The real and serious news today is the protests all over Lebanon and seemingly the ones in Egypt and elsewhere, but the ones in Lebanon got the most attention from STRATFOR this morning. I have received no less than a dozen SITREPS on closures of highways, major demonstrations and movements of people in Lebanon who are concerned about Hizb’allah and the Hariri matter.
I cannot post them all here, as STRATFOR is a paid service and while, as I do pay for it, I do not mind posting the odd one which is directly relevent to our specific field of interest here at Vladtepesblog, I am not comfortable posting all of the,
In that spirit, I make the following suggestion.
Sometimes, www.stratfor.com runs a special where you can get two weeks free to try their product. Now that The Islamic Brotherhood is trying to capitalize on the inertia of the coup in Tunisia, and that strong forces are acting in Lebanon, and the North Caucasus seems to be stepping up it’s game, I think now might be a really good time to get that two week offer.
Not that Stratfor is perfect, I have a few issues with them. They seem to think that Islam as an ideology is not an issue and it is a standard geopolitical matter for one thing. However as an augmentary source of information, I am very grateful for it. Today’s news out of Lebanon alone is worth the effort to get the subscription, certainly if it is free.
Eeyore for Vladtepesblog.
Stratfor also lets you sign up for a free article once a week, this weeks is on the State of the Union speech.
The Lebanese protests are scary because Hezbollah is for all practical purposes the government of Lebanon, they are suppose to be carryout practice raids to seize control of all of the governmental buildings and the radio and TV stations. The Egyptian protests are also scary since the Moslem Brotherhood is suppose to be getting ready to seize power in that nation. Are the protests organized by Hezbollah and the Moslem Brotherhood, I doubt it. Are they getting ready to take advantage of the protests to seize power? Sure. The government of Tunisia wasn’t brought down by the Islamists but they are taking advantage of it to seize power. Based on inadequate data I am predicting that this summer the Moslem Brotherhood in one form or another will control all of the North African nations, will have a sympathetic government in Turkey, and be working on taking control of Jordan if they don’t already control it. And will probably be in control of Albania.
Combine this with the intifada in France and you will see that we are not only facing a long hot summer but several long hot years if not decades. Events are coming to a head, soon it won’t be possible for the most complacent couch potato or appeaser to ignore the fact that we are in a war of survival. Welcome to the world the left has created for us.