A great article on a few cases of people trying to shutdown or retaliate bloggers.

Buddhism does not believe in a creator God so it really bugs me if one claims to be a devout buddhist and said he also believes in a god who created the universe.

The Jewish Community Relations Council and the World Affairs Council of Greater Dallas jointly hosted a luncheon with Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer at the Crescent Hotel today. He was the American Ambassador to Egypt from 1997 to 2001 and then U.S. Ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005.

He provided a lot of insight into the middle east politics that I have not heard before, much more factual and practical. One thing the ambassador cited repeatedly is the Arab Development Report. Tom Friedman's book was mentioned often as well. His book was translated into Arabic and the Ambassador has given many copies to the high officials of Egypt. The Arabs themselves recognized their own problems. We just need to motivate them to fix them. A couple of problems mentioned by the ambassador that particularly stuck out in my mind are:

1. School is teaching kids to accumulate facts and not to stimulate the thought process.
2. The problem of persistent conflict, that violence is a way of life. I wonder if this is the fulfillment of what was spoken in Genesis 25:13-18, particularly verse 18.

The 5 areas of strategic importance the US has focused on in the middle east area have not changed in the past 20 years, regardless of who was in the White House and who controled Congress. The US has been successful at some and could have done better at others. Now that he is an outsider, no longer a State Department personnel, he can offer six different ways he think the US needs to change the way they handle things:

1. Foreign assistance: the Israelis themselves have told us that they no longer need economic assistance. They however do need security assistance: weapons and the likes. So we should listen to them and reconfigure our aid packages.
2. We should export the idea of democracy and not democracy itself.
3. We need a national energy policy, not that we could be independent in his opinion but we should become less dependent.
4. The Palestinians, the Arabs have been a lot of talk and seldom came through with their promised financial help. On average, only 25 cents on a dollar promised have been delivered. We should encourage the Arabs to do more for their fellow Arab brothers.
5. Iran cannot be a nuclear power, whatever it takes.
6. Eliminate the terrorists. The absence of any reformist trend within Islam is troublesome. They are in need of a similar reformation as the Protestant reformation within Christianity. We need to give the U.S. military the tools and the space they need to do their job.

A question was asked about the six generals who spoke out against secretary Rumfelds. What would be the protocol for ambassador Kurtzer as a State Department personnel to voice his differing opinions. The answer is very straightforward. You had a chance to have your say but once a presidential determination has been made, you either try to carry it out the best you can or resign.

An observation was mentioned that an NGO always does a better job solving a problem than any governmental agency. I dare to speculate the reason is that they are held accountable for how they spend the money given to them.

An interesting note is that Gamal Mubarak is going around Egypt engaging people and cultivating grassroots politics.

A question was asked about the prospect of Israel having a woman prime minister. That lady who asked the question must have forgotten that Golda Meir was the prime minister from 1969 to 1974. On the same topic, current Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Livni is very capable and it would not surprise the ambassador if she turns out to be Israel prime minister sooner or later. In fact, she and the currrent interim prime minister, Ehud Olmert, were the two people that the ambassador believed are the most important players in Israel politics and told secretary Rice so right before he left his post.

I learned that the defense minister is the second most powerful post in Israel. I also learned that the reason the Likud party lost it influence because it's the only party left still believe in a bi-national state for Israel and wants to hang on to the west bank and Gaza while the rest of the country want nothing to do with the Palestinians anymore because everytime they had dealings with the Palestinians, someone got killed.