Special Reports From Archive

• Oct-01-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  Human Rights Watch: Dignity Denied: Systematic Discrimination & Hostility Toward Saudi Shia Citizens.
  A pilgrimage of Saudi Shia to Medina in February 2009 to observe the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s death led to clashes between the pilgrims and Saudi security forces. Those forces included the non-uniformed religious police, which is staunchly Sunni and opposed to what they consider the idolatrous innovations of Shia rituals of commemorating special holidays and making visits to graves. The immediate cause of the Medina clashes was the filming on February 20 of Shia women pilgrims by a man believed to belong to the religious police. The clashes continued in the area of the Baqi’ cemetery in Medina over a five-day period, and resulted in the arrest of tens of pilgrims. The Medina clashes and subsequent events in the Eastern Province stoked the sharpest manifestation of long- standing sectarian tensions that the kingdom has experienced in years. The incidents at the Baqi’ cemetery reflected in part these long-standing tensions, but they were also an outlet for anger among the Shia (who are 10-15 percent of the population) over systematic discrimination at the hands of the government in education, the justice system, and, especially, religious freedom. They also face exclusion in government employment. The government for its part reacted with repressive measures of arrest and a clampdown on public airing of Shia grievances rather than seeking dialogue to prevent further conflict. Nevertheless, underlying discrimination has risen. Since the February-March events, authorities have intensified ongoing restrictions on Shia communal life. The Saudi government should urgently address the underlying reasons for sectarian tension, and end systematic discrimination against the Shia.

• Aug-04-2009- SPECIAL 9-PART REPORT
  The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 1 - Waking From Its Sleep
  
  A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world; it will be complete only when the last failed dictatorship is voted out. What ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The Arabs are a dynamic and inventive people whose long and proud history includes fabulous contributions to art, culture, science and, of course, religion. The score of modern Arab states, on the other hand, have been impressive mainly for their consistent record of failure.

  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 2
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 2 - Waking From Its Sleep
    In a special report on the Arab world which The Economist published in 1990, the headline at the top of this page was “When history passes by” (see article). That was when the communist dictatorships of eastern Europe were beginning to wobble and fall. In the Arab world, however, authoritarian rule remained the order of the day. And whereas western Europe was making massive strides towards political and economic union, the Arabs remained woefully divided. Much Arab opinion remained fixated on the struggle with Israel, in which the Arabs seemed unable to hold their own, let alone prevail.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 3
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 3 - The World Of The Arabs --- What Do They Have In Common?
    What do they have in common? Convenient as it is to describe the 22 countries (including the unborn Palestine) that belong to the Arab League as “the Arab world”, the neat phrase can mislead. This is a heterogeneous agglomeration of some 350m people —Maronites, Copts, Berbers, Kurds and Africans as well as Arabs and Muslims—inhabiting a miscellany of lands from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Saharan desert to the foothills of Anatolia. So all generalisations about the Arabs—their experiences, instincts and styles of faith or politics—should be treated with scepticism.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 4
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 4 - Arab Freedom --- Imposing Freedom
    In the month of June an attractive black American politician visited a university in Cairo and made an astonishing speech. “For 60 years,” said the visitor, “my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East—and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.” The year was 2005 and the orator was Condoleezza Rice, George Bush’s secretary of state.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 5
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 5 - Arab Pressures - All Change, No Change
    Imagine an Arab Rip Abu Winkle who had fallen into a deep slumber some time in the early 1980s. If he woke up now, he would rub his eyes in disbelief at how little had changed. Hosni Mubarak is still the president of Egypt, after a cool 28 years in the top job. In Syria the grim reaper did for Hafez Assad after a run of three decades as the country’s ruler, but his son, Bashar, has become president in his place. In Tunisia Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali remains president after 22 years. Ali Abdullah Saleh has been president of parts or all of Yemen for more than 30 years. Jordan is still run by the Hashemite family, Morocco by the Alouite family, Saudi Arabia by the al-Sauds and Kuwait by the al- Sabahs. Muammar Qaddafi has been imposing his idiosyncratic brand of “Islamic socialism” on Libyans since 1969. And like Syria, Libya may become a family business on the old man’s death: as in Egypt, there is much talk of a favoured son inheriting the fief.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 6
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 6 - Power In The Arab World --- How To Stay In Charge
    A lot of the wounding comparative statistics trotted out to demonstrate the backwardness of the Arabs appeared first in the Arab Human Development Report of 2002. Its stark findings influenced the design of the Bush administration’s Middle East Partnership Initiative. In the Arab world itself the report owed its resonance to the fact that it was written not by Western technocrats but by a team of Arab academics. The lead author was Nader Fergany, encountered earlier in this report berating the Americans as “the new Mongols” of the Middle East.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 7
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 7 - Arab Dissent --- The Fever Under The Surface. A Silent Solical Revolution
    President Assad's decision to nip the reform movement in the bud in 2005 should not have surprised Syria’s would-be democrats, for this was a moment of extreme danger to the regime. Influential voices in Washington, DC, were urging Mr Bush to finish what he had started in Iraq by toppling Syria’s leadership too. And in neighbouring Lebanon, which Syria had long treated as a vassal, the assassination of Rafik Hariri, a popular former prime minister, had triggered massive protests. Many Lebanese blamed Syria for Mr Hariri’s murder. Their spontaneous protests—one of the biggest manifestations of “people’s power” the Arab world had witnessed—came to be known as the “cedar revolution”. Within months (and with the prodding of France and America) the cedar revolution forced Mr Assad to withdraw his army from Lebanon, after a stay of 30 years.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 8
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 8 - Arab's World Future --- Which Way Will They Go?
    “The Arab world is more or less a vicious circle. None of its problems will be solved soon. All these troubles have the capacity to reinvent themselves.” So says Ali al-Din Hillal Dessouki, a former minister and senior figure in Egypt’s ruling party. This special report opened by arguing that the causes of conflict in the Arab world—the competition for energy, the conflict with Israel, the weakness of Arab statehood and the stagnation of politics—are taking on the characteristics of a chronic condition. But they are not just chronic. They are also connected to each other, and self-reinforcing.
    
