Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

International news

Michelle's just the latest to flout Saudi tradition

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Laura Bush did it. So did Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Same with Angela Merkel.

What did a former U.S. first lady, two former secretaries of state and the chancellor of Germany do? They appeared in public in Saudi Arabia — without covering their hair, as prescribed by Muslim tradition in the Sunni nation.

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/01/28/3616556/saudi-arabia-michelle-obama/

The current first lady, Michelle Obama, thus is the just the latest woman to flout the custom demanded of Saudi women.

It’s interesting at a couple of levels that the media would make any kind of mention of Mrs. Obama’s decision to go scarf-less in public.

No. 1, she is hardly the first foreign dignitary to be photographed doing this.

No. 2, and perhaps more importantly, is that she was virtually ignored while she stood in a greeting line alongside her husband — Barack H. Obama, president of the United States of America.

The dignitaries walked along the greeting line, shook hands with Mr. Obama but didn’t shake Mrs. Obama’s hand. What’s up with that?

Actually, I know. Saudis disrespect women whenever and wherever possible. That, too, is part of their custom. Women aren’t able to drive motor vehicles legally, for example. It should come as no surprise, then, that the potentates or whoever those gentlemen were greeting the president would ignore his wife.

To whatever extent she intended, Michelle Obama did a nice job of standing tall and proud for women in the country that played host to her briefly — and, in fact, for oppressed women all around the world. So did those who preceded her.

Well done, ladies.

 

International news, political news

Wow! Ted Cruz praises Michelle Obama!

Times like these call for special attention.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TEA Party Nation, has actually said something complimentary about the first lady of the United States of America.

Cruz wrote on his Facebook page that Michelle Obama has stood up for the rights of women around the world by declining to wear a scarf covering her head while visiting Saudi Arabia.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/28/ted-cruz-michelle-obama_n_6564768.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

You go, Ted!

He wrote: “Kudos to First Lady Michelle Obama for standing up for women worldwide and refusing to wear a Sharia-mandated head-scarf in Saudi Arabia. Nicely done.”

Cruz, who’s actually from Texas (of course) isn’t likely to say nice things — ever — about the first lady or her husband. He’s entertaining a possible — if not probable — run for the presidency in 2016. He’s no doubt storing up plenty of negative things to say about the past eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

Just for grins and giggles, though, I am curious to know the reason Michelle Obama didn’t wear the scarf in a country where Islamic tradition plays such a huge role in people’s lives. My own hunch is that the Sharia mandate is for Muslim women and since Michelle Obama is not a Muslim, she and other women in the presidential party were exempt from the rule.

Still, it’s good to hear Sen. Cruz acknowledge the guts it took for the first lady to do such a thing in Saudi Arabia. Imagine what he and other critics on the right would have said had she shown up with her hair covered.

 

 

International news

You go, Mme. First Lady!

Social media are chattering about first lady Michelle Obama.

No, she didn’t say anything worth noting. All she did was get off a plane in Saudi Arabia sans a scarf covering her hair, which is customary in the Sunni Muslim country.

Some, but not all, of her hosts were offended by the first lady. My own reaction? You go, Mrs. Obama!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/01/27/michelle-obama-forgoes-a-headscarf-and-sparks-a-backlash-in-saudi-arabia/?tid=sm_fb

The president and first lady stopped briefly in Saudi Arabia to pay their respects after the death of King Abdullah. Saudi custom dictates that women cover their heads; many Saudi women wear niqabs.

But here’s the deal. Saudi women do so to honor their Islamic faith. The Obamas aren’t Muslim. They are practicing Christians. Indeed, although the custom is followed generally in Saudi Arabia, it’s not a requirement, particularly if women are seen only in, shall we say, secular surroundings. Were she to enter a mosque? Yes, I can understand the requirement to cover her hair as required by Islamic teaching.

And as the Washington Post reported: “Exceptions are made for foreigners, however, and Michelle – who did wear loose clothing that fully covered her arms – appears to have been one of them. In photographs from the official events, other foreign female guests are also shown not wearing headscarves.”

That hasn’t stopped Saudi social media from chattering all over creation about the supposed “insult” perpetrated by the American first lady.

Let’s just get over it, shall we?

International news, national news, political news

Obama seeks to thread dangerous needle

Talk about a much-anticipated speech.

President Obama is going to speak Wednesday about his planned strategy for “degrading, defeating and destroying” the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In that speech, the president is going to lay out a plan that will preclude American “boots on the ground.” What he will need to explain — and he’ll need to use his tremendous rhetorical skill to do so — is how this nation is going to defeat ISIL’s efforts to overthrow the government in Syria without aligning ourselves with the government that we also hate.

