Category Archives: Saudi Arabia

Arabian Peninsula, Corruption, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Prince Downsizes: Sells A380 Flying Combo Mosque-Night Club-Ali Baba Cave………

         

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“Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, ranked #29 on the list of global billionaires by Forbes magazine, has sold off his ‘off-plan’ Airbus A380, according to media reports. Prince Alwaleed, whose net worth in March 2012 was estimated at $18 billion by Forbes magazine, ordered the A380 way back in 2007, and had ordered multi-million-dollar customisations to it, which made the media dub his aircraft as ‘the flying palace’. According to unconfirmed reports, among the customisations that Saudi Arabia’s richest businessman had ordered included a parking spot for his Rolls-Royce, five suites with king-sized beds and en-suite bathrooms with showers, first-class ‘sleepers’ for an additional 20 guests, a steam room for spa treatments and a marble-finished Turkish bath, a boardroom with holographic displays, a prayer area in which computer-generated mats move to point towards Mecca……………..”

That is a cute touch, the part about pointing toward Mecca. He ought to sail through the pearly gates, or our Muslim equivalent.
It is amusing how Forbes Magazine every year lists Al-Waleed (Male Born Baby) among the “top’ wealthy people in the world, without mentioning other princes and potentates who are even more powerful and more wealthy, as I have pointed out here and in others posts some of which are listed below. It must have to do with the fact that he is accessible to Western media, while the rest of the princes, the richer ones, hide away like bats in the dark.
It is even more amusing how Forbes every year notes that the source of the prince’s wealth is “self-made”. As I opined before: it must be all those teenage years he spent flipping burgers in Riyadh.
 
The Saudi Uprisings: Shi’a Opposition, Wahhabi Opposition, Lost Liberals

Gangs of Arabia: Oil Fiefdoms and Turf Wars, Ivanhoe and Isaac of Qatif

Saudi Legs and Bellies: Roots of Instability, the Coming Age of Warlord Princes

The Coming Brawl for Saudi Succession: a Kingdom of Principalities

Saudi Arabia: the Most Ignored Arab Uprising

Lion of Sunnis, King of Falafel, Pious Prince of Baba Ghannouj

Who is Running Saudi Arabia: Retainers or a Cabal of Desperate Housewives?

Saudi Mufti Diagnoses Arab Uprisings: Sectarian Fitna, Sinful Anarchy, Ali and the Umayyads

PR Nation: Saudi King Appoints Women to Advisory Council

Holy Greed: Paris Hilton Does Mecca, Takes Over Prophet Mohammed’s Childhood Home

A Saudi Timeline for Arab Spring: Omitting Bahrain and Qatif and Hijaz and Nejd

Impact of Lower Oil Prices on Gulf Potentates, Gross Princely Product

Gulf Poverty: Ali Baba and the Potentates, Shameless Hungry Saudi Kingdom of Arabia

The Mufti as Theoretician of Arab Uprisings and Activist of Private Lives

A Saudi Al-Basoos War on Twitter, Mujtahidd and the Royal Court

Saudi Activist Goes Mad, Claims All Princes Want Democracy, Wants Future King Tried

Battle of Saudi Succession Heats Up, Rectal Prince Promoted

Cheers
mhg

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Arab Politics, Lebanon, Nobel Prize, Saudi Arabia

Nobel Prize and Democracy: a Saudi King, a Gulf Banana, and a Good Lebanese Singer………..

         

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“Many Saudis have started to cast votes on a website to nominate King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Website www.votefornobelprize.com has asked people from the Middle East and Africa (MEA) to nominate the person whom they think most deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, with King Abdullah currently receiving more than 100,000 votes, which is more than any other candidate. Five nominees have been chosen from different MEA countries: King Abdullah, Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Misned, Chairman of Qatar’s Board of Education, Science and Community Development and the wife of the Emir of Qatar; Dr. Albert Dagher, Professor of Economics at Lebanese University; Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of Qatar, and Majeda Al-Roumi, well-known Lebanese singer who has recorded many popular songs on the theme of peace. Many Saudis and non-Saudis have sent e-mails to their friends asking them to vote for King Abdullah, and a number of Internet forums have posted links and have invited people to vote for him…………….”

