Here, There and Out of My Mind
I’ll start with the ending, it’s all come to a crashing halt. I feel like a child who has been taken to a day in the park, all the rides, all the sugary foods and now they say I have to come home?
Yes. I will tell you about the trip, with lots of photos, so you won’t think I am just being a bore, you can look at the photos and imagine yourself there with us. At the end of the trip, it all goes downhill, the lovely African adventure has ended.
Leaving our last camp, we fly in a very small airplane back from the lower Zambezi to Lusaka. We drive to the airstrip, the pilot checks our names against his list, we climb aboard and take off. That’s the airstrip. The last time we were there, we don’t think it was paved.
It is the best flight we have all day – two charming pilots, five passengers, it is a great flight. Lusaka isn’t so bad; we have a competent ticket agent who manages to book our bags all the way to Pensacola, so we don’t have to scurry around picking up bags, then coming back in to check them in, because we booked our travel to Johannesburg separately from out travel from JoBurg to Lusaka, it’s complicated but it all has to do with alliances. Not my alliances, airline alliances.
BTW, Lusaka International airport is sweet. Quiet. One tiny little restaurant in the departure area where we found good grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Some shops, not greatly stocked.
Lusaka airport – you walk to the plane, walk up the stairs, the old fashioned way:
Johannesburg transit is horrible. It always is. We have flown in from Frankfurt several times, from Dubai several times, and from Windhoek and Gaborone and Lusaka – transiting Johannesburg is, for some reason, irrationally annoying. No matter how crowded the transit area is, or how isolated, the computers are always slow, or . . . the operators. No matter what airline we deal with, that transit area, the one downstairs where you have to check in for your next flight, it is horrible. It takes so much longer than it needs to.
Upstairs, we hit the shops, junky Out of Africa with it’s schlock, some of the others. I made a big mistake; I was buying little fun things for our son and his wife, little coffee things and such at Taste of Africa, and I bought them some biltong; what we call jerky. They had ostrich and eland and several exotic kinds, so I bought several.
Loading up for the 17 hour (yes, you read that right, it is Delta’s longest non-stop flight) flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta was an unusual experience. Think Amsterdam on steroids. We are all sitting, and are rousted out of the waiting room and told to line up in two lines, with men in one line and women in the other. They look at our bags and ask us questions. This is the third time today my bags have been checked; I don’t mind, but it is a little unusual. Then we line up again once we are back in the waiting room; it is nearly time to board.
There is one of those wild-eyed women going down the line asking loudly “Is this the line for PRIORITY boarding? Are you all PRIORITY passengers?” and clearly she thinks she has a pretty high priority. But when the airline boards the Diamonds and the Platinums, she is still waiting back with the golds and silvers, so I guess she didn’t have as much priority as she thought she had.
It’s one of those big, huge flights with every seat taken. It’s sort of like being in a high school cafeteria, tempers flare as overhead baggage bins fill up, parents with children beg people to change places so they can fly together, while the privileged politely decline; they paid extra for those aisle seats. It’s all pretty horrible, but we have books and somehow we even catch a couple hours sleep. The flight attendants are like harried waitresses, hauling those drink carts and meal carts up and down the aisles, trying to get people to stay in their seats (who can stay in their seat for SEVENTEEN hours??) I discovered that if you are reading books, iPad batteries keep their charge longer than if you are playing Sudoku. I’m reading a great book, Wolf Hall, and it holds my interest.
Arriving in Atlanta, it’s all my fault, AdventureMan and I are shuttled into the agricultural inspection area, where it is pretty much us and all the Africans bringing back turnips and sugar cane and rice and meats and special foods. I didn’t know that the dried meat was a problem, but evidently ostrich meat is some of the very most threatening, and other countries have serious diseases that we have so far managed to escape. They are actually very kind to me, although they do confiscate all my jerkies. The inspector tells us they get all kinds of stuff (there was a huge barrel of confiscated agricultural products) including rats, and monkey brains.
Sadly, many of the people in there with us don’t really understand, and I know many of them went to a lot of trouble to bring a home specialty for some family member, only to have it confiscated. Many didn’t understand enough English and the inspectors didn’t know their languages.
We got off easy enough; all they cared about was confiscating the illegal meat.
Found a place with decent coffee and croissants, found a place to wash our faces and brush our teeth, so we boarded the Pensacola flight fresher than we got off the flight from JoBurg.
