When their Gulf neighbours - Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain joined by Egypt -launched a land, air and sea blockade of Qatar in the early morning hours of June 5, 2017, the reason cited by what came to be called the…

First to the good news, at least from the perspective of the government of Bahrain and its supporters. Despite an opposition call to boycott the vote, turnout, at 67%, was impressively high. The government did not release the number…

The age of impunity is upon us. On 20 November, in a statement replete with exclamations marks the president of the United States said this about the role of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman in the murder of the journalist…

On 2 October, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered during his presence inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The unsuccessful Saudi operation carried out by the Intelligence Services is still under investigation by both the…

Two years and counting into the radical transformation of the Saudi economy known as Vision 2030, a key component of the strategy – to empower the private sector and significantly reduce unemployment – remains stalled. Figures recently…

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze introduced a unique political and social view through the concept of ‘rhizomes,’ put forward as an alternative for the traditional ‘tree-like’ model. Deleuze articulated the ‘rhizome’ concept in terms…

There is a link between the disappearance and murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the terrible war in Yemen that after more than three years continues to grind on relentlessly. The link is the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin…

When then Saudi deputy crown prince and now crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he is known, mused in early 2016 that he believed it was “in the interest of the Saudi market and in the interest of (Saudi) Aramco” to sell shares in…