Middle East

Submitted by Salil Mehta of Statistics Ideas

Travel Post-ISIS

Authored by Alastair Crooke, originally posted at ConsortiumNews.com,

Official Washington is awash with tough talk about Russia and the need to punish President Putin for his role in Ukraine and Syria. But this bravado ignores Russia’s genuine national interests, its “red lines,” and the risk that “tough-guy-ism” can lead to nuclear war, as Alastair Crooke explains.

By Toby Matthiesen is a senior research fellow in the international relations of the Middle East at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of "Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn’t" and "The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism." Originally posted on the NYT.

The West’s Alliance With Saudi Arabia Fuels Islamism

Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

Guided by talking heads, American armchair warriors spout vitriol, increasingly calling to either treat Muslims like Jews in the Third Reich or simply bomb them into oblivion — and their cognitive dissonance is glaring. These contradictions are evident not least in the paralyzing fear so many ‘Mericans feel toward Muslims who courageously call for soldiers to do their bidding in the Middle East. Their crippling fear of Islamic terror, itself, is cloaked in contradiction.