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Last week saw news that a Saudia Arabian man murdered his daughter because she was using to Facebook to chat with a boy and that merchants in Dubai sold AMD processors to Iranians who built them into Iraqi roadside bombs. But let's be clear, the place where Silicon Valley meets the Middle East isn't all honor killings and distributed warfare. For example, there's this piece of spam I got my in inbox today.

According to Google's translation tools, it reads: "We are pleased Smart Net company to offer you our services in the design, development and hosting sites." Sure, I'm not interested in buying any of those things, but I'm glad there's a market to be reached where the buyers and the sellers of such Web services both write in Arabic.

It helps me remember that the most popular Facebook group in the Saudi Arabian network is "Single and Looking in Saudi Arabia" and that merchants like those who resold AMD's products have fostered an entrepreneurial class in Dubai which promises to make the emirate less oil dependent and more progressive than its neighbors.