    
    
  • Aug-04-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT - PART 9
    The Economist: THE ARAB WORLD PART 9 - (1990 Article) - When History Passes By
    Old 1990 article by The Economist - “The Arab world is more or less a vicious circle. None of its problems will be solved soon. All these troubles have the capacity to reinvent themselves.” So says Ali al-Din Hillal Dessouki, a former minister and senior figure in Egypt’s ruling party. This special report opened by arguing that the causes of conflict in the Arab world—the competition for energy, the conflict with Israel, the weakness of Arab statehood and the stagnation of politics—are taking on the characteristics of a chronic condition. But they are not just chronic. They are also connected to each other, and self-reinforcing.

• May-18-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  
  (English version)
  Iraqi Construction Special Inspector General: HARD LESSIONS - The Iraq Reconstruction Experience
  
  (Arabic version)
  Iraqi Construction Special Inspector General: HARD LESSIONS - The Iraq Reconstruction Experience
  

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 1 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 2 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 3 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 4 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 5 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 6 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 7 (in Arabic)

• Mar-21-2009 -SPECIAL REPORT
  Dar Al Hayat: Ahmed Chalabi Remembers - Part 8 (in Arabic)

• Mar-19-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  Weiss Research Inc.: Dangerous Unintended Consequences: How Banking Bailouts, Buyouts and Nationalization Can Only Prolong America's Second Depression and Weaken Any Subsequent Recovery

• Mar-13-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  (date of report: Feb-01-2007)
  Foreign Policy: Who Won in Iraq: The Iraqi People - By Jalal Talabani (President of Iraq)
  "The past four years have been a roller-coaster for the Iraqi people. We’ve been liberated from our oppressive tyrant, only to be thrust into deadly sectarian warfare. But the fight for Iraq is not just the fight of the Iraqi people; the entire civilized world has a stake in what happens here. And simply abandoning the country to the terrorists would be everyone’s shame."

• Feb-23-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  (date of report: Nov-03-2008)
  Peter Bernstein: Two Little-Noted Features Of The Markets And The Economy
  This issue analyzes two significant aspects of the current environment, one financial and one from the real economy. Neither of these subjects has received the attention it deserves, yet both have important stories to tell. The financial discussion raises tantalizing questions about investor rationality. The comments about the real sector consider current conditions in the labor market and their implications for equity price/earnings ratios in the years ahead.

• Feb-23-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  (date of report: Sep-18-2008)
  Embassy Of Iraq (Ottawa, Canada): The Rebirth Of Iraq
  Remarks of Howar Ziad, Ambassador of Iraq to Canada, to the Fraser Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Thursday, September 18, 2008.
  "How then should Canadian companies react to the important changes in Iraq? My view is that Iraq is an important opportunity that you should not miss. I fully understand continuing concerns about security and some of the continuing logistical difficulties involved in doing business in Iraq. Nonetheless, it would be a shame if Canadian firms were to miss out on this important market and all that it promises. The best strategy is for foreign companies to enter the safe, quiet zones of Iraq that have been largely untouched by recent conflict. After establishing their presence there, these companies can then start to expand their operations in other parts of Iraq."

• Feb-03-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  Validea Special Report: 10 Big-Name Stocks That Can Beat The Recession
  Recession: It's an ugly word -- and one that's hard to escape these days. Every time we see another report on rising unemployment, slow economic growth, or skyrocketing mortgage defaults, we're reminded of just how tough a time the economy has been having. All of the negative economic news is enough to make an investor want to cash out and head for the hills. If you're thinking of fleeing the market, however -- STOP RIGHT THERE! Doing so might just be the worst move you can make right now. To understand why that's the case, it's important to consider a couple of key points. First, just because the economy's tanking doesn't mean your portfolio has to follow suit. Though we often think of it as some sort of monolithic entity, the "stock market" is more aptly described as a market of individual stocks. And on any given day, hundreds, if not thousands, of those stocks will be gaining ground -- regardless of what the economy or the major indices are doing. One recent afternoon, for example, the S&P 500 -- the index most commonly referred to when people discuss "the market" -- was down more than 2 percent, but about 20 percent of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange had gained ground. The message: Even if the economy drags the broader market down, there are always opportunities to make money in stocks.

