Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/26/2013 02:38 AM Report

Area - comparative:

slightly smaller than Indiana

National anthem:

"As-salam al-malaki al-urdoni" (Long Live the King of Jordan)

"Jordan's economy is among the smallest in the Middle East, with insufficient supplies of water, oil, and other natural resources, underlying the government's heavy reliance on foreign assistance."

(Smaller than Indiana, Sing to the King, a welfare state per the CIA https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/jo.html. Prince Zeid Bin Ra'ad, Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations, seems to have done quite well though.)

REMant  01/25/2013 11:43 AM Report

The Christian Science Monitor reported nothing like this. The Islamists were either excluded from or boycotted the election, and the govt engaged in vote-buying to boost turnout. Nearly 57 percent of registered voters voted, alright, but only 2.2 million of Jordan's 3.6 million eligible voters were registered. And it is not a system like ours with equal geographical representation.

There's nothing inherently wrong with either monarchies or theocracies, but there is when they no longer reflect consensus. There's no way to divorce religion or political belief from society, as many of democracy's advocates would like to do. There's nothing positive about rights, or substantive in contract, only negativity and increasing alienation. Inalienable rights must also be inalienable duties. Virtue is not acquired in a vacuum, as Aristotle pointed out, but neither is a crowd a substitute for it. Too often a minority of those without any right are allowed by those who won't do their duty to wag the entire social animal, some of whom it appears received their comeuppance in this week's Israeli election.

I cannot, however, pass on Mr Halevy's history of Palestine.