Epstein Secrets

. The Middle East has gone from an addiction to a distraction. Imagine that five years ago someone had said to you: "In 2013, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and Iraq will all be in varying states of political turmoil or outright civil war; what do you think the price of crude will be?" You'd sure

ed, it would give the U.S. leverage to pursue "tough love" with other American allies, EFTA_R1_00441184 EFTA01964436 including Hosni Mubarak and the House of Saud, to push for reforms in their countries. The 2004 G-8 Sea Island Summit was also, in theory, supposed to lay the foundations for massive new effor

of youths mobilizing in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt's dreary police state. We watched transfixed as a movement first ignited in Tunisia spread from one part of Egypt to another, and then from country to country EFTA_R1_02204481 EFTA02720825 across the region. Before it was over,

Yemen war on one side, and they can't let Jordan fall. This is a heavy burden, even for them. Iran, say the hawks, can win a war of attrition with the House of Saud. Elsewhere, while Hezbollah may be having problems, and ISIS is ugly, Iran's hawks reason that the best way to help their friends and hurt their e

s issue, but it hasn't been so far. Largely lost sight of are the facts that there EFTA00684008 has been some progress in the Muslim world. Iraq, Tunisia, and Libya may be better off than they were before their upheavals. Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, the Emirates, and even in an odd way, Saudi Arabia, so

fundamentalist groups in the region to overthrow the Saudi royal family in the 1980s. (The Saudi government is essentially a joint venture between the House of Saud and the Wahhabi establishment, lubricated by vast amounts of Danegeld paid to the propagation of Wahhabi fundamentalist views around the Muslim wor