So most Saudis split their votes for the Nobel Prize between King Abdullah, a Lebanese singer, and the wife of the Emir of Qatar. Clearly they go for ‘looks’, or maybe entertainment, rather than knowledge and wisdom.
Based on this I now believe that the Saudi people are absolutely not ready for democracy and probably will not be for another generation. Speaking of Shaikha Mozah: I believe this is the first and only time a banana, even a ripe one, was nominated for a Nobel Prize. If I had to choose among those three, I’d choose Majda Al Roumi: she has a great voice and is highly entertaining, besides looking good (which is why all these Saudi men voted for her rather than their king). Besides, Lebanon has not had a Nobel Prize winner yet and is unlikely to have one anytime soon (especially now that Hariri has emigrated to Riyadh, the Bulgarians are helping the Israelis deny Nasrallah the prize, and Jumblatt seems still stoned out of his head).
I would have thought most Saudis would vote for the chubby shaikh (now self-appointed king) of Bahrain or maybe his ancient but nastier uncle Khalifa Bin Technocrat Al StickyFingers. But that is okay, some Europeans are nominating the next best thing in Bahrain: the Al-Khawaja family. (No, those Euros I mentioned are not David Cameron or William J Hague bin Yoda). As for the king of Arabia, nothing personal but I wouldn’t nominate him for a dogcatcher in Najran.
Cheers
mhg

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Nobel Prize, Saudi Arabia

King Faisal the True Winner of Nobel and Conqueror of Communism, Himmler…………

         

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“From the 1950s to the fall of communism, Saudi Arabia was the steel wall against the spread of communism. In later months in 1975, I have read many books about the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and the mechanism of the nomination for the prize. And it has been mentioned many times that King Faisal was able to stop the spread of communism in the Middle East without the use of force. He used his influence and charisma to achieve this. King Faisal was the first political figure who predicted the fall of communism at the peak of the Cold War. And in September 1975, I sent a registered letter to the Nobel Prize Committee. I sent it from a post office located on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, New York. In the letter, I was asking if there were any other candidates for the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize besides Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho and I asked why the 1972 Nobel Peace Prize was blocked and was not awarded to any person or organization. I got no answer and I wasn’t expecting to be answered.
In 1976, one year after the death of King Faisal, a foundation was established in Saudi Arabia and was named King Faisal International Prize……………… And to this day, I always ask myself: Why the blocked 1972 Nobel Peace Prize wasn’t awarded to King Faisal for his efforts to stop the spread of communism……………”

I would have liked to say that the Nobel Committee was antisemitic, that is why King Faisal was passed over, but that can’t be it.
Can you believe this F—Kopf writing in the Saudi daily Arab News? And here Americans have the misconception that they are responsible for the defeat of communism. Republicans think Reagan did it single-handed, while John McCain believes his years at the Hanoi Hilton contributed. Not some too bit absolute monarch.
I would think the late king should get the Nobel Prize for opposing the emancipation of slaves in his country in the 1960s, or was it for supporting it?  Which reminds me, I have never seen the late king smile. They even have photos of Hitler smiling (although not Himmler). I am sure he had a sense of humor, the king not Himmler, but probably well-hidden. After all, he had to have some sense of humor: he was not even from Jordan or anything like that. Obviously the vengeful nephew who shot him had no sense of humor either. I suspect that maybe it runs in the family, at least among those who are sober.
Cheers
mhg

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Al-Qaeda, Cinema, Iraq, Saudi Arabia

Zero Dark Baghdad? Saudi Detainees in Iraqi Guantanamo………….

         

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“Twenty Saudi detainees in Iraqi prisons were tortured after the Iraqi national team lost the Gulf Cup football tournament to the UAE in a match supervised by a Saudi referee, according to Thamer Balheed, head of the Saudi detainees in Iraq. Balheed told Al Arabiya TV that the Saudi prisoners were severely beaten and insulted by Iraqi prison guards who blamed the Saudi referee for their national team’s 1-2 defeat to the UAE. A sport commentator on an Iraqi television network lost his temper during the match, issuing live prayers against Saudi referee Khalil al-Ghamdi and accusing him of being unfair to Iraq. Iraq and Saudi Arabia have recently resumed security cooperation talks, including discussion on a prisoners exchange deal. This came after a Saudi man was released from an Iraqi jail and said he was tortured by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Balheed has previously stated that up to 60 Saudi detainees are being held in Iraqi prisons. He noted that they are being kept in different prisons and are all staying in deplorable conditions and exposed to various forms of torture…………….”


