This is interesting:

Aren't the Saudis rather prominent in F9/11? I haven't seen it.

Why do they need aid? They're stinkin' rich.

$25,000? That's peanuts.

Since 15 of the 19 highjackers on 9/11 were Saudi, well, the US should have done this long ago. Yet Bush wants to give them more money? I'd ask why does Bush hate America, but that'd be silly.

http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2004/06/the_storm_headi.php

THE STORM HEADING FOR SAUDI ARABIA

LONDON - The spreading violence in Saudi Arabia is not simply `terrorism’ perpetrated by al-Qaida, as the Bush Administration and its Saudi allies claim. It’s the latest sign of a long developing, low intensity rebellion in this nation containing 25% of the world’s oil reserves.


Saudi Arabia is a feudal monarchy owned and run by 6-7,000 royal princes. The de facto ruler is Crown Prince Abdullah; the ailing king, Fahad, is a figurehead. The royal family has responded to the growing violence in the kingdom by insisting it is the work of a small number of `al-Qaida terrorists.’ While the overthrow of the Saudi royal family is a key objective of al-Qaida, al-Qaida is not the only insurgent organization bent on revolution.


Saudi Arabia has been a US oil protectorate since the late 1940’s under the following arrangement: the royal family supplies cheap oil to the US and allies Europe and Japan. The billions earned by the Saudis are recycled into US and western financial institutions and commercial projects, or spent on huge amounts of advanced weapons($9 billion in recent years) the Saudis cannot operate. Saudi arms purchases are used to support friendly US and European politicians in politically sensitive states or regions.


In return, the US supplies the royal family with protection against its own increasingly restive people and covetous neighbors, like Iraq. The small Saudi Army is denied ammunition to prevent it staging the kind of coup that overthrew Iraq’s British-run puppet monarch in 1958. A parallel `White Army,’ composed of loyal Bedouin tribesmen led by US `advisors, watches the army. The US Air Force, now based in Iraq and the Gulf emirates, is ready to intervene to protect the royal family in the event of a coup attempt.


After 9/11, America’s pro-Israel neoconservatives launched violent political and media attacks against the Saudi regime, accusing it of being in league with Saudi militant Osama bin Laden. The neocon’s objective: bring down the Saudi government, a key financial backer of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation.


But far from being an enemy of the US, Saudi Arabia is almost an overseas American state. A third of the population of 24 million is foreign. Some experts believe that of the 16 million native `Saudis,’ 4-5 million may actually be immigrants and guest workers from neighboring Yemen, the ancestral home of the bin Laden family.



Saudi defenses, internal security, finance, and the oil industry are still run by some 70,000 US and British expatriates. Some 8 million Asian workers do the middle management and donkey work.


The royal family is intimately linked to Washington’s political and money power elite through a network of business and personal connections. The Bush family, and its entourage of Republican military-industrial complex deal makers, led by the Carlyle Group, has been joined at the hip for two decades with Saudis power princes and their financial front men.


As this column has long maintained, Saudi Arabia did not finance or abet Osama bin Laden -it tried repeatedly to kill him. Bin Laden’s modest funds came from donations by individual Saudis, wealthy and poor, who supported his jihad against western domination, as well as from other Gulf Arabs.


The violence now erupting across the kingdom is partly the work of small al-Qaida cells. Bin Laden’s charges that the royal family debases Islam, squanders the nation’s oil billions on useless arms, luxury prostitutes, and the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, resonate across Arabia.


Anti-royalist jihadi groups, many veterans of the 1980’s Afghan War, have joined in the revolt with young Saudis fed up by their nation’s medieval society, corrupt regime, brutal repression, and subservience to Washington. Half of Saudis are under 16. The kingdom is undergoing the same kind of generational revolt that brought down the Soviet Empire.


These anti-feudal rebels cannot all be dismissed as `terrorists.’ Many want genuine democracy and modernity; others, a truly Islamic state, or, simply, change. Al-Qaida are likely a small minority. The ground is shaking in Saudi Arabia.


The recent beheading of an American military worker by al-Qaida extremists horrified westerners. Interestingly, the Saudi regime publicly beheaded 53 people last year, many opponents of the regime, without a peep from the western media.


In spite of the recent killing of senior al-Qaida operatives, the spreading revolt is likely to continue and intensify. Al-Qaida is trying to stampede foreign workers out of Saudi Arabia. Without them, the kingdom would collapse and revert to desert.


But while some westerners may flee, millions of capable Asians will likely remain. Oil production is thus unlikely to suffer very much, at least short term. Physical sabotage of the vast oil infrastructure, while possible, would be very difficult.


Still, the Saudi royal family’s days appear numbered. What replaces them - civil war between royalist factions, an Iraqi-style US-imposed puppet regime, an Islamic republic, or a new firebrand Col. Nasser –remains the 64 billion riyal question.

