Carola Richter takes a look at Germany's broadcasting efforts in the Middle East in the Arab Media and Society Journal, and offers her perspective on whether the channel effectively promotes intercultural dialogue. This is one of six possible functions she identifies (and attributes to scholar Groebel) for foreign broadcasting efforts like this one (and also […]
Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus received the Distinguished Service Award from the State Department today for their work in Iraq on counterinsurgency/diplomacy/reconstruction/everything. The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor that State can give a person. The remarks speak to the partnership that Crocker and Petraeus managed to forge between State and Defense […]
A seventeen-member delegation from Afghanistan met in Saudi Arabia last week to discuss a resolution to the Taliban/NATO-backed government conflict. According to CNN, this is the first such meeting.
An Nahar daily reported that Israel may withdraw from the Ghajar village by November 21. If that is true, then March 14 will have more ammunition in the upcoming campaign against Hizballah. Israel should withdraw from the Shebaa farms and the hills around, just to let Hizballah without its liberation pretenses. Let the people of […]
Facebook users in the UAE voice concern that Internet Service Providers in the Emirates will begin blocking Facebook in whole or in part.
Nathan Brown wrote a policy brief for the Carnegie Endowment's Foreign Policy for the Next President series on the ways a McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden administration can cultivate a foundation in Israel and in Palestine for the ever-elusive two-state solution.
The Department of Defense recently committed to spending $300 million in four years on a pro-Coalition information campaign in Iraq. This campaign will not necessarily appropriately label its broadcasts, leaflets and articles as “Made in the USA”. They took this decision based on the idea that taking responsibility for our own propaganda would undermine said […]
The Los Angeles Times has a piece today on the conflict between the younger, more liberal generation and the older, more conservative generation in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. They interview bloggers Mustafa Naggar and Abd el-Monem Mahmoud, author of the blog “Ana Ikhwan“, both disaffected Brotherhood members disappointed by the religious rigidity of Egypt's main opposition […]
NOW Lebanon: With increasing frequency since the February assassination of top Hezbollah commander Imad Mugniyah in Damascus, the Israeli Counter-Terrorism Bureau has been warning its citizens that the possibility of either above scenario being carried out by Hezbollah is high. The chatter has gotten particularly loud now that the Jewish high holidays have begun. Should […]
The International Herald Tribune has posted a rather strange account from the Associated Press about how the hostages were freed. Apparently after ten days of driving around the desert to escape detection from Libyan, Chadian, Sudanese, and Egyptian security forces the kidnappers told the tourists to pile into an SUV and drive. According to some […]
AP reports that women in Saudi Arabia can now find abayas with designs on them for purchase in local boutiques. Jeddah leads the charge for most stylish abayas available. The transition of these abayas from taboo to mainstream is a mystery (at least to this writer): No one really knows why or how it became […]
Eid al Fitr begins today. The LA Times has some recipes for Middle Eastern sweets, doctored slightly for the American grocery store. Below: Muhalbiya al-ruz.
As a testament of their commitment to the liberal arts tradition in their new satellite campus, NYU has named Alfred H. Bloom, former president of Swarthmore, the head of its new Abu Dhabi campus. This is interesting because I am pretty sure the Swarthmore version of a liberal arts tradition looks totally different than the […]
Ehud Olmert, current lame-duck Prime Minister of Israel, conceded yesterday in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth that Israel will have to give up land in order to achieve peace with Palestine, specifically land in the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Summary quote: “In the end of the day, we will have to withdraw […]
30% of people surveyed from 23 different countries in a BBC poll believe that the war on terror has strengthened al Qaeda. Skepticism is never unhealthy with respect to the accuracy of polling data, but this seems like a pretty compelling argument for the role of public diplomacy in foreign affairs, in addition to, uh, […]