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Posts Tagged ‘Kuwait’

Global Press Freedom at Lowest Level in More Than Decade

May 3, 2011 Comments off

voanews

Photo: Reuters
Journalists and activists participate in a rally calling for press freedom in central Ankara, Turkey, March 19, 2011 (file photo)

Freedom House, a U.S.-based group that monitors human rights around the world says the number of people with access to free and independent media has declined to its lowest level in more than a decade.  In its newly released annual survey, the group says several key countries saw significant declines last year and that only one-in-six people live in countries with a press designated as free.

In this year’s annual index of global media freedom of 196 countries and territories, Freedom House says it rated 68 as “free” and the remaining two thirds as “partly free” or “not free.”

Freedom House Senior Editor Karin Karlekar says this is roughly an even breakdown, but a closer look reveals a different picture. “If you look at the population statistics, they are much bleaker, only Read more…

Categories: Rights, world Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saudi Arabian security forces quell ‘day of rage’ protests

March 12, 2011 Comments off

guardian.co.uk

Saudi Saudi policemen form a check point near the site where a demonstration was expected to take place in Riyadh on Friday. Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP

Saudi security forces came out in strength in Riyadh on a “day of rage” organised by pro-democracy campaigners who managed only small demonstrations in the eastern provinces.

Expectations that the unrest sweeping the Arab world in the last few weeks would spread to its most conservative kingdom appeared to have been dashed by pre-emptive security measures and stern official warnings against any protests.

Far larger demonstrations rocked Yemen, where tens of thousands of pro and anti-government protesters took to the streets as President Ali Abdullah Saleh struggled to maintain his grip.

Clashes broke out in Read more…

Categories: days of rage, Saudi Arabia Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oil will go up ‘ballistically’ if unrest shifts to Saudi Arabia, says Marc Faber

March 10, 2011 Comments off

bi-me.com

INTERNATIONAL. Marc Faber the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor sees oil prices extending their bull run despite the 15% run-up this year alone.

In an optimistic scenario demand for oil will rise as the global recovery takes hold, and in a pessimistic scenario prices still go up if the Middle East unrest spreads and crude production is curtailed. In both cases, he says, you should be long energy and energy related shares.

Speaking to CNBC today, Faber said: ” I think long term you should be exposed to energy in either scenario….if you are extra bearish and believe that War World III is going to start soon, as I believe, or in an optimistic scenario”.

Addressing the fundamentals of the oil market, Faber said: “What we had over the last couple of years is essentially a reduction in demand from the developed world, the US, Western Europe and Japan, and continued growth in emerging economies.

“So, if you take a very optimistic view of the world, namely a global economic recovery, demand in the Western World will pick up and demand in the Emerging World will continue to rise strongly, so from a very optimistic point of view you should be long oil,” he recommended.

On the flip side, “in a very pessimistic scenario you have to assume that unrest will shift to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the gulf and at that stage the production is curtailed and in that case obviously oil will go up ballistically.”

Brent crude futures could hit US$200 a barrel if political unrest spreads into Saudi Arabia, Societe Generale said on Monday.

Under what the bank called Geopolitical Scenario 3, “unrest spreads to Read more…

Categories: Oil, Saudi Arabia Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Middle East Unrest Could Harm WMD-Free Zone Talks

March 9, 2011 Comments off

globalsecuritynewswire

Protesters chant slogans on Saturday during a demonstration outside an Egyptian state security building in the outskirts of Cairo. Recent political instability throughout the Middle East could complicate efforts to establish a regional weapons of mass destruction-free zone, current and former officials said (Wissam Nassar/Getty Images).

The unrest and revolutions sweeping through the Middle East have raised doubts over the potential for regional nations to hold previously planned talks focused on forming a weapons of mass destruction-free zone, Arms Control Today reported in its March issue (see GSN, March 1).

At the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference in New York, member nations agreed to hold a 2012 meeting on “the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.”

“We are absolutely committed” to the WMD-free zone meeting, White House WMD point man Gary Samore said in an interview last month. “But there’s a lot of uncertainty because of the unrest in the Middle East.”

In the last two months, longstanding regimes in Tunisia and Egypt have fallen, and protests in Libya have escalated into full-scale fighting between militants and forces loyal to Col. Muammar Qadhafi. Protests have also erupted in Bahrain, Jordan, Oman and Read more…

Categories: Middle East, WMD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

China Approves Kuwaiti Refinery

March 9, 2011 Comments off

wsj.com

BEIJING—China has given final approval to Kuwait to build an oil refinery in the south of the country in a joint venture with China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., a person with firsthand knowledge of the decision said Tuesday.

