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A SAUDI BILLIONAIRE – and the nephew of the country’s king – has called for parliamentary elections to be held in the country, where the king currently names members of a toothless Shura consultative council.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the richest Arab businessman and a nephew of King Abdullah, said in a television interview aired last night that his uncle’s decision last month, to appoint 30 women to the national consultative council, was “very important” but needed to go further.
“For this to become historic, I think two things are essential: first, elections, even if partial, and, more importantly, [giving] powers,” he said in the interview aired on several channels, most belonging to his own media empire.
The prince also said that ending a ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia was a matter of time, despite strong resistance from religious conservatives in the desert kingdom that is the birthplace of Islam.
“I think that driving [for women] is definitely coming,” he said, playing up the economic benefits of saving wages paid to foreign drivers.
Prince Alwaleed regretted the “negative” outcome of Arab Spring uprisings, saying the politics of new Islamist-dominated governments “do not reflect the aspirations of the people … for freedom and justice.”
The uprisings which toppled strong Arab leaders would not reach the Gulf monarchies, where “the leaders look after the interests of their peoples,” said the prince.
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Good to read women’s rights are being taken into account, these countries are still behind but good to see improvements being made.
Behind by a long long way. They’ve a massive way to go: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/saudi-arabia-news-paralysis-sentence-outrageous-2013-04-02
I know an eye for an eye and all that but he was 14 when he done it!!
Lads,
The guy has no real power himself and your all cheering him on,lol. Seriously
When it comes to the Catholic church or America your not half as tolerant.
Saudi Arabia still bans anyone building a non Muslim place of worship, it still funds massive Islamic centres and mosques worldwide, They wanted to build a Saudi school here in Ireland. Only Muslims can enter Mecca, can you imagine if Rome was only for Catholics.
Such ludicrous double standards.
No doubt he has Irish connections.
Meeeerrrrrr
Yeah, democracy so long as he can hold on to his ill gotten assets.
It is no coincidence that what we call ‘representative democracy’ is favoured by the wealthy in society. They can own Tv stations, newspapers, internet hubs and, in general, the means to communicate ideas and a discourse to justify and legitimate their ownership.
Joe Soap is left with this notion of free-speech, stand up on a box and say what you want. Nobody listens, and if they did, he would get a right crack from the forces of the state.
What we need is direct democracy and the distribution and access to the means of communication for all.
Anne, Pardon my ignorance but what is “direct democracy and the distribution and access to the means of communication” ?
An uncensored internet construct to support and improve a democracy?? is that what your advocating?
Direct participatory democracy: the sort of thing were, eh, people get to decide more thant what smile they like on a ballot card, or what political spoofer has the best speaking ability.
The distribution of communications: where ultra salariedy buffoons do not have a hegemony in key positions of communications. Ala RTE lifers. Also where the means to propagate communications is more distributed, rather than owned by millionaires Ala Denis O Brian Mr Murdoch.
Access to communications: Where licence fee’s and such like to operate, say, a radio station are not prohibitive to the ordinary man.
Use your imagination Slow harry. I can see where the name comes from.
saucer of milk…
You sound like a man round long time ago called “Stalin” good luck with that one!
So basically loads of referendums, allowing pirate radio stations, limiting the number of media outlets an individaul / company can run and a salary cap in media companies
Anne, what you’re talking about is broader opportunity of access to communications. Direct democracy is what slow harry just managed to explain more concisely and accurately than you did. Yes, direct participation in decision making. There are many concerns around this style of government. It inevitably involves a lot of referendums. It also requires that the public take the time to inform themselves about some complex issues: so far you’re not doing a great job of demonstrating how that part might work.
So basically, participatory democracy, greater access to the means of communications and reducing the structural tendency for media conglomeration.
All postive measures to aspire to.
Hardly the best medium for explaining such matters, densij.
All Slow Harry has done is reiterate perceived ideas form the standpoint of the existing framework. Ie Pirate radio stations.
Hardly pirate if they were legal, and so forth.
Tv and newspapers, the traditional means by which the Murdochs of the world decide who gets heard, are becoming less and less relevant these days. Most of my friends don’t even own a tv. They get their news from the internet. The net is a much harder medium to control. No licence needed to blog or comment. And social media like Twitter are about as distributed as you can get.
True Joe.
However, what we are beginning to see on the internet is the creation of internet hubs and the general centralisation of internet communications. Google, facebook, twitter. And with online media centres such as thejournal.
People, unless already aware of ideas outside of their frame of reference, will tend to stay within these media hubs and with a reluctance to explore or search outside of them.
And there are good reasons for this. Generally, these hubs are well funded and do more up-to-date reportage than those with fewer resources.
