<p>" In frustration, I made some inquiries on my own. When I first heard of the tragedy, I had imagined that the girls were trampled as they fell in a stairwell or had been crushed against the door. Then I spoke to Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at U.C.L.A. and a member of the board of Human Rights Watch. He told me that he had received a call from a businessman in Mecca who claimed to be the father of one of the dead girls. “He was at work, a ten-minute drive from the school,” Abou El Fadl told me. “He got a call and rushed over, and there he encountered police and firemen. He pushed his way through, and then he noticed the muttawa’a.” A few minutes later, the father said, his daughter ran to the gate with a group of girls. The girls pleaded for someone to let them out. “She was screaming, ‘Break the lock! Break the lock!’” Abou El Fadl continued. “The smoke was overwhelming, it was very hot. One of the girls was screaming that her clothes were sticking to her skin.”</p>
<p>Seventeen fire engines had responded to the alarm, along with members of the civil defense. Between them and the desperate students stood the muttawa’a. None of the representatives of Saudi society standing outside the gate of the girls’ school—the police, the firemen, the parents, the bystanders—were able to summon the collective will to ignore the muttawa’a and save the girls. The man who called Abou El Fadl said he was afraid of challenging the religious police. They sent his daughter back into the school to get her abaya. She burned to death. “He said, ‘I want the criminals tried. They murdered my daughter. Help me bring justice,’” Abou El Fadl told me. But that was the last he heard from the man. "</p>
<p>" A middle-aged Saudi told me, I am worried about the next generation. They dont see any real women at all. You dont see each others wives, daughters, sisters. Everything is masculine. And yet they are bombarded by images. They can easily see porn. They live in the imagination of sex all the time. We dont grow naturally, to be loved, not to be lovedwe dont undergo these changes. Two-thirds of the marriages here are basically loveless. Many men cheattheres a lot going on underground.</p>
<p>Some Saudi men openly joke about their behavior when they leave the country. Were all sex maniacs, by the way, one said to me. He regularly flies to Morocco for female companionship. Theres a part of me that I share with all men, where women are concerned. And theres a part I share with Arab men. But theres a big part that only Saudi guys have in common.</p>
<p>The absence of socialization between men and women struck me as a potent factor in terrorist fantasies. The hijackers who killed themselves on September 11th were propelled in part by the notion of being rewarded in the afterlife with the company of virgins. Such abstractions dont seem quite so strange in a country where images of women piped through a satellite dish seem more vivid than actual Saudi womenwhom the male reporters at the Gazette liked to call B.M.O.s, or black moving objects. "</p>
<p>I think FS is conflicted here so she rings her little bell…she hates the Sauid regime, but has to put down those that think the Bush relationship witht he Saudi’s is wrong…sigh</p>
<p>Allumusic, what is your point? What exactly would you have our country do with regard to our “relationship” with the Saudi gov’t? Are you an expert on this or are you just ceasing yet another opportunity to try and trash our leadership.</p>
<p>I have no illusions that things are “black and white” or that lines are ever clearly drawn between what is always GOOD and what will forever be BAD. I also have no illusion that I am an expert on our relations with the Saudi government, and neither, I suspect are you. I and others here have made observations about what I consider to be the unimaginable conditions under which these women live. That I can also recognize that I might not be aware of, or even privy to all the characteristics of our dealings with the Saudis on a diplomatic level is, I think, a good thing. I can still, howver, not like how they treat their women. And be thankful I do not live there.</p>
<p>See, here is what is so tiring. Each and every discussion of anything that is unfair or unjust or even sad in the world always seems to come around to the same old refrain: it’s Bush’s fault. </p>
<p>He must be some kind of powerful! He can even cause hurricanes, I hear, or make them stop… Or lower gas prices… or magically “decide” that now is when the Dow should climb to record highs. I would not want to mess with that!</p>
<p>CMM, I have no insider knowledge, but I am a reader. Have you read Unger’s book?</p>
<p>Are you aware of the intimacies of the Bush/Saud financial relationships, which is well documented?</p>
<p>Did you know that the Saudis’ contributions to the Bush family: a staggering $1.476 billion, paid out over 30 years as gifts to Bush-related charities, as generous perks (including a Saudi-sponsored European hunting trip for George H. W. Bush and his 1991 gulf war cabinet just after the November 2000 general election) and as investments in Bush-related businesses like Harken Energy or the Carlyle Group?</p>
<p>So, the Bushes have all gotten quite rich as a result of this relationship. Don’t forget, not only have these financial backers been members of the royal family, but also the Bin-ladens. And in return, the Saudis get what from the Bushes?</p>
<p>but you see, Bush has had a relationship with the oppressive Saudi regime for years and years, personal and financial, as have his friends, and he embraces the Saudi’s holding hands, lauding them, etc, while at the same time talking about democracy, human dignity, and human rights…so churchmusicmom, do you think it is right for our government to endorse an oppressive regime? </p>
<p>tolerating is one thing to get what you want, I guess, but to applaud them, work out private financial deals, ie Carlyle Group, etc is quite different</p>
<p>And as these are his friends, he says nothing, like treat your women better?
