I'm not really sure why any sane person would continue to seek to provide the Iranian Government's Press TV mouthpeice George Galloway with a platform for his theatrics and Islamism cheerleading, or assume that he has any rational case to make on anything at all, or that he would have the courtesy to show up somewhere on time. But the Oxford Debates gave it a go, and got some brief exposure to Galloway's unique personal brand of discrimination and vulgarity. Mahmood Naji, the organizer of the debate that Galloway walked out of upon discovering that his opponent was Israeli, has written an open letter to Galloway in The Huffington Post:
Dear Mr Galloway,
It has not escaped my attention that, since discourteously walking out on an event I had spent much time and effort organising, you have been claiming repeatedly that I had "misled" and "deceived" you. I was not intending on replying until I saw you once again attempt to, in my opinion, slander me on Press TV.
In that broadcast you claimed, "... I was deceived; I was not told by the Iraqi, Muslim organiser of the event, that I would be debating against a 20-year old
The revolution in Egypt ain't quite over yet. Cynic that I am, I did not see this level of defiance this coming. There have been so many examples of Islamists successfully hijacking revolutions from cowed and disunited secular democrats to seize absolute power around the world. I expected the violence in Egypt to die down and the Muslim Brotherhood to consolidate their rule a la the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Mullahs of Iran and the hellish pockets ruled by self-declared sultans from Algeria to Pakistan.
This may still happen. But Egyptians are not going down without a fight.
The ongoing riots aren't just a rejection of Morsi's theocractic thuggery. They're a reaction to a dire vision of a future that's been decades in the making. It's doubtful that a President and parliament absolutely committed to economic reform and a secular democratic civil society could ever pull his countrymen out of the grave the country's rulers have dug for themselves. Hunger and never-ending violence on the scale of Somalia are pretty much the only sure things people have to look forward to... and the Muslim Brotherhood are going to have to wear this failure....More >>
Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense is feeling the pressure. Good.
Forget about the rest of the world -- based only on his reading of the Middle East, Hagel is the wrong choice. Even if he is confirmed, at least it seems he was not rubber-stamped.More >>
Confirmation of this scenario is likely to come in the form of targeted preventive attacks by the Israeli Air Force against Hezbollah bases in southern Lebanon (you know, the ones the United Nations and the Lebanese state were supposed to prevent), or possibly against bases in Syria. Still, the signs are not looking good:
Israel continued to warn the world on Monday of the potentially devastating outcome if Syria's chemical arsenal falls into the hands of rebels, or worse, Hezbollah, as Lebanese media outlets reported that the Lebanese terror group had already obtained some chemical weapons and long range missiles.
UPDATE January 30 2012. Confirmation may have already happened. The IAF has taken out targets moving from Syria into Lebanon. Given that weapons shipments into Lebanon for Hezbollah are practically routine at this point (no thanks to UN personnel) it does beg the question: what was in that weapons convoy?More >>
Hillary Clinton's frustrated one-liner at the Benghazi hearing may be remembered for some time to come. Facing determined questioning about why the White House spun a bizarre story about a protest tied to an anti-Islam video -- a protest that did not happen -- to explain the Benghazi attack, she practically throws up her arms and complains, "what difference did it make?"
A lot. In line with the scenario put forth by Ambassador Rice, the White House felt compelled to apologize to the Islamic world for instigating the attack on its own people by Islamist jihadists. In the real world, we know there was no link between a YouTube video no one had seen and the death of four Americans.
In the scenario put forth by the White House, America was to blame for its own misfortune -- and they didn't change their story until long after the facts had come in.More >>
Saudi Arabians have the unique experience of living amidst wealth and modernity, at the same time that they live amidst backwardness and an archaic, fundamentalist regime. At least Saudis have a sense of humour about their predicament: "I confess, I saw a naked dinosaur thigh and felt aroused" was one of many mocking responses posted on social media in response to Saudi religious police suddenly raiding a children's dinosaur exhibit in a Saudi Mall:
The government-salaried vigilantes, a bearded auxiliary police force familiarly known to Saudis as the Hayaa, had marched officiously into an educational exhibit featuring plaster models of dinosaurs, turned off the lights and ordered everyone out, frightening children and alarming their parents.It was unclear precisely why the religious police objected to the exhibit, which apparently had been innocently featured at shopping centres across the Gulf for decades.
Read more Tweets speculating on what it was about the seemingly innocuous dinosaurs that got the grim guardians of the sacrosanct all hot and bothered here.More >>
