"a man of remarkable character and courage”

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz (from: Wikipedia)

“Mind-bogglingly, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey is sponsoring an essay contest at the National Defense University to honor Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah, whom he praises as 'a man of remarkable character and courage' presumably on the basis of Abdullah's remarkable achievements - his arresting, jailing, torturing, mutilating and killing of hundreds of his own citizens found to be 'criminals' for offenses like questioning Saudi policies; his denying of basic human rights to migrant workers, domestic workers, peaceful protesters and women forbidden under law from getting passports, driving, studying, traveling or leaving the house without permission from a male guardian, including his own daughters whom he reportedly held under house arrest for years; his sanctioning of domestic violence and child abuse; his financing of terrorism around the world including most of the 9/11 attackers; his dismal record of human rights abuses and brutal punishments said to rival those of ISIS; and his beheading of 87 people, mostly poor guest workers, in 2014, and ten more people so far this year, including a woman whose daylight beheading was recently captured on video. The person who filmed it has now been arrested.”
— Abby Zimet, CommonDreams
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“[…] Yet although IS [ISIS/ISIL] is certainly an Islamic movement, it is neither typical nor mired in the distant past, because its roots are in Wahhabism, a form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia that developed only in the 18th century. In July 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism, and yet the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, condemning IS in the strongest terms, has insisted that ‘the ideas of extremism, radicalism and terrorism do not belong to Islam in any way.’ Other members of the Saudi ruling class, however, look more kindly on the movement, applauding its staunch opposition to Shiaism and for its Salafi piety, its adherence to the original practices of Islam. […]”
— Karen Armstrong, New Statesman
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You never really know who your friends are..." — Al Kooper

From: Addicting Info

“The ISIS punishments are taken from documents which the group recently circulated. The list of crimes and their punishments was published by ISIS on December 16th of last year. The punishments are gleaned from both the Koran and the Hadith, Middle East Eye notes, but are rarely given out in other Muslim countries.
     What ISIS and Saudi Arabia have in common is Wahabism, a fundamentalist sect of Islam. Experts on Islamic history call Wahabism 'ahistorical' as are the punishments handed down in its name. The fact is that Saudi judges hand these sort of punishments down despite doctrine that sets a high bar for doing so. […]
     What ISIS and Saudi Arabia do not have in common is publicity. ISIS loves it, thrives on it. They want the West to see their barbarism. They want to be called 'Islamic terrorists' because it feeds their egos and validates their twisted form of that religion.
     Saudi Arabia is not so open about their system of punishment. Western media seldom talks about it.”
— T. Steeman, Addicting Info
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saudi arabian nights of the round table

From: Lovely Package

“On January 2, 1977, the Shah of Iran made a painful admission about his country’s economy. We’re broke,' he confided bluntly to his closest aide, court minister Asadollah Alam, in a private meeting. Alam predicted still more dangers to come: 'We have squandered every cent we had only to find ourselves checkmated by a single move from Saudi Arabia,' he later wrote in a letter to the shah. '[W]e are now in dire financial peril and must tighten our belts if we are to survive.' […]
     The two men were reacting to recent turmoil in the oil markets. A few weeks prior, at an OPEC meeting in Doha, the Saudis had announced they would resist an Iran-led majority vote to increase petroleum prices by 15 percent. (The shah needed the boost to pay for billions in new spending commitments.) King Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al Saud argued that a price hike wasn’t justified when Western economies were still mired in a recession — but he was also eager to place economic constraints on Iran at a time when the shah was ordering nuclear power plants and projecting influence throughout the Middle East.
     So the Saudis 'flooded the markets,' ramping up oil production from 8 million to 11.8 million barrels per day and slashing crude prices. Unable to compete, Iran was quickly driven from the market: The country’s oil production plunged 38 percent in a month. Billions of dollars in anticipated oil revenues vanished, and Iran was forced to abandon its five-year budget estimates.
     A damaging ripple effect persisted: Over the summer of 1977, industrial manufacturing in Iran fell by 50 percent. Inflation ran between 30 and 40 percent. The government made deep cuts to domestic spending to balance the books, but austerity only made matters worse when thousands of young, unskilled men lost their jobs. Before long, economic distress had eroded middle-class support for the shah’s monarchy — which collapsed two years later in the Iranian Revolution.”
— the New Shelton wet/dry
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“[…] If OPEC has really lost control of the market, how was it able to engineer the fall that has taken prices down by 45 per cent since the early summer? The fall was no accident. OPEC, that is, Saudi Arabia, decided it would not support the price by reducing its own output. Its goal was to buy market share by choking off expensive, non-OPEC production in the United States, Canada, Russia, offshore Brazil and elsewhere. The strategy may work, since the best cure for low prices is low prices just as the high prices in 2007 and 2008 were unsustainable. How long it will take is an open question.
     The problem with the Saudis’ low-price strategy is that it hurts OPEC, too. Its 12 member states are not created equal. The ones in the Gulf – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – probably have the financial muscle to endure low prices for some time, perhaps a few years. Not so the weak OPEC members – Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya and perhaps Iran. The world of $60-(U.S.)-a-barrel oil is pushing them toward the fiscal cliff. If OPEC falls apart, it won’t be because it has lost control of a market swimming in American oil; it will be because the low-price policy is sabotaging the economy and finances of a few of its own members. OPEC is becoming a cannibal family, one that eats its own.”
— Eric Reguly, The Globe and Mail
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See a related post here...

