Particularly in light of the fooforaw following the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement about the inevitability of Sharia law in the UK, this piece from The Volokh Conspiracy on the application of Saudi Sharia law in Texas and Minnesota is interesting, to say the least!
The issue is not actually whether Saudi law applies in Texas (or other states as the article notes), but whether people can, in the course of making contracts, require that Sharia law be applied as the rule for arbitration. It’s a bit complicated, but the courts’ decisions are worth reading. And certainly read the entirety of the Volokh post. The comments, particularly about how Jewish laws can be enforced through arbitration in US courts are also worth while.
Read all about this (and Osama is even involved). But wait, it’s also in Minnesota. And in New Jersey (Nat’l Group for Communications & Computers Ltd. v. Lucent Technologies Int’l, Inc., 331 F. Supp. 2d 290 (D.N.J. 2004)).
Oddly enough, the American courts treat this as a perfectly normal matter. In the first two cases I cited, the parties entered into a contract that provided for Sharia arbitration; the courts considered challenges to the arbitral process, and upheld the awards. The third case involved a contractual provision expressly stating that disputes about the contract would be resolved under Saudi Arabian law; the court then dutifully investigated what the Saudi rules (which are built on Sharia) would call for, and rendered judgment “based upon this Court’s review of various academic texts, the testimony of the experts, the submissions of the parties, and the Court’s understanding of the fundamental principles of Islamic law as they would be interpreted by a court in Saudi Arabia.”
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Various media are reporting on some serious reforms in Saudi Arabia, starting with giving women permission to drive. The story, so far sourced only to a correspondent of the UK’s The Telegraph, but being widely picked up, says that the government has bowed to the inevitable and is in the process of writing regulations and setting up the infrastructure needed, e.g., women-only license and registration offices.
Better sourced is a story on Reuters about the Saudi government’s also permitting women to register in hotels, without a guardian. This has been an issue with Saudi businesswomen who find it difficult to do business in cities in which they have no personal infrastructure–family or residential property.
Both issues are sure to raise hell with the religious conservatives who seem to believe that a woman alone is merely an opportunity for profligate sex. I’m confident that the Saudi religious police will be kept busy scouring the hotel registries and cruising the streets—just like all the hormonally ramped up adolescents—on the look-out for available women.
And since non-driving women are already being accused of causing most traffic accidents, there’s sure to be a flood of stories about how bad women drive.
But baby steps are welcome in a country that’s trying to pull itself out of the hole it’s created for itself.
I’ve written a review of The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda, a riveting retelling of the events of November, 1979, when a group of around 500 Islamic extremists (including at least two American Black Muslims) seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca. The author concludes that this action, taken along with other events of that momentous month, led to the Islamic extremism we’re experiencing today. He notes how the Saudi Ulema, in return for their continued support of the state, extorted a high price: the rolling back of many of the modest reforms and modernizations the government had achieved.
I think the book misses the target on some analysis, particularly in drawing conclusions from contested ‘facts’, and he simply gets some of the history wrong. But the book is very much on target when it comes to the siege in Mecca and the way it was resolved. It also goes into the role of French commandos, the utter failure of Jimmy Carter’s White House, and the way rumor could spread internationally, even in pre-Internet days. Definitely worth reading.
Watching the trailers for ‘The Kingdom’ over the past several months, I was curious about how the film would portray Saudi Arabia and Saudis. I had personal experience with terrorist bombings of residential compounds in Riyadh and wanted to see how accurate the film might be.
The film could have taken the low and easy road, pandering to stereotypes, and shown the Saudis as slavering jihadists looking forward to killing the infidel. It could have taken (and did to a very minor extent did) the path of ‘Syriana’ [see my review here and Amir Taheri's here], claiming on the basis of old and mistaken stereotypes that the oil companies write the rules.
Instead, I was pleased to see that the film showed that while there are bad Saudis, there are also good and decent Saudis who care about their country, their religion, and justice.
The film carries a very strong sense of authenticity. The researchers did their homework when it came to finding the right imagery to convey the sense of time and place. Much of it was shot in Abu Dhabi, with some B-roll materials from Riyadh spliced in. The rest was filmed in ‘non-denominational’ deserts in the American Southwest and in DC. The film was mostly realistic, too, when it came to the bombings, but not quite the same as the compounds bombed in 2003. The film spares us the body parts. That was fine by me, as I found myself slipping back to the reality of May 2003.
