Saudi Arabia’s new Leader is like Trump. Paranoid, Dictatorial, Abusive, Misogynistic, Rich, Unscrupulous. MbS is a Bully.
Mad that Canada asked for the freeing of jailed Civil Society workers, Saudi has violated the rights of its own doctors, patients and university students, demanding they all leave Canada. Canada will not let patients flee with trailing, dripping intravenous tubing while carrying their bedpans but instead will ensure a safe and smooth transition to where patients seek their care, but some patients might be traumatized by the sudden dislocation by Riyadh. In the case of specializing Saudi Doctors, their Canadian Citizenship should not be too hard to ensure. Get on the phone, Doctor.
by Melissa Hemingway Feminine-Perspective Staff
Saudi Arabia Just Opened a can of Wind
Renewable energy generates electricity from sustainable sources like wind, solar, and geothermal power with little or no pollution or global warming emissions. Clean energy must replace fossil fuels in the next 20 years or less say some scientists. Photo: Union of concerned Scientists
The Kingdom of Saud’s power is dependant on its country’s naturally occurring non-renewable oil reserves and daily sales of 13.24% of the world oil market according to Forbes and many other financial expert group publications. Apart from this and its ability to launch the worst terrorist attacks in all of history, Saudi Arabia is otherwise bland on the notability scale.
Feminine-Perspective: Saudi Arabia’s impunity for human rights abuses is derived from its oil-money power. This should be incentive enough for oil buying nations to become clean-energy self-sufficient using sustainable sources like wind, solar, and geothermal power with little or no pollution or global warming emissions.
The net worth of the entire royal family has been estimated at well over $1.4 trillion, says Forbes and Wikipedia. One could do a lot of good with that kind of money but sadly, the Kingdom is not reaching for altruism.
Saudi Arabia has proven reserves of over 266 billion barrels, according to government estimates submitted to OPEC. If these numbers are correct, Saudi Arabia’s reserves will last for 70 years at the average production rate of 10.2 million barrels per day reported for last year.
From: OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2017
But the human race will not last 70 years according to environmentalists unless clean energy-technologies replace our dirty fossil fuels that are killing the globe.
There are 27.1 million Saudi nationals and 8.4 million non-nationals living in Saudi (Saudi Arabia Population 2018).
Between 2 million and 4 million of the country’s native Saudis live on less than $530 a month–about $17 a day–considered the poverty line in Saudi Arabia.
Corruption reins the people, not good leaders.
Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (aka MbS) Photo by Mazen Al Darrab – Sent via OTRS, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
- Area: 2,149,690 sq km
- Population: 32.5 million Note: Saudi nationals make up 20.4 million, or 62.6 per cent of the total population, according to Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture and Information (2018)
- Median age: 27.5 years
- Capital: Riyadh
- Ethnic Groups: Arab 90%, Afro-Asian 10%
- Religion: Muslim (85-90% Sunni and 10-15% Shiite, citizens), Other (includes Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh) (2012 est.)
- GDP (purchasing power parity): $1.756 trillion (2016 est.)
- GDP per capita: $55,300 (2016 est.)
- Unemployment: 5.6% (Saudi men only, 2016 est.)
- Other Facts: Economy -Saudi Arabia possesses approximately 22% of the world’s oil reserves.
- It is the world’s largest exporter of petroleum liquids and relies on the oil industry for almost half of its GDP.
- Saudi Arabia was a founding member of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) in 1960.
- More than 30% of Saudi Arabia’s population is made up of foreign workers.
- Women’s Rights – Saudi Arabia has a guardianship system based on strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. The system is not a formal law. Under the guardianship system, women cannot marry, divorce, travel, get a job or have elective surgery without permission from their male guardians. Also, women can’t mix freely with members of the opposite sex, and must wear a full-length black abaya in public. In 2011, King Abdullah announced that women will be allowed to nominate candidates for the next set of municipal elections. In December 2015, women were allowed to vote for the first time, 979 women ran for office, and 17 were elected. In September 2017, a royal decree was issued that will allow women in the country to drive. Saudi Arabia will allow women into three sports stadiums starting in early this year.
