These days it seems that every time I sit down to put pen to paper the world has undergone another revolution in a country no one could have predicted. We started off over a month ago with Tunisia, then we had the shock of the fall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and now it seems for all the world as if Libya is undergoing the most traumatic and most violent change of all.

Let’s not beat about the bush here. Khadaffi is nuts! He’s a psychotic fruitcake who had managed to somehow worm his weasly way back into the arms of the international community who couldn’t resist the lure of the oil and gas riches that his vast kingdom presented to them. Britain fell for it. The US fell for it. And Europe fell for it too. The probability is that like so many nutters he has a certain charisma and personal charm.

My dear departed grandma reminded me more than once that “you are judged by the company you keep”. Maybe if the world powers had remembered that old saying and looked at Khadaffi’s closest pals, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran and Kim Jung Il of North Korea, they might have thought twice about cosying up to the man that has now turned the Libyan military on his very own people causing masses of needless bloodshed.

The man is crazy, and very dangerous. Now he is threatening to blow up the oil pipelines and to die 'fighting for Libya'. I think I’ve figured out where he got the idea to go out in a ‘blaze of glory’ from. I have this image in my head of Khadaffi tucked away in an underground bunker, munching furiously at a large packet of Pringles, and slugging back a full bottle of sloe gin, whilst watching the old 1949 James Cagney movie ‘White Heat’ – a cinema classic.

The magnificent Cagney plays violent criminal Cody Jarrett who thinks nothing of murdering anyone that crosses his path, but is thoroughly devoted to his mother. (I’m not sure quite what sort of a woman Mrs Khadaffi was, but I bet she thought her boy was an absolute darling!)

The climax of the film sees Cagney, (overcome with grief at the death of his mother and seeing his criminal empire crumble), pursued by the cops and chased onto the top of a huge gas terminal from where he attempts to shoot as may authority figures as he can. After he himself gets shot twice, he turns his gun on the gas terminal in an attempt to take as many people with him as possible. With the fire blazing around him he realizes his number’s up and screams in a murderous, laughing tone "Made It Ma. Top of The World!" Then the whole lot blows up in a massive explosion and the film ends.

I very much hope I’m wrong, but I think Khadaffi is probably a closet James Cagney fan and, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, is going to do something catastrophic before he finally meets his end. What a fruitcake.

And now, (and in no way by means of trying to offend those listeners that keep kosher), to the ham, everyone’s favourite deluded pantomime villain, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The Iranian president seems to revel in his ‘over-the-top’ portrayal of the archetypal bad guy. Indeed, like so many dictators before him he seems to have become a charicature of himself, doing and saying things ever more crazy every time he opens his mouth. He is so far detached from reality that after brutally suppressing the protesters on the streets of both Tehran and Shiraz during the last week, (and reportedly killing a not insignificant number), he has the bare-faced cheek to go on Iranian television condemning the violence in other Arab states like Egypt, Bahrain, and even his old pal Khadaffi’s mob in Libya.

Returning to my grandma’s good advice, Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey, who rolled out the red carpet for Ahmedinejad last week and greeted him like a long lost brother, should be very careful who he is cosying up to. Turkey’s lurch towards radical Islam could backfire internally, with a significant percentage of both the military and the secular majority surely becoming embarrassed by the position their leader is taking. They might let him go so far, but then they will have to act, and having seen the precedent set in Arab states, the only Muslim democracy in the region could also be treading on very thin ice.

So we’ve discussed the fruitcake, thought a little bit about the ham, and now for the sour grapes. I would like it explained to me, (because I’m not very bright and have been struggling to come up with the answer after giving it much thought), just why Israel has been mentioned more and more in recent news reports relating to the regime changes in the Arab world?

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, these changes have nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinian situation, it’s just sour grapes on the part of those who always believe that Israel is responsible for all the world’s ills. What we have seen over the last month are the actions of downtrodden, disenfranchised peoples who have reached the end of the line and refuse to meekly go along any more with the military dictatorships, cronyism and rampant corruption of the last 30 or 40 years. Millions of people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in the region have been starving whilst their leaders lined their bank vaults with gold bullion, built up vast real estate wealth around the globe, and stuffed bank accounts full of money in Switzerland and a dazzling array of off-shore havens.

The tragic spark of the desperate young Tunisian man setting himself on fire after being refused a job for the umpteenth time because he couldn’t afford to pay a bribe to one of the city officials, has engulfed the whole of the region. But Israel has played no part in any of the regime change or revolution. Indeed, for Israel, distasteful as many of the regimes were, they at least knew where the enemy was and who was in charge. Now, Israel has to be on her guard more than ever before in what is a fluid and highly volatile situation that could take us all, who knows where.

Of course a peace deal with the Palestinians on the West Bank would help, but it is a very separate matter to the new-found will of Arab peoples across the Middle East and North Africa to rise up and fight for the right to be free.
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