The Robber Barons of Saudi Arabia

People born in the West tend to take freedom for granted; indeed, some people in the West seem to almost depise democracy.

Moat cleaning and duck houses might seem bad enough (ie, MP’s expenses scandal in the UK) but it’s chickenfeed compared to The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – population about 26 million, of whom 6 million are foreign workers. Many Saudis live below the poverty line, and 40% of Saudi youths have no jobs. Of those who have been able to find work, nearly half of them take home less than 3,000 riyals ($830) a month. In the Saudi royal family there are somewhere between 7,000 and 8,000 princes, each of whom gets a monthly stipend ranging from a few thousand dollars up to $250,000, according to an estimate in a WikiLeaks cable. See this piece from The Economist…

The royal house is rattled too

Now, as if it’s not bad enough that the Saudi royal family steals from its own people (Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter and is awash with cash), the Saudis also have no freedom of speech, no religious freedom (the Saudi government forbids the practice of any religion other than the state-sanctioned interpretation of Islam – Wahhabism), and of course women and minorities have no rights whatsoever. See The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (CDHR).

Has there ever been a nation more ripe for revolution? King Abdullah recently returned to Riyadh after three months of medical treatment abroad (the medical system in oil rich Saudi Arabia is not well funded) and announced $37 billion in benefits for citizens in a bid to curb dissent. On Sunday the council of senior clerics banned all demonstrations in Saudi Arabia (see here). It should be noted that this council of tossers has absolutely no mandate from the people of Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi pro-democracy movement has called for another ‘day of rage’ this coming Friday, 11th March, and it will be interesting to see what happens. The key thing here, of course, is that Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest sites.

If revolution does kick off in Saudi Arabia, which seems a likely event, it might finally calm the West’s fears that these uprisings are an Islamic take-over job.

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