The film was accurate in its portrayal of a sharp-elbowed FBI investigation team running headlong into the reluctant Saudi police, a reaction not unknown to American local police departments and itself the subject matter of other films.
The film gets off to an iffy start, I think. The collage over which the opening credits run provides a brief and mostly accurate history of Saudi Arabia and its relations with the US. I think it focuses inaccurately on oil. While oil is certainly an important aspect of the US-Saudi relation, it is neither the sole one nor necessarily the most important one. Here, though the film feeds the meme that it’s ‘all about oil’, viewers needn’t worry about it. After the credits, the word never comes up again.
In order to avoid spoilers, the rest of the review is below the fold. I haven’t compromised major plot development, but some of the early set-up is discussed. You can also find a lengthier review at Crossroad Arabia, focusing more on the film v. reality clash.
‘The Kingdom’ works from a dated template. The ‘rules’ about how the US government and its agencies respond to an overseas bombing had chanced by 2003. What the film shows is based on rules that applied in 1996 and 1998. In reality, as soon as they could fly in—the next day—a team of about 35 FBI investigators were in Riyadh. These were a specialized group, designed to investigate bombings. They were professional. They did not (at least publicly) carry weapons. The women on the team—and there were several—knew better than to wear form-fitting T-shirts as their outerwear. They were also prepared to work cooperatively with their Saudi counterparts, whether from the police, Saudi Arabian National Guard (one of the 2003 compounds housed American and others on contract to the National Guard), and the Ministry of Interior. The Saudis, post-9/11, were also prepared to cooperate.
Probably the least accurate part of the film was its portrayal of the US State Department and its officers. Nothing new here: they’re tediously shown as ‘cookie-pushers’ who have yet to evolve backbones. That’s the standard stereotype, particularly from the political right, but it’s far from the reality. I won’t speak for all State officers; some actually are wimps. That’s not the case for most of them, though, as many do live brave lives.
By 2003, and therefore the unstated time of the film, new protocols had been established between the FBI and State. State would work to ensure FBI access to sites, evidence, and suspects. Investigative teams would be of a manageable size and the agents would not bear arms unless specifically authorized to do so because of particular circumstances. The teams work under the leadership of the FBI’s Legal Attaché and under the authority of the Ambassador. The LEGATTs, as they are called, know the territory and just what they can and cannot do. The film wanders into a bit of fantasy as its FBI team breaks command structures and simply shows up in Riyadh without Department of Justice authorization. A move like this would have led to instant firing. Nor could their plane have entered Saudi airspace without clearance from the Saudi government, through the US Embassy.
All in all, though, this is a good film. It’s not the very best action film you’ve ever seen and some of the intended laughs fall flat. There’s lots of shooting and explosions, running around and fast car chases. But there’re also occasions in which the viewer is asked to think about the fact that it’s not only the victims who are human, but those who try to do their jobs in the midst of confusion, emotional turmoil, and the threat of further deadly attacks. Here, the film shines.
This part of the story is carried by excellent acting by the principal actors: Jamie Foxx, heading the FBI’s team, and Ashraf Barhom, leading the Saudi police effort. Both show the awkwardness in dealing with complete strangers, fighting against the stereotypes they carry in their own minds. Jason Bateman and Ali Suliman have perhaps the most subtle performances as, respectively, an FBI agent who learns that ‘kick ass’ is not always the best procedure, and a Saudi police sergeant who puts duty to his country above all else. I think Chris Cooper isn’t asked to do much and I guess Jennifer Garner is there because the producers thought they needed some sort of female presence. She adds nothing.
If you’re looking for a film that bashes Saudis or the Administration, this isn’t the film for you. If instead you want a film that accurately portrays the complexity of US-Saudi relations at both official and personal levels, a film that shows how Saudi society itself is trying to come to terms with terrorism, then you don’t want to miss it.
Back in the late 1960s, early 70s, I was editing a Washington, DC alternative newspaper, “Woodwind”. The publisher, Mike Schreibman, funded the paper as a labor of love. He subsidized the paper with his earnings from his music promotion business, Woodwind Entertainment, specializing in producing concerts at area colleges, from Baltimore down to Richmond. I learned far more about the music business than I really cared to know as I helped with the front of the house or backstage work. How, for instance, if you wanted to get a known act, you’d either have to pay through the nose or take it as part of a package deal with complete unknowns, signed by the label, filling the bill. Or how the big names of the time could be real pains in the neck to work with, given their demands for not only reasonable respect, but over-the-top requirements for the dressing room.
