Video: Prince Charles does a sword dance in Saudi Arabia
Prince Charles has been showing off his dancing skills during a culture
festival in Saudi Arabia. The Prince of Wales took part in the ceremony
with members of the Saudi royal family during a visit to the Middle East
The BBC's Jon Brain reports.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip:
Bare Naked Islam).
And no, this does not mean he will come to Israel and dance the hora any time soon.
Labels: Prince Charles, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Royal Family
Obama's ties to Saudi royal family deeper than first thought?
President Obama's ties to the Saudi royal family may go back further than being introduced to the man who got him into Harvard Law School by
the Saudi royal family's US lawyer. In fact, Obama may have been among a group of blacks who were educated with the intention of having them assume positions of prominence to
undermine the United States (Hat Tip:
Instapundit).
The column itself had appeared in the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening
Independent of Nov. 6, but it was the work of a veteran newspaperman who
at the time was working for the prestigious Chicago Tribune and whose
work was syndicated nationally. (1)
So far as I know, this 1979 column has not previously
been brought to light, but it certainly should be because it broke some
very interesting news about the “rumored billions of dollars the
oil-rich Arab nations are supposed to unload on American black leaders
and minority institutions.” The columnist quoted a black San Francisco
lawyer who said, “It’s not just a rumor. Aid will come from some of the
Arab states.”
Well, if anyone would know, it would have been this
lawyer — Donald Warden, who had helped defend OPEC in an antitrust suit
that year and had developed significant ties with the Saudi royal family
since becoming a Muslim and taking the name Khalid Abdullah Tariq
al-Mansour.
Al-Mansour told Jarrett that he had presented the
“proposed special aid program to OPEC Secretary-General Rene Ortiz” in
September 1979, and that “the first indications of Arab help to American
blacks may be announced in December.” Maybe so, but I looked high and
wide in newspapers in 1979 and 1980 for any other stories about this aid
package funded by OPEC and never found it verified.
You would think that a program to spend “$20 million
per year for 10 years to aid 10,000 minority students each year,
including blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans” would
be referred to somewhere other than one obscure 1979 column, but I
haven’t found any other word of it.
Maybe the funding materialized, maybe it didn’t, but
what’s particularly noteworthy is that this black Islamic lawyer who
“for several years [had] urged the rich Arab kingdoms to cultivate
stronger ties to America’s blacks by supporting black businesses and
black colleges and giving financial help to disadvantaged students” was
also the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of
Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.
...
It also might be considered more than coincidence that the author of
that 1979 newspaper column was from Chicago, where Barack Obama settled
in 1986 a few years after his stint at Columbia University. It is
certainly surprising that the author of that column was none other than
Vernon Jarrett, the future (and later former) father-in-law of Valerie
Jarrett, who ultimately became the consigliere of the Obama White House.
It is also noteworthy that Vernon Jarrett was one of
the best friends and a colleague of Frank Marshall Davis, the former
Chicago journalist and lifelong communist who moved to Hawaii in the
late 1940s and years later befriended Stanley and Madelyn Dunham and
their daughter Stanley Ann, the mother of Barack Obama. (4) [Last month, I saw a column claiming that Davis was actually Obama's father. I didn't run it, but you can find it here. CiJ]
And to anyone who has the modicum of a spark of
curiosity, it is surely intriguing that Frank Davis took an active role
in the rearing of young Barack from the age of 10 until he turned 18 and
left Hawaii for his first year of college at Occidental College in Los
Angeles. (5)
It is also at least suggestive that Obama began that
college education as a member of the highly international student body
of Occidental College in 1979, the same year when Vernon Jarrett was
touting the college aid program being funded by OPEC and possibly Prince
Alwaleed. The fact that President Obama has studiously avoided
releasing records of his college years is suggestive also, but has no
evidentiary value in the present discussion. (6)
So which do you think is more likely? That Google will remove the offending articles or that the mainstream media will ignore this story? I would bet on both.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Harvard Law School, Saudi Royal Family
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Monday, May 21.
1) Jerusalem the panoramic
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has a remarkable website devoted to Jerusalem centering around an annotated panoramic photograph of Jerusalem. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)
Of particular interest is a project titled, Jerusalem in International Diplomacy, by Dr. Dore Gold. The executive summary is here.