This would be a terrible story, if it were (completely) true. Yet it is hard to credit a story of Iraqis torturing Saudi prisoners because they lost a game to Emiratis. Especially if the source is the Saudi semi-official Alarabiya network. I am against both torture and the death penalty: they are both barbaric no matter who inflicts it and who is at the receiving end.

I doubt that any of these Saudis entered Iraq to visit the shrines in Karbala. The Iraqis suspect that most of them snuck (okay, sneaked) in illegally to bomb and murder Iraqi civilians. As they and their other Al-Qaeda colleagues from various Arab states have been doing in Iraq for 12 years. I also suspect that the headlining is partly aimed at creating more hostility toward Iraqi Arabs inside the Arabian Peninsula. However, I can be wrong: torture has been common in Iraq for decades, its art perfected by the Baath Party. So have executions, and the new regime in Baghdad is an avid executioner: as avid as Iran and Saudi Arabia and Texas. It is hard to give up old habits.

Of course, the Saudis automatically quickly behead any foreigner they suspect of plotting terrorism on their soil. I can give a long list of that. I can also give a long list of those beheaded on charges of witchcraft and sorcery and magic and fortune-telling and interpreting dreams (both dry and wet), among other things. And the regime, and the system, are have been at it longer.

On the other hand I saw the film Thirty Dark Zero yesterday. It is about the CIA allegedly torturing its way throughout several little Guantanomos around the world. Torturing its way toward Osama Bin Laden and his merry little band of terrorists (and a bunch of their poor innocent children) in AbbottAndCostelloAbad, Pakistan. 
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Islam and Elections, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi

Wahhabi Distortion of Islam: Banning Elections, Idolizing Kings and Princes………

         

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“She said: Kings, when they enter a land, they ruin it, and make its noble people its meanest, thus do they behave…….” Holy Quran (Saurat al-Naml: The Ants)
(Some might say I am taking it out of context. They’re probably wrong)

“Election is banned in Islam: Saudi scholar. A well-known Saudi Islamic scholar has issued a new fatwa (edict) saying holding elections for a president or another form of leadership is prohibited in Islam. Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Nassir Al Barrak, reputed for his radical views, described western-style elections as an alien phenomenon to Islamic countries.“Electing a president or another form of leadership or council members is prohibited in Islam as it has been introduced by the enemies of Moslems,” he wrote on his Twitter page, according to Saudi newspapers. “Selecting an Imam (leader) must be up to the decision-making people not the public…election is a corrupt system which is not based on any legal or logical concept for those who enforce this system by some Moslems…this system has been brought by the anti-Islam parties who have occupied Moslem land.”………..”

This Wahhabi shaikh played music to the ears of the absolute princes: “Selecting a leader must be up to the decision-making people not the public”


This “scholar” will probably get his rewards in this world. It must be clear by now that many if not most of these Saudi clerics and muftis are basically mercenaries (or outlying extremists, or both) . The chief Mufti Shaikh Al Shaikh repeatedly calls protesters and dissidents infiltrators who seek to create “fitna” (except in Syria and Libya for some odd reason). Most of the rest of the Saudi clerics, those who are not in prison or in exile, usually fall in line.
Of course they are distorting history and Islam, these Wahhabi shaikhs of the palace. It is they who are un-Islamic, since Islam was, is, against absolute hereditary monarchy. Islamic leaders, in the early decades when true Islam ruled, where chosen by the Muslims. (They probably also did some politicking). That was how the first four caliphs came to be leaders: from Abu Bakr to Omar and Othman and Ali. Later, the Umayyads in Damascus started the first hereditary dynastic monarchy in Islam. That started a trend that continued until the Mongols sacked Baghdad.
Cheers
mhg

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Cheers
mhg

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia

The Vanishing Fear: Kings of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia get New Free Prizes………………

