○ Praying for Jamal Khashoggi

Trump, Kushner. I don't usually tweet opinions, but here goes: you need to get the Saudis to find/release Jamal Khashoggi. Without constructive critics like him, Saudi econ reform will fail.

— Thomas L. Friedman (@tomfriedman) October 5, 2018

Attention: Saudi Prince in a Hurry | NY Times Opinion - Nov. 7, 2017 |

To understand the upheaval that is taking place in Saudi Arabia today, you have to start with the most important political fact about that country: The dominant shaping political force there for the past four decades has not been Islamism, fundamentalism, liberalism, capitalism or ISISism.

It has been Alzheimer's.

The country's current king is 81 years old. He replaced a king who died at 90, who replaced a king who died at 84. It's not that none of them introduced reforms. It's that at a time when the world has been experiencing so much high-speed change in technology, education and globalization, these successive Saudi monarchs thought that reforming their country at 10 miles an hour was fast enough -- and high oil prices covered for that slow pace.

It doesn't work anymore. Some 70 percent of Saudi Arabia is under age 30, and roughly 25 percent of them are unemployed. In addition, 200,000 more are studying abroad, and about 35,000 of them -- men and women - are coming home every year with degrees, looking for meaningful work, not to mention something fun to do other than going to the mosque or the mall. The system desperately needs to create more jobs outside the oil sector, where Saudi income is no longer what it once was, and the government can't keep eating its savings to buy stability.

That's the backdrop for this week's daring, but reckless, power play by the 32-year-old son of King Salman -- Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known by his initials M.B.S. I've interviewed M.B.S. twice. He is a young man in a hurry. I've found his passion for reform authentic, his support from the youth in his country significant and his case for making radical change in Saudi Arabia compelling.  

So Thomas, Saudi problem you defined to be Alzheimer's ... what seems to be your ailment?  Too troubled by $$$ dollar signs to fog your clarity of vision?

○ Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at Last | NY Times Opinion - Nov. 23, 2017 |

From my diaries ...

○ NYT Interview On Foreign Policy: Hogwash Mr. President!
○ Obama Got It Wrong On Strength Islamic State
○ 'Israel is Holocaust obsessed, Militaristic and Xenophobic' (July 30, 2007)

America has adopted Israel policies in the Middle East including how to invade and occupy Iraq with terror, deprivation, torture and urban warfare with great harm to society and the civilian population. A decade later we are all Israelis! Xenophobic and Islamophobes ... Fear Inc.

○ Signs of Fascism in a Post-Democratic State

Another comment about Thomas Friedman ...

○ Apartheid: Mock Memo to Thomas Friedman - 2001

Hasbara is a dead language