Will the Islamists take Saudi Arabia?
David Osler visited Saudi Arabia recently and looks at the Orwellian picture behind 'our friends in the Midle East' George Orwell himself probably could not have thought up a name as archetypically Orwellian as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. But that is the name the police go by in Saudi Arabia, and their control of public space is almost total. Riyadh is what the fictional 1984 looks like in the actual 2002. Punishment for the slightest criticism of the system is harsh. Torture, amputations and executions are routine. There are no political parties, no...