The New York Times just put out a news alert stating: “The Obama administration is discussing with Egyptian officials a proposal for President Hosni Mubarak to resign immediately, turning over power to a transitional government headed by Vice President Omar Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military, administration officials and Arab diplomats said Thursday.” […]
The turmoil in Egypt raises endless questions about accountability. To name a few: Is it possible for a dictator to be accountable to his people? What responsibility do Egypt’s allies have for holding him accountable? Are the massive public demonstrations currently on display doing any more for accountability than the previous status quo? Any leadership […]
As the situation in Egypt ramps up by the day, a casualty that is frequently making headlines is the media. Specifically, reporters. The attacks on journalists have become so frequent and high profile (think Anderson Cooper) that the White House, in a rare move, has commented on it. According to a story in the New […]
I’m an old New Yorker man from way back. I’ve noted any number of terrific New Yorker stories here, from George Packer and Ryan Lizza on the failures of the Senate on climate and energy legislation, to the authoritative Betsy Kolbert on nearly anything and everything relative to sustainability and the environment. Hendrik Hertzberg is […]
Study: Drugs prevents HIV spread to babies Antiviral triple therapy, usually reserved for patients with highly progressed HIV/AIDS, can help stem the transmission of the virus from pregnant women to their babies, according to a study published in The Lancet. All of the women who participated in the study had HIV, but none had progressed […]
Normally I don’t bother to take the time to discuss distortions of facts that occur on cable news programs. Such occurrences are, to me, as surprising as eating cauliflower. But I think this one, even though it happened a couple weeks ago, is worth commenting on: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and […]
It’s been interesting watching the evolution of the U.S. role in dealing with the crisis in Egypt. It’s clear that the U.S. was taken by surprise by the pace of events. Sure, Tunisia was a warning, but Egypt is not Tunisia and few expected revolution in Egypt. At the outset, the Obama team took a […]
It is without a doubt that mothers will do anything for their children and that when they fear their children’s future and safety are at stake they will risk just about anything. But should a mother go to jail for trying to ensure that her children’s safety and education are preserved? That is exactly what […]
(Sorry to have been a while away from the blog, but last week was pretty busy and then we got away for some lovely skiing. Snow can be a wonderful thing. My sympathies, of course, do go out to those of you who are suffering at home, or in your travels, from the very heavy […]
Like many around the world, I’ve been mesmerized by the ongoing events in Egypt. Some in the media are trying to tie the events to radical Islamists and terrorist groups. I believe this is not the case and instead we are bearing witness to one of the most important civil rights movement in history. The […]
The office of a news website, Lankaenews (or Lanka-e-news) was set on fire over the weekend, apparently in an act of arson. The news website shows photos of the completely decimated office after the fire, which destroyed the organization’s computers. It is not the first time they have been attacked. According to a statement from […]
Though Egypt blocked Twitter following the protests that erupted on January 25th, tweets about Egypt have surged in the days leading up to and after the start of the revolution that has rocked the capitol. According to Sysomos, the number of tweets that contained the words “Egypt,” “Yemen,” or “Tunisia” increased more than tenfold after […]
Investors have largely shrugged off several of these unexpected developments recently, including the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, but the situation in Egypt has the potential to cause more widespread uncertainty in Global Markets, especially if oil and other commodities keep surging or the unrest spreads to more countries in the Middle East.
The thing to watch in Egypt is the military. It all goes back to Crane Brinton’s observation, made in The Anatomy of Revolution, that: …it is almost safe to say that no government is likely to be overthrown until it loses the ability to make adequate use of its military and police powers. That loss […]
I don’t ever want my name as a journalist to be prefaced with the phrase “Pulitzer-prize winning reporter.” It’s not that I am against winning the Pulitzer Prize for my work someday, or that I think the Prize is the mark of a bourgeois journalist. There are simply too many people in the world doing […]