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Should Israel worry about Iran?

In May Newsweek had an interesting data sheet about Israeli's nuclear capabilities.

6 World rank of Israel's nuclear arsenal by volume of bombs, according to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimates.

100-250 Number of nukes in the arsenal, by the Federation of American Scientists' count

3 Number of deployments options for Israeli nuclear weapons - one by air, two by land, three by sea

2 Number of Israel's Dolphin-class, German- made nuclear submarines, which give it a second-strike capability.

Who should worry more about the other; Iran or Israel.

Syria's pigeon game gets the bird over flu fears

This article talks about "Kashash Hamam" in Syria and people who practice this centuries old hobby. The hobby requires a poker-faced owner of flocks of pigeons who deploys strategy to lure away pigeons from other flocks. This hobby is practiced along side several Mediterranean Countries including Spain, Syria and Italy.

Read more ...

Sufis in Syria Reach Out to the West

The NPR program All Things Considered had a very interesting excerpt on June 10, 2006 covering a Sufi mosque in Aleppo, Syria.

I was pleased to see NPR covering Syria in a different lens than everyday media coverage.

you can listen to this NPR excerpt on

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5477014

Sweden labels Golan wines: 'Made in occupied Syrian land'

By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz June 8, 2006

Sweden has started to note that wines produced in the Golan Heights originate in "Israel, occupied Syrian land," the Golan Heights Winery has informed the Israeli Embassy in Sweden. Winery sources told Haaretz that the step is unprecedented and worrisome.

The embassy is investigating claims that the warning is being issued for several wines on the Web site of the Swedish government's chain of shops that sell wine. The chain is the only Swedish body permitted Swedish Jews have protested the step, claiming that the new way of listing the wines from the Golan Heights is a political move by a government body. The sources also said such an indication had never been made regarding any other country - not even South Africa during apartheid.

The Golan Heights Winery approached the commercial attache at the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm this week, and requested Foreign Ministry intervention. "We produce wine, not politics," the winery said yesterday, adding, "happily, this subject does not bother most consumers in Europe."

An Entrepreneur... The ultimate success

by Bassel Ojjeh

Land should never be flipped without making some improvements to it. This should not be the law. It should be the norm.

One of the more dangerous signs seen today in the Middle East is the increased activity of people flipping real-estate in various Middle Eastern countries including Jordan, Syria and the UAE. The commercial activity is centered solely on making incremental profits in a very short time-frame. Investors tend to be arab expatriates or wealthy locals with enough cash flow.

This phenomenon is not new in the Middle East or the rest of the world but what is strange about it is that the real-estate that is being traded is neither developed nor scarce. I wonder if investors realize the negative long range impact they create on local economies.

Flippers, especially those living abroad, have much higher levels of income than locals. They are artificially increasing the prices of real-estate for locals who would want to buy the land and improve on it by either building or farming.

Expatriates should care about how they make their money in their home countries. They should invest in a real-estate development project, a factory, a start-up, a school, etc.

Making money by buying and selling land is boring. It is neither intellectually interesting nor economically stimulating.

So it is not who made a million. It is how.

Being a Flipper is boring ... Fund a startup instead.

Can we do something...

One of our struggles as Arabs living abroad is that either we don't know how to contribute back to our society or that we feel that any contribution (none monetary) requires us to move back to our countries. I lived this same predicament for years until I recently realized that there is so much we contribute to our society in the Arab world even if we are living abroad.