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From the Christian Science Monitor in 1980:
He met the current Sultan some years ago and remembers him as a “sensitive, gentle, and aesthetic soul,” very soldierly in demeanor, who remains “extremely fond of the British family he lived with when he was at Sandhurst.” A classical music lover, the Sultan is also a great devotee of Gilbert and Sullivan. In fact, he is said to have brought his entire set of Gilbert and Sullivan records home with him from Britain in 1963, only to have them destroyed by his father. When he seized power, one of his first action was to order another set of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company classics. In 1976, Sultan Qaboos married his cousin Sayyida Kamila who was then 14. As yet he has no heir.
From Wikipedia:
Qaboos was born in Salalah in Dhofar on 18 November 1940 as an only son of Sultan Said bin Taimur and Sheikha Mazoon al-Mashani.[
… At 20, he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After graduating from Sandhurst in September 1962…
After his military service, Qaboos studied local government subjects in England and then completed his education with a world tour chaperoned by Leslie Chauncy. Upon his return in 1966, he was placed under virtual house arrest in the Sultan’s palace in Salalah by his father.
His father was an old time desert sheik who kept the national treasury in a strongbox under his bed. Dad did not appreciate Gilbert & Sullivan.
Here he was kept isolated from government affairs, except for occasional briefings by his father’s personal advisers. Qaboos studied Islam and the history of his country. His personal relationships were limited to a handpicked group of palace officials who were sons of his father’s advisors and a few expatriate friends such as Tim Landon. Sultan Said said that he would not allow his son to be involved with the developing planning process, and Qaboos began to make known his desire for change—which was quietly supported by his expatriate visitors.
Qaboos acceded to the throne on 23 July 1970 following a successful coup against his father, with the aim of ending the country’s isolation and using its oil revenue for modernization and development. …
The coup was supported by the British, having been “planned in London by MI6 and by civil servants at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office” and sanctioned by the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.
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Jeez, can anyone go to a British boarding school without becoming gay?
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2020/01/Untitled-9-4.jpg
The late Sultan was rumored to have a harem of young boys bear the porous UAE Oman border.Replies: @Lot, @nebulafox
Becoming gay is the whole point of British boarding schools. “This is Sparta!”
There’s no way this turban he’s wearing is straight.
Even Evelyn Waugh became Gay. Yet he went on to father seven children.
O man he put the Qabos on his father ?
This will not stand.
At very least we must airlift several hundred thousand Omani refugees in to Maine and Minnesota.
This is who we are.
It’s a shame he didn’t score at least a run or two for his country. He really must have been a dedicated player for the other team.
Same over here in cricket -playing parts of the UK: "Batting for the other side" is an euphemism-sunning-to -pejorative for a closeted arse-bandit.
Never heard it used in the USA.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
Since there is so much gay crap in the comment thread, I can't resist.
The saultan seems tn have been a good one,perhaps he is recproductuviely dysfunctional, .
I have never ben to the UAE or Duaai,
However, when I was influential and then an admin on a notorious U.S. site, someone from there decided to start an e-mail correspondence. I always replied until the intra-site dramasicked out (and led to the つsite,
Westerners have a kind of complex.
You can go to a baro or restaurant in Seoul, after a big gathering, everybody is holdimg hands.
There is no overtone of homoeroticism.
How come Sailer’s story menu doesn’t get any of those yellow HOT! or NEW! blurbs? Unz really went wild with these today, like a supermarket circular with a big WOW! next to the Doritos, Chips Ahoy and bone-in pork chops
I wonder if the fact he was a, ahem donor ahem, to a particular, ahem Foundation ahem, while a particular lady was Secretary of State, saw him live on to die a health-related death under Trump, rather than a mystery-related death under Obama? Just idly speculating dear iSteve moderator.
CNN on Iran’s belated admission that the U.S. was right after all:
Personally I blame systemic whiteness.
Plenty of gays in history have done their duty and stepped up to the plate to father children. Maybe the poor chap was firing blanks? At which point you really have to call in a brother or something, but Qaboos was an only child. You really would think a fellow allowed four wives should do better than that.
Maybe he wasn't doing it right.
https://twitter.com/MadaGasp/status/1215906113255825408
The senators are cowards and after a day or two of backlash they’d change their tune.Replies: @Desiderius, @Desiderius
OT: I hope Steve will review the movie “1917”:
He looks like Frederick the Great. Frederick’s father also hated his gayness, and thought that Frederick wasn’t able to rule. But, in the end he showed to be a competent ruler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great_Playing_the_Flute_at_Sanssouci#/media/File:Adolph_Menzel_-_Fl%C3%B6tenkonzert_Friedrichs_des_Gro%C3%9Fen_in_Sanssouci_-_Google_Art_Project.jpgReplies: @Old Palo Altan
Having lived in UAE and visited Oman on numerous occasions I can say that atleast 20% of Omani men are bisexual if not outright homo ( they get married and have kids for appearances).
The late Sultan was rumored to have a harem of young boys bear the porous UAE Oman border.
I remember when I first visited Italy in high school. The teenagers and men under 40 tended to be thin, well groomed, and wear tight fashionable clothes in a way that screamed GAY! in the midwest.
Then there’s the whole “men holding hands with friends walking down the street” thing in the Middle East.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar
This will not stand.
At very least we must airlift several hundred thousand Omani refugees in to Maine and Minnesota.
This is who we are.Replies: @Dr Van Nostrand, @Cato
Omanis lead a comfortable life and are happy in their country by and large. They don’t wish to leave.
Diversity grows out of the barrel of a gun Stalin used to say.
So a good man from a strong masculine culture did not have children and was s western puppet.
Do you people not see how whiteness literally murders People of Color?
I am all for homosexuality expansion in the socially constructed white community but it needs to discouraged in Communities of Color so that they can maintain martial prowess
https://static3.businessinsider.com/image/58658cfdee14b61c008b5ce3/russian-embassy-trolls-us-over-obamas-new-sanctions-with-lame-duck-tweet.jpg
A kind word is in order . The sultan didn’t hesitate to bestow citizenship to non Muslims. Something unthinkable in most GCC countries.
The turban rather the traditional Gulf gatra (white or Italian table cloth head gear) is an indication of the Indian subcontinent’s cultural influence on the region . And the large black population a legacy of it’s slave trading past. Oman ruled over Zanzibar and various port cities on East Africa. Apart from those it controlled gwadar till 1960s which it foolishly handed over to Pakistan.
There was an insurgency in the westernmost province suppressed in 1975; otherwise the place has been at peace. The life expectancy at birth in Oman is 79 years. Open defecation has disappeared. About 95% of the urban population has potable tap water. Over 95% of the population over age 15 is literate. Over 80% of the population is urban. Per capita product has doubled (in real terms) in the last generation. It’s a middle income country, with personal consumption per capita (in real terms) proximate to mid 20th century values for the affluent countries of that day. They’ve run up a great deal of foreign and public debt in the last five years (for some reason), and labor mobilization is quite depressed among their native population (something you see in other Gulf countries). Still, quite a bit of collective accomplishment in the last 50 years.
Imagine, Oman beats San Francisco!
It's too bad if they've run up foreign debt because Oman used to be one of only a handful of countries that had little debt.
Like all Arabs, Omanis are very welcoming and hospitable. It's also very beautiful (assuming that like me, you like the desert), mountainous and has hundreds of kilometres of Arabian Sea coastline.
Sandhurst his a military academy, not a boarding school.
I dare say the young lad really enjoyed “It is a Glorious Thing to be a Pirate King” and “A Policeman’s Lot is not a Happy One.”
Africa and Oman
Not to be confused with Gilbert O’Sullivan, the 1970s Irish singer/songwriter.
Say what you will about the Sultan’s proclivities, the man ran the most pleasant, indeed the most non-miserable country, in the region. My condolences to his subjects, that estimable race of sailors and traders, and best wishes to Sultan Haitham.
Famously, during the Thatcher years, the British ‘Arts Council’ – which doles out public money to subsidise ‘unprofitable’ theatrical and artistic endeavors, refused the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company government funding – which lead to the demise of the said venerable institution.
All this from the nation which lionizes that talentless black talker ‘Stormzy’.
Most Omanis belong to a sect that is neither Sunni nor Shia. That is pretty handy, and Oman has managed to stay out of the various Saudi vs Qatar vs Iran fights.
There was a fairly large communist insurgency there in the ’60s and ’70s (supported by South Yemen), and the SAS was heavily involved in suppressing it.
Middle East Eye has a good obituary up for him.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/features/obituary-sultan-qaboos-bin-said
They, too, hint Qaboos was homosexual. He seems to have been an outstanding ruler, though.
When the oil runs out they’ll be back to shitting in the street in no time. There’s no real development – its all built on oil $. They’re living on welfare but in this case Allah left them an underground liquid welfare check.
Ambulance-chaser school left some gaps in your education.
Oil and mineral exports account for about 40% of nominal gross domestic product there. They've been gradually diversifying, and about 28% of their export revenue now comes from goods and services other than fuels and minerals. They've also been developing their human capital the last fifty years, including adult education programs. Current enrollment in vocational and technical education among native Omanis is at 40,000 right now. Given the size of the population of native Omanis, a comparable figure in this country would be about 5 million.
Your bigotry is tedious.Replies: @Jack D, @Jay Igaboo
He received his primary and secondary education at Salalah, and was sent to a private educational establishment at Bury St Edmunds in England at age 16.[6][7] At 20, he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
Oman sounds like Singapore – a successful state run by an enlightened autocrat, one of Plato’s “philosopher kings”.
As an advocate of Democracy I’m jealous.
Overheard in 1988:
“I’m liking the look of the green fatigues, but—now hear me out—what if we added a few strings of fuzzy green pom pom balls. Wouldn’t it look amazing and even more intimidating?”
Right up the old Qaboos, as they say…
His (very) likely gayness aside, he really was a compelling historical figure, having singlehandedly wrested his country out of the Middle Ages after deposing his father. If you like free education and medical care and other such Scandinavian stuff, Oman is now a pretty pleasant place–which it certainly wasn’t when his father was in charge. Back then your average Omani was squatting in a hut eating rocks when not out pasturing his goats on the nonexistent scrub.
Still, Qaboos is certainly the funniest name ever for a homosexual Sultan. And as an admirer of Gilbert & Sullivan, he had to have known this.
Thanks for the summary.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-21/once-a-rated-at-s-p-oman-now-risks-descending-deeper-into-junk
They have a bizarre population “pyramid.” I am guessing guest workers explain the working age male excess. But why the baby bust in the 15-19 age group?
https://www.populationpyramid.net/oman/2020/
The population increase starting around 2010 is interesting.
No, Muscat is a famous trading port. Lots of Indian merchants, Large European influences since the 1500s. It looks to the ocean and is defensible from the interior by topography and fortifications. Wealthy traders setup shop there. Rest of the country resembles rural Arabia, but the capital is a legitimate economy.
Clearly, the old boy needed to close his eyes and think of England……
Open defecation has disappeared.
Imagine, Oman beats San Francisco!
Looks like Iran and Saudi Arabia have another sandbox to fight over.
When the oil runs out they’ll be back to shitting in the street in no time. There’s no real development – its all built on oil $. T
Ambulance-chaser school left some gaps in your education.
Oil and mineral exports account for about 40% of nominal gross domestic product there. They’ve been gradually diversifying, and about 28% of their export revenue now comes from goods and services other than fuels and minerals. They’ve also been developing their human capital the last fifty years, including adult education programs. Current enrollment in vocational and technical education among native Omanis is at 40,000 right now. Given the size of the population of native Omanis, a comparable figure in this country would be about 5 million.
Oman is not for the devotees of Onan.
All this from the nation which lionizes that talentless black talker 'Stormzy'.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Lurker
G & S can’t survive without subsidy?
Are you suggesting he was a sultan of swing?
Oman has nothing like this:
But they do have this— designed by (I kid you not) one Paul Cocksedge:
Very interesting project.
The late Sultan was rumored to have a harem of young boys bear the porous UAE Oman border.Replies: @Lot, @nebulafox
How would you even estimate this?
I remember when I first visited Italy in high school. The teenagers and men under 40 tended to be thin, well groomed, and wear tight fashionable clothes in a way that screamed GAY! in the midwest.
Then there’s the whole “men holding hands with friends walking down the street” thing in the Middle East.
Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/Replies: @nebulafox, @Reg Cæsar
You should read some of the florid greetings he-men opened their letters to other he-men with in Elizabethan times, when actual sodomy could get you garotted.A "metrosexual" was nothing more than a straight guy who tucked his shirt in. That not being a slob gets you labelled a queer in America is somewhat of a blot on our image.Replies: @Anonymous
The turban rather the traditional Gulf gatra (white or Italian table cloth head gear) is an indication of the Indian subcontinent's cultural influence on the region . And the large black population a legacy of it's slave trading past. Oman ruled over Zanzibar and various port cities on East Africa. Apart from those it controlled gwadar till 1960s which it foolishly handed over to Pakistan.Replies: @Hippopotamusdrome
Can we route the refugees to there now, then?
https://twitter.com/kausmickey/status/1215762349958676480
https://twitter.com/MadaGasp/status/1215906113255825408Replies: @Daniel H, @Ed
Trump cucks out he loses, that simple. He hasn’t persuaded one single voter who voted for Hilary in 2016 to change sides, but if he cucks to business many of us (I speak for myself) will just stay home. Won’t take much to swing MI, PA, NC, WI, FL blue.
Important thing is the quality of the heat Trump/Rs are getting from our direction.
In 2016 there was a lot of concern surrounding Trump being a complete unknown, that he would start a nuclear war or invade Mexico or whatever. Now that we have had 3 years of general peace and prosperity under Trump, and the shock and novelty of a President Tweeting has worn off, people are feeling free to vote against the Democrats and their clown car.
RIP, Sultan Qaboos. You ruled well.
I’m a little disappointed about the adolescent sneering about the man’s possible homosexuality I’m seeing from some commentators. The man was a really good ruler despite the murky circumstances of the development-focused coup that placed him in power: Middle Eastern version of Lee Kwan Yew, in some ways. Oman is starkly different from the rest of the Gulf in not being a one-trick pony oil economy, with diversification having been started several decades ago. Unlike elsewhere in the region, the natives generally do not indulge in wasteful, outrageous lifestyles with their oil wealth, generally are knowledgeable about the rest of the world, and are expected to do something with their lives. Human development has progressed to the point that RWTH Aachen has a successful satellite campus in Oman.
Part of this revolves around the fact that the Omanis follow a particularly Spartan brand of Islam that is directly descended from the Kharijites. The plain nature of the native sect is taken seriously, from the architecture of the mosques to the cultural frowning on Saudi-style indulgences. With that said, the Shi’ite minority enjoys a degree of toleration absent in much of the region, and non-Muslim foreigners are generally free to do what as long as they toe the line.
Oman has more diverse economy simply for that reason as the lack of ego doesnt prevent Omanis from finding work in any sector that they feel they can thrive in. In contrast to say UAE, all efforts to find work for not too terribly sharp Emiratis have failed . I remember a scheme where they tried to get to work as cashiers in Spinneys(a local high end supermarket chain), all I remember is the seering contempt that they showed as they bagged your groceries and handed you the receipt. That didnt last too long. To be fair UAE has also seen the writing on the wall and has started diversifying into not just tourism and hospitality but start ups, construction, technology and so on. How this goes is anyone's guess.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Yes, it’s obviously better fitted (so to speak) for the devotees of Oscar Wilde and John Addington Symonds…..
I remember when I first visited Italy in high school. The teenagers and men under 40 tended to be thin, well groomed, and wear tight fashionable clothes in a way that screamed GAY! in the midwest.
Then there’s the whole “men holding hands with friends walking down the street” thing in the Middle East.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar
The Kingdom in the Closet
Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/
OT —
I see Iran is admitting it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake. The admission–which admittedly was the best policy for Iran, since the truth was going to come out–is a class act.
This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran–but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis–to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that’s not Trump’s style.
Plain fact is everyone can screw up. In the 80s the Russians shot down a Korean airliner thinking it was a US spy plane … aided by traditional Russian half-assnessed. Then a few years later a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner thinking–confused thinking after being attacked by Iranian patrol boats– it was an Iranian airforce jet heading to attack.
It's also not what he agreed to do.
He's obviously trying to weasel out of his commitment, but he was paid to start a war with Iran.
The difficulty is that he knows that if he does, he can forget about getting reelected.
I suppose the idea is to appear to keep trying to bait Iran into attacking us -- but to play it all out so that she doesn't actually kill any Americans until after the second Tuesday in November. Needless, to say, his financial backers want just the opposite; they want to see that war actually started before they pony up for the reelection campaign.
I imagine something will be worked out.Replies: @nebulafox
That's pretty bad, considering that there have been no large scale wars associated with the events. The world's militaries and civil aviation authorities really need to improve their aircraft identification protocols.Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic
Do you people not see how whiteness literally murders People of Color?
I am all for homosexuality expansion in the socially constructed white community but it needs to discouraged in Communities of Color so that they can maintain martial prowessReplies: @Anonymous, @anon
Like less cock for CoCs ?
The late Sultan was rumored to have a harem of young boys bear the porous UAE Oman border.Replies: @Lot, @nebulafox
Men hold hands in that part of the world all the time. It does not have any sexual connotation whatsoever.
With that said, down-low homosexuality is surprisingly common in the region, or perhaps not, given the degree of gender segregation. Unofficially, it is a lot like classical Greco-Roman antiquity or prison culture: being the active partner is all well and good. Being the passive partner above a certain age is deeply shameful.
https://images.app.goo.gl/uwD9dWTB3oq3CS6A7
https://images.app.goo.gl/ie8ykYsqyGCVuth19
More info on the gay stuff
http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2010/02/exclusive-interview-being-gay-in.html
An excerpt:
Muscat Confidential: Thank you for taking the time to share with my readers what it’s like to be living a gay lifestyle in The Sultanate of Oman. There's not really a lot of information out there.
The English Gentleman: Thanks for asking me about the experience of being a gay foreigner in Oman. I’m happy to pass on what I know, both for others thinking of living here and for those considering a visit. I should preface what follows by saying I’m talking entirely about men (I’m sure there are Omani lesbians, but I don’t have enough experience to talk with any knowledge), and as someone well past my ‘party years’, with a steady partner. I’ve lived a pretty quiet life here for the past six years.
MC: So – is there an Omani gay community?
TEG: First of all, I think you have to separate men in Oman who actively identify themselves as “gay” and men who are simply having sex with men. The first group is probably pretty small, and what we in the West think of as a “gay community” comes down to some fairly small groups of men, mostly in and around Muscat – more a set of sometimes intersecting sets of friends. To my knowledge, there are no formally organized LGBT groups (although times are changing, and who knows what some enterprising group of students might be up to), and there are no full-time, openly identified gay bars/restaurants/hangouts.
On the other hand, the second group [UD: e.g. men who like to have sex with men but don’t identify as being homosexual] seems to be pretty large, and there does seem to be a certain amount of (unspoken) consent within traditional society about male-male sex. Given the very limited mixing of the sexes, especially for young men, I guess that’s not surprising (teacher friends have told some very interesting stories about things they observe in their students – and this does seem to be one area in which the girls are keeping up). And then, too, there is a really interesting subculture of transvestism and gender-fluidity that doesn’t seem to have been studied too much (Wikipedia has an article on it – Khanith). I’ve been in a couple of traditional local bars at which groups of men in full makeup and partial or even full drag have shown up, and it’s seemed to be something that, at least in that context, is taken pretty matter-of-factly.
In recent years, we’ve met more and more Omanis who do actively identify as gay. Like many in the Arab world, most are very closeted, and many if not most end up married and living, sometimes very happily, what would seem to a Westerner like a double life: wife, kids, and family on one hand, and a social/sexual life with other men on the other. We do have some more “out” Omani friends, including one or two who’ve raised the issue with parents or siblings; they’re from more sophisticated families, and their experiences have been fair to very good.
Some have had experiences, personally and with family and friends, that reminds me of Western friends from very religious/conservative backgrounds. They’re conflicted by what they think their religion tells them and what they feel, and they got real problems about being both gay and religious. Some find their own way and stay quite devout, but many have more or less left religion behind and wish that their culture would open up and acknowledge that there have always been gay people here and let them find a more open place in the society. In a sense, it’s like local attitudes to alcohol – lots and lots of Omanis drink, but it’s still pretty totally taboo.
MC: Where do Gay men meet?
TEG: It’s not an exaggeration to say: everywhere. There might be some better known cruising spots, and as anywhere else in the world, bars are big (try the big hotels), but I’ve heard tales of foreign men meeting Omanis at malls, on the beach, and even in business settings. Omanis, from what friends tell me, often first meet online – the Internet is very, very important in the Arab gay community more widely, and Oman is no exception. I find it interesting that sites that Westerners think of as being entirely for hooking up for anonymous sex, Arabs are using to create online communities, of which sex is just a part along with longer-term friendships and the creation of networks of friends.Replies: @nebulafox
So this gay sultan’s name was really “Caboose”?
Then well have to press gang them. If Omanis wont come to diversity, then we will have to bring the diversity to them with the USAF.
Diversity grows out of the barrel of a gun Stalin used to say.
You’ve heard of The Little Engine That Could? He was the little Qaboos that couldn’t (have children).
Very good. All I could come up with was he was loose in the Qaboos.
I see Iran is admitting it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake. The admission--which admittedly was the best policy for Iran, since the truth was going to come out--is a class act.
This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran--but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis--to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that's not Trump's style.
Plain fact is everyone can screw up. In the 80s the Russians shot down a Korean airliner thinking it was a US spy plane … aided by traditional Russian half-assnessed. Then a few years later a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner thinking--confused thinking after being attacked by Iranian patrol boats-- it was an Iranian airforce jet heading to attack.Replies: @Desiderius, @Colin Wright, @Balaji, @PiltdownMan, @Polynikes
It’s exactly Trump’s style, but he currently has less power than a constitutional monarch.
You mean attack and make up? Yes, a lot of that 2016-17, especially with other elements of the GOP. Ted Cruz is a good example. NK is the good foreign example. It’s sort of worked too in Mexico in getting them to control their southern border, though they have to pretend otherwise since he’a widely hated there.
“he currently has less power than a constitutional monarch.”
?? We’ve evolved to a system where the president can go to war against any third world craphole on a whim.
Even the English monarchs who pretended to be absolute like Henry VIII and James needed to beg, threaten, horsetrade and bribe the Commons for funds for any foreign adventure.Replies: @Desiderius
“It’s exactly Trump’s style”
You mean attack and make up? Yes, a lot of that 2016-17, especially with other elements of the GOP. Ted Cruz is a good example. NK is the good foreign example. It’s sort of worked too in Mexico in getting them to control their southern border, though they have to pretend otherwise since he’a widely hated there.
“he currently has less power than a constitutional monarch.”
?? We’ve evolved to a system where the president can go to war against any third world craphole on a whim.
Even the English monarchs who pretended to be absolute like Henry VIII and James needed to beg, threaten, horsetrade and bribe the Commons for funds for any foreign adventure.
Right, but the merchants mostly are not Arabs.
Well,Prince Harry went there and he certainly turned out fine.
IG Horowitz has enshrined the attempted throwing of elections by unelected bureaucrats in policy, having announced an inability to locate proof of political bias on the part of government employees several years after everyone on the planet and a half dozen astronauts read the Strzok-Page texts. The FBI has apologized, and has promised to make Democracy a Get Well Soon card. The FISA court promises to continue to disregard the law and to rubberstamp the next request.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-apologizes-court-botching-surveillance-144949528.html
Oman = MI6 command base.
The father of Qaboos was weak. The father sends his son to the UK for military education — and then realizes the kid came back brainwashed so the father puts him under house arrest. But the son eventually overthrows the father anyway in a coup orchestrated by MI6.
The father was incompetent. Obviously “Not sufficiently evil.”
Competent (shithead) dictators like Mao, Stalin, Castro — even Maduro — would never have let it happen.
Do you people not see how whiteness literally murders People of Color?
I am all for homosexuality expansion in the socially constructed white community but it needs to discouraged in Communities of Color so that they can maintain martial prowessReplies: @Anonymous, @anon
I am all for homosexuality expansion in the socially constructed white community but it needs to discouraged in Communities of Color so that they can maintain martial prowess
‘When the oil runs out they’ll be back to shitting in the street in no time. There’s no real development – its all built on oil $. They’re living on welfare but in this case Allah left them an underground liquid welfare check.’
Your bigotry is tedious.
