Designed to calm down fears of an ominous US-China trade war, President Xi Jinping’s speech at the Boao Forum, crammed with Chinese metaphors, was the logical extension of his landmark address to Davos early last year – when he established China at the vanguard of globalization 2.0. At the Boao Forum, Xi stressed a “new…
The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Ankara ended in a trilateral summit with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. These state leaders’ joint statement reaffirms their determination to cooperate in the final defeating of the Islamic State (ISIL), the Al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups. The critical importance…
سَنَفْرُغُ لَكُمْ أَيُّهَا الثَّقَلَانِ (Qur’ān, al-Rahmān, 55:31) We shall one day take you to task, O you sin-laden two! (In the above verse the Qur’ān has addressed both a Western world that is loaded with sin, as well as the Shayatīn (plural of Shaitān/ Satan who are evil Jinn/) who have supported and strengthened the West…
A recent cluster of unrelated events is bringing Israel to a point of inflection; or at least, to a moment of deep almost existential reflection – on this, the seventieth anniversary of its founding. The depth of this quite anxious introspection became explicit in a discussion (Hebrew original) hosted by Yediot Ahronoth, Israel’s widest circulation Hebrew newspaper, with…
Is it war yet? Yes, in too many respects. It’s a relentless economic, diplomatic, and ideological war, spiced with (so far) just a dash of military war, and the strong scent of more to come. I mean war with Russia, of course, although Russia is the point target for a constellation of emerging adversaries the…
What civilization has ever sought to repudiate its own culture and traditions as we do today? Some 13 European thinkers issued an intellectual protest late last year against the assault on the Western heritage that has been raging on the Continent and in Britain for years. They called their 11-page document “The Paris Statement” and…