China, dependent on oil imports, has been making deals with major producers to process more crude domestically.

The $9 billion project between Kuwait Petroleum Corp. and Asia’s largest refiner by capacity, also known as Sinopec, has been under negotiation for more than five years. It includes a refinery with a capacity of 300,000 barrels a day in the city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province and an ethylene plant with a capacity of a million tons a year, along with related utilities, jetties and oil pipelines, according to previous comments from government and company officials involved in the Read more…

Categories: China, Kuwait, Oil Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Kuwait is the Spear Pointing at the Heart of Saudi Arabia

March 3, 2011 Comments off

Despite the reassurances and promises of change and trinkets for the masses, the front page news continues to reflect that Bahrain is the most dangerous situation for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The reasoning is that the Shi’a will spread their unrest into the Eastern Provinces along the rich oil producing regions of the nation and interrupt the flow of oil operations and embolden the Iranian regime to create mischief against their historic foe. In my opinion, this is a reach as the spear pointing towards the heart of the Kingdom is in Kuwait, a nation which has escaped the mainstream media’s attention up until this point in time.

The reason Bahrain is so key can best be summed up by the United States military interests in the region based there. Unfortunately for the media, the true story is the same one people realized in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Kuwait is the key to destroying the stranglehold the Saudi royal family has held on the Persian Gulf and the revolutionary movements of the region have understood this for twenty years now. When the Iraqi regime was crushed by the U.S. this decade the focus shifted from expelling the various monarchies in the Gulf region to using terror to expel the American “occupiers” as our nation was so labeled.  When the strategy of state sponsored and funded terrorism failed, the revolutionaries and Read more…

Categories: Kuwait, Oil, Saudi Arabia Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gaddafi warns of bloodbath if West intervenes

March 3, 2011 Comments off

economictimes.indiatimes.com

TRIPOLI: Libyan strongman Moamer Gaddafi warned on Wednesday “thousands” would die if the West intervened to support the uprising against him, as rebels drove back an attack by his forces on an eastern town.

The chilling warning came as western powers dampened expectations of any early imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, amid a clamour from western states for action to prevent Kadhafi’s warplanes from attacking his own people.

The United States is a “long way” from deciding on whether to impose a no-fly zone, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said as two US Navy ships steamed into position off Libya.

The 22-member Arab League appeared to offer an Arab and Read more…

Categories: Libya, Protests Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Will $200 oil kill the economy?

March 2, 2011 Comments off

money.msn.com

Unrest in key oil-producing nations opens the door to price spikes that could push gas to $7 a gallon and spin the world back into recession. Here’s how we’d get there, and how to protect your portfolio.

Image: Oil drums © Kevin Phillips, Digital Vision, age fotostock


Are your pocketbook and portfolio ready for $200-a-barrel oil?

This kind of dramatic price spike may seem less likely now than a few days ago, with oil markets calming down a bit and the price slipping below $100. But given the instability and unrest rolling through the Middle East and North Africa, it’s a definitely a viable scenario.

For the moment, most oil sector analysts have gone off high alert because of a Saudi Arabian pledge to increase production to make up for any shortfalls sparked by unrest. But that ignores a key angle in all this: There’s simply not enough spare capacity to make up for the production losses we’d see if the rolling crises in the region hit just two or three major producers at once.

This could easily happen, given the heightened Read more…

Categories: Economy, Oil Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

VERY INTERESTING” LEAK”- Resurfaced-The Map of the “New Middle East”

March 1, 2011 Comments off

patriotfreedom.org

The Map of the “New Middle East”
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”
MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST

“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration Read more…

Categories: Middle East Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Graph of the Amount of Oil Production Affected by Crisis

February 27, 2011 Comments off

Although Obama might not view what is happening in the Middle East as all that important- he is going to basketball games and concerts and instead directing attempts to riot in WI- I think it is very important because the Middle East region sits on a very important resource- oil. So for fun, I put together a graph this morning to demonstrate the amount of oil production that is affected by the crisis in the Middle East. The graph shows oil production by country based on the most recent data I found in the CIA World Factbook, and shows each nation currently in crisis or about to be in crisis, and then the gray area represents all other nations not currently affected.

Any change in oil production likely will cause the price of gasoline to go up, and as you can see, a large percentage of the world’s oil comes out of this affected region, although if Saudi Arabia stays stable, then the percentages is considerably less although still significant. In my amateur opinion, gas prices are going to rise, the economy will dip again, and Obama will react to this all by supporting our enemies and lowering our oil output. Here is the graph:

Categories: Middle East, Oil, Protests Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,