Signed,
The Jack D TeamReplies: @Art Deco, @J.Ross
Sir Ranulph Fiennes was a Contract Officer (i.e. a British Army officer or SNCO who signed a contract to serve as an "instructor " with Omani forces, for which the Omanis paid plenty),Ranulph Fiennes is , to invent a word, an "Omaniphile".Maybe an Arab Romanticist would be more accurate.
in his memoirs of serving in Oman, he several times expressed in affection and his his preference to the Firquats, the Omani irregulars, under his command, to the working-class un-commissioned Scottish he was lucky enough to command whilst serving in The Royal Scots Greys. This is preference founded on snobbery rather than military ability .
The majority of British Army officers of that era educated at expensive boarding schools were utter snobs who held their enlisted subordinates in contempt -or, perhaps, like Quaboos, he. like quite a few boarding school educated officers of that era, now and then he "batted for the other side"?Anhyoo, Fiennes recorded that his firquats and shit on the ground just a very short walk from where they lived, as did most Omanis.
This was also mentioned with disgust by other soldiers whom I served with who had serve din Oman in the mid 70's, some of whom defended the RAF base at Salalah, the birthplace of Quaboos
I don't suppose you'd let facts interfere with your belief in your moral superiority,All that said, Quaboos was a far better, less murderous leader than any other Arab leader, and his people had their poverty and harsh, spartan lives greatly relieved.
All this from the nation which lionizes that talentless black talker 'Stormzy'.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Lurker
AKA ‘Stabbzy’.
Qaboos died? I didn’t even know he’d been sick.
Maybe Jack D really is a team of teenagers hunched over a cluster of desks.
No offense to the singular or plural Jack D, wherever you are based. Their comments are at least entertaining, although usually way wrong.
If you spend any time in Knightsbridge London it is pretty obvious how much the elite arab world is influenced by the British. What have the British gained from this extensive soft power influence over the arab world?
What a truly, truly f*cked up place contemporary London is.
You mean attack and make up? Yes, a lot of that 2016-17, especially with other elements of the GOP. Ted Cruz is a good example. NK is the good foreign example. It’s sort of worked too in Mexico in getting them to control their southern border, though they have to pretend otherwise since he’a widely hated there.
“he currently has less power than a constitutional monarch.”
?? We’ve evolved to a system where the president can go to war against any third world craphole on a whim.
Even the English monarchs who pretended to be absolute like Henry VIII and James needed to beg, threaten, horsetrade and bribe the Commons for funds for any foreign adventure.Replies: @Desiderius
Same with Trump, except he has to beg them not to force the funds and the wars attached down his throat, so far with little success. They impeached him for having the temerity to merely try in the Ukraine.
>labor mobilization is quite depressed
This is a good thing. It means people are not willing to abandon their communities for a few dollars. Sign of a healthy country.
I see Iran is admitting it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake. The admission--which admittedly was the best policy for Iran, since the truth was going to come out--is a class act.
This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran--but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis--to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that's not Trump's style.
Plain fact is everyone can screw up. In the 80s the Russians shot down a Korean airliner thinking it was a US spy plane … aided by traditional Russian half-assnessed. Then a few years later a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner thinking--confused thinking after being attacked by Iranian patrol boats-- it was an Iranian airforce jet heading to attack.Replies: @Desiderius, @Colin Wright, @Balaji, @PiltdownMan, @Polynikes
‘… This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran–but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis–to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that’s not Trump’s style…’
It’s also not what he agreed to do.
He’s obviously trying to weasel out of his commitment, but he was paid to start a war with Iran.
The difficulty is that he knows that if he does, he can forget about getting reelected.
I suppose the idea is to appear to keep trying to bait Iran into attacking us — but to play it all out so that she doesn’t actually kill any Americans until after the second Tuesday in November. Needless, to say, his financial backers want just the opposite; they want to see that war actually started before they pony up for the reelection campaign.
I imagine something will be worked out.
I see Iran is admitting it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake. The admission--which admittedly was the best policy for Iran, since the truth was going to come out--is a class act.
This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran--but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis--to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that's not Trump's style.
Plain fact is everyone can screw up. In the 80s the Russians shot down a Korean airliner thinking it was a US spy plane … aided by traditional Russian half-assnessed. Then a few years later a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner thinking--confused thinking after being attacked by Iranian patrol boats-- it was an Iranian airforce jet heading to attack.Replies: @Desiderius, @Colin Wright, @Balaji, @PiltdownMan, @Polynikes
You are so right. And let us not forget the Libyan airliner with a French pilot and crew that got lost over the Sinai desert and was shot down by Israel which then occupied the Sinai (February 1973).
stepped up to the plate
Maybe he wasn’t doing it right.
I am not sneering. I am fond of Oman. Just pointing out some idiosyncracies. Omanis have none of the toxic arrogance and sense of entitlement that defines Saudis, Kuwaitis, Qataris and to a lesser extant Emiratis(UAE nationals). Omanis are a relaxed, rather humble people who are not averse to working with their hands. If your car is ever stranded on a deserted road , an Omani turns up soon enough and rolls up his sleeves, removes his Patek Philipe and goes to work on it trying to help. You may find this perhaps with Dubai locals but never with Saudis or Qataris who will laugh at you as they pass by.
Oman has more diverse economy simply for that reason as the lack of ego doesnt prevent Omanis from finding work in any sector that they feel they can thrive in. In contrast to say UAE, all efforts to find work for not too terribly sharp Emiratis have failed . I remember a scheme where they tried to get to work as cashiers in Spinneys(a local high end supermarket chain), all I remember is the seering contempt that they showed as they bagged your groceries and handed you the receipt. That didnt last too long. To be fair UAE has also seen the writing on the wall and has started diversifying into not just tourism and hospitality but start ups, construction, technology and so on. How this goes is anyone’s guess.
https://www.arabianbusiness.com/sites/default/files/styles/full_img/public/images/2018/02/08/Burj-Khalifas-LED-facade.jpg?itok=tYciZJAL
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DmP37zCW4AQUH_R.jpg
Having lived there I am aware of the context of men holding hands ,hugging or even kissing. So does Bush I assume.
https://images.app.goo.gl/uwD9dWTB3oq3CS6A7
https://images.app.goo.gl/ie8ykYsqyGCVuth19
More info on the gay stuff
http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2010/02/exclusive-interview-being-gay-in.html
An excerpt:
Muscat Confidential: Thank you for taking the time to share with my readers what it’s like to be living a gay lifestyle in The Sultanate of Oman. There’s not really a lot of information out there.
The English Gentleman: Thanks for asking me about the experience of being a gay foreigner in Oman. I’m happy to pass on what I know, both for others thinking of living here and for those considering a visit. I should preface what follows by saying I’m talking entirely about men (I’m sure there are Omani lesbians, but I don’t have enough experience to talk with any knowledge), and as someone well past my ‘party years’, with a steady partner. I’ve lived a pretty quiet life here for the past six years.
MC: So – is there an Omani gay community?
TEG: First of all, I think you have to separate men in Oman who actively identify themselves as “gay” and men who are simply having sex with men. The first group is probably pretty small, and what we in the West think of as a “gay community” comes down to some fairly small groups of men, mostly in and around Muscat – more a set of sometimes intersecting sets of friends. To my knowledge, there are no formally organized LGBT groups (although times are changing, and who knows what some enterprising group of students might be up to), and there are no full-time, openly identified gay bars/restaurants/hangouts.
On the other hand, the second group [UD: e.g. men who like to have sex with men but don’t identify as being homosexual] seems to be pretty large, and there does seem to be a certain amount of (unspoken) consent within traditional society about male-male sex. Given the very limited mixing of the sexes, especially for young men, I guess that’s not surprising (teacher friends have told some very interesting stories about things they observe in their students – and this does seem to be one area in which the girls are keeping up). And then, too, there is a really interesting subculture of transvestism and gender-fluidity that doesn’t seem to have been studied too much (Wikipedia has an article on it – Khanith). I’ve been in a couple of traditional local bars at which groups of men in full makeup and partial or even full drag have shown up, and it’s seemed to be something that, at least in that context, is taken pretty matter-of-factly.
In recent years, we’ve met more and more Omanis who do actively identify as gay. Like many in the Arab world, most are very closeted, and many if not most end up married and living, sometimes very happily, what would seem to a Westerner like a double life: wife, kids, and family on one hand, and a social/sexual life with other men on the other. We do have some more “out” Omani friends, including one or two who’ve raised the issue with parents or siblings; they’re from more sophisticated families, and their experiences have been fair to very good.
Some have had experiences, personally and with family and friends, that reminds me of Western friends from very religious/conservative backgrounds. They’re conflicted by what they think their religion tells them and what they feel, and they got real problems about being both gay and religious. Some find their own way and stay quite devout, but many have more or less left religion behind and wish that their culture would open up and acknowledge that there have always been gay people here and let them find a more open place in the society. In a sense, it’s like local attitudes to alcohol – lots and lots of Omanis drink, but it’s still pretty totally taboo.
MC: Where do Gay men meet?
TEG: It’s not an exaggeration to say: everywhere. There might be some better known cruising spots, and as anywhere else in the world, bars are big (try the big hotels), but I’ve heard tales of foreign men meeting Omanis at malls, on the beach, and even in business settings. Omanis, from what friends tell me, often first meet online – the Internet is very, very important in the Arab gay community more widely, and Oman is no exception. I find it interesting that sites that Westerners think of as being entirely for hooking up for anonymous sex, Arabs are using to create online communities, of which sex is just a part along with longer-term friendships and the creation of networks of friends.
Those in Britain have gained the pleasure of long commutes to London as billionaires elbow out millionaires to gobble up whats remaining of the capitals real estate assets. However if you are British expat even from a middling college in the Gulf you really dont have to do too much, a nice job with all sorts of perks and benefits will turn up soon enough if you play your cards right . Oxbridge type of course are treated like semi royalty.
Suspect that many subcons are butthurt by this display of good old fashioned common sense and longing for the 'natural order of things'.Replies: @Art Deco
What happened to Leslie Chauncy after he chaperoned Qaboos during his world tour?
I want to know what happened to Leslie Chauncy.
Due to an unfortunate Googleberg, the chaperon Chauncy is lost to history.
It may be less a matter of cucking than of there never having been much there there. Still, apres lui, le deluge.
Rentboys.
Brings a whole new meaning to that silly little term 'soft power', which can only be the complement of 'hard power'(!), as wielded by the non contemptuous, active, male member of the partnership.
I want to know what happened to Leslie Chauncy.
Due to an unfortunate Googleberg, the chaperon Chauncy is lost to history.Replies: @Anonymous, @YetAnotherAnon
Word is he took it in the Qaboos
https://images.app.goo.gl/uwD9dWTB3oq3CS6A7
https://images.app.goo.gl/ie8ykYsqyGCVuth19
More info on the gay stuff
http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2010/02/exclusive-interview-being-gay-in.html
An excerpt:
Muscat Confidential: Thank you for taking the time to share with my readers what it’s like to be living a gay lifestyle in The Sultanate of Oman. There's not really a lot of information out there.
The English Gentleman: Thanks for asking me about the experience of being a gay foreigner in Oman. I’m happy to pass on what I know, both for others thinking of living here and for those considering a visit. I should preface what follows by saying I’m talking entirely about men (I’m sure there are Omani lesbians, but I don’t have enough experience to talk with any knowledge), and as someone well past my ‘party years’, with a steady partner. I’ve lived a pretty quiet life here for the past six years.
MC: So – is there an Omani gay community?
TEG: First of all, I think you have to separate men in Oman who actively identify themselves as “gay” and men who are simply having sex with men. The first group is probably pretty small, and what we in the West think of as a “gay community” comes down to some fairly small groups of men, mostly in and around Muscat – more a set of sometimes intersecting sets of friends. To my knowledge, there are no formally organized LGBT groups (although times are changing, and who knows what some enterprising group of students might be up to), and there are no full-time, openly identified gay bars/restaurants/hangouts.
On the other hand, the second group [UD: e.g. men who like to have sex with men but don’t identify as being homosexual] seems to be pretty large, and there does seem to be a certain amount of (unspoken) consent within traditional society about male-male sex. Given the very limited mixing of the sexes, especially for young men, I guess that’s not surprising (teacher friends have told some very interesting stories about things they observe in their students – and this does seem to be one area in which the girls are keeping up). And then, too, there is a really interesting subculture of transvestism and gender-fluidity that doesn’t seem to have been studied too much (Wikipedia has an article on it – Khanith). I’ve been in a couple of traditional local bars at which groups of men in full makeup and partial or even full drag have shown up, and it’s seemed to be something that, at least in that context, is taken pretty matter-of-factly.
