Tag Archives: Middle East

Stirring up the hornet's nest.Sic Semper Tyrannis Trump kicked the Islamic world in the teeth today, and loved doing it.Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.) At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates....

As we show in our recent research note ‘Blood and Oil in the Orient, Redux (2017)’, the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition might no longer be in the Middle East driver’s seat. However, with the oil and armament companies, the region’s oil-exporting autocracies and various non-state groups all keen on seeing their oil incomes rise from record lows, the prospects of a new energy conflict, whether premeditated or coincidental, seem extremely high. More evidence suggestive that economics drives...

All in all, a bibi scam that is working well Sic Semper Tyrannis Israel is trying to blow up the ME again. Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.) At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to...

World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer is giving up some of his management duties, in part due to frictions over trying to get researchers to communicate better, pressuring them to create shorter presentations and use fewer run-on sentences (like this one). Bloomberg and FT’s reports seem gossipy and read like only part of the story. Romer has responded with a post on his personal blog, and offered a public mirror of the internal blog he uses to communicate with World Bank staff. Taking on...

[embedded content]  27th January 2017 Srećko Horvat, a Croat philosopher, Elif Shafak, renowned Turkish novelist, and Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister, bring to this conversation an intriguing perspective. As intellectuals who know Britain well, they understand first hand the perils of nationalism, disintegration, isolationism and marginalisation. They place post-Brexit Britain in a...

The last week has been extraordinary, even by the standards of these extraordinary times. A flurry of Executive Orders from the new President of the United States has thrown the global order into chaos and sparked outrage throughout the world. But he has only done exactly what he said he would do. There is nothing in the Executive Orders signed so far that was not announced during the Presidential campaign, repeatedly and to loud cheers from his many supporters. The President was...