Today we are pleased to offer for your consideration our conversation with Samar Fatany a radio broadcaster from Jeddah and author or “Modernizing Saudi Arabia” about the legacy of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud.
“Saudis across the Kingdom celebrated the 83rd National Day on Monday with pomp and pageantry as they remembered the remarkable endeavors made by King Abdul Aziz and his soldiers to unify the Kingdom.”
Today we present for your consideration a video documentary of a key event in the history of Saudi-US relations when King Saud traveled to the United States in 1957 to visit the United Nations and meet President Eisenhower and American officials.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has traveled down a long road to modernity in a very short period of time and Prince Turki Al-Faisal introduced the participants at the Arab-US Policymakers Conference to a concise history of the journey. In his keynote remarks at the 21st AUSPC in Washington last week, Prince Turki, former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, further addressed the challenges facing the Kingdom and the problem of “how to reconcile the seemingly contradictory forces for reform and development with the traditional status quo beneficiaries seeing all innovation as a threat to identity and well-being.” He reviewed domestic issues that have faced Saudi rulers and discussed the economic, social and political reform program that emerged in 1992 as well as the necessity for modernization to account for the defense of a state from outside security threats. Prince Turki concluded his remarks by tackling the question of how well has Saudi Arabia done for its people?
Dhahran International Airport, Pan American Airways and Trans World Airlines had a share of the biggest impact and influence on the history of civil aviation in Saudi Arabia and the world. The three wrote the most beautiful history books about civil aviation. But, sadly, the three ended up in the history books and archives of civil aviation.
Saudi Arabia consists of 13 provinces of which the Eastern Province is the largest in terms of area, with a population of about four million. It covers an area of about 260,000 square miles and is almost as large as the US state of Texas. The capital of the province is Dammam, where the office of governor Prince Mohammad bin Fahd is situated. The young prince was educated in the West and graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he majored in economics and political science.
