king’s ransom
Charles Johnson
Tue Oct 16, 2001 at 3:02 pm PDT • Views: 143
This seems to be Saudi Arabia day at LGF. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh with an excellent article: King’s Ransom.
N.S.A. intercepts reveal the hypocrisy of many in the Saudi royal family, and why the family has become increasingly estranged from the vast majority of its subjects. Over the years, unnerved by the growing strength of the fundamentalist movement, it has failed to deal with the underlying issues of severe unemployment and inadequate education, in a country in which half the population is under the age of eighteen. Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhabism, and its use of mutawwa’in — religious police — to enforce prayer, is rivalled only by the Taliban’s. And yet for years the Saudi princes — there are thousands of them — have kept tabloid newspapers filled with accounts of their drinking binges and partying with prostitutes, while taking billions of dollars from the state budget.
Frank says: