Category Archives: Saudi Arabia

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Iran, Religion, Saudi Arabia

Arab Counterrevolution: Stoking Royal Salafi Fires on the Gulf…………..

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      BFF

“The external opposition continues to fudge its stance on external intervention, and with good reason: the internal opposition rejects it. This is the flaw to the model – for the majority in Syria deeply oppose external intervention, fearing civil conflict. Hence Syrians face a long period of externally mounted insurgency, siege and international attrition. Both sides will pay in blood. But the real danger, as Hannah himself noted, is that the Saudis might “once again fire up the old Sunni jihadist network and point it in the general direction of Shiite Iran”, which puts Syria first in line. In fact, that is exactly what is happening, but the west, as before in Afghanistan, prefers not to notice – so long as the drama plays well to western audiences. As Foreign Affairs reported last month, Saudi and its Gulf allies are firing up the radical Salafists (fundamentalist Sunnis), not only to weaken Iran, but to do what they see is necessary to survive – to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism. This is happening in Syria, Libya, Egypt…………..”

It is all part of the Saudi-led GCC-funded Arab Counterrevolution. Its only goal is to maintain the status quo on the Gulf , at any price. Status quo means only one thing: keeping the al-Saud dynasty in power, with absolute unquestionable authority. Before the Arab “Spring”, it was aimed at any change in the broader Arab status quo. At the time they used developments in Iraq, post the invasion they had supported and participated in, to stoke sectarian fires. Even old Hosni Mubarak managed, with Saudi help, to ‘discover’ plots by Shi’as to convert his people and take over Egypt. They exaggerated fears of an Iranian threat with the goal of dividing the somnolent and often tame peoples of the GCC states into Sunni and Shi’a factions. It always works on the Gulf: fearful Sunnis seek the protection of the corrupt ruling dynasties, angry Shi’as become more vocal in their demands, which in turn is used by the palace Salafis to further stoke the fires of division.
Amazing how one ancient doubtful Hadith about absolute loyalty to the (Muslim) ruler is being used by Salafi clerics to counter the Arab revolutions, but only in selective countries.
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, GCC, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Reshuffling of Bins: Danny Kaye Gone, Custodian of the Pearly Gates…………

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      BFF

“Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, yesterday issued a royal decree appointing Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Defense, succeeding his brother Crown Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to the post. This came as part of a series of royal decrees issued by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz yesterday, which included the renaming of the “Minister of Defense, Aviation, and General Inspection” as the “Minister of Defense.” A second royal decree announced the appointment of Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as Governor of Riyadh Region at the rank of minister, and the appointment of Prince Mohammed Bin Saad Bin Abdulaziz as his deputy, also at the rank of minister. Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz succeeds the newly appointed Saudi Defense Minister as the Governor of Riyadh. The royal decree which announced the appointment of Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s new Defense Minister also included the announcement of the appointment of Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Bin Abdulaziz as Saudi Deputy Minister of Defense at the rank of minister. A third royal decree issued yesterday announced the appointment of Prince Saud Bin Naif Bin Abdulaziz as Head of the Crown Prince’s Court and Special Adviser to the Crown Prince at the rank of minister. Whilst another royal decree announced the appointment of Prince Fahd Bin Abdullah Bin Mohammed Al Saud as Chairman of the General Commission for Civil Aviation ……………”

Saudi semi-official and official media (the only two kinds available) have gone berserk over the new royal line-up (they have no choice). They started by eulogizing the late Crown Prince Sultan as if he were transferred to a new job, Custodian of the Pearly Gates, way up there. Now Prince Nayef is made to be one of the wisest, greatest, nicest, sweetest, prince that ever lived.
I was especially intrigued by this new appointment: “Prince Saud Bin Naif Bin Abdulaziz as Head of the Crown Prince’s Court and Special Adviser to the Crown Prince “.
(I felt sad about the removal of the title of “Inspector General” from the Defense Minister’s portfolio. It always amused me, evoking memories of the late Danny Kaye, although I never knew wtf he inspected).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Human Right, Iran, Lebanon, NATO, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

