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Just a garden-variety protest in some Middle Eastern county, you say, nothing to be afraid of here? Wait till you find out where these people are. (BBC Photo by Safa Al-Ahmad)
The news photo I labeled the scariest of 2014, back in August, and the news story I called the worst of 2015 a few weeks ago, just got scarier, and worse. The photo was of demonstrators who have managed to keep an insurgency alive in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia for three years despite everything a boundlessly wealthy state can do to snuff it out. Bad for us, because the Eastern Province is where the Saudi oil is. The worst news of the year for us was that the Saudi king was in hospital with a terminal illness. Now the king is dead, and the difficulties faced by his successor just became worse by at least an order of magnitude. Continue reading
