Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Middle East Page 10 of 20

Saudi Arabia’s Laughably Stupid Plan for the End of Oil

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On April 29, 2019

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Image by Yuan2003

I’ve been predicting Saudi Arabia’s crackup for some time. Their society is completely dependent on oil revenues, and their rulers have no idea how to diversify off in time.

Couldn’t happen to a bigger bunch of jerks, though as usual, many innocents and powerless people will get dead, raped, and tortured as Saudi Arabia falls.

This piece by Jeff Spross, hasn’t changed my mind. It’s about how the Sauds are selling assets to get US dollars so they can pay for the changeover.

The expert Spross talks to has ideas on what the Sauds could use that money on:

Kaboub proposes the country use advanced aquaponics to build up its self-sufficiency in food — aquaponics can be done indoors for ten percent of the water used by traditional agriculture — and switch over to renewable energy. “It’s a prime location for wind and solar and geothermal,” he noted. Kaboub’s also a fan of a universal job guarantee, which he thinks can serve as a staging policy to lower unemployment and build up other domestic industries.

What does the royal family, lead by the Crown Prince bin Salman (of the Yemeni war and the chopping a journalist to pieces in the Istanbul embassy) think is a good plan?

For the moment, though, the Saudi government has a different vision. Their plan focuses somewhat on renewables and diversifying manufacturing, but the big initiative is on moving the economy more into high-end luxury tourism.

I am entirely sincere when I say that I never imagined they would be this stupid.

The Saud family’s days ruling Saudi Arabia are numbered. Praise God, because only he could have made them quite this imbecilic.

Lifted from the comments, by StewartM

Tourism?

As someone who knows someone who worked a stint in Saudi Arabia, this is gobsmacking. Let’s just name a few:

1) Want to go on a desert excursion? Oops, be careful, you may meet some religiously conservative armed Bedouins.

2) Hey, how about scuba diving along the coast? Well, don’t have an accident or the bends, because hospital services are limited to deal with it.

3) Public displays of affection are a no-no (we’re talking heterosexual husband and wife; don’t even thing same-gender). Mixing of the genders if they’re unrelated is a no-no too. The moral code is enforced by “volunteer” police zealots who have the power to detain you if they think you are breaking Islamic law.

Homosexuality and other violations of the Saudi Islamic moral code apply even in compounds exclusively for foreigners and are enforced in surprise raids.

4) Alcohol and pornography are banned. Mind you, the Saudis may deem your favorite character on the video game on your phone or laptop “pornographic” and seize your device, so their definition of “pornography” probably doesn’t match yours.

5) See something interesting? Want to take a photo? Don’t. You could be arrested for it, as a spy.

6) Don’t talk about politics, especially if it casts even the slightest detraction against the Saudi government or royal family.

7) Don’t wear any non-Islam religious emblems. Public observances of any other religious in a crime.

8) And let’s not talk about the difficulty in obtaining both an entry visa, and an exit visa, to boot. (I’d presume they’d fix that).

In short, Saudi Arabia would be a land where rich tourists would check into their $5,000-a-night hotel in a gated Western compound, and just stay there, not daring to go out. Oh, even then there might be a raid if immoral conduct is suspected.

Unless Crown Prince bin Salman’s plan involves remaking Saudi Arabia into a secular state, from stem to stern, Saudi Arabia will be a country where almost nobody wants to go visit. This is by design:

“My Kingdom will survive only insofar as it remains a country difficult to access, where the foreigner will have no other aim, with his task fulfilled, but to get out.” — King Abdul Aziz bin Saud, c. 1930

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

When Are You Guilty for the Crimes of Your Group

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On February 13, 2019

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One of the most stable political situations in the West is the use of charges of anti-semitism to attack those who criticize Israel.

Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, who championed Palestine in her primary run, was quickly broken by the pro-Israeli lobby, before she was even elected. The UK Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has been under constant attack for “anti-semitism” because Corbyn is sympathetic to Palestinians. And recently, Representative Ilhan Omar suggested that donation from AIPAC are why Congress supports Israel.