Join other scientists and civil society experts to help confront climate change and other science-related issues of the 21st Century. Special tools, training, and action opportunities will help you leverage your expertise and fight back against the latest attacks on science. Join The Union of Concerned Scientists – Photo Credit: December 2016, Union of Concerned Scientists.
According to the London Economist and other sources, Muhammad bin Salman (aka MbS) made himself the sole face of Saudi policy.
It was a dizzying Saturday in Saudi Arabia when on November 4th 2017, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced that scores of people had been held in a massive MbS Anti-Corruption Sweep and Purge. The best-known figure was Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire businessman and investor who owns big chunks of American firms such as Citigroup and News Corporation. But the detainees also include ten other princes; dozens of current and former ministers; the chairman of the Saudi Binladin Group, a construction conglomerate; and the owner of MBC, the largest satellite network in the Middle East. Some are reportedly being held in Riyadh’s opulent Ritz-Carlton, which told paying guests to leave and stopped accepting new bookings. — Paraphrased from The Economist
In a separate move Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman sacked several ministers, notably Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, the commander of the National Guard, consolidating the power of the young crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman (often known as MBS), the hugely ambitious son of King Salman. — Paraphrased from The Economist
MbS Policy is Brutal on Human Rights & Rife with Bullying
According to Reuters nine months ago, ‘more than 200 Saudi people were questioned and dozens of princes, officials and top businessmen detained in a wide reaching MbS Corruption Sweep and Purge. Over 2,000 bank accounts have been frozen by investigators, commercial bankers told Reuters’.
Our sources in Riyadh suggest that the MbS Corruption Sweep and Purge was all about consolidation of power. The amount of loss to the kingdom they say is equivalent to around 800 billion to a trillion United States dollars stolen from the coffers of Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince, they say, has promised to recover at least 100 billion for the people of Saudi Arabia.
These same sources who don’t want to be identified for obvious reasons say that corruption at these levels is normal in Saudi Arabia which “has more money than anyone can count” but the Crown Prince has consistent with other acts launched the MbS Corruption Sweep and Purge to “consolidate his own power and control over the kingdom and its wealth.” The latter statement is rumoured but no one else was willing to give us those words in a statement out of fear of repercussions. That fear of MbS seems widespread.
The Crown Prince Bully Pulpit
Saudi Arabia is a Sharia nation. It is an extremist Islamic Caliphate for Salafi Islamists* exactly like what the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, IS, Daesh) sought to achieve in its Caliphate from 2014 through 2017 in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, The Philippines and other locations.
*The Wahhabi, or Salafi, branch of Sunni Islam has been closely tied to the Saud family since the 18th century. When the Saud family established the modern country of Saudi Arabia in the 1930s, the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam became the kingdom’s official state-sponsored religion. One of the five pillars of Islam is performing Hajj, by travelling to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, at least once. Approximately two million people a year make the pilgrimage. Saudi Arabia bans public worship by non-Muslims and severely restricts public displays of religion by non-Wahhabi-sect Muslims, including Shiites. (CIA)
In November 2017, Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Saad Hariri was kidnapped by Saudi Arabia and presented with a resignation letter to read on the Arabia television channel. This was taken by the Lebanese people as a national insult and an effort to destabilize and maybe even take over the Lebanese government if not to remote control the country as Syria once did.
Lebanese workers post signs decrying the Saudi kidnapping of popular prime minister Saad Hariri. They say the sign translates to, “It is a ‘Saad’ event.” Photo Credit: Associated Press (AP).
Saudi told its citizens to leave Beirut.
Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, who also serves as the nation’s foreign minister, told the UK Independent that Saudi Arabia is “bullying” all of its neighbours and risking new conflicts.
Countries led by Saudi Arabia severed relations in June of last year as saudi accused the Qatar government of supporting terrorism and violating cooperation agreements.