In recent years, we’ve met more and more Omanis who do actively identify as gay. Like many in the Arab world, most are very closeted, and many if not most end up married and living, sometimes very happily, what would seem to a Westerner like a double life: wife, kids, and family on one hand, and a social/sexual life with other men on the other. We do have some more “out” Omani friends, including one or two who’ve raised the issue with parents or siblings; they’re from more sophisticated families, and their experiences have been fair to very good.
Some have had experiences, personally and with family and friends, that reminds me of Western friends from very religious/conservative backgrounds. They’re conflicted by what they think their religion tells them and what they feel, and they got real problems about being both gay and religious. Some find their own way and stay quite devout, but many have more or less left religion behind and wish that their culture would open up and acknowledge that there have always been gay people here and let them find a more open place in the society. In a sense, it’s like local attitudes to alcohol – lots and lots of Omanis drink, but it’s still pretty totally taboo.
MC: Where do Gay men meet?
TEG: It’s not an exaggeration to say: everywhere. There might be some better known cruising spots, and as anywhere else in the world, bars are big (try the big hotels), but I’ve heard tales of foreign men meeting Omanis at malls, on the beach, and even in business settings. Omanis, from what friends tell me, often first meet online – the Internet is very, very important in the Arab gay community more widely, and Oman is no exception. I find it interesting that sites that Westerners think of as being entirely for hooking up for anonymous sex, Arabs are using to create online communities, of which sex is just a part along with longer-term friendships and the creation of networks of friends.Replies: @nebulafox
My strong apologies, I shouldn’t have been so presumptuous! Can you tell me a bit more what life in Oman is like in general? It’s not a country that makes it onto the Western radar often, and it’d be great to here from someone who has actually lived there.
TBH, I think a big part of why a lot of men who have sex with men in that part of the world choose not to identify as “gay” is not just cultural pressure or that they are also attracted to women, but distaste for a popularized Western gay culture they perceive as infantile, obnoxious, and/or effeminate. I’ve met several American homosexuals who aren’t happy with the idea of their personal identity revolving around their sexuality, and are reluctant to identify themselves with media portrayals of gay men. It isn’t shocking that men from far more conservative cultures feel even more negatively about it.
For expats,the pay packages arent as hefty as those in Dubai but you get more bang for your buck in Oman. Of those expats who worked in both UAE and Oman always preferred the latter. Of the highly qualified professionals with all the "good"credentials only those who intended an insane amount of money preferred UAE (n times what they would make back in U.S or U.K where n can be 2 all the way to 10 or higher). There are jobs like these in Oman too but not as many.Western gay movement is ideological to the point of even militancy which is understandable seeing as proto gay movement and proto Nazi movements have the same roots in the nudist vegetarian fitness culture of 19th century Germany. Most Omani men I knew seemed to be straight but I did know quite a few Emirati lesbians and bi women. They are frustrated with the conservatism of their culture obviously but they do cherish their national/ethnic identity. I dont know if EmiratiSwag is still trending but there was a very tasteful way of blending Western and GCC aesthetics to achieve a sort of native hip element. My Arabic is passable and can manage if you air drop me in a Bedouin village but my sample is biased as I mostly hung with an eclectic crowd who were educated abroad and were rather cosmopolitan. Some women even drank alcohol, smoked pot and had pre and post marital sex. Before the oil wealth most GCC women would not cover their hair or wear the abbaya. Heck some Bedouin women even wandered topless as one can see from the saucy French post cards from the 18th century. Salafist or garden variety Islamic puritanism and oil wealth seem to go hand in hand.Depression is a serious problem in UAE. Prescription drug abuse is rampant. Similar to Utah I suppose. Atleast they can smoke and drink coffee which Mormons cant. A little prodding and they will open their hearts (and their wallets) to you. In another post I compared the pragmatic Iranian mentality to that of the passionate Arab mindset. Though (by the standards of this forum) I am a Zionist I feel protective of Arabs as they are people who seem easily taken advantage of due to their nature. More so these specific GCC peoples.
Fortunately for Oman, neither has a dog in the fight: Oman is the only majority Muslim nation that is neither Shia nor Sunni.
I see Iran is admitting it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake. The admission--which admittedly was the best policy for Iran, since the truth was going to come out--is a class act.
This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran--but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis--to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that's not Trump's style.
Plain fact is everyone can screw up. In the 80s the Russians shot down a Korean airliner thinking it was a US spy plane … aided by traditional Russian half-assnessed. Then a few years later a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner thinking--confused thinking after being attacked by Iranian patrol boats-- it was an Iranian airforce jet heading to attack.Replies: @Desiderius, @Colin Wright, @Balaji, @PiltdownMan, @Polynikes
Since c. 1970 there have been five or six instances I can recall, of large passenger jets being downed by a missile, by accident, unintentionally.
That’s pretty bad, considering that there have been no large scale wars associated with the events. The world’s militaries and civil aviation authorities really need to improve their aircraft identification protocols.
It's also not what he agreed to do.
He's obviously trying to weasel out of his commitment, but he was paid to start a war with Iran.
The difficulty is that he knows that if he does, he can forget about getting reelected.
I suppose the idea is to appear to keep trying to bait Iran into attacking us -- but to play it all out so that she doesn't actually kill any Americans until after the second Tuesday in November. Needless, to say, his financial backers want just the opposite; they want to see that war actually started before they pony up for the reelection campaign.
I imagine something will be worked out.Replies: @nebulafox
I think this is giving Trump a little too much credit. Trump is the last person you’d want to entrust with long-term schemes of any kind. That’s what makes the idea that he’s a Russian agent so ridiculous: any semi-competent intelligence agency would immediately fire the officer who tries to recruit someone like Donald Trump. He’s the polar opposite of what you want: you want to someone to carry out your plans reliably and predictably, without courting tons of media attention to shady activities.
Media hyperventilation about his supposed white supremacism aside, I can’t find any evidence that The Donald has any ideology at all, or indeed any ideas beyond his whims for the day and taking the least path of resistance on hand when faced with problems. He certainly didn’t have any coherent ideological plans when taking office other than building The Wall (TM) and a hazy sort of Hamiltonian trade policy. He’s largely making it up as he goes.
Unfortunately, the latter usually means he follows the advice of the last person to talk to him, and when you surrounded by people like Jared Kushner and Mitch McConnell, that’s typically not good for the United States: or for much of the rest of the world, too, and Iran in particular. I don’t find Occam’s Razor here implausible: he decided to whack Soleimani based off what the Pentagon and the GOP urged him to do, then he cut his losses at the table with Iran just because Tucker Carlson came on TV and showed that the voters wouldn’t like it.
No worries. I didnt really live in Oman but in neighboring UAE. I did however go there on a regular basis for business and for pleasure maybe 6 to 7 times a year. UAE residents travel to Oman ( its about a 4 hour drive from Dubai to Muscat or a 35 minute flight) just to soak in the chilled out vibe of the place. Even Muscat which is the capital city just seems…quiet. Its hard to describe. There is hardly any traffic despite the population density or road rage which defines Dubai driving. There was also Salalah which is in the unique position of being on the path of the monsoon clouds travelling to India and hence resembles a sub tropical destination compared to the rest of the desert country. Oman compared to Dubai seems more genuine as they actually had a rich cosmopolitan culture and heritage dating back a millenium atleast(older if you subscribe to the Biblical /Quranic folkore – it claims to be the resting place of Job) as a foundation. Dubai or rather UAE(I still use them interchangeably after all these years) really had no urban culture hence overcompensated by going the route that made Dubai the posterchild of extensive, harried, garish development.
For expats,the pay packages arent as hefty as those in Dubai but you get more bang for your buck in Oman. Of those expats who worked in both UAE and Oman always preferred the latter. Of the highly qualified professionals with all the “good”credentials only those who intended an insane amount of money preferred UAE (n times what they would make back in U.S or U.K where n can be 2 all the way to 10 or higher). There are jobs like these in Oman too but not as many.
Western gay movement is ideological to the point of even militancy which is understandable seeing as proto gay movement and proto Nazi movements have the same roots in the nudist vegetarian fitness culture of 19th century Germany. Most Omani men I knew seemed to be straight but I did know quite a few Emirati lesbians and bi women. They are frustrated with the conservatism of their culture obviously but they do cherish their national/ethnic identity. I dont know if EmiratiSwag is still trending but there was a very tasteful way of blending Western and GCC aesthetics to achieve a sort of native hip element. My Arabic is passable and can manage if you air drop me in a Bedouin village but my sample is biased as I mostly hung with an eclectic crowd who were educated abroad and were rather cosmopolitan. Some women even drank alcohol, smoked pot and had pre and post marital sex. Before the oil wealth most GCC women would not cover their hair or wear the abbaya. Heck some Bedouin women even wandered topless as one can see from the saucy French post cards from the 18th century. Salafist or garden variety Islamic puritanism and oil wealth seem to go hand in hand.Depression is a serious problem in UAE. Prescription drug abuse is rampant. Similar to Utah I suppose. Atleast they can smoke and drink coffee which Mormons cant. A little prodding and they will open their hearts (and their wallets) to you. In another post I compared the pragmatic Iranian mentality to that of the passionate Arab mindset. Though (by the standards of this forum) I am a Zionist I feel protective of Arabs as they are people who seem easily taken advantage of due to their nature. More so these specific GCC peoples.
Apparently a few wily expats figured out how to score with Omani women seeing how so many of their husbands are exclusively homosexual – this is something peculiar to Oman. Most Arab customs of “buggery” involve men who are attracted to women but also exercize an option of an active participant.
http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2008/02/sexual-adventures-in-oman.html
Muscat is generally a tough spot if you’re a single guy expat. Especially compared to Dubai, say. You could go for the prostitutes of course. Or as its called in Oman, a ‘Russian Massage’, wink wink. Or a Chinese takeaway. But prostitutes in Oman are hardly the sort you could take to a work dinner party, or likely to offer conversation and actual sophisticated female company.
The competition for the few single Western women is pretty steep, especially with a lot of the real party girls dating mega-rich members of the extended Omani royal family. Guys, as you probably have found out, a dreary job in an office or in the desert, driving a Prado or a Jeep Wrangler won’t cut it against a Ferrari, a big bowl of Andean happy powder and a house the size of a small hotel. But fear not guys. Muscat Confidential can give all you single guys a huge hint.
I have a friend who I found out is dating Omani women. Yep. Omani ladies. I was amazed at his daring. And even more amazed when he elaborated further to explain these were married women! Wow. That’s taking risks that borders on the insane. What if he gets caught, I asked? What if a scorned lover rats him out to the ROP, or even worse, to her brothers?
Ah, no problem, he explained. You do of course have to be very very discreet, but they are even more afraid of being found out than he is!
The trick? These are not ordinary married women, but unfortunate ladies who have had the misfortune to enter into an arranged marriage with a husband that turns out to be homosexual. He of course can’t say to his family when the arrangements are made ”Oh, no, I don’t want to get married Mum, Dad, because you see I’m actually gay. Sorry!” He basically goes through with it. After an initial consummation, presumably doggy style, he’s off all the time with the underground gay scene and Filipino hairdressers, safely married, satisfying his Mum and ignoring his wife. After a while, she figures whats OK for him is OK for her, and so it goes.
The advantage of having an affair with an expat is 1/ he’s as scared of getting caught as you. 2/ he’s unlikely to know your family. 3/ he’ll have a nice secluded bachelor pad surrounded by other expats. 4/ in a few years he’ll be off anyhow.
I was intrigued. Why hadn’t I thought of that when I was single? And how does he meet them?
Apparently the supermarket is the place. Eye contact? Good. Phone number? You’re in.
He must have balls of steel. I’d always be looking over my shoulder for the 5 brothers to burst in brandishing a red hot poker. But he seems very satisfied. And he assures me that they are too.
His only lament is that there are too many. So, there you go guys. Go shopping!
If they’re smart they’ll offer the job to Pete Buttigieg.
I see my “Jack D can’t be a real person” theory is gaining traction.
No offense to the singular or plural Jack D, wherever you are based. Their comments are at least entertaining, although usually way wrong.
