Several Persian Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar) have urged their citizens in Lebanon to leave the country. The fear is that the Syrian rebels are now targeting those citizens for kidnapping. There has been a rash of kidnappings in a tit-for-tat exchange as different groups try to gain advantage. The kidnappings are also potentially a source of revenue as ransoms are being demanded. The clear fear is that the struggle in Syria is now poised to spread throughout the region.
Media Matters, an organization that analyzes media coverage of public policy issue (and usually takes a liberal perspective), has done an interesting review of how the media covered the heat wave in July. As we know, July was the hottest month ever recorded in the United States, and there was a lot of media coverage on the weather. What was remarkable is that very few of the news reports mentioned the issue of climate change in their coverage. As Media Matters points out, many highly reputable scientific organizations clearly indicated that climate change was at least partially responsible for the extreme weather.
There is a blog report floating through the internet which purports to detail the outlines of an Israeli attack on Iran. I have no idea of how credible it is, and I would advise everyone not to take it seriously. I am only posting it to demonstrate how policy makers have to navigate a highly volatile information universe. The post is also revealing because the outline of the attack is hardly a surgical strike on Iranian nuclear facilities–if it is real, we can expect a very robust response from the Iranians.
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