I doubt that Bush hates America, in fact I know better. I pretty sure you do, Vince.

Yes, something has to change in SA, the question is how will this change occur.

One of the hall marks of our country, Vince, is the ability to change leadership in a peaceful manner. Canada could probably do that too, but currently its all liberal all the time, so power doesn't change hands.

SA doesn't have such a tradition so some roiling in the palaces is a true potential. What Bush's strategy has done is excellent: the old order in the ME had to change, so by yanking out one of the cornerstones of despotism in the region, we've set in motion a change process that would never had begun without the American Catalyst.

Yes, there will be

I love America as much as you love Canada, skip. It's amusing now that I 'outed' (haha) myself as a Canuckistanian that you bring it up in every conversation.

You don't do this with your black friends or gay friends, do you?

"One of the hall marks of our country, Vince, is the ability to change leadership in a peaceful manner."

America, but not Iraq and most of South America. Thanks for the Friday funny.

"Canada could probably do that too, but currently its all liberal all the time, so power doesn’t change hands."

Our Liberal party is actually centrist, compared to the Conservatives (who used to be composed of just fiscal conservatives, who I voted for, but joined up with the Alliance, a bunch of neo-con yahoos who would love to become Republicans). Then we have the NDP who are pretty left-wing, and now the Greens who are socially liberal but suprising fairly fiscally conservative.

Variety is the spice of life, as opposed to choosing between 2 rich guys in matching blue suits and red ties.

Canada's Liberal party = centrist? Maybe in your warped world, Vince.

Skip,
The Liberals lost quite a few reps in the last election to both the Conservatives - and gasp - the Separatists! So, perhaps the Vinces of Canada are on the way out. It's kind of hard for a bunch of socialists to stay in power for too long (meaning 20 years+) - they end up bankrupting their experiment and GDP growth slows to nothing. Don't know about you, but I can't find too many worthwhile Canadian ADRs or ordinary's to trade! Puke!

Canadian update: Al-Jazeera has been approved for a broadcasting license. Still no approval for FoxNews. Leftist censorship at its finest.

you see the deal is my friends are American, Vince. And I accept their criticism of our country as part and parcel of what makes us great.

I don't have much use for your criticism though. Just the way it is Vince. Nothing personal, but I don't much care what the good citizens of some other country think we ought to do differently.

When you guys perform like us, and shoulder the load of advancing civilization, well then maybe, just maybe, I lend some credence to your unfounded drivel. Till then you and your other extra terrestrial liberal friends need to move on.

I'd say the same if you were French, not that there's a whole lot of difference mind you so it's not anti Canadian bigotry I'm displaying, it's American Pride.

Eh?

The dilemma is, what do you replace the House of Saud with?

The unrest there is not that there are freedom fighters and protestors demanding liberty, other than a few thousand western-educated elites, who would like to see things like women being able to wear western clothes and drive a car, and who would like to reign in the cronyism of the extended royal family through elections and transparency in the government.

The unrest is because the majority perceive the House of Saud as too liberal, and want a fundamentalist government.

The House of Saud makes everyone uncomfortable. But if we occupied S.A. and replaced them with a more liberal government, we'd have a revolution on our hands. If we let it go fundamentalist, we'll have an Islamic state hostile to our interests, with billions of dollars of oil revenue, able to fund a nuclear weapons program and worldwide terrorism.

The House of Saud is already a revolution waiting to happen, it may take twenty years but this is their brewing social evolution and I’m thrilled for them.Iraq is the end result of corrupt ambition at it’s peak of ugly perfection,only this time the stench of slaughter hangs thick in our minds and there is no way people are going to ignore the massacre of thousands of innocent people.The neo-cons have harnessed the sensibilities of Adolf Hitler and Israel once the comfortable playground to harvest empathy are looking more and more like the nazi’s who were intent on extingishing them, it doesn’t go unoticed when they carelessly murder Palestinians with their shameless display of American technology.The world is a lot smaller and realization we share the same Planet, the same Real Estate, we all share a thread to the people of the Middle East and in respecting their need and right for independence isn’t a due it is their birthright and governments have been corrupt, unchecked and unbalanced for decades, this means we now have to fight to keep our own rights , which are in serious jepardy, we certainly have to encourage and respect the cultural ideologies and freedoms of the very people that break their backs one way or another so that we can stay fat while they are starved ? As far as Religon well that is truly a helpful tool for any Govenment as can be demonstrated with Bush as the latest,greatest example, the only one we talk to is ourselves and to convice anyone else otherwise is truly in a position of power and control. Might want to re-think the new eco car and solar panels for the house, that way we'll stay comfortable in our homes while fighting various forms of enviromentally related cancers. This is 2004 and we need Political reform and we have to check and balance our governments before they check and balance us. The United States of America is the greatest fake democracy in the World and that isn't saying much more for the rest of us.

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