"So far, it appears that NATO leaders have done a good job in containing a potentially nasty crisis from emerging. Even so, the stress and the strain among alliance members were quite apparent in Warsaw last week. Yet if the US is really intent on realigning its objectives to the war in Afghanistan, it will be hard to avoid the notion that the war on terror has indeed turned into a war on drugs. Subsequently, we can expect to see a split once again between several European countries on the one hand and a coalition of the willing led by the US on the other, much in the same way as it was with the war in Iraq. And if recent history is anything to go by, one of the major issues of the next presidential election in the US may be a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.."

Award winning author Aladdin Elaasar called upon President Obama today to revisit American/Egyptian relation and reconsider receiving the Mubarak’s at the White House. Mr. Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak’s son, is expected to visit the United States and the White House this week. President Mubarak of Egypt is expected to visit the U.S. early April, as well. As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak enters his 28th year in power and his ninth decade, Egypt’s future is more uncertain than ever. Egypt has the highest rates of unemployment among developing nations, young unmarried people, pollution, and corruption. The Egyptian economy is stagnant with inflation reaching 14-18 percent and a large gap between a small, upper class, and the 40 million who live under the poverty line. Egypt also has one of the highest rates of child labor, infant mortality, female illiteracy, corruption and abuses of human rights. Egyptian society and state media are rife with anti-Americanism and anti-Semiticism. ALADDIN ELAASAR, a former professor of Arabic at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, is author “THE LAST PHARAOH: MUBARAK AND THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF EGYPT IN THE VOLATILE MID EAST”. Born, raised and educated in Egypt, Elaasar is a notable expert on Egypt and the Arab World.
For inquiries, please Contact:
Aladdin Elaasar
Tel 224 388 1353
Email: omaraladin@aol.com
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Pharaoh-Mubarak-Uncertain-Volatile/dp/1439226008/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product

The old gives way to the new as the snow gives way to the spring. (Rilke) "The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters. The Obama budget — a bold, even radical departure from recent history, wrapped in bureaucratic formality and statistical tables — would sharply raise taxes on the rich, beyond where Bill Clinton had raised them. It would reduce taxes for everyone else, to a lower point than they were under either Mr. Clinton or George W. Bush. And it would lay the groundwork for sweeping changes in health care and education, among other areas. More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years. They do so first by rewriting the tax code and, over the longer term, by trying to solve some big causes of the middle-class income slowdown, like high medical costs and slowing educational gains.."

As financial meltdown hits Europe, a business ethicist tells swissinfo why a "radical change in fundamental economic doctrines" is necessary.
"In recent decades, the financial markets have built a huge casino which the regulatory authorities have let run-or even encouraged. Now it is the citizens who have to pay for the losses. That is a scandal."

Dean Baker gives a great 1-hr. dissection of our economic plight. Mr. Baker discusses the growth and "predictable" collapse of the housing and stock market bubbles and is critical of both the Reagan and Clinton administrations. He offers suggestions for preventing additional financial crises and advocates massive government spending to combat the recession.

"FDR, as the Depression- and World War II-era president is commonly known, remains popular in the United States today. Obama describes him as his role model.."

"The task before us is to replace the culture and institutions of a
twentieth-century economy designed and managed to serve financial
values with the culture and institutions of a new
twenty-first-century economy designed to serve life values.." "As
we consider the need for bold initiatives by visionary leaders, we
must also keep in mind the deeper questions that rarely find their
way into political debates or public discourse: What is the source
of true happiness and well-being? What is the purpose of economic
life? What does it mean to be human on a living spaceship with
finite resources? What is the human role in the great drama of
evolution's continued unfolding? "

"The task before us is to replace the culture and institutions of a
twentieth-century economy designed and managed to serve financial
values with the culture and institutions of a new
twenty-first-century economy designed to serve life values.." David
Korten's latest book is "Agenda for a New Economy."