INTA89_2_10_Khatib. Ulrichsen - Small States with a Big Role. Public Lecture on Qatar: Small State, Big Politics | Georgetown. Qatar: Rich and Dangerous. The first concern of the Emir of Qatar is the prosperity and security of the tiny kingdom. To achieve that, he knows no limits. Stuck between Iran and Saudi Arabia is Qatar with the third largest natural gas deposit in the world. The gas gives the nearly quarter of a million Qatari citizens the highest per capita income on the planet and provides 70 percent of government revenue. Select the reports you are interested in:NO-SPAM: Under no circumstances will we EVER rent, sell or give away your email How does an extremely wealthy midget with two potentially dangerous neighbors keep them from making an unwelcomed visit? Naturally, you have someone bigger and tougher to protect you. Of course, nothing is free.
Having tanks and bunker busting bombs nearby will discourage military aggression, but it does nothing to curb the social tumult that has been bubbling for decades in the Middle Eastern societies. Sixty-five percent of the people in the Middle East are under twenty-nine years of age. Steinberg 2012 - Qatar and the Arab Spring. Morocco, the Gulf and the media. An interesting item at Angry Arab — Aljazeera and Morocco: "Yassine sent met this: "So al-Jazeera decided not to air the documentary on Morocco and the 20th of February Movement (nuqta sakhina), which they had been promoting for more than a week. Why not? Again? (In November the same thing happened (back then the al-Jazeera crew was forbidden to go to Tanger and the al-Hoceima area: two centers of the Moroccan uprising).
The Emir of Qatar has a huge property in Tangier where he spends part of the summer, close to the king's own palace (and the king spends most of his summer in the north, either in Tangier or nearby Tetouan). Incidentally, two members of the February 20 movement who worked for a UAE-based TV channel (Dubai TV) were fired at the request of the minister of information last year.
Qatar’s Impromptu Alcohol Ban. The Pearl Jenifer Fenton reports from Qatar. There is no flambé at Les Deux Magots, a high-end French restaurant on The Pearl, a mixed development man-made island in Qatar, which hopes to “redefine an entire nation” according to its sales pitch. The sale of alcohol (and use even for cooking) has been banned on The Pearl (where I live) since mid-December, but a month later businesses have still not received formal notification of the reason for the prohibition or when and if it would end, according to interviews with more than a dozen people affected at various establishments. Business is down about 80 percent at Les Deux Magots, according to the restaurant’s executive chef, Charbel Chaloubi. Chaloubi said the only consolation was the situation is the same for the restaurant’s main competitor Pampano, where only four people were dining one recent afternoon. Alcohol had previously been tolerated but severely restricted in the country.
Al-Jazeera : du « printemps arabe » à l’hiver de l’information. Depuis la chute du président tunisien Ben Ali, suivie rapidement de celle de son homologue égyptien Hosni Moubarak, on ne compte plus les commentaires, les articles, les colloques et même déjà les publications qui tombent comme feuilles en automne et qui décernent aux soulèvements arabes du printemps des éloges aussi chaleureux que la surprise a été grande. En dépit de la formule assez dépréciative, voire méprisante, sous laquelle on nous la présentait, la « rue arabe » a montré qu’elle était bien une opinion qui, au contraire de ce que martelaient nombre de commentateurs, n’était pas vouée à plébisciter des valeurs opposées aux « nôtres » ; elle pouvait au contraire les épouser et combattre pour ses aspirations démocratiques, parfois au prix de lourds sacrifices.
Al-Jazeera fête en ce moment son quinzième anniversaire avec des slogans – « L’information, l’opinion, la conscience… » – qui ne craignent pas de verser dans l’auto-célébration ! Imprimer ce billet. Amnesty: Qatari blogger detained - Middle East. Amnesty International says a blogger and human rights activist has been detained incommunicado in Qatar and is at risk of torture or other ill-treatment. The UK-based human rights group said Sultan al-Khalaifi was arrested on March 2 by around eight individuals in plain clothes, believed to be members of the security forces.
According to information received by Amnesty International, al-Khalaifi had told his wife earlier that day that state security had contacted him, asking him to report to them, but that he did not know why. The reasons for his detentions and his whereabouts are unknown, Amnesty said in a statement on Friday, adding that it is believed he is being held in the custody of state security.
Amnesty said al-Khalaifi is the founder of a rights group which campaigns primarily on cases of detention in Qatar, but is legally registered in Switzerland. In the latest entry available on his blog, al- Khalaifi makes critical comments about book censorship in Qatar. Defining a Culture in Doha’s Desert by Hugh Eakin.
I recently had the chance to see an extraordinary new exhibition space devoted to the arts of Islam. The collection included works in stone, metal, glass, ivory, and textile, as well as illuminated manuscripts, and spanned from Moorish Spain and Umayyad Syria to the Central Asian steppe and Safavid Iran; the pieces were mostly of a quality that might be worthy of any great world institution. Readers may at this point guess I am talking about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s just-reopened Islamic galleries.
Actually, I was visiting a museum in the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. In fact, the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened in 2008, is only the first of a series of colossal projects now being launched by Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, through the recently established Qatar Museums Authority. By now, the appeal of high-end museums and universities to newly flush Gulf countries is well-known. Clearly the museums are central to these efforts. But why Qatar?