Oil and troubled waters. Spring is dawning in the Gulf and the UK academy’s links with the region’s repressive, anachronistic autocracies look increasingly questionable, says Christopher Davidson Credit: GettyThey are legion: hundreds of political prisoners, among them these Shia protesters, have been taken in Bahrain in the past year, and the ruling family has kept journalists and other observers out of the state “We have a duty to protect this country through advice, and when a son commits a mistake, you advise him … If the state has taken measures, it is out of interest to protect those sons. Even those who are in jail - they are dear to us. Hence, every mother whose son was arrested, she should excuse me personally.” Most of those arrested are being held in unknown locations, have not yet been charged and in some cases have been on hunger strike. Meanwhile, in the other five Gulf monarchies there have been similar crackdowns since the Arab Spring dawned in January 2011.
Canceled Conference Revives Concerns About Academic Freedom in the Persian Gulf - Global. By Ursula Lindsey Cairo The London School of Economics and Political Science abruptly canceled an academic conference on the Arab Spring it planned to hold over the weekend at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, citing "restrictions imposed on the intellectual content of the event that threatened academic freedom. " The last-minute cancellation took place after Emirati authorities requested that a presentation on the neighboring kingdom of Bahrain—where a protest movement was harshly repressed with the support of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates—be dropped from the program. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a scholar on Arab politics at the London School of Economics who was scheduled to give the presentation, was stopped and briefly detained on Friday at the Dubai airport's passport control.
A security official told him he was on a blacklist and not allowed to enter the country. Mr. Education vs. Mr. Mr. The U.A.E.' Mr. Academic Freedom and UAE Funding - By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. On Friday, February 22, I flew from London to Dubai to participate in a conference jointly organized by the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics (LSE) -- where I work -- and the American University of Sharjah (AUS). The theme of the conference was "The New Middle East: Transition in the Arab World," and my paper was entitled "Bahrain's Uprising: Domestic Implications and Regional and International Perspectives.
" The one-day event was scheduled to take place on Sunday, February 24 at the AUS campus. However, the LSE abruptly pulled out of the conference on Thursday after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government intervened to inform AUS that no discussion of Bahrain would be permitted. By leaving their decision until the very last minute -- the weekend immediately prior to the conference -- the authorities may have hoped that AUS and the LSE would accept it as a "fait accompli" and proceed. ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/GettyImages.
Political participation and economic diversification in the UAE and Kuwait. The United (but not Equal) Arab Emirates. The following post — a backgrounder on the economic structure and inequalities of the UAE — was contributed by Jenifer Fenton. When six emirates proclaimed themselves a unified country in 1971, Ras Al Khaimah was not among them. For Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the ruler of the emirate at the time, there was one remaining stumbling block: an imbalance of power that tilted strongly toward the economically dominant emirates. Today, that imbalance remains. While Abu Dhabi is awash with cranes working around the clock to raise a post modern city from the sand, and the skyline of Dubai is exploding with glass towers, in the northern emirates what one sees is a developing-world landscape.
Here “there is no oil,” Yousef Al Antali, a resident of Fujairah said. In the emirates, where millions of unskilled expatriate laborers earn a meager salary, poor is a relative term. The Arab spring that is sweeping through the region has called attention to this disparity once again. Mike Davis: Fear and Money in Dubai. New Left Review 41, September-October 2006 On the rim of the war zone, a new Mecca of conspicuous consumption and economic crime, under the iron rule of Sheikh al-Maktoum. Skyscrapers half a mile high, artificial archipelagoes, fantasy theme parks—and the indentured Asian labour force that sustains them. ‘As your jet starts its descent, you are glued to your window. The scene below is astonishing: a 24-square-mile archipelago of coral-coloured islands in the shape of an almost-finished puzzle of the world. ‘As the plane slowly banks toward the desert mainland, you gasp at the even more improbable vision ahead.
‘Your jellyfish-shaped hotel, the Hydropolis, is, in fact, exactly 66 feet below the surface of the sea. ‘Although you have an important business meeting at Internet City with clients from Hyderabad and Taipei, you have arrived a day early to treat yourself to one of the famed adventures at the ‘Restless Planet’ themepark. Fantasy levitated Welcome to a strange paradise. Gigantism. Dubai from the Sky 1950-80s. Blackwater Founder Forms Secret Army for Arab State - NYTimes.com.