(I don’t think that’s mostly correct. They fear AIPAC for far more than monetary reasons.)

Anyway, Ilhan was forced to apologize.

I tend to avoid the Israel-Palestine issue because it’s so dangerous. It’s the only issue I’ve ever been told to shut my mouth about or else (a donor strike, in that case).

But let’s state this simply: Israel is a religious-ethnic apartheid settler state, where the land and homes of much of the people who lived there were seized by force.

The problem is that criticism if Israel, a particularly evil state, is deliberately conflated with criticism of Jews, because Israel is an explicitly Jewish state.

So, here’s the formula:

Jews: Wonderful.

Israelis: Citizens of an apartheid, colonial state running the world’s largest open air prison. Any Israeli who opposes their government’s Palestinian policies is good in that regard.

Any Israeli who supports the government is evil. It’s not hard.

Let us extend this:

Germans: Wonderful.

Germans who supported the Nazis. Evil.

Germans who opposed the Nazis. Good.

Or:

Americans: Wonderful

Americans who supported the Iraq War: Evil.

Americans who opposed the Iraq War: Good.

(We could instead say, oh, Whites, or African Americans, or women, then move to Americans.)

People have responsibility exactly equal to their power. Nonetheless, if you support evil, you are culpable.

Most ethical situations are, in fact, black and white. We like to pretend they aren’t. Let’s take another situation:

Raising the price of Insulin 1000 percent in a few years: Evil.

People who do it? Mass murderers.

Correct punishment? Same as for any other murderers.

None of this is to say redemption is impossible. One of my friends supported the Iraq War. He quickly realized his mistake, reversed his position and has consistently opposed shitty American wars since then.

George Bush wouldn’t get off so easy: He had a lot of power, therefore his responsibility is much greater and as he’s no longer in power, he can no longer “make it up”.

The rule for redemption is as follows:

First stop doing evil. Apologize. Make it up. Those insulin execs: Drop the prices back down. Disgorge all the profits you made, with a priority to the families of those you killed. That’s all it takes.

But if you keep doing it or supporting it you are responsible or complicit.

This isn’t hard. Don’t do evil. Don’t support evil. If you do or support evil, then you are stained by that evil.

As for Israelis: It is not their fault they are Israelis. However, if they support their government’s policies against Palestinians, well, they’re evil.

The same is true of Jews, as it is of individuals belonging to identity-group you wish to name.

With respect to Israel, well, all it has to do is offer all Palestinians full citizenship and give them reparations equal to what was stolen. This will probably mean the end of Israel as an religious-ethnic state, but, umm, are religious ethnic states a good thing?

We all know what is required when we do wrong. Stop doing harm, apologize, and recompense the victim(s) as best one is able. (Yeah, this applies to black descendents of slavery in the US, though not so much as it does to the remaining Native Americans in the US, Canada, and elsewhere.)

While often what we should do as individuals isn’t true of states, for redemption and forgiveness, it is. Stop doing evil. Say sorry. Make it up as best one can.

But first stop doing evil.

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“A Single Death Is a Tragedy…”; Saudi Edition

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On October 12, 2018

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“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. — Joseph Stalin”

So, one man, Jamal Khashoggi, gets tortured and killed, but he happens to be a man elites know and like, and suddenly…

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is engaged in a genocide in Yemen. Of course, the US has been aiding that genocide…

It’s not that Kashoggi’s death isn’t a crime, but that any number of nameless people can be killed, raped, and tortured, and elites don’t care. It’s only when it’s one of them that they care.

Normal people are nothing–less than nothing–to our elites.

But they take care of their own.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Tales of Canadian Healthcare and Potential Russia/US War in Syria

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On September 13, 2018

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So, posting has been, errr, non-existent for a bit as I’ve been dealing with some (probably minor) healthcare issues.

