What about Riyadh, Ta’if, Mecca and Madinah? Are we too say the family isn’t corrupt, when you can see the palaces that this family builds for themselves, while there are massive numbers of poor and destitute Saudis – not foreigners, but 1$ a day Saudi bedouins? I remember the Saudi gazette putting AbduLlah on the front cover, after he refused to believe one of his economic advisors, who said there were no poor people in Riyadh – a poor man was shown shaking his worn slipper in (then) Prince abdullah’s face. When I spoke about this with some brothers, they said these statements went back decades, to Faisal’s advisors, one of who asserted in the late 70s that there wasn’t a Saudi who wasn’t a milllionaire… garbage.

That the coutry isn’t developed, despite all the resources thrown at it… in the words of a Saudi student: “We have no job and no hope of seeing a good job. We sit at home watching al-Manar and al-Jazeera all day, seeing our palestinian, afghani, somalian, and chechen arab and muslim brothers and sisters being killed. Then we go to the mosque and listen to someone tell us to die for our religion. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more 9/11s.” I’m quoting verbatim.

Why aren’t Saudis defending themselves? Running things themselves? How well do you think that country would run if they fully “Saudized” and required Saudis to do every job? Do you believe it would make a whole week? Seriously, ignoring the serious problems…

As for the family, Nayef is the prince of darkness, tho Turki was the CIA point man throughout the 80s for the Afghan jihad effort, taking CIA funds and and training to build the madrassas which have done *so much* for Pakistan and Afghanistan… one should ask why every time there was a terrorist attack in Saudi, the major guys seem to get away.

Or the massive prisons, where thousands of Islamists (and political opponents of the Saudi regime, or even completely innocent people, like a Yemeni friend who was arrested when his Saudi business-partner left the country with the capital loaned to him to start a business, and who was arrested for over 2 years, in a vain attempt to make his business partner, flown away to Barbados no doubt, care)… and the fact that the Saudis have offered, along with the Jordanians, to take the Gitmo prisoners, and no doubt, to carry out every bit the same torture and degradation that Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are famous for…

but if you want to tell me these are empty allegations, “just ‘idle Westerners’ care about these things, let’s look at the great marble-filled hotels and KFC joints available everywhere, isn’t that enough to fill the hole that used to be muslim culture and integrity?” – please do…

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