Let's start with red lines. Here it is, Washington’s ultimate red line, straight from the lion’s mouth. Only last week Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said of the Iranians, “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us.” How strange, the way those red lines continue to retreat. Once upon a time, the red line fo
Breaking three months ahead of France's presidential election, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services' decision to strip the country of its prized triple-A debt rating exposes President Nicolas Sarkozy to hard criticism from his many challengers for having failed to conserve what the government had described as a "national treasure." The loss of the country's top-notch rating, which the U.S. rating agency announced Friday, is likely to impose higher borrowing costs on the euro zone's second-largest
Amnesty International warned of another year of protests and government repression in the Middle East if the region’s rulers do not ensure democratic and human rights for their people.
Parliamentarians' offices typically feature self-flattering photos and patriotic paraphernalia, so I was taken aback by the decor of recently elected Muslim Brotherhood MP Saber Abouel Fotouh's Alexandria headquarters. The walls were mostly blank, except for a tremendous banner commemorating a protest that the Muslim Brotherhood had sponsored outside the local "Zionist consulate," complete with an image of a burning Israeli flag. (The demonstration took place following an August 18 incident alon