Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older!

Saudi Arabia's old regime grows older!

The death of Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud highlights the decrepit nature of the Saudi leadership.

Mai Yamani Last Modified: 26 Oct 2011 12:13

The body of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Sultan is carried during his funeral in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia [REUTERS]

The contrast between the deaths, within two days of each other, of Libya's Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz is one of terminal buffoonery versus decadent gerontocracy. And their demise is likely to lead to very different outcomes: liberation for the Libyans and stagnation for the Saudis.

But the death of Sultan, at 86, marks the beginning of a critical period of domestic and foreign uncertainty for the Kingdom. After all, Sultan's half-brother, King Abdullah, 87, is still hospitalised in Riyadh, following a major operation last month. The regime is ageing and ailing, and is perceived by the population as being on life support.
 
Meanwhile, the succession is still being argued. Sultan's death is the first time that the burial of a Saudi royal has been delayed to give the ruling family time to decide on the next in line - a sign of internal discord (and concord on the continuation of dynastic rule).

Who will be next in line?

The Saudi regime's stability now depends on its ability to maintain unity and establish clarity in its system of succession. With the Crown Prince's death, schisms are particularly threatening to the Kingdom's stability (and that of oil exports), because the ruling Al Saud have swelled to 22,000 members, which has given rise to factional clashes among increasingly numerous claimants to power.

Sultan had already been dead - politically, that is - for the last three years; indeed, since June 2011, when he left for New York for medical treatment, young Saudis speculated on numerous websites that this was also literally the case.

Abdullah's octogenarian line of successors recalls the final years of the Soviet Union, when one infirm leader after another succeeded to power for a brief period of inert rule. Many Saudi subjects feel the same pattern of continuous uncertainty and torpor.

Making matters worse, the rule of succession is ambiguous. After Abdullah succeeded his brother Fahd, who ruled for 23 years until his death in 2005, he created an Allegiance Council, an ambiguous and mysterious family body that resembled the Vatican's College of Cardinals. But here, restrictions are not based entirely on age, but on family bloodlines. The Council included the surviving royal princes of the 43 sons of Ibn Saud, the Kingdom's founder, and the sons of their deceased brothers - for example, the late King Faisal's brood.

But, as Sultan's health deteriorated, Abdullah bypassed his own creation and appointed Prince Naif, the interior minister, as a second deputy. In other words, Naif will be anointed Crown Prince. But, befitting this increasingly exsanguinous imperium, Naif, 82, is known to suffer from leukaemia.

Sultan's fortune is estimated at $270bn, which he distributed between his sons prior to his death in order to shore up their political position in the competitive princely arena. The reality is that every senior prince has placed his favorite sons in important positions in the Kingdom. Sultan secured the defence ministry for his son Khaled, and brought back Khaled's notorious brother, Bandar, to head the Intelligence Security Council. Abdullah guaranteed his son Mitaeb's position as head of the National Guard. The new Crown Prince-in-waiting, Naif, has established his son Mohammed as the next interior minister.

Injection of young blood needed

In short, despite Abdullah's innovations in the succession process, it is an open secret that nothing guarantees a transition to a younger generation of leaders - or that an effective ruler will emerge. The story of the Al Saud's succession struggle is no longer whispered behind closed doors. The internet has opened a window on all of the royal family's plots, ambitions and double-dealings.

The Al Saud resembles a family business, established in 1932. Ibn Saud managed to conquer and unite the vast territory of the Arabian Peninsula, give it his family name, and alienate, divide, and control his cousins and brothers in order to establish a clear and undisputed line of succession through his sons. After Ibn Saud's death, his sons, though never entirely united, maintained enough coherence to keep the store running. That is no longer true of the thousands of princes that they produced. As the older generation dies off, the new generation has fallen to fighting in front of the customers.

Indeed, with the ratio of royals to commoners now at one to a thousand (compared to one to five million in the United Kingdom), the challenge of managing princely privileges, salaries, and demand for jobs has never been more intense. Royal perks include lifetime sinecures and domination of the civil service, which enable the princes to award contracts and receive commissions on top of their salaries.

So the Saudi regime is divided, its legitimacy is questioned, and sectarian tensions are growing. Moreover, while oil-export revenue is booming, the neighborhood is in revolutionary flames.

