Total (France) and Sinopec (China) have recently signed contracts worth $ 4.5 billion with small U.S. oil companies, for the exploration and drilling of shale oil and gas in the Unites States. Each company invested around two billion dollars in return for stakes in shale hydrocarbon production through concessions awarded previously to U.S. companies.

When Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will visit Morocco, he will find that many things have changed. Rabat, which never aspired for exerting any pressure on its northern neighbor during the interim period following the passing of General Franco, would like Madrid to treat it likewise today in order for it to achieve a quality step in its newborn democratic path. Indeed, the relationships between the two neighboring countries do not need any new crisis especially that the two countries have a confrontations-rich history.

Russia these days stresses the existence of Western plans to change the ruling regimes in Tehran and Damascus. Such claims could be connected to Moscow’s desire not to get involved in international stances opposed to the two countries, for its own considerations, or in anticipation of future trade-offs with the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin. Nevertheless, the end result of such accusations is that Iran and Syria still consider themselves to be out of the reach of international action through the Security Council.

Who are the contenders vying for the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. presidential election, which will take place on the first Tuesday of November, or 6/11/2012?

Which resembles the other, Egypt or Ibrahim Aslan?

There is no talk in Kuwait these days other than talk of the parliamentary elections. In truth, the fixation on these elections makes a person who is a stranger to Kuwait and its people think that he is seeing the first ever parliamentary elections in Kuwait, and would not believe that this is the fourth elections of this kind in the country since 2006.

The Arab revolutions, at the head of which is the Syrian revolution, are invited to produce excessive meaning to face and counter the excessive power used by the Arab tyrannical regimes.

In his recent attack on the Syrian opposition and foreign “conspirators,” Syrian President Bashar Assad resorted to defending pan-Arabism, and accused those who he considers his rivals in the Arab world of being “so-called Arabs.” He said that attacking Syria, “the beating heart of Arabism,” renders the Arabism of such individuals suspect. Isn’t Damascus the capital of Greater Syria and the capital of the Umayyad dynasty, as the Syrian president boasted?

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is inaugurating his second term this week with a visit to Lebanon, in which he intends to assert his courage in adhering to his principle, in addition his refusal to seclude himself as a hostage of fear-mongering and intimidation. He does not do this as a challenge to anyone, and will not go there raising a banner or hailing himself as a leader.

Since the eruption of the bloody events in Syria last March, President Bashar al-Assad gave three speeches, on 1/4/2011, 22/6/2011, and 10/1/2012, (and an address on the 66th anniversary of the Syrian army on 1/8/2011). All these speeches were almost the same, as they maintained that there is a ‘big conspiracy’ against Syria staged by near and far away countries, “chapters of conspiring and killing”, or a “foreign conspiracy” at play, along with offers, on the other hand, for national dialogue, reform and resoluteness in staying the course.