No one following the news can come to any other conclusion than that our world is undergoing insane times. Where do we start? Well, with the Ukrainian crisis, which I always say could have been avoided with a Zoom meeting, not constant rounds of meetings.
The persistence of this senseless war, with no real mediation efforts being made as the war does not end, is also insane, especially since everyone is worse off. The simplest example is the Europeans’ claims that Russia is blackmailing them with energy.
Observers can only be perplexed; what does Europe, and the US behind it, expect? The sanctions on Russian individuals are also crazy. If they were imposed without evidence or trials, with property confiscated by a stroke of a pen, in countries that had always been called states of law and institutions.
The details of the Ukrainian crisis are many, the most recent of which is the food crisis that the world is about to face, in addition to the inevitable energy crisis facing Europe when winter begins, knowing that some have begun to resort to coal and at the moment when talk of the threats posed by climate change abounds.
There is a crisis of arms distribution in Ukraine, which will create real dangers if the war in Ukraine stops, a crisis that many countries will suffer from, and not just in Europe.
Even more insane is that worried about hellos and whether they had been fist bumps or handshakes- the media and politicians, as they avoid discussing serious issues. On top of that, they talk about human rights values that their societies do not share as the Left goes mad.
It is insane, for example, to see a great power like the US lecturing the world about democracy while Henry Kissinger, its former Secretary of State, the most famous one the US has ever had, not be allowed to express his divergent opinion on Ukraine.
Even a magazine like The Economist felt that it had no choice but to use the cover page to a recent issue to warn Democrats against the absurdity of the left and the threat that the left poses to the party and democracy. The magazine stressed that it does not usually give advice to politicians.
What is going on in Britain is also insane. Conservative candidates are battling it out to become the next prime minister as the country suffers from the implications of COVID-19 on the economy, leaving the EU before that, and now the implications of the war in Ukraine.
The insanity in our area could be taught at schools. In Lebanon, for example, where the state has been hijacked by a militia that some in the international community see as a component of Lebanese society, although the militia itself admits to “following the orders of Iran” and is funded by it. The same applies to Hamas.
Iraq is an insanity outlier. The country’s insanity has turned it into a place where the state and the elections are hijacked by an Iran-backed figure threatening everyone, even from his sect. It could be taught in higher education.
This is no exaggeration. Iran, for example, claims to be strong and to be resisting Israel, while the latter continues to kidnap high-ranking IRGC figures and interrogate them inside Iran before sending them home. These facts are backed by video and audio evidence. Can things get any more insane?
This is a summary, a very bleak one, but we can say that we are going to undergo a face that only God can anticipate. This phase demands standing with rational states, those of Arab moderation.