Depending on the D nominee he’s done well enough that great swaths of non-AWFLs may feel that it’s safe to stay home too. Alternatively Sanders could play out like UK, or Biden could implode several ways. Fluid situation.
Important thing is the quality of the heat Trump/Rs are getting from our direction.
James Bond seemed to have an eye only for the ladies .Then there was Harry Flashman
Next you will telling me that Harry Flashman (who ? ) is also a fictional character
Interesting thing about Butigieg, Mitch Daniels, Ralph Nader, Shalala, Sunnunu is that their Arab heritage rarely ever comes up in the media. Are Lebanese /Palestinian Christians that well integrated in white mainstream that its a non issue? Contrast this with say Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Ilhan Omar though oddly indulges in infidel white D. Butigieg while not technically Arab hail from a very unique place called Malta which though considered quite European(Knights of Malta and all that) speak a Semitic language not too different from Arabic. What they make of their most famous son being a homo is anyone’s guess.
The former mayor of St. Louis (Slay) was half Lebanese and I don't think anyone viewed him as anything other than an ethnic white person.Replies: @Anonymous, @prosa123
The other day, some very wealthy scion of a senior Arab family – in the UK for ‘study’, apparently, – was stabbed to death right outside Harrods in Knightsbridge, for the sake of his Rolex watch. No doubt the murder was perpetrated by one of the dark complexioned enrichers who so abound in London spreading the love and the diversity.
What a truly, truly f*cked up place contemporary London is.
Yep.
Brings a whole new meaning to that silly little term ‘soft power’, which can only be the complement of ‘hard power'(!), as wielded by the non contemptuous, active, male member of the partnership.
He was notoriously gay at least among cognoscenti here in France . I know it from a French diplomat (gay) and from an old French Duke (straight) independently.
It’s cool for the western media not to out him and ruins his reputation in the eyes of its own people and neighbouring populations. He has been of great help, being a bridge between shias, sunnis and westerners.
I want to know what happened to Leslie Chauncy.
Due to an unfortunate Googleberg, the chaperon Chauncy is lost to history.Replies: @Anonymous, @YetAnotherAnon
I don’t know about Chauncey, but it turns out that the “Tom Greening” in Ranulph Fiennes’ book who was Quaboos’ intelligence officer and confidant (and who helped organise the coup against his father) was in reality the “Tim Landon” described above as an “expatriate friend”.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14682745.2010.498823
So maybe Leslie Chauncy is itself a pseudonym. Ah, found him. Try spelling it Chauncey when searching.
https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6nh4t61#biography
https://www.atheer.om/en/38171/qaboos-our-hero/
https://cco.ndu.edu/News/Article/1375921/12-the-british-experience-in-africa-and-oman/
Can’t find his birth on FreeBMD, but it may have been in Scotland or overseas. Must say there doesn’t seem to be much about him, for a man who was
The advent of the Web and social media must have made sorting “legends” for agents a bit more of a pain. No wonder FB and Google are close to governments, as I imagine they could be very useful in a panopticon world. I wonder if there are files of names to be “forgotten about” at Mountain View?
Major Chauncy was born in India (via ancestry.com) in 1904, died in Dorset in 1986, had a CBE, married Barbara E Miller, there was a Times obit.
Buttigieg is highly relevant, (sort of) coming from an adjacent culture but also engaging in sex with men (though perhaps engaging in that behavior just for career-advancing reasons).
LOL.
Same over here in cricket -playing parts of the UK: “Batting for the other side” is an euphemism-sunning-to -pejorative for a closeted arse-bandit.
Never heard it used in the USA.
http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2008/02/sexual-adventures-in-oman.html
Muscat is generally a tough spot if you’re a single guy expat. Especially compared to Dubai, say. You could go for the prostitutes of course. Or as its called in Oman, a 'Russian Massage', wink wink. Or a Chinese takeaway. But prostitutes in Oman are hardly the sort you could take to a work dinner party, or likely to offer conversation and actual sophisticated female company.
The competition for the few single Western women is pretty steep, especially with a lot of the real party girls dating mega-rich members of the extended Omani royal family. Guys, as you probably have found out, a dreary job in an office or in the desert, driving a Prado or a Jeep Wrangler won’t cut it against a Ferrari, a big bowl of Andean happy powder and a house the size of a small hotel. But fear not guys. Muscat Confidential can give all you single guys a huge hint.
I have a friend who I found out is dating Omani women. Yep. Omani ladies. I was amazed at his daring. And even more amazed when he elaborated further to explain these were married women! Wow. That’s taking risks that borders on the insane. What if he gets caught, I asked? What if a scorned lover rats him out to the ROP, or even worse, to her brothers?
Ah, no problem, he explained. You do of course have to be very very discreet, but they are even more afraid of being found out than he is!
The trick? These are not ordinary married women, but unfortunate ladies who have had the misfortune to enter into an arranged marriage with a husband that turns out to be homosexual. He of course can’t say to his family when the arrangements are made ''Oh, no, I don’t want to get married Mum, Dad, because you see I’m actually gay. Sorry!'' He basically goes through with it. After an initial consummation, presumably doggy style, he’s off all the time with the underground gay scene and Filipino hairdressers, safely married, satisfying his Mum and ignoring his wife. After a while, she figures whats OK for him is OK for her, and so it goes.
The advantage of having an affair with an expat is 1/ he’s as scared of getting caught as you. 2/ he’s unlikely to know your family. 3/ he’ll have a nice secluded bachelor pad surrounded by other expats. 4/ in a few years he’ll be off anyhow.
I was intrigued. Why hadn’t I thought of that when I was single? And how does he meet them?
Apparently the supermarket is the place. Eye contact? Good. Phone number? You’re in.
He must have balls of steel. I’d always be looking over my shoulder for the 5 brothers to burst in brandishing a red hot poker. But he seems very satisfied. And he assures me that they are too.
His only lament is that there are too many. So, there you go guys. Go shopping!Replies: @Anonymous, @No Jack london
‘Muscat’ – by the way these particular gays behave, they really seem to act like cats spraying musk all over the place.
Gulf Arabs, for one, don’t take the post 1960s garbage of ‘equality’ seriously – hence their egregious refusal to accept their co religionists from Syria as refugees, and other acts of clear thinking rationality which baffle the PC whipped westerners, ironically.
Suspect that many subcons are butthurt by this display of good old fashioned common sense and longing for the ‘natural order of things’.
2. You might conceive of the Gulf Emirates as industrial park / office park / tourist park societies. The parks have owners who supply the security staff, occupy the senior executive positions, and work in some capacities around the park. The rest of the people arrive their to work and engage in consumer activity which generates revenue (of which the park owners get a cut). The foreigners may or may not have permission to bring their dependents, have residence visas which vary in their duration depending on the human capital they bring to the table, are not permitted to own real property, and belong to mutual aid societies which provide common services (e.g. schooling) which the state supplies to the park owners. There really isn't a niche for refugees qua refugees in such a social system, merely refugees with skills who arrive to work for a couple of years 'ere going home. The government in the Gulf Emirates is likely chary about that as they have no home to go to for the time being. NB, about 1/4 of the resident population of Kuwait at one time were refugees &c from the former mandatory Palestine, some with Jordanian citizenship and some stateless. The Kuwaiti government figured at the end of the 1st Gulf War that that had worked out rather badly for them and these Arabs were not welcome back.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Your bigotry is tedious.Replies: @Jack D, @Jay Igaboo
This is not bigotry, it’s just facts. Before oil was discovered in the 1960s, the GDP of Oman was around $160 per person, which is comparable to Haiti’s. Oman is Haiti with oil. Take the oil away and see if I am wrong.
Signed,
The Jack D Team
See the latest Maddison Project release. In 1960, Pakistan's per capita product was in real terms lower than Haiti's and lower than Oman's as well. As we speak, fuel and mineral exports account for 0.3% of Pakistan's nominal GDP. Real GDP per capita has increased 4-fold in Pakistan since 1960. That's because people in Pakistan have mastered techniques which allow them to produce more goods and services, just like they did in Britain between 1760 and 1920.
This is not bigotry, it’s just facts.
The term 'fact' does not mean what you think it means.
I gather part of the law school curriculum is indoctrinating students with the illusion that there is no such thing as human capital and that no one actually acquires any skills. Which may be an attractive notion to people who aspire to a career wherein a great deal of your income comes from shakedowns and rent-extraction. The thing is, Omanis can acquire skills too, and can and will do so even if you refuse to acknowledge they're doing it. As we speak, per capita product there outside the oil and mineral sector exceeds the real value of total per capita product (in 1960) by a factor of 4.4.
And a comparison with Haiti is bizarre. Haiti is one of a short list of countries whose measurable standard of living has declined since 1960. (On the list are Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and seven countries in tropical Africa).Replies: @Jack D
>Jack D, an actual law school graduate: yeah, but what about before the period we're talking about?
https://postimg.cc/5YKGndPR
Same over here in cricket -playing parts of the UK: "Batting for the other side" is an euphemism-sunning-to -pejorative for a closeted arse-bandit.
Never heard it used in the USA.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon
Also “bowling round the wicket” (as opposed to the usual “over the wicket” delivery).
Another cricketing pejorative for shirt-lifters?
One is amazed to find that I don't know every pejorative that can be used to trigger the snowflakerie into a frenzy of proxy outrage on behalf of PC beneficiaries.
I can only plead a degree of cricketing ignorance, no doubt because I am Jockinese, who. like almost all Celts, accept the judgement of fellow Celt( but convicted turd-burglar) Oscar Wilde, who described cricket as "organised loafing"!
:-)
Signed,
The Jack D TeamReplies: @Art Deco, @J.Ross
Before oil was discovered in the 1960s, the GDP of Oman was around $160 per person, which is comparable to Haiti’s.
See the latest Maddison Project release. In 1960, Pakistan’s per capita product was in real terms lower than Haiti’s and lower than Oman’s as well. As we speak, fuel and mineral exports account for 0.3% of Pakistan’s nominal GDP. Real GDP per capita has increased 4-fold in Pakistan since 1960. That’s because people in Pakistan have mastered techniques which allow them to produce more goods and services, just like they did in Britain between 1760 and 1920.
This is not bigotry, it’s just facts.
The term ‘fact’ does not mean what you think it means.
I gather part of the law school curriculum is indoctrinating students with the illusion that there is no such thing as human capital and that no one actually acquires any skills. Which may be an attractive notion to people who aspire to a career wherein a great deal of your income comes from shakedowns and rent-extraction. The thing is, Omanis can acquire skills too, and can and will do so even if you refuse to acknowledge they’re doing it. As we speak, per capita product there outside the oil and mineral sector exceeds the real value of total per capita product (in 1960) by a factor of 4.4.
And a comparison with Haiti is bizarre. Haiti is one of a short list of countries whose measurable standard of living has declined since 1960. (On the list are Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and seven countries in tropical Africa).
Of course using that oil wealth they have educated their population somewhat and even if the oil ran out perhaps it would not immediately sink back to $640. But if you imagine some alternate history where the oil is never discovered and project that they would have grown at the same rate as Pakistan, their current GDP would be $640 per capita. It's all built on oil, like I said originally. I revise what I said before. "Without oil, they would be Pakistan." That's better than Haiti, but not by much.
I have to say that my law school curriculum didn't touch on economics much if at all. I don't know what law school has to do with this and I don't know why you keep bringing it up.Replies: @Desiderius, @Lot
OT
Steve’s suggestion was sort of taken seriously by Los Angeles, and his prediction has sort of come to pass.
In the Los Angeles Times, the city hires a “young, black, female lesbian” named “Cat” Packer, who also has one of those special law degrees that they’ve been handing out to blacks lately, the kind that don’t get you clerkships or partner offers.
So anyway, Cat, who solves the hair issue with a lesbian buzz cut, such that she looks like a teenaged boy ready to steal your watch … Cat has never run any sort of program in her life and fucks it up.
Next stop, threats from blacks who had put up cash but not gotten licenses and an audit from the mayor. And the zip code based system to target “victims” of pot laws ended up including, no, not Korean neighborhoods, but that other great Los Angeles immigrant community, Armenians, who applied en masse for licenses. Blacks couldn’t figure out the online application system, but they did manage to drag their incompetent asses down to the city council to bitch.
I lived in Oman for a while and can confirm this. It was a very pleasant place, not garishly wealthy like its neighbours but everything seemed to work well and the people seemed comfortable.
It’s too bad if they’ve run up foreign debt because Oman used to be one of only a handful of countries that had little debt.
