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March 28, 2024, 09:41:27 PM

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House of Saud on BBC4

Started by abbot lau, May 27, 2004, 09:44:47 PM

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abbot lau

Did anyone see this?

bloody brilliant doc about the history of Saudi Arabia and their royal family. Some amazing interviews.

It really filled a load of gaps in my knowledge about the middle east and gave a good insight on the motivations of a certain mr Bin Laden.

Kingboy_D

I watched both episodes and it was pretty good, covered a lot of material although it skimmed over elements such as the massive levels of corruption that exist within the House of Saud. They may have mentioned it in the first episode ( i was very stoned) but bribing people to speak favourably of them is a matter of tradition, and corruption a way of life.

It also didn't mention the comical excess of the royals, when the oil money first started to flood in Saudi princes indulged themselves with western luxuries they didn't understand. One prince bought a Cadillac from a smooth talking salesman, and then when it ran out of fuel bought another to replace it. Another prince built a railway across Arabia, essentially between nowhere and nowhere, just for something to do.

It talked about the treatment of women in Saudi society but again just skimmed the surface the subject (but to be fair that's a documentary in itself). Women are just expensive pets with virtually no rights or legal safeguards, for example for a man to be convicted of rape there have to be at least four male witnesses, consequently there has never been a man prosecuted for rape in Saudi Arabia - ever. There are also indications that the royals are perhaps the worst offenders, there was one incident when uber violent Muhammad "Twin Evil" (Booze and Gambling), once in line for the Saudi throne, was in Britain meeting dignitaries. A waitress at the event offended him somehow so he slapped her so hard that he knocked out three of her teeth. It was described as a 'minor incident' by number 10.

So yeah, it was good overview of the regime but it left quite a bit out about just how evil they actually are.

Did anyone see "Death in Gaza" on before it on Channel 4? The filmmaker was shot in the neck by an Israeli soldier on the last day of shooting, and the whole thing was edited posthumously. It was pretty shocking stuff, the opening scene was kids rummaging through derby for bits of human flesh after a "targeted assassination", with the intent of burying them. But 10 year olds holding up slabs of people meat was just the beginning, there was also a scene where a kid called Ahmed was hanging out with his mates in Hamas, who treated him like their little brother. He wasted to be like the big boys so discussed becoming a martyr with his estranged mother, just to get acceptance in a 'cool' social group.

Also shocking was just how ingrained the hatred of the Jews is, but the film offers a glimpses as to why this is. The only contact most of them get with the Israelis is when they are bulldozing houses or shooting their family, the Jews aren't people like them, they are an abstract faceless thing that's destroying their lives and killing their families. One girl they interviewed had lost six members of her family to the Israelis, all of them were children, and two of them were killed on their way home from school. She cried as she spoke of the constant terror of thinking at any second her life could end just walking down the street. During the filming of the movie, her cousin was shot to death for throwing rocks at a bulldozer, he was 15.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "abbot lau"Did anyone see this?
No, and annoyingly I knew it was on, and in fact meant to flag it up after a book on the same subject was mentioned in a thread the other day.  Aren't I crap?

abbot lau

Some good points there, Kingboy, about what they left out of the Doc... I read in the New Yorker that Jeddah got funding to build a new sewage system as the current method of dealing with it is to dump it in a lake in the mountains that overlook the city.   The money was 'appropriated' by a prince and spent on a new house in the US.  They can't prosecute him because he's a prince, and the press can't even write an article about how Jeddah is now basically an open sewer, people's basements are being flooded with shit and geologists reckon the 'shit lake' is poised to cause a major landslide which will bury the city in turds.

True, there's a ton of corruption and press freedom is virtually nil, but I suppose they couldn't give that more than a cursory mention and still get all those princes to go on record.  I particularly liked the two guys (may have been father and son) who were descended from King Faisal.  I think the father was the head of the secret service or something. Not sure what the son does but they both seemed pretty intelligent and progressive.

Missed 'Death in Gaza'. It seemed like  pretty grim going. There  are jews out there who cringe every time they see the Isrealis bulldozing houses and shooting people with scant reason..

I taped 'House of Saud' (minus the 1st five minutes) and can run off a copy for anyone with anything to share.