But Saudi Arabia is a Terrorist State Itself
The Republican Party of the United States has a conflict between human rights in the United States and grabbing money. Making more money than you can imagine, staggering amounts of money in the hands of greedy men while 43 million people live in deprivation and poverty, is what we are talking about and that is probably why Trump supporters will not want to believe this. But America had such deep money ties with Saudi Arabian oil, construction and engineering concerns it could not possibly even reprimand Saudi Arabia for killing 2966 Americans and injuring g000 in the September 11, 2001 attacks on America.
George W. Bush, the second Bush to become President, was pushed into office by a second-generation operative for an international anarchistic stateless banking network.
George Pratt Shultz, a Republican Party king maker by this time following years in government, and a major American policy influence, operates largely behind the scenes, but decisively toward carrying out the global agenda of his businesses and a group of cultish international bankers of incomprehensible wealth. These were bankers financially married to a group that included Schultz, the Bush family and the Bin Ladin dynasties’ money/business concerns. Simultaneously this small but powerful banking network connected to any policy-making influence they could lever or buy to both protect and enhance their wealth and concomitantly the wealth of their clients.
The BinLadin Corporation in Saudi Arabia is a major engineering and construction company which also owns at arm’s length significant holdings in the oil industry to which it provides construction and engineering services or indeed acts as a contractor for outside construction and engineering services.
According to the Hoover Institute George Pratt Shultz (97) has had a distinguished career in government, in academia, and in the world of business. He is one of two individuals who have held four different federal cabinet posts; he has taught at three of this country’s great universities; and for eight years he was president of a major engineering and construction company. Bechtel Corporation is an engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company. It is the largest construction company in the United States and the 8th-largest privately owned American company in 2017 (Wikipedia).
On September 11 in 2001, Osama bin Ladin of Saudi Arbia allegedly led the 9/11 attacks on American soil. Nineteen young men with their whole adult lives ahead of them commandeered airliners and flew suicidal mass-murder crash- missions into important US buildings in New York City and the Washington DC area.
Fifteen of the 19 attackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and the others were from the United Arab Emirates (2), Egypt(1), and Lebanon(1).
The first phone call George Pratt Shultz received about this event was from George W. Bush. The second was likely from a Bin Ladin family member.
George Shultz was owed plenty by the G.W. Bush team who gained power from Shultz.
Shultz, who had picked Texas Governor George W. Bush in the late 1990s as a controllable candidate he would help win. Shultz got to work and called in favours from the religious right of America who got behind Bush, attended his inauguration on January 20, 2001 leading to an enormous change in US policy that still has yet to be turned around. By September 2001, Shultz and friends were pulling many strings. Shultz had picked friend and former Reagan Administration Secretary of State James Baker to sway the movers and shakers of the Republican Party that George W. Bush was their man. Baker who also held business interests tied to the Shultz group became Bush’s Secretary of State.
By the end of September 2001, Americans began to hear rumours that claimed members of the Bin Ladin family had been whisked by the Bush Administration out of America with their assets. Saudi Arabia was beginning to look like the source of the attacks on the USA. Most of the attacking jihadists were Saudi Arabians as was the de facto attack leader, Osama Bin Ladin.
Meanwhile, this titular head of the September 11, 2001 attacks on America Osama Bin Ladin had been entrenched in the Afghanistan fight against Russian troops.
Far removed from reality, in mid-September 2001, someone in the White House began circulating rumours that within Iraq was a Boeing 767 cabin-crew-training simulator wherein Iraqi Jihadists had been practising slitting of the throats of American Airline cabin crew mannequins, preparing for exactly the style of attack that happened on September 11.
Bin Ladin was a committed Salafi Jihadist of note who lived between homes in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But he and his base were from Saudi Arabia.
Without any doubt, Saudi Arabia was the source of the attackers and the money (about $450,000) that created the 9/11 project. It was and is the primary source of all Salafi Jihadism.
There is no way America Would Attack Saudi Arabia Because American Leaders were and are still deeply Immersed in Saudi Financial Corruption
Both Saudi Arabia and American leaders planted seeds to suggest that Canada was actually the source of the Jihadists who entered the United States to take flying lessons and eventually commandeer American Boeing 767s and fly them with full fuel loads into the NYC Twin Towers, the Pentagon and one other target we believe was the US Congress according to the death bed statements of a few Salafis.
