CPI - Corruption Perceptions Index 2009

According to a new report by Transparency International, it was found that the top 12 least corrupt nations are: New Zealand, Denmark, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Hong Kong, Luxembourg.

The 12 most corrupt countries are: Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Chad, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Haiti, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea.

What quite interesting - at least for me - is that Egypt holds position number 111 out of 180 surveyed countries.
Whole list can be found here
Ironically, Algeria shares the same position with Egypt with a score of 2.8 out of 10.
Algeria and Egypt are having a very tough game today, where one of them will be qualified to the World Cup 2010 in South Africa. Relations between both nations has deteriorated dramatically during the past few days because of this fact. To the extent that Algerians horrified Egyptians living in Algeria, burned some of the shops and Egyptian investments there.
Lets hope things pass peacefully, and then they can work on the corruption issue!!!

Netanyahu is a stupid ass hole

“I would like to re-emphasize that united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged; this means — inter alia — that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city.”
Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day war. It annexed East Jerusalem, which contains sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as many Palestinian neighborhoods, and built a series of Jewish neighborhoods in and around it to solidify its claim. It has also built scores of West Bank settlements.
NY Times

This is not just a direct challenge to Obama and the American administration, it deepens the people-people conflict, increases hatred and suspicions about the future of this region. Not a single Arab or Arab leader will be able to support the giving away of Eastern Jerusalem.
Moreover, I bet millions in the Middle East will be waiting to check Obama's response for this, something that didn't happen at the time of writing this post. The only thing that is in the media, is the Sen. George Mitchell will be visiting the region this week. We'll see how this goes.

Will it work?

"Since the first stirrings of the Arab-Israeli peace process after the Yom Kippur war, America's relations with Israel have been characterized by a paradox. Those presidents regarded as the least friendly to the Jewish state have done it the most good. Its strong allies have proven much less helpful.

This history begins with Jimmy Carter, who threatened a cutoff of American aid to pressure Menachem Begin into returning all of Sinai to Egypt, which made possible the 1979 Camp David agreement. The other most meaningful U.S. contribution to Mideast peace came under the first President George Bush at the 1991 Madrid Conference. When the Israelis refused to participate, Secretary of State James Baker withheld loan guarantees and said that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir should call him when he got interested in peace. At one point, Baker actually banned Benjamin Netanyahu, who was representing Shamir in Washington, from the State Department Building. Madrid led to a peace treaty with Jordan, the recognition of Israel by many other countries, and the first real face-to-face negotiations with Palestinians." ....

"Happily, President Obama seems poised to defy this old dichotomy."

Slate

That's just the beginning!

Israel's new ultra-nationalist foreign minister has said it is not bound by a US-sponsored 2007 agreement to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

"The Annapolis conference, it has no validity," Avigdor Lieberman said. BBC

Power of the internet (2)

"The campaign’s new-media strategy, inspired by popular social networks like MySpace and Facebook, has revolutionized the use of the Web as a political tool, helping the candidate raise more than two million donations of less than $200 each and swiftly mobilize hundreds of thousands of supporters before various primaries."
“One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “And there’s no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet.”
More...

Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

“The two-state solution is disappearing,” said Mansour Tahboub, senior editor, at the West Bank newspaper Al-Ayyam.
Read this column by Thomas Friedman.

Not only us!

I find it funny reading the news about relatives of diplomats taking their places! It's totally understood in Kingdom's for example, but now its spreading everywhere.
I've seen Bush the Son taking place of his father in the US. Same is happening nowadays (Hillary and Bill Clinton). And today i just read the news that the wife of Argentina's President Nestor Kirchner, Cristina, is to run for president in October's election, instead of her husband. What is happening to the world under the name of democracy?

Who is Obama?

The Economist summarizes the answer for this question in a very nice article.

Cartoon!

Just saw this cartoon on Al-Jazeera, really attracted me!
The Cartoon is under the title of "New Democracy"

Blogging in Egypt

Today I was reading an article named "Bloggers' search for anonymity" on BBC. I was really sad to see my country's name in there. I believe that we're living a good era (regarding freedom of speech) here relative to what our parents and grand parents used to though I can't deny that we still have a long way ahead.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of this war. The American people see the reality of the war; the president does not."
SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI, a California Democrat, in bringing an end to a charged debate in the House.