Monday, July 25, 2011

On Saudi Arabia in the Pakistani press

Comrade Jawad sent me this (I post with his permission):  "Dear Angry Arab,  I am the minister of potatoes in the government of Pakistan. It is part of my duties to set the record straight on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Comrade Junaid's argument that there is already too much public Saudi bashing by Pakistan's "neoliberal" elites, is the most potatolicious pro-Saudi statement ever published on the Angry Arab blog. How can there be such a thing as too much Saudi bashing, we plead with you? It is a mathematical impossibility. Saudi Arabia is one of the leading sacred cows of Pakistan's relatively freewheeling English media. The other two are the governments of UAE and China. Most of these newspapers are available online, so it is not hard to count the anti-Saudi pieces. There aren't many at all. Junaid is right about one thing. It is fashionable among liberal Pakistanis to give the US a free pass for bombing wedding parties in the GWOT. They argue that each blown child represents not American incompetence of savagery, but something dark in the heart of the brown-skinned victims themselves. Comarade Junaid is correct to identify this blame shifting, but then in one slick judo move he uses the same silly argument to defend the polygamous head-chopping zombies of the Saudi regime. Saudis have played a hateful role in Pakistan, just as they have in Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt etc. This needs to be exposed, and not covered up, for potato's sake."