Earlier this week, I had exploratory surgery and, later, an MRI. The total time for the exploratory surgery (entering the hospital to leaving) was about five hours. The total time for the MRI was two hours, of which I spent 45 minutes semi-dozing inside the machine.

Total price? $20 for some pain killers to take home with me after the day-surgery. Oxycodone (the generic form of Oxycontin), which is the first time I’ve had it (I’ve had plenty of morphine and codeine at various points), and, ummm, I can see why a lot of people get addicted.

Generally speaking the nurses, doctors, techs, and orderlies were all polite and efficient. The nurses and doctors at the day surgery stood out as particularly solicitous, which I appreciated. I haven’t always had the best experience with surgery (understatement alert), so getting the feeling that they cared and were competent was nice.

Contrary to the propaganda, all of this was relatively expeditious. I don’t have an urgent problem, so the process hasn’t been super fast, but it hasn’t been slow, either.

And this is Canadian healthcare.

Regular posting should resume soon.

Idlib province in Syria is a potential flashpoint between the US and Syria/Russia. The Syrians want to clear up the Al-Qaeda subsidiary there, and the Americans want to pretend they aren’t Al-Qaeda, and have been saber rattling and stating that Assad is going to attack chemically, and the US will retaliate.

Lots of stupid here, and a small–but real–chance of starting something nasty between the US and Russia, which the US might well lose, actually, since the US has fallen behind both on missiles and missile defense technology.

Let’s hope not. Not getting into a war in Syria with Russia was Trump’s main selling point, but he seems to have since become deranged about Syria’s Iran ties, because the US’s foreign policy, apparently, is about doing what Saudi Arabia and Israel want, not what is good for the US.

Sigh.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

White Helmet

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On August 12, 2018

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MANDOS Post

The Assad regime in Syria is ghastly, and I have no truck with the sort of leftism or anti-imperialism that lionizes it as some kind of grand resistance against imperialism — it is of the same sort of moral absurdity that attempts to paint Russia as anything other than a weaker rival imperialist competing with the US, as though it were a kind of moral paragon. You can make a case for or against a multipolar world in utilitarian terms (more stable or prosperous in some sense?), you can have ideological content preferences among the different imperialism flavours, but ghastly regimes are still ghastly and military imperialism always involves mass suffering. Whose catspaw the Assad regime is does not make it more or less criminal. Someone who wants its overthrow is not automatically an ideological fellow-traveller of ISIS.

On the other hand, I also have no patience for the neoconservative/liberal hawk tomfoolery that uses the Assad regime’s ghastliness (and the horror show that encompasses its victory for anyone who is seen as an enemy of the regime) as a reason to wash away the utter failure and downright evil of the intervention in Iraq. (Is this “virtue-signalling”? I’m under the impression that in some quarters, if you’re anti-Assad, you must be an interventionist.) I am not a pacifist, so in principle I accept that there is a case to be made, under very abstracted conditions, for a stronger military power to intervene to prevent suffering in another country. In practice, the conditions under which this leads to a better outcome are very rare–if they ever occur at all. The risks of creating a worse situation in Syria, given the experience in Iraq, are extremely high. The vested interests are strong, the risk of making a bad situation worse from a direct overthrow of the Assad government are overwhelming for that and other reasons.

Which leads me to the question of the White Helmets. I gather that a lot of people on the “anti-imperialist” side view them as propaganda catspaws of imperialists. The reason for this seems largely to be that they operate in areas held by forces opposed to the regime (this to me is perfectly legitimate — how could a rebel trust the government to conduct rescues?), organizational and media help is offered by foreign entities with vested interests in the overthrow of the Assad government (again, to me legitimate — I would accept such help if I were opposed to the regime and in dire straits), and they receive foreign funding (ditto). None of these indict the organization to me — victims of Assad’s attempt to retake forces held by opposition groups are going to need rescue from someone and frankly, publicity.

