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Tuesday, February 2

Update to "Waiting on the dawn: The Tale of Sathya Sai Baba and the Stupid Villager"

This is for readers who saw the post yesterday. A few minutes ago I made changes to the post; first I supplied the name of the Shiite cleric executed by the Saudi government, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and the name of the archduke whose assassination touched off events that led to World War One. I also changed "ashram" to "palace" in the Sai Baba tale I told. Then I tried to preempt complaints from any Sai Baba devotees who would chance across the post and elaborated on my point in telling the tale, as follows:   

For Sathya Sai Baba devotees who are insulted by my likening his powers to those of a jinn and referring to his ashram as a palace -- I'm imagining myself talking to a Saudi child of Persian heritage or who is Iranian and looks five years old to me. A child who is much too young to be caught up in the angst of adults who are not showing common sense. 

There is a time and a place to stage mass public protests, but this would not be when a very powerful regime is but a few incidents from outright panic. From that view it's the point of the tale of Sai Baba and a stupid villager that matters to me and I would hope the child -- the point being that the villager was not quite so stupid as to spurn common sense when it was offered to him. 

Keep in mind that this is what the Shiite protests in Qatif looked like to the kingdom's rulers:



Remind you of anything? At the start of the Tahrir Square protests in Cairo the Saudis couldn't have dreamed that they would result in Hosni Mubarak being booted from power.  Now they look at such protests and see anything as possible. They fear the Obama administration would lend support to the Shiite protests in Saudi Arabia and even to revolution. Not very likely I'd say, but frightened people don't coolly calculate odds. 

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If I'd seen this report, published today at RT, before I made the updates I might have added that the Saudi regime was in bigger trouble than most people realized at the time of the Qatif protests. But I think I made my point without further updates.

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