Saudi nukes by '09

if you believe this graph (which accompanies this article)

Perversion and power

...it is safe to say that Britain does not have a monopoly on what the high court referred to as "the impotence of the law"...

-- Craig Unger

And these are our friends

The judge said of the Saudi threat: "If that had happened in our jurisdiction, they would have been guilty of a criminal offence."...

... the [Serious Fraud Office]'s assistant director...described attending a meeting at the Foreign Office where "we had been told that 'British lives on British streets' were at risk".

-- from Government rolled over to Saudi BAE threats, says judge

Saudi boom

One of the most noticeable illustrations of the industrialization push is a plan...to build six new cities throughout the country — including the King Abdullah Economic City on the western coast, near the city of Rabigh; the Knowledge Economic City, near Medina; and the Prince Abdulaziz bin Mousaed Economic City, in the north.

...these cities together will have four times the geographical area of Hong Kong, three times the population of Dubai, and an economic output equal to Singapore’s. Other plans include building four refineries, two petrochemical plants and a modern graduate-level university with an endowment of $10 billion.

-- from The Construction Site Called Saudi Arabia

Credibility Gulf

The World Tonight (14 Jan) reports that George W. Bush's urging of Saudi and the Gulf states to confront Iran, along with his call for countries like Saudi Arabia to come over all democratic, has not impressed everyone. A comparison from 1964, perhaps:

the U.S. described the Chinese government of that time in terms very similar to those used later by George W. Bush to describe the 'axis [of evil]' governments. Soviet leaders, American observers were already saying, were ruthless but rational. They wanted to stay in power and stay alive, not die in a universal conflagration. They could be deterred. Mao Zedong was said to be different. He was a proven fanatic. He could not be counted on to make rational decisions...The choice for the American government, then as now, was between relying chiefly on diplomacy or chiefly on force. Johnson like every other president [since 1945] but the current one, chose diplomacy, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was born.

-- from The Seventh Decade.

P.S. 16 Jan:

Arab TV offered an uncomfortable juxtaposition: Al Arabiya running the wretched saga of Gaza children suffering from a lack of food and medicine during the Israeli blockade, blending into the wretched excess scenes of W. being festooned with rapper-level bling from royal hosts flush with gazillions from gouging us on oil

. -- from Maureen Dowd on Faith, Freedom and Bling in the Middle East.

God and my right

No longer, not necessarily

“There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization,” said Abdallah S. Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco. “We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era.”

-- from Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert. That would be "no longer" in the sense of "since about the 14th Century" (CE); a "no longer" like the "not necessarily" in the phrase about the war going to Japan's advantage.

P.S. 31 Oct: Jason Burke on The Values Monarchy.

Creepers of the wholly baseless

Most countries sent delegates [to the IPCC] only from their environment ministries, but of the seven delegates representing Saudi Arabia at the negotiations, four were dispatched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

-- from Saudis blocking reductions in fossil-fuel consumption (New Scientist, 27 April). See also More on IPCC censorship.