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The Saudi and American Way

The Saudi and American Way

The Saudi and American Way

The U.S.-Saudi-UAE “Operation Restoring Hope” has become their plan to bomb the food-supply route that the residents in the Shiite Houthi area of Yemen rely upon in order to receive food, and thereby for the U.S.-Saudi-UAE alliance to win their war against the Houthis — who are Shiites — and to take full control over Yemen, by forcing this Houthi population to either surrender to the Sauds’ strict Sunni rule, or else starve to death. Saudi Arabia, on occasion, bombs its own Shia areas; so, doing it in its neighbor Yemen is no stretch for them. However, the Shiites inside Saudi Arabia aren’t also being starved to death. Starving Shiites to death is something new for Saudi Arabia’s troops. And, therefore, the troops who have this assignment, seem to be, perhaps, squeamish about it; but, in any case, they evidently need some ‘moral’ guidance, in order to do it.

On July 10th, the owner of Saudi Arabia, the royal Saud family (by means of the Crown Prince), issued a proclamation providing absolution in advance for any bloodshed, torture, rape, or anything else, that their troops perpetrate in their “Operation Restoring Hope.” Now, whatever the troops of Saudi Arabia do, to conquer Yemen, has been officially approved in advance. These soldiers won’t need to fear any repercussions against themselves. Whatever they do, is officially okay — it’s been authorized in advance.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Salman al-Saud — who will inherit ownership of Saudi Arabia when the current King Salman al-Saud dies — issued the July 10th decree, and this decree will be presented here, in full.

For some reason, which the decree doesn’t state, this decree was viewed by Prince Salman to be necessary, in order for the U.S.-Saudi-UAE alliance to carry “Operation Restoring Hope” to a successful completion — victory. (“Restoring Hope” to the victors.)

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

On The Verge Of Catastrophe: Saudi Arabia Says Lebanon Declared War

On The Verge Of Catastrophe: Saudi Arabia Says Lebanon Declared War

As expected, Saudi Arabia has cast itself as the victim of external Shia plotting after its internal weekend of chaos which included a missile attack from Yemen, the deaths of two princes and other high officials within a mere 24 hours, and an aggressive crackdown against dissent in the royal family which saw close to a dozen princes placed under house arrest. And as Al Jazeera noted,in this Saudi version of ‘Game of Thrones’, the 32-year-old Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) shows that he is willing to throw the entire region into jeopardy to wear the royal gown.

While Saudi Arabia has long blamed Iran for sowing unrest in the region, this evening’s declaration by Saudi Gulf affairs minister Thamer al-Sabhan that Lebanon has “declared war” against the kingdom is truly an historic first. But perhaps the biggest problem is that international media is currently uncritically spreading the statement, whereas what such a bizarre claim actually warrants is laughter. Thankfully, Nassim Nicholas Taleb sums it up nicely with a basic geography lesson: “Either the media is stupid, or Saudi rulers are stupid, or both. Lebanon did not formally declare war and there is no common border.”

With that in mind, here is the statement currently making headlines as reported by Reuters:

Saudi Arabia said on Monday that Lebanon had declared war against it because of attacks against the Kingdom by the Lebanese Shi‘ite group Hezbollah.

Saudi Gulf affairs minister Thamer al-Sabhan told Al-Arabiya TV that Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation as Lebanon’s prime minister on Saturday, had been told that acts of “aggression” by Hezbollah “were considered acts of a declaration of war against Saudi Arabia by Lebanon and by the Lebanese Party of the Devil”.

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

A “Nervous” NATO Fears Turkey, Russia May Soon Go To War

A “Nervous” NATO Fears Turkey, Russia May Soon Go To War

If you want our take – and let’s face it, you must because that’s why you’re here – we wouldn’t put too much faith in today’s announced Syrian “ceasefire” agreement.

Although the deal calls for the cessation of hostilities as of Saturday at midnight, you shouldn’t expect the Russians and the Iranians to halt their advance on Aleppo and likewise, you shouldn’t expect Turkey to stop shelling the Azaz corridor in a largely transparent effort to keep the supply lines to the rebels open.

The stakes are simply too high now. As we’ve explained exhaustively, the fall of Aleppo to Hezbollah and the Russians would for all intents and purposes be the end of the rebellion. Assad would once again control the bulk of the country’s urban backbone in the west and that would mean his rule would be effectively restored.

