Saudi Propaganda

More propaganda.

The Saudis are claiming that the Houthis were targeting the Kaaba, after the Saudis experienced global outrage over targeting Houthi civilians.

Why would the Houthis target Mecca? To scare fellow Muslims from undertaking the hajj? In order to reduce Saudi income from pilgrims? It makes absolutely no zero sense.

Why would the Saudi accuse the Houthis of targeting Mecca. Makes all the sense in the world as propaganda.

And remember that recently the Houthis were accused of targeting a US ship. The US struck the Houthis in retaliation. Later the US admitted that it had no firm evidence of the attack, and the incident may been the result of a US Navy mistake. This was after the outrage at the Saudis target civilians was also directed at the US for arming them and doing just about everything else but pull the trigger.

Eurasia Review

Saudi Arabia: Global Outrage Over Houthi Missile Attack Targeting Mecca
Arab News

The Houthi reply.

The Yemeni Houthi army's spokesman on Friday denied Saudi allegation of targeting the holy city of Mecca with a ballistic missile, noting that it targeted a Saudi airport in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, in a statement carried by Houthi-controlled state Saba News Agency.

Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman said that Thursday's ballistic missile attack "has hit the target" with 100 percent accuracy, stressing that the target was inside the King Abdel Aziz Airport in Jeddah, west of Mecca.

He slammed the allegation as "a media war and misleading of public opinion," affirming that his army fighters are "very careful to spare civilian areas, particularly the Islamic holy sites, from any attack."

Saudi state news agency SPA reported Thursday that a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis from Yemeni northern province of Saada was intercepted 65 km from Mecca.

Xinhuanet

Yemen's Houthis deny targeting Mecca with missile

Does anyone else find it curious that America's enemies reported to be constantly targeting civilians intentionally, while when America or its allies are caught hitting civilians, it is always a mistake.

Rakesh Krishna Simha — How the West used radical Islam and unleashed global terror

Western nations have backed fundamentalist forces at the expense of secular, nationalist Muslims. With western funding and support, the Islamic fringe has come to occupy the mainstream.…

How it all began.

“The British Empire had an overprotective attitude toward Islam,” writes Nu’man Abd Al-Wahid of the Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar.

Considering that Britain was one of the prime culprits in the destabilisation of Iran in the 1950s and is behind the devastation of Iraq, Libya and Syria in more recent times, one would be tempted to take the view the British are anti-Muslim. But in fact they are only opposed to nationalist Muslims and the moderate middle classes.

Al-Wahid explains: “When the Empire began to consolidate its lordship over the Arab world after World War I, it partnered with Saudi Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. The trends these movements represented were not so much ‘invented’ by the British but favoured and promoted.

"Before the British allowed the Wahhabis to establish themselves in Riyadh in 1901, they were an isolated, exiled cult in the Basra region known as ‘Kuwait’. With further support from the Empire, the Wahhabis expanded into the western part of the Arabian peninsula in 1924 and 1925.”

The British advocated the Muslim Brotherhood brand of Islam rather than the traditional moderate Islam as practised by the oldest university in the Islamic world, Al-Azhar.

“The British Empire...heroically and selflessly defended Islam, even if al-Azhar, the traditional bastion of Islamic learning in the world, didn’t comprehend this urgency. By the time these two major trends of Islamism strategically coalesced in the 1950s to meet the challenge of third world independence and socialism, the Americans had embraced the British Empire’s imperialist strategy.”

“This embrace meant bringing British puppets, such as the al-Saud clan of Saudi Arabia and the Thani clan of Qatar, under its protective umbrella. This American appropriation of the puppets had initially gained doctrinal credibility through the Eisenhower doctrine and extended all the way until the 1980s to support the Islamist mercenaries, or mujahideen, against the Soviets in the 1980s.”

Downhill from there.

During the Carter administration, under the influence of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US began to employ Wahhabi, Salafi, Takfiri mujahideen as "freedom fighters" and used them subsequently in  proxy wars — until the mujahideen turned on them. But the mujahideen presented too good an opportunity to give up entirely so the US still incorporates them.

However, the desire to play cynical geopolitical games is too strong in the West. In most cases western politicians and generals are way over their heads in events they cannot begin to understand, let alone control. Meanwhile, the battle is spilling over into the streets of Europe and occasionally the United States. The West’s ‘Freudian Bargain’ is clearly coming unstuck.

Russia & India Report
How the West used radical Islam and unleashed global terror
Rakesh Krishnan Simha

Kristen Breitweiser — REDACTED: All The Kingdom’s Men

Over the weekend, the New York Times published an article by Mark Mazzetti regarding Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attacks.

The article describes some important facts and circumstances surrounding the support that two Saudis gave to two 9/11 hijackers. However, there is more to the story.…

Detailed and disturbing.

The Huffington Post
REDACTED: All The Kingdom’s Men

Kristen Breitweiser | 9/11 widow and activist

Bloomberg Special Report — The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret

The facts confirm the rumors.

