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Al Jazeera “is free to criticise other countries but never to criticise Qatar”, says a media-watcher in the emirate. The state-funded channel trumpets the Saudi women seeking asylum in the West, but keeps mum about Qatar’s own women seeking asylum in Britain. “There’s no Qatari opposition,” says its acting director, Mostefa Souag, when asked to explain the lack of Qatari dissent on his programmes.

Read more at The Economist

But Mona Elswah, an Arab media researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said its Arabic channel had become a “mouthpiece for the Qatari government”.

“If the government changes its position, Al Jazeera would have to change its position no matter what,” she told AFP.

Read more at Agence France-Press.

In practice, Al Jazeera continues to act as Qatar’s alter ego, zealously advancing the emirate’s pro-Islamist agenda. While Doha serves as a safe haven for jihadist field commanders from the Taliban and Hamas, Al Jazeera English programming is replete with Jewish-power conspiracies and terrorism apologias. AJ Plus, the network’s slick online video content platform, produces the same anti-American and anti-Semitic subject matter but with a militantly progressive slant.

Read more at The Washington Examiner

Photographer Matthew Schrier claims the Qatar Islamic Bank allowed individuals and a charity to funnel money to terrorist groups fighting in Syria.

Read more at Courthouse News Service

Over the years, Qatar has spent copious amounts of money on its charm offence, targeting Western decision-makers, especially in the US. While many of its activities fall under lobbying, it’s time for the West to keep a close eye on the money trail.

Read more at International Business Times

All of these countries seem to suggest that they are in need of a way to get around trade sanctions imposed by others.

Read more at the Jerusalem Post

The debate series is presented as highbrow intellectual engagement with matters of deep concern to westerners, such as the future of capitalism and democracy. But its real mission is to help create a smokescreen that the Qatari government hopes will obscure some of the most anti-progressive domestic and foreign policies in the world. Doha Debates is the latest cunning public relations move by an illiberal regime that has been able to ingratiate itself to western progressive elites with remarkable ease.

Read more at The Washington Examiner

The government of Qatar is one of Ballard’s clients, and so was the government of Turkey until last month. Turkey alone paid roughly $2 million to Ballard’s firm over the last two years. The relationship between Turkey and Ballard ended after Turkey’s state-run bank Halkbank (which at the time had also been Ballard’s client) was indicted in federal court for evading U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The sanctions-evasion scheme had been spearheaded by Reza Zarrab, a Turkey-based gold trader who was born in Iran. Zarrab, of course, was later represented by Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney.

Read more at The Bulwark

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Qatar Monday on his first official trip to an Arab country since Ankara’s forces intervened in northeast Syria last month against Kurdish fighters.