Like all Arabs, Omanis are very welcoming and hospitable. It’s also very beautiful (assuming that like me, you like the desert), mountainous and has hundreds of kilometres of Arabian Sea coastline.
Dunno, probably would be useless as he makes many posts in a short period
Qaboos was a true come-from-behind success story.
I think that’s right. I think they’re viewed as similar to Italians and Greeks in being just another variety of white people.
The former mayor of St. Louis (Slay) was half Lebanese and I don’t think anyone viewed him as anything other than an ethnic white person.
** = rumor had it that the mainland Portuguese, who were the majority of the Portuguese population, regarded the Azorean minority as country bumpkins. There also was a dark-skinned Cape Verdean population, and they were much closer to the white Portuguese than to other blacks.Replies: @Anon
Qabuws — the first consonant must come in the back of your throat.
That's pretty bad, considering that there have been no large scale wars associated with the events. The world's militaries and civil aviation authorities really need to improve their aircraft identification protocols.Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic
Isn’t the tech just point-and-shoot now? I wouldn’t be surprised if you could set it to track and fire automatically for a certain altitude and airspeed. That way, you and your fellow soldiers can set it and go off somewhere to smoke cigarettes and play cards while your smart-AA just watches and waits.
OT:
Thank you Afroyim v. Rusk:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-10/california-residents-vote-taiwanese-presidential-election
See the latest Maddison Project release. In 1960, Pakistan's per capita product was in real terms lower than Haiti's and lower than Oman's as well. As we speak, fuel and mineral exports account for 0.3% of Pakistan's nominal GDP. Real GDP per capita has increased 4-fold in Pakistan since 1960. That's because people in Pakistan have mastered techniques which allow them to produce more goods and services, just like they did in Britain between 1760 and 1920.
This is not bigotry, it’s just facts.
The term 'fact' does not mean what you think it means.
I gather part of the law school curriculum is indoctrinating students with the illusion that there is no such thing as human capital and that no one actually acquires any skills. Which may be an attractive notion to people who aspire to a career wherein a great deal of your income comes from shakedowns and rent-extraction. The thing is, Omanis can acquire skills too, and can and will do so even if you refuse to acknowledge they're doing it. As we speak, per capita product there outside the oil and mineral sector exceeds the real value of total per capita product (in 1960) by a factor of 4.4.
And a comparison with Haiti is bizarre. Haiti is one of a short list of countries whose measurable standard of living has declined since 1960. (On the list are Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and seven countries in tropical Africa).Replies: @Jack D
Right, so let’s apply the same factor to Oman and their current GDP per capital would now be $640. Oil explains the other $14,000+ of their current GDP. 400 or 440% growth sounds fantastic but once you apply it to a base of $160 it’s not so fantastic any more.
Of course using that oil wealth they have educated their population somewhat and even if the oil ran out perhaps it would not immediately sink back to $640. But if you imagine some alternate history where the oil is never discovered and project that they would have grown at the same rate as Pakistan, their current GDP would be $640 per capita. It’s all built on oil, like I said originally. I revise what I said before. “Without oil, they would be Pakistan.” That’s better than Haiti, but not by much.
I have to say that my law school curriculum didn’t touch on economics much if at all. I don’t know what law school has to do with this and I don’t know why you keep bringing it up.
Oman is resource-cursed and reliant on foreign labor.
The part of the economy that isn’t officially oil and gas is mostly providing services to people who work in those sectors.
They have absolutely nothing except regional tourism and incense that is competitive in world markets.
Without oil a reasonable per capita GDP range is between Yemen ($925) and Djibouti ($2084). Perhaps a little higher if our counterfactual is Oman has no oil but its neighborhood still has plenty, as it would serve as a tourism and short-life fresh produce source.Replies: @Art Deco
Chasten (heh) is his beard. He hasn’t hit puberty yet.
Of course using that oil wealth they have educated their population somewhat and even if the oil ran out perhaps it would not immediately sink back to $640. But if you imagine some alternate history where the oil is never discovered and project that they would have grown at the same rate as Pakistan, their current GDP would be $640 per capita. It's all built on oil, like I said originally. I revise what I said before. "Without oil, they would be Pakistan." That's better than Haiti, but not by much.
I have to say that my law school curriculum didn't touch on economics much if at all. I don't know what law school has to do with this and I don't know why you keep bringing it up.Replies: @Desiderius, @Lot
The outsized influence of Jews though substantial is exagerrated. Not so lawyers. To the detriment of all.
http://www.tnhistoryforkids.org/history/virtual-tours/sm_files/loststatesign.jpg
https://www.tngenweb.org/pre1796/franklin.gif
We have a lot of law school grads who go into politics, but they seem mostly to have never practiced law, or done so for less than 5 years.
B Clinton, Obama, Warren: law academia after law school
Romney: business after law school
H Clinton: practiced about 10 years at Rose Law Firm. Even then, she was the wife of the AG/Gov and likely was more of a fixer/lobbyist than someone who wrote briefs and tried cases.
Biden: maybe 3 years of legal practiceReplies: @J.Ross, @Desiderius
https://postimg.cc/LnbGF1M0Replies: @Desiderius
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/carter-doctrine-conundrum-has-trump-repudiated-foundational-element-us-national-security
http://muscatconfidential.blogspot.com/2008/02/sexual-adventures-in-oman.html
Muscat is generally a tough spot if you’re a single guy expat. Especially compared to Dubai, say. You could go for the prostitutes of course. Or as its called in Oman, a 'Russian Massage', wink wink. Or a Chinese takeaway. But prostitutes in Oman are hardly the sort you could take to a work dinner party, or likely to offer conversation and actual sophisticated female company.
The competition for the few single Western women is pretty steep, especially with a lot of the real party girls dating mega-rich members of the extended Omani royal family. Guys, as you probably have found out, a dreary job in an office or in the desert, driving a Prado or a Jeep Wrangler won’t cut it against a Ferrari, a big bowl of Andean happy powder and a house the size of a small hotel. But fear not guys. Muscat Confidential can give all you single guys a huge hint.
I have a friend who I found out is dating Omani women. Yep. Omani ladies. I was amazed at his daring. And even more amazed when he elaborated further to explain these were married women! Wow. That’s taking risks that borders on the insane. What if he gets caught, I asked? What if a scorned lover rats him out to the ROP, or even worse, to her brothers?
Ah, no problem, he explained. You do of course have to be very very discreet, but they are even more afraid of being found out than he is!
The trick? These are not ordinary married women, but unfortunate ladies who have had the misfortune to enter into an arranged marriage with a husband that turns out to be homosexual. He of course can’t say to his family when the arrangements are made ''Oh, no, I don’t want to get married Mum, Dad, because you see I’m actually gay. Sorry!'' He basically goes through with it. After an initial consummation, presumably doggy style, he’s off all the time with the underground gay scene and Filipino hairdressers, safely married, satisfying his Mum and ignoring his wife. After a while, she figures whats OK for him is OK for her, and so it goes.
The advantage of having an affair with an expat is 1/ he’s as scared of getting caught as you. 2/ he’s unlikely to know your family. 3/ he’ll have a nice secluded bachelor pad surrounded by other expats. 4/ in a few years he’ll be off anyhow.
I was intrigued. Why hadn’t I thought of that when I was single? And how does he meet them?
Apparently the supermarket is the place. Eye contact? Good. Phone number? You’re in.
He must have balls of steel. I’d always be looking over my shoulder for the 5 brothers to burst in brandishing a red hot poker. But he seems very satisfied. And he assures me that they are too.
His only lament is that there are too many. So, there you go guys. Go shopping!Replies: @Anonymous, @No Jack london
Do these guys speak Arabic or do the ladies speak English?
For GCC women generally Indian and Pakistanis are considered beneath their station generally but the charismatic men among them do cleanup with the women. The women's odd obsession with Bollywood helps somewhat.
Being gay would explain why he played the flute.
By the way, the great Roger Scruton died earlier today, after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 75.
I spent a week-end with him and his daughter at his farmhouse in Wiltshire some twenty years ago: he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a profoundly insightful student of our civilisation and its woes.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Lot, @kaganovitch
Also RIP to the Greatest Living Englishman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_the_Great_Playing_the_Flute_at_Sanssouci#/media/File:Adolph_Menzel_-_Fl%C3%B6tenkonzert_Friedrichs_des_Gro%C3%9Fen_in_Sanssouci_-_Google_Art_Project.jpgReplies: @Old Palo Altan
A joke, I hope.
By the way, the great Roger Scruton died earlier today, after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 75.
I spent a week-end with him and his daughter at his farmhouse in Wiltshire some twenty years ago: he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a profoundly insightful student of our civilisation and its woes.
Orban awarded him a medal and gave a nice speech last month.
https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-lauds-sir-roger-scruton-loyal-friend-of-freedom-loving-hungarians/
Agree, its by far the best country to visit in the region. Saudi Arabia is of course the worst, and has the worst people.
The constitution proposed for the State of Franklin barred doctors and lawyers from serving in the legislature.
By the way, the great Roger Scruton died earlier today, after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 75.
I spent a week-end with him and his daughter at his farmhouse in Wiltshire some twenty years ago: he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a profoundly insightful student of our civilisation and its woes.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Lot, @kaganovitch
Our culture, if that term still applies, could stand to use a lot more “scrutony”.
Suspect that many subcons are butthurt by this display of good old fashioned common sense and longing for the 'natural order of things'.Replies: @Art Deco
1. A conventional policy for addressing refugee situations is to maintain them in camps proximate to their country of origin with a view to their eventual repatriation. The Gulf Emirates are separated from Syria by several hundred miles of desert.
2. You might conceive of the Gulf Emirates as industrial park / office park / tourist park societies. The parks have owners who supply the security staff, occupy the senior executive positions, and work in some capacities around the park. The rest of the people arrive their to work and engage in consumer activity which generates revenue (of which the park owners get a cut). The foreigners may or may not have permission to bring their dependents, have residence visas which vary in their duration depending on the human capital they bring to the table, are not permitted to own real property, and belong to mutual aid societies which provide common services (e.g. schooling) which the state supplies to the park owners. There really isn’t a niche for refugees qua refugees in such a social system, merely refugees with skills who arrive to work for a couple of years ‘ere going home. The government in the Gulf Emirates is likely chary about that as they have no home to go to for the time being. NB, about 1/4 of the resident population of Kuwait at one time were refugees &c from the former mandatory Palestine, some with Jordanian citizenship and some stateless. The Kuwaiti government figured at the end of the 1st Gulf War that that had worked out rather badly for them and these Arabs were not welcome back.
(Actually, that's the feeling I get in downtown Washington-- that I'm in Disneydistrict, complete with a height limit so nothing rises above the Magic Castle.)
https://cdn.citylab.com/media/img/citylab/2012/11/26/shutterstock_107418896/lead_large.jpg?mod=1494545522
Of course using that oil wealth they have educated their population somewhat and even if the oil ran out perhaps it would not immediately sink back to $640. But if you imagine some alternate history where the oil is never discovered and project that they would have grown at the same rate as Pakistan, their current GDP would be $640 per capita. It's all built on oil, like I said originally. I revise what I said before. "Without oil, they would be Pakistan." That's better than Haiti, but not by much.
I have to say that my law school curriculum didn't touch on economics much if at all. I don't know what law school has to do with this and I don't know why you keep bringing it up.Replies: @Desiderius, @Lot
Art Deco is being dumb and tedious.
Oman is resource-cursed and reliant on foreign labor.
The part of the economy that isn’t officially oil and gas is mostly providing services to people who work in those sectors.
They have absolutely nothing except regional tourism and incense that is competitive in world markets.
Without oil a reasonable per capita GDP range is between Yemen ($925) and Djibouti ($2084). Perhaps a little higher if our counterfactual is Oman has no oil but its neighborhood still has plenty, as it would serve as a tourism and short-life fresh produce source.
You mean you have access to highly granular input-output tables on the Omani economy. Where did you get them?
Without oil a reasonable per capita GDP range is between Yemen ($925) and Djibouti ($2084). Perhaps a little higher if our counterfactual is Oman has no oil but its neighborhood still has plenty, as it would serve as a tourism and short-life fresh produce source.
How did you manufacture this counterfactual? To which other places are you comparing Oman?Replies: @Jack D
Do actual practicing lawyers have a lot of political influence compared to other learned professions?
