SonomaPatientsCoop
01-27-2017, 06:41 PM
With trumps ban on Muslim immigrants today, I was thinking, again, of the Grateful Dead's 1975 "Blues for Allah" album.
Some of you may know, many more probably not, that this album was homage to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who was murdered by his nephew. Faisal was very western leaning, and a big fan of the Grateful Dead…and under his rule Saudi Arabia was quite open and western leaning (they even had disco’s ! )
One can only wonder how different our world would be today if he had survived. I tend to believe his reforms would have reached a critical mass where they could not have been turned back. And these freedoms and refoms may have spread. To think…how different our world could be if the deadhead King had lived…
(I'm not sure how many people know- certainly not many in the Trump/Tea Party camps) how open and western leaning many muslim/arab countries, including Iran, actually are. {the people, not necessarily the governments] )
For the conspiracy minded out there- it appears his nephew visited Washington DC just before returning and killing his uncle. Suggestions he had met with the Nixon administration. There was certainly unease that his very liberal stances could endanger the supply of Saudi oil to the US, instead putting it on the much more global market.
And almost certainly, had he lived, he would not have signed off on the deal that seems to be widely accepted (though I'm not sure proven) that Saud signed off on financially supporting Wahabism (sp?) , radical Islam, in exchange for keeping it and it's violence out of their country.
Some of you may know, many more probably not, that this album was homage to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, who was murdered by his nephew. Faisal was very western leaning, and a big fan of the Grateful Dead…and under his rule Saudi Arabia was quite open and western leaning (they even had disco’s ! )
One can only wonder how different our world would be today if he had survived. I tend to believe his reforms would have reached a critical mass where they could not have been turned back. And these freedoms and refoms may have spread. To think…how different our world could be if the deadhead King had lived…
(I'm not sure how many people know- certainly not many in the Trump/Tea Party camps) how open and western leaning many muslim/arab countries, including Iran, actually are. {the people, not necessarily the governments] )
For the conspiracy minded out there- it appears his nephew visited Washington DC just before returning and killing his uncle. Suggestions he had met with the Nixon administration. There was certainly unease that his very liberal stances could endanger the supply of Saudi oil to the US, instead putting it on the much more global market.
And almost certainly, had he lived, he would not have signed off on the deal that seems to be widely accepted (though I'm not sure proven) that Saud signed off on financially supporting Wahabism (sp?) , radical Islam, in exchange for keeping it and it's violence out of their country.