Qatar versus Saudi Arabia: the war continues. And the Saudi King of Jordan. The war between the two governments continues and intensifies. The Saudi AlArabiyya TV was very pleased with the article about it in NYT magazine (see previous post) and quoted from it extensively on its daily program As-Sultah Ar-Rabi`ah, which reviews the international press, but is now under management pressures to ignore the UK's Guardian and Independent. Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat is a major Saudi weapon against Al-Jazeera, and features regular pieces to embarrass Al-Jazeera. The newspaper received an advance tape from the US propaganda TV, Al-Hurra (which is watched by 3 people in the region, and two of them work in US embassies in the Middle East) about taped meetings with Saddam's criminal son `Udayy Husayn. One of the meetings featured one between `Udayy and the former director-general of Al-Jazeera. Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat hopes that the tape would embarrass Al-Jazeera. But I read the text, and found nothing damning. It was a typical silly meeting between a media representative and a government official. I would like to see tapes of meetings between `Udayy and Saudi officials. I am sure that they would prove more damning. Or better yet, where are the tapes of meetings and social outings and hunting trips between `Udayy and the Jordanian king when the two were best buddies. Bring out those tapes, I say. I of course support neither sides of the dispute, and will never say a kind word about any--ANY--Arab government. But Saudi media are in no position to sound sanctimonous about democracy, professionalism, and tolerance. Saudi media for example run articles about the ostentation of Saddam's palaces; but are the palaces of King Fahd less or more ostentatious? The afore mentioned tape also features a meeting between `Udayy (or Uuuuuuuuuuudaaayyy according to US media pronunciations) and Arab journalist Hamidah Na`na`. Now here there are no surprises. Na`na` has been a pro-Saddam propagandist for decades. So many Arab journalists were pro-Saddam propagandists, and Saddam in the 1970s and 1980s spent lavishly to buy the Arab media. In Europe, for example, all those Arabic publications received funding from Saddam: Ad-Dustur, Al-Watan Al-`Arabia, At-Tadamun, Al-Wifaq Al-`Arabi, among several others. After his 1991 military defeat, he stopped funding the exile press, and focused on bribes of Arab journalists. The pro-Saddam publications in Europe went out of business, and one (Al-Watan Al-`Arabi) changed from pro-Saddam fanaticism to pro-Saudi fanaticism OVERNIGHT, after it was bought by Khalid Bin Sultan who owns Al-Hayat newspaper too (he leased it actually from the Lebanese Muruwwah family for 20 years). I am not kidding. Saddam also would pay $100,000.00 to every Arab journalist (editor of the publication) who interviewed him. Many if not most editors of newspapers in Beirut, Amman, and Kuwait would receive latest models of Mercedes cars as gifts from Saddam. Some of the same editors are still driving those cars while now claiming to speak on behalf of democracy in Iraq. A well-known Arab journalist was driving me to my hotel after a TV interview last summer in Beirut, and I noticed that he was driving a Mercedes. I immediately asked him: "Have you interviewed Saddam?" "No," he said. "But I interviewed Ahmad Hasan Al-Bakr" (Iraqi president until 1979 when Saddam became president). Hamidah Na`na` wrote a pathetically fawning book about Tariq `Aziz, and she never tried to hide her championing of Saddam's horrific regime. AlJazeera has its problems, of course. I have pointed out some of them before. They relish any bad news from Saudi Arabia, and interview any critic of the kingdom at length, while Qatar (their home base) remains uncovered. Now regarding the Saudi King of Jordan, `Abdullah. I have mentioned to you before that he never says anything in English that he does not deny later in Arabic. His last English statements (about Iranian designs for a Shi`ite crescent) during his motorcycle trip to the US (he comes to CA to ride his motorcycle on Highway 1) was today "clarified" if not denied by his Foreign Minister during a visit to Lebanon. This person also went on about Jordan's strong attachment to Arabism and Arab identity of Arab countries. Funny, as Jordan is loathed by Arab nationalists of any stripe. Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat today (tomorrow) has an article that Jordan is angry at Iran because it has uncovered evidence of links between Iranian Revolutionary Guards and...Zarqawi. Now that is quite unbelievable, given Zarqawi bigotry toward and murder of Shi`ites. This is like saying there is a link between US and Castro.