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Why Obama's Mideast Policy Will Work

by Steven L. Spiegel

42 reviews

Published 08.10.2009 Category: Keywords: Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Gaza, Fatah, Hamas, Hizbollah

Together for Peace

by James J. Zogby

52 reviews

Published 26.10.2009 Category: by James Zogby, The Middle East Keywords: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Gaza

Memo To David Axelrod: Take A Nap

by Tony Schwartz Added 09.03.2010

David Axelrod, President Obama's chief political adviser, sleeps "five fitful hours a night," the New York Times reported yesterday. "I think he's getting close to a burnout kind of thing," Axelrod's friend Sam Smith was quoted as saying....

Memo to Republicans: Want to Vote Against Health Care Reform? -- Go Ahead, Make My Day

by Robert Creamer Added 08.03.2010

Over the last several weeks various pundits - and Republican talkers - have fanned out across the airwaves to proclaim that Democrats face grave political danger this fall if they are so bold as to pass health care reform in the face of united...

The Last Labour Adventurer: Remembering Michael Foot

by Binoy Kampmark Added 06.03.2010

He was called a walking obituary of the British Labour Party more prone to writing suicide notes (in the political sense), than manifestoes for survival. In a sense, Chris Patten had been right when he used that somewhat cruel description of...

The Real Threat to Israel’s National Security

by Alon Ben-Meir Added 05.03.2010

It is time for the Israeli government to be realistic with the changing political conditions in the Middle East. The national security paranoia that has defined its policy toward the Arab world is dated, and no longer helps Israel in dealing...

The Coming Battle of the Ritz Carlton

by Robert Creamer Added 04.03.2010

President Obama's announcement yesterday began the final chapter in the 14-month war over health care reform. The decisive battle will obviously take place on the floor of Congress. But the most symbolically powerful battle may take place next...

'Empathic Civilization': When Money No Longer Buys Happiness

by Richard Layard Added 03.03.2010

Competition is lonely. It is good to have it between organisations. Within organisations, though, it may or may not increase productivity, but it does not increase happiness. To extol it is to make a fundamental misjudgment about human nature....

For America to Succeed in the 21st Century, Senate Rules Must Change

by Robert Creamer Added 01.03.2010

As momentum grows to change the rules of the United States Senate, it's important to look beyond partisan battles and evaluate the effect of the way we make major decisions on the prospects for American success in the 21st Century. In his book...

Abuse of Language Threatens American Freedoms

by James J. Zogby Added 01.03.2010

The last Administration displayed a rather perverse and dangerous penchant for dressing up their behavior, providing it with religious or patriotic intent. President Bush packaged the Iraq war, for example, as America's mission - having been...

The Great Recession: A Spiritual Crisis

by Jim Wallis Added 26.02.2010

The Great Recession is not just an economic crisis, it is the result of a loss of values, a moral crisis. And to say that it is a moral crisis is also to say that it is a spiritual crisis. At the center of most religions is the question of who...

Now or Never

by Dylan Loewe Added 25.02.2010

If Barack Obama signs a health care reform bill later this year, today will have been its turning point. For a White House that admitted after Scott Brown's victory that it was facing a new political calculus without a contingency plan, today's...

Who's to Blame for Stalling Key Parts of the Obama Agenda?

by Robert Creamer Added 24.02.2010

Those who don't live in the nation's capital may so far have been spared the columnist-generated imbroglio over who is "to blame" for the fact that many of President Obama's flagship initiatives have yet to pass into law. Many candidates have...

Sugar May Be Bad But This Sweetener Is Far More Deadly

by Joseph Mercola Added 24.02.2010

Study after study are taking their place in a growing lineup of scientific research demonstrating that consuming high-fructose corn syrup is the fastest way to trash your health. It is now known without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all...

Blunt Instrument of the Dark Side: Alexander Haig

by Binoy Kampmark Added 24.02.2010

The bluff and bluster of history stills itself from time to time, leaving in its wake the busy activity of revisionism and more sympathetic readings of its figures. A figure who is unlikely to deserve such treatment is the late Alexander Haig, a...