Additionally, don’t expect Hezbollah to simply pack up and head back to Lebanon once the rebels are defeated. Iran will most likely keep Hassan Nasrallah’s army in place to provide security as well as members of the various Shiite militias the Quds called over from Iraq. Similarly, the Russians won’t be going anywhere either. Vladimir Putin now has an air base and a naval base in Syria and The Kremlin will want to protect those installations vociferously during what is likely to be a turbulent couple of years following the demise of the rebel cause.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia know all of this and they’re fuming mad. The last thing Saudi Arabia wants is for Tehran to preserve the Shiite crescent and the supply line to Lebanon and Turkey is now in a bitter feud with the Russians following Erdogan’s ill-fated move to down an Su-24 near the border on November 24.

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

Turkey, Saudi Arabia Mull Syria Ground Invasion As Russia, Hezbollah Decimate Rebels

Turkey, Saudi Arabia Mull Syria Ground Invasion As Russia, Hezbollah Decimate Rebels

“What’s going on in Syria can only go on for so long. At some point it has to change,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on a plane back to Turkey from Latin America over the weekend.

As we’ve documented extensively over the past several days, Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha have their backs against the wall when it comes to the effort to oust Bashar al-Assad and perpetuate Sunni hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula.

Hezbollah has surrounded Aleppo and their advance is backed by what’s been described as an unrelenting Russian air campaign. The rebels’ supply lines to Turkey have been cut and without a direct intervention by either the US or the Gulf states, the battle for Syria will have been lost for the opposition which pulled out of peace talks in Geneva citing the ongoing aerial bombardment by Moscow.

Now, with time running out, both Saudi Arabia and Turkey are weighing ground invasions.

“You don’t talk about these things. When necessary, you do what’s needed,” Erdogan said, when asked if Ankara was considering sending troops into Syria. “Right now our security forces are prepared for all possibilities,” he added.

For Erdogan, there’s only one acceptable outcome: Sunni militants oust Assad and take control of Damascus. Assad’s ouster is the desired outcome for the Saudis as well, but Erdogan has a secondary agenda in Syria: preventing the conflict from strengthening the Kurds. That means he’s against any support for the YPG – even if such support would help facilitate regime change.

Over the weekend Erdogan blasted both Russia and the US.

What are you doing in Syria? You’re essentially an occupier,” he said, in a message to Vladimir Putin. “How can we trust you?

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

Risking World War III in Syria

Risking World War III in Syria


Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last October said in a little noticed comment that the United States was ready to take “direct action on the ground” in Syria. Vice President Joe Biden said in Istanbul last month that if peace talks in Geneva failed, the United States was prepared for a “military solution” in that country.

The peace talks collapsed on Wednesday even before they began. A day later Saudi Arabia said it is ready to invade Syria while Turkey is building up forces at its Syrian border.

Saudi King Salman meets with President Barack Obama at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Saudi King Salman meets with President Barack Obama at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The U.N. aims to restart the talks on Feb. 25 but there is little hope they can begin in earnest as the Saudi-run opposition has set numerous conditions. The most important is that Russia stop its military operation in support of the Syrian government, which has been making serious gains on the ground.

A day after the talks collapsed, it was revealed that Turkey has begun preparations for an invasion of Syria, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. On Thursday, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: “We have good reasons to believe that Turkey is actively preparing for a military invasion of a sovereign state – the Syrian Arab Republic. We’re detecting more and more signs of Turkish armed forces being engaged in covert preparations for direct military actions in Syria.” The U.N. and the State Department had no comment.

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

Saudi Arabia “Ready To Send Ground Troops To Syria”

Saudi Arabia “Ready To Send Ground Troops To Syria”

Last month, when Saudi Arabia announced it would be heading (that’s heading, not beheading) a 34-nation “anti-terror coalition”, everyone who knows anything at all about the Mid-East and about the sectarian divide laughed hysterically.

Why? Because Saudi Arabia is without question the world’s number one state sponsor of terror. Riyadh would vehemently deny that charge but when your state religion is Wahhabism it’s a bit difficult to explain how it is that you’re not contributing to the rise of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Fortunately for the Saudis, they’ve got all the oil, which means the world looks the other way while the government racks up an abysmal human rights record and sticks to policies that look like they walked right out of the seventh century.

