Articles

THE oil-rich countries of the Middle East lag behind some of their more impoverished neighbours in science and technology, according to a survey of science in the Arab world published by UNESCO, the United Nation Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

Ahmad Mazhar Sa`du interviews Muhammad Ali al-Mahfuz, the secretary-general of the Bahrain Islamic Front, the organisation at the forefront of the uprising against the Bahraini regime.

IT would be a great pity if the American public does not know what US policy-makers know: That there is growing opposition to US presence in Saudi Arabia. The bomb blast in Dhahran was the boldest and bloodiest expression of that opposition.

More than three weeks after a bombmaker with a British passport apparently blew himself up in an East Jerusalem hotel on April 12, mystery continues to thicken as to his true identity and the real purpose of his mission, largely as a result of the news blackout imposed two days later by the Israeli authorities.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) was given a blunt choice: agree to scrap the condition that US soldiers would be subject to UAE law or there would be no mutual defence agreement with Uncle Sam.

Tunisia’s president Zeinal-Abidin Ben Ali is no ‘democrat’ by any stretch of the imagination, while his vicious crackdown on the country’s Islamic movement is well-documented.

Arab rulers, long denied their favourite passtime - rhetoric - as a result of the US-sponsored ‘peace process’ in the Middle East, have discovered a new sport: belching. At least 20 kings, shaikhs, presidents, generals and colonels met in Cairo for two days from June 21 in what was to be a summit of loud belching.

The story of how the beduin’s camel under the pretext of getting his head inside the tent to escape from the cold night in the desert took over the whole tent is well-known.

What is there in the jungle? Plenty. There are thousands and thousands of trees - big trees, small trees, dead trees, cut-up trees. And climbing these trees are the vines and lianas. Underneath, on the ground surface is a layer of leaf-litter, fully decomposed or in various stages of decomposition.

The question is not what to give the world’s richest man for his birthday. Rather, what do you call a white prince presenting the richest man a walking stick?