Unfulfilled Promises: Guantanamo and Torture, Difficulties in Burying Sins of the Past

by James J. Zogby Added 23.02.2010

Last April we polled across the Arab World asking what Arabs thought was the most positive early action President Obama had taken to improve U.S.-Arab relations. High up on the list (barely topped by the decision to leave Iraq) was the...

Obama Proposal to Regulate Premiums of Insurance Companies is a Game Changer

by Robert Creamer Added 22.02.2010

President Obama's proposal to regulate the premiums charged by health insurance companies is a game changer. And this week's health care summit will almost certainly serve as a tipping point in the year-long health care debate. The President's...

‘Terrifying’ Narcissism: J. D. Salinger’s Legacy

by Binoy Kampmark Added 17.02.2010

How will we remember J.D. Salinger? The painfully reclusive author of the monumental work on childhood alienation The Catcher in the Rye (1951)? A rather cranky voice for silenced youth? Certainly, many adolescents who opened the pages of the...

The Tea Party Movement Frightens Me

by James J. Zogby Added 16.02.2010

Last weekend, when Washington was being hit by its worst-ever snow storm, the Tea Party Movement was holding its first national meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. With nothing else to do, and unable to travel, I watched parts of their convention...

Syria Must Be a Top Priority

by Alon Ben-Meir Added 12.02.2010

Recently Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman caused yet another blunder for Israel's foreign image in a series of hawkish comments and threats toward Syria. Following the diplomatic breech with Turkey by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny...

T. Boone Pickens: Spoiling a Big Idea

by James J. Zogby Added 12.02.2010

T. Boone Pickens has a big idea. It may even be a good one. But when Pickens stoops to using fear and bigotry to sell this idea, it becomes small and unsavory. "The Pickens Plan", as it is known, proposes the far-reaching goal of ending the...

What the Iconic Labor Battle at Hugo Boss Means for Our Economic Future

by Robert Creamer Added 12.02.2010

It's the red carpet season in Hollywood. That means high-end apparel companies like Hugo Boss are promoting iconic celebrities to wear their clothing line at the Oscars and other award ceremonies.But for the workers who make these suits in...

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No significant global warming since 1995

by Jarl R. Ahlbeck 36890 downloads

The recovery of the earth's climate from the little ice age started about 200 years ago, but the concentration of the atmospheric carbon dioxide started to increase significantly as late as in the 1950s, probably due to rapidly increased burning...

Genetically modified plants benefit everybody

by Petter Portin 9177 downloads

We consume approximately one gram's worth of genes in every meal. This may not seem like very much, but each of our meals contains trillions of individual genes. The transfer-genes contained in genetically modified food-stuffs are identical to...

Brzezinski: Russia's Invasion of Georgia Is Reminiscent of Stalin's Attack on Finland

by Nathan Gardels 7069 downloads

On Sunday (Editor's note: August 10, 2008) I talked with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the elder statesman who was national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, about the Russian invasion of Georgia. He long tangled with Soviet power. Now he takes...

Putin's doctrine surfaces

by Stefan Forss 6167 downloads

A few Georgian battalions - trained to fight terrorists, not to manoeuvre against a powerful Russian army! - undertook a militarily deficient offensive against Tskhinvali in South Ossetia on August 8. The Russians replied promptly and...

Firewalls to Freedom

by Rebecca MacKinnon and Evgeny Morozov 5685 downloads

NEW YORK - Even the most cold-hearted realists would agree that the failure of Communist censorship played a role in the collapse of the Iron Curtain: Voice of America, the fax machine, rock 'n' roll, and the lure of Western capitalism helped to...

Fareed Zakaria: The Post-American World – A Book Review

by Olli Raade 5682 downloads

Above there is an interview with Fareed Zakaria by the New Perspectives Quarterly about his book "The Post-American World". Below there is a summary of the book as for a background for the interview. Zakaria argues that America's relative weight...

New cheap power source heading for independent tests

by Michael Johnson 5423 downloads

As Middle East oil climbs to record highs, research into alternative energy sources is attracting a wave of new science, much of it still experimental and untested. One of the most advanced concepts, scheduled to go live about a year from now,...

