Good article. The most effective thing Saudi could do is reform itself and stop exporting Wahhabism to the rest of the world.

And here’s another from Fisk on the Saudi’s so-called coalition against terrorism. He leaves out one obvious reason – that Indonesia have announced their own efforts to challenge the fundamentalist Islamic dogma that mainly the Saudis spread.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-is-indonesia-not-in-the-saudi-led-sunni-coalition-against-terror-a6774551.html

Excellent article Ken! I’ve put it on Twitter and a couple of places on Facebook, including the Heather’s Homilies page.

I heard that a leading women’s rights organization in Saudi was boycotting the election because of a lot of the things pointed out in this article.

This article puts the new voting right for women in some perspective.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/12/14/saudi-womens-vote-step-forward

Yes they are, against the Shia, who the Saudis hate way more than Daesh. Here is a good article that summarises the goals different ME groups have and why none of them aligns with US goals.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176079/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_who_will_fight_the_islamic_state/

I need to learn more about Yemen – my knowledge of what’s going on there is nowhere near what it should be for someone who comments on the region as much as I do.

However, it looks a lot to me like Saudi and al-Qaeda are on the same side there in some sort of unholy alliance.

I also see a lot of equivalences between Saudi and Israel vs Yemen and Palestine, but I’m not sure yet whether I’ve got that right.

Canada has been outstanding in this cause, and I’ve no doubt it will get better with Trudeau as PM.

I was so impressed to see him welcoming the first of the Syrian refugees there too.

Yeah, I agree. Women can vote, but not in the same polling stations as men (about a third are reserved just for women) and they can’t, of course, drive themselves to the polling station. So they effectively need permission from the man who owns them to do it.

The king says he wants to move forward, but there have been a heap more judicial executions since he took over last year.