The finest concert I ever attended was at Georgetown’s tiny Trinity Theater, seating 200 at most. The musicians played two back-to-back shows of unequaled musicianship. Each absolutely filled the hall with sounds you would think impossible to come from single instruments.
The opening act was Bryan Bowers, a Good Ole Boy from around the Petersburg area of Virginia. What I heard was that he’d just gotten out of jail on a dope bust and needed the money. He learned to play autoharp, I was told, while sitting in his cell. Whether this is true or just a story, I don’t know, but that’s what was being said.
Below is a clip of his playing at a folk concert in 1987, the best example of his music I can find on YouTube.com. This clip, unfortunately, doesn’t begin to show his artistry, but there are very few clips of Bowers’ music online. His albums are all still available, though.
Today, Bowers is deservedly considered the American master of the autoharp. He introduced a five-finger method of playing that moved his music through the then-burgeoning Bluegrass renaissance and continues today to Gospel, Celtic, and of course Folk. Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps, but excellent.The main act was Leo Kottke, one of the most talented guitarists to this day. He plays as though he has at least a couple of other guitars playing with him, typical of his inimitable style. Kottke, too, is not necessarily to everyone’s taste. His music ranges through Folk, to Blues, to Jazz, but is largely idiosyncratic, noted for open and dropped tunings on both 6- and 12-string guitars. When he speaks about his music, he seems to be coming from a different planet. When he plays, you’re sure of it. This clip is from a TV appearance in the early 70s, where he plays ‘Vaseline Machine Gun’.
Somewhat more sedate is this pairing of “Louise” and “William Powell”, from a few years ago.
You can find a lot of Kottke clips (and homages) on YouTube. His albums, too, continue to sell to those who appreciate his style, humor, and of course music.
Back in May, James Joyner and I wrote a piece for TCS Daily, Armed Diplomats? When State and Stability Operations Collide about the conflicting roles and missions of State Department diplomats and those of the US Military. The article noted that diplomats (as well as the various support staff needed to run a diplomatic missions, though they weren’t specifically mentioned in the article) are not trained to operate under combat conditions and are generally not armed nor armored. As a rule, most diplomats and staff in State are also older than the bulk of the US military, with the average age of diplomats being around 40. (State has mandatory retirement at age 65; age 55 for those involved in law enforcement-type activities.)
The Washington Enquirer ran a piece earlier this week that is germane to the discussion in the TCS Daily article: Security Fears Restrict US Diplomats.
This piece notes that US diplomats in 28 countries serve under lockdowns and prohibitions on travel and that dependents are not permitted to accompany Foreign Service Officers to 21 countries, according to an Associated Press survey of “State Dept. directives, warning, and officials.” Since the 1980s, when only two countries were deemed dangerous enough to trigger “danger pay,” the number has risen to 26 countries.
The piece focuses on the fact that this level of danger has consequences on the ability of the US Foreign Service to accomplish its mission. In the name of security, US embassies and other USG buildings have become more cut off from the local communities. In addition to making the US seem aloof, this means that it is more difficult for the citizens of a given country to access American officers and services. This is absolutely true.
Take, as an example, the American Library in New Delhi. The building, which dates from the late 1950s or early 1960s, is located on a major boulevard downtown. In addition to a large library and a theater, the building houses offices of several USG agencies and departments. In addition to local and American staff, the building also sees upwards of 5,000 Indian visitors per week. While in the building, the security of those Indians is a concern of the USG. [The US also operates libraries in Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chenai, each with their own issues.]
The building—where I had my office for part of my tour of duty in New Delhi as Information Officer—is certainly functional, if not beautiful in the non-public areas. For its time, it was certainly adequate to its role.
Today, it is not so. There has been a long-running argument between the embassy sections located in this building and the Security officers located in the Chancery, a few miles away and behind substantial walls, about what to do with this building, its functions, and its staff. Everyone would like to find a way to improve the building’s physical security, but that’s a tough nut to crack.
