The Gulf Blog: curiously pigeonholed 10, July 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: email
add a comment
Recently, my Gulf Blog email has been filling up. Every day I get a couple of unsolicited emails from various people or, more recently, PR agencies working for companies. It’s interesting to see how all this works.
I fear that thegulfblog.com has become pigeonholed as a reasonable successful minor blog which attracts some demographic or other which is useful and interesting to some company or other. I fervently imagine some PR company sitting in some slick, IKEA clad office waxing obsequiously to a prospective employer about how they have the pulse of a particular sliver of a demographic and the specific, highly nuanced, cultured and attuned ways of reaching said market.
The oddest thing is that the range of emails is astounding.
First, several months ago, I found myself on the AIPAC media list thing. I get loads of their guff about conferences and supporting any and all pro-Israeli policies coming out of Washington. Yet at the same time and to the same email address, I get emails letting me know that some European fashion designer is now designing clothes for some typical UK high street store which are now available in KSA.
I know that these two groups of people – blindingly pro-Israeli folk and people who care about some tubby fashion designer’s latest flick of the pen – are by no means mutually exclusive but it still seems somewhat odd. Curious times.
Berlusconi: ‘The man who screwed an entire country’ 9, June 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Berlusconi, Berlusconi fraud, bunga bunga, Italy, Italy's economy
add a comment
…is the title of a recent Economist article eloquently dismembering what’s left of the reputation of Italy’s philandering joke of a leader. To wit:
the lurid saga of his “Bunga Bunga” sex parties, one of which has led to the unedifying spectacle of a prime minister being put on trial in Milan on charges of paying for sex with a minor. The Rubygate trial has besmirched not just Mr Berlusconi, but also his country.
…
his second failing: his financial shenanigans. Over the years, he has been tried more than a dozen times for fraud, false accounting or bribery. His defenders claim that he has never been convicted, but this is untrue. Several cases have seen convictions, only for them to be set aside because the convoluted proceedings led to trials being timed out by a statute of limitations—at least twice because Mr Berlusconi himself changed the law
…
[His] Worst [failure] by far has been a third defect: his total disregard for the economic condition of his country.
…
When Europe’s economies shrink, Italy’s shrinks more; when they grow, it grows less.
…
only Zimbabwe and Haiti had lower GDP growth than Italy in the decade to 2010. In fact GDP per head in Italy actually fell.
…
the public debt is still 120% of GDP, the rich world’s third-biggest. This is all the more worrying given the rapid ageing of Italy’s population.
…
A quarter of young people—far more in parts of the depressed south—are jobless. The female-participation rate in the workforce is 46%, the lowest in western Europe. A mix of low productivity and high wages is eroding competitiveness: whereas productivity rose by a fifth in America and a tenth in Britain in the decade to 2010, in Italy it fell by 5%. Italy comes 80th in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” index, below Belarus and Mongolia, and 48th in the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness rankings, behind Indonesia and Barbados.
‘Nuff said
The need for enslaved female concubines 9, June 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Femals concubines, Kuwait, Kuwait call for sexual slavery, Sexual slavery
2 comments
Remarkably, Salwa Al Mutairi, a “female political activist” and a former parliamentary candidate has called for the intruduction and
provision of enslaved female concubines for Muslim men in Kuwait in a bid
to
protect those men from committing adultery or corruption.
Apparently, you see, she has been told that some rich Muslim men ‘feared’ being seduced
into immoral behavior by the beauty of their female servants, or even of those servants ‘casting spells’ on them
therefore – clearly – it would
be better to purchase women from an ‘enslaved maid’ agency for sexual purposes.
Clearly.
She seems to have thought it all through: these elslaved women would be rented out as maids are today by an agency. She even notes a potential source for these enslaved women:
these maids could be brought as prisoners of war in war-stricken nations like Chechnya to be sold on later to devout merchants.
None of this is, apparently forbidden by religious law:
Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid (766-809 AD) was married to one woman but possessed 200 concubines.
Good to know.
The mind, as they say, boggles.