Anne. The Internet by its nature is a decentralised internetwork, Google is merely an index of web services, there are plenty of alternatives majority choose to use Google for now. Facebook is Popular but could very well be gone in 5 years swept aside by the next net trend and nobody reads the journal (apart from Irish)
To re-iterate Joe’s point, the very nature of the internet makes it almost impossible to centralise/control communication to the despair of many rogue regimes!
The internet is not decentralised by nature. There are ‘agenda setters’, media hubs such as The Journal, RTE.ie, IrishTimes.com and so forth which produce news and frame a topic.
This news often originates from a centralised source. ie The Garda, a state agency or other well known organisations and institutions.
Even bloggers, while expressing different analysis, work from the same sources of information, by and large.
Information about what is going on, therefore, originates, usually, from centralised positions.
Anne I think you missed the point and Joe’s point entirely! The internet is unlike any of its predecessors. Traditional Media over airwaves(radio, TV) was privately operated and regulated and controlled by the few usually states or private media organisations, the internet is an open medium accessible equally by all. Yes all traditional media providers like rate/BBC have online presences but they no longer have monopolies. Anyone is free to set up a communications service and broadcast to the world given a voice to those previously silenced. Your comment stating that the internet is not decentralised shows your lack of understanding of the underlying technology.
Queen of the buzzwords! You should run for Taoiseach.
Anne can you point me in the direction of a website with agenda free news content. I can’t see how news content is produced without someone’s agenda being imprinted on it.
You are wrong John.
Traditional media such as the radio, newspapers and Tv broadcasting (to a lesser extent) were highly decentralised to begin with. Then came regulation. Then came advertising/profitibility. Then came prohibitive production equipment.
And gradually, bit by bit, we were left with fewer radio stations, fewer newspapers and fewer TV broadcasts. And the internet is going in this direction.
And you miss my point. Sure, anyone can set up a blog or an online radio podcast. But there is a monopoly on the production of information, and therefore news production as I have explained above.
Additionally, and as someone above mentioned, people have very little time in their lives to digest and research news. Therefore those agencies which produce regularly updated ready-pop news such as thejournal will command a central position in news production.
Other alternatuves having less resources for regular updates, less contacts with the Gardai (and god forbid the gardai cold face your contact otherwise you would really be short of news to produce.).
Its called the ‘propaganda model’, and with some modification, applies very much to the internet.
@slow harry
All news is ideologically loaded. Indeed language itself is loaded with ideology.
One must be aware from where that ideology originates, how it is constructed and in whose interests it represents.
Any news site I would put you on to would have some sort of agenda, consciously or otherwise.
Therefore understand your own agenda and interests, and critically analyse the news discourse to see it matches your interests and those with whom you have a common afiliation.
Saudi Arabia promotes and exports an extreme form of Islam, with the result that Sunni muslims are slaughtering the more moderate Shia on a daily basis. These are the same guys who yesterday sentenced a man to be paralyzed because he stabbed and paralyzed another man when he was 14. They regularly chop off heads and hands. Basically they are trapped in a time warp – at around 632 ad. Democracy ? I dont think so.
Is there any truth to the rumour there has never been a crash in Saudi Arabia?! ;)
I Jan a 24 year old Sri Lankan girl was beheaded in Saudi Arabia for the alleged killing of a Saudi child in her care when she was 17 she totally denied it and was allowed no lawyer in court the country is a barbaric state and no amount of weasel words from a so called prince can escape that fact
Women driving,no way that’s madness.
Ya, look what happened here
Good to hear that finally women will get more rights than at present. … long time in coming tho. … the article also raises the obscene personal wealth of this one individual and highlights what a sick and unequal world we live in. … Unfortunately people such as this exist all over the world. …. if only there were more wealthy people such as bill and Melinda gates our world would be a better place
The west should have invaded these oil rich lands long ago and kept them. We are being held to ransom they take the oil out at $11 and it sells at $115. Do I see democracy there no, but a few Monarchs calling the tune , look at Bahrain . After Tunisia you guys knew your days were numbered and you don’t want to die like Gaddafi. Hence you mediocre pretense to promote some form of power sharing .
So if you were to extract resources from the ground in Ireland, export it and the people whom you exported it to were not satisfied with the level of money they had to pay for it and then “invaded” to take these resources for themselves, you would have no problem with that? It is THEIR resource, it belongs to the nation to which it is located in and they can sell it for what they like, or not at all.
Liam, it’s a pity your thesis doesn’t seem to apply to our gas in Mayo!
I need your help bro
I met him in Dublin a few years ago. Nice man..
It’s easy to be nice when you’re worth a few billion.
Good on him. It makes a difference from the last time he made international headlines crying over not being high enough on Forbes rich list.
Al waleed bin talal god like u
The rich man Alwaleed bin talal make plan form
Don’t hold your breath.
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