First, the building is, at most, only a hundred feet from the street. That does not comply with current security standards that want a 300-foot setback. The building was not constructed with bomb-proofing in mind and few doubt the consequences of a large car or truck bomb being detonated in front of the building. The walls of the building are not strong enough to hold contemporary ‘blast-proof’ windows and instead must rely on Mylar film and heavy curtains inside the windows with latticed brickwork on the outside. Whether this would defeat an RPG is a good question. It does, unquestionably, provide roosting places for pigeons and other Indian avians.
The biggest problem, though, is that the street it is located on is also a favorite for public demonstrations by Indians. These demonstrations need not be related to US foreign policy. In the seven or so months I spent in that building, there were at least eight demonstrations, each with thousands of participants, protesting something that the Indian government had done or was about to do. Unfortunately, Indian demonstrations can turn into riots with little apparent provocation.
To be sure, the US Embassy has implemented a lot of work-arounds. The building, though it has serious problems, is not a deathtrap. I won’t be discussing those work-around here, of course.
So, why doesn’t the USG just sell the building and build a more secure one, somewhere safer?
If you guessed ‘money’, you’re right. If you guessed ‘location’, you’re also right.
State’s budget does not have the money to construct a new building, meeting current safety and security standards. What money exists in the budget for construction—handled by the Overseas Building Operations, OBO—is going toward construction of new buildings in even less secure areas: Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance. [See this front page article from the July 5 issue of The Washington Post for the travails of OBO.]
Complicating the issue further is the fact of the geography of New Delhi. The city itself, like the District of Columbia, is small, occupying only 16 square miles. Nearly every square foot of the city, with the exception of government buildings and a few parks and monuments, is already occupied. A new US building, meeting security standards, cannot be built within the city limits without the Government of India’s permitting the USG to build on public park lands.
That leaves moving the building outside of the city, into a neighboring province. Imagine a Washington, DC-based embassy with its cultural mission sited in Fredericksburg, VA or Frederick, MD. Imagine how busy it would be. Given the traffic congestion in New Delhi, a visit to the library would easily turn into a full-day adventure.
As is the case everywhere, diplomatic missions rely on local government for the first line of defense against crime and terror. The Indian government does provide guards at all USG buildings—including some residences off the Embassy compounds—and they do their jobs in screening visitors before they get within the fences or walls. Just how effective they would be when confronting a drive-by truck bomb is also another matter.
So what’s to be done? One thing for sure is that there are no 100% guarantees for personal safety. But India is not considered a particularly dangerous country. It’s not one of those places that attracts danger pay and dependents are permitted at post. There is intrinsic danger in assignments to India, but FSOs and their families accept the risks—or they don’t bid on the assignments.
Other places, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Congo, Sudan, Pakistan, are far more dangerous. Diplomats need a minimal level of security in order to be able to do their jobs. They need to be able to sleep without worrying that an incoming round will find their bedrooms. They need to be able to go from the office to meetings with different people both within and outside the local governments. Unaccompanied assignments generally assuage concern about the safety of their families, but introduce the strains of separation and the loss of control over what’s happening to their families located half a world away. Of course, these same anxieties affect members of the US military; the difference is that for the military it is understood that families are not part of the deployment equation.
Most current FSOs did not join the Foreign Service with the understanding that they would be separated from their immediate families. It was a possibility, but not likely over the past 30 years. They are going to have to change their expectations to take into account changed reality. Some will, as some already have, decide that they just aren’t cut out for the higher level of risk.
New State officers are realizing that they are working in a far more dangerous world now. People considering a career in diplomacy are going to have to factor danger into their decisions, as well as family separation and short tours of duty (which lead to a diminished sense of professional accomplishment). Either pay scales are going to have to improve dramatically or, I fear, standards are going to slip.
Christian Science Monitor has a good piece on the difficulties in developing a pool of Arabic speakers who can help develop and support US foreign policy in the Middle East. The article, Why the pool of Arabic speakers is still a puddle, notes that Arabic is a difficult language, taking at least triple the time and effort involved in learning French or Spanish. High levels of student frustration in learning the language lead to high levels of dropping out of Arabic programs. More important, the article says, the demand for Arabic is outstripping the language teaching capabilities of good programs. This leads to even greater frustration for the students.
Arabic grammar, surprisingly, is not all that difficult. It is almost mathematical in its regularity, although as is the case with any language, there are always exceptions to those tidy grammatical rules. There’s a small learning hump in developing the facility to pronounce a few letters for which no English counterparts exist, and learning a new alphabet takes a little time. When I started learning Arabic, it took me one evening of concentrated work to get the alphabet down, even with the complication of four potential forms of each letter, depending on its position in a word or if it stands alone.
