Category: Middle East
-
Critical time for the world, is America up to it…?
It was sad to see Biden stumble about on stage and lose his train of thought. Neither candidate seemed that well-informed and if the free world rests on the inconsistencies of Trump or the frailty of Biden, the world is in trouble. There was an element of sadness that the frailties of Biden were on display,…
-
Middle East in conflict
In an article by editor in chief of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, tells the story of Roi Rotberg, a man patrolling the fields of kibbutz Nahal. He had been taken by Palestinians and was horribly tortured, his eyes were poked out and the body was found on the Gaza side of the border. He told this…
-
Is US intelligence being undone by the isolationists in US Congress.
The rise of intelligence agencies activities is not much of a surprise, but the movement into the realm of technology is a spate that worries those who remember Edward Snowdon and Julian Assange’s warnings of mission creep. That William Burns, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency is writing in this weeks Foreign Affairs, tells…
-
Four days to find an answer
Fifty seats will be taken out of two hundred and twenty tomorrow. The sadness of those sitting down to eat will not be lost on the families around them waiting for a loved one to take their seat. Of course the sadness will be tinged by some relief, but there will also be 170 seats…
-
The 7th October repercussions
The 7th October 2022, will be remembered in Israel for the absolute barbarity of a Hamas attack on the defenceless, women and children. It will also be remembered for the consequences of the attack and the bombardment of Gaza, where 5,000 have been killed and body parts strewn in rubble with the remnants of those…
-
The movement away from the forever wars.
There is nothing quite like the spite of Putin, the end of Karabakh’s Armenian population is down to Armenia moving closer to the West. But the reasoning behind Putin’s negation of the Armenian population is down to larger concerns for the Russian government. The war in Ukraine has stripped the Russian military from much of…
-
The Syrian problem
The Middle East welcomed Syria back into the Arab League, and yet the country is still divided through conflict. By welcoming al-Assad back into the fold of the Arab League, Arab leaders who once provided the weapons and finance to oust him have taken a step back from pressuring the regime. If anything it was…
-
Part two Lebanon politics
Politics in Lebanon is normally a dull affair where the same names and parties dominate arguments that morph into a singular contention of – what’s in it for me -. But since the uprising of October 2019, where hundreds and thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to demand political change, there has not been…
-
Is Lebanon close to having an economy again?
Lebanon is in a mess, but is it close to getting out of this mess? Lebanon’s economy decelerated by 37 percent between 2018 and 2021, real gross domestic production (GDP) has fallen by 2.6 percent in 2022. But the most pressing question for the Lebanese is whether the economy is starting to build an element…