Free Republic

The final “exploratory” meeting between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization ended Wednesday in Amman with no progress, official said. PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israeli attorney Yitzchak Mocho made little headway in their fifth meeting, the last before the January 26 deadline set by the Quartet of peacekeeping nations to break the impasse and relaunch direct talks for a final status agreement between the two sides. "Israel has not advanced one step towards resuming negotiations,” a PLO representative told the AFP news agency. Nevertheless, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh characterized the talks as “serious” despite the disagreements on both...

Thought this needed started. Live stream at the link once the man is ready.

By modern standards, contemporary Middle Eastern Arab nations are failed societies. On virtually every index of socioeconomic and political development, they compare poorly with other parts of the world. Under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, an independent group of 20 Arab scholars analyzed the state of Arab human development in a widely-circulated 2002 report. Their findings were stark. In particular, the Arab Human Development Report 2002 found that the 19 nations under study suffer from a "freedom deficit": "Out of seven world regions, the Arab countries had the...

<p>Will Rogers once said that the Senate was the greatest collection of comedians in the world (actually, it was Congress as a whole, but for purposes of this column the Senate will do). Every time a law is passed it's a joke and every time a joke is told it becomes a law, Rogers said.</p>