Reports from KSA say King Abdullah has passed away sometime this week and an announcement is likely later Friday. Journalists working at the state-run Saudi First Channel and Al Ikhbariyya news channel were called back from weekend holidays for an unexplained emergency.
Continue reading this entry ...
Mideast peace is possible and it's really not that hard to achieve: Israel's security must be guaranteed in return for Israel guaranteeing to be a peaceful neighbor. The only global power that can underwrite this is the US.
Continue reading this entry ...
The situation in Egypt appears to be messy to the extreme.
Continue reading this entry ...
We are truly turning our existence into virtual, and the dynamics of this virtual world has little to do with the physical one. On the day Israeli forces stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, it wasn't only the IDF fighting an unsymmetrical war with club-wielding activists.
Continue reading this entry ...
Turkey's autocratic, militaristic regime is coming to its end. There may well be backlashes, but there is no turning back the clocks. This train terminates at this station and it won't just be Turkey that changes tracks. The whole Middle East will be impacted.
Continue reading this entry ...
Sheikh Osama Bin Laden has just released a new audio tape on the occasion of the opening of the movie Avatar. The audio recording is being distributed by Al Qaeda's media arm Al Sahab and is believed to be authentic given specific and characteristic references of Bin Laden.
Continue reading this entry ...
Reports are coming in from Tehran suggesting that the Iranian Supreme Leader is either dead or suffered a serious stroke, putting him in coma.
Continue reading this entry ...
It's all about Rajeh of Lebanon. Not today's Lebanon, but the one in the frail, ailing days of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Lebanon of village mukhtars, shawishes* and onbashis* determining the social order.
Continue reading this entry ...
The New York Times dubbed it "A Clear Assault on the Press" in its recent editorial, after Turkey's Dogan Media Group was fined to the tune of $2.5 billion due to alleged tax irregularities. Except, The Times did not mention what it was all about.
Continue reading this entry ...
- Near Tehran Another holy Friday, another unholy series of sermons from Iran's great-and-the-good.
Continue reading this entry ...
To cut a long story short: Ahmadinejad stole an election. His opponents, including some of the most powerful names of the regime, sent people to the streets to demonstrate. Tens of thousands of youngsters also protested, using Twitter, Facebook, SMS and so on.
Continue reading this entry ...
Iran's revolutionary regime has ended Friday night. Or at least it has taken the irreversible first step to self-destruction. The interior ministry declared an implausible vote percentage for the incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Continue reading this entry ...
Sorry, Ankara. You pale into insignificance compared to what Istanbul means for Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Iranians, Pakistanis and Indonesians. This is about Obama delivering a special message to the Islamic world during his upcoming Turkish trip.
Continue reading this entry ...
This is for the cases where the man has a heart big enough to hold more than one love. For disasters to be avoided, prior planning is a must. Once you choose with whom to spend the Valentine's, carefully observe some basic rules.
Continue reading this entry ...
It finally came. Google Translate introduced Turkish yesterday. And it basically told Turks "Obama says he crapped." There is fun in the story, but first the serious part.
Continue reading this entry ...
BBC's Pam O'Toole seems to have hit the nail on the head more than 15 years ago. She, together with a handful of mostly British journalists organized around BBC World Service and the Guardian newspaper, had coined the term "Turkish-Kurdish" for the PKK.
Continue reading this entry ...
As I read Stratfor's excellent analysis of Pakistan's pains of dealing with Islamism, I could not help but reflect on how secular our analysis framework has been on dissecting the diametrical opposition between Islam and Islamism.
Continue reading this entry ...
Once, a famous US diplomat said Turkey and US were not natural allies. He was addressing a sympathetic but suspicious Turkish audience who felt it hard to digest the message.
Continue reading this entry ...
My relationship with international radio goes back a long time. Something like 28 years.
Continue reading this entry ...
It won't. And it could make things much worse. This is the second in my series of major fallacies on Islam.
Continue reading this entry ...
They are not. And it is fallacious to say they are. This is the first in a series of pieces I plan to write on the dangers of hidden premises and logical fallacies about Islam.
Continue reading this entry ...
What a funny outfit this Arab League is...
Continue reading this entry ...
There are a few things about the new MacBook Air that disappointed me. Like it being a Mac without a firewire port. Like the presence of just one USB port. Like the sub-100GB storage options. I can hardly store or manage any videos on this.
Continue reading this entry ...
I was asked by a key European media figure about how the Turkish media is reading President Abdullah Gul's US visit and what I thought about it all.
Continue reading this entry ...
The US has a big problem: It's called Turkey. Turkey tops the list of countries with the highest unfavorable opinion of the US. We know it's not the values. It's the policies, actions, intentions and the perceptions thereof.
Continue reading this entry ...
I'm looking at the issue from another perspective: the capabilities of the Turkish military. For both actually fighting wars and preventing them Turkey will need a much stronger military. Especially as deterrence against Iran. Seeing how the Turkish media blows a small bombing campaign out of proportion and makes mountains out of molehills I now understand that both the public and the military in Turkey have to sit down and think about who we are, what our goals are and how are we going to reach them.
Thinking about an even REMOTE possiblity of Turkey being excluded from NATO and it's protection makes me lose sleep.
— S.Habib
When you see the sun, through the clouds for the first time in weeks you get a tingly feeling in your tummy. Yeah, that's almost like the feeling I get when I see a new article by Nuri.
— S.Habib
Latest Comments
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening
The Middle East: What really is happening