Gulf
A-rab Money? Fo Real Busta Rhymes????
“Middle East women and Middle East bread I got Oil Well money in the desert playin Golf My first thought when I heard the offensive chorus sandwiched in between gibberish “Arabic” (“The way i make the people wanna sing the hook in Arabic : LaLaLa HaleHeloHaLow/HelaBalaHeHeleBalo/We gettin Arab Money/We gettin Arab Money”): WTF Busta? Now [...]
Bling Bling Money Ain’t a Thing (see I’m cool)
This doesn’t have much to do with anything in the news, I just saw it in this month’s issue of National Geographic (sorry Mohammad, no jungle boobies in this one) and thought I’d share… According to the attached article (click to enlarge), the United States has 3,300,000 millionaires — as compared to the entire Middle [...]
Saudi Girls Deserve Sports Heroes, Too
This has been talked about to death in some circles, I know – fortunately this isn’t one of them. As the Beijing Olympics roll on and the Michael Phelpses and Nastia Liukins (or the Cheng Feis and Yang Weis, if you prefer) win medal after medal, it’s almost too easy to forget those left out [...]
Nonoo? or Yes Yessss?
Houda Nonoo, who has been appointed as the new Bahraini ambassador to the US. Nonoo is remarkable not only for being the first woman ambassador from the kingdom to the US, but because she hails from the country’s small Jewish community. Most of the Jewish Bahrainis trace their ancestry to either Iraq or India, but [...]
A Qatar Above
While the longevity/viability of the Lebanese peace deal has yet to be determined the emergence of Qatar as an emerging global player seems to be more certain. The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece on what the tiny country is doing. When you add it up, the list of their activities is quite impressive [...]
Get Your Vote On…
Kuwait held elections on May 17th and the results are in. In Saturday’s vote, tribal MPs took 23 seats in the assembly, hard-line Islamists won 11 seats, liberals took 11 seats, and Shiite candidates won five seats. The elections were held to help resolve a deadlock in the parliament that has held up proposed economic [...]
Rock the Cliche
I do enjoy the occasional puff piece human interest story about the Middle East, but it is all the more aggravating when they a done so terribly. In an incredibly cliche article the Times Online profiles the rock obsessed son of the King of Bahrain, Abdullah bin Hamad al Khalifa. He seems like an interesting [...]
The Spitfire-side Chats: The Low Down on the High Value of “Low” and “Good” Numbers in the UAE and other Persian Gulf States
“Yo son, what you sporting these days?”“Well, you know how I do; I got me some gators, 22s, and a single-digit license plate number-ya herrrrd!” That’s right, big pimpin’ in the Arab world has taken a life of it’s own. Because of the general level of wealth enjoyed by Khaleeji national community (and corrupt monarchy-sustained [...]
Two steps forward, three steps back
As I wrote about recently, there have been some positive, albeit tentative, movement in regards to the rights of migrant workers in Gulf State. I was even more encouraged when i found an article about a public awareness campaign in Saudi asking them to “be nice to your maid“. However, as I read further in [...]
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