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The wealthy autocrats of the Gulf have traditionally relied on money to minimise dissent and keep themselves in power. In the initial alarm over the Arab Spring uprisings, the king of Saudi Arabia dipped into his pockets and produced a £133 billion social spending package to include bonuses… Read more
Global soccer and global sports governance have for the past nine years and certainly since a fateful meeting in late 2010 of the executive committee of FIFA, the world soccer body, witnessed crisis after crisis. Invariably the scandals involved corruption: financial corruption, political… Read more
Britain's three worst newspapers – the Daily Express, the Sun and the Daily Mail – along with the dreadful Jihadwatch website and the Russian Sputnik propaganda site have suddenly become excited about the plight of atheists in Saudi Arabia.
During the last few days they have all reported that the… Read more
Mohamed Tamalt, a journalist with British and Algerian citizenship is reported to be critically ill after going on hunger strike in an Algerian jail.
Tamalt, 42, who has dual nationality and had been living in Britain before his imprisonment, is serving a two-year sentence for insulting… Read more
THE GULF STATE of Qatar is small but exceptionally rich and uses its money relentlessly to acquire friends and influence. The recipients of its largesse have been many and various, from Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation in the United States to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.… Read more
Early on Sunday morning – the start of the working week in Dubai – Sheikh Mohammed, the Gulf emirate's ruler, made an unexpected tour of government offices and found some of them deserted. On Monday, the sheikh issued a decree announcing the immediate "retirement" of nine senior… Read more
With the military conflict in Yemen at an impasse, a battle has now broken out between the two rival governments for control of the country's Central Bank. The squabble threatens to exacerbate an already dire economic situation because the bank is the source of wages for state employees and also… Read more
The British government faces growing calls to review its lucrative arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Yesterday the international charity Oxfam accused Britain of being “one of the most significant violators” of the Arms Trade Treaty.
The UK’s arms sales are, at least in theory, also… Read more
In a TV interview today, Yemen's ex-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, appeared to invite Russian military intervention in the country's conflict. He talked of reactivating old Yemeni agreements with the Soviet Union and offfered "all the facilities" of Yemen's bases, ports and airports to Russia.… Read more
Details have begun to emerge about the Emirati funding of GNRD, the strange – and now bankrupt – human rights organisation accused of money-laundering.
In May last year Norwegian police raided GNRD's international headquarters in Stavanger, along with the home of its founder/president, Loai… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
