Lawry,
At 12:51 12/08/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Gosh, Keith. I know quite a few Saudi Arabians, and quite a bit about Saudi
>Arabia, and have none of the senses that you describe. None. Perhaps you are
>falling prey to the increasingly engineered anti-Saudi rant that the media
>is carrying? My impression of Saudis is that of friendliness to the US and
>to Americans, self-interest but restraint on oil sales, zero promotion of
>terrorism, and honest struggles with issues of modernity and traditional
>values. What different points of view we have! But I think mine is the one
>generally held by people who really know the country and its people, not the
>least of which includes US Ambassadors, scholars, expats who have worked in
>the country, and general experts on the Middle East.
I know nothing personally about Saudi Arabia. However, as I mentioned in my
reply to Jan Matthieu ("Gulf War II/Israeli War IV" -- 10 August), I rely a
great deal on the reports of BBC correspondents and other journalists
(those, at least who manage to get into the country -- very few are allowed
to travel freely outside the capital), and these pretty uniformly describe
a nasty and deeply repressed society (as indeed the Rand Report describes),
where minor criminals are still amputated or beheaded (and women for lesser
crimes), where riots are becoming increasingly common (though usually
censored in their newspapers) and where books and information about the
west are virtually unobtainable.
I don't have any personal experience of Saudi Arabia but rely on the
observations of others and am thus at a loss to reconcile your description
with theirs. I don't know in what capacity you know Saudi Arabia -- have
you visited the place? I have a relative who has worked for several years
in Abu Dhabi with a similar dictatorial regime and he thinks it a very fine
place. (The Sheikh is benign when he wants to be, and not when he doesn't
want to be.) The truth is, though, that my relative moves only in
well-defined (business) circles and doesn't have any contact with ordinary
people -- nor with the bonded labour (slaves) there. Do your Saudi freinds
tell you of the bonded labour in SA and the way they are treated?
I'll have to leave it there. If my reliance on the observations of BBC
journalists and others is unfounded then none of what I've been sketching
(a likely insurrection led by the mullahs) will take place. And I'll be
very pleased if that's so. We'll have to wait and see.
(LdeB)
>I am as always intrigued with your scenarios, skeptical over the amount of
>centralized planning and coordination that they posit. But mostly I hope
>that you remember that they are _only_ scenarios, and that reality may be
>quite different.
>
>Re. the Brits who have been arrested for setting up a distribution network
>for booze they distilled in their bathtubs (not just a small case of
>smuggling in a whiskey bottle or two!) my guess is that if they had
>apologized and showed public contrition, they would be on an airplane out of
>there pretty quickly. I don't know much about the case, and don't know who
>they were working for, but I would guess that their companies had given them
>briefings on what was expected of them and their behavior in Saudi Arabia
>(SOP for expats) so they can't claim innocent ignorance.
They have been kept in solitary confinement for months, mentally tortured
and have had to sign confessions that they were terrorists. One of them was
"sprung" by his company and this is what he related. His friends are in a
terrible state and our Foreign Office can do nothing about it except make
feeble attempts to get them released every now and again.
>Too many Europeans
>and Americans travel to other cultures with the attitude they can do
>anything they damn well please, and then howl with outrage when they are
>arrested for (usually egregiously) breaking the laws.
Well, that's one way of putting it, I suppose, but I still think that if
the Saudi royal family and many of their rich businessmen who buy up
expensive properties in the west (such as some beautiful country estates
round here) and seek to live like us, then one might expect that they would
do their best to bring their country out of abysmal medievalism, start some
schools to teach skills to their young men, endow a few universities, give
their womenfolk ordinary citizens' rights and generally treat their fellow
Saudis with reasonable decency.
But they don't seem to. Not at least according to the Rand Report, nor BBC
journalists.
Keith
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Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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