The hardest part of Arabic, at least for me, was the massive vocabulary. Unlike English which discards words over time, Arabic tends to keep the vast pool of vocabulary active perpetually. Even native speakers of Arabic suffer from this abundance. When they pick up a newspaper, they will scan an article first to see which ‘register’ of vocabulary is being used. Will the piece have a lot of words and phrases from ‘classical Arabic’? Will it be using religious terminology? Will the rhetoric be filled with literary flourishes and allusions to history and folklore? Will it, perhaps, be written in a local dialect with its own shifts of meaning and idiom?
The US State Department, through its Foreign Service Institute (FSI), teaches Arabic in an ‘total immersion’ program, as it does with all its language training. Students have six hours of classes daily, with about four hours of homework, five days per week. Students are not permitted to take leave—except for emergencies—during their training. One afternoon per week is dedicated to ‘Area Studies’, to familiarize the students with the history and culture(s) of the region.
The length of training depends on the difficulty of the language. Spanish might take six months; Turkish, a year. ‘Hard Languages’, including Arabic and Chinese, need a second year of study to reach ‘Professional Competence’. That second year is usually spent at an FSI school in a country in which the subject language is the native language. For Arabic, that means the FSI school in Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia. For speaking purposes, that location is less than ideal as the Tunisian dialect is very different from other dialects. But it’s the best that can be done for political, security, and economic reasons.
Language competence is measured on a scale of 0-5 for both reading and speaking, with a 5 indicating full fluency at a university-educated level. Very few non-native speakers ever reach this level. One is considered to have ‘Professional Competence’ at the R-3/S-3 level. [The ability to write languages is not measured or graded for most of the 'hard languages': that's what translators do.]
Languages are taught at several levels of competence.
The lowest level, ‘Courtesy level’, is intended for State employees who will have little contact with the local population abroad beyond casual, day-to-day contact in restaurants, markets, taxis, and the like. Those who are assigned to this level are primarily support personnel or those who work exclusively within the embassy itself.
‘Professional Competence’ means that the student is able to perform his/her job in the language. This, however, is a far cry from full fluency. If one is an Economics Officer, for example, s/he will have a lot of economic vocabulary, but not much in the way of political vocabulary and almost none in cultural vocabulary. Public Diplomacy Officers, on the other hand, need to be conversant on many issues, spanning the range of USG interests. The R-3/S-3 rating is really not adequate to performing the job well. An R-4/S-4 rating is what’s truly needed, but there are not formal programs to accomplish this. My understanding is that State is now considering, on a case-by-case basis, additional training for particularly apt officers.
As noted above, ‘Full Fluency’ is exceptionally difficult to obtain, in any language. It implies not only intimate knowledge of a country or region and its cultures, but having studied in a university in that language. For a non-native speaker—excepting the rare language marvel—this would require at least three years of intensive study. That’s a long time to have an officer out of service, so to speak. Not only does the Department not receive any immediate value for its investment, but the officer runs the risk of falling outside the view of promotion boards. State, like the US military, has an ‘up or out’ system of promotion. Besides, three or more years of intensive study is excruciatingly fatiguing.
State tries to break up long-term language training. After the first year, an officer will be posted to a two-year assignment where the language will be of use. If the officer finds s/he’s interested in continuing study—and if the Department determines that it likes the officer’s performance—then a second year of advanced study might be offered. This certainly makes sense on several levels. But it does not lead to the quick development of language-capable officers.
Programs to support the learning and teaching of Arabic outside government are worth supporting. As the article notes, many students will drop out somewhere along the way. Those who remain, though, do form a pool that can be used as a source of new language-capable officers. But as the article also notes, there are other impediments, ranging from disagreement with policy to non-competitive salaries, that will ensure that the USG never has enough officers available to do the necessary work.
US Public Diplomacy: A long row to hoe in the Islamic World
Worldpublicopinion.org a project of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, has recently published an public opinion poll on attitudes toward the US, terrorist organization, and a generalized ‘clash of civilizations’. [The link is to a 28-page PDF document. The questionnaire is also available as a 20-page PDF] The polling was conducted in Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco, and Pakistan between December 2006 and February 2007.
