Category Archives: Saudi Arabia

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Bahrain, Occupied Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, US Foreign Policy

Political Nirvana: Hillary Clinton Writes to the Saudi People about Freedom for Syrians…….

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has penned a column for the Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat (owned by Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud). Her topic is the Syrian uprising against the Assad regime and is titled “No return to the Status Quo Ante in Syria”.
She assures the Saudi people, and any other Arabs who might read that daily, that the Bahraini Saudi Syrian people deserve freedom and the right to choose their own government, that they deserve dignity and freedom from fear. She also said that Bahrain Syria deserves a government that respects the people and seeks a unified and democratic nation…..
Like Mr. Obama in his last speech, she neglected to mention Saudi Arabia and the people of the Arabian Peninsula. They both believe in the principle of selective non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations, and hence she did not mention Occupied Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or the UAE where many people are languishing in prison for expressing their opinion. Or maybe they believe that the peoples in these absolute tribal monarchies have already attained political Nirvana or, worse, they don’t believe these people deserve what the peoples of other Arab countries (and Iran) deserve.
It is true, not as many people have been killed in most the Gulf states than in Syria or Libya or Egypt. Except for Bahrain where proportionally as much if not more have been killed than in some of the others, given the small population of native Bahrainis and the 33 killed and dozens still “missing”.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Egypt, Gulf states, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Possibly a New Egypt, Same Old Saudi Arabia……………….

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“In fact, it is not implausible that post-Mubarak governments will advocate causes and goals that undermine Saudi Arabia’s interests. For instance, a democratising Egypt could seek to promote freedom and liberty in the region, which is undoubtedly antithetical to Saudi interests. And down the road, a more nationalistic Egypt very well could try to challenge Saudi Arabia as the vanguard of Sunni dominance in the region. Some of this is conjecture, to be sure. But do not think Saudi rulers are unaware of these possibilities. And here is one more challenge in Saudi-Egyptian relations: Egypt’s revolutionaries and political activists, as well as various Shia and Copts, believe that Saudi Arabia is funding extremist political groups (specifically, the Salafis) so as to undermine the revolution. That is to say, in their eyes, Saudi Arabia is meddling in their country and in bed with, if not actually leading, the counter-revolutionaries. Not surprisingly, there have been protests at the Saudi Embassy in Cairo. Arguably, the more troubling part of this is that the accusations give the Saudis another reason to dislike the revolutionaries ……….”

Last January, an angry King Abdullah famously called the protesting people of Egypt “foreign infiltrators”. Egypt under Mr. Mubarak was a unique animal: a country that normally leads the Arab world was a sidekick for the Saudis for thirty years. That will probably never happen again, unless the Mubarak-appointed Field Marshal Tantawi and his generals keep control. Egypt is too large, has too much history and culture: it automatically poses a challenge to the al-Saud leadership (it always did until Hosni Mubarak took over). It is the same with Iraq: too rich (potentially has more petroleum than Saudi Arabia) with too much history and culture to play second fiddle to the al-Saud (even under someone like Allawi). Even in the so-called “moderate” camp, Egypt poses a challenge for the Saudi regime. In their hearts, the al-Saud would rather have Egypt, and Iraq, away from their sphere of influence around the Gulf and in Jordan.
(I have no doubt that the Saudis are financing the Salafis of Egypt, just as they are financing the Salafi groups and politicians of the Gulf region. These Salafis are their fifth column, their not very sleepy sleeping cells in the Arab states. But that is okay: every regime looks for its own interest).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia

A Country of Princes on Wheelchairs, Corrupt Men in Suvs, Scurrying Faceless Women……

