An Aramco consultant says in 2006 Aramco will have trouble going past 12.5 bpd, but the US embassy notes Manifa field will make that possible sometime in the future. And former Aramco head Abdullah Juma pooh-poohs the Matt Simmons book from 2005 […]
So this US cable from the Riyadh embassy in April 2007 – released on 26 June 2011 – outlines Saudi Interior Ministry fears that Iran could ruin Saudi oil production with even a “stupid” missile, in coordination with militant cells among the […]
This Wikileaks cable from May 2006 – one of the latest released concerning Saudi Arabia – is interesting in light of the uprisings: http://wikileaks.org/cable/2006/05/06RIYADH3312.html (released 2 July 2011). It appears to be the conclusion of considerable research by the embassy – and hats off […]
Mark Twain once wrote that rumours of his death had been an exaggeration. It’s become fashionable to herald the imminent death of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but I wonder if we’re not jumping the gun. Media reporting about a situation like the Syrian protest movement […]
This Jerusalem Post article, “Analysis: Syria – Is it on the threshold of a civil war?”, illustrates just the point I was making in a previous post about the false difference between the state violence of Israel and that of its neighbours. […]
DUBAI (Reuters) – Arabs reacted strongly on Monday to the deaths of dozens of Syrians in Hama at the hands of the Syrian army but most Arab governments kept silent, apparently fearing the power of protest movements that have spread throughout the […]
Kuwaiti Islamists organised a meeting in past two days to lobby support for the Syria protest movement. It involved Kuwaiti Islamists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Salafi trend, all Sunni. The background in Kuwait’s context is that Shi’ites are seen as […]
Wikileaks are still publishing US diplomatic cables, often under the radar, as it were, because media have moved on to the Arab uprisings after the initial impact of the Wikileaks material. I’d like to draw some more attention to those concerning Saudi Arabia. This is […]
So, the currently in vogue phrase is “Gulf monarchies”, and although some of their leaders are emir, one is sultan, a few are sheikh, and only two are “king”, I guess it works as a way of grouping the dynasties together. They […]
This is a publicly available file of the hardback reference book I wrote several years back. The paperback was a different, shorter narrative. I’ll be working on an update to it in coming months, since it’s kind of necessary, given recent events… http://www.scribd.com/doc/17865809/Pop-Culture-Arab-World Tweet