The Coming Saudi Insurrection?
The Saudi [Im]moral Police
Was The Saudi King Drinking?
Saudi Censorship
The Coming American Suez?
The End of the Saudi Era II
A royal family that gives its name to its subjects clearly expects subservience. But those days in Saudi Arabia may be coming to an end. Despite House of Saud propagandists working overtime to portray an imagined dividing line between Arab republics and Arab monarchs and pretend that the latter are responsive to their people, uphold their dignity and thus worthy of preservation, the Saudi people are having none of it.
After the shock of Tunisia and the stunning seconding of Egypt, the ripples will not be kept at bay any longer. Bahrain and Oman, two oil rich bordering nations, are now in the midst of their own uprising and the Saudis could be next. For the first time an openly declared political party has been set up and over one hundred intellectuals have signed two letters calling for reform in the kingdom (including rights for women and the Shi'a minority).
Saudi Arabia's corrupt monarchs have responded in typical manner: 1) arrested the founders of the new political party and adding them to the hundreds of political prisoners and 2) seeking to bride their people by proposing $36billion in handouts. But the Saudi people are not asking for money, but a voice and dignity. The former only angers reformers more and the latter is an insult to the entire nation.
A vastly younger nation than Egypt or Tunisia, the youth of Saudi Arabia have already demonstrated their discontent through numerous acts of civil disorderliness (like defacing traffic statues) and they are growing restless still.
The Saudi monarchy will not fall easily, their third-in-line to the crown recently told dissidents that "what was taken by the sword will be defended by the sword", but the family's grip is less secure than that was of Mubarak and Ben Ali and the police states they built.
The monarchy may be willing to and able to fight a bloody battle, but the day of reckoning is not far.