The West and the Syrian Taliban: Advise from a Saudi Prince of Thieves?…………

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      BFF

“This summer a senior Saudi official told John Hannah, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, that from the outset of the upheaval in Syria, the king has believed that regime change would be highly beneficial to Saudi interests: “The king knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.” This is today’s “great game” – losing Syria. And this is how it is played: set up a hurried transitional council as sole representative of the Syrian people, irrespective of whether it has any real legs inside Syria; feed in armed insurgents from neighbouring states; impose sanctions that will hurt the middle classes; mount a media campaign to denigrate any Syrian efforts at reform; try to instigate divisions within the army and the elite; and ultimately President Assad will fall – so its initiators insist……….. The radical armed elements being used in Syria as auxiliaries to depose Assad run counter to the prospect of any outcome emerging within the western paradigm. These groups may well have a bloody and very undemocratic agenda of their own………The origins of the “lose Assad” operation preceded the Arab awakening: they reach back to Israel’s failure in its 2006 war to seriously damage Hezbollah, and the post-conflict US assessment that it was Syria that represented Hezbollah’s achilles heel – as the vulnerable conduit linking Hezbollah to Iran. US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor, but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia………….”

Bandar Bin Sultan, Saudi Prince of thieves, is advising the West on how to topple the Ba’athist dictatorship in Damascus and almost certainly install a worse regime of Salafis and other fundamentalists. That may be fine with the al-Saud rulers in Riyadh: the Salafis are their fifth columnists, bought and paid for, from the Persian-American Gulf states to Egypt and North Africa. The West will almost certainly miss the Assad dictatorship, once the Islamists rule in Damascus. Imagine the Taliban wedged between Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel. It is especially the latter border that should give the West second thoughts.
(I trust there is no need for my regular readers to have me repeat the well-known story that BAE Systems had given bribes commissions of about GBP1 billion (US$ 2 billion) to Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for his role in a huge British-Saudi arms deal. Tony (Yo) Blair killed the British Serious Frauds Office (SFO) investigation of it because it threatened a new British deal to sell weapons systems and pay the princes yet more bribes commissions. That came to be known as the al-Yamama scandal, and it set Tony Blair on his path to multimillion contracts with Arab and other oil potentates after he left office).

Cheers
mhg


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Lebanon, Saudi Arabia

Lebanon’s Hariri Tweeting the Arab Potentates…………..

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      BFF

I discovered that Sa’ad Hariri, of Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, tweets. It said that he follows seven others, but five of them he owns and one is a relative. That leaves one other and it is Fouad Saniora (which some might say that he also owns, or shares with his Saudi masters), one of the guys who were praying ten times a day in July 2006 for an Israeli victory.
When I first saw that he follows seven others I thought he meant the surviving sons of Saudi King Abdulaziz al-Saud (Ibn Saud), not just the Sudairi Seven. It turns out he is not following any of the usual potentates. I suspect he doesn’t realize they are tweeting incognito, that they tweet furiously, arthritis be damned. Most likely they have hired ‘fingers’ doing the walking and the talking for them.
Oh, it says Hariri also follows Twitter! Now why didn’t I think of that?
Cheers
mhg


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GCC, Iran, Israel, Persian-American Gulf, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

A Poodle that Roars: British Readying for New Gulf War? GCC Dilemma……………..

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“Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned. The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government. In anticipation of a potential attack, British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships…………”

Having liked Iraq (2003 and WMD and W and all that) the (new) British regime is doing it again. They are now being more ‘royal’ than the American king. Maybe there have been promises by the petroleum potentates of my Gulf, promises to pay the costs of war, promises to buy more useless weapons. Most oligarchies of the Persian-American Gulf would like nothing better than for the West and Israel to attack the mullahs in Iran. They would like a Saddam II (or is it III), except this will not be a retake of previous wars. There will be no UN resolution authorizing aggression against a member state that has not attacked anyone. The geriatric polygamous al-Saud absolute tribal monarchy would likes nothing better than for the West to destroy Iran (the head of the snake), making them by default the new Western “viceroy” in charge of the region.

Yet a war against Iran will have ominous consequences for some Gulf states. The danger will not be from the Iranians, it will come from the Saudis who have always been expansionist at the expense of the smaller GCC states. They have taken territory from almost all the Gulf states and Yemen. After all, the Iranians are safely on the other side, they must cross the Persian-American Gulf and plow through all the Western navies to reach the Arab side, the GCC states. As the invasion of Bahrain proved, all the Saudis need do is drive their tanks across the border. Only Bahrain can feel safe from Saudi tanks: the tanks are already in Manama.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Arab Potentates Gaming the Electoral Systems: Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia…….

