The one firm truth about the Middle East is that the truth changes with alarming speed and regularity. It all usually depends on which despot, regime, fanatic or extremist is in the ascendancy at any given moment, and which racist, mass-murderer, dictator or relgious theocracy has been deoposed or alternatively murdered its way to the […]
Tag archives: Barry Rubin
A Strategic Environment in the Making
Writing for Stratfor, a provider of global geopolitical analysis, George Friedman penned a wide-ranging, nuanced and admirably detailed study of the current situation in Israel and the wider Middle East. His article is entitled “Israel’s New Strategic Environment”. His analysis is interesting, but flawed or at best incomplete in certain respects. One factor George Friedman […]
When silence drowns out the cacophony
A priest far in the Christian religious periphery, with a mere 50 followers grouped in one single country – the USA – announced his intention to set fire to a couple of copies of the Koran. But he didn’t actually do it. At the same time – or to be more accurate long, long before […]
The silence of the lambs
As they are led to the Islamist slaughterhouse. January 2010: 2166 civilians (mostly Muslims) murdered by Islamists in terror attacks. Silence. February: 1556 civilians (mostly Muslims) murdered by Islamists in terror attacks. Silence. March: 2536 civilians (mostly Muslims) murdered by Islamists in terror attacks. Silence. April: 1768 civilians (mostly Muslims) murdered by Islamists in terror […]
A composite view of the Middle East
Take a look at the state of play from the vantage points as far apart as Scandinavia, the USA, and inside the Middle East itself. A Finnish blogger, KGS of Tundra Tabloids, brings this story of how Church organizations in Finland and Sweden routinely engage in spine-chillingly anti-Semitic trips that are funded partly by the […]
Strange priorities
You’re at work. A murderer from the next town breaks into your home, slaughters your entire family and while he is in the process of breaking into your neighbour’s home to continue on his rampage, the police arrive. The murderer resists arrest, starts shooting at the officers and is himself killed in the exchange of […]
A promising investment
The UN Human Rights Council is the best, the most promising, the most successful purchase the Arab regimes have made to date. An investment worth its weight in oil. The UN used its funds to commission a UNHRC report whose planning brief specified in advance that it was to find Israel guilty of war crimes […]