saudi arabian nights

G.W. Bush & Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia (from: say it ain't so already)

or... "every time you buy some gas a terrorist get's his wings."

“[…] ‘It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.’ Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the [28 page] document is ‘stunning in its clarity,’ and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America. ‘Those twenty-eight pages tell a story that has been completely removed from the 9/11 Report,’ Lynch maintains.
     Another congressman who has read the document said that the evidence of Saudi government support for the 9/11 hijacking is ‘very disturbing,’ and that ‘the real question is whether it was sanctioned at the royal-family level or beneath that, and whether these leads were followed through.’ Now, in a rare example of bipartisanship, Jones and Lynch have co-sponsored a resolution requesting that the Obama Administration declassify the pages. […]
     The theory behind the lawsuit against the Saudis goes back to the 1991 Gulf War. The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia was a shattering event in the country’s history, calling into question the ancient bargain between the royal family and the Wahhabi clerics, whose blessing allows the Saud family to rule. In 1992, a group of the country’s most prominent religious leaders issued the Memorandum of Advice, which implicitly threatened a clerical coup. The royal family, shaken by the threat to its rule, accommodated most of the clerics’ demands, giving them more control over Saudi society. One of their directives called for the creation of a Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which would be given offices in Saudi embassies and consulates. As the journalist Philip Shenon writes, citing John Lehman, the former Secretary of the Navy and a 9/11 commissioner, ‘it was well-known in intelligence circles that the Islamic affairs office functioned as the Saudis’ 'fifth column' in support of Muslim extremists.’”
— Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker
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“A few nights after he resigned his post as secretary of state [...] Colin L. Powell answered a ring at his front door. Standing outside was Prince Bandar, then Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, with a 1995 Jaguar.

Photo: keywordpictures

     Mr. Powell’s wife, Alma, had once mentioned that she missed their 1995 Jaguar, which she and her husband had traded in. Prince Bandar had filed that information away, and presented the Powells that night with an identical, 10-year-old model.”
— Helena Cooper and Jim Rutenberg, The New York Times
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“In the Horn of Africa and East Africa, Wahhabism was introduced in the early 1950′s. Saudi sponsored charities, al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and the International Islamic Relief Organization associated with Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, built numerous mosques and madrassas. These Saudi NGO’s offered education, humanitarian aid, and other charitable programs. Both organizations were subsequently accused of supporting and financing terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. […]
     Saudi money often ends up in [the] hands of militants. Saudi-sponsored NGOs operating in sub-Saharan Africa have been unmistakably linked to global terrorist groups. [T]he Somalia office of the Saudi-sponsored charity al-Haramain has been connected to al-Qaeda and the group Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya (AIAI) that has terrorized the Horn of Africa.’ […]
     There are numerous imams in the United States and Europe preaching a form of Sunni fundamentalism practiced in Saudi Arabia that justifies armed jihad. Saudi Arabia has financed over 4,000 mosques, religious schools, and cultural centers around the world in recent years. Across America there are over 2,000 mosques and Islamic centers, an increase of almost 50 percent since the year 2000, and over 100 percent since 1990.
     In a 2007 Citizen Warrior article, author Mark Silverberg stated that for American Muslim moderates, the harsh reality of having their religion hijacked by Wahhabi radicals is something they have yet to confront. “Radical Islamic groups have now taken over leadership of the ‘mainstream’ Islamic institutions in the United States and anyone who pretends otherwise is deliberately engaging in self-deception […]”
— John Price (Former U.S. Ambassador)
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