What does Ms. Palin’s tattoo tell us?

by Michael Johnson 4787 downloads

BORDEAUX - I have witnessed the gradual penetration of tattoo culture into the middle classes in Europe and the United States over the past two or three years but I always thought it would go away. So I was stunned to see that now we have...

Wilson Is the Poster "Child" for the New Republican Party

by Robert Creamer 4452 downloads

When Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled out that President Obama was a "liar" in the middle of Obama's nationally televised address to a joint session of Congress, he became the poster child for the new Republican Party. I definitely mean...

Odd couple share Cliburn gold

by Michael Johnson 4123 downloads

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas, ended Sunday on a somewhat sour note, with some critics and former winners wondering how the jury could award the top prize jointly to the two young winners - one a Chinese...

How the French take their sex in stride

by Michael Johnson 4022 downloads

BORDEAUX -- Our glamorous, doe-eyed Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati, is the talk of France again - this time over her surprise pregnancy. Always controversial, she has now added spice to the gossip by politely declining to reveal who the...

A Tribunal for Kenya: the Waki Commission Report

by Binoy Kampmark 3996 downloads

The Waki commission, charged with the task of investigating post-election violence in the aftermath of the Kenyan elections last December, has called for a special tribunal to try various perpetrators. The Commission of Inquiry into...

Finland show the way to coffee binge-drinking

by Michael Johnson 3834 downloads

I was between jobs a few years ago when I stumbled into a bit of public relations work for the coffee industry. The coffee marketers seemed a decent lot, just men and women trying to make a living. They had only one characteristic that bothered...

Effects of banning smoking in restaurants

by Pentti Huovinen 3678 downloads

Latest research shows that the banning of smoking in restaurants has reduced heart attacks by as much as a fifth. Researchers in the University of California have analysed relevant studies undertaken after 2004. In all the studies it was...

Behind the scenes at piano competitions

by Michael Johnson 3603 downloads

Has the time come to rethink the concept of piano competitions? Many participants and leading musicians believe so. The proliferation of international competitions - now numbering more than 750 - is producing hundreds of annual laureates who...

Republicans Take Huge Political Risk Opposing Obama Jobs Bill

by Robert Creamer 3520 downloads

You'd think that the results of November's election -- coupled with the collapse of the economy -- would begin to make Republican lawmakers question the consequences of their blind commitment to right wing economic orthodoxy. Apparently most...

Fareed Zakaria: Facing a Post-American World - An Interview

by Nathan Gardels 3427 downloads

Fareed Zakaria is author of The Post-American World and editor-in-chief of Newsweek International. He spoke with NPQ editor Nathan Gardels in June. NPQ | Barack Obama has been reading your book The Post-American World. If he becomes president,...

Nathan Gardels interviews Joseph Stiglitz about Wall Street meltdown

by Nathan Gardels 3379 downloads

Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001. I spoke with him on Tuesday (Editor's note September 16, 2008) about the Wall Street meltdown. Nathan Gardels: Barack Obama has said the Wall Street meltdown is the greatest...

Time to Nationalize Insolvent Banks

by Nouriel Roubini 3219 downloads

NEW YORK - A year ago, I predicted that the losses of US financial institutions would reach at least $1 trillion and possibly go as high as $2 trillion. At that time, the consensus among economists and policymakers was that these estimates were...

The Coming Battle of the Atlantic: Euro vs. the Dollar

by Kenichi Ohmae 3000 downloads

Tokyo - Because Americans are more proactive than the Japanese, they are likely to avoid the same kind of deep slump as we had for almost a decade. Nonetheless, with the value of their key assets-their homes-diminished, they will become a land...

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Britain trades free speech for security

by Michael Johnson

904 reviews

Britain's decision to ban outspoken Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders from entering the United Kingdom last week dramatizes the religious tensions that once again loom over humankind. Specifically, it is a sign that intolerant Muslim faithful...

