--- Two years ago, for my birthday, the husband bought me this nifty little TV
for the kitchen. We have it hooked up to the DirecTV receiver in the
living room, so whatever we're watching on the main TV, we also watch
in the kitchen. It's not only great to be able to watch CNN whilst
cooking supper, but it's pretty damn sweet that I don't have to pay for
a third receiver as well because the husband wired it creatively (we'll
conveniently skip over the fact he stuck his foot through the ceiling
when he was wiring it). So, after dinner the other night, I was mildly
absorbed in trying to get an overload of pots and pans to fit into the
dishwasher and the TV was on, of course. Anderson Cooper had gone to
commercials. I wasn't really
paying attention, but then something made my head pop up: a male
announcer with a cheesy game show host voice uttered the words: "...Headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia..."
WTF? Who the hell in Saudi Arabia would be silly enough to advertise on
CNN? I wondered. Are the Saudis doing another one of their famous PR
campaigns? I watched and then picked up a pen and wrote down Kingdom Holding Company
when the name of the company flashed up on the screen and went back to
cleaning up, but my interest had been piqued.
Later on, I went and googled "Kingdom Holding Company," and was fairly
surprised to find there wasn't a website for it. This was really odd to
me. Everyone
and their brother has a website. It seems de rigeur to list your
website in any sort of advertising these days. Hmmph. So, with my
failure in mind, I set the husband on the project---he's a much better
surfer than I am. He finds all sorts of junk. This is what he came up
with, and I quote: Top story in basic search
"The objective of the Arab Decision site is
to make available to citizens and general public useful information on
the Institutions of the Arab World.The documentation was gathered with
the best efforts of researchers and scholars, in neutral and scientific
spirit. We welcome all clarifications, corrections and improvements for
best services." The WHOIS results for www.kingdom.net - reported as the
website (under construction) by ArabDecision.org. This was interesting,
I had to go to a deeper Whois search than the one provided by the main
companies like whois.com (you don't want to know), {because} they
turned up no results. Domain name: KINGDOM.NET Administrative Contact:
Amjad, Shaheen ams@kingdom.net Takhassusi Street Riyadh, 11321 SA
9661-442-0101 Fax: 9661-4811954 Technical Contact: Jisri, Mahmoud
noc@naseej.com.sa Sitteen St. P.O Box 20129 304 Riyadh, Riyadh 11455 SA
966114770477 Fax: 966114783512 Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record
last updated on 29-Sep-2003. Record expires on 01-Oct-2004. Record
created on 02-Oct-1995. Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.AWALNET.NET.SA NS2.AWALNET.NET.SA twocows, Inc. Now THAT's
strange... More available about the owner than the company... The "Owner"
Kingdom Centre
Working with Mr. Gates
News links on His Royal Highness
From the Arab Banker's Association of North America
His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin AbdulAziz Alsaud. We all remember this guy, right?
Now he's advertising on CNN. Attempting to garner US interest in his company.
Why? Because the Saudi infrastructure sucks and he wants us to help him
fix it via investment in his company. Pardon me, dear Prince, but don't
you have plenty of your own money to blow on fixing your backasswards
country? Forbes just listed you at being worth $21 billion---and that's
with a big Carl Sagan 'B.' If you're so big on looking at the root
causes of problem, particularly in relation to 9/11, then perhaps
you'll realize that it would be a bad
idea for any US investor to come in and spend moolah in Saudi right
now. After all, what's in it for us? A Democratic Saudi Arabia? Please.
But I will wish you a fond Inshallah in your efforts---with all of the underlying meanings that one word entails.