On the 19th of January, the Bay State [Massachusetts] held a special election to fill the senate seat which was occupied by the late Edward Kennedy [a democrat] for almost half a century which was now filed on an interim basis by one of his former assistants. Massachusetts is the nearest thing to a totally Democratic state, it registers 3 Democrats to 1 Republican, currently all its high elected officials are Democrats.  The state has never elected a Republican for a U.S. senate seat for almost fifty years, this recent contest for the Kennedy seat was fought by one very well known Democrat.  Martha Coakley the current state attorney general, she was challenged by Scott Brown, a fifty years old state senator and a Republican, Scot Brown was much less known who had a fairly difficult  life in his early years but had finally settled in the state’s senate representing Wrentham the city from were he came.  The Democrats never doubted the chances of their candidate, her success was taken for granted, but when the ballots were finally counted they had a very nasty surprise.  The favorite lost and the outsider was the winner with a very comfortable margin, Scott Brown was now the 41 republican U.S. Senator

In the December 7, 2009 issue of Time magazine there was a seven page article about the last decade which it called the decade from hell, the writer claimed that the first ten years of the twenty first century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post world war two era.  In fact the last decade has been similarly hellish to lots of people allover the world including my own country which has been practically destroyed as a result of its invasion y the Americans and my own family when our lives turned upside down as a result of the mistaken and senseless shooting of my son by an American soldier in Baghdad on the 29th of March 2004, a calamity which left him in a vegetative state which I am sure a lot of this blog’s visitors are pretty familiar with, but today I am not talking about my son’s tragedy I am going to try highlighting some of the major events which had taken place during the last decade which is closing up in few days time.

For a very long time throughout history some nations at one time or another gained power while others lost it.  This question is not only of a historical interest but is also very important for the understanding of our world as the twenty first century unravels.  For just as the great empires of the past rose and fell will today’s empires rise and fall as well.  This question as addressed in a book called The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers which was written by Dr Paul Kennedy who was professor of history at Yale University.  The book was an immediate success and a real sensation.  The author was trying to explain why sometimes during history certain powers rose to very great heights and then fell.  In the last few chapters of the book the author was asking whether the United States would go through the same cycle that was in 1987, at that time I thought the question was absolutely irrelevant then the United States was at the peak of its economic and military power.  Now, after spending two years in this country I am sure I was mistaken.

Since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been honoring men and women from all corners of the globe for outstanding achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Economics for work in peace.  The foundations of the prize were laid in 1895 when Alfred Nobel wrote his last will leaving 35 Million Swedish Kroner [about $225 million today] for the creation of five annual prizes [to which one in economics was added later] to honor those who bestowed the greatest benefit on mankind in the above mentioned fields.  Each recipient, which Nobel instructed should be the person who has performed the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace conferences, each prize consists of a medal, a certificate and one and a half million US dollars. On the 9th of October 2009 the five member Nobel Prize committee which is appointed by the Norwegian parliament to decide on the year's recipients of the honors decided in its wisdom to give it to the President of the United States, Mr. Barrack Obama.  The granting of the peace prize to the American President was a real surprise, it generated a big storm of criticism which centered on the fact that the president has been in office for only eight months to have been able to do enough to be qualified for the prize and the great honor, it was called premature and a potential liability to the man himself.  One commentator said it was like giving a literature prize for a book not yet written.