[ by Charles Cameron -- a single word in a very small book, and the world that hangs in the balance ] . I’ve just read Hegghammer & Lacroix on The Meccan Rebellion. At 78 pages and 5.3 x 8.3 inches, it’s a tiny book in hardback and quite a delight to hold — the [...] Read more »
Valentine — our first global saint?
[ by Charles Cameron -- a mixed reception for St Valentine and his Day ] . ** Blog-friend Omar Ali has a piece up at the Brown Pundits blog, How easy is it to be accused of blasphemy in Pakistan? — which included the upper of the two images above, along with this comment and [...] Read more »
Is This the Secret U.S. Drone Base in Saudi Arabia?
Former intelligence officers believe this remote airstrip in Saudi Arabia is a secret U.S. airfield, used to launch attacks on militants in Yemen. Read more »
Concerning the enforcement of morals
[ by Charles Cameron -- enforcement of moral codes in the UK, US, Israel and KSA, unofficial and official, worsening, continuing and improving, quite the smörgåsbord ] . . Moral vigilantism appears to be on the rise in parts of London, according to this first-person piece by Jane Kelly, consulting editor of the Salisbury Review, [...] Read more »
Reading a partisan cartoon: the parable of a dog’s ears and teeth
[ by Charles Cameron -- on the difficulties that may be posed when "reading" graphics ] . ** The question I want to ask in this post is: how much can you safely read into a political cartoon? Here is the particular cartoon I have in mind: It was published in The Guardian (UK) yesterday, [...] Read more »
An army in Sham, an army in Yemen, and an army in Iraq
[ by Charles Cameron -- uh-oh, it's Mahdi time again.. giving a little wide-angle context, then passing along a hadith of possible current interest -- also an aside about an end-times Shiite trinity ] . . We live, as everyone pretty much agrees, in some place called “here” (although that shifts) at a particular moment [...] Read more »
Of quantity and intensity: the case of the Sufiyan
[ by Charles Cameron -- catching the apocalyptic mention in a broad sectarian overview ] . . I’d like to discuss the last four paragraphs of a recent NYT piece on the influx of Iraqi Shiites to Syria: Iraqi Shiites did not initially take sides in Syria. Many Shiites here despise Mr. Assad for his [...] Read more »
Lang, Francona et socii on an Israeli strike
[ by Charles Cameron -- a quick recap of Col. Lang & Lt. Col. Francona on the realities of an Israeli strike on Iranian facilities, 2006-2012 -- and the recent WaPo trilogy ] . . I posted here a while ago about what happens when “religious leaders talk of wiping nations off the map” — [...] Read more »
What We Are Reading
ASP ICYMI - Fukushima, Mexico, drones, glaciers, Saudi Arabia, oil, and multilateralism Read more »
U.S. Support for Yemen’s Transition
At the Yemen Donor Conference in Riyadh, which I attended on September 4, I was impressed by how far Yemen has come in the past year. But I think what really made this conference stand out is that we focused on what happens after the conference, and ... Read more »