Islamic Leadership in Egypt … failure after failure

Thomas Friedman offers some very interesting insights into Egypt within the New York Times … The country is more divided than ever between Islamist and less religious and liberal parties, and the Egyptian currency has lost 8 percent of its value against the dollar in the last two months. Even more disturbing, there has been … Read more

Building a real Star Wars Death Star

The White House in the US has an on-line presence entitled “We the People…” that permits individuals to raise any petition they wish. The deal is that if a specific number sign, then it mandates an official White House response. Well, the limit was 25,000 and so when they received a petition signed by over … Read more

State Sponsored Murder in Saudi Arabia

Last Wednesday Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan, was executed in Dawadmi, west of the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh. She had been found guilty of smothering an infant in her care to death in 2007. This was quite frankly an appalling and truly outrageous barbaric act. Why? Well because …. While it is true that Ms Nafeek had confessed to the crime, she later … Read more

A new offering from the Republicans? … er no.

Republican candidate Marco Rubio has declared his intent to run for election as US president in 2016. Having learned that touting “stupid” or “religious nut” is not a vote winner from the last election, he will be different, something new and fresh, right? …. actually no, he is more of the same …. sigh! He did … Read more

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict

And so it continues … another generation of people on both sides are committing themselves to their on-going mutual destruction. Tempting as it might be to take sides, or justify the actions of one side by listing the crimes of the other, I won’t. Both have much in common. The stunning silence – The Israelis will point … Read more

2012 Nobel Prize: Peace

The Nobel peace prize is one that sets my skeptical alarm bells ringing. The science based Nobel Prizes (Medicine, Physics and Chemistry) leave us all standing in awe of both the discoveries and the discoverers, all those laureates are truly applaud worthy, and year after year it remains a consistent pattern. The Literature prize may indeed leave many asking … Read more