The president offered a hint of that strategy this morning in an interview broadcast on Meet the Press. He talked to new MTP moderator Chuck Todd about working with “moderate opposition forces” that also are fighting the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. ISIL is the new enemy on the battlefield in Syria, he said, and the United States will deploy its enormous air power to hit ISIL’s whenever and wherever we find it.

This, I submit, is where the equation gets very tricky.

Assad’s regime is as hated as any in the Middle East. He, too, is a monster who needs to go. ISIL, though, is an even worse monster. Do we take sides in this struggle, wishing for one enemy force to defeat another enemy force?

Obama said the aim ought to be to help those so-called moderates in Syria — with help from other Sunni Arab states in the region. He mentioned Saudi Arabia and Jordan, two nations that have received significant U.S. military support over the years.

It’s time, Obama said, for those nations to deploy the assets we’ve provided for them in the fight against ISIL.

The president took a lot of heat when he said recently that “we don’t have a strategy yet” in dealing with ISIL. The critics who pounded Obama over that statement forget the “yet” part of that statement.

It appears a strategy is forthcoming. I’ll wait with interest for what the president has to say.

I will be particularly interested in hearing how he plans to keep fighting Bashar al-Assad while destroying the dictator’s No. 1 enemy.

 

Uncategorized

More good news to share: oil

That doggone good news just keeps piling up. Why, I just don’t know what to do with myself as I look at this stuff.

Did you know, for example, that by the end of 2014 the United States of America likely will be the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas?

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2014/07/america_world_s_leading_oil_producer_as_we_re_pumping_more_we_re_using_less.html

All those pump jacks you see bobbing along the vast West Texas landscape suggest to me that hundred-dollar-per-barrel oil is paying some dividends for the U.S. of A.

Bloomberg reports that American oil production surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia earlier this year. We’ll be No. 1 soon, according to the business news outlet.

Let’s add natural gas to the mix. Oil production is up 49 percent since 2008, according to Bloomberg. Adding natural gas to the mix boosts the increase way beyond even that impressive figure.

On the flip side, there’s even more good news. We’re using less fossil fuel because of more fuel-efficient motor vehicles. Hmmm. Interesting, yes? Is that because that big, mean old government has required vehicles to burn fuel more efficiently?

And what about all this doom-and-gloom talk about how the feds were intent on “destroying the oil industry” by making it so difficult to explore for these fuels? Has the destruction occurred? Not by a long shot.

A favorite mantra among politicians of all stripes is the need to rid this nation of its dependence on foreign fossil fuel, particularly the fuel that comes from those crazy places like the Middle East.

Let’s see. I think we’re doing that.

The Bakken Field in North Dakota and Montana appears to contain the largest reserve in world history. Canada continues to be our friend by producing copious quantities of fossil fuel. However, let’s be mindful of yet another cheerful development: We’re importing a smaller amount of our oil — from friend and foe alike — than at any time in our history.

Gosh, I hate be the bearer of good news when we’re frothing over all these foreign crises.

Oh, I’m just kidding. I kind of like trying to add a little fuller context to the gloominess that seems to energize so many Americans.

Uncategorized

‘Energy independence’ gets a little closer

Let’s look back about, oh, two years.

Gasoline prices were rocketing skyward. The U.S. government was under fire for failing to do more to encourage domestic oil exploration and production. Republicans across the land were lampooning the Democratic president for his abject failure to draw us closer to the day when we wouldn’t have to depend on foreign sources to run our industries and fuel our vehicles.

Now comes word that the Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, which is greater than what economists predicted. The cause of that spike in GDP growth? Domestic oil production.

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/319649-booming-oil-production-boosted-gdp-estimate-white-house-advisers-say

Interesting, don’t you think?

Domestic oil production is at a 17-year high, according to White House economists. Are they being objective? Well, no neutral observer has questioned the numbers.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence in West Texas to make the point. The Permian Basin boasts the lowest jobless rate in the state. The reason? The huge demand for oil-related jobs.

I’ve been talking to friends and acquaintances with business interests in the Midland-Odessa area and they all say the same thing: You can’t get housing there; hotel rooms are booked up; those high-rise Midland skyscrapers, the ones built in the 1970s that went vacant when the oil industry crashed in the mid-1980s, have filled up again with tenants.

But don’t rely on that kind of chatter. There appears to be plenty of hard evidence of a turnaround.

All of this bodes pretty well for the United States as Americans watch with intense interest in developments in the Middle East. Egypt looked on the verge of exploding once again. Syria remains a serious question mark for the United States. No one can predict with any certainty what will happen in a region of the world from which we still get a lot of our oil.

Meanwhile, the pump jacks are still working hard here at home. North Dakota is becoming the next “Texas” and/or “Alaska.” Reports indicate an oil field discovery there that will dwarf the reserves known to lie under the Saudi sand.

And I haven’t even mentioned all the “alternative energy” sources being developed, such as the Panhandle wind farms.

Why are the critics so quiet these days?