Our son met us at the airport and got us all home; we grabbed a quick lunch at the nearby Marina Oyster Barn (our comfort-food restaurant of choice) and then showered and tumbled into bed. We woke up again as our son and his wife and the darling little happy toddler came by for dinner. After dinner, we said good night and good bye to our guests, knowing we were all going to bed but that we would be awake in the middle of the night and they would probably leave to go to their home. As it turned out, we were all awake around 3:30 in the oh-dark-hundred, so we were able to hear them off.
We’ve been up since, trying to take care of business and to stay awake. I started with trying to get through (get rid of) over a thousand e-mail – two weeks is a LONG time. AdventureMan fell asleep in my office around 7:30 so I woke him up and made him go to aqua-aerobics with me, we hit the grocery store, and poor AdventureMan, his computer has bit the dust so he had to buy a new computer today. He picked up the mail in the afternoon, I paid the outstanding bills. Anything, anything to stay awake, to try to get us back on schedule, Pensacola time.
We caught the last episode of Game of Thrones, Season two, which helped us make it an extra hour last night, and AdventureMan has some things we missed lined up for tonight – HBO’s Girls, VEEP, and the first episode from the new season of True Blood, also he thinks Southland is starting up again, and we really like that.
I think I’m going out of my mind. Jet lag makes me a little crazy. Normally, I am all unpacked by now, but I couldn’t even stand to look at my suitcase today. I bought salmon for tonight’s dinner, but I don’t think I can cook it. I haven’t felt energetic since . . . 3:30 this morning, LOL. When I get tired, I can get weepy, or irrational, or a little unbalanced. What I yearn for is to take a nap, a nice, long, snoozy nap . . .
Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . . ………..
“Never for Acclaim, Always for Country”
This weekend the CIA also honors fallen warriors, and in a new level of transparency, shares some of those names. It’s devastating to lose a loved one in the military, and I cannot imagine what it was like to lose a loved one and not to even be able to tell people your loved one was lost in service to his or her country. Heartfelt thanks to all those who have served silently and anonymously and sacrificed identity and history for our nation. You know who you are. 🙂
From ABC News:
Out of the shadows in death: The CIA honors its fallen
By Suzanne Kelly CNN – When you’re a spy, you have to accept the fact that everything you do will go unnoticed by most people during your life. Sometimes that secrecy even follows you in death, with a simple star carved into a marble wall at Langley being the only memorial to your service.
Sometimes though, in death, the names come out, along with just enough information to piece together a glimpse of what life — and death — have been like for CIA spies over the past three decades.
This past Monday, 15 names were added to what’s known by insiders as the “Book of Honor.” When a name is inscribed in the book, it allows family and friends of the fallen to publicly acknowledge in general terms, how their loved ones spent their lives, and how they died.
The names and brief stories shared with a crowd said to number in the hundreds gathered in the CIA lobby, told a story of an Agency spread far and wide; the story of an Agency not only consumed with tracking down terrorists, but sometimes becoming victims of the hunted.
Jeffrey R. Patneau, described by CIA Director David Petraeus as a “young can-do officer,” was killed in Yemen in September 2008. Yemen has become a hotbed of al Qaeda activity and is where a recent al Qaeda in the Arabian Pensinsula (AQAP) plot to bring down an airliner with a difficult-to-detect new explosive material, was recently foiled by undercover operatives.
Five of those honored this year died on April 18, 1983, when terrorists targeted the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. Phyliss Nancy Faraci had also been one of the last four Americans evacuated from the Mekong Delta when Saigon fell, according to an Agency spokesman. She died in Beirut along with Deborah M. Hixson, Frank J. Johnston, and a married couple, James F. and Monique N. Lewis. Petraeus noted the Embassy bombing as the place where the Agency “first caught sight of the adversary we face today.”
To get a sense of just how widespread the CIA presence has been over the years, Matthew K. Gannon was killed in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; Molly N. Hardy was killed in the 1998 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; Leslianne Shedd died when hijackers downed the plane she was on over the Indian Ocean in November 1996; Jacqueline K. Van Landingham was killed in Pakistan in March 1995; Barry S. Castiglione died during the ocean rescue of a colleague in 1992 in the waters off El Salvador; Lawrence N. Freedman was killed in Somalia in December 1992; Thomas M. Jennings, Jr. died in Bosnia in 1997; Freddie R. Woodruff was killed in Georgia in 1993; and Robert W. Woods died in a plane crash during a humanitarian mission to Ethiopia in 1989.