The results are pretty depressing. Majorities have negative views of the US government. Gross majorities believe it is US policy to undermine and divide the Islamic world and to spread Christianity. Majorities have a negative view of Western culture and believe that groups like Al-Qaeda are right in trying to fight its spread.
Majorities believe that the US is actively working to help Israel extend its territory and large numbers believe that the US is not really interested in a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli problem.
Surprisingly large numbers believe that the true identities of the 9/11 attackers remain unknown with many believing, still, that either the US or Israel is behind the attacks. In none of the four countries is Al-Qaeda identified as being responsible by more than 35% of the polled population.
Majorities share the Al-Qaeda belief that Muslim countries should be ruled by strict Sharia law and that Islamic countries should be unified in a single Islamic state or Caliphate.
There are a few bright notes, though. Majorities in all countries believe that democracy is an appropriate form of government for their own country. Majorities also believe that globalization is good for them, though they object strongly to Western cultural values flooding their own societies.
Majorities in all countries are strongly opposed to attacks on civilian targets in America, Europe, or in Muslim countries. Al-Qaeda’s support among the polled populations is weak; Usama Bin Laden’s support level is even weaker, with maximum support (40%) coming from Egypt.
It’s hard to find much to cheer about here. What’s very clear is that the US has an enormous task ahead if it is to improve is image in the Islamic world. There are, though, some indications that this is possible.
The paradoxical attitudes about American freedoms (good) and American culture (bad) suggest that there is room for discussion here. It doesn’t make it any easier that large segments of American society don’t have clear ideas about what needs to be done in the Islamic world, or even about the Islamic world. It certainly doesn’t help, either, when there is no consensus in the US on the role of America in the world or on American values. With disturbingly large numbers of Americans believing that there’s something ‘fishy’ about 9/11, it’s hard to argue that foreign audiences are simply off the wall.
Attitudes don’t change as the result of a press release or a speech. They change only as the result of sustained behavior and a free flow of information, providing context when possible. This is not going to be an easy task, particularly when groups like the ‘net roots’, anarchical organizations, and purely crazy people muddy the public discourse. I do fear that ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’ has become a global pandemic, but things will not change substantively following the next election.
The US needs to be fully engaged in explaining itself calmly and clearly, admitting when its policies apply differentially. The government can do more to repudiate those who demonize Islam. People—including Islamic audiences—realize that the world is not a tidy place, that one solution doesn’t fit all problems. Consistency, while desirable, is not always achievable, but this is not a new insight. We do need to explain why and how our policies are formed and applied, and what our goals are exactly. The messages explaining these have to be tailored to the audiences, but cannot be different or contradictory, one to the next.
A large part of the problem of attitudes is that foreign audiences, even in highly educated places like Europe, do not have a clear conception of how the US government works, the role of policy advocates and opponents, the role of Congress or the media. One cannot blame the local education systems. After all, what do the average American know about the political system of any other country. We can encourage the development of ‘American Studies’ programs in foreign universities, but we cannot make them happen nor can we ensure that students leave those programs with the ‘right’ ideas.
We cannot and should not seek to control what images and ideas about America are conveyed through our media. We can, though, make use of USG media to try to provide the context of our culture. While Paris Hilton may exemplify the worst we have to offer, her jailing can exemplify the best by demonstrating that rule of law does actually work.
The Washington Post has an interesting bit today on how researchers are using narwhals to collect data in regions of the Arctic. The project, jointly run by the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration, is using the deep diving narwhals to reach poorly sampled regions of the oceans to gather information on temperature, time, and depth. The article doesn’t say anything about collecting data on salinity, a measurement I think would be of particular interest in the debate about the causes and effects of global warming and the Atlantic Gyre and the thermohaline effect. It seems these tusked whales are working hard to improve their PR from mere counters to poison to active members of the environmental movement.
For years, scientists have been trying to get a sense of the ocean north of Greenland but have been deterred by the harsh weather there. Now they have finally found deep-diving oceanographers willing to do their work for them: narwhals.
Narwhals — whales that got their name because the Norse thought their skin resembled that of a drowned sailor — used to be coveted for their 9-foot spiral tusks. In the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth I of England bought a narwhal tusk for a price supposedly equal to a castle, and other royals sought the tusk for medicinal purposes.
But researchers from the United States and Greenland are using them to analyze a part of the ocean crucial for regulating climate. The narwhals’ wintering territory is near the northern Labrador Sea, where warm, salty water is moving north and cold, fresh water is moving south.