In the short term, the iron-fisted Naif, as Crown Prince, will push the Kingdom into greater repression, in part by strengthening the hardline Wahhabi clerics' place in the country's power nexus. Magnificent sums of money, backed by Wahhabi dogma, will be deployed to ensure popular submission and silence. Whereas Abdullah at least talked about reform (though with no real consequences), Naif can barely bring himself to utter the word.

Denial remains the Saudi rulers' dominant mindset. The royals believe that custodianship of Islam's holy places gives them a special status in the Arab world, and that no revolution can touch them. And, if anyone tries, they will follow Naif's counsel: “What we took by the sword we will hold by the sword.”

Throughout the region, newly mobilised (and thus empowered) Arab youth are trying to move their countries towards reform and liberalisation. Saudi Arabia, unfortunately, is moving in the opposite direction.

Mai Yamani's most recent book is Cradle of Islam.

A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

WHY the Wall Street protests ?

WHY  the Wall Street protests ?

Immunity and impunity in elite America

 
The top one per cent of US society is enjoying a two-tiered system of justice and politics.

 
Glenn Greenwald Last Modified: 27 Oct 2011 16:08

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American foundation - indeed, an integral part of it.

Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades.
As journalist Tim Noah described the process: "During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth - the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom’. Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 per cent of total increase in Americans' income went to the top one per cent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts [the first decade of the new century], but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 per cent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads."
The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top one per cent of earners in the US have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.
 

Inferiors and superiors

In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in US political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised "the natural aristocracy" as "the most precious gift of nature" for the "government of society". John Adams concurred: "It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction."
 

Not only have the overwhelming majority of those in the US long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.
In the 1980s, this paradox - whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state - became more firmly entrenched. That's because it found a folksy, friendly face. Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. "A rising tide," as one former US president put it, "lifts all boats". 

The sum of his wisdom being: It is in your interest when the rich get richer.
Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible, because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.

Gratefulness for the leadership

We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth - their pocket change - would trickle down in various ways to all of us.
This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate.
 

Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimising anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law - that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all - has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.
While the founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasised - over and over - that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that "the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar". Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce "total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections" between the rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against "counterfeit nobles", those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.

Definition of tyranny

After all, one of their principal grievances against the British king was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.
Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalised for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.
If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.

That catches the mood of the US in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality - acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world - without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

Writing laws

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of those in the US that the wealth of the top one per cent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunise themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping programme.

It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans, but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks "frankly own the place".

If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions. 

‘Two-tiered justice system’

In lieu of the rule of law - the equal application of rules to everyone - what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunised, while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimising anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.

That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fuelling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.
 ---------------

Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional and civil rights litigator and a current contributing writer at Salon.com. He is the author of two New York Times bestselling books on the Bush administration's executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (Metropolitan Books), is a scathing indictment of America's two-tiered system of justice.  He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.
A version of this article previously appeared on TomDispatch.com.

• 
  

Europe to destroy traditional family and sexual identity

10.10.2011 18:17

Traditional words 'father' and 'mother' will be replaced with official terms Parent 1 and Parent 2 in Britain. The terms will be used in official documents. The authorities decided to make such a "politically correct" move to accommodate same-sex couples. Experts are sure, though, that the matter is not about the requirements of certain social groups. The decision is another step towards the destruction of traditional families.

The words 'father' and 'mother' will be removed from British passport applications before December 2011. This became an achievement of Stonewall group, which defends the rights of sex minorities. The US State Department tried to do the same before, but it was eventually decided not to remove the two words from US passport applications.

The subject about novelties in the field of gender relations has been getting more and more popular recently. Not so long ago, Pravda.Ru wrote about the kindergarten in Sweden, which became world-famous after its administration decided to simply abolish the use of 'he' and 'she' pronouns.

Last year, the European Parliament published the brochure, which recommended not to use the words 'Missus' and 'Miss', 'Mademoiselle', 'Seniora' and 'Seniorita'.  From the point of view of the European parliament, the use of such words was discriminating against women because they directly indicated their sexual identity.

One does not have to be an expert to realize that such novelties in various countries are not just a coincidence. It is a trend, the goal of which is to change the public perception of the role of the sexes in the society.

