Polls dictate the slant the mass media broadcasts. Driven by advertising loot, newscasters bow to majority canvassed opinion. The pollster has become the kingmaker. News coverage will err on the side of a popular President rather than risk losing viewers to a rival. Administration briefings and Presidential sound bites are taken at face value, rebroadcast unexamined.

 

Media manipulation is childsplay for a Whitehouse slavering at the prospect of Ground Zero in September, having honed its skills in Philadelphia. Image over substance, subliminality reigns supreme. Irony or tragic irony, Oreo nation beguiled.

 

While slavery was abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962, the mentality of working employees to exhaustion rendering them more docile continues to this day. But not if you’re monied, American or European.

 

In the bald pecking order of a royal society, American expatriates are the top-guns. They provide vital services in return for tax-free salaries, rent free accommodation and many other regal benefits.

 

Every now and then, rumors that the Saudis might impose nominal taxation on expats because of domestic economic concerns, spread through vulnerable compounds like perfidity in a harem. The resulting howling and wailing so terrifies the Finance Ministry in Riyadh that denials are quickly issued.

 

The Saudis can move rapidly when they want to. They know more than most that the only reason foreigners endure the Kingdom’s torrid repression is the buckets of unlevied cash. Expat altruism is a non-starter. So the bombshell threat to eliminate the tax credit on income earned abroad will reverberate louder and longer than anything Al Queda and friends can muster.

 

Saudiization- the government policy to replace foreign workers with unemployed locals- was never meant to be achieved through foreign legislation or terror. The inscrutable House of Saud took two hits this week. 

A second Iraqi regime change in as many months, Bush is on a roll. The Head Occupier must look and sound like an unindictable Wall Street executive for the MBA President. The Great Delegator will feel comfortable when he sees the punctual shirt-and-tie telling ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-informed natives how things are going to be.

Nuance is sissyish. Arabic is optional. Bush the Second is dumping Bremer the Third smack in the middle of a hornet’s nest, ready or not.

The skills of a political insider in Washington are not necessarily transferable. Human rights are. Even for military designated enemy combatants, Cubanized into oblivion.             

11:05:52 AM