Here’s an excerpt from “Saudi Arabia: An ISIS That Has Made It,” by Kamel Daoud:

Black Daesh, white Daesh. The former slits throats, kills, stones, cuts off hands, destroys humanity’s common heritage and despises archaeology, women and non-Muslims. The latter is better dressed and neater but does the same things. The Islamic State; Saudi Arabia. In its struggle against terrorism, the West wages war on one, but shakes hands with the other. This is a mechanism of denial, and denial has a price: preserving the famous strategic alliance with Saudi Arabia at the risk of forgetting that the kingdom also relies on an alliance with a religious clergy that produces, legitimizes, spreads, preaches and defends Wahhabism, the ultra-puritanical form of Islam that Daesh feeds on.

And so, when the Saudis announced they were set to launch their own “war” on terror, we couldn’t help but chuckle at the sheer absurdity. “That’s right ladies and gentlemen, you no longer have anything to fear from Sunni extremists because the undisputed king of promoting Sunni extremism is on the case,” we quipped, incredulous.

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

One Map That Explains the Dangerous Saudi-Iranian Conflict

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

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

Saudi Arabia’s Gruesome Provocation

Saudi Arabia’s Gruesome Provocation


There should be little doubt that Saudi Arabia wanted to escalate regional tensions into a crisis by executing Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. On the same day, Riyadh also unilaterally withdrew from the ceasefire agreement in Yemen.

By allowing protesters to torch the Saudi embassy in Tehran in response, Iran seems to have walked right into the Saudi trap. If Saudi Arabia succeeds in forcing the United States into the conflict by siding with the kingdom, then its objectives will have been met.

President Barack Obama walks past a military honor guard formation during an arrival ceremony at King Khalid International airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2014 (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

President Barack Obama walks past a military honor guard formation during an arrival ceremony at King Khalid International airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 28, 2014 (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

It is difficult to see that Saudi Arabia did not know that its decision to execute Nimr would not cause uproar in the region and wouldn’t put additional strains on its already tense relations with Iran. The inexcusable torching of the Saudi embassy in Iran — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned it and called it “totally unjustifiable,” though footage shows that Iranian security forces did little to prevent the attack — in turn provided Riyadh with the perfect pretext to cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. With that, Riyadh significantly undermined U.S.-led regional diplomacy on both Syria and Yemen.

Saudi Arabia has long opposed diplomatic initiatives that Iran participated in – be it in Syria or on the nuclear issue – and that risked normalizing Tehran’s regional role and influence.

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

From Baghdad to Bahrain…From Beruit to Tehran – Tensions Are Exploding Across the Middle East

From Baghdad to Bahrain…From Beruit to Tehran – Tensions Are Exploding Across the Middle East

Either the rebel prince succeeds in convincing enough people who matter to remove the King, or the King counters and drives the prince out. The former situation is far and away the best option for stability in the Middle East, and would likely allow the Saudi royal lineage to hold on to power for longer. If the second scenario unfolds, current leadership will crack down even harder on dissent and run the state further into the ground. This behavior will ultimately lead to an unpredictable and likely violent revolution, and if you think the Middle East is volatile now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

As John F. Kennedy accurately noted:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

This also applies to Saudi Arabia.

– From the post: Regime Change is Coming – Saudi Prince Calls for Coup to Remove King

If you’re like me, you’ve probably been pretty checked out of global news over the past severals days. It’s time to get checked in.

The extremely dangerous developments currently unfolding throughout the Middle East cannot be overstated. Indeed, it appears we may be on the verge of all out regional conflict. In order to understand what’s happening and where things might go, let’s review the events of recent days.

On January 2nd, Saudi officials welcomed the New Year by holding its largest mass execution since 1980. 47 individuals were put to death across 12 cities, some by firing squad, others by beheading. While the vast majority (43) were Sunni jihadists accused of attacks upon Western compounds and government buildings during the 2003-2006 period, the remaining victims were Shiite dissidents, most notably the revered and prominent cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

The resulting backlash from Beruit to Tehran, from Baghdad to Bahrain, has been nothing short of explosive. Expect this execution to be remembered as a major catalyst in the regional chaos to come.

