The Washington Post has released three more photos from the Abu Ghraib prison. If you're still not clear as to what constitutes torture, try Photo 2.

Saudi Education Minister Mohammed Ahmed Rasheed is a reformer. And he has wassatiya in mind. The word means "being neither to the extreme right nor the extreme left"—sort of a Saudi middle-of-the-roader.

But reading about the problems Rasheed faces in the Desert Kingdom and the stark parallels with educational problems in America, I'd say he has his work cut out for him.

Take this, for example: "A few of our teachers used to try to indoctrinate our young students." His use of the past tense suggests that the problem has been resolved in Saudi Arabia, but one suspects otherwise, if the United States is any sort of model.

Here at home, indoctrination is our first priority. Math and science have to be squeezed in among the flag-raising and Pledge of Allegiance in the morning, the noonday voluntary prayer session held around the flagpole by Christian athletes and other student opinion-makers. Then there's the flag-lowering, to be followed in the evening by Christian events such as football, which typically requires playing the Star-Spangled Banner, a few words from a member of the clergy, to be capped by the footballers kneeling in a circle before they go out and kick some ass.

What has piqued1 the Washington Post's interest in Saudi education was the publication of the face of a Saudi female CEO2 last January.

[T]he kingdom's

The face that launched a thousand rants.

religious leaders were outraged, particularly after a picture appeared in Saudi newspapers the next day showing Olayan without a veil.

"Such a practice is agreed upon unanimously to be forbidden, as is newspapers' publication of photographs of such women in this unseemly, Islamically unlawful state," intoned the grand mufti, Sheik Abdalaziz bin Abdullah Sheik.

If that wasn't clear enough, another source reveals that he went on to say,

“I decree3 that Muslims should beware, be alert and avoid being carried away by this propaganda, which destroys religion, morals and virtues... What was published in some newspapers about this being the start of liberating the Saudi woman—such talk is null and void. One's duty is to obey Shariah (Islamic law) by complying with orders and shunning that which is forbidden.”

Now I know that being deprived of a glimpse of any portion of the female anatomy since you last saw your mother's teat will cause strange reactions, and I will not even speculate upon what Saudi men may have done to themselves when they saw that face. But in any case, it can't be as bad as the teaching of Darwinism, which is what Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have to put up with.

But what we're really talking about here is preserving the regime.

Preserving the regime

The single most important pillar supporting the ruling Saud family, the Wahhabis, are under siege at a time when the Sauds need them more than ever to bolster their rule against Islamic radicals.4

Again, the parallel with the Bush regime is striking. It too depends for its preservation upon grand muftis such as the Revs. Robertson and Falwell. But a part of Bush's problem is that he can't seem to elicit the same degree of fervor from his religious followers as the House of Saud can.

"Seeking to overthrow existing legitimate regimes is forbidden," the grand mufti said in a late January sermon.... "Praise the leaders of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia who are providing us with peace and security."

Terrorism must be "crushed," he continued. "God says the penalty of those that fight God and his prophet and spread violence and terror is to be killed, crucified or have their hands and legs chopped off."

While Bush may be able to count on Pat Robertson to call down a hurricane or two come November, the effect is just not the same.

A teeny part of the dilemma for both King George and the House of Saud is that neither really believes in the beliefs of their supporters. So they're forced to appear as radical moderates, or moderate radicals (that's wassatiya, to you), and the hypocrisy is just killing them.

In his heart of hearts our Great Leader probably wants to support stem-cell research and go to Mars in hope of finding dinosaurs or something (which could wreak havoc with the Christian fundamentalist idea that the universe was created just 5,000 years ago). But he knows how precarious his regime really is, so we'll go to Mars, but he just won't mention the dinosaurs.

As for the Saudis, if you've ever seen a Saudi prince in a hotel bar, you know what I mean. To put it succinctly—they don't give a shit about Shariah and admit that they're often miffed by the muftis.

If all this weren't enough, there's the media problem.

[M]any Saudis contend the House of Wahhab's iron grip is slipping. Shobokshi, the Jiddah businessman and columnist, ascribes this to expanded access to more moderate Islamic preachers elsewhere in the Arab world. "Saudis have discovered there are other ways to get interpretations of the Koran from other sheiks on the Internet and satellite television previously not available," he said.

You see what I mean? I have written elsewhere on the corrupting influence of foreign journalists and our government's efforts to prevent it, but the Internet and satellite television may require something more drastic.

What that "something" may be remains unclear. While the government already has the capacity to survey your every mouse click, it is not—so far as I know—actually coming between you and your clicker. That could change.

The satellite television component of the media assault on the population is more easily contained. Our newly activated Star Wars antiballistic missile system needs something sufficiently immobile to shoot at, since so far it has been absolutely hopeless at shooting down anything that moves. A geostationary satellite should be just the thing.
-

There are two groups for which the U.S. Immigration Service is keeping a sharp lookout—terrorists and foreign journalists. From the signals I'm getting from the government, it is difficult to tell which is more threatening.

Elena Lappin, a British citizen and wife and mother of American citizens, previously a permanent resident of the United States, was on her way to L.A. to conduct an interview when she got snared by "la Migra." It seems that Britons are allowed to come here without a visa, but only if they're not being paid to report on what they see.

Paid journalism is a threat to America that the Bush administration is taking very seriously. If any news is to leak out about what we're doing over here, it should come from the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe, not some Limey or Wop or Aussie, who might give completely biased impressions of what our Great Leader is up to.

I have it on background that the Department of Commerce has agreed that the benefit-to-risk ratio for foreign journalists is so low that it shouldn't undermine our border policy. You see, it's not just what the journalists might write, but—let's face it—they don't spend.

Consider how Ms. Lappin describes her seatmate and her reaction—

Sitting next to an intriguingly silent young man who could have been a porn star or a well camouflaged air marshal, I spent most of the 11-hour flight daydreaming about the city where he so clearly belonged and that I had never visited.

Most red-blooded American women (not to mention men) would have spent the 11-hour flight dreaming of him, and surely would have made him a remunerative offer before touchdown. It wouldn't really have mattered whether he was a porn star or an air marshal, since we admire raw sex and authority almost equally.

But that's a British journalist for you—cheap and a bit repressed. And what we need right now is an economic stimulus—something more like electroshock really—and people like Mrs. Lappin are just not going to get the job done.

Here she is again:

I incurred the wrath of the boss [of the guards] when I insisted on edible food. "I'm in charge in here. Do you know who you are? Do you know where you are? This isn't a hotel," he screamed.

"Why are you yelling?" I asked. "I'm just asking for some decent food. I'll pay for it myself." A Burger King fishburger never tasted so good. And it occurred to me that a hotel or transit lounge would have been a better place to keep travellers waiting to return home.

See what I mean? They let her pay for her food while she's in detention, and what does she order? A California pizza with gouda and prosciutto for $15.95? An Atkins Diet appetizer of chitlins in hand-rendered bacon fat for $10.95. Not her. It's fish-and-chips all the way for $3.95. And she wants to eat it in a lounge?!

When she got back to London, she could hardly wait to write up her experience. She concluded her version of the episode rather snippily, I thought.

During my surreal interlude at LAX, I told the officer taking my fingerprints that I would be writing about it all. "No doubt," he snorted. "And anything you'll write won't be the truth."

If they ever let her back in, I just hope she'll have the good sense to leave her notebook at home and bring her credit card.

I am a firm believer in getting the word out, and there is no better vehicle than advertising. Checking this blog from netside, I noticed the ads that Google has provided.

Protective Escape Mask
Small (3 oz.) pocket size mask. Carbon Monoxide + 56 toxic gases.

Where Is God In Tragedy?
Essay Detailing What We Can Count on God For in Difficult Times

Related Searches: • terror • us treasury department

You just can't make this stuff up. Those of you who want to see it for yourself will just have to keep visiting this site. The ads can change from page load to page load, so just keep coming back.