25% of Saudi Arabia's citizenry live in abject poverty .....

while the country spends billions of dollars on spreading wahhabism abroad in Muslim as well as in the gullible Judeo-Christian nations of the world  .... and billions more on madrasas in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere to train jihadis.   Millions of dollars if not billions are spent  in retainer fees to public relation firms  to keep adverse news from that manipulative country from making it to your TV screens or the newspapers you read and  yet more millions see their way to  law firms to suppress anyone having the temerity to speak against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Don't forget that Saudi Arabia  is a staunch  ally and friend of  the government in power of any of the Judeo-Christian countries, whether that governing party in power happens to be Right or Left leaning, matters little ...  try to remember that shaming fact while watching the vid below and reading the Dec. 3, 2012 article from Washington Post.    The maker of  the video, Feras Boqna and his team were arrested  soon after the vid was posted and the last "readily" available news about them is from a Oct 2011 article in The Guardian UK.  The team was jailed supposedly for two weeks and then set free ... but where  is Feras Boqna and his team now ?   No idea.



Kevin Sullivan writing at WashingtonPost:
In Saudi Arabia,    unemployment and booming population drive growing poverty.  

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
A few miles from the blinged-out shopping malls of Saudi Arabia’s capital, Souad al-Shamir lives in a concrete house in a trash-strewn alley, with no job, no money, five children younger than 14 and an unemployed husband who is laid up with chronic heart problems.
“We are at the bottom,” she said, sobbing hard behind a black veil that left only her eyes visible. “My kids are crying, and I can’t provide for them.”

Millions of Saudis live in poverty, struggling on the fringes of one of the world’s most powerful economies, where job-growth and welfare programs have failed to keep pace with a booming population that has soared from 6 million in 1970 to 28 million today.
Under King Abdullah, the government has spent billions to help the growing numbers of poor people, estimated to be as much as a quarter of the native Saudi population.
But critics complain that those programs are inadequate, and that some royals seem more concerned with their wealth and the country’s image than with helping the needy. Last year, for example, three young Saudi video bloggers were arrested and jailed for two weeks after they produced an online video about poverty in Saudi Arabia.

“The state hides the poor very well,” said Rosie Bsheer, a Saudi scholar who has written extensively on development and poverty. “The elite don’t see the suffering of the poor. People are hungry.”
The Saudi government discloses little official data about its poorest citizens. But media reports and private estimates suggest that between 2 million and 4 million of the country’s native Saudis live on less than about $530 a month — about $17 a day — which analysts generally consider the poverty line in Saudi Arabia...............