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Life in Iraq has not been easy for civilians by any means since the beginning of the American invasion and, even though many electronic media outlets, such as Al Jazeera on Creative commons and McClatchy’s excellent blog have been tracking life in Iraq, it’s hard to gauge the exact quality of life in the country.
The data is [...]

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The UN, the United States, and other bodies often send money to the West Bank and Gaza alike.  However, their  donations in Palestine end up being squandered due to the usual littany of complaints: no transparency and high levels of  bureaucracy.
Which is why it’s good news that
The Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), a publicly owned investment [...]

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A post I wrote about the situation in Ghajar is now a WSJ news item.
GHAJAR, on the Israel-Lebanon border—The Obama administration is pushing Israel to withdraw its forces from the Lebanese side of this farming village, where 2,200 residents—all Israeli citizens—are stuck in limbo astride the border of two rival nations.

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From the FAS project on government secrecy (via my husband) comes the news that Fatah is revising its charter for 2010, maybe influenced by possible changes in the Hamas charter, who said they may reconsider their charter goal of calling for the elmination of Israel.    Translation here.
Last year, the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fatah [...]

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Arabic, the 6th most spoken language in  the world (5th by some estimates), is already a key language for the United Nations, IMF, and the World Bank.  Now, Kuwait has requested that Arabic also become an official language of the World Trade Organization.  Given that the WTO, smaller than the World Bank or UN [...]