The amazing story of Nauru 17, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Nauru, North Korea defectors, Operation Weasel
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Nauru is more or less literally in the middle of nowhere. I knew nothing of it until I listened to this excellent radio-cast by Chicago Public radio. The tiny rainforest Pacific island came to prominence at the turn of the 19th century for its pure pohsphate deposits. These were rapaciously mined with no thought to the consequences. The middle of the island is now a disgusting wasteland of open-faced mining and the island is approaching being uninhabitable. Indeed, they do not have any industry to speak of now. A recent source of money for the country was from Austrailia paying Nauru tens of millions of dollars to host refugees.
Nauru also started down a more nefarious path of money laundering and passport selling to keep its self afloat. They enabled people to establish banks there with little to no paperwork and several Al Qaeda suspects were found with Neuru passprots. This, unsurprisingly brought them to the attention of the US authorities, who soon hatched their own plan.
Operation Weasel was suggested by the US to Nauru as a means to start again. America would re-landscape and revitalize the island state in return for Nehru setting up an Embassy in Beijing from which the US would funnel out North Korean defectors.
Hat tip: Abstract JK
Operation Weasel – US
Qatar ‘most peaceful’ Middle Eastern state 17, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Middle East, Qatar.Tags: conflict, Global peace index, Most peaceful states, peace
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The global peace index ranks countries according to how peaceful they are using a raft of statistics ranging from the number of homicides per 100,000 people to the number of inter-state conflicts to the number of internal security officers per 100,000. In short, it provides a reasonably accurate tabulation of the relative peacefulness of states.
In this year’s rankings Qatar came top of all Middle Eastern states as the most peaceful, pipping Oman by 5 places, finishing an impressive 16th, one ahead of Switzerland. Here’s the GCC breakdown.
| 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
| Qatar | 30 | 33 | 16 |
| Saudi | 90 | 108 | 109 |
| UAE | 38 | 42 | 40 |
| Kuwait | 46 | 45 | 42 |
| Bahrain | 62 | 74 | 69 |
| Oman | 22 | 25 | 21 |
| 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | |
| Qatar | 30 | 33 | 16 |
| Saudi | 90 | 108 | 109 |
| UAE | 38 | 42 | 40 |
| Kuwait | 46 | 45 | 42 |
| Bahrain | 62 | 74 | 69 |
| Oman | 22 | 25 | 21 |
Dubai: No lessons learned 15, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in The Emirates.Tags: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Dubai bail out, Dubai crash, Dubai credit crunch, Suq al Mal
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There’s a peach of a post over at Suq Al Mal discussing an absurdly triumphal editorial in a Dubai newspaper.
One would have thought that recent events would have resulted in a bit of introspection and restrained behavior. Unless of course one was familiar with the region.Today’s Khaleej Newspaper (Dubai) has a lead article entitled “We Can Do It”. Here is the first paragraph.“GLOBAL crisis or not, Dubai has done it again. It has once again shown the world, beyond doubt, its ability and willingness not only to meet its obligations but any challenge to its unrivalled status as the most dynamic global financial and trading hub in the Gulf region.”I’m not sure precisely what Dubai has done.As I understand things, the kindly Shaykh up the road has sent around US$10 billion to be used to settle Dubai’s debts. And Dubai is mailing the check. How that shows ability is beyond me. And how living off the kindness of strangers beats back challenges to a postulated “unrivalled status” also escapes me.
BA set for Christmas strike 14, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in UK.Tags: BA industrial action, BA strike, British Airways, British Airways strike, Christmas strike, Emirates, Ethiad, Qatar airways
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British Airways – ‘the world’s favourite airline’ – will, according to reports, vote in favour of a Christmas strike perhaps starting on the 21st December. They have a monumental hole in their pension pot as well as making an estimated £600 million loss this year and BA’s management have been seeking ways to cut costs. One of these has been through charging to reserve seats in advance and another has been reducing staffing costs. Indeed, the latter does not seem so unreasonable given that BA’s cabin crew earn almost twice as much as some of their rivals.
I really have no idea as to what BA needs to do. All I do unequivocally know is that having a strike at Christmas, with people flying home to their relatives, will erode BA’s name and customer base yet further and earn them vitriol and hate. They must not do this. If the London tube drivers want to strike (though I think it’s reprehensible given their pay) then but so be it: people will always have to take the tube. Need it be said that the same is utterly untrue for BA? With Emirates, Ethiad and Qatar airways buying billions and billions of dollars worth of new, beautifully comfortable planes and offering discounted ticket prices compared to BA’s overpriced tickets for old planes, (not to mention healthy European competition) striking would be, as far as I see it, more or less suicide.
I very much hope that I am reading this situation wrongly. For as average as BA are these days I nevertheless think it’s exceedingly important for Britain to retain a viable flagship carrier.
Update: Cabin crew have voted for a strike – 12 days (22nd December – 2nd January) affecting nearly 1 million passengers costing BA anywhere up to £80 million. Utter suicide.
Egypt v Algeria football riot: Zionist Conspiracy 14, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Egypt.add a comment
…but then again, isn’t everything?