Petraeus told the group of gathered mourners and friends that the officers who have died for the mission “all heard the same call to duty and answered it without hesitation — never for acclaim, always for country.”
One more star has been carved into that wall so far this year, bringing the number of stars representing fallen officers to 103. We don’t know who the latest person was, or how they died, but maybe someday, we will.
Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Prescribed or Proscribed?
We will be taking a trip soon, and, thanks be to God, our travel companions alerted us in time that there is a new requirement for Yellow Fever Shots, malarial precautions are now strongly recommended, AND medications we buy over the counter are prescription medications in Zambia, and you can be arrested for carrying them into country; they would be contraband.
Horrors! I’ve always taken Benedryl for my allergies, and because I am also a mosquito magnet, I use Benedryl gel to survive the mosquitos, and the tse-tse flies. Our doctor is a gem; he wrote prescriptions and today we got them filled so we can take our OTC medications into Zambia with us. The pharmacists didn’t bat an eye. They see it all the time.
“You heading out on a mission?” another customer asked.
“Not a religious mission,” I laughed. AdventureMan has a mission to get some spectacular photographs. Pensacola has several churches that sponsor major missions throughout the world, and missionaries are found in Pensacola pharmacies stocking up on a couple years worth of prescription medications – as well as the medications proscribed by host countries. I also suspect that having all these people that travel and live throughout the world contributes to the variety of cuisines available and sought after in Pensacola restaurants. I just wish we’d get some Ethiopians!
Grand Canyon: Early East Rim, Breakfast at El Tovar and Shuttle along the West Rim
When your day starts at five in the morning, you have a lot of hours in your day!
We were back at the lodge by seven, where there is already a crowd lining up for breakfast. We had such a great dinner the night before, we decide to have breakfast and then take the shuttles along the western rim of the canyon.
The El Tovar Dining room is as beautiful by day as it is by night:
We are on the south west side of the dining room, near a large fireplace and far away from the view, but it hardly matters – the view is there, 24/7, for anyone who wants to visit. We see fabulous plates arriving at all the tables, and we watch a new wait-person being trained in the El Tovar way of doing things. It was great entertainment. Our breakfasts were divine.
AdventureMan’s breakfast:
I had Eggs Benedict, with smoked salmon instead of the traditional Canadian bacon:
We run upstairs to brush our teeth, and then head out to explore the western rim before the train arrives, at 1100, bringing in many more people, even in these early spring months.
The shuttle system is a marvel. Different colored lines have different routes, and there are maps that show what color the bus is that goes where you want to go. We walked to the red bus stops, hopped on, hopped off, hopped on, hopped off, hiked a little, hopped back on, hopped off, hiked a little more, met some great people and had a lot of fun taking photos.
The sun has burned off the clouds, it is still a little hazy but a great, sunny day.
We hit Hermit’s Rest, at the end of the shuttle line, around 11:30, and head back to Grand Canyon village.
Snockered
“Think you can move on?” AdventureMan asks me, and no, no, I am not ready to move on. I am still mad. So I am going to tell you about it so it will not happen to YOU, and then I will move on.
Outside of Carlsbad, I used my handy-dandy iPhone to find out if there were any Marriott Hotels in Carlsbad, and there was a Fairfield Inn and Suites, one of the Marriott Brands. We like Marriotts. We like their culture of CLEAN and SERVICE.
So I googled “Fairfield Inn and Suites in Carlsbad, NM” and wow, there was a phone number! I called the number, but when the lady answered, it was all sort of scratchy, maybe we had bad reception . . . or something. Anyway, I told her I was a Marriott Rewards customer and we wanted a room at the Fairfield Inn and we would be there in about an hour. She said “Oh so sorry, there are no more rooms at the Fairfield Inn. We can find you a room somewhere else, in fact, it is the last room in town, everything else has been snapped up.”
This has happened to us before, when we were heading into Louisiana, and every Marriott we walked into was fully sold out because of “the convention” or some such, and once before when the area had been hit by a tornado and the hotels were full with people living there.
So we said “Oh! What is the room?” and she told us about a nice room at a hotel we had never heard of and it was the last room left, did we want it? So we said ‘yes’ and gave her our credit card number to reserve it. When we got to the hotel, the desk clerk gave us a receipt for forty dollars less than the person I had called had said it would cost, so I asked about it, and was told I had gone through a booking agent who charged $40. I was livid. I checked again on the iPhone, and sure enough, the small print was some website – NOT the Marriott, even though the header was Fairfield Inn – Carlsbad, NM. Oh arrgh.
