Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor and eminent scholar of the Persian Gulf, has written a short essay on Hillary Clinton’s recent threat to “obliterate Iran” should it attack Israel for the excellent Gulf 2000 listserv he maintains. Notwithstanding the chiefly domestic US political reasons that led Clinton to engage in rather vulgar sable-rattling, Sick [...]

The prince, the waitress … and ‘a fairytale come true’:
It is an unlikely setting for romance. And when Sheikh Sayyid bin Maktoum al-Maktoum arrived in Belarus last month for a clay pigeon shooting competition, his only thought was how to win a medal.
But soon after checking into the presidential suite of the Hotel Minsk the [...]

A parable on freedom and social constraints - part 1 in Arabic, part 2 in Arabic, and both parts in English. Found through Bint Battuta in Bahrain.

Most of the Gulf countries have made it onto the Tier 3 list (those countries with the worst record in human trafficking, according to the report) of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2007: Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. UAE is on the Tier 2 watch list.
So is Egypt. From the report:
Egypt [...]

A very cautiously written, but important column by Rami Khouri: When Arab security chiefs conduct foreign policy
Two intriguing meetings took place this past week in the Arab world. In Egypt, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with the intelligence services directors of four Arab states - Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab [...]

Mahmoud is the “grandfather” of Bahraini bloggers and is now being sued by a minister for a critical comment he wrote on Mahmoud’s Den. Read all about it here:
I was a guest of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Adliya this morning. I was called yesterday and asked - very politely - to present myself [...]

The president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, was arrested this morning. For more details see their website, which currently blocked in Bahrain.

I have an op-ed about US strategy in the Middle East and the growing Sunni-Shia divide over at TomPaine.com. Let me know what you think.
Later today I will post a hyperlinked version here.
Update: The New Saddam
Making a renewed appearance in the State of the Union address this year was Iran. Bush set out an agenda [...]

A Canadian web designer gets rather racist when asking for a job:
From: Amir Saffar
To: Mike Platts
Sent: Friday, December 15, 2006 9:11 PM
Subject: RE: hi again
it’s very simple Mike. You are interested in my profile and i wanted to know how much you were able to pay. no response means: you either can’t pay that much, [...]

A Qatari server has been running spam attacks on the Wikipedia page for Qatar, so Wikipedia has blocked its IP address. And that means that most Qataris are now unable to edit the page for their own country:
Whilst the ban is due to spam-abuse coming from the IP address in question, the fact that [...]

Sheikh Muhammad’s vision: can it possibly get more ridiculous and megalomaniacal?

The Economist thinks that if things don’t go smoothly, a Shia uprising could take place.

This will only be of interest to photography geeks: legendary lens maker Carl Zeiss has just unveiled a made-to-order only 1700mm F4 lens. The first of its kind has Arabic writing on the side and the emblem of the state of Qatar. It weighs 256kg and is gives you three times more telephoto than the [...]

All the excitement about political reform in in the Gulf — especially the small Gulf states — is pure propaganda, in my opinion. Now the UAE wants to stage elections, although of course they won’t change who’s actually ruling the place. Same thing for the recent “democratic flowering” in Kuwait. I just don’t see how [...]

This happened a few days ago, but I missed it then. After the recent elections in Kuwait, won by the Islamist opposition, parliament was on track to carry out the electoral reforms that irked the regime and caused it to disband parliament in the first place.

Brian Ulrich points out that Bahrain is drafting a new law to ban public rallies. It seems that even the darlings of Arab democratization are starting to backtrack. For background information, check out Toby Jones’ Bahrain: A Year of Decision in the March 2006 issue of the Arab Reform Bulletin.

The lawyer of the Yemen Observer was threatened by extremists while he defended his client for publishing the Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad:
Two young bearded men threatened the defense lawyer of Yemen Observer in the court room that they would have killed him if they have power.
Khalid Al-Anesi, who defends Mohammed Al-Asaadi, editor-in-chief of the [...]

Hugh Miles, who wrote a book on Al Jazeera, has a “Think Again” piece in Foreign Policy debunking various myths about the channel. Nothing much new in it, but it’s a good overview of the facts many get wrong.
One interesting issue is about Al Jazeera International, the English-language channel that should launch later this year. [...]

Ali Abdullah Saleh, who’s been ruling Yemen since 1978, is to run for a new presidency term, despite his earlier promise not to.
I read somewhere last year about anti-Saleh statements circulating Sana’a, signed by a Yemeni Kefaya. Does anyone have info on that?

It’s become rather fashionable to write about Dubai. This piece from Mother Jones at least does not indulge in contemplative wonder of “Sheikh Mo’s Vision”:
Under the enlightened despotism of its Crown Prince and CEO, 56-year-old Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Rhode-Island-sized Emirate of Dubai has become the new global icon of imagineered urbanism. Although [...]