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“But not Saudi Arabia, or so it seems. And not Riyadh. As ever, Saudi men sit in their large SUVs, stuck in traffic between the steel-blue facades of office buildings, and the wives of these men are still having their drivers drop them off in front of the shopping malls in downtown Riyadh, where they scurry from Prada to Ralph Lauren and then disappear into Starbucks for a latte — in the “family department,” a room on the side kept separate from the world of men. The boulevards and promenades of the Saudi capital look as though they had been swept clean, as if some mysterious force had extinguished all public life. Riyadh has nothing like Avenue Bourguiba in Tunis or Tahrir Square in Cairo. In fact, there is no sign in Saudi Arabia of a public political discourse that could be compared with the debates, held in secret at first and then more and more in the open, with which the unrest began in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. Almost every political discussion seems to end with the same words: Long live the king! Saudi Arabia feels like a realm that has come to a standstill in a rapidly changing world. Its leaders, most notably the 86-year-old King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, are pinning their hopes on the old principle of stability………….”

They call it stability, others call it stagnation. That same argument was used in the swamp that was Egypt under Mubarak for thirty years: they said it was ‘stability’, I called it a swamp. There is not much virtue in stable misery and repression and powerlessness and corruption. Once the fear is gone, the ‘stability’ card is not compelling.
(And then there was/is Khaled al-Jehany, a brave young man, the only one in the city, who stood in a Riyadh street and said that the whole country is a big prison, He was whisked away and his fate is still unknown).
Cheers
mhg


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Bahrain, Corruption, Iran, Saudi Arabia

Pictorial: How to Apply for a Job on the Gulf………

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How to apply for a job in Bahrain, and who to apply to:


Applying in Bahrain (left)

          
Applying in Iran                                                  Applying in Saudi Arabia

     
The honorable way in Bahrain                 Different way (Jacko & the ruler)  

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Saudi Arabia, Women 100

Is the Saudi Women Drive-in Protest DOA?……….

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“On Facebook and Twitter, activists had launched a campaign calling on women in Saudi Arabia who hold international drivers’ licenses to get behind the wheel on Friday, June 17, and drive their cars to protest the country’s ban on women driving. Their call is a daring initiative. Women who have defied the ban in the past have lost their jobs, been banned from travel and denounced by members of the country’s powerful extremist religious establishment. The women say their planned move is not a protest nor an attempt to break the law, but rather a bid to claim basic rights as human beings……….”

That is where these women are wrong, when they say they are not trying to protest (or even break an arbitrary rule). Protest is a God-given right. Every one of us, man or woman, was born protesting, along with the proverbial slap on the behind. They are protesting, they are asserting their right to protest, as they should. Rather than pull back and try to water down their demands, they should expand them. Arab despots, like all despots, only understand the language of firmness. They can smell fear and hesitation. Think of Egypt, think of Tunisia.
(Nevertheless, I now suspect that this Saudi drive-in may fizzle, as much as the men’s protest in Riyadh last March did. Opponents are gaining voices on twitter. That expected drive-in may be DOA: dead on arrival).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Culture, Saudi Arabia, Women 100

Saudi Women, Saudi men: the Drive-in…..

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“One woman’s effort to end the ban on her gender being able to drive in Saudi Arabia is catching attention around the world. And on Morning Edition today, the editor of Jeddah’s Saudi News said that Manal al-Sharif’s campaign is gaining some traction in Saudi Arabia…….” NPR News

A Saudi woman was arrested yesterday, for the second time, for driving a vehicle. Saudi Arabia is the only country that bans females, that is ‘human’ females, from driving cars (I suspect women in Qandahar can’t drive either: so you get the picture). That is not the news. The real Saudi news is that Saudi women are organizing a drive-in, and it has a chance of success. If many women join.
Success is always a matter of how many come out to defy authority. Last March there was a campaign for protests in Saudi cities to call for freedom and reform. Only one man reportedly showed up in the capital Riyadh to publicly protest and he has not been since his arrest that day. Khaled al-Jehany is unlikely to be in a mood to protest again, if he is released. Defying authority has always been a taboo in Saudi Arabia: religious fatwas and the usual instruments of a police state have been effective in keeping people from defying the authority of the princes and their Wahhabi ulema (clergy) allies under Shaikh Al Al Shaikh.

