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UAE: Media hub strategy

I’m reproducing a brief I wrote a few months back for Oxford Analytica about the media hub model in the UAE.  At the time Abu Dhabi hadn’t formally launched its big media hub to compete with Dubai Media City, but

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America’s Kingdom

I finally got around to this book which I had wanted to read ever since the spirited discussion of it on the short-lived Qahwa Sada. It’s a history of ARAMCO and US-Saudi relations between the 1930s and mid-60s that aims

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Don’t mind us: US interests section in Tehran

McClatchy is reporting that, following the presidential elections, the Bush administration will announce it intends to open an interests section in Tehran: The proposal for an “interests section,” which falls short of a full U.S. Embassy , has been conveyed

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You say minging, I say …

Continuing our detour from the Middle East: this website is awesome, especially for foreigners living in the UK, where I was living before coming to Egypt.  Click on any of the little colored people and you’ll get an audio sample

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Smoking in the pool

In Egypt you can get pretty much anything delivered.   I’ve had a 10 LE bottle of vegetable oil delivered to my apartment, and know people who will routinely call out for a single pack of cigarettes or a coke. 

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