Dissent

The United States is really good at blowing up selected Muslim nations, but when our economic interests are at stake, our President gets on his knees for them. Link

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia - Seven years after Ali al-Dimeeni penned his novel "A Gray Cloud," the Saudi poet and author is living out his protagonist's predicament — a dissident jailed for years in a desert nation prison where many others have done time for their political views.

The hero of his novel speaks of his eyes becoming accustomed to the shadows of a cavernous cell: "I was startled by the inscriptions on the walls, which belonged to people I know and thinkers whose books I had read."

Al-Dimeeni, already jailed more than a year in a Saudi prison outside Riyadh, was sentenced May 15 to nine years in prison for sowing dissent, disobeying his rulers and sedition. His sentence and that of two Saudi scholars convicted with him drew international condemnation and astonished Arab literary and reform circles for its severity.

It disgusts me the way Bush is so in bed with the Saudis. Everything out of his mouth is a bunch of bullshit.

The three men had written a letter to the kingdom's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, calling for political, economic and social reforms — including parliamentary elections in a kingdom that just this year allowed its first, limited elections for weak local councils.

Then, they refused to back down.