         

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“All these milder monarchies now risk slipping into the habits of the Gulf’s worst human-rights offenders, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The 2011 crackdown by Bahrain’s rulers left nearly 100 dead and the island kingdom dangerously split between a Shia majority and loyalist Sunnis. Hopes of respite rose when the government accepted the recommendations of an international panel for reform. It has implemented almost none of them, however, and Bahraini courts have continued to dispense cruel justice. This month the highest appeal court upheld life sentences for seven men accused of calling for anti-government demonstrations. Saudi Arabia, however, remains in a league of its own, ranked by Freedom House, along with North Korea and Equatorial Guinea, as one of the world’s least free nations. Its small, harassed band of rights campaigners celebrates such small advances as the induction of women into the shura council. But they face a double challenge—not only from the state but from a religious right that habitually brands democracy supporters as apostates from Islam. ………………..”

Also sprach The Economist, turning its attention back to the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian-American Gulf. In several of the Gulf states, the idea of “reform” is just not tenable under some of the current ruling clans. I can name at least two of them. Can you imagine several thousand Al Saud princes giving up their life-and-death-and-loot grip on the vast country? Can you imagine the leech-like Al Khalifa clan voluntarily releasing their blood-sucking grip over the islands of Bahrain?
Okay, the Al-Saud start to make the right noises about women’s rights and the West goes ape in excitement, thinking their ‘values’ are taking hold. The Al Khalifa allow booze and prostitution in their hotels, and some in the West, mostly European expatriates whose fortunes are tied to the rulers, call that enlightenment. Assigning a few token women to a toothless appointed body in Riyadh that prolongs the repression of the absolute monarchy is called reform. Allowing booze and sinning in Manama hotels (mostly for the benefit of thirsty and hungry Saudi faithful) is supposed to imply that the ruling gang is reform-minded. Some may even call it humanitarian.
Reform? My well-educated guess is that probably very likely possibly almost certainly it is absofuckinglutely too late for mere “reform” in those two oligarchies. It will go on until it is resolved. The fear is gone or it is on its way out.
Cheers
mhg

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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

Saudi Arabia: a Popular Revolution or a Potential Palace Revolt by Princes…………..

         

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“You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out
Don’t you know it’s gonna be all right………..

You say you’ll change the constitution……….”
                                  
Revolution (The Beatles)

“Unfortunately, notwithstanding the stakes, the United States has no serious option for heading off a revolution in the Kingdom if it is coming. Since American interests are so intimately tied to the House of Saud, the U.S. does not have the choice of distancing the United States from it in an effort to get on the right side of history. Nevertheless, you should try to reestablish trust with the King and urge him to move more rapidly on his political reform agenda, while recognizing that this effort is likely to have limited results………. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a proven survivor. Two earlier Saudi kingdoms were defeated by the Ottoman Empire and eradicated. But the House of Saud came back. They survived a wave of revolutions against Arab monarchies in the 1950s and 1960s. A jihadist coup attempt in 1979 seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca but was crushed. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda staged a four-year-long insurrection to topple the royal family and failed less than a decade ago. Nevertheless, al Qaeda cadres remain in the Kingdom and next door in Yemen…………. Much more disturbing to the royals would be protests in Sunni parts of the Kingdom. These might start in the so-called Koran belt north of the capital where dissent is endemic or in the neglected Asir province on the Yemeni border. Once they start they could snowball and reach the major cities of the Hejaz………………”