Here is what makes me so mad. I think they deliberately deceived me. I kept telling them how we loved Marriotts, thinking I was talking with Marriott people, and assuming they were helping me out because they were full, finding me this other booking. OK, OK, my bad, yes, probably the reason I am partly angry is that I am angry at myself for being so easily taken, but I was. Totally taken.
The room was nice enough, but I am willing to bet there would have been a room at the Fairfield Inn. I think this booking lady lied to me about the Fairfield Inn being full, and I know she lied about this being the last room in town – we could have gotten a room just about anywhere, and a lot cheaper.
Yes. I am embarrassed. That’s why I am writing this, so it won’t happen to you. Check whether the web site is the chain you are calling or a booking agency.
I don’t have any problems with a booking agency when I know it is a booking agency – like in Fredericksburg, the agency that handled all the B&B’s. That’s all aboveboard. It’s when you think you are calling a certain hotel or chain and they let you keep thinking that, oh, it makes me so mad.
OK, now I am moving on.
Driving in Qatar
Almost every day, the two articles garnering the greatest number of hits have to do with new traffic rules in Kuwait and in Qatar. I think I wrote the posts in 2009. Here is what the US Department of State has to say to US Nationals about driving in Qatar:
TRAFFIC SAFETY AND ROAD CONDITIONS: While in Qatar, you may encounter road conditions that differ significantly from those in the United States. The information below concerning Qatar is provided for general reference only and is subject to change at any time. Current traffic regulations may be obtained through the Ministry of Interior’s Traffic Police.
Short-term visitors should obtain a valid International Driving Permit prior to arrival and should not drive in Qatar on a U.S. driver’s license. New and prospective residents should obtain a permanent Qatari Driving License immediately after arrival. To obtain a Qatari driver’s license, U.S. citizens need to pass a driving exam, including a road test. Short-term visitors and business travelers can also obtain a Temporary Qatari Driving License by presenting their U.S. driver’s license at any branch of Qatar’s Traffic Police.
Traffic accidents are among Qatar’s leading causes of death. Safety regulations in Qatar are improving, thanks to a more stringent traffic law adopted in October 2007 and a country-wide traffic safety campaign. However, informal rules of the road and the combination of local and third-country-national driving customs often prove frustrating for first-time drivers in Qatar. The combination of Qatar’s extensive use of roundabouts, many road construction projects and the high speeds at which drivers may travel can prove challenging. The rate of automobile accidents due to driver error and excessive speed is declining but remains higher than in the United States. In rural areas, poor lighting, wandering camels and un-shouldered roads present other hazards.
Despite the aggressive driving on Qatar’s roads, drivers should avoid altercations or arguments over traffic incidents, particularly with Qatari citizens who, if insulted, have filed complaints with local police that resulted in the arrest and overnight detention of U.S. citizens. Drivers can be held liable for injuries to other persons involved in a vehicular accident, and local police have detained U.S. citizens overnight until the extent of the person’s injuries were known. Due to its conservative Islamic norms, Qatar maintains a zero-tolerance policy against drinking and driving. Qatar’s Traffic Police have arrested Americans for driving after consuming amounts of alcohol at even smaller levels normally accepted in the U.S.
Any motor vehicle over five years old cannot be imported into the country. For specific information concerning Qatari driver’s permits, vehicle inspection, road tax and mandatory insurance, please contact either the Embassy of the State of Qatar in Washington, DC or the Consulate General of the State of Qatar in Houston, Texas.
There are things that the Department of State is too diplomatic to tell you, and that people living there will not write for fear of having a travel ban put against them, a case filed against them for ‘insulting’ a national or the government.
The beautiful roads in Qatar were wonderful when they had a tenth of the cars on the road they have now. There are two categories of “most dangerous.” One category is the expat $200 car held together with gum and rubber bands that breaks down in the worst possible place, or has a blow-out, or hits someone because the driver not only doesn’t have a license, he also doesn’t know how to drive.
Although there are rules about what trucks are allowed to haul and how it is to be tied down, the laws are ignored and unenforced. It is still important never to travel behind or beside a truck carrying cement blocks. They look like they are not secured. They are not secured. Watch out, too, for any truck delivering bottled water (that makes a huge mess all over the roundabout) or sheep or cows, which regularly overturn.
