Girls Of Riyadh

Saudiland's recent smoke and mirrors event at UN featuring that wicked old despot king of intolerance himself Abdullah is a risible exercise in the absurb.

Dr David Keyes at the Adelson Institue for Strategic Studies points out how retarded the entire event was:

"Abdullah should be awarded a medal not because he called for plurality, tolerance, and moderation, but because he did so with a straight face. That the ruler of one of the most repressive and despotic nations on Earth convinced anyone to listen to his peroration points only to our willful delusion and profound moral ineptitude."

As Abdullah waxed poetic at the U.N., the West should be working furiously to undermine his regime. Liberty must not be sacrificed on the altar of perceived economic stability. The Saudi people are being radicalized and alienated under the oppressive thumb of King Abdullah and the Wahhabist imams he subsidizes.

For Saudi Arabia to preside over a U.N. conference on tolerance is akin to Iraq being offered the chair of the U.N. Committee on Disarmament (with as Iran co-chair!) or Libya being elected to lead the U.N. Human Rights Committee. Never before have such ferocious foxes guarded such naïve hens.


Any sane discussion about tolerance would feature Saudi Arabia as the precise opposite of what is desired. Abdullah would be roundly castigated and one leader after another would denounce his regime. But that would be asking too much, for it would require a modicum of moral clarity and the ability to stand up for something other than immediate economic gain."

Total control and all it's trappings that despotpedia can provide - like a computerized police state, secret police, 'Ministries of Virtue and Vice Prevention" along with secret trials, secret prisons and secret executions actually fires up desires and wishes that are human - and universal.

Like the hottie naughty underground best seller "Girls Of Riyadh" by Rajaa Alsanea. A sexy sex confessional written as an online blog, set among the closeted female society of modern Saudi Arabia.

Every Friday after prayers, the unnamed narrator 'posts' the latest sexual exploits and experiences of her four upper-class female friends as they text and flirt with men, pop abroad for cosmetic surgery and wear designer clothes – all conducted under cover of the veil.

The book's own success mirrors that of the girls' secret existence: initially unavailable in Saudi, it became an underground smash hit and has topped the Arabic language best-seller lists.

Alsanea's narrative both mimics and is entrenched within its characters' Web and text-speak; as a novel, it lacks depth, characterisation and narrative drive (remind you of anyone else?!).

Yet it boldly explodes Western preconceptions of life in one of Mohammedism's most repressive societies and, as such, surely resembles an act of enormous courage and hope.