Asia Pacific

"Libertarians routinely trot out horror stories about government waste, fraud, and abuse, and measure these troublesome anecdotes alongside an unrealizable ideal of a "perfectly functioning market." However, this argument commits the fallacy of disparate comparison by comparing what the perfect market would do in theory with what imperfect governmental agencies, at their worst, have done in fact. No thoughtful liberal defender of public regulation of the environment in liberal democracies will pretend that this approach is perfect."

"I believe that the Israeli Obama will find fertile ground for peace. I would like to be present at his victory rally at Rabin Square."

"These behind the scene appointments of unelected people have been setting the stage for a dramatic escalation of military conflict with Iran as soon as the new administration takes office."

"Barack Obama is inheriting a godawful mess as he prepares to move into the presidency, virtually none of it of his making. The governmental/corporate looting system that was the CheneyBush Administration, with greed as its organizing principle and lack of oversight as its all-clear authorization, has broken the back of the American economy. And because when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold, the situation is even more dangerous and desperate."

"If anything, America’s unquestioning identification of Obama as a ‘black’ candidate is deeply problematic. It demonstrates that the United States remains firmly rooted in ideas of race that go back to the era of slavery and Jim Crow Laws."

"The status of women under Islam is one of the most intentionally misrepresented and falsely exaggerated issues by Western politicians and their political clergy cronies. Islam had liberated women long before women’s liberation movements in the West even began. I had lived in Islamic, Israeli and American societies, and have found higher percentage of Israeli and American women being abused, enslaved and victimized under the flag of so called Western women liberation movements, freedom and democracy. Women prostitution slave-trade, in its many forms, is very common within these two societies. One needs only to watch televised news and reads local newspapers to recognize this fact."

"...Sadat proved one thing, which in my eyes is more important than anything else: one can change the emotional state of an entire people. One can cut the psychological knot with one bold stroke. For that one needs leaders, on both sides. Such leaders can appear quite suddenly, in the most unexpected place and at the most unexpected time. Barak Obama could prove to be a kind of American Sadat."

"Since the March 2008 elections, Anwar was seen as a vulture waiting to pounce upon the carcass of a dying UMNO. With Abdullah out and Najib in, it is feared that the vulture may turn out to be the eighty-something Mahathir, dying to have the last laugh. That is a scenario most Malaysians would want to avoid, at any cost."