Curious? It's all about the benjamins....they got some serious money for moving. Yes, Ahmed....enjoy living in a country where migrant workers make up 99% of the workforce, but have absolutely no rights, including the holding of their own passport. Enjoy living in a country where you can get 15 years in jail for criticizing the emir....5 or criticizing your country. I hope your sisters and mother enjoy living in a country where marital rape is not a crime. Don't ever denounce your muslim religion....it's a capital offense. Don't drink or have kinky sex....you'll get flogged. If you do end up in court, you may not actually be in the courtroom when you get sentenced. If Ahmed ends up in family court, his sister's testimony is considered worth only half of a man's and may be dismissed entirely. " WikiLeaks revealed a State Department cable last December (2010) that labeled Qatar, the tiny, oil-rich Gulf nation, as the Middle East's "worst" participant in counterterrorism efforts, the New York Times reports. According to the cable, Qatari security was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals." al Qaeda is probably still on their payroll. Yes, Ahmed, enjoy your new home!
I haven't. I have been to Kuwait and UAE. The political left chides his school for being racists. But this kid prefers a country where women are treated terribly and gays are illegal. Somehow I doubt he will complain about that while living there.
Are you kidding? He is a great inventor. he will have all kinds of great inventions like the cell phone and computer.
I was wondering what they might do. The attention was not going to give the kid or his family much of a chance to resume a normal life in the neighborhood running the electronics shop. I was thinking California, where these is less chance of some Bubba wanting to whip his ass every day. But a scholarship to a national science foundation prep school in a wealthy Gulf oil nation is not something most middle-class people would ignore, especially if he wants to earn that MIT or Harvard scholarship. And it is closer to Sudan, where they have family and dual citizenships.
Well, we are in bed with far worse scoundrels than Qatar, Saudi Arabia is still number one. Qatar is in a precarious situation with vast oil wealth in a tiny area between two large countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, who both covet it. Qatar tries not to piss off anybody, including Al Qaeda. But it should be remembered that Qatar was the only Arab country in the 1991 Gulf War whose soldiers stood up and fought hard alongside American troops at Khafji. And Qatar is the home of the US Central Command forward headquarters at a huge air base with a 12,000-foot runway and maybe 10,000 Americans. Lots of overt and covert US air operations originate there. They are very much in our sphere of influence. It gives us a secure base with a port and right in the middle of the action, where we can't be subject to the whims of the Saudis. And none of their powerful enemies will fuck with them while we are there. They remember Kuwait extremely well.
Please....15 minutes and nobody gives a rip about this kid. That's America. Someone else will take his place in the media spotlight and he'll become somebody who was famous once. To suggest that this move was all about the notoriety and a scholarship is silly. Qatar's gubment (emir) has probably paid this family millions. That's the political game they play with the US. Go back and read Ahmed's alleged devotion to rights and free speech. And now he's moving to Qatar? What a joke!
Your cynicism exceeds mine, which is alarming. Of course it was about the scholarship. Let one of your kids get a half million dollar education offer and you would not ignore it out of hand. The emir is not doing this to displease America, he cannot afford that. He puckers up to kiss American ass as a part of his job. And Qatar is not anti-American in the least. The emir is almost British, graduating from the British military academy Sandhurst. He has huge investments in Britain and the US and is said to be a "savvy, careful, and calculating" pragmatist and to have "excellent relations" with the West including the USA , Britain and France. American contractors jobs in Qatar are pretty good gigs.
