Word: persian
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Although Pipes is perhaps the most fanatical of the cold-war ideologues, he is only the cutting edge of the ideology that always expects a Soviet invasion of the Persian Gulf or of Western Europe, and blames the Soviets for every indigenous revolutionary movement anywhere in the world. Most of these ideas about the Soviet Union emanate more clearly from cold-war misperceptions of the 1950's than from the current reality of the Soviet Union. The conclusions that flow from these misperceptions ought to be analyzed more carefully before they are embodied in policies of increased American militarism...
...recent months, the Saudis have been meeting with five other Persian Gulf states* to lay the political underpinning for a proposed Gulf Council for Cooperation, which would bind the region with formal defense as well as economic and cultural ties. They have improved relations with a radical former adversary, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, to the extent that Riyadh was accused of complicity-or at least patent moral support -in Iraq's original assault against Iran...
...government's current $285 billion five-year plan puts the emphasis on diversification to reduce the overwhelming dependence on oil exports in the future. Huge industrial cities are under construction, one at Jubail on the Persian Gulf, the other at Yanbu on the Red Sea. By the end of the century, the two cities are to accommodate five new refineries, seven petrochemical facilities, a hydrocarbon fertilizer plant and an iron and steel complex...
...Persian Gulf has now become a romper room of business corruption. In Saudi Arabia, a key government minister is widely reported to have collected upwards of $500 million in "commission fees" in connection with foreign business ventures in the past year alone. To do business in Saudi Arabia, it is essential to be connected, via an agent or middleman, to a member of the royal family, which controls not just the government but business as well. Says a veteran U.S. businessman bluntly: "Everyone needs a prince." Finding one is not hard; there are 5,000 princes in the royal family...
...bribe is a bribe by any name-and the more euphemistic the name for it, the better. Baksheesh, currently in wide use in the Middle East, is a Persian word that is also found in Turkish and Arabic. It actually means a tip or gratuity given by a boss to his underling. The word was first used extensively to mean a bribe in connection with the money that a new sultan gave his troops. In most Spanish-speaking countries, el soborno means a payoff, but in Mexico payola is aptly described as the bite (la mordida...