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

After Executing Regime Critic, Saudi Arabia Fires Up American PR Machine

Saudi Arabia’s well-funded public relations apparatus moved quickly after Saturday’s explosive execution of Shiite political dissident Nimr al-Nimr to shape how the news is covered in the United States.

The execution led protestors in Shiite-run Iran to set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran, precipitating a major diplomatic crisis between the two major powers already fighting proxy wars across the Middle East.

The Saudi side of the story is getting a particularly effective boost in the American media through pundits who are quoted justifying the execution, in many cases without mention of their funding or close affiliation with the Saudi Arabian government.

Meanwhile, social media accounts affiliated with Saudi Arabia’s American lobbyists have pushed English-language infographics, tweets, and online videos to promote a narrative that reflects the interests of the Saudi regime.

A Politico article about the rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran by Nahal Toosi, for instance, quoted only three sources: the State Department, which provided a muted response to the executions; the Saudi government; and Fahad Nazer, identified as a “political analyst with JTG Inc.” Nazer defended the executions, saying that they served as a “message … aimed at Saudi Arabia’s own militants regardless of their sect.”

What Politico did not reveal was that Nazer is himself a former political analyst at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a think tank formed last year that discloses that it is fully funded by the Saudi Embassy and the United Arab Emirates.

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

Sunni & Shia Tensions Rise in Middle East

Sunni & Shia Tensions Rise in Middle East

Protesters stormed and ransacked Saudi Arabia’s embassy on Sunday after gathering to denounce the kingdom for executing a prominent Shia cleric. They stormed the embassy, smashed furniture, setting the embassy on fire, and threw papers from the roof. They were eventually cleared away by the police, Iran’s ISNA news agency reported.

On Saturday, Saudi Arabia announced it had executed 47 prisoners convicted of terrorism charges, including al-Qaeda detainees and Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr who had rallied protests against the government. It was the execution of al-Nimr which had been expected to increase sectarian tensions across the entire region and deepen the hatred between Sunnji and Shia minority in Saudi Arabia’s not to mention with the Shia in Iran.

Indeed, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Jaberi Ansari had been quoted on the state-owned English-language Press TV warning that the Saudi monarchy would pay a heavy price for its policies while a Iranian cleric, Hossein Nouri Hamedani, said this would raise significant tensions.

ISIS: The ‘Enemy’ the US Created, Armed, and Funded

To delve into Daesh’s convoluted money trail, one must first explore its equally convoluted origins. And in both areas, the role of the U.S. and its allies can not be ignored.

(MINTPRESSOut of nowhere, it seems, Daesh, also commonly referred to as ISIL or ISIS, spontaneously formed, a group that perverts aspects of Islam for its own violent ends, and threatens, we are told, all that the civilized world holds dear.

The “war on terror,” governments inform their citizens, has a new front. And that front is Daesh.

Let us not be too hasty. Things are not always what they appear. Daesh is well-financed, and that money must be coming from somewhere other than a ragtag band of malcontents. Daesh soldiers have advanced weaponry and sophisticated communications methods. They have tanks and Humvees. None of these can be obtained without significant funding. Though the source is quite illusive, there is some evidence that will lead to a trail.

First, we must look at Daesh’s origins, and even that is not easily discernible. Writing for The Guardian in August 2014, Ali Khedery suggests:

“Principally, Isis is the product of a genocide that continued unabated as the world stood back and watched. It is the illegitimate child born of pure hate and pure fear – the result of 200,000 murdered Syrians and of millions more displaced and divorced from their hopes and dreams. Isis’s rise is also a reminder of how Bashar al-Assad’s Machiavellian embrace of al-Qaida would come back to haunt him.

Facing Assad’s army and intelligence services, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s Shia Islamist militias and their grand patron, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Syria’s initially peaceful protesters quickly became disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised – and then radicalised and violently militant.”

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

Protesters Set The Streets On Fire In Bahrain After Saudis Kill Top Shiite Cleric

Protesters Set The Streets On Fire In Bahrain After Saudis Kill Top Shiite Cleric

Earlier today, we documented Saudi Arabia’s largest mass execution in 25 years.

In what was billed as an effort to rid the world of 47 “terrorists”, the Saudis killed dozens of al-Qaeda affiliates and four Shiites who stood accused of shooting policemen in the anti-government protests which broke out during the Arab Spring.

