Saudi Gazette/ Opinion/ Editorial

Opinion

1 - 10 from 476 . In "Opinion / Editorial"

October 19, 2018

Cyber-warfare’s own perils

TWO world wars in the last century saw tens of millions of casualties in what was still essentially hand-to-hand fighting. But bomber aircraft changed the face of conflict. Bombing by massed formations of Allied aircraft over Nazi Germany made up for the lack of precision technology by carpeting towns and cities with incendiaries and high explosives. By 1945, so great had been the devastation caused, the Americans and British had ...

October 18, 2018

Legalizing catastrophe

All around the world, there are laws against serious offenses such as robbery, kidnap and murder, yet robberies, kidnappings and murders continue to happen. Is the fact that these crimes are still being committed any reason to get rid of the laws that forbid them? No civilized society should consider making a crime “legal” simply because it fails to stop people committing it.Yet among the most prominent arguments for the ...

October 17, 2018

Beijing’s Xinjiang behavior

The Chinese government says it is wrestling with three forces of evil in its northwestern province of Xinjiang. These it lists as terrorism, extremism and separatism. No one could question its dedication to eradicating the scourge of terrorism to which all civilized nations have committed themselves. And separatism clearly represents a danger in a country of such varied ethnicities as China. Just as the United States sets out to instill ...

October 16, 2018

Trying to steal a rival political party’s clothes is not always a good idea. At best it can dilute the guiding vision that allows one set of politicians to differentiate themselves from another. Thus parties can be fighting over the same center ground, wrestling to become “moderates of the extreme center” while voters on either side of the debate do not see their views being represented.At worst, filching a rival’s ...

October 15, 2018

Ending the Afghan war

Signaling US President Donald Trump’s interest in finding a negotiated end to the Afghan war, Zalmay Khalilzad, America’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, held discussions with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah in Kabul last week.It is too early to say whether Khalilzad will succeed in his mission, but a new YouGov survey reveals that a majority of Americans would support drawing US involvement to a close and ...

October 14, 2018

The trouble with long flights

The world’s longest non-stop commercial flight has ended successfully - from Singapore to New York, 15,000 kilometers in 17 hours and 52 minutes.What is forgotten is that there are other planes perfectly capable of flying such long distances. Qantas, for example, launched a 17-hour non-stop service from Perth to London earlier this year.Such long-haul flights go beyond the typical flight patterns of take off, eat, watch a movie, rest and ...

October 13, 2018

US student strikes fear into Israel

LARA Alqasem, a 22-year-old American student, is not the first foreigner to be detained at Ben Gurion International Airport. Over the last several months, many people who are critics of Israel have been forced to make a stopover at the Tel Aviv airport’s detention facility. However, Alqasem who arrived in Israel on Oct. 2, has been detained longer than anyone else. Just as serious, she is the only one who ...

October 12, 2018

Have financial regulators and politicians done enough?

BALI is one of the world’s most beautiful conference locations. However, the movers and shakers of international finance who traveled there this week for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank may not have been in the mood to appreciate the exotic scenery. In its latest Financial Stability Report, the IMF has warned of “dangerous undercurrents”. These stem variously from the rising trade war, potential defaults on ...

October 11, 2018

Simmering South China Sea dispute

There is a simmering geopolitical pot that is likely to boil over dangerously if the heat beneath it is turned up, probably even by a fraction.Beijing’s claims to rocky outcrops and reefs in the South China Sea, which it has occupied and fortified, have been thrown out by international arbitrators. But possession being nine-tenths of the law, the Chinese government has established military bases on them and is arguing that ...

October 10, 2018

Brutal honesty makes good science

The expression “Never say never” should be a treasured maxim of the scientific establishment. The whole basis of current scientific knowledge is the willingness to doubt, to question, to re-check and re-examine, even the very foundations of an accepted precept. Thus scientific advances have by no means been constant. There have been retreats as researchers made new discoveries that undermined or completely negated established theories. The core quality of good ...

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