Juan Cole (juancole.com) is a professor of History at the University of Michigan. He reads and translates Arabic and has provided invaluable insights into the historical context and also what's been going on in the middle east and especially Iraq over the past few years.

Now he's being intimidated by a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) because he had some unkind things to say about an organization called MEMRI, which is a right-wing think tank which also does some dubious translating and interperetation of Arabic. He charged that their translations are selective and designed to push a particular point of view about the Middle East.

If the idea of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation is as bad to you as it is to me, maybe you should send an email. Be polite, but firm -- memri@memri.org.

There are heavy overtones of Israel here, which I usually try and stay away from, but which I kind of want to get into for a second. I realize I'm not an expert or direct party to that whole situation. I have plenty of Jewish friends, several of whom have spent time in Israel and I'm uncomfortable at the thought of disrespecting any of them of their heritage. I also have met many people from Israel, and I find I tend to like their national character, though I have also met some pretty bad Israeli tourists.

However, it's hard to look at how that country is going and really think it's all that good or even justified. It seems obvious that history entitles the Jewish people a significant degree of acommodataion, but from an objective standpoint I don't see how Israel really has anything to fear from its neighboring states that justifies a miniature replication of the Great Wall. They're not going to face an invasion any time soon. On the terrorism tip, the reality of the situation is you can have security or sanity. Pick one. The wall is madness.

There can be no absolute physical security on the street level: you'll never stop people who are willing to blow themselves up to kill you. That's a lesson we also need to learn here in the US, but it's a lesson we'll learn eventually. The question is how to make fewer and fewer people willing to do that, and/or how to keep more of the people who remain willing to do such things away from your shopping centers, busses and so forth.

A cold calculus would also suggest another question which is how can you kill all those people before they get close enough to hurt you when they blow themselves up. Now, the degree of brutality needed to follow through on the latter solution breaches the boundary of genocide, but as long as we're thinking outside the box -- not recommending any courses of action -- that's an option on the table.

Things have been simmering for quite a long time in the middle east and elsewhere, and it looks like a boil is on the horizon. The long-term picture is far from hopeless, but the current trends are not good.