The World's Affairs, With Sharper Commentary, More Humor and Better Pictures.
The African nation of Malawi has proposed making it illegal to fart in public, according to reports receiving widespread international attention.
In addition to the reported ban on passing gas, the Local Courts Bill of 2010 also deals with citizens who hinder the burial of dead bodies as well as people who pretend to be fortune tellers, according to Malawi media reports.
read more »
As we approach the Sunday centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, much will be said and written about America’s 40th president. The link below is to a brief but fondly written tome from the son of Lou Cannon, the reporter who covered Reagan longer than anyone else.
Complete article via National Journal
Al Aribiya is reporting that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is agreeing to not run for re-election…but it is an open question whether the people of Egypt will be appeased.
read more »
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that numerous banks are now harassing consumers with credit card charge-offs that are “decades old” – in hopes that they won’t realize that the statue of limitations have passed. In one case involving Capital One, the bank claims it was only complying with a new Fed rule when it started sending bills, and then calling, a Hollywood couple for a $5,195, based on a $2000 credit card balance it wrote off 10 years ago.
Complete article via Los Angeles Times
“Where it got sticky is when our commentators were anchoring political coverage. Those are, in some ways, incompatible roles. We worked our way through that,” long-time NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw told the Chicago Tribune, in his first comments about the departure from MSNBC of hyper-partisan Keith Olbermann.
read more »
Al Arabiya TV is reporting that Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak will announce he will step down after election in a televised address to his nation.
(But will that satisfy the people of Egypt? Seems unlikely at this point.)
via Al Arabiya
Several new apps have been introduced that make online articles much easier to read. The new Readability app, for example, strips out the clutter of ads and styles sheets so that all you see is the text and pictures.
Complete article via New York Times
The Muslim Brotherhood, or al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, is Egypt’s oldest and largest Islamist organization.
Founded by Hassan al-Banna in the 1920s, the group has influenced Islamist movements around the world with its model of political activism combined with Islamic charity work.
read more »
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he will step down after elections this year, bowing after 29 years in power to a popular uprising that has begun to reshape the Middle East.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he will step down from power after his term expires this fall, for the first time setting a date to end his three decades of authoritarian rule.
read more »
King Abdullah II of Jordan has reportedly fired his government today in the face of a wave of demands of public accountability sweeping the Arab world and bringing throngs of demonstrators to the streets of Egypt.
read more »
ED. NOTE: When it comes to assigning blame for the failure of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Americans tend to blame the Palestinian side.
However, recent leaks of highly secret offers made to Israel by Palestinian negotiators provide strong evidence that it has been the Israeli side that refuses to accept peace and is not negotiating in good faith.
Could it be that it is the Israelis who”never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” to make peace? And are Americans ready to reconsider their views of the 44-year old conflict in light of new facts?
The Rest of the Story by James Traub
At a meeting between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators on June 21, 2008, Ahmed Qurei, a former Palestinian prime minister, raised a familiar concern: “When will you freeze settlement activity? This will kill us.” Israel’s continuing refusal to stop settlement construction was making the Palestinian Authority look fatally weak in the eyes of Palestinian and Arab public opinion and thus empowering the radicals of Hamas. “You want to help Hamas on our account?” he asked.
read more »
Frankly, I’ve never cared (or even ever wondered) how Anderson Cooper gets to work, but this pic in today’s New York Post with the caption “Anderson Cooper rides the New York City subway after leaving CNN” did surprise me. I guess I expected CNN’s main guy to have a car service, rather than be a regular subway commuter…not that there’s anything wrong with it.
via NY Post
Understanding Egypt’s Historic Moment by Steven Cook, Council of Foreign Relations’s Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies.
The uprising in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak and the military-dominated political system he inherited is shaping up to be a seminal event in the region’s history, ranking with the establishment of Israel, Egypt’s Free Officers’ coup of 1952, and the June 1967 Six Days War. Like these events, the revolution-in-the making has the potential to remake Egyptian and regional politics. Although Mubarak seems to be on the ropes, the outcome of the crisis remains unclear. Mubarak continues to control the coercive apparatus of the state–the military, intelligence services, and what is left of the Ministry of Interior and its forces. It is entirely possible that a stalemate between the large cross section of Egyptian society that has come out into the streets and the state will ensue.
To understand the unfolding events, it is important to take note of the following actors:
read more »
Yet another example of the evil that Google is becoming.
Google has just announced that all email you send to others via their Gmail service will be delivered to your recipient with a display advertisement based on what you’ve written in your email.
Better watch your wording in your emails to grandma or your own children.
Not covered in the article linked below is the potential, should Google deem it profitable, to place ads in your email based on what you’ve written in previous emails to other people.
By the way, you do know that when you delete your old (or embarrassing) emails from your Gmail account, Google still keeps a copy, don’t you? Don’t you?
(Click Map to Enlarge)
The Vichy Palestine Papers
The Papers of Opprobrium By Mohamed El Mokhtar
The recent damming documents, consisting of minutes of negotiations, memos, diplomatic correspondences, and maps dating from 1999 to 2010, secretly obtained and publicly released by Al Jazeera satellite TV channel eloquently laid bare the material evidence attesting and conforming, beyond any reasonable doubt, the direct complicity of the Palestinian Authority in the continuing rape and criminal destitution of the Palestinian land and people.
read more »
Share:
Like this:
Posted in Current Events, World Affairs | Leave a Comment »