It is the numbers, stupid. The more who heed the call for protest, the more chance of success. At some point there is enough of the people out (men, women, or otherwise) that the authority has to give in: that was the lesson of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya (almost), and Bahrain (almost). The numbers defy age-old fears. On their coming drive-in day, Saudi women may come out in huge numbers and drive. They may be able to achieve what the men have failed to do: defy authority and win. That is what authority fears: that it will be forced to relent through public protests, that is why they sent tanks into Bahrain. They want any “reform” to be bestowed by the ruler, not a right taken, wrested, by the people as it should be.
I am always for anyone or group that defies any authority anywhere in the Middle East (except the Salafis who always side with repressive and corrupt authority): from Rabat through Riyadh and onto Tehran.
 
(Go for it ladies: you may be the ones who finally break that wall of fear).
Cheers
mhg


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9/11, Al-Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, September 11

Iranian 9/11, Jewish Barbarossa, Tooth Fairy of Qandahar………..

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“Former investigators on the 9/11 Commission, which uncovered tantalizing but inconclusive evidence of Tehran’s ties to the plot, tell The Daily Beast they welcome the lawsuit, because they believe the U.S. government has done little to follow up on the commission’s evidence of Iranian complicity. The lawsuit, they say, may offer the best hope of getting to the truth about whether Iranian government officials had advance knowledge of the plot and worked with al Qaeda to make it easier for several of the hijackers to travel undetected in the year before the attacks. The suit, brought in the United States District Court in Manhattan on behalf of the families of dozens of 9/11 victims, is promising testimony from three Iranian defectors, all of them identified as former members of Iran’s central spy agency, who will implicate Iran and its terrorist proxies in Lebanon in the Sept. 11 attacks. In court papers filed last week that outlined their testimony, the defectors were not identified by name out of concern for their safety, said Thomas Mellon, a Pennsylvania lawyer and former federal prosecutor who is representing the families…………”

I don’t know: this is like saying that the German Nazis were financing or plotting with the Jewish Agency to take over Palestine. Or that European Jews planned Operation Barbarossa (look it up). The mutual dislike and contempt between Shi’a Iran and Salafi Wahhabi al-Qaeda is that strong. This Thomas Mellon sounds like another D.A. Jim Garrison (google him and Kennedy and Dallas and Louisiana). It is not clear what they needed the Iranians for. They got all the money and leaders and volunteers from Saudi Arabia (with a couple of others). They had the planners in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Germany. As for the ‘Iranian defectors’ who will testify: I’d require blood tests on them first for alcohol, drugs, airplane glue, among other ‘substances’.

Okay, the truth is, I think it is the most ridiculous, nay most asinine, story I have read today. More ridiculous than the story about the prime minister of Bahrain, butcher of Manama, wondering why people can’t just get along. I may be wrong, I am wrong one in a while, but probably not on this one.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Culture, Egypt, Religion, Saudi Arabia

Sir Thomas More Al Shaikh, Saint Thomas Becket of Al-Azhar………..

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Thomas Becket was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by his close friend King Henry II. Becket took his job in the church seriously and would not side with the king on many issues, when he thought the king was wrong. He was murdered in 1170, possibly with the encouragement of the king.
Sir Thomas More was appointed Lord Chancellor by King Henry VIII with the apparent assumption that he would do the king’s bidding against the Catholic Church. More took his job seriously: he could not in good conscious side with the king who had raised him so high and appointed him chancellor. Sir Thomas was tried for treason and beheaded in 1535, as he no doubt expected.

