Saudi Gazette/ Opinion/ Editorial

Opinion

1 - 10 from 473 . In "Opinion / Editorial"

October 16, 2018

Trying to steal a rival political party’s clothes is not always a good idea. At best it can dilute the guiding vision that allows one set of politicians to differentiate themselves from another. Thus parties can be fighting over the same center ground, wrestling to become “moderates of the extreme center” while voters on either side of the debate do not see their views being represented.At worst, filching a rival’s ...

October 15, 2018

Ending the Afghan war

Signaling US President Donald Trump’s interest in finding a negotiated end to the Afghan war, Zalmay Khalilzad, America’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, held discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah in Kabul last week.It is too early to say whether Khalilzad will succeed in his mission, but a new YouGov survey reveals that a majority of Americans would support drawing US involvement to a close and ...

October 14, 2018

The trouble with long flights

The world’s longest non-stop commercial flight has ended successfully - from Singapore to New York, 15,000 kilometers in 17 hours and 52 minutes.What is forgotten is that there are other planes perfectly capable of flying such long distances. Qantas, for example, launched a 17-hour non-stop service from Perth to London earlier this year.Such long-haul flights go beyond the typical flight patterns of take off, eat, watch a movie, rest and ...

October 13, 2018

US student strikes fear into Israel

LARA Alqasem, a 22-year-old American student, is not the first foreigner to be detained at Ben Gurion International Airport. Over the last several months, many people who are critics of Israel have been forced to make a stopover at the Tel Aviv airport’s detention facility. However, Alqasem who arrived in Israel on Oct. 2, has been detained longer than anyone else. Just as serious, she is the only one who ...

October 12, 2018

Have financial regulators and politicians done enough?

BALI is one of the world’s most beautiful conference locations. However, the movers and shakers of international finance who traveled there this week for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank may not have been in the mood to appreciate the exotic scenery. In its latest Financial Stability Report, the IMF has warned of “dangerous undercurrents”. These stem variously from the rising trade war, potential defaults on ...

October 11, 2018

Simmering South China Sea dispute

There is a simmering geopolitical pot that is likely to boil over dangerously if the heat beneath it is turned up, probably even by a fraction.Beijing’s claims to rocky outcrops and reefs in the South China Sea, which it has occupied and fortified, have been thrown out by international arbitrators. But possession being nine-tenths of the law, the Chinese government has established military bases on them and is arguing that ...

October 10, 2018

Brutal honesty makes good science

The expression “Never say never” should be a treasured maxim of the scientific establishment. The whole basis of current scientific knowledge is the willingness to doubt, to question, to re-check and re-examine, even the very foundations of an accepted precept. Thus scientific advances have by no means been constant. There have been retreats as researchers made new discoveries that undermined or completely negated established theories. The core quality of good ...

October 9, 2018

Shredding a million dollars

Fine art pictures are an international currency used by an elite few. Like the banknotes of any country, the pictures that are bought and sold by collectors are worth whatever other collectors are prepared to pay for them. And the traders in this rarified currency are the handful of major auction houses which these days charge both buyers and sellers handsomely for their services.While the work of some painters or ...

October 8, 2018

Suu Kyi and Nobel Laureates

The Norwegian Nobel Committee and Myanmar’s civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi were very much in the news last week for two reasons.First, the committee announced this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners — Nadia Murad of Iraq and Denis Mukwege of Congo — in Oslo on Friday. Second was the announcement by the Nobel Foundation that Suu Kyi’s Peace Prize will not be withdrawn as demanded by many people around ...

October 7, 2018

Case of the missing Interpol head

It’s one of those stories that make readers do a double take: The head of Interpol, the intelligence organization that can supposedly find anybody anywhere in the world, has gone missing.Meng Hongwei of China and his family reside in Lyon, France, the seat of Interpol headquarters. His wife reported him missing after he took a trip to China on Sept. 25. He hasn’t been heard from since.The mystery surrounding the ...

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