Way back in 2004, King Abdullah of Jordan told Chris Matthews, for some reason, that Sunni governments in the Middle East were askeert about the growing power of Iranian-backed Shiʿa movements in the region, despite the fact that Sunnis constitute about 60% of all Muslims in the Middle East and 90% of all Muslims around … Continue reading About that “Shiʿa Crescent”…

Not much good news, I'm afraid. First, there's been an outbreak of cholera among the Burundian refugees in Tanzania: About 3,000 refugees fleeing political turmoil in Burundi have been infected in a cholera epidemic in neighboring Tanzania, the United Nations said on Friday, stoking fears of a growing humanitarian crisis in Africa's Great Lakes. Up … Continue reading Refugee updates and charity links

Last week's US/GCC "summit" (I'm not sure it counts as a real summit when 4 of the 6 GCC leaders didn't bother showing up) ended so expectedly that, well, I just plain forgot to blog about it. What I wrote before the "summit": As I said on the program on Saturday, one possible outcome of … Continue reading A couple of reasons why Camp David didn’t end with any major agreements

Jonathan Chait is mad at Harper's because the Putin-loving (?) lefties over there aren't making any damn sense: Bromwich explains that the campaign to defame Putin reached its nadir when Obama’s minions descended upon Putin’s own country to arm his enemies with cookies: When Nuland appeared in Kiev to hand out cookies to the anti-Russian … Continue reading The power of the correction, or why Jonathan Chait’s “point” doesn’t “stand”

After it briefly looked, earlier in the week, like their advance might peter out, ISIS appears to have taken control of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra as well as its modern companion city of Tadmur yesterday. As bad as ISIS's capture of Ramadi was in Iraq, I'm going to argue that this is worse, … Continue reading The loss of Palmyra is terrible in so many ways

Those stranded and increasingly desperate Rohingya refugees in the Andaman Sea have gotten a couple of pieces of good news over the last couple of days. Incredibly, Malaysian and Indonesia citizens have been aiding refugees in spite of their governments' having formally barred Rohingya migrants from entering: Sympathetic Malaysians have launched donation drives to help feed … Continue reading A small break for Rohingya refugees

For some reason I can't really understand, my wife decided to watch Game Change a couple of days ago. She's already seen the movie, and I'm not really sure what put her in the mood to watch it again, but she doesn't understand why I watch The Godfather every time it's on TV, so whatever. … Continue reading David Letterman and the 2008 election

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udNHsk57f24 One of the peculiar things I've always wondered about when it comes to presidential politics is how governors who aren't even popular in their home states (no offense to you personally, Governor Jindal) can possibly think they've got a prayer of being elected president. Thankfully I now have my answer, courtesy of New Jersey's … Continue reading Self-delusion is a hell of a drug

The House passed its version of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act on Friday, and it includes a little provision, courtesy of Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) that requires the DoD to look into alternative bases for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, the one attached to Navy Central Command (NAVCENT) and currently based out of Bahrain. … Continue reading No place to dock your boats, my latest at LobeLog

One ancillary problem with the fact that the United States has committed itself to an indeterminate and geographically undefinable "war" against...well, who knows at this point (people who commit terrorist attacks? the tactic of "terrorism"? the emotion of "terror"? anybody who doesn't like the United States?), is that autocrats around the world feel like they … Continue reading Burundi’s president cites the universal excuse, terrorism, to justify his violence