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      BFF

“Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said there would be a vote for an advisory council in 2013, in line with a constitution introduced eight years ago. The decision is another victory, though a small one given the delayed and partial nature of the change, for the Arab Spring which Qatar did so much to foment. The royal family’s failure to introduce any semblance of the democracy it was helping elsewhere to promote, through the Al-Jazeera television channel which it owns, and finance with its large-scale backing for the revolution in Libya, has drawn increasing political attention to itself. “We have always preferred that regimes start changes on their own and lead the movement of transformation, instead of seeing people rise up,” the Emir said in a nod to the contradiction………...”

No doubt the Qatari potentate had to do something. His Aljazeera network could not continue publicizing Arab uprisings against despots in Syria and Libya and other places while his own people had no representation. A two-third elected parliament is better than no parliament, depending on what other actions the government takes to influence the elections. The “devil is in the detail” and all that. It will be better than Bahrain which has nominally a half-elected legislature but it is effectively no more elected than 30% or so. It is even better than the case of Saudi Arabia where no one votes for a legislature or a dog-catcher and the ‘Shoura” council is fully appointed by the royal family. The Saudi “elections” they are talking about are for toothless municipal councils, which will also act as “advisory”, pending the accession to the throne of Prince Nayef (Naif) who will then get rid of them.
Arab potentates on the Gulf are learning how to “game the system”. Just as Mubarak and Saleh did, they can have all the pretensions of popular elections, without the headache and inconvenience of actual accountability. It would also make the Western allies happier, once they learn to turn a blind eye.

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Corruption, GCC, Saudi Arabia

Defining an Arab Kleptocracy: “Sultan’s Fortune is Estimated at $270 Billion”………

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“Sultan’s fortune is estimated at $270 billion, which he distributed between his sons prior to his death in order to shore up their political position in the competitive princely arena. The reality is that every senior prince has placed his favorite sons in important positions in the Kingdom .…….. The Al Saud resembles a family business, established in 1932. Ibn Saud managed to conquer and unite the vast territory of the Arabian Peninsula, give it his family name, and alienate, divide, and control his cousins and brothers in order to establish a clear and undisputed line of succession through his sons. After Ibn Saud’s death, his sons, though never entirely united, maintained enough coherence to keep the store running. That is no longer true of the thousands of princes that they produced. As the older generation dies off, the new generation has fallen to fighting in front of the customers. Indeed, with the ratio of royals to commoners now at one to a thousand (compared to one to five million in the United Kingdom), the challenge of managing princely privileges, salaries, and demand for jobs has never been more intense. Royal perks include lifetime sinecures and domination of the civil service, which enable the princes to award contracts and receive commissions on top of their salaries. So the Saudi regime is divided, its legitimacy is questioned …….….”

This lady knows her country, but she won’t travel home anytime soon.

The amount mentioned is staggering, nay mind boggling. No wonder the Saudi semi-official media (alarabiya, Asharq Alawsat) call him Sultan of Plenty. If true, he had to earn, loot, and steal plenty to get to the $ 270 billion. Yet million of people of the Arabian Peninsula struggle to find jobs, housing, and the basic necessities of life. The unemployment rate is in double digits (over 30% for young people), millions are out of work and more live under poverty than we’ll ever read about in Saudi media or Western media like the Washington Post. He does not appear on the annual Forbes list of richest people; that covers only normal mortals not princes and shaikhs. His nephew al-Waleed Bin Talal is listed, along with the information claiming that his fortune is ‘self-made’. The folks at Forbes editorial must think al-Waleed started flipping burgers at the Dairy Queen in Riyadh and moved up from there. Just like Steve Forbes. It can’t be stupidity, can it?

Cheers
mhg


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Algeria civil war, Arab Counterrevoltion, Gulf states, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Media Mourn Prince Sultan: Prince of Plenty………..

