King By Conquest

Despite a gradual release Nestor Sander’s Ibn Saud: King by Conquest is gaining an unexpected momentum with sales doubling every month. As one reader wrote, “It is amazing to read how a penniless prince with a vision and an inexhaustible courage reclaimed his father’s kingdom in a distant time and went on to change the world.”

The book is available exclusively at www.KingByConquest.comand Amazon.

I spent the first 30 years of my life in the kingdom and yes I do expect much more from the government of a people who are so smart, hard-working, deadly funny and absolutely devoted to their children and their education. It’s the 21st century and today’s elite Saudi teenagers will one day lead the Arab world, but they won’t do it because they watched a 1000 music videos or 1000 soccer games, they will do it because they studied hard in their chosen discipline, were able to read widely and decide for themselves the facts of their own history, not what was dictated to them by the wrong person.

Ministry Should Concentrate on Culture, Not Banning Books

Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed, comments@d-corner.com

Along with the new name, the indomitable Ministry of Information, MOI, has now a new minister.
Personally, I have decided not to use the new title, which includes the sonorous term ‘Culture,’
until the ministry actually produces something that merits such
high-flying terminology.

The new minister, Iyad Madani, is a journalist, an ex-editor in chief, and an accomplished writer. He was also the Minister of Haj before this current appointment. His credentials are impressive.

What is needed at this time, however, is neither qualification sensitive nor complex enough to warrant the input of committees and over-paid consultants. We basically need some common sense.

To make things easier, we need to think of the final objective of this exercise. This is easy enough: The ministry should shed its perceived and actual role as censor at large, and it should concentrate on culture and art.

There are three tasks that require the new minister’s attention. First, a matter much like a French farce. Say I am a publisher and I want to bring in some copies of a new book to the ministry itself for approval. There is no mechanism to do that. In other words, the book will not be allowed in since all books are treated with suspicion. The books will be taken at the airport and sent to the ministry to be allowed for my personal use but not to be officially imported. The only way to get the new books to the ministry is to smuggle them in. Books have to be smuggled in so one can take them to the ministry. If that is not a farce, I don’t know what is.

Second, there are books approved to be sold in the Kingdom in English but banned in Arabic. I will give an example. “Out in The Blue,” published by Selwa Press, was released in the Kingdom and became the bestselling English book in this country. When the publisher presented the translated version, both copies were banned and withdrawn from circulation. This is a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie yet we only ask for this charade to stop. It is embarrassing.

Third: MOI officials at entry points behave in a very odd way and have an attitude that is beyond reason. Printed matter to them is like poison that has to be confiscated to protect the demented carrier from harming him or herself. In the age of Internet and uncontrollable television, this is redundant if not outright mad.

They will take anything and everything according to their mood and whim and declare it a possibly banned book. It will have to be sent to you know where to be checked.

The MOI itself does not have a list to tell us what is banned and what is not. Instead of employing people going through passengers’ knickers, why don’t they employ them to read all that is published? This is a better pastime and a healthier approach. The list should be published once a month.

It might also be of use to tell them that not every book that has the name Sharon on its cover is written by Ariel Sharon. While at it, the name is used as a first name by women and not men.

We don’t want to cloud the minister’s head with all that can be done to his ministry to make it user friendly. We must keep in mind, however, that the ultimate solution lies in the steps taken in other Arab countries: Shut it down.

Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East was named Biography of the Year by the Benjamin Franklin Awards 2009, only to be banned in Saudi Arabia. Selwa Press publisher Tim Barger shares his comments on book banning in the kingdom.

Biography of the Year
Benjamin Franklin Awards 2009

Thomas Lippman’s Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East was awarded the 2009 Benjamin Franklin Award for biography of the year by the Independent Book Publishers Association.

Presented annually, the award represents the best work of the association’s more than 3500 members. Karla Olson of Book Studio accepted on behalf of Selwa Press at the awards ceremony May 28th, 2009 in New York.

Arabian Knight, the story of Colonel Bill Eddy USMC, often called America’s Lawrence of Arabia, has been championed by many readers, but few as eloquent as retired General Anthony C. Zinni USMC who wrote,

“This exceptional biography is a must-read for those who want to understand the roots of our relations in this troubled part of the world and the effect
one remarkable individual had in building them.”

In a related development Selwa Press announced that Arabian Knight has been officially banned by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Information.

Interviewed today at Selwa’s offices in Vista, California, publisher Tim Barger noted that this wasn’t his first book to be banned in the kingdom. “August 17th 2004, the day after my daughter Khamisah’s wedding, I received an email that Out in the Blue had been banned in Arabia - after three years of robust sales. I was disturbed but chose not to publicize the ban. The Saudis have enough detractors without my encouraging them.”

Asked to comment on the banning of Arabian Knight Mr. Barger said, “In these days of global satellite TV and the internet, it is almost quaint to think that banning a book could accomplish anything - except embarrassment for the banning authority, be it a school board in Kansas, a commission in Brussels or a ministry in Arabia.

“More than a million Saudis read English; proportionately it would be as if tens of millions of ordinary Americans could read Arabic. To deny these Saudis the opportunity to read in English about the history of their country might be considered a free speech issue, I see it as a restraint-of-trade issue, the trade in ideas, something more valuable than money.

