Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:45:08 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Youssef Ibrahim :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Youssef+Ibrahim istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/arabian-oil-tsar-to-president-bush-get-lost/69855/ Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST After pleading with King Abdullah to pump more oil and ease gas prices, "get lost" was the answer President Bush received on his historic visit to Saudi Arabia. "Presidents and kings have every right to comment or ask or say whatever they want," but we will not do it, the Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, responded in a hastily convened press conference hours after the presidential supplication. Particularly noteworthy is that Mr. Bush made his entreaty on behalf of American consumers whose tax... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/us-solution-to-the-mideast-conflict/69673/ Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Anwar Sadat used to say America held 99% of the cards in the Arab-Israeli conflict. When the late Egyptian president joined the game, he won back every inch of the Sinai and secured a peace treaty with the Jewish state. The cards are still in America's hands. Let's play one more round. America's plan is premised on two facts: 1) The Middle East players hate each other, but they all long for America's affections. Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia jostle to be the "prime" American ally; Syria wakes... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/last-chance-for-a-legacy/69448/ Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST President Bush will return empty-handed from his first voyage to some dicey Arab countries — including Saudi Arabia, the world's prime purveyor of Islamofascism. The Saudis will be able to buy more advanced weapons, and they will get a free pass to export Islamist terror as well as oil. America should lead a sweeping transformation of the West's hesitant prosecution of the war on Islamofascist terror. With teeming armies of boorish fanatics on call, an assembly line of suicide bombers, bearded... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/bands-visit-what-peace-is-about/68007/ Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST The organizers of the Middle East gathering at Annapolis, Md., should have screened "The Band's Visit," a gem of an Israeli movie playing in theaters in New York, instead of the grim replay of old footage we saw last month. Of course, it is only a movie, and a very funny one at that, dealing with the so-called cultural exchanges that have taken place for decades under what we all know as a "Cold Peace." Yet the film takes note of what many Arabs, Israelis, and most of the world does not realize... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/gulf-conundrum-deception-vs-policy/67596/ Thu, 6 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Foreign policy wonks, politicians, and even the presidents of Jewish organizations have returned from their visits to Saudi Arabia and Arab sheikdoms — dazed by "private confessions" that these regimes deeply fear Iran, uniformly favor attacking its nuclear facilities, and do indeed possess armies and air forces superior to the ayatollahs'. They also "really" accept Israel, several of these visitors keep assuring us, even if their princes would not shake hands with a Jew in public. Some go on... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/bedouin-darkness-spreads-with-oil-money/67226/ Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Do American institutions want to snuggle up with Saudi Arabia and its Dark Age values? They had better think this one through as a tidal wave of money from Saudi Arabia — as well as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait — is crashing into these shores and buying up American assets. They should expect no free lunches. These failed governments are buying America's silence and its implied acquiescence to barbaric. First, the numbers: • The United Arab Emirates, a tiny enclave of a half... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/owls-gather-at-annapolis/66954/ Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Like the menacing crows in Alfred Hitchcock's classic "The Birds," participants are gathering at Annapolis for the first Middle East megaconference in 16 years. After much coyness, it seems that everyone is coming: the princes of corruption, assorted jihadists and nincompoops, Syrian murderers, hapless Israelis, superfluous Egyptians, and a coterie of Europeans and hangers-on — all gathered by Secretary of State Rice, whose record of nonexistent accomplishments in almost eight years as national... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/chavezs-dreams-of-grandeur/66667/ Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST When Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, he promised nirvana to a country with 39% of its population living below the poverty line. Nine years later, as Mr. Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" promotes exotic plans to cut the workday to six hours and offer state pensions to street vendors, homemakers, and maids, the poor are still miserable. To bring about the grandiose proposals, Mr. Chavez's socialist minions are stripping the goose that laid the golden egg, Venezuela's... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/king-the-pope-and-the-sword/66106/ Thu, 8 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Saudi Arabia's king visited the pope at the Vatican this week, and the leader of Catholicism expressed grief over the draconian discrimination experienced by Christian minorities in some Muslim lands. During the unprecedented and historic encounter, Benedict XVI gave the Saudi monarch an old painting of the Vatican. The king's gift to the pontiff: a sword. As a gift from from a leading Islamic fundamentalist nation, a sword is about as clear a symbol of intolerance as there can be; and indeed... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/hubris-amateurs-spell-tragedy-in-middle-east/65799/ Fri, 2 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Neoconservatives and the Bush administration now concede that misjudgments combined with hubris and ideological zeal ruined what could have been a liberating American project in Iraq. Yet they keep doing it. The current issue of the New Yorker magazine includes the disturbing example of one Jared Cohen, a member of the State Department policy planning staff who functions as a primary adviser to Secretary of State Rice on how to win the hearts and minds of young Muslims. In tales shared more... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/turkey-before-the-gates-of-hell-in-kurdistan/65404/ Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Welcome to the latest regional war in the Middle East — Turkey's contemplated invasion of northern Iraq. Among other things, this latest Turkish aggression, preceded years ago by the invasion of Cyprus, threatens to: • Send energy prices through the roof. With oil prices already at a record $90 a barrel, they will easily keep setting new highs as winter arrives in Europe and America. • Set back American military and political efforts to stabilize an already convulsed Middle East, inviting even... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/backtracking-on-ally-turkey-damages-credibility/64973/ Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Over the past three weeks Turkey has deployed 60,000 troops to its border with Iraq, the Turkish parliament has voted overwhelmingly to authorize an invasion of northern Iraq, and Turkish generals have threatened to block almost 75% of supplies to American forces in Iraq, which are transported through Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan promised further hostilities if Congress did not back away from a nonbinding resolution labeling the Turkish massacre of 1.5 million Armenian Christians in 1915 as... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saudi-arabias-friendship-or-oil/64791/ Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Why hasn't President Bush, a man who has been known to invade countries, ordered a blueprint for taking Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which has half the world's oil? Oil prices are inching closer to an all-time high of $100 a barrel, which soon will translate into more than $4 a gallon at the pump. With energy costs at those levels, most economists agree, Western economies will be pushed to the brink of collapse. That is an outcome we must prevent at all costs, in one of two ways. One is for... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/acknowledging-the-armenian-genocide/64553/ Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST America has moral and strategic purposes in denouncing the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as a horrendous genocide perpetrated by Turks. The facts are not in dispute. Ample documentation shows that for two years, hundreds of thousands of Armenian Christians were forcibly marched out of their towns and villages, killed, starved, and crucified until death as part of a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign by the Young Turks government of the dying Ottoman Empire. Twenty-two countries... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/in-the-kingdom-darkness-deepens/64000/ Fri, 5 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST A new movie is playing in theaters, and I recommend you see it. It's called "The Kingdom," and it reminds us of the scale of terror visited upon the world by Saudi Arabia's Islamist priesthood, its ruling family, its army, and many of its citizens. Although it is an action picture, "The Kingdom," remarkably well-directed by Peter Berg, goes far beyond the usual fare and delves into the deep dysfunctions of Saudi society. Based on actual events surrounding the June 1996 terror bombings that left... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/let-lebanese-not-palestinians-rule-lebanon/63704/ Mon, 1 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST The Palestinian Arab refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in northern Lebanon that was destroyed during four months of fighting between Palestinian jihadists and the Lebanese army would cost $385 million to rebuild. Alternatively, beginning to reinstitute the rights of a much-abused Lebanon would cost nothing. Instead of rebuilding the house these Palestinians destroyed — as the United Nations is already agitating to do — another choice is to raze what's left to the ground, return the land to its... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/israel-lobbys-pull-pales-next-to-evil-saudi-input/63353/ Tue, 25 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST It's been a while since a book about American Jews has elicited as much controversy as "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," in which professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard University argue that America's Israel lobby exercises "undue" influence and blocks other views on the Middle East. In the noisy debate that has sprung up among its many critics and few advocates, the issue has been unfortunately narrowed to the obvious: how powerful the... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/islamist-trojan-horse/63064/ Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST "We're fighting them there, so we don't have to fight them here" has become a hymn for the American right and an abominable lie to the left. But drowned out by all the noise is the fact that "they" are here already, having landed a long time ago and gotten very busy indeed constructing the American wing of jihad. Have you watched the Arabic Channel, also known as TAC, which serves the New York region? Probably not, as most New Yorkers neither understand nor speak Arabic. But if you are among... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saudi-reign-of-terror/62636/ Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST Six years after visiting its brand of terror on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia has become a world-class exporter of Islamist violence. The toll is grisly: Well over 3,000 Saudi citizens roaming the world — and just as many schemers are actively involved at home — are managing terrorist networks and planning and executing suicide bombings and jihadist attacks that span the globe: • More than 30% of the insurgents fighting the Lebanese army at... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/sunny-arab-satire-slaps-anti-america-reflex/62039/ Thu, 6 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST "Why do they hate us?" is a question that has bedeviled a myriad of Western analysts since September 2001, but Middle Eastern humor may have the best answer to it yet. No one is better at poking fun at the dysfunctional obsessions of Arabs than the brilliant Egyptian playwright Ali Salem — the Arab world's equivalent to Neil Simon. In a cute essay the other day, he answered the question by showing how Arabs are programmed to oppose anything America says or does. His funny tale is set at a... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/turkeys-new-president-gul-or-ghoul/61609/ Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST A ghoul in Islamic folklore is a demon that eats buried bodies, abducts children, and attacks unwary travelers. The new president of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, may not be that kind of monster, but he is a determined Islamist who will instead abduct Turkey's secularism, bury its democracy, and attack fellow travelers next door in Europe. Indeed what happened with Tuesday's election of Mr. Gul, a leader steeped in political Islam, as Turkey's first nonsecular president in some 60 years, gave the... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saudi-arabia-the-islamist-cage/61322/ Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST A former prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, recently declared he was returning home to try to regain power after six years of exile — in Saudi Arabia. The day that the monster of Uganda, Idi Amin, was removed from power in 1979, he flew to a country where sanctuary as a Muslim African leader would be guaranteed upon his arrival — Saudi Arabia. And in 1970, immediately following the death of an Egyptian dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leadership of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/egypt-under-mubarak-years-of-the-disappeared/61138/ Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Which country of 80 million is a close ally of America, has jailed 100,000 political prisoners, maintains a police force of 1.4 million — four times the size of its standing army — and is a place where 200 critics of its president have disappeared without a trace since 1990? If you guessed Egypt, you are right. Next to Israel, Egypt ranks as the second-largest recipient of American aid, raking in more than $45 billion since 1979. A great deal of this aid has gone to Egypt's military — which has... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/giulianis-palestinian-policy-opens-new-vistas/60869/ Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The leading Republican contender for the presidency, Mayor Giuliani, is turning heads with a new magazine article in which he appears to come out against a two-state solution in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. "Palestinian statehood will have to be earned through sustained good governance, a clear commitment to fighting terrorism, and a willingness to live in peace with Israel," Mr. Giuliani writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. After expressing his full support for Israel... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/crazy-world-of-colonel-gadhafi/60396/ Mon, 13 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST In the mid-1980s, I had an eight-hour session with Colonel Muammar Gadhafi that began at midnight at an encampment by the Gulf of Sidra in Libya. Like several press interviews before and after, it essentially consisted of an uninterrupted monologue about his "Green Book" — a thin volume of platitudes he authored — along with his theories on human evolution, relations between males and females, and his belief that Shakespeare was an Arab Bedouin whose original name was Sheik Zubair. (No kidding... