Considering his feelings about the Saudi royal family and Hamas.

Maybe our resident poster of his work will share his insights into this development.

One senses new blood in the Saudi government so to speak, but it offers very little sense of having coherent plans or goals, it's more like a lot of lashing out at real and imagined enemies. It looks like thrashing around, is what it looks like up to now.

And thus the bullshit proliferates about it too.

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Baround is like various other writers that I read from time to time, but think they get too carried away with their argument at times, a little too disinclined to see a fool when you can see a evil genius instead, a flaw we are all prone to fall into, but which generally over-inflates the abilities of most of the evil people one sees.

But mostly I avoid flame wars, i want intelligent conversation, so he doesn't really work for me, like Parry, Hudson, etc. I mostly stopped posting Escobar because of that. If I wanted that it's easy to do, so many choices.

Edit: so I don't really care much what he thinks, Baroud, most of the time, but I don't have a problem with him either.

I think it is particular interesting now that the Saudi king is meeting with Hamas leaders considering how a lot of pundits are talking about how Saudi Arabia and Israel are forging some kind of bond in their opposition to Iran and could potentially work together in a potential strike.

I think you ought not put much weight on any alliance between the Saudis and Israel. They'd love to have Bibi bomb Iran, but that's about as far as it goes.

I have seen it theorized that the Sauds are attempting to lead a circling of the Sunni wagons, to borrow a frontier metaphor, to fend off the rising Iranian "threat", and it's the best idea I've seen so far.

It does seem to show that MB is no longer outcast in Saudi thinking, which would seem to affect relations to Israel too (and Egypt), except there is talk of Hamas and Israel getting less hostile with each other too.

The Sauds do seem anxious, as mentioned elsewhere, to finish Asssad and get back control of Yemen before Iran unleashes it's forces, but I am skeptical that is going to work out, and there are suggestions here and there that the Russian and US may put their differences over Ukraine aside and make a deal in Syria, but I consider that the people on the ground there will have their own plans too.

And there is the insurgency in the Sinai, ISIS, which is a threat to them all.

And then there is Bibi, who is kind of a loose cannon at this point, I would not try to guess what he may try to do next.

So things seem "unsettled", alliances are changing, people are considering their options.

Lots to think about.

I wish there were more news sources available in English coming out of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other nations in the region.

It's hard to get a good handle on the different perspectives of folks living in those countries.

We live in a language ghetto.

If I had it to do over I'd spend more time on languages.

On the other hand, the web has really opened things up, in terms of access to other cultures and places, it's way the heck better than in my youth, what you can find in good English translation, with pictures and maps on the web.

And if you only have one language, English is a great one for it to be, like French 300 years ago.