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Castrated

April 24, 2016

Castrated

Take away Saudi Arabia’s oil and all that’s left are a couple of Islamic shrines and a lot of sand and hot air.

After three decades of internecine war, Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, allied with the fundamentalist Wahhabist Islamic sect, consolidated the House of Saud’s dominance over Arabia in 1932 with the tacit support of regional imperial power Great Britain. The bedrock of the Saudi Arabian economy, the massive pool of oil in the Al-Hasa region along the Persian Gulf coast, was discovered in 1938 and development began in 1941. Towards the end of World War II, President Roosevelt and Abdul-Aziz reached a handshake deal that has governed relations between the two nations ever since: Saudi Arabia would guarantee the flow of oil to the US at a reasonable price; the US would protect the Saud regime.

Like so many born into wealth, the House of Saud has mistaken fortuitous circumstances for divine favor, haughtily condescending to a world that goes along with its pretensions because of its oil. Saudi Arabia is dependent for its security and armaments on the west, particularly the US. No particular skill is necessary to extract (its reserves are among the world’s shallowest and easiest to tap), transport, or export its oil. It exports most of its oil because it has little industry, although its riches have made it a financial center and funded one of the world’s most generous welfare states. Much of the actual labor is performed by immigrants. The partial diversion of oil revenues has kept the non-House of Saud population pacified.

Oil has made the House of Saud one of the wealthiest extended clans in the world. It retains this privileged position by virtue of US military and intelligence support and its relationship with the Wahhabist clerics.

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One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict

January 6, 2016

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed Shiite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr on Saturday. Hours later, Iranian protestors set fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, the Saudi government, which considers itself the guardian of Sunni Islam, cut diplomatic ties with Iran, which is a Shiite Muslim theocracy.

To explain what’s going on, the New York Times provided a primer on the difference between Sunni and Shiite Islam, informing us that “a schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632” — i.e., 1,383 years ago.

But to the degree that the current crisis has anything to do with religion, it’s much less about whether Abu Bakr or Ali was Muhammad’s rightful successor and much more about who’s going to control something more concrete right now: oil.

In fact, much of the conflict can be explained by a fascinating map created by M.R. Izady, a cartographer and adjunct master professor at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School/Joint Special Operations University in Florida.

What the map shows is that, due to a peculiar correlation of religious history and anaerobic decomposition of plankton, almost all the Persian Gulf’s fossil fuels are located underneath Shiites. This is true even in Sunni Saudi Arabia, where the major oil fields are in the Eastern Province, which has a majority Shiite population.

As a result, one of the Saudi royal family’s deepest fears is that one day Saudi Shiites will secede, with their oil, and ally with Shiite Iran.

This fear has only grown since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq overturned Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni regime, and empowered the pro-Iranian Shiite majority. Nimr himself said in 2009 that Saudi Shiites would call for secession if the Saudi government didn’t improve its treatment of them.

shia-oil-cropped-2

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Enough Already! It’s Time To Send The Despicable House Of Saud To The Dustbin Of History

January 6, 2016

Enough Already! It’s Time To Send The Despicable House Of Saud To The Dustbin Of History

The attached column by Pat Buchanan could not be more spot on. It slices through the misbegotten assumption that Saudi Arabia is our ally and that the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE, Spokane WA and Springfield MA have anything to do with the religious and political machinations of Riyadh and its conflicts with Iran and the rest of the Shiite world.

Nor is this only a recent development. In fact, for more than four decades Washington’s middle eastern policy has been dead wrong and increasingly counter-productive and destructive. The crisis provoked this past weekend by the 30-year old hot-headed Saudi prince, who is son of the King and heir to the throne, only clarified what has long been true.

That is, Washington’s Mideast policy is predicated on the assumption that the answer to high oil prices and energy security is deployment of the Fifth Fleet to the Persian Gulf. And that an associated alliance with one of the most corrupt, despotic, avaricious and benighted tyrannies in the modern world is the lynch pin to regional stability and US national security.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The House of Saud is a scourge on mankind that would have been eliminated decades ago, save for Imperial Washington’s deplorable coddling and massive transfer of arms and political support.

At the same time, the answer to high oil prices is high oil prices. Could anything not be more obvious than today when crude oil is hovering around $35 per barrel notwithstanding a near state of war in the Persian Gulf?

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The Coming Saudi Crack-up?

December 23, 2015

The Coming Saudi Crack-up?

Exclusive: President Obama, like generations of Western leaders, has coddled the oil-rich Saudi monarchy by tolerating its reactionary politics, its financing of radical Islam and its military support for Sunni jihadist terrorism. But the spoiled Saudi leaders may finally be going too far, as Daniel Lazare describes.

Is the Saudi monarchy coming apart at the seams? Scholars and journalists have long predicted the kingdom’s demise, but this time the forecasts may finally prove correct.

The reason is an unprecedented avalanche of problems pouring down on Saudi Arabia since 79-year-old Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud assumed the throne last January. A hardliner in contrast to his vaguely reformist predecessor Abdullah, Salman lost no time in letting the world know that a new sheriff was in town. He upped the number of public executions, which, at 151, are now running at nearly double last year’s rate.

King Salman greets the President and First Lady during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

King Salman greets the President and First Lady during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

After meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he promised to intensify efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by increasing aid to Al Nusra, Al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate. A few weeks later, he assembled a coalition of nine Sunni Arab states to launch nightly bombing raids on Yemen, quickly reducing one of the poorest countries in the Middle East to ruin.

