Buying Friends Creates More Enemies

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I had the opportunity to raise some of my concerns regarding U.S. foreign policy and the costs of our interventionism around the world. Many observers claim that the...

read more

A Crazy Prophet

“Why don't the masses stream to the square here, too, and throw Bibi out?” my taxi driver exclaimed when we were passing Rabin Square. The wide expanse was almost empty, with only a few mothers and their children enjoying the mild winter sun. The masses will not...

read more

Mubarak’s Name Easier to Erase Than His Legacy

RAFAH - It was easy enough to rename Mubarak Children’s Hospital the Al Tahrir Hospital in Gaza. Not so easy is the task of managing patients who need to cross over to the Egyptian side for treatment, or come back in. Crossing the border, even for medical treatment,...

read more

Israeli Media ‘Fears’ the New Egypt

Over the past three weeks the Israeli media has been extremely interested in Egypt. During the climatic days of the unprecedented demonstrations, television news programs spent most of their airtime covering the protests, while the daily papers dedicated half the news...

read more

The Five Eyes’ Daisy Chain

So the Five Eyes' daisy chain is alive and well. I encountered this at first hand with my own application under Canada's Access to Information Act (ATIA), submitted in December 2006 and documented elsewhere. In summary, after a hideous delay not countenanced by the...

read more

Nationalism, Democracy, and the Arab Awakening

The revolutionary wave sweeping through the Middle East promises to topple sclerotic Arab regimes throughout the region, but there is a marked difference between, say, Egypt and Iran – and the difference is the nationalist factor. In Egypt, the people rose up...

read more

The Genie Is Out of the Bottle

This is a story right out of 1,001 Nights. The genie escaped from the bottle, and no power on earth can put it back. When it happened in Tunisia, it could have been said: OK, an Arab country, but a minor one. It was always a bit more progressive than the others. Just...

read more