The July 2000 Camp David Summit was clearly a diplomatic failure. It resulted largely, though not exclusively, from the insurmountable gap between Israel and the PLO over the issue of Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Bill Clinton insisted on holding the summit apparently assuming that the diplomatic gaps between the parties could ultimately be bridged. Were they equipped with a more accurate assessment of the positions of the principal parties on the Jerusalem question, they might have anticipated that the summit would not succeed. For the PLO, the various Clinton proposals were a non-starter. But for Israel, as well, Barak's readiness to even consider concessions on Jerusalem led to the collapse of parliamentary support for his government, a massive public demonstration against the U.S. proposals, and finally, when combined with Palestinian violence, Barak's loss in national elections by an unprecedented majority to Ariel Sharon.
Israel suffered from a more fundamental diplomatic failure of its own, beyond its misreading of the Palestinian position on Jerusalem. The structure of the peace process, whereby Israel has focused all its energies on an abstract, albeit worthy, goal of peace, while the Palestinians' diplomatic energies were concentrated on a concrete goal of achieving a Palestinian state with a capital in Jerusalem, inevitably led the negotiations in the direction of the party with the more articulated objective -- namely, the Palestinian goal of sovereignty in Jerusalem. This diplomatic asymmetry led to a clear-cut erosion of Israel's own claims.
Yet, a careful reading of the historical record of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem and an understanding of the international legal rights of the Jewish people to their historical capital might have led negotiators to take a stronger stand on behalf of Israel's rights in the city. This study was conceived with the purpose of providing both a more realistic understanding of the actual positions of the principal parties to the Jerusalem question and a deeper appreciation of the rights Israel possesses in Jerusalem for any future negotiations.
Gerald Steinberg and Naftali Balanson explain what the JCPA is fighting in How the EU-NGO alliance destabilizes Jerusalem.
It is bad enough that the EU funds a group whose leaders promote “one-state” polices and use demonizing rhetoric that incites hatred – the fact that this becomes the basis for policy is even worse.
While the EU/NGO reports are filled with false or misleading allegations targeting Israeli policy in Jerusalem, other basic information that contradicts this bias is entirely missing. Thus, there is no discussion of the role of the Jerusalem municipality in providing building permits for Arab residents of Jerusalem at a level comparable to Jewish residents; in opening post offices, public clinics, and classrooms; in inaugurating the light rail systems, which serves both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods; and with respect to other programs for the benefit of Arab neighborhoods.
The EU, again following the lead of these fringe NGOs that are their “advisors” on Jerusalem affairs, also erased the central security context and the historical background. For instance, both EU documents regarding Jerusalem assert an “institutional and leadership vacuum in East Jerusalem created by the prolonged closure of those institutions, in particular that of the Orient House.” They erase the background to the Orient House closure in August 2001, when, as part of Israel’s defense against mass terror, including the horrific Sbarro pizzeria bombing in the center of Jerusalem, Israeli security forces found stolen weapons in the Orient House and documents proving that Palestinian officials had been operating illegally from the building.
The Jewish Press takes you on a tour of Ir David. (The City of David)
2) The "debate" over Megrahi
The New York Times had a headline Libyan’s Death Brings Up Debate Over His Release. The article has precious little about the debate over the convicted Lockerbie bomber's release three years ago; it's more about doubts of Megrahi's incarceration - or guilt. In the debate over his release, the New York Times (on its op-ed page anyway) came down in favor of the release by allowing Saif al-Islam Qaddafi to argue (probably falsely) that Megrahi received No Hero's Welcome in Libya. Though about a year and a half ago the New York Times finally discovered that the Qaddafis were not nice people; it wasn't that long ago it allowed the family to avail itself of precious op-ed space.
3) Why there's no Arab spring
Shlomo Avineri (via Honest Reporting, Daily Alert):
Simply put, a rosy outlook for countries like Egypt cannot be assumed on the basis of exhilarating images on CNN or Al Jazeera, or the fact that masses of young, well-educated, English-speaking men and women are connected through Facebook and Twitter. The great majority of Egyptians were not in Tahrir Square, and many of them lack not only access to online social networks, but also electricity and safe drinking water. Democracy and free speech are not at the top of their agenda.
Egypt's silent majority also identifies with the authenticity represented by various Islamic groups, while principles of democracy and civil rights seem to them to be imported Western abstractions. So the tremendous victory of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Nour Party in Egypt — as well as that of Ennahda in Tunisia — should come as no surprise.
