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By Thomas L. Friedman on April 14, 2011

When I was in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, I wanted to change hotels one day to be closer to the action and called the Marriott to see if it had any openings. The young-sounding Egyptian woman who spoke with me from the reservations department offered me a room and then asked: “Do you have a corporate rate?” I said, “I don’t know. I work for the New York Times”. There was a silence on the phone for a few moments, and then she said: “Can I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Are we going to be OK? I’m worried.”

The U.S. government has prevented more than 350 people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups from boarding U.S.-bound commercial flights since the end of 2009, The Associated Press has learned.

In the Public Interest February 14, 2011

Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post writer and founder of the Center for Teaching Peace, must be very happy with the news from Egypt. For twenty-five years, McCarthy has been persuading high schools and colleges to adopt peace studies in their curriculum (for more information, contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ). Now he has another example of a largely non-violent revolution—led by young people of all backgrounds—successfully ousting a dictatorial regime.

Military Pledges Civilian Handover

Cairo, Feb 12: Egypt’s military leaders say they are committed to eventually handing over power to an elected civilian administration that will abide by its international agreements.

Sana’a, Feb 12: Thousands of protesters gathered in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, Saturday, calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down a day after Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak resigned.

It's pretty common now for supporters of the Palestinians and Palestinian leaders themselves to say, "Well, we have to abandon hope in the two-state solution." As one of the Palestinian leaders said, "We should give Israel the key and let them take over the entire West Bank. It will be one state, we'll then carry out a civil rights struggle. We can win that one, like South Africa." But this view overlooks a simple point of logic. Those are not the two options. There is a third option, namely that the U.S. and Israel continue doing exactly what they are doing. They're not going to take control of the West Bank. They don't want it. They don't want the Palestinians. So the analogy to South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle is pretty misleading. South Africa needed its black population. They were its workforce. They couldn't get rid of them. They were 85 percent of the population doing the work of the country. So, as under slavery, they had to take care of them. Bantustans were bad enough, but they were intended to be more or less viable because it was necessary to reproduce the workforce. That's not true for Israel and the Palestinians. Israel doesn't want to take responsibility for them, rather it wants them to get out. It's like the United States and the indigenous population. There's no sense in taking care of them, just exterminate that "hapless race" of Native Americans.

by David Hudson

Shocking and terrible news from Tehran today. Farideh Gheirat, a lawyer representing several of the politicians, journalists and artists detained during the protests that immediately followed the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential election, has told the ISNA news agency (as reported by Reuters and the AFP) that Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to six years in jail and that his "social rights," including "making movies, writing scripts, foreign travel and giving interviews to domestic and foreign media, have been taken away for 20 years."

Fifteen years after the end of the Bosnian war, a country lives with brutal memories

Sarajevo's Jezero paediatric hospital officially reopened late last month. It should have been a joyful moment – but as is so often the case in divided Bosnia, it was bittersweet. The hospital didn't close in 1992 for repairs because it was old; the Bosnian Serbs, then besieging the city, wrecked it at the start of the war with a well-aimed artillery shell. Six newborn infants perished in the rubble.

Tim Sloan / AFP-Getty Images

President Obama walks to his car with Secret Service agents after being injured in a basketball game with friends and aides.

President Obama hasn't hidden the fact that he enjoys the occasional round of golf, or a basketball scrimmage from time to time. He's caught plenty of flak for it, too, from critics suggesting he takes too much leisure time. Now the sportiness appears to have caught up with the athletic president. During a post-Thanksgiving basketball game at Fort McNair, Obama, playing with personal aide Reggie Love and a few family members, took an unfriendly elbow straight to the lip. The result: an open gash that sent the Secret Service and White House Medical Unit scrambling. Rushed home, the injured president received 12 stitches to close up the wound.

Activist Relies on Islam to Fight for Animal Rights

Scott Nelson for The New York Times

Egyptians gather to watch bulls be slaughtered in accordance with Eid al-Adha tradition at a streetside butchery in the Sayeda Zeinab district of Cairo, Egypt.

It is never easy to be an animal rights activist in the Arab world. But on Id al-Adha, the annual Muslim religious holiday when the streets run red with the blood of slaughtered sheep, cows and camels, it is a nightmare.

“Ah, I can’t stand it!” wailed Amina Abaza, wincing as she drove through a gantlet of hanging carcasses and entrails, with doomed sheep bleating all around her. “Islam is all about compassion, but we don’t practice it!”

GREETINGS President Obama headed for Mumbai to court India as a partner.

Rajanish Kakade/Associated Press

At a panel discussion last week on relations between India and the United States, Strobe Talbott, the former American diplomat, told an audience of Indian business leaders that he had learned a valuable lesson about India: Do not hyphenate it. As in Indo-Pak. (Or, in a close cousin of a hyphen, as in Chindia.) The audience smiled at his epiphany: India matters because it is India.