I agree but they also need to do whatever the US says and the US is apparently on SA side

Falconry is a big deal amongst the ME elite - some of the car companies even cater to it:
http://www.businessinsider.com/...hotos-2017-5/

When you might drop up to 250k or more on a bird you need all that shit in your car.

These are the same people that drive round with tigers in their cars. Google doha tiger car.

The shit i have seen / heard about is ridiculous.

I suspect it's mostly about Al Jazeera.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Wow. Conspicuous consumption redefined!

That really pisses SA off but locally its a bit more than that. The Al Thani's are the noveau riche relative to Al Khalifa's in Bahrain, Nahyan and Maktoums all of whom have had cash but future revenues are looking bleak

To date Qatar has needed to listen to no one and when Tamin became Emir after his old man abdicated he was called to SA and expected to toe the party line. Thats not happened.

So SA have leverage and they will want AJ shut or editorially toned down, but the much bigger local issue is which GCC country is setting sunni policy and SA do not like the upstart with huge pockets.

I am pretty sure their sovereign wealth fund is greater than SA's per capita by a huge (or huuuuge) margin and they have 1-2% of the population (qatari's not total population)

The bn for the kidnapping is a side show, as is al jazeera, saudi is facing massive problems as the regional leader, depleting its sovereign wealth fund, oil at 50 / barrel whilst next door their wealth per capita is enormous and they are not in the oil business

Qatari's like islamists but so do the saudi's. Just different ones

A Sargent in the UAE AF I worked with had 2 tigers and a cheetah. He would routinely drive around with the cheetah on the dashboard of his car...

Lots of cash.

CNN is reporting that Russian hackers may have planted a fake news story that contributed to this Gulf "crisis".


The US has ~11,000 troops at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar (the biggest US base in the middle east). After Trump's tweet this morning, why would Qatar continue to host them?

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-planted-fake-news-qatar-crisis/index.html

Doesn't matter. This is about who's in charge

Turkey sending troops to qatar

Qatar asking for supplies from iran

This does not end well.