Now it appears that a large number of them have been given asylum by Israel en route to being distributed to other countries, as Assad looks to retake most of all of Syria. If they stayed, surely they would face criminal proceedings (or, probably, much worse) from the Syrian government. But a lot of anti-imperialist (pro-Assad?) commentators, including/especially on the left, seem to view this as a further indictment of the White Helmets. Naturally, there is considerable moral inconsistency in Israel’s action, to say the least, but that is not an ethical quandary for those who are fleeing Assad.

What are they supposed to do? Stay and face Assad’s torturers (which he definitely uses)?

It should generally be possible to accept the legitimacy of opposition to Assad, including (especially!), rescue of his enemies, while criticizing the vested interests that might seek to take advantage of his overthrow.

The Hilarious Saudi-Canadian Dispute & The Less Hilarious Terrorism Threat From Saudi Arabia

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On August 8, 2018

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So, the Saudis are very very upset that Canada dared suggest they not violate human rights.

This is the offending tweet:

It started with a bit of fair tit-for-tat: The observation that Canada doesn’t treat its indigenous people well. Totally fair and true.

But then the Saudis, errr, escalated…

The Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia was expelled. Fifteen thousand Saudi students in Canadian universities have been ordered to go home and Saudi citizens in Canadian hospitals are being airlifted to non-Canadian hospitals.

Saudi Arabia has also ordered all state related organs holding Canadian securities to dump them, causing a drop in the Canadian dollar.

My reaction to all this is amusement, truly at the laugh-out-loud level.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, is hilariously incompetent and foolish. He keeps over-reaching. He tried to take out Qatar with an embargo and failed. He’s got an ongoing war with Yemen which is going to turn into a genocide. He’s selling off income-creating state assets to try and turn around the economy, in a step which will actually reduce state income and not improve the economy enough to make a difference.

He locked up a bunch of his relatives and other powerful Saudis, appears to have tortured them (at least one to death), and forced them to pay ransom to be released.

He’s running Saudi Arabia. He’s clearly an extraordinarily dangerous megalomaniac.

And his people threatened Canada with a terrorist attack!


There is no way that tweet can be taken as anything but a threat.

As Magnier says, any terrorist threat, especially by the biggest source of terrorist funding in the world, Saudi Arabia, should be taken seriously.

But…yeah, I’m sorry, fuck bin Salman. He seems to be confused about how much power he actually has. Canada needs nothing from Saudi Arabia. Nothing. We have plenty of our own oil, and that’s the only thing that Saudi Arabia has that matters in the world today.

Money? We have too much foreign money flooding in. Saudi Arabia’s money is a drop in the bucket compared to the Chinese money that has made housing unaffordable in all major Canadian cities.

Our problem isn’t getting foreign money. Our problem is we need to get rid of most of it. And if the Canadian dollar drops some, that’s fine. We export a lot.

As for the terrorist threat, by the leading terrorist country in the world (the US is it’s only competition), well, I do take it seriously. After all, most of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia.

What Canada should do is just let it be known that if any attack that even remotely looks related to Saudi Arabia hits Canada, we’ll start supplying Saudi enemies with weapons–all the stuff that the Saudis don’t want them to have.

Oh, and as NATO members, we’ll blame Saudi Arabia, and state that an attack on one is an attack on all.

Saudi Arabia has only one card left that matters, other than terrorism: Selling oil in US dollars. That is it. Once the petro-dollar is broken (and it is going to be because other countries are moving to sell in something other than dollars), the US has no reason to continue supporting them.

Meanwhile, the rise of solar and electric cars means that the last oil boom is probably done, and if not, there’ll only be one more. Bin Salman’s desperate, and desperately stupid moves to try and diversify the economy won’t work: It’s too late and he’s doing it the wrong way.

The Saudi state will run out of money, and when states run out of money? That is when revolutions occur. Running out of money to pay the citizenry off and the enforcers is when it always happens.

Hopefully Bin Salman will be killed cleanly and not tortured, but I suspect a lot of his victims hope he gets a taste of his own medicine.