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/bushs-baffling-policy-toward-saudi-arabia/59431/ Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Sulaiman Al-Rajhi is a reclusive Saudi octogenarian with a personal fortune of $12 billion and his own Islamic bank with 500 branches in Saudi Arabia and a few more around the Muslim world. According to the CIA, Mr. Rajhi's organizations have acted as conduits, financiers, and facilitators for a wide variety of Islamic terror groups — from Al Qaeda to Hamas — for about 20 years now. On Thursday, their nefarious activities were detailed in a landmark investigation by the Wall Street Journal. The... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/intelligence-estimates-illogical-conclusions/58739/ Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Among the key judgments of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate was a conclusion that "a growing number of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the radical and violent segment of the West's Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States." The report stressed that the sort of Islam taking root in Muslim communities of America and Europe is a "radical" and "especially Salafi" type of Islam. "Salafi" is a synonym for Saudi or Wahhabist... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/national/facts-on-ground-require-shift-in-approach-on-iraq/58465/ Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST The moment of truth on Iraq is coming at summer's end, when Lieutenant General David Petraeus is expected to tell the nation how long American forces must fight. For those who were listening, however, the top commander of American troops has already said it generally takes 10 years to put down an insurgency such as the one facing his troops. The more relevant question about Iraq therefore is not "how long?" but "why stay?" Perhaps a process of elimination would be helpful: 1) Preventing a civil... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/questioning-whether-islam-is-religion-of-peace/58062/ Mon, 9 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST The latest batch of attacks by Islamic terrorists raised fresh concerns among Muslims over what they fear may be "heinous attempts" to link terror with Islam. British Muslims, who number 1.6 million, are reportedly funding advertising campaigns across Britain that proclaim Islam is "the religion of peace" — in the process also implicitly warning fellow Britons against criticizing their faith. Yet a year ago, a weighty Muslim writer and pundit, Abdelrahman Al Rashed, manager of the pan-Arab TV... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/dj-vu-apologists-unfurl-stale-arguments/57715/ Mon, 2 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Moments after the latest terror attack on Britain, television commentators engaged in the usual rhetorical hara-kiri, blaming everyone but its authors: the two Muslim jihadists jumping out of a burning car at Glasgow's international airport ululating "Allah! Allah!" — even as one of them was barbecued — and the European Union's vast Muslim fundamentalist infrastructure, which spawned them. The initial discussions of the three car bombs — two in central London were defused, unexploded — were... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/give-blair-a-real-job-not-mission-impossible/57513/ Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST The world's powers have decided to engage a former British premier, Tony Blair, as a special Middle East envoy for the Arab-Israeli dispute, and the one question that immediately leaps to mind is: Why? Does the man possess powers lacking in those who preceded him? Or is Mr. Blair considered a particular favorite in a region where Israelis, Arabs, and Iranians all retain unsavory memories of the British Empire? The move to hire Mr. Blair by the so-called Quartet — America, the European Union... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/national/mighty-heart-gives-a-free-pass-to-terror/57207/ Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST America's movie industry is a potent weapon of global reach that has shaped the world's imagination for generations. In that sense, "A Mighty Heart," the movie that pretends to tell the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002 by Islamic jihadists in Pakistan, ranks as a travesty. Pearl's story is a real-life yarn of multiple dimensions that, at its most grandiose, could have been spun as the tale of a great clash, a sort of collision between... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/arabs-losing-faith-in-the-cause/57044/ Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Why is America trying to pour new money and more weapons into Palestinian Arab hands barely days after the Gaza debacle? It is an ill-considered policy, both premature and useless. The only sure result will be that warring gangs in the West Bank will use every new weapon to continue the mayhem and that the millions paid out won't buy as much as a bottle of milk for Palestinian Arab civilians. Instead, the money will end up in the pockets and bank accounts of the same crooks who lost Gaza... