Feature – News Updates

For the uninitiated, the flowing of lines and seemingly idiosyncratic spattering of dots and dashes that characterize the Arabic script can appear an inscrutable enigma. That it is a cursive system with few clues as to exactly where discrete elements find their borders only adds to the puzzle. Without an overly onerous measure of study however, the mystery is breached …

Colonel Efraim (Fein) Eitam was only following orders when he told his troops to beat Ayyad Aqel in 1988. They beat him to death. Eitam, who since then has held several senior posts in the Israeli government, has recently toured the US as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Special Emissary” to the “Caravan for Democracy” program of the Jewish National …

How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years? December 01, 2009 “FP” —  Tom Friedman had an especially fatuous column in Sunday’s New York Times, which is saying something given his well-established capacity for smug self-assurance. According to Friedman, the big challenge we face in the Arab and Islamic world is “the Narrative” — his patronizing …

After wavering for three months and holding ten crisis meetings with top officials, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a decision his chief commanding officer in Afghanistan wanted him to take. He agreed to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, disappointing a section of the population who voted him into office last year in the hope that he would …

Three perspectives on Sri Lankan identity [Slightly revised version of the 12th Bakeer Markar Memorial lecture on ‘Challenges to Strengthening Sri Lankan Identity’, delivered on Nov 17, 2009 by Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, former Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations at Geneva]. (December 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) When Imthiaz extended this invitation to me, it was impossible …

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall Monday passed very quietly in the Arab world, because the meaning of the wall’s fall – the transition from total state control to human freedom – also bypassed the Arab world. Not the Islamic world, or the Middle East, but the Arab world. For many reasons, the Arab world collectively …