As long as Arab countries are ruled by dictators (or kings), and no criticism of the rulers is allowed and as long as there is no self-criticism of their societies, these societies will remain backwards. They will also continue to blame outsiders for all their problems and continue to be breeding grounds for terrorists.

Meanwhile the Republikans want to keep on giving these "backward barbarians".......still more of our money every day. I hate the thought of giving my hard earned dollars to people who want to kill me....Republikans have no problem with it.

The Saudi's have enough of our money to do whatever they damn well please in their country. And they do it!

Not sure if it's any different under the Dems DuhBu.

It isn't, I agree with you. And one reason why I'm getting kind of tired of The Fray are comments like DuhBuh's.

I'm no fan of the previous administration, but I do get tired of the hate-Republicans thing that so unhinges so many of the posters here.

Sometimes I think that if Obama were to start a war with Iran, the consensus here at the Fray would be:

It's a masterstroke of foreign policy.

Having to go to war with Iran is Bush's fault.

I'm afraid this comment from alittlesense is about as trite as the one to which it responds.

The fact is Obama is our first Presiden who hasnt't given the Saudis (or for that matter, the Isarelis) a compelte pass since before Jimmy Carter.

We should try to speak with everyone in the world, but why should we be any more supportive of the Saudis than we are of Chavez? They both espouse poisonous perspectives on the world withe the help of petrodollars.

why should we be any more supportive of the Saudis than we are of Chavez? They both espouse poisonous perspectives on the world withe the help of petrodollars.

Because the Saudis have lobbyists who dole out acres of cash to Dems and Repubs and Chavez hasn't figured out how to do business with the US Congress.

Well, Republicans are typically in favor of off shore drilling for oil here; Democrats and Greens force our reliance on foreign oil, right?

Some good points have been made here. It would seem a lot of liberals are against the war in Afghanistan and leery of health care reform. But they are hesitant to attack Obama by name for ongoing policies and potential spending on his watch.

This is an interesting contrast to the behavior of conservatives during the Bush administration. Among conservatives the "all or nothing" and "you are with us or you are the enemy" mentality is clearly much stronger. Liberals are, as expected more open to internal dissent in the "ranks" but still hesitant to criticize their own guy personally as they would the leader of the enemy.

The school talked about had internet connections (wireless) and computers for each student. How many of our schools do??? Not many, unfortunately.

That isn't backward. Having access to the internet means you are no longer really closed in. You are connected to the entire world. While I imagine there are some restrictions on where they are supposed to go (as there are for the few minutes a week some of our students are allowed to get on the net) they are on the internet.

While the curriculum may not have changed, the fact that the young girl in the story is talking about a future career in the same field as her brother would be new in Saudi Arabia. It isn't a backward thought, it is a great deal of real progress from a time when a girl in Saudi Arabia (not so long ago) would have said she was going to be better able to make a good home for her family and a good marriage due to her education instead

Things are changing there in a positive direction, whether you want to pretend otherwise or not..

The ISA has been around for at least a couple of decades. I always viewed it as just the place where Saudi diplomat's kids and rich Saudi expats would send their kids so that they wouldn't be disconnected from Saudi society and the Arabic language. They seem have a college-prep curriculum that has a lot of Western influences. They send most of their students to regular American universities.

I lived in suburban Northern Virginia for 15 years, including the time that I was in high school in Fairfax County. I knew a number of students from ISA and competed against them in some of my extracurricular activities and clubs. The students I encountered were bright, polite, knowledgeable, and above all, normal teenagers.

As with any large group of people, such as the student body of a school, there are going to be individuals who grow up to commit crimes or engage in any number of ill-advised activities. Would you look through my high school yearbook and judge my classmates by the bad behavior of a few? Of course you wouldn't. Why judge ISA by a different standard, simply because it's not the school you attended?

"That isn't backward. Having access to the internet means you are no longer really closed in. You are connected to the entire world. While I imagine there are some restrictions on where they are supposed to go (as there are for the few minutes a week some of our students are allowed to get on the net) they are on the internet."

The 'internet' in China differs vastly from what we see in the United States. Saudi Arabia's is not the same as the US. Different forms and degrees of censorship, Domains and how they are linked internationally vary from one nation to another, etc. Do a little research, having access to the internet does not mean that "you are connected to the entire world".

Any educational institution in the US that receives fed funds is required to have content filtering in place on all computers that students touch. Look up CIPA for more info on what that entails. Most school districts use it basically to restrict students from viewing pornography, but some can use it for more 'censorhip' than most people realize.

"Having access to the internet means you are no longer really closed in" Um no, what it means is that you can think that you're not cut off, but in reality you are restricted to certain areas of the internet that your gov't and ISP allow you to see. Go ask a Chinese dissident trying to perform a Google search what they think of the Chinese internet. Google agreed to censor for the Chinese gov't.

What is really open and much tougher to censor by most gov'ts? Cell phones with internet access cards.

The ISA is actually in the United States and uses the American ISPs, not Saudi or Chinese ones. Do you have any particular data regarding the ISA's content filtering?

tracker:

Well, Republicans are typically in favor of off shore drilling for oil here; Democrats and Greens force our reliance on foreign oil, right?

Actually Greens would want to use alternate sources of energy, hence the name greens.