• Feb-01-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  Times Online: The British House Of Lords Scandal
  Five articles from The Times Online, regarding subject news of scandal at The British House Of Lords, have been conjoined together into one file:

Jan-25-09 | Revealed: Labour lords change laws for cash.
LABOUR peers are prepared to accept fees of up to £120,000 a year to amend laws in the House of Lords on behalf of business clients, a Sunday Times investigation has found. Four peers — including two former ministers — offered to help undercover reporters posing as lobbyists obtain an amendment in return for cash.

Jan-25-09 | Whispered over tea and cake: price for a peer to fix the law.
BARON TRUSCOTT of St James’s took a bite of his teacake before explaining to the two lobbyists in front of him just how much it would cost to hire a peer of the realm. “Rates vary between £1,000 and £5,000 a day,” he said quietly, his voice almost drowned by the chatter in the House of the Lords dining room. It was a question, he agreed, of getting the right person rather than haggling over the money

Jan-28-09 | The Lords are not so noble any more: The rise of professional politicians should make the Upper House rethink its disciplinary rules.
Cash for laws is worse than cash for questions. In 1994 John Major was vilified for presiding over a culture of sleaze when two insignificant Tory MPs were found to have accepted money to ask questions in Parliament. Four Labour peers have now been accused of being willing to accept cash to alter legislation. Parliamentary questions seek to influence policy through the front door. The peers, by contrast, are being accused of seeking to influence legislation not through the front door by putting down amendments, but through the back door by nobbling ministerial chums. They are alleged to have breached the Lords code of conduct, which declares that “Members of the House... must never accept any financial inducement... for exercising parliamentary influence”, and “must not... promote any matter in return for payment”. The four strenuously deny the allegations, which are to be considered by the sub-committee on Lords' Interests. But, unlike the Commons, the Lords has no sanctions against wrongdoers.

Jan-30-09 | Exclusive: Peers for cash investigation - new undercover footage. The Sunday Times has released secret video and audio in which Lord Truscott offers to help reporters 'facilitate' a bill amendment.
The Sunday Times secretly filmed Lord Truscott, one of the four peers who the newspaper revealed were prepared to assist in changing legislation for cash, during a meeting with the undercover reporters in the St James’ Hotel and Club in London on Wednesday January 21, 2009. The recording shows Truscott telling the reporters, posing as lobbyists, that he will work with them to “facilitate” the amendment to the Business Rates Supplement Bill on behalf of their client.

Feb-01-2009 | Lords for hire: Members of the House of Lords should act primarily out of public interest. Yet some seem too ready to sell their services.
Earlier this month Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, a Labour peer, walked into the public bill office in the House of Lords with a clutch of amendments to a proposed law going through parliament. The clerks checked the amendments and agreed to their publication. O’Neill, president of the Specialist Engineering Contractors’ Group, was trying to change a bill about the construction industry so that it would favour his organisation’s members. He is paid a fee by the group, but does not disclose how much.

• Jan-26-2009 - SPECIAL REPORT
  Publication Of The Royal Canadian Military Institute: OUTLOOK IRAQ: PROSPECTS FOR STABILITY IN THE POST-SADDAM ERA
  Remarks by His Excellency Howar Ziad, Ambassador of Iraq to Canada to the Joint Royal Canadian Military Institute and Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies Conference held on 11 July, 2006, which also included Ambassador Michael Bell – former Canadian Ambassador to Jordan, Israel and Egypt, Nahlah Ayed – CBC’s Beirut correspondent, and Major Joel Rayburn US Army – Commander’s Advisory Group, US Central Command.

• 2004 - SPECIAL REPORT (large file, over 70 pages)
  Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): Regime Strategic Intent
  Saddam Hussain so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted. Saddam controlled every peak position of authority in Iraq and formally dominated its state, administrative, Ba’th party and military hierarchies. By the time of Desert Storm, there was no constitutional threat to his position of authority. He had also appointed himself “Paramount Sheikh” in a bid to dominate the country’s tribal system. By the late 1990s, he began seeking more formal control over the nation’s religious structures. Saddam was simultaneously President, Prime Minister, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), General Secretary of the Ba’th Party, and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Also directly reporting to him were the Republican Guard (RG), Special Republican Guard (SRG), Fedayeen Saddam, the four intelligence agencies, the Military Industrialization Commission (MIC)a and the Al Quds Army. Tariq ‘Aziz says that Saddam had enhanced the role of the tribal leaders, giving them money, weapons, land and authority, to turn them into an instrument of support for himself.