Wednesday, May 25, 2005

My name is the House of Saud, and I will be your servant forever, Uncle Sam. I can't believe how hard the House of Saud is trying to please the US. They are mostly winning US approval by the incredible restructuring of the Arab media, almost all of which are Saudi-financed in one way or another. The Arab media are now synchronized and carefully calibrated to US propaganda interests especially after the abysmal failure of Hurra-TV, and musical--but not news--success of Sawa Radio. Harb, who runs both stations, did not know that his mission was not to urge Arab youth to dance to musical tunes. In one week, Thomas Friedman, as I mentioned before, paid tribute to a columnist in Al-Hayat, a columnist of Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat, and mentioned Rose ElYoussef. US propagandists are taking notice very quickly. But this has gone too far. AlHayat has started a website in English to translate its neo-conservative articles to please the US government. And Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat yesterday launched its English website. But it was a glaring omission that the various Arab nationalist and Islamic-oriented columnists (who are censored and tightly controlled of course) are not translated. Only the right-wing Saudi columnists who are handpicked by the House of Saud are translated in full. You will be able to judge how insightful and sophisticated these columns are, especially by the new editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Tariq Al-Mu'ayyid, who was appointed to his position before he celebrated his 17th birthday by Prince Faysal bin Salman, who runs the show there. And this week, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat and the Center for Strategic and International Studies held a joint conference on US-Saudi relations in Washington, DC. For some bizarre reason, I was not invited although the affair was funded by Prince Faysal bin Salman with whom I used play marbles as a kid--do people still play marbles by the way. I was so good in marble games as a child. I should write about my marble adventures some day. According to AlArabiyya TV report on the affair, the participants agreed that things are getting so much better between the two countries. Now you can sleep better.