Boring Press Conference?
January 8, 2010 by Roberto Santiago
Filed under Middle East
Boring Press Conference?
No, Gold Mine for Understanding
by Barry Rubin of the Rubin Reports
What could be more boring, you might ask, then a press conference following the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani? Well, a little document like this is a gold mine of interesting stuff that either won’t be covered or won’t be understood in the mass media.
Qatar, though tiny, is a very interesting country. On one hand, it hosts al-Udayd air base which is vital for the U.S. presence in the Gulf. On the other hand, it hosts and owns al-Jazira television which incites anti-Americanism. To make matters worse, Qatar has been the Gulf Arab state closest to Iran, which hosted the anti-American and radical summit led by the Iran-Syria bloc.
So Qatar is hedging its bets rather well. In public, Hillary isn’t going to complain about this stuff. Did she do so in the private meeting? Perhaps, though the jollity of al-Thani, a member of the ruling family, seems to belie any tough words from the secretary of state. But this is going too far:
“Qatar is a friend and an ally of the United States, and the partnership between our two countries is a model of the new beginning based on mutual respect and mutual interest that President Obama called for in Cairo.” Click here to read the entire article…
Israeli-Arab War Will Ignite Over Water
November 19, 2009 by Michael Travis
Filed under Politics
War, war rumors of war!
ISRAELI-ARAB WAR WILL IGNITE OVER WATER
CHRISTIANS ALERT
MORE TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND
by Paul L. Williams
War is looming in the Middle East.
But the cause, according to Arab experts, will be neither the creation of a Palestinian state nor the emergence of a nuclear Iran.
It will arise from the shortage of water.
The region’s worsening water situation, exasperated by global warming and burgeoning populations, already has created civil unrest which, experts fear, will ignite into armed conflicts – – including a clash between Israel with neighboring Lebanon and Egypt.
Jordanian political science professor Ghazi al-Rababah says that Israel will be the first to go to war over the Litani River just north of its border with Lebanon.