We have a lot of law school grads who go into politics, but they seem mostly to have never practiced law, or done so for less than 5 years.
B Clinton, Obama, Warren: law academia after law school
Romney: business after law school
H Clinton: practiced about 10 years at Rose Law Firm. Even then, she was the wife of the AG/Gov and likely was more of a fixer/lobbyist than someone who wrote briefs and tried cases.
Biden: maybe 3 years of legal practice
Oman is resource-cursed and reliant on foreign labor.
The part of the economy that isn’t officially oil and gas is mostly providing services to people who work in those sectors.
They have absolutely nothing except regional tourism and incense that is competitive in world markets.
Without oil a reasonable per capita GDP range is between Yemen ($925) and Djibouti ($2084). Perhaps a little higher if our counterfactual is Oman has no oil but its neighborhood still has plenty, as it would serve as a tourism and short-life fresh produce source.Replies: @Art Deco
The part of the economy that isn’t officially oil and gas is mostly providing services to people who work in those sectors.
You mean you have access to highly granular input-output tables on the Omani economy. Where did you get them?
Without oil a reasonable per capita GDP range is between Yemen ($925) and Djibouti ($2084). Perhaps a little higher if our counterfactual is Oman has no oil but its neighborhood still has plenty, as it would serve as a tourism and short-life fresh produce source.
How did you manufacture this counterfactual? To which other places are you comparing Oman?
By the way, the great Roger Scruton died earlier today, after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 75.
I spent a week-end with him and his daughter at his farmhouse in Wiltshire some twenty years ago: he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a profoundly insightful student of our civilisation and its woes.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Lot, @kaganovitch
He knew Viktor Orban when he was only 19!
Orban awarded him a medal and gave a nice speech last month.
https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-lauds-sir-roger-scruton-loyal-friend-of-freedom-loving-hungarians/
Signed,
The Jack D TeamReplies: @Art Deco, @J.Ross
>assertion: Oman’s most recent leader, who took power in the 70s, did relatively good stuff instead of standard third world dictator behavior
>Jack D, an actual law school graduate: yeah, but what about before the period we’re talking about?
https://postimg.cc/5YKGndPR
We have a lot of law school grads who go into politics, but they seem mostly to have never practiced law, or done so for less than 5 years.
B Clinton, Obama, Warren: law academia after law school
Romney: business after law school
H Clinton: practiced about 10 years at Rose Law Firm. Even then, she was the wife of the AG/Gov and likely was more of a fixer/lobbyist than someone who wrote briefs and tried cases.
Biden: maybe 3 years of legal practiceReplies: @J.Ross, @Desiderius
I don’t know about then but it’s definitely the case now. Trial lawyers have an oft-bemoaned and enormously powerful lobby, and are near-monolithically globohomo Democrats. That’s on top of speaking the language, being the primary customer, and being the major feeder population of the legislature. When citizens complain to legislators about laws and legal philosophies, it’s generally ignored, and some of it should be, but lawyers are like front line soldiers reporting back to the staff that a particular tool or tactic really doesn’t work. The real gripe though is probably dependent on a belief that The Lawyer comes to see the world a certain way, valuing rhetorical logic over results and tolerating evil procedures.
The former mayor of St. Louis (Slay) was half Lebanese and I don't think anyone viewed him as anything other than an ethnic white person.Replies: @Anonymous, @prosa123
Thats largely true. There is a cutoff though. Coptic christians are not viewed as white, much as I support them in Egypt. its a fine line. Kardashians are only whitish.
Jewish disproportionate effect isn’t even Jewish disproportion, it’s almost always the outsize contribution of one guy who happens to be Jewish (but who also magically becomes “all Jews” should you presume to criticize him). It could be called the “And Then There’s This Asshole” Effect.
https://postimg.cc/LnbGF1M0
Now you've got arrogant schlemiels like Stelter and Schiff pissing it all away. The recent Kris appointment was definitely lawyers saying hold my beer.Replies: @Brutusale
But who will be the the new scrutonator?
2. You might conceive of the Gulf Emirates as industrial park / office park / tourist park societies. The parks have owners who supply the security staff, occupy the senior executive positions, and work in some capacities around the park. The rest of the people arrive their to work and engage in consumer activity which generates revenue (of which the park owners get a cut). The foreigners may or may not have permission to bring their dependents, have residence visas which vary in their duration depending on the human capital they bring to the table, are not permitted to own real property, and belong to mutual aid societies which provide common services (e.g. schooling) which the state supplies to the park owners. There really isn't a niche for refugees qua refugees in such a social system, merely refugees with skills who arrive to work for a couple of years 'ere going home. The government in the Gulf Emirates is likely chary about that as they have no home to go to for the time being. NB, about 1/4 of the resident population of Kuwait at one time were refugees &c from the former mandatory Palestine, some with Jordanian citizenship and some stateless. The Kuwaiti government figured at the end of the 1st Gulf War that that had worked out rather badly for them and these Arabs were not welcome back.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
Exactly. A person staying in a tent over the border is a refugee. A person living in a house over the sea is an immigrant.
Theme parks.
(Actually, that’s the feeling I get in downtown Washington– that I’m in Disneydistrict, complete with a height limit so nothing rises above the Magic Castle.)
By the way, the great Roger Scruton died earlier today, after a six-month battle with cancer. He was 75.
I spent a week-end with him and his daughter at his farmhouse in Wiltshire some twenty years ago: he was a gentleman, a scholar, and a profoundly insightful student of our civilisation and its woes.Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Lot, @kaganovitch
An indispensable man, R.I.P.
Yeah, on the way to the graveyard.
Hello, Sailer.
Since there is so much gay crap in the comment thread, I can’t resist.
The saultan seems tn have been a good one,perhaps he is recproductuviely dysfunctional, .
I have never ben to the UAE or Duaai,
However, when I was influential and then an admin on a notorious U.S. site, someone from there decided to start an e-mail correspondence. I always replied until the intra-site dramasicked out (and led to the つsite,
Westerners have a kind of complex.
You can go to a baro or restaurant in Seoul, after a big gathering, everybody is holdimg hands.
There is no overtone of homoeroticism.
Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/Replies: @nebulafox, @Reg Cæsar
>But what seems more startling, at least from a Western perspective, is that some of the men having sex with other men don’t consider themselves gay. For many Saudis, the fact that a man has sex with another man has little to do with “gayness.” The act may fulfill a desire or a need, but it doesn’t constitute an identity.
For the overwhelming majority of human history, it was this way.
They say it as if it is this barbaric, horrible, retrograde thing, not having the concept of who you are as a human being revolve around who you have sex with.
Everyone else really didn’t care much as long as you married and had kids.Replies: @Desiderius
The former mayor of St. Louis (Slay) was half Lebanese and I don't think anyone viewed him as anything other than an ethnic white person.Replies: @Anonymous, @prosa123
I grew up in a Northeastern city with a substantial Lebanese Christian population and would second the notion that people regarded them as somewhat exotic whites but not as minorities. And this was in a city where ethnic identities were strong. The Lebanese Christians did tend to associate among themselves to a greater extent than other white ethnic groups, but only to an extent. What may have been the most exotic part about them was religion – most of the city’s white population was Catholic, but the Lebanese followed the somewhat different Maronite rite and went to their own church. They were similar to the Greeks in that respect.
Physically, some of the Lebanese looked slightly different than “white” whites, but it was by no means always the case and even the most exotic-looking ones could have passed for being of European descent.
Interestingly, there were two other groups that got similar exotic-white treatment: Albanians* (European but mostly secular Muslims) and Portuguese** (also European, but more recently arrived than other groups).
* = I believe many of the Albanians actually were Kosovar, but no one outside the group made that distinction.
** = rumor had it that the mainland Portuguese, who were the majority of the Portuguese population, regarded the Azorean minority as country bumpkins. There also was a dark-skinned Cape Verdean population, and they were much closer to the white Portuguese than to other blacks.
Whatever some aver his proclivities, he managed the ship of state well enough. That should be enough.
We have a lot of law school grads who go into politics, but they seem mostly to have never practiced law, or done so for less than 5 years.
B Clinton, Obama, Warren: law academia after law school
Romney: business after law school
H Clinton: practiced about 10 years at Rose Law Firm. Even then, she was the wife of the AG/Gov and likely was more of a fixer/lobbyist than someone who wrote briefs and tried cases.
Biden: maybe 3 years of legal practiceReplies: @J.Ross, @Desiderius
That’s about the (out)size of it.
This can’t be said loudly enough.
There is nothing Western about such a perspective. It is the product of a pride too overweening to settle for merely one civilization.
Perditio ut nihilo
** = rumor had it that the mainland Portuguese, who were the majority of the Portuguese population, regarded the Azorean minority as country bumpkins. There also was a dark-skinned Cape Verdean population, and they were much closer to the white Portuguese than to other blacks.Replies: @Anon
Excellent post but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Maronites are Catholics in full communion with Rome. Which you probably know given your phrasing but other people might not.
but the Lebanese followed the somewhat different Maronite rite and went to their own church.
St. Louis Gonzaga?
Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/Replies: @nebulafox, @Reg Cæsar
I’ve never been thirsty enough to drink from the toilet bowl.
An indispensable man, R.I.P.
Yeah, on the way to the graveyard.
Oman has more diverse economy simply for that reason as the lack of ego doesnt prevent Omanis from finding work in any sector that they feel they can thrive in. In contrast to say UAE, all efforts to find work for not too terribly sharp Emiratis have failed . I remember a scheme where they tried to get to work as cashiers in Spinneys(a local high end supermarket chain), all I remember is the seering contempt that they showed as they bagged your groceries and handed you the receipt. That didnt last too long. To be fair UAE has also seen the writing on the wall and has started diversifying into not just tourism and hospitality but start ups, construction, technology and so on. How this goes is anyone's guess.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I hear the process is burj-eoning.
I remember when I first visited Italy in high school. The teenagers and men under 40 tended to be thin, well groomed, and wear tight fashionable clothes in a way that screamed GAY! in the midwest.
Then there’s the whole “men holding hands with friends walking down the street” thing in the Middle East.Replies: @syonredux, @Reg Cæsar
Men feel free to do that in “homophobic” societies. I’ve seen it in Korea.
You should read some of the florid greetings he-men opened their letters to other he-men with in Elizabethan times, when actual sodomy could get you garotted.
A “metrosexual” was nothing more than a straight guy who tucked his shirt in. That not being a slob gets you labelled a queer in America is somewhat of a blot on our image.
I see Iran is admitting it shot down the Ukrainian airliner by mistake. The admission--which admittedly was the best policy for Iran, since the truth was going to come out--is a class act.
This would be a good time for Trump to offer some rhetorical olive branches, express condolences, and understanding while calling on Iran--but also everyone else, the US, the Russians, Turkey, the Saudis, Israelis--to curb the adventurism, dial it back and let the people of individual nations sort out their own affairs. And then get the US out of Iraq. Unfortunately … that's not Trump's style.
Plain fact is everyone can screw up. In the 80s the Russians shot down a Korean airliner thinking it was a US spy plane … aided by traditional Russian half-assnessed. Then a few years later a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner thinking--confused thinking after being attacked by Iranian patrol boats-- it was an Iranian airforce jet heading to attack.Replies: @Desiderius, @Colin Wright, @Balaji, @PiltdownMan, @Polynikes
They deflected and placed blame on the US. You have an odd definition of class.
I personally think Qaboos’s exSAS advisors referred to the middle of the Mayfair Set program by Adam Curtis linked to above at comment 21 had a hand in convincing him to try it.
You should read some of the florid greetings he-men opened their letters to other he-men with in Elizabethan times, when actual sodomy could get you garotted.A "metrosexual" was nothing more than a straight guy who tucked his shirt in. That not being a slob gets you labelled a queer in America is somewhat of a blot on our image.Replies: @Anonymous
Do you have some examples ?
Though she doesn't quote any herself, Dr Dollimore of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust explains the stark difference between male relationships in that day and ours:
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/was-shakespeare-gay/
Certain scenes in the plays are played homoerotically today, when they probably were no more meant to be than Bud Light's "I Love You, Man" campaign.
You mean you have access to highly granular input-output tables on the Omani economy. Where did you get them?
Without oil a reasonable per capita GDP range is between Yemen ($925) and Djibouti ($2084). Perhaps a little higher if our counterfactual is Oman has no oil but its neighborhood still has plenty, as it would serve as a tourism and short-life fresh produce source.