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Writers in Saudi media have gone over the top in accolades to the late Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud:
 
“Sultan of Generosity and Plenty has departed….” Chief Editor of Asharq Alawsat (Prince Salman)

“An Arab knight has dismounted. ALL Saudis called his Sultan of Generosity and Plenty….” Mamoun Fandy (Egyptian). No doubt his sons called him that, especially Prince Bandar who got “plenty” in bribes from BAE Systems.

“Sultan the Insan (Sultan the Human)……” M. al-Rumaihi

“When Iraq occupied Kuwait, Saudi Arabia confronted Iraq initially (alone) and later formed an alliance with 33 other countries…..” Sameer Atallah (Lebanese): of course this man lies. Saudi media did not even mention that Iraq had occupied Kuwait until days later. The princes were literally shitting in their thobes until US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney got there.

I hear tell that Saudi television networks, offshore and onshore, are extensively covering the funeral, not a common thing among Salafi Wahhabis.
They are all princes of “plenty”. They have all looted “plenty” of the resources of the people of the Arabian Peninsula. They all have plenty of progeny who continue to take and loot plenty.
Still, may he rest in peace.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab League, Arab Revolutions, France, Libya, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Syria

Thwarted in Iraq, Buoyed in Libya: McCain Seeks a New Maysaloon in Syria……….

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“With NATO bombing of Libya set to end, U.S. Sen. John McCain on Sunday raised the possibility of some kind of military attack on Syria, where the government of Bashar Assad has been accused of brutally cracking down on protesters. “Now that military operations in Libya are ending, there will be renewed focus on what partial military operations might be considered to protect civilian lives in Syria,” McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan. “The Assad regime should not consider that it can get away with mass murder. Kadafi made that mistake and it cost him everything.” There was no immediate response from the Assad government, which has blamed “armed groups” for the violence that has swept the nation since mid-March. ……….. Still, there is a school of thought that an impasse has been reached seven months into the protest movement and some kind of foreign intervention may be the only way……….”

Foreign intervention? How about Chinese intervention? Or Iranian intervention? Are they as kosher as French intervention?  Maybe McCain will join Sarkozy in leading a new Battle of Maysaloon to retake Syria.


The French reneged (along with the British) on their promise to the Arabs under the Hashemites of Hijaz after World War I. The Brits installed Faisal as King of Syria, only to see the French invade and kick him out to Iraq. Later on, the British allowed Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi forces to invade Hijaz and annex it to their Nejdi kingdom. Jordan and Iraq were the consolation prize.
Cheers
mhg


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Britain, Corruption, NATO, Saudi Arabia

Tony Blair Bin Bandar Meets Borat: the Great Money Machine Moves to Kazakhstan…….

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“Kazakhstan said Monday it has hired Britain’s ex-prime minister Tony Blair as a consultant to attract new investment to the Central Asian state, on a contract reportedly worth millions of dollars. The hire marks a major coup for strongman President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s bid to promote Kazakhstan as an economic powerhouse despite complaints from critics that the country pays little heed to Western democratic standards. The Daily Telegraph earlier said Blair had signed a one-year contract worth eight million pounds ($12.7 million) with the government of Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan since even before the Soviet collapse. The foreign ministry refused to confirm the figure but said Blair was one of several foreign officials contracted by the Kazakh state…….. Nazarbayev’s top advisor Yermukhamet Yertysbayev said Blair would probably deal with “the question of social-economic modernization of Kazakhstan.” “He has extensive ties. He himself worked on modernisation of such a well developed country as the United Kingdom”……”

It also markes a great coup for Blair: almost makes me jealous.
They forgot to mention how Blair worked on the moderation of WMD in Iraq, the stalling of the Israeli-Palestinian talks, the Libyan-JP Morgan-Migrahi-Lockerbie deal, Central-Asian gas and oil deals, among others. Oh, I forgot his most memorable deal: killing the investigation by the British Serious Frauds Office (SFO) into the BPP 1 billion (US$ 2 billion) bribe by BAE Systems to Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for a huge weapons deal (generally known as the al0Yamama scandal). For which he has been and still is richly rewarded. Tony also famously opined in February something to the effect that “We must manage the Egyptian uprising“.
Some people claim that all these deals Tony is making are like his own revenge, the Poodle’s Revenge.
Cheers
mhg


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