Saudi spokesmen made three significant – even stunning –announcements last week. The first one came from the Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, speaking to oil company executives at a meeting in Houston. He announced that Saudi Arabia was going to break completely with its past policy, would no longer be OPEC’s swing producer, and […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Islam à voile et à vapeur
There is a French phrase — “Il marche à voile et à vapeur” — literally, “it moves by sail or by steam,” which refers, however, not to a sailboat or a steamboat or a boat that can move using either means of propulsion but, rather, in the witty French manner, to a person who is […]