How did you manufacture this counterfactual? To which other places are you comparing Oman?Replies: @Jack D
Switzerland.
Why are you comparing it to a country which has been among the world’s most affluent for more than a century?
Immediately falsified. I know several.
In 2016 there was a lot of concern surrounding Trump being a complete unknown, that he would start a nuclear war or invade Mexico or whatever. Now that we have had 3 years of general peace and prosperity under Trump, and the shock and novelty of a President Tweeting has worn off, people are feeling free to vote against the Democrats and their clown car.
Steve's suggestion was sort of taken seriously by Los Angeles, and his prediction has sort of come to pass.In the Los Angeles Times, the city hires a "young, black, female lesbian" named "Cat" Packer, who also has one of those special law degrees that they've been handing out to blacks lately, the kind that don't get you clerkships or partner offers.So anyway, Cat, who solves the hair issue with a lesbian buzz cut, such that she looks like a teenaged boy ready to steal your watch ... Cat has never run any sort of program in her life and fucks it up.Next stop, threats from blacks who had put up cash but not gotten licenses and an audit from the mayor. And the zip code based system to target "victims" of pot laws ended up including, no, not Korean neighborhoods, but that other great Los Angeles immigrant community, Armenians, who applied en masse for licenses. Blacks couldn't figure out the online application system, but they did manage to drag their incompetent asses down to the city council to bitch.Replies: @Ghost of Bull Moose, @Dissident
So it’s all not going, according to (Steve’s) plan.
What??!
Another cricketing pejorative for shirt-lifters?
One is amazed to find that I don’t know every pejorative that can be used to trigger the snowflakerie into a frenzy of proxy outrage on behalf of PC beneficiaries.
I can only plead a degree of cricketing ignorance, no doubt because I am Jockinese, who. like almost all Celts, accept the judgement of fellow Celt( but convicted turd-burglar) Oscar Wilde, who described cricket as “organised loafing”!
🙂
Clearly, the old boy needed to close his eyes and think of England……
My mother and I lived in these townhouse apartments for a couple years when I was 10 and 11. Our next-door neighbors were a man in his late 30’s or thereabouts, his much younger wife, and a toddler daughter. The wife couldn’t have been more than 21, they had gotten married when she was right out of high school, and even as a kid I could tell that she was very naive and a bit overwhelmed with being a wife and mother. My mother sometimes gave her advice on house cleaning and shopping and things like that.
Something else I was able to notice despite my age is that while the other women living in the complex were friendly with the husband, the other men seemed to avoid him and I could tell that they didn’t like him much. He actually seemed a bit “off,” though I couldn’t articulate just why.
One day I told my mother that some older kids were talking about Mr. Smith. When she asked what they were saying, I responded with a question of my own: “Mom, what’s a f@gg0t?”
The Kardashians being only “whitish” is due to their hairstyles, clothing, makeup, plastic surgeries, and bronzers. Even the one who isn’t the daughter of the Armenian guy, Kylie Jenner, has transformed herself into an ethnically ambiguous barbie doll. She looked pretty normal as a teen.
You’re really a genuine autist, aren’t you? It must not be easy being so literal minded.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Switzerland-considered-a-Third-World-country/answer/Jaydip-Halvadiya-જયદીપ-હળવદિયા
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D706YzGXUAA3dPR.jpg
If that cut helps you feel better about being a know-nothing loudmouth, go with that.
“Stratfordian” scholars do. They’ll quote them to answer speculation that the Bard was a poofter.
Though she doesn’t quote any herself, Dr Dollimore of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust explains the stark difference between male relationships in that day and ours:
https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcasts/lets-talk-shakespeare/was-shakespeare-gay/
Certain scenes in the plays are played homoerotically today, when they probably were no more meant to be than Bud Light’s “I Love You, Man” campaign.
Switzerland was the original Third World country. Literally:
https://www.quora.com/Is-Switzerland-considered-a-Third-World-country/answer/Jaydip-Halvadiya-જયદીપ-હળવદિયા
https://postimg.cc/LnbGF1M0Replies: @Desiderius
That’s how they’re rapidly burning through the influence it took generations to build. For my generation Jews were guys like Gene Simmons you’d want to have a beer with and, crucially, would want to have a beer with you. Watch that Mike Douglas clip.
Now you’ve got arrogant schlemiels like Stelter and Schiff pissing it all away. The recent Kris appointment was definitely lawyers saying hold my beer.
This will not stand.
At very least we must airlift several hundred thousand Omani refugees in to Maine and Minnesota.
This is who we are.Replies: @Dr Van Nostrand, @Cato
The Omani women I’ve seen (they were not veiled) would light up the streets of small towns in Maine. But I’m afraid they aren’t coming — we are just going to keep on getting Somalis.
Your bigotry is tedious.Replies: @Jack D, @Jay Igaboo
Even more tedious are Libtards vitue signals by throwing out labels.
In the 70’s most Omani’s just shit nearby wherever they happened to be,.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes was a Contract Officer (i.e. a British Army officer or SNCO who signed a contract to serve as an “instructor ” with Omani forces, for which the Omanis paid plenty),
Ranulph Fiennes is , to invent a word, an “Omaniphile”.
Maybe an Arab Romanticist would be more accurate.
in his memoirs of serving in Oman, he several times expressed in affection and his his preference to the Firquats, the Omani irregulars, under his command, to the working-class un-commissioned Scottish he was lucky enough to command whilst serving in The Royal Scots Greys.
This is preference founded on snobbery rather than military ability .
The majority of British Army officers of that era educated at expensive boarding schools were utter snobs who held their enlisted subordinates in contempt -or, perhaps, like Quaboos, he. like quite a few boarding school educated officers of that era, now and then he “batted for the other side”?
Anhyoo, Fiennes recorded that his firquats and shit on the ground just a very short walk from where they lived, as did most Omanis.
This was also mentioned with disgust by other soldiers whom I served with who had serve din Oman in the mid 70’s, some of whom defended the RAF base at Salalah, the birthplace of Quaboos
I don’t suppose you’d let facts interfere with your belief in your moral superiority,
All that said, Quaboos was a far better, less murderous leader than any other Arab leader, and his people had their poverty and harsh, spartan lives greatly relieved.
I’m not sure if a FOB arriving from the Levant today would quite “pass” as well as a Zogby, Sununu, etc.
The captain of his yacht – British citizen who did Sandhursst (like Westpoinr) naturalized in Oman – was his last boyfriend.
You’re really a genuine autist, aren’t you? It must not be easy being so literal minded.
If that cut helps you feel better about being a know-nothing loudmouth, go with that.
Right the notion that a man that engages in sex acts with men constitutes a permanent fixed identity is an exclusively Western concept that took hold in the late 20th century.
Everyone else really didn’t care much as long as you married and had kids.
I personally know of 2. Stay home and do you like a spoiled child. Some of us like this country and want to keep it.
https://twitter.com/kausmickey/status/1215762349958676480
https://twitter.com/MadaGasp/status/1215906113255825408Replies: @Daniel H, @Ed
The WSJ story rings false. Which Senators are angling for an Iranian war to the point that they would publicly impact Trump’s impeachment trial in a negative way? Graham wouldn’t dare.
The senators are cowards and after a day or two of backlash they’d change their tune.
That’s not how any of this works.
Start with Burr and go from there.
Now you've got arrogant schlemiels like Stelter and Schiff pissing it all away. The recent Kris appointment was definitely lawyers saying hold my beer.Replies: @Brutusale
No beers. Like the Orange Emperor, Chaim Witz doesn’t drink. Instead, maybe you could share a shiksa with him!
I suppose that would be what the crackers of yesteryears said when they came back after a visit to the dwellings of their “house-ni**as.”
While brevity may well be the soul of wit, some prolixity might assist in decoding your message, to wit, whiskey tango foxtrot, over?
Granted, my kith and kin have, in part, only been this side of the pond since early in the seventeenth century, but my understanding of the historical situation here in Dixie's land is that the "crackers" tended to possess few, if any, slaves of the "house" variety. You've got the whole tenor of the present times thing badly wrong, I fear: the aristocracy, the "slave power" are to be the class enemies, not the beleaguered "crackers".
If there is a font of misery and resentment operating among the Omani populace which I failed to detect, and as your reply so well illustrates, I possess a near mystical capacity for attracting the attention of malcontents, I as always welcome any amplifying /correcting information. In the interim, I shall continue to stand upon my previous impressions.
The senators are cowards and after a day or two of backlash they’d change their tune.Replies: @Desiderius, @Desiderius
Publicly?
That’s not how any of this works.
Start with Burr and go from there.
That’s what beer is for.
James Bond—a heterosexual product of English boarding schools—is a fictional character.
Everyone else really didn’t care much as long as you married and had kids.Replies: @Desiderius
What’s Western about people who hate the West and all it stood/stands for with the heat of a thousand suns?
The senators are cowards and after a day or two of backlash they’d change their tune.Replies: @Desiderius, @Desiderius
And it’s not just about impeachment, it’s about going after his (and Flynn’s) son. The day of the CNN-televised Gestapo raid on Stone they went on MSNBC to publicly threaten that Don Jr. was next. That day Trump caved on the shutdown (battle for Wall funding). Burr abrogated a prior agreement to call Jr. in to testify again after Mueller collapsed.
That’s why Trump went after Hunter, and continues to.
https://cdn.getyourguide.com/img/tour_img-1651260-146.jpg
But they do have this-- designed by (I kid you not) one Paul Cocksedge:
https://static.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/oman-botanic-garden-paul-cocksedge-designboom-600.jpgReplies: @a reader
Thanks Reg Cæsar !
Very interesting project.
Sir or madam,
While brevity may well be the soul of wit, some prolixity might assist in decoding your message, to wit, whiskey tango foxtrot, over?
Granted, my kith and kin have, in part, only been this side of the pond since early in the seventeenth century, but my understanding of the historical situation here in Dixie’s land is that the “crackers” tended to possess few, if any, slaves of the “house” variety. You’ve got the whole tenor of the present times thing badly wrong, I fear: the aristocracy, the “slave power” are to be the class enemies, not the beleaguered “crackers”.
If there is a font of misery and resentment operating among the Omani populace which I failed to detect, and as your reply so well illustrates, I possess a near mystical capacity for attracting the attention of malcontents, I as always welcome any amplifying /correcting information. In the interim, I shall continue to stand upon my previous impressions.
White expats speak rudimentary Arabic unless they work closely with local VIPs. But generally Omanis speak passable English so communication is not an issue. Knowing GCC ladies as I do if they do take on a European lover it’s usually Bosnian, Irish,French or Spanish in no particular order. Englishmen if they do get involved with an Arab broad prefer Egyptian or Lebanese.
For GCC women generally Indian and Pakistanis are considered beneath their station generally but the charismatic men among them do cleanup with the women. The women’s odd obsession with Bollywood helps somewhat.
His father was an old time desert sheik who kept the national treasury in a strongbox under his bed. Dad did not appreciate Gilbert & Sullivan.
I like the old man.
5ds
Prince Harry tutned out fine? Sure. If you call marrying an American slag who got around in show business the old fashioned way, on her knees, doing fine.
Agreed. The New York Times once called it “the world’s most charming police state” or something to that effect.
Central Asia is like this. Kyrgyzstan, for example, though very conservative, mostly identifies as non-denominational Muslim. Kazakhstan too, which is more open.
You don’t say !
Next you will telling me that Harry Flashman (who ? ) is also a fictional character
Steve's suggestion was sort of taken seriously by Los Angeles, and his prediction has sort of come to pass.In the Los Angeles Times, the city hires a "young, black, female lesbian" named "Cat" Packer, who also has one of those special law degrees that they've been handing out to blacks lately, the kind that don't get you clerkships or partner offers.So anyway, Cat, who solves the hair issue with a lesbian buzz cut, such that she looks like a teenaged boy ready to steal your watch ... Cat has never run any sort of program in her life and fucks it up.Next stop, threats from blacks who had put up cash but not gotten licenses and an audit from the mayor. And the zip code based system to target "victims" of pot laws ended up including, no, not Korean neighborhoods, but that other great Los Angeles immigrant community, Armenians, who applied en masse for licenses. Blacks couldn't figure out the online application system, but they did manage to drag their incompetent asses down to the city council to bitch.Replies: @Ghost of Bull Moose, @Dissident
A lesbian named Cat Packer? I wonder if Packer is her real last name.
>the first consonant must come in the back of your throat.
Come again?