CAIRO ― How has life changed in Egypt since the revolution, and what’s going to happen in the parliamentary elections that begin late this month? I recently asked those questions in a poor neighborhood of Cairo called Ain el-Sira, and the responses amounted to a warning: The new Egypt must give these people a sense of security and progress soon, or it’s in trouble. “It’s worse since the revolution ― there is no safety, no security, no police,” says Nashwa Mustafa, a simple woman garbed in black

The U.S. and Western European countries are still mired in the economic crisis and Arab countries have not recovered from the political crisis. These two different crises have engulfed the whole world and left it hanging it in the balance. The economic crisis has been caused by hyper-economic development, and the political crisis by political mal-development. In the West, financial capital has incapacitated the free market and corrupted industrial capital and undermined the entire capitalist sys

Recently law professors in South Korea were asked their opinion on the latest version of the Korean bar exam, the test the new law school graduates must pass to become lawyers. Yet nowhere in the questionnaire was there opportunity to address the biggest issue, that of the quota system. Despite repeated attempts to open up the legal market in South Korea, the current members of the Korean bar have managed to retain a quota of around 1,500 new lawyers per year for the foreseeable future. This abs

I didn’t see any Ruth Madoff masks on Halloween night, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if I had. The wife of disgraced Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff was Pariah No. 1 last week, followed closely by her son, Andrew. The two, along with Andrew’s fiance, appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night (Oct. 30) to promote their “authorized family biography,” “Truth and Consequences.”“I have been eager, I would say almost desperate, to speak out publicly and tell people that I’m absolutely not

Koreans often seem to be confused by the question, “Do good people build a good society, or does a good society foster good people?” The former claim may be the basis for a liberal, democratic society and the latter for a socialist country. Living in a group-oriented society, many Koreans ultimately seem to be inclined to the latter, believing in the power of a good society rather than in the strength of the individual. As someone who studies and teaches literature, however, I believe in the pow

MADRID ― The exchange of prisoners between enemies is often a prelude to political reconciliation. Unfortunately, the recent exchange between Israel and Hamas, in which the Islamist organization gained the lion’s share of more than 1,000 prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, does not augur well for the chances of an Israeli-Palestinian peace.Contrary to appearances, the deal is not a reflection of both sides’ interest in beginning a political rapprochement that might lead t

MELBOURNE ― A few weeks ago, representatives of 54 countries, mostly heads of government, attended the bi-annual Commonwealth Meeting. High on the agenda was a report by the Eminent Persons Group (EPG), established to reinvigorate the Commonwealth, strengthen its secretariat, and transform its approach to human rights. The group included former Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, former Malay Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and