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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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The funny part is that a large part of the funding is from the Saudis.

Anyways, it will probably work itself out. Paramount was financially struggling, and massively overpaying for Warner Bros famously hasn't worked out for much healthier companies.

The Saudis (and pretty much all the Gulf sheikdoms except Qatar) have been collaborating with the international Jewish conspiracy (if it exists) or allied with Israel and the US against Iran based on shared interests (if it doesn't) since well before the Abraham Accords formalised the situation. In the world we live in, there is nothing at all odd about the Saudis investing on commercial terms in Hasbara Inc.

The Saudis (and pretty much all the Gulf sheikdoms except Qatar) have been collaborating with the international Jewish conspiracy (if it exists) or allied with Israel and the US against Iran based on shared interests

As illustration, see one minor detail from Epstein saga.

Piece of covering of Kaaba in Mecca was sent by Saudis to their good friend Jeffrey to use as decorative carpets.

If you take Islam only slightly seriously, this is bad. As bad as drawing unflattering picture of the Prophet, only about 100,000x worse. As analogy, imagine than Jeffrey had good friend in Vatican who sent him old vestments from St Peter to redecorate his bedroom (well, if this also happened would not surprise me overall).

And... nothing. This news went out months ago, and no protests, no riots, nothing. As if there never had been anything organic about these happenings.

The Kiswah is a massive piece of cloth that is replaced annually and routinely cut up into little pieces to be given away as gifts to visiting dignitaries, museums, prominent businessmen, etc. This is more like being given a flag that flew over the Capitol for a day last year than it is being bribed with a priceless relic. The description of the piece's religious significance is basically just the Saudi government hyping up how cool its goodie bags are.

In part that’s because the Israel - Iran conflict is merely part of a larger web of interconnected Middle Eastern conflicts that exist above and beyond it, the most significant being about whether Saudi Arabia or Iran is perceived by the Ummah as the more Islamic government, the legitimacy of the guardianship of Mecca and Medina by the Al-Sauds, the millennium-old Sunni-Shia split, the war in Yemen (now tripartite between the Saudis, Iranians and UAE) etc.

People overfocus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but there would be plenty of drama in the region without it.