Pavel Parfentyev, the chairman of the inter-regional public organization "For Family Rights" also shares this point of view.

"Indeed, this is a serious international trend. It started back in the seventies and the eighties as a powerful movement to defend the rights of sexual minorities. There were organizations that tried to defend even the rights of pedophiles, who, as they believed, also had the rights for their own sexual preferences.

"The organizations publicly said that their goal was to destroy family. Afterwards, under the pressure of public opinion, many activists decided to refuse from the openly sexual bias in their activities. They proceeded towards the protection of human rights. This is how they approach children's rights today. They think that children must be protected from the despotism of their parents - from any forms of traditional upbringing, that is to say. In order to accomplish that, one has to destroy the traditional family first and to make the family become a form that enslaves and binds children," the expert said.

In order to be more efficient, representatives of such movements began to cooperate with large international organizations such as the UN and the Council of Europe. This led to the creation of a small, albeit a very strong lobby for the protection of the rights of sexual minorities on the international level, Pavel Parfentyev believes. The lobby intends to distort the perception of traditional family in the modern society.

As a result, European officials already try to avoid the use of the word 'family' in top-level international documents. Instead, they use "family in all of its forms" expression, which implies all forms of cohabitation. As a matter of fact, they deliberately erode and expand the notion of family. The family as we know it has virtually disappeared from the new term.

"The lobby prefers to move in small steps. At first they say that one should not discriminate human beings on their gender rights and sexual orientation. It is hard to argue with this indeed. In Russia, there is no discrimination of real human rights on the base of sexual preferences. At the same time, they create special, previously unseen "rights" and preferences for homosexuals on the international level. As a result, they attach special importance to sexual orientation, which distinguishes a person and makes them stand higher than others," Pavel Parfentyev said.

The words indicating the sexual identity of people gradually disappear from official speech and documents. If they abolish 'he', 'she', 'father' and 'mother' they will not be able to abolish the gender per se. However, it can be possible to undermine the traditional perception of gender.

"A family is much more than a marital union of two people. It is a reproduction mechanism for the whole society. The movements for the protection of rights of sexual minorities are trying to undermine the traditional or natural family, as we call it. They want to take it beyond the scope of public values. More importantly, they want to separate the process of procreation and childcare from marriage and family. According to them, children and parents are two different things that must exist separately from each other. They cast doubts on the special role of parents in raising children," the expert added.

Many people in Britain claimed that the above-mentioned novelties undermine family grounds in the country.

Svetlana Smetanina

 

Muslim immigrants want Switzerland to change national flag

12.10.2011 10:33

A group of Muslim immigrants wants to force Switzerland to abandon the current flag - a white cross on the red background. They say that it violates the rights of the representatives of non-Christian confessions. They seem to have been hurt by the recent ban on minarets construction. However, their proposal is unlikely to be welcomed by the native Swiss and will only increase the number of votes in favor of the treasury of the local far-right People's Party.
   

The first suggestion to remove the cross from the Swiss flag was made not by a Muslim, but (judging by the name) an ethnic Croat and Catholic vice-president of the association of immigrants Secondos Plus Ivica Petrushich. "The cross does not fit today's multicultural Switzerland," he said. The organization of the Turkish, Albanian and other immigrants from Muslim countries followed with a similar initiative. Instead, they suggested using a green-yellow-red flag of Helvetic Republic that existed at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. It has no cross on it.

It is hardly coincidental that the issue of replacing the flag was raised by the representatives of immigrant organizations. Today, over 20 percent of seven million-strong Swiss population is immigrants. Naturally, the Muslims will be more than others insistent on replacing the flag. There are nearly 400,000 of them (more than five percent of the population). The largest "ethnic Muslim" community is Albanian, followed by the Turkish one. Arabs and Bosnian Muslims also reside in Switzerland. Many of them certainly do not like the cross.

The vast majority of Swiss Muslims virtually broke off with the religion of their ancestors. No more than 50 thousand of the faithful pray five times a day. However, women in headscarves have become an integral part of the cityscape of Zurich or Geneva. Furthermore, the birthrate in religious Muslim families is much higher than among the other population. Finally, all Swiss followers of Islam are not natives, but immigrants and their descendants. Their support of changing the appearance of the flag is, to say the least, ambiguous.


