Unesco Palestine vote puts US to shame
It is regrettable that the United States, Germany and Canada should so shamefully bend to Israel's will and be among the handful of countries that voted against the Palestinian motion to obtain full membership at Unesco, the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi said in an editorial yesterday.
Palestine was voted Unesco's newest member on Monday, despite US threats to cut off its annual funding to the UN institution. Only 14 states voted against membership, while 107 voted in favour and 52 abstained.
The US administration went out of its way to lobby against the Palestinian membership in this purely cultural and educational institution. Yet the arguments Washington presented to justify its position were far from "convincing", the newspaper said.
The argument that Palestinian membership would be "counterproductive" for the Middle East peace process meant little, "for where is this peace process the US is talking about?"
It has been 18 years, the newspaper went on, since the Palestinians made up their mind to follow the "path of negotiations" towards the establishment of their own independent state. So far, that path has offered them nothing but frustration.
And now, with this "Palestinian victory" at Unesco, the current US administration is made to endure one its most awkward moments.
Maliki adopts a policy of the double standard
In standing by the Syrian regime at the expense of the Syrian people, the destructive role of the Iraqi government seems to take on a larger scale, wrote Tareq Al Homayed, the editor in chief of the pan-Arab daily Asharq Al Awsat.
To know more about the seriousness of this orientation we should look into two important pieces of news, said the writer. The first says that 13 out of 14 internet monitoring devices sold by a US company to Baghdad have found their way into the hands of the Baath regime in Syria.
This violates the US sanction regimen imposed on Damascus, which stipulates that clients of American companies are not allowed to sell or give the Syrian regime any such equipment.
The second news item is that Iraq's government has arrested nearly 600 Iraqis accused of affiliation with the dissolved Baath party. Nouri Al Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, said in a TV interview that the Baath party is banned because it has damaged the national sovereignty and badly affected the entire Iraqi people. It carried out mass massacres using chemical weapons. "The Baath embodies a mentality of conspiracy and coups," he said.
So, surprisingly, Maliki is chasing and vilifying Baath remnants in Iraq, but refrains from doing the same when it comes to Syria's ruling Baath party. The explanation is simple: as long as the Syrian regime is loyal to Iran, the Iraqi government will support it.
The Arab Spring has shaken the world
"Israel was not the only [non-Arab] country affected by the Arab Spring, when hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets to demand better living conditions," Mazen Hammad said in an opinion piece for the Doha-based newspaper Al Watan.
The Arab Spring was followed by large-scale protests in 80 countries around the world, including in the West. People protested against lack of liquidity, unemployment and social injustice.
Surprisingly, reports from North Korea, say that Pyongyang has put in place a pro-regime campaign, with the aim of stimulating young people through the official propaganda machine. It also aims to spare the leadership a fate like that of Muammar Qaddafi.
The plan, said some South Korean sources, showed to what extent the regime in the North was scared of "the ideological relaxation of young Korean people, who take interest in trends and developments from outside."
Accordingly, the regime has allegedly attempted to control hundreds of Koreans who used to reside and work in Libya and in other Arab countries that witnessed the Spring.
"We don't know how true is the report that Pyongyang has decided to prevent the return of many expatriate Koreans and their families, who spent years in the Middle East or North Africa, but we are sure that … the fallout of the Arab Spring will go beyond borders and will have far-reaching effects."
Syrian regime actions prompt intervention
"Even though the region is evolving in terms of politics and the use of power, some regimes are still hostage to traditional thought, which they have followed for many decades," the Saudi daily Al Jazeera pointed out in its editorial.
This is the case for the Syrian regime, which has used intimidation and terror against its own citizens and also against other countries and regimes that try to reform themselves.
As much as Syrian authorities insist that they must be excluded from development and change, they also threaten to set the whole region ablaze, should the world community intervene to stop the daily slaying of Syrian citizens.
Arabs gave the regime two weeks to enter into talks with the opposition, stop the killing and withdraw the army to barracks, but this call was not heeded at all. Instead, the regime has intensified its deadly campaign,
That Arabs failed to persuade Syria to change its policy has put Damascus's strongest allies, Russia and China, in an embarrassing situation.
These countries along with India, South Africa and Brazil might soon agree to provide direct protection to the Syrian people, especially if the Arab League supports international intervention.
* Digest compiled by Mostapha El Mouloudi
melmouloudi@thenational.ae
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The flights
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Seeing the games
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”