What keeps Jordan's King Abdullah up at Night?

Is it a bout of insomnia brought about by a highly caffeinated diet, or is it financial concerns... for his Hashemite Kingdom? Happy Halloween you Middle Eastern partakers in this heathen festival!; Consider your identity in light of the Middle East transitions and tectonic shifts.

King Abdullah II of Jordan is not shying away from discussing his region's changes.

The Black Iris [3]

Verbatim | What Keeps King Abdullah Up At Night

“Probably sooner. We haven’t shut any doors on relinquishing power. My mission is as quickly as possible to get Jordan to have a prime minister elected from a political party…We need to create new political parties based on programs…The Arab Spring didn’t start because of politics; it started because of economics — poverty and unemployment…What keeps me up at night is not political reform because I am clear on where we are going. What keeps me up at night is the economic situation because if people are going to get back on the streets, it is because of economic challenges, not political.” – HM King Abdullah

Ink On The Side [4]

Halloween: Well … this is new!

Happy Halloween everyone! Hope you all had a great time over the weekend! And what did YOU dress up as? P.S. I hope you realized that in the last panel the naked lady is wearing a ghost mask, and it’s not just white hair…

Life with Subtitles [5]

Identity: my precious

In light of the recent changes in the Arab world, and particularly the ones that concern my country, Tunisia, my attention was brought to the recurrence of the concepts of identity, and specifically how identity, nationality and government policy are -still- linked in our political conscience. This, to my understanding, has been the central point of the elections of the Assembly that was elected on October 23rd to write up the new Constitution for the new, liberated-from-dictatorship Tunisia....

SM Palestine [6]

UNESCO votes Palestine in, US pushes UNESCO out

And in the month leading to Thanksgiving, this is not the spirit we expected from the US toward a good-will UN agent. "The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted Monday voted in favor of admitting Palestine as a full member. Although I am not an ardent supporter of Mahmoud Abbas’ bid for statehood (I’m of the opinion that we don’t need to “bid” for self-autonomy), I am touched by the growing international support for the Palestinian cause. Those hostile to the idea of a sovereign Palestine typically frame the country and its people as a threat to the entire world, so it is both refreshing and relieving to see nations from every corner of the world prove otherwise."