Bashar Ja’afari, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations was a special guest on Charlie Rose last night. We happened to catch the interview. We won’t steel anything from Charlie, here is a link to a video replay of the interview if you are deeply interested in it (it was [...]
The UN has issued a “humanitarian crisis” warning for the Sahel Region in Africa. As one of the poorest regions in the world and suffering from its third drought in ten years – the country has had its plight masked by the crisis in Syria, Egypt, and Libya over the past two years. As a [...]
President Ahmadinejad of Iran said that the country can last two to three years without selling oil abroad based on its “savings”. Moreover, he said that it can achieve this “easily”. The raw fact is that the Iranian economy is crumbling. He may think that the government can operate for two to three years from [...]
The latest incident challenging Chinese security in the Middle East involves the seizure of a freighter by pirates off the coast of Iran. The Chinese have demanded that Iran get engaged in recovering the ship and its crew but that puts Iran in a very awkward position. If Iranian naval vessels attempt any kind of [...]
New North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un visited a famous naval unit from the Korean War era last night in the preliminary days just before it will allegedly launch a satellite into orbit using a three stage ballistic missile. We covered this earlier in the week. But one comment he mentioned is worth repeating, because apparently [...]
If we were to pay attention to the press in the Middle East, we could begin to believe that President Obama had back-tracked on his tough stance on Iran. But, that might also be our point. The President did use an ambassador from Turkey negotiating between Iran and the West to deliver a message to [...]
Things are heating up as far as the elections in two key nations. It seemed only a few weeks ago that Nicolas Sarkozy had been written off in terms of his re-election. It was possible that he would be lose the opportunity to compete in the second round of the election against the Socialist candidate [...]
The attack on Afghan civilians by a much respected sergeant is going to become a major issue in the campaign at some point. Right now the whole issue is radioactive and none of the candidates are touching it but as the trial starts it will become impossible to ignore. The accused soldier faces the death [...]
The sweep of reform and challenge through the Middle East has been nothing short of staggering. What started as a shocked reaction to change in Tunisia and Egypt has become shock that every nation has not started down the same road. After all there has been major change in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Syria [...]
One can browse any number of websites throughout the Middle East and see that a prediction of an attack by the US and Israel on Iran is “just around the corner”. Reporters are working overtime to make connections between senior US official visits and coordinated “but incidental” meetings that are happening around the world among [...]