Shaikh A Al Al Shaikh, Mufti of Saudi Arabia, head of its Commission of High Religious Ulema (clergy). He would never disagree with the king or any of the princes. He would, and has, issued fatwas banning any criticism and opposition to the king, any king. His most famous fatwa was issued last March, banning any protests against the government, calling them ‘acts against Islam’. The excited Saudi government published two million copies of his fatwa and distributed them across the country. It never made the list of N Y Time or Amazon bestsellers. Perhaps if Shaikh Al Al Shaikh could start traveling around the world, signing copies of his fatwa at Border’s and Barnes & Noble.
Shaikh Ahmed al-Tayeb. Appointed two years ago by Hosni Mubarak as head of al-Azhar and its chief Mufti. He was a member of Mubarak’s ruling party at the time. On his first few months as Mufti he legalized Saudi-style temporary part-time marriages in Egypt (the mesyar or mesayar), allowing funny summer vacation marriages between elderly Saudis and poor Egyptian girls. Immediately after that he announced to Saudi media that he will be watching carefully for Shi’a expansion in al-Azhar and work to stop it, wtf that means. He opined against the Egyptian Revolution that started on January 25, 2011, but after Mubarak fell he changed him mind.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Culture, Saudi Arabia

A Saudi Prague Spring: a Guest of Honor and Shame………..

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“At Book World Prague 2011, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the “guest of honour”. But guest, in this context, actually means high-paying client: an oppressive regime hoping to buy itself some cultural legitimacy with its petrodollars. And honour? Given the dismal Saudi Arabian record on freedom of speech and other human rights, honour basically means shame. Under the soft rainbow colours of an arching art nouveau roof, the Saudis have erected a huge and lavish stand, in the form of a turreted (and carpeted) mock fortress, replete with scale models of Mecca and Medina, children’s play area, some blonde women in Saudi costumes, and plenty of individually plastic-wrapped dates for all. There are even a few books, presumably as a concession to this being a book fair – and one or two of them are literary titles. But where are the Saudi writers?………”

Like the almost-proverbial guys said, or could have said: “You pays your money and you does your thing….”
The al-Saud are such known book lovers, as are their Salafi mutawa’een of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice (religious police). Normally they love to ban books from the country but, barring that, they also love to burn books. Writers can go to prison for writing the “wrong” stuff; they can get flogged for writing the truly ‘wrong” stuff. To prove their love and devotion to books, only a few weeks ago they published and distributed 1.5 million copies of the religious fatwas banning protests against Arab regimes (edited by none other than Shilk A Al Al Shaikh). That was the second printing: the initial printing was half a million copies.

(No need for me to state, again, that the Mufti shaikh A Al Al Shaikh is a direct descendant of Imam Mohammed Bin abdulwahhab and that he is to bedistinguished from the late great Egyptian musician and singer Mohammed Abdelwahhab who was not a Salafi Wahhabi. There are a passel of Al Al Shaikh progeny in high positions in Saudi Arabia).
Cheers
mhg


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Economics, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia

Hariri Family Affairs: of Saudi Masters and Money Troubles………

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Al-akhbar daily (Lebanese secular and liberal) reports that the management of the Arab Bank have refused to confirm or deny reports that outgoing PM Sa’ad Hariri is selling part of his share in the bank to former PM, and Hariri aide, Fouad Saniora. The newspaper cites knowledgeable banking sources that this is true. It notes that Mr. Hariri, a billionaire, is facing liquidity problems after suffering heavy business losses, to the extent that he is facing some difficulty making loan payments in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Al-akhbar reports that his liquidity problems are affecting his relationships with “influential Saudis”, usually a code word for al-Saud princes.
It reports that his difficulties extend to his own family relationships and that it came to light after his sister Hind could not deposit three checks issued by him for US$ 150 million as payment of part of her share from their father’s estate. There were apparently insufficient funds to cash them. The reports claims his huge firm, Saudi Oger has suffered US$ 3 billion in losses and that many “influential Saudis” are angry at him.
Mr. Hariri got into serious trouble with the family of the de facto Saudi ruler, Prince Nayed the Interior Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, etc etc, after calling prince Mohammed, his son and deputy, a “bloodthirsty butcher”. He seems to have lost some of his magic to the Saudis, whose nationality he holds.
Cheers
mhg


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