Saudi Arabia’s problems have almost nothing to do with foreigners making toothless observations about civil rights. Bin Salman should end his idiotic war in Yemen, stop picking foreign fights, then stand down and let someone competent take the reins. It’s the only chance his family has of keeping control of Saudi Arabia.

But, frankly, his family should lose control. Can’t happen soon enough. It’s just sad that so many people will suffer along the way. But that suffering is the responsibility of the Saudi royal family, not some powerless foreigners commenting on women’s rights who anyone with a sense of proportion would simply have ignored.

Pathetic.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

The Yemeni Holocaust

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On June 4, 2018

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We often ask, what would we do if there was another Holocaust? Surely we would do something? Surely, at least, we would not be complicit?

The question might have been answered in Rwanda, where the UN commander begged the UN for orders to intervene, orders which never came. The general, Romeo Dallaire, has spent the rest of his life curled around his failure to act despite orders.

Meanwhile, we have the blockade of Yemen, which despite claims, continues:

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, expressed his concern regarding the “recent decline of commercial food imports through the Red Sea ports” — adding that, if conditions do not improve, the number of Yemenis at the brink of starvation would rise from the current figure of 8.4 million to 18.4 million by this December. Given that there are approximately 28 million people in Yemen, a continuation of the Saudi-led blockade would mean that nearly two-thirds of the entire country’s population will soon face starvation.

Not sure how many of those who face starvation will starve to death, rather than simply sit on the edge of death, but millions of lives are at risk, this is deliberate, it is happening in slow motion, and the rest of the world is doing nothing.

Well, if they aren’t helping the mass murder, like America (and America was helping under Obama, so no, this isn’t a partisan issue.)

America could stop Saudi Arabia cold if it wanted to; and it certainly could at least not participate.

But, of course, we all know that in the run up to World War II no one cared what was happening to the Jews: we refused to let in Jewish refugee ships, after all. If all Hitler had done was the Holocaust, no one would have gone to war with him over that.

Not that the US needs to go to war; the simple credible threat of sanctions would bring Saudi Arabia to its knees. Nor does the US, post shale oil, need Saudi Arabia’s oil, but the Saudis, in any case, are no longer in a position to not sell. Their own society would implode in months.

Europe could do this too: SWIFT is located in Europe and subject to European law. Apparently Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, which Netanyahu has stated was 5 years from a nuclear bomb since the early nineties, was worth Europeans forcing SWIFT to cut them off (SWIFT objected), but not millions of Yemeni deaths.

Since Europe = Germany (no, don’t pretend, if Germany wants it, it happens), that means the Germans, having done the Holocaust are now sitting aside when they could stop millions of deaths, and doing nothing.

Lovely.

Well, I guess we’ll just watch.

And no, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince is not a good guy even if he has decided to let Saudi women drive.

The only bright lining on all this is that Saudi Arabia will be in civil war itself by 2030, I suspect.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer country.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Israeli Killings Are the Result of De-Humanization of Palestinians

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On May 15, 2018

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So, Palestinians protested moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, and Israel shot and killed somewhere between 52 and 60 of them, and injured hundreds more.

The rule of international law (yes, I know, a dead letter) is that force must be proportional to threat.

This is disproportionate.

The simple fact is that too many Israelis now think of Palestinians as sub-human; animals to be killed if they are inconvenient.

Israel is an apartheid state. A large chunk of the population is denied their rights–including their right to vote. And both the West Bank and Gaza are, yes, open air prisons.

The two state solution is dead. I’m not sure it was ever viable, but it no longer is. Israel will either have to cleanse Palestinians from its territory (something the de-humanization is clearly working them up to) or Israel as a religious-ethnic state will, inevitably, end.

It is well noted that those who are abused tend to become abusers. The applicability to Israel is obvious and sad.

Still, while tragic, today’s events pale in comparison to what Saudi Arabia, with America’s assistance, is doing in Yemen.

Plenty of tragedies to go around on Earth.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

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