The worst hazard of all is Qatari male drivers between 11 and 35 years old. They own the roads. They will drive on the sidewalks, down the wrong way of a six lane highway to get to the roundabout, through red lights. They will push you into an unsafe roundabout with the Hummer daddy bought for their 12th birthday. If you insult a Qatari young male driver in any way, they may block you, stop you and threaten you, and no one, least of all the police, will come to your aid. They know no speed limits, blow through stop lights, harass female expat drivers, and they pay no fines for traffic violations. For a short time, the law was applied somewhat equally to all, but there were so many outraged Qataris paying the humungous fines that no one enforced the law against the Qataris anymore, and you rarely see the police stopping anyone except the poorest of the poor.
If you want to drive in Qatar, you will want a sturdy car to get over the unpaved areas and the roads torn up for infrastructure improvements, as well as for protection against the aggressive Qatari male drivers and the accidents that may not be your fault but cannot be avoided. You will want to drive only during the lowest traffic times of the day, if possible. Even during the summer, when much of the population goes elsewhere, anywhere, to avoid the heat, night traffic on the major ring roads, the major arterial roads and on the Corniche is gridlock.
The Department of State will also not tell you that if you are ever in trouble on the road, you are certain to have many kind older Qatari men stop and render assistance. They will insist on giving you water, and fixing whatever they can fix, or at the very least waiting with you until help comes. If they think you are lost as you journey around Qatar, they will make sure you get where you are going. There is a long tradition of taking good care of the guest, and of civility among the Qataris, but mostly it seems to kick in when they mature – like around 35 or so.
This may not be the truth for everyone; we all have our own stories, horror stories and stories of kindness. It’s a little bit of the wild west, driving in Qatar.
Qatar’s Balancing Act (from National Post)
Fascinating article on Qatar – thank you, John Mueller, who sends me these great news articles.
From the National Post
Qatar’s balancing act
Fadi Al-Assaad, Reuters Files
Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, has steadily built a reputation for mediation and seeks to be regarded as an “honest broker” in the Middle East.
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Peter Goodspeed, National Post · Feb. 25, 2012 | Last Updated: Feb. 25, 2012 5:16 AM ET
The tiny country of Qatar used the slogan “Expect the Amazing” when it successfully bid to host soccer’s 2022 World Cup.
It’s a phrase that could summarize the reign of Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who in just 17 years has turned a small Arabian peninsula of salt and sand flats, once one of the poorest countries in the Persian Gulf, into the world’s richest country and possibly the Middle East’s most influential state.
A former British protectorate, which was noted for its declining pearl fishery when it became independent in 1971, Qatar was once described by the Lonely Planet Travel Guide as “possibly the most boring place on Earth.”
Now, according to the World Bank, its 250,000 citizens and 1.5 million foreign workers have the highest per capita income in the world (US$84,000, twice that of the United States) and an economy that outstripped China by growing 15.8% last year.
Since 2006, Qatar has been the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas and the kingdom is transforming its new wealth into worldwide influence.
Qatar recently led the Arab League’s expulsion of Syria and, on Friday, called for the creation of an Arab military force to open humanitarian corridors to protect civilians in Syria.
Last month, it allowed Afghanistan’s Taliban to open an office in Doha to facilitate peace talks with the U.S.
And in the spring, it was the first Arab country to recognize the rebel government in Libya.
The emirate sent six Mirage fighters to Crete to help NATO enforce a no fly zone over Libya.
It also supplied rebels with the fuel, weapons, cash and the training they needed to overthrow dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Qatari special forces provided basic infantry training in the Nafusa Mountains, west of Tripoli and some helped lead the final assault on Col. Gaddafi’s compound in the capital.
They were so proud of their achievement, they hung a Qatari flag from the wreckage of his palace.
“The Qataris have really adopted a kind of adventurous foreign policy in the last couple of years and shown a willingness to send special forces to these kind of areas of conflict,” said Andrew McGregor, senior editor of the Global Terrorism Monitor for the Jamestown Foundation.
“They’ve used their considerable wealth to supply arms and whatever else is needed.
“I would be keeping a close eye on what they are doing [in Syria]. They are rapidly emerging as a real power in the Arab League, despite their size. They are very influential and very wealthy, and they have shown a willingness to be engaged.”
The Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, sometimes referred to disparagingly as the “Arab World’s Henry Kissinger,” has steadily built a reputation for mediation and seeks to be regarded as an “honest broker” in the Middle East.
“Since the mid-1990s, Qatar has pursued an activist foreign policy, using its affluence, unthreatening military position and skills as a mediator to interject itself in conflicts around the Middle East and beyond,” said David Roberts, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute’s Doha Centre.
In recent years, Sheikh Hamad has carefully inserted himself in conflicts in Libya, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.
In 2008, an agreement negotiated in Doha averted another civil war in Lebanon by establishing a power sharing agreement between the country’s different factions. Around the same time, Qatar helped negotiate a short-lived ceasefire in Yemen, mediated a border dispute between Djibouti and Eritrea, and hosted peace talks between Sudan and rebel groups in Darfur.
A regional actor with international reach, Sheikh Hamad has pursued a foreign policy that is ripe with conflicts and contradictions.
Qatar maintains good relations with Iran, while still offering the U.S. its biggest and most important air base in the Middle East at al-Udeid, a few kilometres outside Doha.
Unlike most Arab states, Qatar has generally had good relations with Israel and allowed the Israelis to maintain a commercial office in Doha until the 2009 Gaza invasion.
At the same time, it has warm relations with Israel’s enemies Hamas and Hezbollah, and provides safe haven to hardline Islamists from all over the Arab world.
Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria fled to Qatar in the 1960s and 1970s, even though the kingdom’s rulers frown on organized political Islam and ban all political parties.
Qatar “has a reputation for ‘omni-balancing’ between seemingly incompatible policies,” said Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Gulf expert at the London School of Economics.
“Qatar’s rise, seemingly from nowhere, is rooted in deeper political, economic and security shifts and, in turn, is reconfiguring the balance of regional power.”
Those changes highlight Sheikh Hamad’s own rise to power and his reign in Qatar, where his family has ruled since the 19th century.
Raised by a maternal uncle’s family, after his mother died young, the Emir attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, west of London, graduating in 1971, the year Qatar won its independence and when its first natural gas field was discovered.
He was made a lieutenant colonel in Qatar’s army and, after his father deposed an uncle to become emir in 1972, he rapidly rose to become commander-in-chief of its armed forces.
As crown prince, Sheikh Hamad was gradually given the power to run the country day-to-day, while his father cultivated a taste for extravagance and spent most of his time on the French Riviera.
Sheikh Hamad oversaw development of Qatar’s oil and gas industry and carefully planned an economy that provides Qataris with free education, health care, housing and utilities – and no taxes.
But when his father returned home briefly in 1995 and arbitrarily demoted another son from his position as prime minister, Crown Prince Sheikh Hamad staged a bloodless coup. He informed his father by telephone while he was holidaying in Switzerland.
The old emir returned to the Gulf the following year, publicly disowning his son and trying to drum up support for a countercoup, but Sheik Hamad snuffed out the plot by freezing billions of dollars in his father’s overseas bank accounts.
Then, just 44 and the youngest ruler in the Gulf, he set about to reform and redefine Qatar.
Surrounding himself with young, Western-educated advisors, he drew up a longterm plan to develop a post-oil knowledge-based economy.
He has allocated 40% of Qatar’s budget between now and 2016 to massive infrastructure projects, including an $11billion international airport, a $5.5-billion deep-water seaport and a $1-billion transport corridor in Doha, as well as $20billion in new roads.
He has also invited foreign universities to establish Middle East campuses in a $100-billion Education City in Doha.
Without an elected parliament to advise him, the Emir has final say in the disposition of the country’s $70-billion to $100-billion sovereign wealth fund, which has made it a financial powerhouse internationally by investing heavily in everything from German carmakers Porsche and Volk-swagen to the Agricultural Bank of China, Harrods department store in London, a Brazilian bank, Chinese oil refineries, a Spanish soccer team and a French fashion house.
The Emir’s most influential investment was his creation of the 24-hour Arab-language Al Jazeera television network in 1996.
Granted a level of editorial independence unheard of in the Arab world, Al Jazeera is encouraged to report freely and aggressively on everything but Qatari politics, and is the most watched TV network in the Middle East.
The broadcaster was widely regarded as one of the driving forces behind the spread of the Arab Spring.
“Qatar hopes to insert itself as the key mediator between the Muslim world and the West,” Mr. Roberts said.
