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Monday, October 21, 2013

Saudi Arabia's poverty ridden and unemployed cleverly hidden by PR firms


A large percentage of the poverty ridden citizens of  Saudi Arabia are left to wallow in their misery while the cavemen government showers billions of dollars empowering terrorists all over the world.  The oil-rich Saudi princes, sheikhs and whatnot, would prefer to bribe politicians and media  here, there, everywhere with truckloads of money,  hire the most expensive public relations firms and lawyers in every nook and corner of the Judeo-Christian world, advertise for top jobs in Saudi Arabia for foreigners from Western countries ... but when it comes to keeping Saudi citizens employed and satisfied,  they are lacking miserably in doing the needful.  What a farce!  

Christopher Davidson writing at NYTimes:
....This summer,  disgruntled Saudis took their grievances online in droves, complaining of ever-growing inequality, rising poverty, corruption and unemployment. Their Twitter campaign became one of the world’s highest trending topics. It caused great alarm within elite circles in Saudi Arabia and sent ripples throughout the region. The rallying cry that “salaries are not enough” helped to prove that the monarchy’s social contract with its people is now publicly coming unstuck, and on a significant scale.

Many experts believe that the Gulf states have survived the Arab Spring because they are different. After all, they’ve weathered numerous past storms — from the Arab nationalist revolutions of the 1950s and ’60s to Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait to an Al Qaeda terror campaign in 2003.

But they are not different in any fundamental way. They have simply bought time with petrodollars. And that time is running out.

The sheiks of the Persian Gulf might not face the fate of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya or Hosni Mubarak of Egypt next year, but the system they have created is untenable in the longer term and it could come apart even sooner than many believe.
Saudi Arabia is the kingpin of the six Gulf monarchies, so its internal stability is crucial for the region, especially since so much attention has now been turned toward these anachronistic political systems in the wake of the 2011 uprisings.

Although it’s never healthy to treat any state as exceptional, Saudi Arabia is indeed a bit different from its neighbors. Unlike Mr. Mubarak or Colonel Qaddafi, Saudi Arabia’s octogenarian king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, has had the oil-financed means to buy off protesters. He has managed to calm the anger that has flared up in his backyard by ramping up subsidies, dramatically increasing public-sector employment and announcing huge and unprecedented government spending programs. So far, this has been a fast and effective way to keep the masses off the streets.....

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