People certainly took notice. But if Salman thought such actions would win him respect, he was wrong. Instead, the result has been a steady drum beat of negative publicity as the world awakes to the fact that, with its public beheadings and barbaric treatment of women, the Islamic state headed by the House of Saud is little different from the Islamic State headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northern Syria and Iraq.

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Riyadh Feels the Pinch: The True Cost of Saudi Subsidies

November 21, 2015

Riyadh Feels the Pinch: The True Cost of Saudi Subsidies

Saudi Water Tower, cc Flickr Andrew A. Shenouda, modifiedIn downtown Riyadh, SUV-populated intersections and lushly landscaped parks leave little indication that Saudi Arabia is rapidly depleting its oil and water resources. The Saudi predilection for gas-guzzling vehicles and water-intensive leisure spaces is hardly surprising- governmental subsidies have long obscured the true cost of these resources.

Saudis pay about 60 cents a gallon at the pump, which makes the average cost to fill a tank less than $20. Electricity, powered primarily by oil, costs only USD 0.6 per kilowatt hour. Drinking water supplied to Saudi households is so cheap that it is practically free. These low commodity rates are viewed by many as traditional perks of Saudi birthright, and Riyadh has traditionally shied away from raising tariffs and risking public ire. Placating the masses through subsidies and handouts, after all, has been a successful strategy for maintaining the House of Saud’s enduring grip on power in a region plagued by uprisings and political volatility. Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi recently reaffirmed that there is no “dire need” for the Kingdom to cut energy subsidies in response to rumors that Riyadh was discussing adjustments to the subsidy program.

Yet a system of high subsidies is ultimately unsustainable for the Kingdom. Most obviously, the costly system is contributing to a rapid depletion of governmental coffers. With oil prices still slumping, Saudi Arabia faces skyrocketing debt and depleted monetary reserves. Equally important – high subsidies distort the true cost of resources, encourage overconsumption, and foster a public misperception that energy and water supplies are inexhaustible.

Depleting Monetary Resources

The Kingdom’s energy subsidy program runs up an annual bill of over $107 billion, or 13.2% of the country’s total GDP. This year has seen plenty of additional discretionary spending by Riyadh as well. When King Salman ascended the throne in January, Riyadh doled out $32 billion in handouts as a gesture of goodwill.

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The Saudis Are Stumbling – They May Take the Middle East With Them

November 17, 2015

The Saudis Are Stumbling – They May Take the Middle East With Them

America’s leading Sunni ally is proving how easily hubris, delusion, and old-fashioned ineptitude can trump even bottomless wealth

For the past eight decades Saudi Arabia has been careful.

Using its vast oil wealth, it’s quietly spread its ultra-conservative brand of Islam throughout the Muslim world, secretly undermined secular regimes in its region, and prudently kept to the shadows while others did the fighting and dying. It was Saudi money that fueled the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, underwrote Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran, and bankrolled Islamic movements and terrorist groups from the Caucasus to the Hindu Kush.

It wasn’t a modest foreign policy, but it was a discreet one.

Today that circumspect diplomacy is in ruins, and the House of Saud looks more vulnerable than it has since the country was founded in 1926. Unraveling the reasons for the current train wreck is a study in how easily hubris, delusion, and old-fashioned ineptness can trump even bottomless wealth.

Oil Slick

The kingdom’s first stumble was a strategic decision last fall to undermine competitors by scaling up its oil production and thus lowering the global price.

They figured that if the price of a barrel of oil dropped from over $100 to around $80, it would strangle competitors that relied on more expensive sources and new technologies, including the U.S. fracking industry, companies exploring the Arctic, and emergent producers like Brazil. That, in turn, would allow Riyadh to reclaim its shrinking share of the energy market. There was also the added benefit that lower oil prices would damage oil-reliant countries that the Saudis didn’t like – including Russia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Iran.

In one sense it worked. The American fracking industry is scaling back, the exploitation of Canada’s tar sands has slowed, and many Arctic drillers have closed up shop. And indeed, countries like Venezuela, Ecuador, and Russia have taken serious economic hits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Putin and the Saudi Caravan

June 23, 2015

Putin and the Saudi Caravan

No one – as usual – saw it coming.

So guess who walks into a room in St. Petersburg this past Thursday; Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince – and Defense Minister – Muhammad bin Salman, favorite son of King Salman; Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir (former ambassador to the US and very close to key players in the Beltway); and all-powerful Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi. They were all there for a face-to-face with President Vladimir Putin, on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.
2015 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Day One
© SPUTNIK/ ILIYA PITALEV
SPIEF Shows West Wants to Return to Business as Usual in Russia

In principle, there could not be a more spectacular game-changer-in-waiting. A royal Saudi caravan offering tribute, in the form of incense, gold and myrrh (or higher oil prices)? No one knows, yet, how this will play out in the New Great Game in Eurasia, of which a major spin-off is Cold War 2.0 between the US and Russia.Putin and King Salman – very discreetly — had been in touch over the phone for weeks. The King’s son invited Putin to Riyadh. Accepted. Putin invited the King to Moscow. Accepted. No question, the suspense is already killing everybody. But is this real life? Or smoke and mirrors?

Who’s allied with whom?

First of all, the crucial energy front. Putin is now discussing what was, so far, an oil price war but may become – and the operative concept is “maybe” – a “petroleum alliance” (in Naimi’s words), directly with the source: the House of Saud.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20150622/1023689645.html#ixzz3dscF0SuY

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