Americans listening to talking heads on CNN quickly came to question the allegation because in fact that would mean that it was American border guards who would be at fault for allowing the jihadists entry into America.
The counter to that was a new rumour saying the Newfoundlanders had rowed their boats filled with Islamists to the Maine coast and let them ashore in the wee hours of the night.
Well. Newfoundlanders are likely the most hospitable people on the planet who opened up their homes to thousands of stranded Americans as did other Canadians across the country on September 11, 2001. While we admit that there is no love lost between Newfie fishing boat captains and crew and the US Government owing to Trump-inspired American poaching in Canadian waters (Trump alleges a different and more outlandish scenario), hence any statement Newfoundlanders might give us would be jaded, the Canadian Newfie is willing to do anything for a stranger if per chance there is screech and a night of darts involved. If some Jihadist was offering screech and darts in lieu of sea-fare (and that is quite possible because a Jihadist is unlikely to know a single thing about Canada’s amazing Newfoundland), no right minded Newfie would be sailing nor could he or she be trying to find the Maine coast in the night or day through a typical Grand Banks fog if there was a night of screech ‘n Canada Dry plus darts to be had. (You can’t sail to Maine if you are drunk on screech. Moreover passengers if getting near the screech would likely be so quickly intoxicated they would be barfing over the gunnels and eventually fall into the rough North Atlantic Ocean. Any Newfie knows that to be true. Hence it’s a no-go. In other words, it was an insane and very rude accusation coming from stupid Trump-like-Americans. And as one Newfoundlander from Cornerbrooke put it, “Where the hell is Maine? Any fish there? Do they have screech there?”
Saudi Arabians from top to bottom of the attacker hierarchy did the attack on the twin Towers in NYC plus the attack on the Pentagon.
Not $Billions but $Trillions in the pockets of a handful of men caused a Million Iraqis to be Slaughtered Starting in 2003.
George Shultz was the US Secretary of State when on 17 May, 1987 an Iraqi marked Mirage fired a sequence of French-made Exocet sea-skimming missiles at the FFG-31 USS Stark Guided Missile Frigate of the Oliver Hazard Perry Class weighing in at just under 4000 tons of displacement.
The USS Stark had left Manama port in Bahrain and sailed along the Saudi Arabian coast, toward the Iran-Iraq War exclusion boundary.
According to The Wednesday Report an aerospace and defence industry trade publication, which reported on the events that day, “at 9:05 pm the frigate detected target acquisition signals from the Mirage radar system. The fighter jet was 27 miles out. The Stark had repeatedly attempted to contact the Iraqi aircraft at the frequency for negotiations in international waters, but the pilot didn’t respond to the request. At 9:09 pm the USS Stark announced a combat alert while at 9:10 pm the frigate’s EW systems registered the ‘acquisition and tracking’ of the frigate by the Iraqi plane’s integrated missile system. Then the Mirage sharply turned 180 degrees. A second later, the first Exocet missile hit the US frigate”. A short time later the second Exocet missile struck leaving a 5 meter hole in the ship and killing 37 crew members. The USS Stark was rendered ‘dead in the water’.
USN AIRMEN MAY AVENGE STARK’s 37 MURDERED CREWMEN
From Volume 4, Number 33 August 15, 1990The 1987 attack on the USS Stark was deliberate — not that anyone believes otherwise.That year The Wednesday Report launched a lengthy investigation into developments in the Persian Gulf, in particular, the effectiveness of weapons involved in the USS Stark incident, weapons, in fact, similar to those being fitted to Canada’s Tribal-class destroyers under the Tribal Class Update and Modernization Program.On October 7, 1987, a TWR article, “Lessons From The Persian Gulf” was published criticizing the anti-missile defence armaments aboard the USS Stark and an anti-missile gun system that had actually failed its shock testing. This in turn led to a forty-five million dollar lawsuit filed against The Wednesday Report‘s Maclean Hunter Author, Micheal O’Brien. The suit was filed in Canada by gun manufacturer OTO-Melara of Italy.
