A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Post Mortems on Doha: Do These Men Look Comfortable with Each Other?

Do these men really look comfortable with each other? Talk about awkward body language in an official photograph. Note the amount of space between them and their facial expressions, not to mention Qadhafi's slouch. And what is it with Qadhafi's right leg? Is that his Superman cape, or what? And this was their big reconciliation meeting after Qadhafi denounced ‘Abdullah. Really convincing reconciliation if this is the best photo they could manage.

The Doha fizzle is drawing a lot of comment in the Arab world, and Marc Lynch has done a good round-up here so I'll just refer you to him and not bother to do the same thing here. And if you don't follow his blog at Foreign Policy regularly, if you didn't see his last day of Doha posting I'd refer it to you both for content, and especially for his leading me to this great picture of King ‘Abdullah "making up" with Qadhafi. Talk about awkward body language. I'm reproducing a copy of it here but not from the Foreign Policy website as I have no idea what copyright claims they might have to their version and, as an Editor and publisher, I revere copyright. So I stole this one overseas. I think it's a Saudi Press Agency shot originally.

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