So, last week wasn't the best week for Al Jazeera, the television network owned by Qatar's despotic ruling family, for the same reason that it wasn't a great week for the despotic ruling family itself: the ouster of Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, the bumpkin fundamentalist.
Qatar pumped a lot of money into Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood government, and for what? The Qatari royal family should sue the Brotherhood for malfeasance.
So much hope was riding on Morsi's experiment in political Islam. Although Qatar spreads the risk around a bit — it has provided millions of dollars to Islamists in Syria and to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas (now there's an investment in the future) — Morsi represented its main chance to advance the cause of Islamic fundamentalism. And to add insult to financial injury, Saudi Arabia just promised post-Morsi Egypt $5 billion, and the United Arab Emirates, another of Qatar's main rivals, has kicked in $3 billion.