guess he just doesn’t care, as these are our “allies”-</p>
<p>“The president and Crown Prince Abdullah were also sending a real political message that they are partners and friends and intend to remain that way.”</p>
<p>I am not here to argue politics or foreign policy. Only to point out that some people here seek to create such an argument out of almost every discussion. That, to me, makes their “points” ring hollow.</p>
<p>I admittedly am not all that well-read in these matters. Call me whatever you wish for that. But it took me very little time to find info that sheds quite a different light on the points you made about the Bush’s supposedly taking money from the Saudis.</p>
<p>Quote from a site called “footnote farenheit”:
The alleged investment that James Bath made, reportedly on behalf of two wealthy Saudis, into George W. Bush’s first oil company in 1978.</p>
<p>Evidently, rumors to that effect have spread for years. But Craig Unger, who Michael Moore cites as a key source for Fahrenheit 9/11, conceded in his 2003 book “House of Bush, House of Saud” that “no hard evidence has ever been found to back up that charge.” Unger also reported that Bath himself had said that he had invested his own money into Bush.</p>
<p>“One hundred percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment,” Bath is quoted as saying in a footnote in Unger’s book. Bath reportedly said that Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden had nothing to do with either George W. Bush or his father. “They never met Bush. Ever. And there was no reason to. At that point Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling young entrepreneur trying to get a drilling fund.”</p>
<p>Again, I am not here to argue with you. I refuse to be baited into decrying our govenrment’s policies re Saudi Arabia based solely on your say-so since you obviously seem to have a difficult time presenting a balanced view of things.</p>
<p>But I can, because I Do have “experience” at being a woman who is blessed to live in a country where I enjoy a great deal of freedom and liberty, bemoan situations where women are not allowed to do so.</p>
<p>I was reading the messages in this thread without noticing the original date and when I saw that lucifer11287 had responded (early this year before his death), a cold chill went through me. I was interested in the title, but my mind has strayed. It makes me so sad all over again.</p>
<p>1) Re: the hijackers who killed themselves on September 11th were propelled in part by the notion of being rewarded in the afterlife with the company of virgins…</p>
<p>2) Re: Bush friendly with the Saudis</p>
<p>Watching <a href=“http://www.loosechange911.com%5B/url%5D”>www.loosechange911.com</a> will give some clues as to why Bush
didn’t go after the Saudis, though it was ‘their men’ who perpetrated 9/11.</p>
<p>"A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced the victim of a gang rape to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man other than her husband.</p>
<p>The Jerusalem Post reports the high-profile and controversial trial ended with the convicted rapists sentenced to punishments ranging from one thousand lashes to as little as 80 — 10 fewer than the victim — along with prison terms of between one and five years. The woman’s family says it will appeal what it considers inadequate sentences for the rapists."</p>
<p>The Arab countries differ from one another but most have serious problems in their societies that they need to work out with religious reformation or whatever. It will be a long struggle and they will have to do it themselves. What we in the U.S. can do is begin withdrawing from our economic dependence on the region while continuing to offer friendship, student exchanges and other kinds of diplomacy.</p>
I agree with you. We need to end our addiction to oil and prohibit the import of any foreign oil within a defined number of years. We should have a national policy promoting ethanol and electric cars instead of gas vehicles.</p>
<p>I like that there were alot of comments in this thread about how bad america is, no matter what anyone does or anyone says everything comes back to how america does this and george bush is secretly doing that, but i personally do not know many plain people who would live in Saudi Arabia over the US.</p>
<p>Truthfully, Arab citizens of Israel have more rights than the arabs in any other arab country-freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to drive, freedom to participate in free and open govt, freedom of religion etc.</p>
<p>America is great, but it is not without many faults, and as Americans and patriots, if we don’t try and fix the faults, we are shricking our responsibility</p>
<p>pollyannas about america do the country no good…</p>