By Andrew L. Jaffee

Bestowing us with her infinite wisdom, CNN’s Gloria Borger told us what the American presidential election is all about. According to Gloria, all women are voting for Hillary, all black people are voting for Obama, and all the rest of the electorate — white men — will decide the outcome. Thanks, Gloria, I’ve seen the light. I understand. Things are so simple. If you feel like a good laugh, watch Ms. Borger for yourself. (I think I need to add a blog category for “Political Idiots.”)

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PHILADELPHIA* — The Muslim Weekly, a London-based publication, issued an apology today to Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, concerning a defamatory article it published in February 2007.

That article repeated a false allegation made by Tariq Ramadan that Daniel Pipes had lied to a conference hosted by London mayor Ken Livingstone in January 2007. (For details of what did occur, see the article by Mr. Pipes, “Is Tariq Ramadan Lying [about Magdi Allam]?“)

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By Barry Rubin

The U.S. presidential election is not–at least not supposed to be–like electing a high school class president. Vague promises, glib speeches, and personal popularity shouldn’t be enough to gain victory. This should be especially true this year since so many Americans don’t seem to think they did such a great job of choosing the last time they voted.

All these points go double and more for the Middle East, an area too dangerous and important to deal with lightly. Yet since these debates are so highly partisan there has been a huge amount of distortion and self-interested blather on all sides.

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by David J. Rusin*

Myra Morton approached her sleeping husband on the morning of August 5, 2007, with pain in her heart and a gun in her hand. Once the smoke had cleared at the couple’s upscale home just outside Philadelphia, a man would lie dead, a family secret would be exposed, and a spotlight would shine on the emergent phenomenon of Islamic polygamy in the Western world.

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By Barry Rubin

Keep repeating to yourself what the media institution’s spokespeople tell us: Coverage is fair, coverage is fair, coverage is fair. But as you do so be sure not to look at the actual articles.

Journalism has changed. It is a tool for advocacy. For a lot of reporters, writing articles is what they do instead of demonstrating or lobbying for a cause, and against another one. Behavior that twenty years ago would have been quickly condemned and resulted in either editorial changes or summary firings is accepted and defended routinely.

Just look at the texts. They are so skewed that even while being horrified one wants to laugh at the clumsy and obvious tricks employed.

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by Nimrod Raphaeli and Bianca Gersten*

Countries have used sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) as instruments through which to buy assets with their surplus foreign exchange since the 1950s when Norway and Singapore, and soon after Kuwait, sought new strategies to insulate themselves from exchange rate fluctuation. Central banks employed SWFs only as buffers for currency stabilization when countries had little or no international debt and large current account surpluses. Today, SWFs have become quite common. As of March 2007, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia had, respectively, the first and third largest SWFs internationally, and Kuwait ranked sixth.[1] Because of burgeoning oil prices, Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds have become the preferred investment vehicles of Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. As SWFs blur the line between public and private investment, however, Western nations worry about the security implications of foreign countries, including Persian Gulf states, acquiring important positions in key industries and companies.

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By Barry Rubin

One of the things least understood by people in the West is the framework–or should I say straitjacket?–of the dominant ideology in the Arabic-speaking world in shaping thought, speech, and political alternatives. This shows up in the smallest of exchanges. But atoms, too, are very tiny yet make up all the wide variety of things in the world.

Call it AIDS (Arab Ideological Doctrine Syndrome), a disease that doesn’t just threaten the Middle East, it’s been a plague since the 1950s with few signs of a let-up. Here’s a little example that illustrates the big picture. On February 25, Lebanese cabinet minister Marwan Hamada gave an interview to Press TV. It is a commonplace for supporters of Lebanon’s government to be accused of being Western agents, an implication often repeated in the Western media referring to it as “pro-U.S.”

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