industryterm:oil-rich state

En mai 2003, le député koweitien Mussallam al-Barrak (opposant aujourd’hui détenu) promet des œufs pourris à Rafic Hariri qu’il accuse de s’opposer à l’invasion américaine de l’Irak : Lawmakers say Lebanese prime minister not welcome in Kuwait
▻http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-73688955.html

Lebanon’s prime minister is unwelcome in Kuwait and should be pelted with eggs for backing Saddam Hussein’s toppled regime and offering little support for Kuwait, two lawmakers said Sunday. Rafik Hariri is expected to arrive Monday on a fence mending visit to this oil-rich state.

“This is what you are worth Hariri,... a rotten egg from the Kuwaiti people,” Musallam al-Barrak, a Kuwaiti parliamentarian told reporters, carrying an egg in his hand for emphasis.

More than 50,000 Ethiopians leave #Saudi_Arabia in migrant crackdown
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/more-50000-ethiopians-leave-saudi-arabia-over-migrant-worker-crac

Ethiopia has flown home over 50,000 citizens in Saudi Arabia after a crackdown against undocumented immigrants in the oil-rich state, the foreign ministry said Wednesday. “We projected the initial number to be 10,000 but it is increasing,” foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told AFP, adding that the final total once the mass airlift ends is now expected to be around 80,000. read more

#Ethiopia #migrant_workers #Top_News

Money, guns flowing from Kuwait to Syria’s most radical rebel factions
▻http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/11/money-guns-flowing-from-kuwait-to-syria-most-radical-rebel-factions

Syrian rebels have a new source of weapons and cash from inside Kuwait, and their benefactors in the oil-rich state are sending the aid to the most militant and anti-West factions involved in the fight to topple Bashar al-Assad.

The role of Saudi and Qatari governments and individuals in the funding and arming of Islamist fighters in Syria has been well known since the civil war began more than two years ago. But now, guns and money are flowing from private sources and Salafist-controlled NGOs based in Kuwait, and they are going to rebel factions aligned with Al Qaeda.

“We are collecting money to buy all these weapons, so that our brothers will be victorious,” hard-core Sunni Islamist Sheikh Shafi’ Al-Ajami announced on Kuwaiti television last month, listing the black-market prices of weapons, including heat-seeking missiles, anti-aircraft guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Days later, Al-Ajami addressed a small throng outside the Lebanese Embassy in Kuwait and gleefully described slitting the throat of a Shiite Muslim in Syria.

“We slaughtered him with knives,” Al-Ajami said to shouts of “God is Great.”

Qatar returns statues to Greece amid nudity dispute | World news | The Guardian
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/28/qatar-returns-statues-greece-nudity

It was a spat that nobody wanted – neither the Greeks, the Qataris nor, say officials, the two nude statues that sparked the furore.

But in a classic clash of cultures, Greece has found itself at odds with the oil-rich state – a nation it is keen to woo financially – over the presentation of masterworks depicting athletes in an exhibition dedicated to the Olympic games.

“The statues are now back at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens,” said a culture ministry official.

The dispute, though authorities are not calling it that, broke when Greece’s culture minister, Costas Tzavaras, arrived in Doha last month to discover the “anatomically challenging” treasures cloaked in cloth for fear of offending female spectators.
(...) It remains unclear why Qatari authorities had taken such umbrage over the antiquities in question, although officials in Athens described the young athletes – both from Eleusis – as being especially beautiful.

Why the Sheikhs Will Fall - By Christopher M. Davidson
| Foreign Policy
▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/26/why_the_sheikhs_will_fall

On April 22, a Kuwaiti judge announced that opposition figure Musallam al-Barrak would be released on bail, prompting cheers from his supporters packing the court. Barrak’s refusal to hand himself over to the authorities last week to serve a five-year sentence for criticizing the emir symbolized the intensifying resistance to autocracy in the oil-rich state.

In the wake of Barrak’s sentencing, thousands of Kuwaitis took to the streets in solidarity, sporadic clashes broke out with security forces, and dozens of key activists recited his controversial speech. The stage now seems set for a long summer of confrontations between large sections of Kuwait’s emboldened citizenry and an entrenched, traditional monarchy that has abandoned its democratic pretensions and is pressing ahead with police state strategies.

The contrast between now and summer 2012, when the British edition of my book After the Sheikhs went to press, could not be starker. Back then, there was little, if any, mainstream discussion outside the Middle East itself of the prospect of serious political unrest in the Gulf monarchies. Academics and policy wonks, at least in the monarchies’ Western allies, had for the most part set these states apart as somehow exceptional and aloof from the Arab Spring movements sweeping the region.