Richard Engel Quotes
The Taliban may pine for a pre-industrial society, but most Afghans do not.
The Jews and Arabs for years shared Palestine. But the Jews spread out over the world, becoming modern and Westernized in the process. When the Jews returned to Palestine as a part of the Zionist movement, they were more modern, Westernized, and culturally at odds with their old Arab cousins, whose cultures had atrophied. The Arabs resented the Westernized culture that was being introduced into the Middle East. One point of view is that had Israel not tried to introduce moderism and Western ideas into the Middle East, the Jewish State might have been more accepted. However, not only did they bring a foreign perspective (democracy), education and techmology and capitalism to the area, but they far outpassed the Arab nations in agriculture, industry, science, medicine and general standard of living. The Arab dictators and monarchs had always had the excuse for poverty that the land was so poor that it simply could not be developed, but Israel developed the worst of the land in the area with no oil or natural resources. Every day of Israeli prosperity and scientific achievement was an embarassment for the rest of the Middle East where even the rich oil countries were not improving the lot of the average citizen.
Lieber is best known because he was assigned by President Lincoln to study the then international laws of war and prepare a manual for the guidance of union troops in the Civil War. Lincoln then issued the document as a general order.
There had been a revolution against the Qing Dynasty and an attempt to establish a republic. Wang, the spokesperson, quickly wrote an article in the Atlantic Monthly one of the most prestigious American publications. He minimized the degree of bloodshed, but by Chinese standards of civil unrest where over 20 million people had been killed in previous discords, this was relatively benign. It was a de facto military coup which also involved political assassinations which he carefully avoided mentioning, and just a few months after the publication of this article a second revolution broke out and this version of the Chinese Republic was very short lived.
The OId Testament prohibited Jews from shaving which is why Orthodox Jewish men today wear full beards. Mohammad ordered his followers to keep this commandment of God’s and to the Orthodox Muslim, shaving is wrong. However, the Orthodox Jews do not make a law that every male must not shave…though it is not clear what they might do if they controlled a Jewish theocracy. The Orthodox Jews are the minority in Israel and shaving is not illegal. It is not illegal in most Muslim nations today either.
Richard Engel is an American journalist and author who is NBC News' chief foreign correspondent. He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008, after being the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut Bureau chief. Engel was the first broadcast journalist recipient of the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for his report "War Zone Diary".
