In an idle moment between cocktail parties in the Arab capital where they served, a British and French diplomat were chatting recently about their respective countries' legacies in the Middle East: why not commemorate them with a new rock band?
From Russian companies' standpoint, limiting production now would amount to idling a multibillion-dollar investment -- and all to satiate Arab oil barons who profited handsomely from Russia's 1990's decline.
The historic change that Tunisia and Egypt have triggered is simply that Arab citizens are now players in this process, having been mostly idle bystanders in the past four generations when Arab statehood proliferated without any real citizen sovereignty taking root in parallel.
This was completed by 18 June, but the ship lay idle until the end of the month when she was provided with an Arab crew and sailed to Port Said.
The Arab villages to the south, towns like Baaj, where a hulking granary that once supported the town now sits idle, have suffered severely in the last five years.