Reform will not do it in the Arabian Peninsula. There is no such thing as a “political” reform in an absolute tribal monarchy that is also a theocracy. Nor can meaningful “reform” happen. When you have thousands of princes living in a certain style by effectively looting the wealth of the country, it is nearly impossible to get them to give it up for “reform”.
Saudi Arabia has the biggest and most generous entitlement program in the world, but it is welfare for the Al Saud princes and their retainers. (I must add that it is not for all princes, just for a few thousand of them, the ones that matter. I was told by a source that there are some ‘distant’ princes who are “middle class”). No serious attempt at reform and accountability is possible under the Al Saud system. For the princes, accountability and freedom of speech would kill the Golden Goose. Any monarch or potentate that tries serious reform will face a ‘palace revolution of princes’. Can you ask the Forty Thieves to give up the cave and its treasures to Ali Baba? Besides, they are not only “forty” thieves, they are thousands of thieves and hence it is impossible to get a consensus.
There can and will be some cosmetic reforms. Women will be, they are, used as a substitute for real change. Women appointed to the appointed Shoura Council. Women allowed to drive within certain areas. Limits will be put on a girl’s marriage age (I am guessing 12 or 13 will be the best limit they can do, for historical reasons). These will be cheered in the West as “reforms” while the princes monopolize the politics, such as they are, and continue to rob the resources (oil and land) of the people.
I have opined (succinctly and insightfully, I might add) in the recent past on the prospects for a Saudi “revolution”. Some of my more recent posts on this topic are linked here, both for my archival purposes and for your dubious reading pleasure:

The Saudi Uprisings: Shi’a Opposition, Wahhabi Opposition, Lost Liberals

Gangs of Arabia: Oil Fiefdoms and Turf Wars, Ivanhoe and Isaac of Qatif

Saudi Legs and Bellies: Roots of Instability, the Coming Age of Warlord Princes

The Coming Brawl for Saudi Succession: a Kingdom of Principalities

Saudi Arabia: the Most Ignored Arab Uprising

Lion of Sunnis, King of Falafel, Pious Prince of Baba Ghannouj

Who is Running Saudi Arabia: Retainers or a Cabal of Desperate Housewives?

Saudi Mufti Diagnoses Arab Uprisings: Sectarian Fitna, Sinful Anarchy, Ali and the Umayyads

PR Nation: Saudi King Appoints Women to Advisory Council

Holy Greed: Paris Hilton Does Mecca, Takes Over Prophet Mohammed’s Childhood Home

A Saudi Timeline for Arab Spring: Omitting Bahrain and Qatif and Hijaz and Nejd

Impact of Lower Oil Prices on Gulf Potentates, Gross Princely Product

Gulf Poverty: Ali Baba and the Potentates, Shameless Hungry Saudi Kingdom of Arabia

The Mufti as Theoretician of Arab Uprisings and Activist of Private Lives

A Saudi Al-Basoos War on Twitter, Mujtahidd and the Royal Court

Saudi Activist Goes Mad, Claims All Princes Want Democracy, Wants Future King Tried

Battle of Saudi Succession Heats Up, Rectal Prince Promoted

Cheers
mhg

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Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, Wahhabi

Genocidal Salafi Militants of Pakistan: Spawned by Wahhabi Petro-Money and Madrassas……………..

         

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“The attack on the Hazara Shia community hall in Quetta has finally shocked the Pakistani state into taking action against the slaughter of that community in Balochistan. Haji Abdul Qayyum Changezi, a senior community leader, described it best on Sunday. “Our people are being massacred — 1,100 have been murdered in the last five years,” he said while speaking in a televised meeting with Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf. “That’s out of a total population of 500,000 — a rate unprecedented anywhere in Pakistan.” While women and children have been killed, the high risk age group remains young males. Increasingly, the Hazara youth prefer to choose the life of the illegal immigrant. Certain death awaits them at home. All Hazaras fear that they could be the next target of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. For Pakistan’s deadliest militant group’s Baloch incarnation — they are the ideal target on both ethnic and religious basis…………The LeJ’s story is well-known — created in form of the Sipah-e-Sahaba in the mid eighties by militants and extremist demagogues by harnessing rising anti-Shia feeling in the Punjab. While the province has remained home base, the LeJ has slowly but surely spread its tentacles across the country. Its sectarian poison also found a fertile ground in the soil that was prepared post 9/11.…………”

