Today, 16 October, is World Hunger Day! The facts in relation to the lack of food for millions of people around the world are truly staggering. 850 millions people around the world are hungry - see this. Meanwhile, the UNHRC web site the contains some rather scary numbers of the UN's count of refugees in the world. And to think that a rich country like Australia has spent countless millions of dollars to prevent a few thousand either arriving in Australia - or even worse, staying here!
There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t
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