Jonathan Schanzer and Steven Miller:
However, the Saudi royal family was not content to simply enforce its draconian media laws as a means to prevent unrest in the kingdom. In an attempt to buy the loyalty of his subjects, King Abdullah pledged more than $35 billion to the Saudi people upon returning from his three-month convalescence in Morocco on February 23rd. This package included increased funding for housing, studying abroad, and social security. State awarded its employees a 15 percent salary increase, and infused $10.7 billion into the country's development fund, which offers interest-free loans for Saudis to build homes, marry, or start small businesses. The measures were further designed to alleviate unemployment, believed to be around 40 percent for Saudis between 15 and 24.[5]
These measures conspicuously lacked any indication that the king was considering the political reforms that masses were calling for around the region. The government proved as much when it arrested founding members of the Islamic Umma Party, a self-professed "moderate" party that blatantly flaunted the state's long-standing ban on political parties.[6]
...
Nevertheless, based on the relative calm that prevailed, the financial package appeared to allay some of the concerns of Saudi citizens, at least for the time being. On the other hand, they may have been afraid of protesting due to the expected response of the Saudi state.
Labels: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Arab spring, Egypt, Jerusalem, Middle East Media Sampler, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Royal Family, Soccer Dad
Abayas to be mandatory in all female Twitter avatars
I cannot yet confirm the rumors that abayas are going to become mandatory for all female photos on Twitter now that Saudi prince Al-Walid bin Talal is
investing $300 million in the social media.
The investment by Prince Walid and the Kingdom Holding Company represents roughly 3 percent of Twitter. Prince Walid, who owns 95 percent of Kingdom Holding, said in a statement that the purchase was part of a strategy “to invest in promising, high-growth businesses with a global impact.”
With Twitter, Prince Walid — who also own stakes in American blue chip companies including Citigroup, General Motors and Apple — gains a foothold in the fast-growing social networking space.
Twitter, the microblogging service, has more than 100 million active users and is part of an elite group of Internet companies that have rapidly attracted users and carry multibillion dollar valuations.
Twitter has been increasingly popular in the Arab world, where it was credited with playing a role in the recent social uprisings across North Africa and the Persian Gulf. Arabic-language messaging is the fastest-growing segment on Twitter, according to the data intelligence company Semiocast. The volume of Arabic messages increased 2,146 percent in the 12 months ended Oct. 31.
I wonder what will happen if the 'Arab spring' reaches Saudi Arabia via Twitter.
In any event, I also have to wonder why Twitter's valuation is so high. I'm still trying to figure out how they make money.
But
follow me anyway.
Labels: Saudi Royal Family, Twitter
'Charming' Saudi threatens US over Israel
And to think that Maureen Dowd of the
New York Times once referred to him as '
charming.' He's anything but charming in this
distortion-filled op-ed in the Washington Post.
As the main political and financial supporter of the Palestinian quest for self-determination, Saudi Arabia holds an especially strong position. The kingdom’s wealth, steady growth and stability have made it the bulwark of the Middle East. As the cradle of Islam, it is able to symbolically unite most Muslims worldwide. In September, the kingdom will use its considerable diplomatic might to support the Palestinians in their quest for international recognition. American leaders have long called Israel an “indispensable” ally. They will soon learn that there are other players in the region — not least the Arab street — who are as, if not more, “indispensable.” The game of favoritism toward Israel has not proven wise for Washington, and soon it will be shown to be an even greater folly.
Commentators have long speculated about the demise of Saudi Arabia as a regional powerhouse. They have been sorely disappointed. Similarly, history will prove wrong those who imagine that the future of Palestine will be determined by the United States and Israel. There will be disastrous consequences for U.S.-Saudi relations if the United States vetoes U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. It would mark a nadir in the decades-long relationship as well as irrevocably damage the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and America’s reputation among Arab nations. The ideological distance between the Muslim world and the West in general would widen — and opportunities for friendship and cooperation between the two could vanish.
We Arabs used to say no to peace, and we got our comeuppance in 1967. In 2002 King Abdullah offered what has become the Arab Peace Initiative. Based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, it calls for an end to the conflict based on land for peace. The Israelis withdraw from all occupied lands, including East Jerusalem, reach a mutually agreed solution to the Palestinian refugees and recognize the Palestinian state. In return, they will get full diplomatic recognition from the Arab world and all the Muslim states, an end to hostilities and normal relations with all these states.
Now, it is the Israelis who are saying no. I’d hate to be around when they face their comeuppance.
