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.

Comments

EUA: tanto estrago em tão pouco tempo

As part of my effort to learn about Portugal, both the country and the language, I'm subscribing to the centrist newspaper, O Publico . There are plenty of newspapers: conservative tabloids, and socialist and communist-sponsored daily papers; I find O Publico to be most sober, with consistently interesting columnists and opinion pieces, in addition to some local (Porto) news, with just enough sporting news to keep me chatting with the taxi driver. Today's opinion piece sums up, I think, European pundits' view of the U.S. government. As the title puts it: so much damage in so little time. I shudder at the rank incompetence and corrupt behavior, demonstrating a cynical attitude toward public service, showing indeed that the cruelty is the point. What scandal, what damage will be the tipping point to collapse this government? And what will it take to recover from the damage? Who will be able to trust the US government again, ever? Only ni...

Riding the Bus often

From 201010 Saudi scenes It is ironic that this land of cheap gasoline has so much group transport -- buses. From 201010 Saudi scenes Our housing compound has a Toyota-Coaster bus that takes some to/from school (we usually go earlier and return later, on a similar bus that the school provides). Driver Yahya takes residents on the 90-minute trip down to the Big City shopping every Thursday morning. The above picture shows our group one Thursday, usually going to Ikea or the new Lulu's Hypermarket , or the Dhahran Mall. Coleman rides a different bus every day to and from school -- usually 100 minutes there, 80 minutes back. His bus is evidently an old tourist bus, usually comfortable but a bit dusty. The air-conditioning usually works too well. I've ridden it with him several times, to attend business meetings at the district office. From 201010 Saudi scenes There he is, at 5:45am every morning, at the start of the bus run. Fortunately only about 20 stu...

Yikes! Russian Chocolate!

The other day we chanced upon a Slavic grocery store. We went inside, marveled at all the products from various eastern european countries, from Czechia to Poland to Yugoslavia to Russia to Kazakhstan. I grabbed a chocolate bar... and now I realize that it's Russian, imported via Germany. The ingredients list is written in Russian, Kyrgyz, and Uzbek; and a separate ingredients sticker pasted over it in German. No Portuguese or Spanish or English. Hmm. How did it get here? And what sort of sanctions are imposed on Russian confectioners? The chocolate itself is just okay, nothing special.

Thomas journals

Search This Blog