Apparently, this circumstance was taken into account by the head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland Mayzar Hisham, who called the idea of ​​changing the flag "counterproductive." He said that they did not demand anyone to change the ancient traditions of their countries. It is hard not to agree with his words. The relations of the indigenous Swiss and immigrants have already passed a difficult strength test. The desire to change the flag will only add fuel to the fire.
Two years ago the Muslim community wanted to attach minarets to the existing mosques. However, Switzerland is different from all other countries in a way that each more or less relevant issue is solved by holding a referendum. Negotiations with the government officials were not sufficient, and they had to ask the opinion of the population. This opinion was not in favor of the Muslim immigrants.

The initiator of the referendum two years ago was the ultra-right Swiss People's Party that called to stop the "creeping Islamization". A deputy of the Swiss Parliament Ulrich Shlyuer said that minarets were a political symbol of the implementation of Islam. Step by step, Sharia was conquering Switzerland, acting in parallel with the Swiss law. Statistics show that the degree of religiosity of the local Muslim population is exaggerated, but for the ordinary Swiss even a hint of a violation of their habitual way of living was sufficient.

The results of voting on November 29, 2009 shocked Europe. 57.5 percent of the Swiss population was in favor of a ban on construction of minarets. At the same time kosher and halal slaughter of animals was banned (because of cruelty). Islamic organizations, human rights activists, and many European politicians expressed their outrage. However, the law came into force. The EU could not influence Switzerland as it is not its member.
 
Many of those dissatisfied with the verdict (including indigenous Europeans who had departed from the religion) were eager for revenge, and eventually decided to strike from the other side. They inquired why the flag of the Swiss Confederation had a Christian cross on it if construction of minarets was banned. Allegedly, it violated the rights of not only Muslims but also non-believers. That is why the red-green-yellow flag of the Helvetic Republic would be better.

Would the majority of the Swiss agree with this point of view?

Unlike neighboring France and Germany, the Swiss society is rather conservative. While there is no case of absolute religiousness of the Swiss society, the number of believers in Switzerland is higher than in the neighboring countries. This can be partially explained by a high proportion of rural population scattered along numerous mountain valleys in 20 cantons and six half-cantons of the country. Approximately half of the indigenous Swiss are Catholics; a little fewer are Protestant Calvinists. The cross on the flag is something that unites the country, and does not divide it.

As for the flag, the current symbol was first used in Switzerland in 1339, when the union of separate cantons just started to take shape. It achieved its official status in 1848, when the last standoff on this land ended, crowned with a robust Swiss Confederation. To some extent, it is a symbol of freedom and peace, a path to which took many centuries and numerous wars. 
The Helvetic Republic, whose flag is offered instead of the current one, is not particularly respected by the Swiss. It was created by Napoleon who occupied the country and decided to build entities supervised by the French on its territory. For the free-spirited Swiss this flag is a symbol of oppression.

Not to mention the fact that the combination of green, red and yellow colors is characteristic mainly of African countries. In Europe, only Lithuania has a similar flag.
 
Do the immigrants have a right to teach the Swiss tolerance? For over 160 years there has been no bloodshed on this territory. This is all the more surprising considering that the country is multinational. Nearly three-quarters of the indigenous Swiss speak German, one-fifth speaks French, five or six percent speak Italian, and a little less than one percent - the Romansh language. All these languages ​​have the official status, but there is one dominant language group in each canton (with rare exceptions). They managed to combine small mono-national "houses" with a multinational one. The country is not threated by a collapse.
 
Encroaching on the foundation of the state, immigrants cause a reaction from the German Swiss, French Swiss and Italian Swiss.  

Ultra People's Party is gaining popularity among all of them. Its symbol is three white sheep (the number of the top three language groups), kicking the fourth, black one. This is a clear hint to what should be done with immigrants. Four years ago, the party secured 29 percent of the Swiss votes, and it was a shock to Europe. In the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 23, the result may be even higher.



As is evident from the story with the restrictions on ritual slaughter of animals and minarets construction, the Swiss are not afraid to challenge the infamous political correctness. A ban on wearing the veil is to follow. The more you attempt to encroach on the foundation of the Swiss state, the stronger will be the response. It took Switzerland and its people too long to achieve stability and peace of mind to just give up on their values.


Vadim Trukhachev