Jefferson turning over in his grave

All that foreign oil controlling American soil,
Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed
Sheiks walkin' around like kings, wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and Paris
--- Bob Dylan, "Slow Train Coming"

Ms. L, the new co-worker I wrote about earlier, turns out to be a Tamil-speaking Christian Indian who grew up in a certain city in Saudi Arabia (her father worked for the Arab American Oil Company).

She told me stories of being watched by the mutawa (religious police), being denied entrance to the American hospital if authorities suspected her family was actually going to the chapel, of their Bible being confiscated and thrown away.

It's no secret that Saudi Arabia is one of the most rigid religious tyrannies. (See here and here for just the tip of the iceberg.)

Yet this is the country America seems eager to be in bed with and to protect. American oil money has made this oppresive theocracy so wealthy that, in the words of my co-worker, "the air around the gold district literally glows yellow."

And let's not even get into the whole 9/11-Saudi link and the coverup there...