(I can’t embed it – go to the ever trustworthy (…) MEMRI for the clip)
What makes this somewhat worse is that it is a former Egyptian Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq that is trotting out this absurd rubbish. His logic is that the US wants to defend Israel so they set the two most powerful Arab nations, Egypt and Algeria (…), against each other to reduce each as a threat. Flawless analysis there.
Arabian Gulf…Persian Gulf…Gulf of Basra? 14, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in The Gulf.Tags: Arabian Gulf, Gulf of Basra, Iran, Iraq, Persian Gulf
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As you no doubt know there’s a remarkable amount of kerfuffle over whether the name for the body of water separating Iran from their Arab neighbors is called the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf. Yet, as if this weren’t one too many choices already, the Iraqi Foreign Minister has decided to stick his oar into the subject and has “discovered” that it “in fact” used to be called the Gulf of Basra. This is really such a curious debate when international law and historical precedent are really rather unequivocal on the matter.
Saudi’s floods and the Yemen conflict 14, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Saudi Arabia.Tags: Jeddah floods, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Yemen conflict, Simon Henderson, Washington Institute, Yemen
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The ever-dependable Simon Henderson over at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has a few useful notes in his latest policy brief.
Aside from a brief recap of the basics of Saudi succession (there is no-one better on this topic) Henderson briefly discusses the fall out of the recent floods in Jeddah and there’s also a word or two about their Yemeni conflict. The whole piece is well worth the read, but here are the key interesting bits, as far as I see it.
The Red Sea port of Jeddah is a case in point. The city suffered catastrophic floods on November 25, brought about by torrential rain after a period of drought. (The government had called on the Saudi people to pray for rain.) At least 118 people died, although some estimates put the toll at several times this, with one claiming more than a thousand. Critics see the magnitude of the catastrophe as correlating directly to insufficient investment in public works.
Among the places badly damaged were parts of the new, state-of-the-art King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a pet project of the monarch. In Jeddah itself, the crisis was worsened by lack of drains, even on newly built roads. The sewage system in much of the city is antiquated, relying on basement tanks that are emptied regularly and the contents trucked to Musk Lake (labeled on GoogleEarth), an artificial lake in the hills several miles east of the city. Fears that the earth walls of the lake could collapse have led to the panicked flight of some residents in the likely path of the estimated 30 million cubic meters of mostly untreated sewage. On December 10, it was reported that the Jeddah municipality has banned further dumping into the lake.
…
Despite claims of successes, the fighting has not been going entirely well for the Saudi forces. At least one small group of special forces has been wiped out by rebel units, and Saudi officials have released the names of nine missing soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel. Online reports indicate that some of the missing have been found in Yemeni territory, a contentious issue because King Abdullah has said no soldiers will cross the border.
Kuwait’s Parliament dodges bidoon question 12, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Kuwait.Tags: Bidoon, Kuwait's bidoon issue, Kuwait's Parliament, Stateless people
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Last week there was supposed to be a motion in Kuwait’s Parliament to deal with their bidoon problem. In Kuwaiti society, there is a whole swathe of stateless people with severely limited rights. Their life is difficult, they are not officially allowed to work, drive or own a mobile phone and are treated as second-class citizens. They live in cinder block houses with corrugated roofs though with AC. However, it must be noted that the ones that I visited in July still – like 95% of Kuwaitis – had a Philippine maid in the kitchen.
Their predicament is a divisive issue in Kuwait. Indeed, other GCC countries had similar problems in recent times. Saudi Arabia, though, sorted their problem out many years ago by simply giving them all passports.
For once, there appeared to be a genuine attempt by Kuwait’s parliament to sort out this issue however not enough Kuwaiti MPs turned up at Parliament to form a Quorum for the vote to go ahead. Presumably, they simply did not want to be forced to vote on an issue which is divisive in society.
Many Kuwaitis believe that the bidoon are people that have arrived from Iran or Iraq or other Arab countries relatively recently in order to take advantage of the hugely generous Kuwait welfare system. This is, however, a massive over-simplification. Many of the bidoons have been resident in Kuwait for generations now, a fact that many Kuwaitis like to ignore. It is difficult from an outsider’s perspective not to feel that it is a rather greedy trait of Kuwaitis to deny these people who have lived in Kuwait for decades and even fought in their army until the early 1980s a passport for what are – essentially – financial reasons.
Cheeta Woods gags English media 11, December 2009
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Random.Tags: Cheeta Woods, Gag orders, Libel, Libel tourism, Tiger Woods, UK courts, Woods gags British press
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Cheeta Woods has managed to gag English media from reporting on more of his transgressions. This is yet another example of libel tourism where anyone can come to the UK and sue in the British courts which are notoriously quick to issue gag orders.
Woods allegedly assiduously cultivated the notion of a straight-laced, family man to allegedly promote his prodigious advertising contract garnering abilities. Yet it allegedly turns out that he allegedly can’t keep his pecker in his pants…tut tut.
Here’s a list of Cheeta’s ladies.
[PS. Cheeta, if you’re reading, please don’t sue, I’m a poor student…and it’s not my fault that you allegedly can’t keep your hands off other women and allegedly don’t want to face the consequences.]
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