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/annexation-of-gaza-must-be-contained/56740/ Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST There are many ways to look at the Hamas victory in the Gaza Strip last week, but the most relevant is that Gaza has joined the expanding Jihadistan terrorist landscape. Gaza is only the most recent addition to Jihadistan's several cities in Iraq, the tribal regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, much of Somalia, and the Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon — yet another place for terrorist-masters to meet, organize, plan, and operate. It will be a farce if President Bush and... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/forty-years-later-doing-nothing-is-the-best-policy/56027/ Thu, 7 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST In this week's torrent of 40th anniversary recollections about the Six-Day War, one TV image cut straight to the chase: King Faisal of Saudi Arabia staring into a camera to say, "The essential point remains the total elimination of Israel." The king's statement of principles was captured in "Six Days in June," an impressive two-hour documentary that aired Monday on PBS. It included footage from a September 1967 meeting of Arab heads of state on how to deal with Israel's crushing military... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/for-peace-with-iran-israel-should-get-mad/55607/ Thu, 31 May 2007 00:00:00 EST The unfortunate reality is that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in three years or less, even according to the timid accounts of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet beyond rhetoric and economic sanctions, the West has offered no effective plans to stop this process. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, even so supremely hawkish a figure as the leader of Israel's Likud Party, Benjamin Netanyahu, has advocated a strategy hinging on "divestment" from Iran's economy and... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/palestinian-arabs-doing-violence-to-own-cause/55123/ Thu, 24 May 2007 00:00:00 EST Syria and Al Qaeda laid siege to northern Lebanon this week at the aptly named Nahr al-Bared, or "Cold River," Palestinian Arab refugee camp, but it fell to the ever-obliging Palestinians to do the killing. The ongoing fighting between the Palestinian Arabs and the Lebanese army in Tripoli says a lot about a skewered sense of entitlement felt by Palestinian refugees in many of the countries that play host to them and not much about their gratitude. For its part, the Lebanese government has... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/end-of-education-as-we-know-it/54856/ Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 EST For half a century, some 270 million Arabs have had to suffer a drastic limiting of the idea of education as it has been shrunk to fit concepts of Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, a process funded by nouveau riche Arabian oil wealth. The results have been nothing short of tragic. In the Arab world of today, the word "intellectual" has come to refer to a person who reads newspapers regularly. An "educated" person is someone who holds a high school diploma. So-called "ulemas," a word... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/americas-thankless-commitment-to-peace/54706/ Thu, 17 May 2007 00:00:00 EST It's been some week in Gaza — the Palestinian Arab civil war has become an all-out action movie. Hamas fighters lob mortars at the compound where the Palestinian Arab president, Mahmoud Abbas, hides. Egypt sends freshly armed Fatah fighters across its borders to kill other Palestinians. The interior minister of the Palestinian Authority resigns, saying he has no authority. Meanwhile, most of Gaza's 1 million residents are holed up in their homes as men with black ski masks stake out positions... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/to-veil-or-not-to-veil-the-pelosi-question/54412/ Mon, 14 May 2007 00:00:00 EST The new minister of education for Kuwait is a brave woman now famous across the Islamic world for a landmark moment: The day she walked up to the podium of Parliament, despite the catcalls from Islamist lawmakers, and took her oath of office without wearing a veil to cover her hair or face. Her April 2 act of defiance placed Dr. Nouriya Al-Subeeh on the front line of the growing ranks of Muslim women leaders who are denouncing the veil as a symbol of female oppression. But on the following day... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/new-useful-idiots/54226/ Thu, 10 May 2007 00:00:00 EST For years, the Soviet Union benefited from those Vladimir Lenin is said to have dubbed "the useful idiots of the West" — reporters, scholars, leftists, and assorted romantics who said the Soviet system of totalitarianism was not so bad. Leading its own charm offensive, another evil empire, the Muslim Brotherhood, has assembled its own enablers among the West's august institutions during the last few years. On May 2, the Wall Street Journal glossed over Prime Minister Erdogan's program of... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/vive-la-diffrence-franaise/53922/ Mon, 7 May 2007 00:00:00 EST Yesterday's French presidential election is cause to honor a much-maligned country. Centuries ago, France helped usher in the Age of Enlightenment, produced a world-class revolution, ended the absolutism of church and state, and helped enshrine inalienable rights. Along the way, it gave America the Statue of Liberty and bestowed upon the world an unrivaled cuisine, sumptuous wines, 400 different types of cheese, and the very notion of joie de vivre. The day after millions of French voters... