Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

• Domestic oil use in Saudi Arabia at 10-year high | Energy, Oil and Gas | AMEinfo.com

  According to official Saudi figures, crude oil consumption in the kingdom rose 13.7% in October from the previous month, reaching the highest level since at least 2002, Bloomberg has reported. The country used an average of 2.02 million barrels a day of oil in October compared with 1.78 million barrels in September,

• Israel's Emerging "Jewish Hezbollah" by Mark Perry | The Middle East Channel

  "I don't want to exaggerate, but it's time to call this what it is," a veteran IDF officer noted in a recent telephone conversation on the Nablus incident. "It might be news in America, but it's no secret in Israel. This is a very real crisis. What we have here is the birth of a state within a state. The birth of a kind of Jewish Hezbollah." This former officer went on to speculate that "what is emerging in the West Bank" is "a three-state solution: Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and, standing between them, a radical settler state."

• Portugal to Pass Security Laws as Crime Rises Amid Austerity - Bloomberg

  Portugal’s government is set to propose laws to make streets safer amid an increase in crime during the country’s year-long recession, Justice Minister Paula Teixeira da Cruz said. The government will soon propose legislation to bolster cooperation between different police forces,

• Woman Burned Alive in Brooklyn Elevator - Police Arrest Man - NYTimes.com

  Mr. Isaac, 47, methodically set the woman aflame, burning her alive in the elevator of her building in Brooklyn on Saturday, only a few feet from her apartment door, the police said. He sprayed the flammable liquid in the woman’s face and over her cowering body, and then lighted a Molotov cocktail to ignite the fire.

• Israel frees hundreds in second phase of swap - The Washington Post

  Also Sunday, the Israeli government moved ahead with its plan to accelerate building in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem, announcing that it would invite bids to construct more than 1,000 homes there. The new housing will be in the settlements of Beitar Ilit and Givat Zeev, and in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem built on West Bank land annexed to the city. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the stepped-up construction last month after the Palestinians were accepted as a member state in UNESCO.

• Saudi Prince Buys $300 Million Stake in Twitter - WSJ.com

  Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has made a $300 million investment in Twitter Inc., expanding his media empire into social-media sites and giving the billionaire a stake in an online forum that was widely used by activists in this year's Arab uprisings.

• UAE food prices are among lowest in world | Retail | AMEinfo.com

  Food prices in the UAE are now some of the lowest in the world, thanks in part to ongoing government controls introduced earlier this year, The National has reported. The UAE Government sought to protect consumers in May when it launched a campaign to freeze or reduce the prices of 400 basic commodities until the end of the year.

• Records show colonizers were not done with Goa - The Times of India

  After 50 years, one tends to think that the Portuguese colonial power kept itself busy elsewhere after Goa was liberated from its rule by the Indian army. But the colonizers nursed dreams of recapturing the tiny coastal Indian region for several years, even bombing Goa twice under the Indian union.

• A New Home for Hamas? - By Houriya Ahmed and Julia Pettengill | Foreign Policy

  The shifting allegiances in this tumultuous era of Arab politics have come to resemble a game of musical chairs. According to an unnamed Hamas official quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the hard-line Palestinian group is seeking to move its political headquarters from Damascus as early as this week. Its reliance on the tottering regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has left it significantly weakened and in search of a new base for political operations, and Egypt and Qatar have both materialized as possible new bases, according to the official. In the case of the Qatari capital of Doha, that may not necessarily be a bad thing.

• Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir - NYTimes.com

  I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. The real test is what would happen if Bibi tried to speak at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin. My guess is that many students would boycott him and many Jewish students would stay away, not because they are hostile but because they are confused.

• Why Tom Friedman is a true friend of Israel - By Stephen M. Walt | Stephen M. Walt

  Many of you probably saw Tom Friedman's startling column in yesterday's New York Times, where he attacked the Republican presidential candidates for pandering on the subject of Israel. He also informed his readers that all those standing ovations for Netanyahu in Congress were "bought and paid for by the Israel lobby," and he correctly noted that this blind and unconditional support for Israel was not really "pro-Israel" at all. Why? Because it was leading Israel away from a two-state solution and toward one of three disastrous options from Israel's perspective: 1) apartheid, 2) ethnic cleansing, or 3) a binational democratic state which would eventually be dominated by the more numerous Palestinians.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

So to some of you in recent years I have commented that I have been surprised and oddly disappointed through all my years of travel that I've never faced any crazy incidences such as natural disasters, hospital stays, muggings or general events outside the pace of normal life. While presumably these events are terrifying and awful at the time; with the salve of time and a return home, they inevitably make a great story best told over a Christmas dinner table with family or a pub night with friends.