Summarizing Saudi history: "The Kingdom" opening credits
The opening credits were the best part of The Kingdom. It summarizes the 20th century history of Saudi Arabia's oil industry in a few minutes. Here's the video. Link
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The Prize : The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin is an essential and fascinating history of the oil industry. The early history is especially interesting, as well as the cycles of boom-and-bust. And after decades of befuddlement brought on by TV news, I now understand a bit about why the middle east (from Iran to Egypt) politics is what it is.
The video says that oil was found by mistake as the Saudis were looking for water. In fact the Saudis were approached by the British who were in Bahrain. The British struck oil in Bahrain and concluded that more oil could be found in Saudi Arabia.
King Abdulaziz (Ibn Saud) knew if the British entered the Kingdom they would colonize it as they did other countries. The king allowed American firms Standard oil to look for oil, as the Americans at the time were known to be anti- imperialistic.
So when they said "blood for oil"..they were right???
Who knew the hippies would be right!?!??
Just an observation, but isn't this 4 minute clip copyright-protected? I mean it is part of a cinematic film that was released within the last year - I have to believe it is protected.
4 minutes is well beyond fair use (as I understand it)...
Is this the same Saudi Arabia that recently sentenced an 18 year old woman to 200 lashes and jail time for being in a car with a man who wasn't a relative, and this after she had been gang raped at knife point on being found in said car? Lovely place.
There's a version of this clip also at video.yahoo that's higher quality (and possibility rights-cleared?)
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1229418
Ken-
The 3:50 title sequence is offered freely for publicity purposes (and in Hi Def) here:
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809740161/trailer
Looks like somebody watched "What Barry Says" rather carefully:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO_8RwXMMwI
I was also thinking of What Barry Says while watching it.
If you can't make time for all 928 pages for the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Prize", it was made into an fascinating 8 part documentary by PBS. It's up on Google vid. http://tinyurl.com/34qpzy
The clip has some deceptive leaps-- for example, while it's true the US is the world's largest oil consumer, we only get about 12% of that oil from Saudi Arabia. The EU and Japan and increasingly China depend far more on Middle Eastern oil. The US national security concern is that a disruption in those nation's oil supply will devastate their economies and subsequently ours, and that these countries would then get involved militarily in the region.
Another fudge: While it's true Bin Laden declared war on the royal family after they chose the US as its protectors, the Al Qaeda leader's main objection is that the American military has Christians, Jews, and women in it, all of whom are supposed to be forbidden from being in the Holy Land, according to his bigoted nutbag salafist version of Islam.
//The US national security concern is that a disruption in those nation's oil supply will devastate their economies and subsequently ours, and that these countries would then get involved militarily in the region.
Re: the 'US national security concern':
- 'those who control the oil, control global politics'
check out Robert Newman's DVD:
The History of Oil:
http://www.robnewman.com/shop.html
//the Al Qaeda leader's main objection is that the American military has Christians, Jews, and women in it, all of whom are supposed to be forbidden from being in the Holy Land, according to his bigoted nutbag salafist version of Islam.
oy veh, this view is so naive and dangerous
their objection has far more to do with the fact that the US has inflicted its materialist, wasteful, hyper-consumer 'culture' upon their society with our corporate and military presence.
we are pigs at the trough and they are sick of it
PATRICK DODDS - the girl was sentenced for violating their law (they can do that, it's their country) - but, she was given a royal pardon by the King
READ A PROPER BOOK FOR HISTORY,
don't rely on a 4 minute credits sequence for a crappy movie!
Ken Hansen - being female is not a crime, arbitrary laws be damned. Law & morality are orthogonal axes.
@ANECHOIC
"Oy veh" is right. They hate us for a whole slew of reasons. From we're infidels in Saudi Arabia, to our support for Israel, to our support for corrupt totalitarian regimes in the Middle East[*] to our cultural hegemony. For anyone to pick their favorite beef and say "THIS is the One True Reason(tm) why they hate us," is being overly simplistic.
[*] With regards to Middle Eastern totalitarian regimes, do we REALLY want a popularly chosen government in all of these nations? The fact is, we don't want a democratic Saudi Arabia. Sure the Saudi family are a bunch of decadent sons of bitches, but they like us, which is more than we can say about the opposition.
Saudi Arabia's not the biggest producer of oil, that would be Russia. Saudi is only the biggest if you include condensate.
@COAXIAL
agreed about there being multiple reasons...I just tried to sum it up by pointing to our behavior there i.e. it being more or less a symptom of what you enumerated
w/r/t ME totalian regimes: why does it matter one whit what WE want in SA or anywhere for that matter?
They have the right to self-determination so long as they abide by basic humanitarian rules of the world community