Human Trustees

Amazingly, the goal of halving the number of undernourished people worldwide was just about reached hrough the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, 2000-2015). UN chief Ban Ki-moon declared at the end of that process, “The MDGs helped to lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty, to make inroads against hunger, to enable more girls to attend school than…

In a sequence now all too familiar in Europe, a truck careened down a busy shopping street in Stockholm last Friday afternoon killing four people and seriously injuring nine others before going up in flames as it rammed into a department store. The driver, as was later discovered, was a 39-year-old Uzbek, a Muslim likely radicalized through ISIS propaganda. An…

It’s no secret that stoking the fear of “Islamic terrorism” was one element of candidate Trump’s successful campaign and the prime motivation behind his attempt (so far unsuccessful) to ban travel to the US from six Muslim nations. That fear is real. In the 2016 Survey of American Fears, Chapman University found that people’s top fear was “government corruption” (60.6%).…

When President Donald Trump announced his first refugee ban, Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz fired back that his company would hire 10,000 refugees. In turn, this ignited a social media firestorm from conservatives vowing to boycott the brand. Though Starbucks disputes this will have any effect on its bottom line, it does underscore in graphic terms what we all know –…

Now using the 2008 edition of Ghannouchi’s book (The Public Freedoms in the Islamic State, Damascus), I’m behind in my translation (plenty of changes, plus new material), but I’m still close to three quarters done. Also, it’s plunged me into political theory – hence this blog! Keep reading – this is more fascinating than you might think. I’m using a…

You can’t escape it. Watch the news on TV or look at any paper’s headlines these days and you’ll read about the latest atrocities committed by the “Islamic State,” ISIL, ISIS or Da’esh (Arabic acronym). Before I dive into the heart of the issue, I want to recommend some good reading on “The Islamic State.” The glamorous Queen Rania of…