Among the Shiites killed was prominent cleric Nimr al-Nimr. The Sheikh was an outspoken supporter of the anti-government movement and his death drew sharp condemnation from Iran, Hezbollah, and the Houthis on Saturday.

In the wake of the execution, “scores marched through Nimr’s home district of Qatif shouting ‘down with the Al Saud’ and, in neighboring Bahrain, police fired tear gas at several dozen people who gathered to protest the news,” AP reported.

“Bahrain’s Saudi-backed Sunni authorities crushed protests led by its majority Shia shortly after they erupted on February 14, 2011, taking their cue from Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa,” al-Jazeera wrote back in February when hundreds took to the streets of Manama to commemorate the anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising. “Tensions are running high in the kingdom where a sectarian divide is deepening and there is a growing gap between the Sunni minority government and the Island’s Shia majority.”

Below, find the searing (literally) images from Bahrain where police fired tear gas at protesters to disperse the crowds.

Are the days of the Gulf monarchies numbered?

Historic New Harpers Article Exposes Who Controls America

Historic New Harpers Article Exposes Who Controls America

There can be little doubt now: America’s decades-long catastrophic failures to make significant progress in eliminating even a single one of the numerous jihadist groups around the world is due to the American government’s secret under-the-table crucial ongoing assistance to those groups, and this American-government support has intentionally encouraged recent terrorist events especially in Syria, Libya, and other countries that had been allied with Russia — but which might be flipped ‘our’ way, by those jihadists. In such countries (America’s ‘enemies’), the U.S. government calls the jihadist groups ‘moderates’ and ‘pro-democracy.’ But in Christian, Jewish, and Shiite-Muslim dominant countries, they’re instead called “terrorists,” which is what they actually are. George Orwell called such linguistic tricks for fooling any nation’s mass of suckers, “Newspeak,” but America’s version is more sophisticated than his fictional one was. And so is America’s version of Orwell’s “Big Brother” more sophisticated than his — and now we know what it actually is, because of this:

The great investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn, in the January 2016 issue of Harpers Magazine, has come forth with what may be the best public-affairs article I’ve ever seen (it’s at that link), because he has interviewed key individuals in the U.S. government’s CIA and other intelligence agencies, some of whom he even identifies by name (i.e., they’re retired), and all of whom provide different details of the very same stunning huge story, a story that I have been reporting only in bits and pieces over the past year, but for which Cockburn offers an astounding amount of fuller and entirely new documentation — it blows everything else away.

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

Saudi Royal Family Announces Its New Global Sunni Military Empire

Saudi Royal Family Announces Its New Global Sunni Military Empire

(NOTE: Some news-media have made clear to me flat-out that they won’t publish anything that criticizes the Saudi royal family, especially not as being what they really are, but I have included those media on my distribution-list anyway, as I always do. I send everything I do to all of them, regardless of whether or not they will consider publishing my reports.)

An official announcement from the world’s leading, and most fundamentalistic, Sunni Islamic nation, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday December 15th, has introduced a Sunni-Islamic counterpart to NATO, and it includes one NATO member, Turkey, which is already at war against NATO’s enemy Russia, and against Russia’s ally the non-sectarian, secular Shiite, Bashar al-Assad, who runs Syria. The Sauds’ “Joint Statement on Formation of Islamic Military Alliance” has been signed by 34 Sunni-led nations, with “more than ten other Islamic countries” that “have expressed their support for this … alliance and will take the necessary measures” to join, “including Indonesia” (the highest-population Islamic-majority nation). All of those “Islamic countries” are specifically Sunni-led, not  Shiite-led.

The two top importers of U.S. weapons are #1 Saudi Arabia, and #2 Turkey. Both are Sunni, and no Shiite nation is even on the list. The new, 34-nation-plus military alliance could cause U.S. military producers to soar. And the figures shown there for Saudi Arabia grossly understate the reality. For example, on 13 September 2010, Britain’s Telegraph  bannered “US secures record $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia,” and other lesser arms bonanzas to the U.S. from the Sauds came in the years after, so that a figure of only “$1,199,000,000” for the year 2014 (given in the first of those two links) is no fair indication of the reality, which is that the Saud family dwarfs any other buyer of U.S. armaments. And, U.S. ‘news’ media refuse to allow their reporters to cover the ugly reality of how those weapons are being used — and they fire any who publicly object.

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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