Picture: FIFA ballot paper 1, June 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Blatter election, Blatter election picture, FIFA, FIFA ballot paper, FIFA election, Picture FIFA ballot paper
add a comment
This is a picture of the FIFA ballot paper used this afternoon to elect Herr Blatter for another term as President of FIFA.
No comment needed really.
Superb income inequality graph 1, June 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: American income, income inequality graph, Indian income
3 comments
I love a good graph.
On the left is a percentile representing the worlds richest people (100) and poorest people (1). On the bottom axis are the four countries noted split up into 20 equal tranches of their population (the poorest 5%: 1 - to the richest 5%: 20).
Brazil, for example, has some of the poorest people on earth, those in the very lowest percentile of ‘world income distribution’. It also has some of those in the highest percentiles as the line snaking upwards and to the right shows. It is, therefore, a highly unequal country.
Interestingly, this graph shows that the poorest ventile in America is still richer that the richest ventile in India. And that
the typical person in the bottom 5 percent of the American income distribution is still richer than 68 percent of the world’s inhabitants.
Hat tip:
@jason_burke – who wrote the seminal book on Al Qaeda
2 Muslims kicked off plane + extra irony 7, May 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Muslims kicked of plane predjudice conference, Muslims kicked off plane
add a comment
Alas the Onion does not report that two US Muslims were kicked off a plane in the States, despite having been cleared through security, as the pilot refused to allow them to stay on the plane…wait for it…they were on their way to a conference on prejudice against Muslims in North Caroline.
Once again, this is, apparently, a real news story.
It’s not as bad as it first appears though, as both were wearing traditional Muslim garb…oh, wait…
Hat tip:
@carol_gallo & @m_clem & @blakehounshell
Resuming 7, May 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.1 comment so far
So I’m back. Good to see that I’ve not missed any great stories in the past couple of weeks.
Palin in Israel-Palestine blunder 21, March 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Palin Bethlehem, Palin gaff, Palin Israel gaff, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin gaff, Sarah Palin Israel, West Bank Sarah Palin
6 comments
Sarah Palin, the gaff-prone Inspector Clouseau-esque soccer mom from Alaska is currently embarking on a foreign tour to enhance augment burnish establish rustle-up cobble together bodge fake some foreign relations credentials before running for President of the US of A. Wonderfully predictably Palin has made a whopper of a gaff already.
On a visit to – equally predictably – Israel, she did not realise that Bethlehem is not actually in Israel but the West Bank. So when her motorcade began to approach an Israeli check-point to leave Israel it slowed, scratched its proverbial head, felt a sinking feeling in the pit of its stomach and then performed a U-turn, scurrying away.
The Israeli Defense Ministry noted that she had not made any request to visit the West Bank, as is customary on such visits.
Truly the thought of this incompetent having her finger on the nuclear button worries me.
A real milestone: the 1001st post 5, March 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: 1001 posts, The Gulf Blog, thegulfblog.com
2 comments
I’ve been looking forward to writing a celebratory wee note on my 1000th blog posting but then, when it actually comes, I forgot about it and instead reached 1000 posts with a dull rant. Typical.
I suppose that I will just have to live with celebrating the 1001st post of thegulfblog.com
So hurrah, cheers, yey and mabrouk!
I’ve enjoyed writing all of the posts…well, some of them…at least a few…perhaps just one or two… but still, we’ve made it to quite the milestone. Amazing really.
So here’s you you, dear reader. Many thanks for the patronage. I hope to keep up the blog, if not quite as prolifically as before, at least several times per week now that I’m gainfully employed in sunny Doha. Thanks and shukran once again.
thegulfblog
Normal service…inshallah 21, February 2011
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.add a comment
So, have I missed anything?
Over two weeks of the trials and tribulations of moving jobs and countries left me without my beloved google reader, twitter and my cathartic blog. And it could hardly be more typical that this period of incommunicado-ness came just as the crescendo of revolutions firmly reaches my remit. Perfect.
Still, c’est la vie. Though I am far from settled here in sunny Doha, at least I have an established base (before I move again) so a touch of normal service ought to be resumed. Inshallah.
Your continued patience and patronage is most appreciated.
