From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Aug 14 2002 - 00:26:14 MDT
mlorrey@yahoo.com wrote:
> The Washington Post article was planted by the Saudi Embassy as an
> attempt to dissuade support for a growing movement on capital hill to
> treat Saudi Arabia as at best a non-supportive neutral state, and at
> worst the source of the problem, and thereby end support of the Saud
> regieme.
The idea that a government would plant a story that suggests their
society is opening to critical discussion about its foundations of
religious and social structure, and to have that all be a lie, seems to
me an extremely dangerous course to take, especially if such a
government is walking a tightrope between it's own people and much of
the Islamic world on one side and the US on the other.
This isn't to say that I disagree with the thesis that SA is a part of
the problem.
But there seems more to it than that. The fire in a SA school some
months ago, where 15 girls died since they weren't permitted to flee w/o
proper dress, seems to have provoked discussion. As I imagine it would,
since I would think parents of any culture might get a wee bit upset at
the news of their children being burned to death.
Years ago, I did programming work (in the US) for a large SA government
system. Several times we got to see films about industry and progress in
SA. These were about as thrilling as your typical Downtown Progress
featurette. But they all ended exactly the same way, a little one minute
epilogue about how, despite all the changes and educational advancements
and progress we had just seen, the eternal truths of their
religion-based social structures would never ever change. 'Yeah, right'
was my usual reaction.
-Mike
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