Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Alastair Sloan
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The British government is courting Saudi Aramco; the FCA and Stock Exchange should tread very warily
The British Establishment is performing ever more strenuous gymnastics to attract Saudi Aramco to list itself on the London Stock Exchange. The company is so large that it would dwarf Exxon, Apple, Google and Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway combined. In a post-Brexit economy where confidence is everything, attracting such...
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Comments about the Saudis by a group funded by foreign extremists should not be taken seriously
When the Henry Jackson Society released its report earlier this week about how Saudi Arabia is allegedly funding extremism in Britain, there was acclaim from all corners. Left and right united to publicise the think tank. The report even prompted an article in the New York Times, which claimed...
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Trump wants us to be distracted; cue a few more bombs dropped on Syria
Within hours of the White House announcing that the Trump administration is considering yet more military action against Damascus, defence and intelligence officials were scratching their heads in surprise. Five of these “US defence, military and intelligence officials” told NBC News exactly that. “I don’t know what the [White...
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Who does Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt really work for?
The promotion of Conservative MP Alistair Burt to Minister for the Middle East within Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) demonstrates that the UK’s friendship with the Saudi-aligned Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states will remain toxic. Between May 2010 and October 2013, Burt was only an Under-Secretary of State at...
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The Palestinians are typecast as the aggressors; it’s time for a rethink
For decades, the Israeli and Palestinian people have both lived under elites who care more about prolonging conflict than solving it. There is a lot to be made from this mess. Re-election, for a right-wing Israeli politician, is a decent enough prize to excuse a new war in Gaza....
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Is Saudi Arabia really responsible for global terrorism?
“Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus,” said the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher in 1981. It’s true, and nothing is more consensual in British discourse today than the belief that Saudi Arabia is the root of all evil in the world, especially terrorism. The Saudis, we were told...
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Israel is a troubling guardian of the holy land
HEBRON: Saif still remembers seeing the gunman moving along the narrows steps towards one of the most magnificent houses of prayer in the world, known as the Ibrahimi Mosque by Muslims, and the Cave of the Patriarchs by Jews. He has worked here, in Hebron, as a gate guard...
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A pro-Daesh film from an anti-Islam ideologue
Last night’s Channel 4 polemic, “The Origins of Violence”, had the potential to be a fascinating dive into a deeply important topic; how Islamic is the Islamic State (Daesh)? That had been the title of an essay by the well-regarded Muslim commentator Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman in March...
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Is Myanmar becoming another Palestine?
I have just returned from Rakhine state in western Myanmar, but it feels as if it was a trip to somewhere far more familiar; to Palestine. I know, Rakhine is over five thousand miles away from Jerusalem and it has no particularly significant religious sites within it. The conflict...
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For the US, sending special forces isn’t intervention
American special forces are burning out. In testimony to the House Armed Services Committee last week, their commander, General Raymond “Ray” Thomas called the pace of deployments simply “unsustainable”. His 8,000 fighters have now been engaged in “continuous combat over the past 15 and a half years.” This is predictably...
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Corbyn's pro-Palestine stance may prove to be costly
Although nobody in the Labour Party wants to admit it, this election will be the first firm reminder that Britain’s Jewish voters may be about to desert the party that, on the whole, has been their traditional home since before the Second World War. Of course, there have always...
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China is betting big on Saudi Arabia
China is betting big on Saudi Arabia, this time by offering to pour money into the upcoming stock exchange listing of Saudi Aramco. Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Crown Prince of the kingdom, has said that Aramco is worth $2 trillion. A recent report by executives within the oil company...
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Message to Jeremy Corbyn: don't mention Hamas
Jeremy Corbyn is about to be hit by the mother of all smear campaigns. The election consultants who are preparing this monstrosity of anti-democratic negative campaigning are the shadowy Crosby-Textor Group, whose UK offices on a quiet backstreet of Mayfair are unassuming and modest. Australian-born Sir Lynton Crosby, the...
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The West’s disturbing obsession with how Syrians die
How would you prefer to die? Suffocation by sarin or suffocation by sandstone? Do you favour starvation over succumbing to shrapnel wounds? Or perhaps your extermination of choice is a more straightforward summary execution at the hands of an irregular militia, extreme jihadist group or simply the nearest intelligence...
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The real reason Theresa May went to Saudi Arabia
British Prime Minister Theresa May is often, and superficially, compared to the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who led the country at a time when arms sales to Saudi Arabia were very much in vogue. On 11 August 1987, the first two aircraft of the infamous Al-Yamamah deals were delivered by...
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The more that civilians are killed by US bombs, the more that Trump seems not to care
A little less than two months ago, I predicted in MEMO that the botched Yemen raid that constituted Donald Trump’s first major military action was only a sign of things to come. The bloodthirsty Trump doctrine is even bloodier than I imagined. Last week, up to two hundred Iraqi...
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Israel needs good lawyers to defend its contempt for the law
Thousands of activists have descended on Washington for the annual AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) Policy Conference; the organisation is the cheerleader of the pro-Israel Lobby in the US. Under the banner “Many Voices, One Mission” they will discuss ways to whitewash the Israeli occupation of the West...
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Self-assured states have no need to persecute their own citizens, so why is the UAE lashing out?
At midnight on 20 March, a group of ten uniformed police officers arrived at the apartment of Ahmed Mansoor in the city of Ajman, in the United Arab Emirates. They conducted a search for electronic devices, even confiscating the phones used by Mansoor’s children. With all the laptops and...
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Why BDS activists can't shrug off the ban on entering Israel
The cynic might say that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement got what was coming to it when Israel recently banned its activists from visiting the country. You can’t, surely, be advocating the cutting of ties with a country and not expect the government of that country to...
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Positive steps in UK-Brotherhood relations
Love them or loathe them, the Muslim Brotherhood is by far the most influential civil society movement in the Middle East. You can disagree with their policies, contemporary positions or long-term visions, but to be serious, you have to recognise their “greatness”. By “great,” I don’t mean wonderful or...
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Welcome to British and Australian support for Israel, where jazz and genocide are the new norm
It was an extraordinary get-together that spoke to all the contradictions, idiosyncrasies and moral errors that characterise the curious relationship of the Anglophone world with the political elite of Israel. An Australian company, also registered as a charity, paid for a £2,000 per head junket to Israel, just before...
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In Dubai, the departure of Western law firms may only be the beginning
Over the past two years, a series of large Western law firms have announced the closure of their offices in the Arabian Gulf. This is largely down to the oil price falling; falling some more; and then stubbornly refusing to rise back again. Many have moved staff back to...
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Netanyahu wants a war that he knows he can’t win
Benjamin Netanyahu wants another war; a war in “self-defence”, of course, but a war nonetheless. Fresh from defending himself from rock-throwing teenagers and the lo-tech home-made rockets of Hamas, he now wants a war with Iran. This is nothing new. Were it not for his generals and a relatively...
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The botched raid on Yemen is a sign of things to come from Trump’s America
Donald Trump’s first military raid into the Middle East was, even after the most generous application of “alternative facts”, a full-blown disaster. If we are to believe the US media, the target of the raid was Al-Qaeda leader Qassim Al-Rimi, who escaped unharmed. Al-Rimi is the commander of “Al-Qaeda...