This lecture about the 'human rights' of 'Palestinians' might not have been quite so annoying had the government that Tooki represents not arrested five women in Riyadh on Thursday...
for the crime of driving. That's not a crime for women in Israel - the only country in the Middle East that shares values with the United States. The only thing the Saudis share with the United States is oil. For now.
Labels: Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, Saudi Royal Family, Turki al-Faisal, unilateral declaration of statehood
Who's upset that Osama's dead?
Who's upset over Osama Bin Laden's death and burial at sea?
Hamas is upset over his death, and at least one Islamic cleric in Egypt has spoken out against his burial at sea. This is a tweet from Reuters (linked above):
Hamas condemns U.S. killing of bin Laden, calls it "assassination" of "Arab holy warrior"
And here's our upset
Egyptian cleric.
The head of Egypt's prestigious seat of Sunni Muslim learning, al-Azhar, condemned U.S. troops' disposal of the body of Osama bin Laden at sea Monday as an affront to religious and human values.
Muslims set great store by interment in permanent graves on land and accept burial at sea only in cases where the body cannot be preserved intact aboard ship until it reaches shore.
"The Grand Imam, Dr Ahmed El-Tayeb, the sheikh of Al-Azhar condemned the reports, if true, of the throwing of the body of Osama bin Laden into the sea," according to a statement released by al-Azhar, which is respected around the world by many Sunni Muslims as a seat of religious learning.
The procedure "contradicts all the religious values and human norms," it said: "The Grand Imam asserted that it is forbidden in Islam to deform the dead, regardless of their beliefs. One honors the dead by burying them."
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said bin Laden's body was dropped into the sea from the deck of an aircraft carrier after troops killed the al Qaeda leader in Pakistan. One said this was done to prevent his grave becoming a shrine. Another said Islamic customs had been respected.
There's a story I've seen online from the US that says that video of the burial is to be released tonight by the Department of Defense. If I see it, you'll see it.
A prominent Egyptian Islamist lawyer also condemned the U.S. move and said bin Laden should have been buried in his native Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally and home to Islam's holiest sites.
"Isn't it enough that they killed him and displayed their joy to the world?" Montasser al-Zayat told Al Jazeera television. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a moral obligation to demand that it bury Osama on its land."
Something tells me that the Saudi royals aren't going to spend a lot of money trying to find Bin Laden's body in the middle of the ocean. Heh.
By the way, the authenticity of the picture at the top of this post has been called into question.
Labels: al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islam, Osama Bin Laden, Saudi Royal Family, sea burial
Panic in the Gulf
There's been a massive sell-off in the Saudi stock market this week, and the reason is really quite simple: The Saudi royal family is
between a rock and a hard place.
The latest sell-off was triggered by the arrest of a Shi’ite cleric in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province after he called for democratic reforms and a constitutional monarchy. The province is home to Saudi Arabia’s aggrieved Shi’ite minority and also holds the country’s vast Ghawar oilfield, placing it at the epicentre of global crude supply.
...
In Bahrain, the island nation’s Sunni elite holds sway over a Shi’ite majority that is denied key jobs and has a token political voice, making it a trial run for Saudi Arabia’s near-identical tensions in the Eastern Province.
Bahraini dissidents have so far been much bolder, prompting a bloody crackdown last month when at least seven people were shot by the military. The ruling family – under intense pressure from Washington to stop the killings – has since held out an olive branch to protesters and let the radical Haq leader Hassan Mushaima return from exile, yet the crisis is far from contained.
My Mushaima said on Wednesday that protesters have “the right to appeal for help from Iran” if Saudi military units interfere in the struggle. Tanks were seen crossing the 17-mile causeway from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain on Tuesday.
“These were supposed to be Bahrain’s tanks returning from Kuwait: that is not a credible story,” said Firas Abi Ali, a Gulf expert at the risk group Exclusive Analysis.
He said the outcome in Bahrain will set the template for events across the border. “There is no good outcome from this for Saudi Arabia. If Bahrain offers concessions, the Saudi Shia will demand similar concessions. If they crack down, they risk an uprising. These people do not want to live under the House of Saud,” he said.
Saudi activists have called on Facebook for a “Day of Rage” on March 11, despite the penalty of lashing for street protest. A similar call to arms in Syria fizzled because people were frightened, and the security forces nipped it in the bud. “We will be watching closely to see how many people turn up, and how far their demands go,” said Mr Abi Ali.
