When the come-back kids meet up:

John McCain- born 1936
Batman- born 1939...

Rag and Bone: around the globe in 5 links

• Rising food prices are affecting everybody - especially Cairo's street vendors. Al Jazeera English digs deep into Egypt's local flavor and even asks some tough questions. Aren't you craving a ful sandwich?

• As some audiences oggle over Obama's letter to God, Nigerians are flocking to a raw religious relic. Check out this holy cow.

• "We believed they were from giant camels." Sa'ana seeks UNESCO recognition for dinosaur footprints at Yemen's Jurassic Bark.

• Three hipsters from the Horn of Africa take on big issues while printing t-shirts.

• Scrabble fever in Senegal. Did you know they have 9 world titles?! To be a world champion, you have to know at least 50,000 words.
  

Lonely Planet Iraq

"Heh... I'm a satirist. Pound it!"

Club Meddling : Gaddafi skips the Paris summit and wins out

While Mediterranean leaders met to discuss a new partnership for the region, something entirely different was happening in Libya. Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi skipped the Club Med(iterranean) summit and called its structure “neo-imperialist.” Indeed, France's President Sarkozy had set the agenda. The meeting, which brought together the EU’s 27 countries along with North African and Levantine states, reinforced imbalanced power relations.

Mr. Gaddafi, "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution," provided a counterpoint: “I do not advise my country to be part of this salad, this nonsense. This would make us face difficult problems… I believe this project of the Union for the Mediterranean would increase illegal migration and terrorism and give a justification to Islamist extremists to step up jihad attacks.” Perhaps the summit is a "frightening and dangerous" project. Why waste time trying to achieve the goals of northern countries that already have the upper hand?

Last month, Gaddafi’s meeting with the Emir of Qatar signified an entirely different type of cooperation. A high-profile Qatari delegation visited Sirte and confirmed 8 billion USD of investments in Libya.

If Qatar epitomizes diplomacy in the global sphere, they have a lot to offer Gaddafi. Libya’s inclusion into the international market of commerce and ideas will not happen through any grand, multi-party union. Rather Qatar’s interests in Tripoli will open up its struggling economy and maybe improve its environment. With the largest oil reserves in Africa, Libya has much to gain by signing accords on energy and water projects with the wealthy Gulf state. If the Mediterranean Union is just a “passing fad," Qatar’s investments might initiate long-term growth and social change in Libya.

Arms Control Yesterday: Thoughts on "Israel's Airstrike on Syria's Nuclear Reactor"

Everything about Al Kibar, from alleged links with North Korea to Syria’s hushed reaction, appears “bizarre.” When Israeli F-16s attacked Syria’s suspected nuclear facility last fall, the international community ignored the incident. This was “not an accidental silence,” said Leonard Specter, deputy director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Sitting on panel with nuclear experts and practitioners at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Mr. Specter sided with Avner Cohen and David Albright, whose joint-paper in Arms Control Today was the focus of the discussion.

The paper argues that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which barely responded to the Al Kibar incident, admitted its weaknesses. But the authors doubt whether the silence constituted international approval.

Claiming they lacked access to intelligence on Al-Kibar, the panelists’ talking points left many questions lingering in the cheerily lit forum.

All the speakers basically agreed on two points: Syria was caught “red-handed” and illicit arms-trade was a serious threat to global security. Syria’s ability to acquire nuclear technology, however rudimentary it is, reflects the pervasiveness of arms smuggling. What safeguards are in place to prevent equipment from clandestinely reaching signatories to the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)?

Israel’s preventative/preemptive strike occurred when the site’s nuclear goals were still far off. Six months after the attack, the CIA publicized a digital rendering of the nearly completed plutonium reactor based on satellite photos. But the Al-Kibar lacked a processor, barracks, and other trademarks of a nuclear enrichment facility. Israeli and American analysts quickly pointed to Iranian connections in explaining these missing elements. At the panel, Robin Wright, who covered the story for the Washington Post, discredited the Iranian ties.

Syrian officials have been in touch with North Korean nuclear experts since 1997 but the first aerial photos of Al-Kibar were not taken until 2001.

Absent from today’s discussion was the other motive for the Israeli attack. F-16s breached Syrian airspace and displayed their ability to outrun soviet radar tracking technology. Moreover, in a New Yorker article, Seymour Hersch pointed out that Al Hamad, the boat which transported the reactor, was in "rotten shape." When I asked Mr. Albright about the ship's flimsy floorboards during the question/answer period, he dismissed Hersch's report.