Alhurra

Colleagues,   The University of Southern California and the Goethe Institute are hosting a conference this Saturday in Washington, DC on the writings of celebrated German novelist Thomas Mann on democracy. I moderate an afternoon panel with Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) and Daniel Ziblatt (How Democracies Die).    You can have a look…

Dear Colleagues, Thanks for your steadiness, decency, and forbearance. I’ve never seen a company weather such intense storms: wars in our region, painful restructure, and now the choking off of MBN’s Congressionally approved funding. Thanks to you MBN is still standing. Thanks to you we were able to avoid full closure of the company on…

Dear Colleagues, Leigh Sloan and Tom Beckett of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) were with us at Springfield headquarters last week. They represent IISS in the United States. IISS, whose research includes work on the Eastern Mediterranean, convenes each year a regional conference in Bahrain known as the Manama Dialogue. Current IISS…

Dear Colleagues, On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt starts the day on the bridge of the USS John Paul Jones. The guided missile destroyer is conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea. That same morning, US Marine Major Chris Wedge Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over…

Dear Colleagues, Your patience and perseverance are inspiring. Thanks to you we were able to restructure in 2024 and save the American taxpayer $20 million. “Leaner ops, greater impact — always with purpose.” That’s the MBN mantra. We’re raising our game with an important addition next week. That’s Scott Riddick, our new security chief, a…

Dear Colleagues, Daniel Barenboim has served as music director of the Berlin State Opera, the Chicago Symphony, the Orchestre de Paris, and La Scala in Milan. A quarter of a century ago, Barenboim started the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a Seville-based group made up of young Arab and Israeli musicians. In 2008, Barenboim explained in an…

Dear Colleagues, Handel’s Messiah, a staple in the U.S. and across the Anglo-Saxon world at this time of year, was premiered in Dublin. That was April 13, 1742, to be exact and concert-goers attended the first performance in large part because of the contralto. The singer in question was Susannah Maria Cibber, a mesmerizing vocalist…

Dear Colleagues, Syria today is a picture of shock, anguish, euphoria, uncertainty — and hope. Among thousands freed from Bashar al-Assad dungeons, Raghid al-Tatari is the pilot imprisoned 43 years ago for refusing Hafez Al-Assad’s orders to bomb the city of Hama. At the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus — where as many as 30,000 had been tortured and executed — women poured out of overcrowded…

Dear Colleagues, When I lived in London, Mort Abramowitz would kindly look me up when coming through. Mort would occasionally mention something about being in town for music. We’d meet over a meal and dig quickly into the state of the world. I was tickled by these get-togethers. Mort was a dean of American foreign policy. He had…

Dear Colleagues, I look from time to time at a small online magazine called The New Atlantis. Its aspiration: “A culture in which science and technology work for, not on, human beings.” You can imagine the eclectic mix of articles, the data considered, the threads tugged and stories spun. The moon blows up and meteors destroy life…