“The foundation of any society is an informed citizen. To discourage the serious reading of history in a country awash in Egyptian soap operas, Bollywood and Hollywood DVDs, slick personality magazines, and disposable popular music is just plain self-destructive.”

Barger said that he wouldn’t submit his latest release, Nestor Sander’s Ibn Saud: King by Conquest, to the ministry for its approval because, “I know that it’s too factual to meet their standards. Instead we’re offering the book exclusively at www.KingByConquest.com and Amazon.” He also noted that the entire Selwa Press catalog will soon be available as Ebooks.

Mr. Barger concluded his remarks by thanking the IBPA for the Benjamin Franklin Award and saying, as Ben might have put it, “Many people will tell you what you want to hear, only your true friends will tell you what you need to know.”

8 June 2009
Author: Carolyn Fox
www.AramcoExpats.com

Arabian Knight
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Selwa Press (September 1, 2008)
ISBN-13: 978-0970115720

Tim Barger was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and spent most of his first 30 years in the kingdom. Selwa Press hosts websites at www.outintheblue.com and www.SelwaPress.com and a You Tube channel at SelwaVideo.

Selwa Press debuted in 2000 with Out in the Blue: Letters from Arabia 1937-1940, a best-selling, true story of romance and adventure in the deserts of early Arabia. In 2005 Selwa published The Unfurling by the poet Nimah Nawwab, the first Saudi poet to ever be published in the United States. In 2007, for the first time in America, the company published the lost desert classic, Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil by Wallace Stegner, introducing thousands of Americans to a way of life rooted in the days of Abraham and biblical nomads.

Eddy - 1958

Author and journalist Don DeNevi writes in the Quantico Sentry

“By the time the reader has turned a dozen pages of ‘Arabian Knight — Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power In the Middle East’, he or she will realize what an unsung Marine hero Eddy was.”

DeNevi adroitly sketches the highlights of Eddy’s life and precisely places them in the context of the times - be it Belleau Wood or Vichy Casablanca. He concludes …

‘‘Arabian Knight” is a priceless gem among recent military biographies. Small and easily read because Lippman’s prose is at once taut and graceful, the book should be read for its mixture of 20th century history and current Middle Eastern insights by all professionally minded Marines, regardless of rank.

Buy Now

Now available, the long-awaited biography of an extraordinary, but unheralded, Marine officer by one of the nation’s leading experts on the Middle East.

As George Crile used Charlie Wilson to examine CIA involvement in Afghanistan, Tom Lippman has used the astonishing life of Bill Eddy to trace the rise of American involvement in the region - from a handshake between FDR and Ibn Saud on the deck of an American cruiser in 1945 to the first Marine landing in Lebanon in 1958, where as one observer noted, “Pepsi and 7-Up umbrellas on the beaches sheltered vendors who prayed that fresh waves of Marines would land.”

Fascinating in its detail and sweeping in its scope, Arabian Knight is the rare book that fuses biography and political history into a compelling, enlightening read. It is the story of a warrior, a scholar, a spymaster and a diplomat. It is the story of Colonel Bill Eddy, a Marine for all seasons.

To learn more about Arabian Knight, please visit AramcoExpats.com

Bechtel hired Wallie Ballor in 1944 to install a high voltage line from Dhahran to Ras Tanura as part of the construction of the refinery at Ras Tanura. With two crews of installers - one Italian and the other Saudi, he installed power poles between the towns and wired them up. It was a thankless task, digging deep post holes in the sand and sabkha every 50 yards or so, and raising the 40 foot poles in the heat and humidity and in spite of shammals (sandstorms). After he was done he helped wire up the refinery itself, no small task in itself.

His photographs are a rare look at a contractor’s life in the great postwar expansion of Aramco and a reminder that it was the efforts of countless people from all walks of life that built the company that endures to this day.

Some of his photos can be seen at the Wallie Ballor Gallery

Vicci at Shaybah in 2003 flanked by Stephen Sapienza of Azimuth Films

After World War II in Aramco there was born an informal newsletter that informed the employees about events and activities, by the early fifties this newsletter became The Sun & Flare, a weekly English newspaper that carried the latest news and announcements of community interest. It had stories about Aramco’s various milestones - production figures, new installations of GOSPs and other projects, employee news - retirements and service pin ceremonies, but more importantly coverage of employee leisure activities of all sorts. Announcements of art shows, garden club meetings, school plays, ladies club get togethers and extensive coverage of the many sporting events with regular columns for the bowlers, golfers, tennis players. School graduations, returning student basketball tournaments, wedding announcements and travel articles all shared space with the movie schedules for each district and later the TV schedule for Aramco television. In short the Sun & Flare was the small town newspaper for the thousands of English speaking expatriates of Aramco, primarily Americans.

In the mid 70s flares were out and the paper’s name was changed to The Arabian Sun and the paper’s focus widened to include all employees - expatriates from many different countries as well as Saudi nationals, and the small town flavor of the Sun & Flare was much diluted. In 2002 Vicci Thompson revived the essence of the Sun & Flare for the internet age when she established AramcoExpats.com and for six years it has been the source of community news and events for a new generation of expatriates both active and retired. Single-handedly Vicci has worked tirelessly to provide current news and announcements of interest to Aramcons of all ages and nationalities and in the process has rendered a singular service to us all - an international community newspaper.