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/why-turkey-may-need-a-coup-dtat/53835/ Fri, 4 May 2007 00:00:00 EST A fateful battle between secularism and Islamism is unfurling at Europe's gates. On Tuesday, the highest court in Turkey blocked a Muslim fundamentalist candidate from running for president. At least 700,000 people had marched to protest the nomination in Istanbul on Sunday, and the Turkish army's chiefs of staff have warned the elected Islamist government of Prime Minister Erdogan to desist from diluting the secular nature of the country, or else. It is not an idle threat — the army has... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saudi-arabias-domestic-crackdown/53451/ Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST For decades, Saudi Arabia's ruling family has lent political and financial support to the country's most fanatical Muslim clergy. The clergy received money to infest the world with their vision of violent jihad; the Al Sauds received religious support for their claims to absolute power. It has been a good marriage — but now the jihadi chickens have come home to roost. Last week, the Saudi government rounded up 172 men on charges of plotting to assassinate public figures, blow up oil refineries... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/sad-day-ahead-in-caracas/53279/ Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST On or around May 1, President Chavez is expected to expropriate American and European oil ventures in Venezuela. It will be a sad day for the Venezuelan economy. The same thing happened to Libya in the 1970s, when Muammar Gadhafi nationalized the oil industry, and Libya and the other OPEC member states that later undertook such an experiment have yet to recover. While the oil companies survived, and even expanded, the Libyan oil industry suffered stilted growth and a huge drop in technological... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saudi-royals-mask-a-jihad-agenda/52999/ Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST Keeping Saudi Arabia's royal family safe from radical Islamists is the West's strategic concern and delusion. The only intelligent question for America about Saudi Arabia is: Should we deal with the royals of the house of Saud or go directly to their bearded, Kalashnikov-toting Osama bin Laden-loving followers? For half a century, the West has preferred to believe that its choice in Saudi Arabia is the moderate, friendly Saudi royal family or the wild-eyed, sandal-clad zombies of jihad... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/how-to-create-a-failed-arab-state/52769/ Thu, 19 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST In Algeria, they're called heittists. Out of jobs and out of luck, they are the thousands of men who spend their days leaning against the wall — or in Arabic, the heitt. You can see heittists in big cities such as Algiers and Oran and in smaller towns at shabby Sovietstyle public housing complexes, where their 10- or 12-member families must squeeze into one tiny room. The reason that they loiter is tragically simple: There are not enough mattresses for everyone to sleep on, so they take shifts... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/america-the-world-is-watching-you/52284/ Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST Americans peek overseas in snippets, paying attention when something spectacular happens but forgetting that most of the time, the world is watching America. Few are mindful of the impact our country's press, culture, and movies have around the globe until they live abroad for any length of time. America is the only gorilla dominating the global airwaves, framing not only the news but also entertainment, press delivery, soap operas, reality shows, and, above all, global political discourse... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/national/13-day-crisis-yields-tattered-strategy/52060/ Mon, 9 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST In the movie "The Recruit," characters exploring the CIA's training methodology emphasize that nothing is what it seems. To overcome this challenge, trainers teach recruits to focus on one thing only: the bottom line. When it comes to Iran, the West would be wise to heed this edict instead of becoming bewildered by the catch-and-release of 15 British sailors. So, what does the 13-day hostage crisis tell us? The liberal establishment in Europe and America is giving us the same tired analysis... YOUSSEF IBRAHIM http://www.nysun.com/foreign/rethinking-pelosis-visit-british-naval-discipline/51956/ Fri, 6 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST This has been a seriously bad week for the West's image — or whatever is left of it — in the Middle East. The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, traveled all the way to Damascus to play domestic American politics, while the Iranians made a spectacle of the British army, whose soldiers were tripping over one another after a mere 13 days in captivity to express regret over entering Iranian waters. Of course, these are early days, and we may discover that the disgraceful behavior of these British...