Pakistan’s sectarian war of genocide preceded September 11 and its aftermath. Its seeds were planted in the 1970s, when Wahhabi petro-money started flowing into impoverished Pakistan, mainly from Saudi Arabia. With the money came clerics, shaikhs committed to spreading the intolerant Wahhabi doctrine of hating and excommunicating “others”. The new madrassas did their assigned job over the past decades.
By the 1980s the Wahhabi inroad has deepened. Pakistan started seeing sectarian hatred in the open, and soon after sectarian killings spread, aimed at Shi’as. There are other minority faiths and sects in Pakistan that were also demonized by the Wahhbai ‘teachers’ and their disciples, but most of them are Shi’as (about one quarter of the population of Pakistan are Shi’as). And it is not confined to Baluchistan and not just against the Hazaras: it is widespread and suicide terror bombs often hit Shi’a mosques or funerals in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. There are occasional retaliations, but the terror and murder traffic is mostly one way.
It is a shame that such a beautiful Arabic word, Madrassa, has taken a sinister meaning outside the Arabic and Islamic world. It simply means a school, a place where lessons are taught and learned. It was not intended to mean a place where imported hatred is planted in young minds to spawn future terrorist monsters.
Cheers
mhg

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Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia, Women

PR Nation: Saudi King Appoints Women to Advisory Council………….

        

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“Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, ruler of one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women, appointed the first female members Friday to a top advisory body that is the closest thing the kingdom has to a parliament. The 30 women named to the 150-member body will be required to wear proper hijab, or covering, and will have a separate entrance and section within the council’s main chambers, the royal decree announcing the appointments said. “It’s a big, big step forward,” said Thuraya Obaid, a former United Nations undersecretary-general from Saudi Arabia who was appointed to the council. In terms of women in Saudi Arabia, she said, “we will not be able to achieve everything at once … but this will give strength to the voice of women in the country……..”……”

Actually not only women members will be required to cover their heads. There is some equality here: both sexes, men and women, are required to wear a head cover. When they show a photo of the appointed advisory council, you’ll see that all members, both males and females, are wearing head covers, but with different names. It is called hijab for women and something else for the men. What separates the two sexes is probably the goatee, the royal fuzz on the royal chin, the (saksooka) which may become a requirement, but only for the men. As for separate entrances, I can’t imagine what will happen if some confused male member takes the wrong turn.

This appointment of women to this advisory council
is a positive departure from past policy. But it is a tiny symbolic step
that is meaningless in terms of any move toward freedom and democracy
and, as important, accountability. The Saudi regime has become masterful at creating diversions, at public relations stunts. It is good at making meaningless moves that attract headlines, especially in the West, even as the regime is tightening its controls. Even as it is cracking down at growing dissent and protests against repression across the Arabian Peninsula, from Qatif to Najd to Hijaz.
 
This council is appointed by the king, and last year his majesty arbitrarily decided to renew the appointment of all current members. Just like that. The late prince Nayef once famously remarked something to the effect that “I look at these members of the council, and I know that no electoral system can come up with better people than these”.
Cheers
mhg

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Arabian Peninsula, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia

Gulf: Absolute Prince Wishes Absolute Shaikhs Well, of Financial Fellatio………

   

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                                Neck of the woods

“In a message sent by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, to The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrain, Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, the recent unfortunate terrorist acts suffered by the Kingdom of Bahrain were denounced, Prince Saud said that both the Saudi government and people condemned the terrorist incidents that accrued in Manama recently, where blasts resulted in the death and wounding of innocent people. He stressed that his Government was united with Bahrain in combating terrorism in all its forms and all those who support such crimes, wishing the country and its people further security and prosperity..…………”

Okay. Apparently Absolute Prince Saud Al-Faisal Al-Saud, foreign minister of some forty years, is apparently alive and well. Why shouldn’t he be, since he is neither in Morocco nor in New York? In case you’ve been living on another planet: senior Saudi princes usually go to New York for medical treatment, after which they return to Morocco either to recover or to die (sometimes they do both: recover and die). The Prince is wishing the Al-Khalifa clan of Bahrain well (I probably wouldn’t, not yet). Many Happy Repressive returns. Great. Thanks, prince.
(FYI: junior princes live much longer; they don’t start hitting Morocco until middle-age. Unfortunately they keep multiplying, what with multiple wives and nothing else to do in Riyadh besides conjugal bliss, hopefully. As they multiply, they keep on sucking more of the resources of the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. The Bahrain shaikhs don’t have access to similar resources, but they do wonders with what little resources their blighted island is blessed with. They manage to suck off more of less, quite a feat, and no pun was intended, and I am just referring to a form of financial fellatio).

Cheers
mhg
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