“Qatar sees its role as a highly specialized interlocutor between the two worlds, making – from the West’s point of view – unpalatable but necessary friendships and alliances with anti-Western leaders.”
Sheikh Hamad Bin Jasem Al-Thani, Qatar’s Prime Minister and a distant cousin of the Emir, likes to say his country is small and has to be proactive to protect its interest and avoid being run over by more powerful neighbours.
“Our policy is to be friendly with everybody,” the Emir said recently in a television interview. “We are looking for peace. It doesn’t mean if two parties turn against each other, we have to go to one party. No, we would like to stick with the two parties.”
– Formerly a British protectorate, Qatar has been ruled by the Al-Thani family since the mid-1800s. The current Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, overthrew his father in a bloodless coup in 1995.
– Oil and natural gas revenues have enabled Qatar to attain the highest per-capita income in the world (US$84,000 according to a report this year by Global Finance).
– Oil output at current levels should last 57 years, according to the CIA World Factbook.
– It has a zero unemployment rate and zero percentage below the poverty line.
– The mostly flat and desert land is 11,586 square kilometres – only slightly larger than Jasper National Park.
– It has a population of 848,016 – similar to the population of Edmonton.
SOURCE: NATIONAL POST NEWS SERVICES
JONATHON RIVAIT / NATIONAL POST
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
Upcoming Execution in Iran?
Thank you, John Mueller 🙂
Supporters demonstrate in January for the release of Saeed Malekpour in Montreal, Quebec.
(CNN) — A computer programmer from Canada faces imminent execution in Iran for the actions of another person, which he had no control over, a human rights group says.
Saeed Malekpour wrote a program to upload photos to the Internet, an accomplishment that could cost him his life, Amnesty International reported Friday. Authorities in the Islamic Republic claimed his program was used by someone else to upload pornography and charged him with “insulting and desecrating Islam.”
Malekpour, who is a Toronto resident, was arrested in October 2008 while visiting relatives in Iran. He was convicted in a short trial and was sentenced to death in October 2011, according to Amnesty International.
Iran’s Supreme Court confirmed the sentence on January 17. Malekpour’s lawyers have been unable to ascertain the whereabouts of his court files since Tuesday and fear this could be an indicator that an executioner could carry out the sentence soon, Amnesty said. A court official suggested to the lawyers that the file had been sent to the Office for the Implementation of Sentences, according to Amnesty.
Malekpour sent a letter from prison detailing beatings and other mistreatment at the hands of Iranian prison officials to obtain a confession, said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
“A large portion of my confession was extracted under pressure, physical and psychological torture, threats to myself and my family, and false promises of immediate release upon giving a false confession to whatever the interrogators dictated,” the letter says.
Malekpour’s supporters have created Facebook pages and websites in his support dating to at least 2009.
Amnesty International has requested on its website that concerned individuals write Iranian authorities inside and outside the country to demand that Malekpour not be executed.
Malek Jandali Freedom Qashoush Symphony مالك جندلي حرية سيمفونية القاشوش
We have spent many happy hours and days in Syria. We grieve for our Syrian friends, for those living in Homs and Hama, and all those seeking freedom from tyranny.
Saudis Investigate Dancing Nurses
Unfortunately, I can no longer find the video sent me by John Mueller on U-Tube; it has been removed, but you can see it for yourself here:
What the Saudis are investigating – and yes, there were men and women present – is a game of musical chairs, a game even children play at birthday parties.
Hospitals are a high stress environment – and these are sweet young people having a good time. Lord have mercy, and “investigation.”
Saudi health authorities have opened an investigation into three films published on U-Tube showing Asian nurses dancing at a mixed-gender birthday party inside a government hospital.
The three separate films showed several male and female nurses were involved in the concert that included music and dances, which are strictly banned at Saudi hospitals and other public facilities.
The films showed the party was held at King Fahd Hospital in the eastern town of Hofouf and the participants were apparently from the Philippines and Indonesia, according to Saudi newspapers.
One film was titled in Arabic “a scandal at King Fahd Hospital in Hofouf” while the heading of another video read “in the absence of supervision at King Fahd Hospital”. The third read “a dancing party for a nurse’s birthday.”
“We have been instructed to open an investigation into these films to determine whether this party was really held at King Fahd Hospital,” said Ibrahim Al Hajji, information director at the Health Department.
Hajji, who was quoted by Sharq newspaper, did not elaborate on what measures would be taken against those involved in the party.
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