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Monthly Archives: June 2013
Money Makes a Midget a Giant – The case of Qatar
This past week a change in the regime of Qatar has initiated a number of stories about the Arab “magic kingdom.” This is a tribal state, a family fiefdom in which only one out of five people who live there … Continue reading
Posted in Arab Culture, Middle East Politics
Tagged Al-, al-Thani, Arab culture, Bahrain, Gulf, Hamas, Hurra, Jazeera, Khalifas, Qatar, Radical Islam, Shia, Sunnis, Syria, Thani, Wahabis, Wahhabism
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Sunni versus Shi’a
There can be little doubt that the political conflict that convulses the Arab and Islamic world is that of the Shi’a -Sunni conflict. It has superseded the near century of the Arab-Israeli conflict. While many of the Western academics and … Continue reading
Posted in Arab Culture, Middle East Politics
Tagged Arab, Egypt, Iran, Islam, Middle East, Shia, Sunnis
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Travelling in Iran
My wife and I travelled from Tehran to Shiraz in 1968. We Flew from Beirut to Tehran, got a vehicle from the Embassy and set out on our adventure. Most of our pics have been lost in the dozens of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Moderates win again.This time in Iran
For those who actually read my blog…,meaning mostly my family and extended family I screwed up the this post so bad I deleted it and started over. I did so many revisions to it that I got confused as to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Turkey and Erdogan
The Alevi are a salient aspect to the troubles in Turkey. The Gezi park area is an area inhabited by a large community of Alevis. Some years ago a series of drive- by shootings left a number of Alevis dead … Continue reading
Obstacles to Arab World progress
obstacles-to-arab-progress In this PPT I have analyzed 12 reasons why there is so little s progress in the Arab world. The PPT is in the following order First a map of the Arab world at its greatest extent A view … Continue reading
Erdogan, Obama’s poster boy as a model for Islamist democracy
Turkey’s Erdogan and President Obama share one very important personal attribute. Both have a surfeit of megalomania. Erdogan pictured himself as the Sultan of the new Ottoman empire, sheltering the hapless Arabs under his protective wing. He thought that by … Continue reading
Posted in Turkey, US Foreign Policy in Middle East
Tagged Alawis, Alevis, Arab Spring, Bashar Assad, Erdogan, Iraq, Middle East, Shia, Sunnis, Syria, Turkey, US foreign policy
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