Thanks to Brandon Velarde for pointing this one out:

Despite a few plays for political advantage, here and abroad, the world’s response to the Indian Ocean tsunami has been heartening. With few exceptions, the vast majority of people, countries, and religions are working together to alleviate human suffering. The big exception is radical Islamists, led by Saudi Arabia.

My first reaction, cynically enough, is something along the lines of “but how can this be – George Bush says the Saudis are our friends.” And while that pot shot is fair enough, as would be all kinds of peripheral observations about why we’re hung up in Iraq when the real problem in the region lies just across the country’s southern border, the real issue here needs to be what can we do to wake people the hell up. (Okay, “people” isn’t the right term here. How about “our feckin’ government”?)

The status quo in SA doesn’t strike me as sustainable. As much money as the country has, it’s still blowing through it at a frightening rate thanks to the entitlements doled out to the exploding numbers of Saud “princes.” If you can imagine it, there are some who believe the country might actually bankrupt itself if it doesn’t do something about this policy. Further, it would an exercise in understatement to suggest that the royal family is less popular with the people than it would like to be. Any number of astute observers who know the country believe that the lid will blow off – it’s just a question of when and how bad it will be when it does.

It has also been suggested that a free and open election in SA would result in a landslide victory for one of the country’s most popular figures – Osama bin Laden. I guess the good news about that scenario is that if it happened, we’d finally be able to find him, huh?

So, there’s the Riyadh issue – we can learn much about them from what they have to say about the tsunami victims. Now the Topeka connection. Meet the Westboro Baptist Church:

We sincerely hope and pray that all 20,000 Swedes are dead, their bodies bloated on the ground or in mass graves or floating at sea feeding sharks and fishes or in the bellies of thousands of crocodiles washed ashore by tsunamis.

And that’s hardly even the beginning. I encourage you to read the whole FAQ.

I have said before that our real worst nightmare is this: what happens if the Islamic fundie nutcases and the American neo-con/religious right ever figure out that they’re actually on the same side? A global world war with the US vs. Islam would be horrific, but it would pale to a war pitting the forces of social progress against fundamentalism, wherever it may be found.