Behind the scenes at piano competitions

by Michael Johnson

97 reviews

The Real Threat to Israel’s National Security

by Alon Ben-Meir

5 reviews

An Hour's Drive From Pakistan

by Dhiraj Singh

70 reviews

This local koan begins to make sense as you prepare to enter the ICT or the Islamabad Capital Territory. It is a bit like entering the First World from a Third World country by road. The check-posts, the armed guards, the four-lane highway that...

Can Fresh Interpretations of Islamic Text Prevent a Possible "Clash of Civilizations?"

by Tawfik Hamid

58 reviews

Since 9/11, the possibility of a clash of civilizations has become an unavoidable area of discussion among intellectuals as well as the general public. The inaction of Islamic scholars around the world to those who incorrectly interpret the...

In Praise of Slow Thinking

by Carl Honoré

40 reviews

Google seems like the last employer on earth that would promote slowness at work. After all, this is a company that went from a twinkle in its founders' eyes to global supremacy in a just a few years. It pumps out new products at a dizzying...

Telecom reforms drive French workers to suicide

by Michael Johnson

56 reviews

French workers have never been known for their flexibility. But the impact of globalization has meant a gradual erosion of the cocoon inside which they have traditionally found comfort. The backlash against more rigorous management standards has...

Freeze the Settlement Freeze

by Daoud Kuttab

63 reviews

RAMALLAH - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to approve new Jewish settlements on the eve of a possible settlement freeze is the latest round in a cycle that has been repeated so many times over the past 40 years that it would...

Why Bipartisanship is Good Politics

by Chris Patten

199 reviews

LONDON - Bipartisanship seems to have taken a drubbing in Washington since President Barack Obama got to the White House. Like most recent American presidents, Obama campaigned on a promise to work with his political opponents for the greater...

Fighting a War by Objective

by Alon Ben-Meir

51 reviews

The ongoing deliberations among President Obama's national security team and congressional leaders are necessary to determine the best possible means of successfully conducting the war in Afghanistan. But what must guide these discussions and...

The Tea Party Movement Frightens Me

by James J. Zogby

15 reviews

Haiti Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

by Evelyn Leopold

26 reviews

UNITED NATIONS - Roads are jammed with the homeless sleeping under open skies. The promised food, water and medicine are slow in reaching them. The dead litter byways, some scooped up in dump trucks and unloaded into mass graves. And tens of...

Fear, Anger, Hope and Inspiration will Decide Health Care Battle

by Robert Creamer

58 reviews

The details of policy will not decide the outcome of the health care reform battle. In fact, the policy outcome itself will be decided largely by the interplay of four emotions that will drive the outcome of this essentially political battle:...

No evidence for man made global warming

by Andrew Kenny

62 reviews

In the next two months you will see hysterical stories about melting ice caps, rising seas and other catastrophes to be caused by man made global warming. They are all nonsense. The reason for them is the Copenhagen Conference in December, which...

Two Key Election Contests in 2009

by James J. Zogby

46 reviews

The last time Democrats won the White House in 1992, they quickly lost ground in the 1993 and 1994 elections. The results were debilitating for President Clinton. With Republicans winning Governorships in Virginia and New Jersey (the only two...

The Hypocrisy of David Letterman

by Jane Shure

53 reviews

Here we are once again confronted with yet another public figure who postures one way and acts another. Thursday night, after becoming the target of an extortion plot, David Letterman confessed, "Sure enough, contained in the package was stuff...

Obama, Progressives and Afghanistan

by Robert Creamer

51 reviews

Like many Progressives, I disagreed with President Obama's decision to increase the number of American troops deployed to Afghanistan. But Progressives must not lose sight of the fact, that though we may disagree with this particular decision,...

Remembering the Nazi-Soviet Pact After Seventy Years

by Robert Gellately

45 reviews

The first annual European-wide commemoration of the "the victims of Stalinism and Nazism" took place on August 23. The resolution to hold this event was passed recently by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and...

What the Iconic Labor Battle at Hugo Boss Means for Our Economic Future

by Robert Creamer

13 reviews

Who's to Blame for Stalling Key Parts of the Obama Agenda?

by Robert Creamer

13 reviews

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