Neck of the woods Saudi media editors and owners, all freedom lovers, are deeply worried that “Iraq press freedom is threatened”. Saudi media freedom itself, however, is not threatened for two reasons: (1) There is no Saudi press freedom to be threatened. You have no press freedom, ergo: you don’t have to worry about a press freedom that does not exist, and, (2) Saudi media are all owned and/or operated by the princes and their kin, from Asharq Alawsat (Crown Prince for the Next Few Months Salman) and al-Hayat (Prince Khaled Bin sultan) to Alarabiya to Al-Arab Network (Prince Al-Waleeed) all the way down to the local newspapers. We know nobody would restrict the freedom of princely press because princes are fierce defenders of press freedom and will not stand for it. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Neck of the woods “JEDDAH: An expert ruled out the occurrence of devastating earthquakes in Saudi Arabia over the next 100 years. “Seismic activity underneath Saudi Arabia will remain normal and if any disturbances do occur over the next 100 years, they will not pose any danger as their magnitude will never exceed 4.5 on the Richter Scale,” said Ali Al-Shukri, head of the Astronomical Sciences Department at King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals. The latest tremor registering a magnitude of 4.5 near the Kingdom occurred at an undersea location 181 km off Farasan Island in the Red Sea on Sept. 2.
Satellite images showed that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate were moving away from each other, stretching the Earth’s crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea……………”
Odd, but it almost never quakes in the Arabian Peninsula. It falls just outside the “Seismic Hazard Zone”, although the tip of the UAE is the only exposed part of as an extension of the active Iranian zone (speaking geological, not political). Surrounding regions, like Iran and Turkey get hit frequently and hard, but the Peninsula (and East Africa) is not affected.
This I couldn’t resist: I suspect they are setting the ground for skyscrapers in Mecca and Madinah. And maybe in Jeddah, of course. Manhattan in Hijaz is a possibility, and the potentates are probably salivating at how many pious pilgrims they can squeeze in every year. They have already razed all the historic monuments of Mecca, like the homes of the Prophet and the Sahaba they claim to love and venerate, and replaced them with lucrative hotels, five-six-seven star hotels and shopping malls. Cheers
mhg [email protected]
Multidisciplinary: Middle East, North Africa, Gulf, GCC, World, Cosmos…..
