Archives for January 2010

The world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifah or Khalifah Tower, was unveiled in Dubai on Monday. AP has video Dubai is a finance hub, the bubble of which has burst, so the building’s opening now seems a critique of past excesses more than the triumph originally dreamed of. Now that Dubai is having to be bailed […]

Surprises in the Asia Society poll done in June, 2009, of attitudes of Afghans. It was a big poll, with some 6400 respondents from all over the country. It reveals a society increasingly connected by new communications technology, where devotion to democratic values is deepening and commitment to women’s rights is rapidly growing. The stereotype […]

You probably won’t see it in most US news outlets, but on Monday morning in Kabul and Jalalabad, hundreds of university students demonstrated against US strikes this weekend that allegedly killed a number of civilians. I want to underline the irony that the students in Tehran University are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while students in these […]

The Lippard Blog: Who are the climate change skeptics? Follow the money End/ (Not Continued)

The WSJ headlines that Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano “has become “a target” for the GOP in the wake of the attempted Christmas day bombing of a Northwest Airliner. And I expect Ms. Napolitano, an extremely competent civil servant, to take a drubbing on the Sunday talk shows today. So let us look more closely […]

The USG Open Source Center translates an interview with the “Old Taliban’s” number 2 man, Mullah “Baradar” Abdul Ghani, on Taliban tactics against the US. Taleban deputy leader warns of more attacks in Afghanistan in 2010Afghan Islamic PressThursday, December 31, 2009 Document Type: OSC Translated Text Taleban deputy leader warns of more attacks in Afghanistan […]

DETNEWS | WebVideo | Detroit 2009, The Movie Tbe main hope I see for Detroit is that rising petroleum prices may hurt commuting and suburbs, and reverse the exodus from places like downtown, causing companies to relocate there and employees to seek condos. It is amazing how many relatively nice office and apartment buildings are […]

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Death toll climbs to 93 in Lakki Marwat blast Only a few days after Monday’s horrific bombing of a Shiite procession in Karachi, the Pakistani Taliban struck again, blowing up a truck bomb in the middle of a volleyball match at a Pashtun village bordering South Waziristan. The village is the […]

10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University. In a country where the sexes have been so separated in public that some have spoken of ‘gender Apartheid,’ this move, which came from King Abdullah, provoked raging controversy. When a prominent cleric criticized having male and female students […]