Business as Usual in the Kingdom

First: we had a wonderful weekend, a day at the beach, wonderful weather; and are getting ready for school tomorrow.
Various news media and our expatriate community was all abuzz with talk about possible demonstrations and disruptions in Saudi Arabia, apparently triggered by a Facebook message. It was an obvious reminder for us to brush up on our emergency plans, and it prompted our teachers to check their Virtual School logins, just in case.
After surfing various news websites now, here's what I find on Friday night at 9:30pm here: It seems that most of the newspeople are devoted to reporting on the tsunami in Japan. CNN's website is surprisingly old, referring to Friday as tomorrow, and posting no follow-up to a rather alarmist article (I'm disappointed in the lack of follow-up). The LATimes has the most up-to-date piece, calling the protests a fizzle...it even includes a photo of the (apparently) largest protest, actually held yesterday in a town near us (though we've never been there, it's the oldest town in the region), which the NYTimes reported, again with no follow-up yet. It seems that a peaceful demonstration demanding release of some political prisoners was disrupted by tear gas and security forces firing over the heads, resulting in 2 or 4 demonstrators wounded and one security person wounded. How wounded, not clear.
However, we note an interesting coincidence. Arab News reports a type of article I haven't seen before, about a wounded soldier being airlifted to a hospital for treatment -- airlifted from Dhahran (near Qatif) to Riyadh (the capital), by special order of the Interior Minister Prince Naif. hmmm. The Interior Minister is reputed to be a strict conservative, in charge of domestic security (read riot police). Am I reading too much into this? Maybe Private Hamid Al-Qahtani of the Special Emergency Forces was injured while suppressing a demonstration?
At any rate, let's keep an eye on reporter Neela Banerjee of the LATimes: congratulations for current and insightful reporting.

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