Dear Saudi Friends

Dear Saudi friends, As you have seen, France is going through a rough time. It actually caught me a bit off guard that you might be interested in this, as I am myself following things a bit from a distance. I realize from messages I have received that there might be misconceptions about what led to the violence we have seen. So, in case you are interested, here are some elements of context. The trigger for the protest which started a couple of weeks ago is the increase in the oil prices. In France we have two kinds of gas, regular and gasoil. Historically, gasoil was less taxed and overall cheaper, which lead a number of poorer households or people driving a lot to buy a gasoil car (my mum has one of them). From my understanding, the government wants to align the tax between regular gas and gasoil. But instead of doing it incrementally, as some politicians have suggested, they have decided to do it in one go, which means an increase of something like 7 cents a liter ...

Yesterday, I received an email from a Saudi I know from Twitter. We had discussed in length before, not politics but a common interest we have. Over the last few days however, things had gone downward. He was obviously unhappy with me and I was quite sure it was because of something he misunderstood about me. But he wouldn't back down. His email last night was very harsh, he was criticizing me, saying that I “lecture and preach against Saudi Crown Prince actions and the issues of Saudi Arabia” while I said nothing about what was going on in France. I was very annoyed by this email and especially by its tone, but as some of you might share this opinion, I thought I should write a post about it. Do I lecture and preach against the Crown Prince? Do I highlight the issues of Saudi Arabia? I don’t. I absolutely don’t. I realize however, and I am sometimes considering stopping this column for that particular reason, that some of you don’t understand the difference ...

Dear Saudi friends, I cannot believe this is happening again. A year ago, I was studying your country’s communication, as part of a masters in Geopolitics I had started, and I saw it. Those people were arrested, sent to the Ritz. And for 3 days, you kept quiet. Western media were covered with news that this was a power grab. Only after 3 days, we were told that no, this was not a power grab, this was an anti-corruption thing. Nobody really spoke on behalf of Saudi Arabia, not that I know anyway, I suppose it was just a press release or something. And then, 3 weeks after the arrest, the Crown Prince actually gave an interview to Western media and there he said that this was obviously not a power grab, that this was a anti-corruption thing. It seemed absolutely obvious to him it was not a power grab. I believed him but it almost made me smile because the truth is, three weeks after the facts, it didn’t matter anymore what it was. Three weeks after the facts, people in...