The court action prompted a subsequently more intense investigation to uncover additional details (a $45 million libel suit can bring a journalist team closer to a story than you might ever imagine).
In all, the wide-ranging research turned up a number of parallel stories. One of them was the account of the attack itself.In the dark of night on May 17, 1987, an Iraqi pilot flying an Iraqi Air Force Dassault-Breguet Mirage F1 launched two anti-shipping AM-39 Exocet missiles at the unsuspecting crew of the frigate, USS Stark.
As a direct result of the raid, thirty-seven sailors were killed and twenty-one of Stark’s crew were injured — many of whom had just months before visited Toronto, Ontario where we had befriended a few at our favourite `watering hole’ on the main floor of the Maclean Hunter building on Bay Street.
From Baghdad came an official apology and declaration that the offending pilot had mistaken the USS Stark for an Iranian oil tanker. A dumbfounded U.S. administration in Washington hungrily lapped up the explanation and continued to focus its anger on Iran. The Iranian hostage-taking incident had generated a deep hatred for the Iranians within the U.S. resulting in considerable American patronage for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq conflict.
It served no purpose to retaliate against Iraq, America’s preset agenda was anti-Iran.
All through that summer and into the fall, The Wednesday Report crew was hearing rumours — and more than rumours, boastful claims by laughing Iraqis — of luxuriant rewards paid to the pilot of the Mirage by the government of Saddam Hussein.
Reliable sources itemized a cash award which they say included a 1987 Mercedes-Benz; a (quick) furlough of luxuriant proportions; a military commendation; and promotion to a higher rank.
U.S. naval airmen who fly the 270 aircraft from U.S. carriers — USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Independence, USS Saratoga and USS John F. Kennedy, either in the Gulf region, presently en-route, or soon to depart the U.S. — are surely eager. In fact it is likely that the best money aboard Independence is bet on its flyers being the first to see action. Iraqi aircraft too close to the fleet, or nearing U.S. naval aircraft patrols, will be blown out of the sky by itchy-trigger-fingered young men who would only be cheered at home for having avenged the thirty-seven Americans who were slain treacherously by Saddam Hussein in 1987. |
The above article’s information suggests it is clear that US State Department Secretary George Shultz would have known that the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark was deliberate.
The United States and its coalition partners had no grounds whatsoever to attack Iraq and kill a million Iraqis in 2003 other than disliking Saddam Hussein. Could that same logic be used against the United States’s Donald Trump who is more disliked than Saddam Hussein??
For only Saudi Arabia was there justification for a punitive military response to the 9000 casualties of the September 11, 2001 attacks, led by and done by Saudi Arabians. But wealthy old American men who only wanted to line their pockets with money, killed a million innocent Iraqis instead. Saudi Arabia could have prevented that.
Feminine-Perspective.com Canada is right and Saudi is wrong to severely restrict freedoms of expression, association & assembly. Photo (Art: Feminine Perspective: Melissa Hemingway and Hilary Arizmendi Sánchez.)
Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud! Release human rights defenders & critics you detained. Bullying Civil Society workers is what Trump‘s ‘shithole countries’ do. We know Trump is backing you but he’ll be ousted soon. Join the human race and advance human development or get left out of a prosperous future of gender equality. Feminists can make you very rich. |
Additional Sources:
- OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2017
- Assessing the Employment and Social Impact of Energy Efficiency (Cambridge Econometrics, 2015);
- Mercure, J. et al. Policy-induced Energy Technological Innovation and Finance for Low-carbon Economic Growth. Study on the Macroeconomics of Energy and Climate Policies (European Commission, 2016)
- Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015);
- Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD, 2017)
- The Impact of Climate Change on the UK Insurance Sector (Bank of England Prudential Regulation Authority, 2015)
- Marrakech Action Proclamation for Our Climate and Sustainable Development (UNFCCC, 2016)
- Blanchard, O. J. The Crisis: Basic Mechanisms, and Appropriate Policies Working Paper (IMF, 2008)