This past week, ABC TV’s Diane Sawyer has been reporting on her travels to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia for the ‘Good Morning America’ program. There’s not a lot there for anyone with any foreign policy savvy, but a few things did pop out. Below is a brief overview of the different segments that aired and are available for your viewing pleasure on the ABC website through the links.
The most interesting segment was a 7-minute interview with Saudi Foreign Minister Pr. Saud Al-Faisal (additional bits of the interview are interspersed in the other segments). Among issues addressed is King Abdullah’s calling the US presence in Iraq ‘illegitimate foreign occupation’: Al-Faisal says it’s a matter of ‘legitimacy’ rather than ‘legality’. The Saudis did not ‘dis’ the White House by not accepting an invitation: the timing was wrong and no other meaning should be inferred. Al-Faisal tries to distinguish between text books and religious primers when it comes to attitudes about other religions. Saudi schools, he says, are trying to promote tolerance and openness, but books that are instructing on religious doctrine are always intolerant, no matter the religion involved. The interview is worth watching. There’s supposed to be another interview coming soon about women in Saudi Arabia.
‘Saudi Schools’ takes a look at a pre-school and what’s being taught there. When it comes to investigation into Saudi schools, the piece is pretty shallow. Talking with a group of five-year-olds, Sawyer finds that they have already developed negative opinions of Christians (”Christians don’t pray, but Muslims do pray”). The kids are also attuned to the TV, with one citing ‘Dr. Phil’ as one of the programs he watches. What’s pretty amazing, though, is these children’s facility with English. I have to assume that they are the children of mothers for whom English is the mother tongue and English is the children’s first language. In other words, these children are not very representative of Saudi children at all.
‘The Middle East’s Wealth Gap’ isn’t all that informative, either. It’s basically saying ‘There are some super-wealthy Arabs, but also poor Arabs.’ Parts of this clip deal with Saudi Arabia, including panoramic views of the Defense Minister’s cruise-ship-sized yacht. Most of the clip deals with the UAE, though, and the incredible real estate developments going on. Not much exploration of the plight of the poor, though, outside of Afghanistan. Sawyer cites statistics that the average Saudi income is around $14,000/year while that of Abu Dhabi, with only 120,000 citizens, has a per capita income of $70 million (at least on paper). She asks Pr. Saud about why the USG is spending $3 billion in Afghanistan while Saudi Arabia spends only $200 million. Saud answers that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have an army there to protect its aid programs. (He might also have added that when Saudi Arabia was slow to stop its aid to the Afghan government that morphed into the Taliban, it got severely whacked by the US opinion and policy writers.)
‘Sex and Islam’ is a bit of a mash-up. It briefly mentions that Saudis are using technology to break through social barriers to meet members of the opposite sex and that Saudi women live strictly delimited lives. Sawyer gets Pr. Saud to say that controls on relations between the sexes is not a matter of Islam but rather of tradition and culture and these take a long time to change. He asks Sawyer how long it took for for women to get the right to vote in the US. Sawyer doesn’t provide an answer. The largest segment of this piece is with an Egyptian ‘Dr. Ruth’, Dr. Heba Kotb, who offers advice about sex on her TV program, basing her response on what’s found in the Quran. Why this runs under a banner of ‘Assignment Saudi Arabia’, though, is a puzzle.
Today’s installment of Diane Sawyer’s visit to Saudi Arabia is pretty lame. She focuses on camels, guaranteed to perpetuate the stereotype of Saudi Arabia as not much beyond camels and oil. In fact, Saudis are only slightly more likely to have ridden a camel in their lives than an average American. Camels are part of Saudi history and tradition, but Saudis travel more in Toyotas and Fords, or Airbuses and Boeings than they do on the ’ship of the desert’. Along Jeddah’s Corniche you’ll find men offering camel rides (as well as donkey and horse rides) to the tourists and that’s where many Saudis will have their first and only experience with camels. Well, camel meat is available in most supermarkets, but that’s a slightly different thing. But it’s a normal a facet of life and the newspapers report on distribution problems leading to tainted camel meat… just like the current problem with pet food in the US.
The series isn’t worthless. The visuals do help comprehension but there’s no great depth to the various pieces. Still, having some good information is better than continued ignorance, even if it tends to confirm stereotypes.