Saudi King Abdullah has scant leeway. His own legitimacy stems from Wahabi clerics, who refuse any compromise with the Shia. He is 87 and in poor health, raising the prospect of an imminent succession struggle that favours the hard-line interior minister Prince Nayef. He would undoubtedly crush any protests. The monarchy has sought to gain time by spending an extra $36bn (£22bn) on welfare and salaries, but patronage politics may strike the wrong note at this stage.
Read the whole thing.
What we're seeing is the chickens from 90 years ago coming home to roost. The West attempted to divide the Middle East into nation states in the hope of making them Western-style democracies. They have failed on two counts. First, the division was accomplished by paying off the strongest tribes in the region, ignoring the inevitability that who is the strongest tribe is a cyclical notion, and that the day would come that the al-Saud's and the Khalifa's would not have the consent of other tribes to govern them. Second, loyalty in this part of the world remains the loyalty of the tribe - and in the grander scale of the sect of Islam. There is no Western-style notion of loyalty to the nation state.
I've seen a lot of comments that what's going on now is the Arab world's
1848. That might be true in Egypt, which is an ancient and cohesive society and it may even be true in Tunisia. But it's not true in countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Libya, and further down the road Jordan and Oman. For those countries, what we're seeing is 1848 in reverse: A withdrawal from nationalism in favor of tribal loyalties.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Bahrain, Saudi Royal Family, tribalism
Saudi prince calls for reform
Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, a grandson of the founding king of modern Saudi Arabia, writes an op-ed in the New York Times calling for
reform.
[U]nless many Arab governments adopt radically different policies, their countries will very likely experience more political and civil unrest. The facts are undeniable:
The majority of the Arab population is under 25, and the unemployment rate for young adults is in most countries 20 percent or more. Unemployment is even higher among women, who are economically and socially marginalized. The middle classes are being pushed down by inflation, which makes a stable standard of living seem an unattainable hope. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening. The basic needs for housing, health care and education are not being met for millions.
Moreover, Arab countries have been burdened by political systems that have become outmoded and brittle. Their leaderships are tied to patterns of governance that have become irrelevant and ineffective. Decision-making is invariably confined to small circles, with the outcomes largely intended to serve special and self-serving interests. Political participation is often denied, truncated and manipulated to ensure elections that perpetuate one-party rule.
Disheartening as this Arab condition may be, reforming it is neither impossible nor too late. Other societies that were afflicted with similar maladies have managed to restore themselves to health. But we can succeed only if we open our systems to greater political participation, accountability, increased transparency and the empowerment of women as well as youth. The pressing issues of poverty, illiteracy, education and unemployment have to be fully addressed. Initiatives just announced in my country, Saudi Arabia, by King Abdullah are a step in the right direction, but they are only the beginning of a longer journey to broader participation, especially by the younger generation.
The lesson to be learned from the Tunisian, Egyptian and other upheavals — which, it is important to note, were not animated by anti-American fervor or by extremist Islamic zeal — is that Arab governments can no longer afford to take their populations for granted, or to assume that they will remain static and subdued. Nor can the soothing instruments of yesteryear, which were meant to appease, serve any longer as substitutes for meaningful reform. The winds of change are blowing across our region with force, and it would be folly to suppose that they will soon dissipate.
I wonder if he published it in Arabic and whether his view (he's spent a lot of time in the US - I think he was the one who Rudy Giuliani told to take a hike after he offered $10 million after 9/11) is the prevailing view in the royal family.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Saudi reform, Saudi Royal Family
Could the House of Saud come tumbling down?
What would happen if 'our friends, the Saudis' were no longer our friends? Karen Elliott House writes in the Wall Street Journal that the consequences could be quite serious and the chances of the
House of Saud falling are increasing.
In any authoritarian regime, instability seems unthinkable up to the moment of upheaval, and that is true now for Saudi Arabia. But even as American influence recedes across the Middle East, the U.S. soon may face the staggering consequences of instability here, in its most important remaining Arab ally. While a radical regime in Egypt would threaten Israel directly but not America, a radical anti-Western regime in Saudi Arabia—which produces one of every four barrels of oil world-wide—clearly would endanger America as leader of the world economy.
Thirty years of visiting Saudi Arabia, including intensive reporting over the past four years, convinces me that unless the regime rapidly and radically reforms itself—or is pushed to do so by the U.S.—it will remain vulnerable to upheaval. Despite the conventional wisdom that Saudi Arabia is unique, and that billions in oil revenue and an omnipresent intelligence system allow the regime to maintain power by buying loyalty or intimidating its passive populace, it can happen here.
The many risks to the al Saud family's rule can be summed up in one sentence: The gap between aged rulers and youthful subjects grows dramatically as the information gap between rulers and ruled shrinks. The average age of the kingdom's trio of ruling princes is 83, yet 60% of Saudis are under 18 years of age. Thanks to satellite television, the Internet and social media, the young now are well aware of government corruption—and that 40% of Saudis live in poverty and nearly 70% can't afford a home. These Saudis are living Third World lives, suffering from poor education and unable to find jobs in a private sector where 90% of all employees are imported non-Saudis. Through new media the young compare their circumstances unfavorably with those in nearby Gulf sheikhdoms and the West.
...
What these reform-minded princes fail to understand—or at least acknowledge to foreigners—is the degree to which many young Saudis no longer respect or fear the royal family. Rather, they increasingly resent the indignity inherent in having to beg princes for favors that should be a public right.
Frustrated by these daily indignities, young Saudis experiment with drugs, steal cars and vandalize government property. Saudis at all levels of society are becoming increasingly lawless, emulating their leaders in doing whatever they can get away with. A recent target of youthful ire is a new camera system that tickets speeders. The system has been repeatedly vandalized by youth who claim that their fines enrich the Minister of the Interior, who is also responsible for the kingdom's invasive intelligence agencies. In choosing this target, young Saudis protest both royal corruption and state intrusion into their lives.
Still, most ordinary Saudis do not crave democracy. They fear that traditional tribal divisions, coupled with a lack of social and political organizations, would lead to mayhem—or to even greater domination by the conservative religious establishment that is well-organized through the kingdom's 70,000 mosques. If in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood is considered a potential threat, its Saudi equivalent already dominates Saudi society.
What Saudis hunger for are standard services provided by far less wealthy governments: good education, jobs, decent health care. They also want to be able to speak honestly about the political and economic issues that affect their lives. Yet when a professor of religion at Imam University dared in November to suggest on the Internet that Saudis be permitted to take public their private discussions on succession, he was jailed.
"The gap between reform here and the demands of our young is widening," warns a senior prince. "It is a race against time because the young are tired of the status quo, tired of talk." Saudi Arabia is not Egypt. But even in this most shrouded and supposedly most stable of Arab societies, time is running out.
Well, I sure hope they don't expect Obama to do anything about this.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Obama, Egyptian regime change, Saudi Arabia, Saudi King Abdullah, Saudi Royal Family
Wine, women and song, Saudi style
With just 0.4% of the documents disclosed (about 1,000 out of 250,000), the revelations from Wikileaks just keep on coming. In one document released on Wednesday, it was disclosed that when it comes to wine, women and song, the Saudi Royal Family's attitude is that it's
for me and not for thee.
According to the leaked dispatches, officials from the Jeddah consulate detailed an underground Halloween party in which alcohol and prostitutes were readily available. The party, attended by over 150 Saudi men and women mostly in their twenties and thirties, was organized by a member of the Saudi royalty, a wealthy prince from the Al Thunayan family.
The party was held in a heavily secured villa and some of the funding was contributed by a US energy drink. The diplomat recommended the prince's identity remain secret.
The dispatch was signed off by Martin Quinn, the consul in Jeddah.
"Alcohol, though strictly prohibited by Saudi law and custom, was plentiful at the party's well-stocked bar," explained the cable. "The hired Filipino bartenders served a cocktail punch using sadiqi, a locally-made "moonshine". It was also learned through word-of-mouth that a number of the guests were in fact 'working girls', not uncommon for such parties."
American party attendees added that, "Though not witnessed directly at this event, cocaine and hashish use is common in these social circles."
Secret, underground parties protected by Saudi royalty and accessible only to the wealthy, were described as "thriving and throbbing" in the dispatch.
"The scene resembled a nightclub anywhere outside the Kingdom: plentiful alcohol, young couples dancing, a DJ at the turntables, and everyone in costume," the dispatch continued.
"Over the past few years, the increased conservatism of Saudi Arabia’s external society has pushed the nightlife and party scene in Jeddah even further underground," a prominent Saudi was quoted in the dispatch as saying.
Heh.
The cartoon at the top is a Saudi cartoon about the Wikileaks document dump.
Labels: for me and not for thee, Saudi Royal Family, Wikileaks, wine, women and song