Bloomberg
The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret
Andrea Wong, With assistance from Sangwon Yoon

Zero Hedge — Saudi Arabia Admits To A Full-Blown Liquidity Crisis: Will Pay Government Contractors With IOUs, Debt

What this means is simple: as a result of the budget imbalance driven by low oil prices, largely a Saudi doing, the kingdom is forced to give workers an implicit pay cut. It also means that since the government has to "pay" through the issuance of debt, that the liquidity crisis in the kingdom is far worse than many had anticipated.

Which brings up the question of devaluation: how long until the SAR has to follow the Yuan and see a substantial haircut. According to the market, 12 month SAR forward are now trading at a price which implies a 12% devaluation in the coming months.

Then Saudis are going to have to pump more oil to pay the bills, even though that means lower prices. The question is whether or how long the Saudis will maintain the the USD/SAR (dollar-riyal) peg.

Zero Hedge
Saudi Arabia Admits To A Full-Blown Liquidity Crisis: Will Pay Government Contractors With IOUs, Debt

Tyler Durden

ht Don Quijones at Raging Bull-Shit

Moon of Alabama — When Media Shill For Saudi Money

More news from the snake pit.

Moon of Alabama
When Media Shill For Saudi Money

Eliza Collins — Obama aide: Saudi Arabia paid 'insufficient attention' to extremist funding

The money financing Islamic terrorism is coming from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia in particular. Surprise.

Politico
Obama aide: Saudi Arabia paid 'insufficient attention' to extremist funding
Eliza Collins

Paul Sperry — How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11

The line between conspiracy theory and fact is blurring, and the US government is doing it best to keep it dark.

New York Post
How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11

Paul Sperry | former Hoover Institution* media fellow

The Hoover Institution is conservative. Perry is ultra-right. It seems that the American right now has it in for the Saudis.

Zero Hedge — Saudi Arabia Threatens To Liquidate Its Treasury Holdings If Congress Probes Its Role In Sept 11 Attacks

Blackmail. Hybrid warfare uses many weapons.

From the MMT POV, the threat is nonsense, but US government officials probably don't know that.

The ZH post is interesting, even though out of paradigm with MMT. There's much more going on in the snake pit than just munnie.

Zero Hedge
Saudi Arabia Threatens To Liquidate Its Treasury Holdings If Congress Probes Its Role In Sept 11 Attacks

Tyler Durden

Angry Arab News Service — Who was behind Sep. 11? Saudi regime media now exonerate Bin Laden

Are you aware that based on that stupid NYC judge (based on a non-show by one-side) Saudi regime media are now jubilantly exonerating Bin Laden of responsibility for Sep. 11 and now are blaming the Iranian "Supreme leader"?

Of course, you would not know this is you don't read Arabic, and it certainly is not going to be reported in the Western MSM.

Angry Arab News Service
Who was behind Sep. 11? Saudi regime media now exonerate Bin Laden
As’ad Abu Khalil | Professor of Political Science, California State University, Stanislaus

Press TV — Saudi Arabia doesn’t need elections, Syria does, Riyadh envoy to UN says

Why is Saudi Arabia calling for elections in Syria when it only permits limited municipal elections in its own country? Riyadh’s UN ambassador says it’s because the kingdom doesn’t need elections as its people are among the happiest with their government in the world, a point which has nothing to do with Riyadh banning calls for change of government or even criticizing the state.

“Elections are not the panacea for everything. Just because there are elections in Syria doesn’t mean there have to be elections in Saudi,” said Abdallah al-Mouallimi during an interview published on the Al Jazeera television news network’s website on Saturday. 

He added that if a survey was conducted in the kingdom “you will find a high degree of support for the system” which has nothing to do with people being jailed for opposing the system.

In December, the kingdom for the first time allowed women to take part in the country’s municipal elections in which representatives were picked for the “consultative assembly” which can only propose laws and not enact them. Political parties are also prohibited in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

Earlier in the month, Amnesty International called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its abuse of laws to stifle dissent.
The Arab kingdom has enforced an “abusive” anti-terror law, which equates peaceful protests with terrorism, and allows it to hand down lengthy jail terms to peaceful critics and human rights activists after holding “deeply unfair” trials for them, the rights group said in a statement.

Press TV
Saudi Arabia doesn’t need elections, Syria does, Riyadh envoy to UN says

Rudy Panko — ISIS Twitter Accounts Traced to British Government

Twitter has blocked users accused of 'harassing' accounts linked to ISIS. Meanwhile, hackers have revealed that Twitter handles used by ISIS can be traced back to Saudi Arabia -- and the British government. Surprise?…

Russia Insider
ISIS Twitter Accounts Traced to British Government

Rudy Panko

The Saker — Week twenty-one of the Russian military intervention in Syria: the calm before the storm?

Sitrep.

The Vineyard of the Saker
Week twenty-one of the Russian military intervention in Syria: the calm before the storm?
The Saker

RT — ‘We will participate’: Saudi military admits US coalition mulling ground invasion in Syria

Saudi Arabia has acknowledged that the US-led anti-ISIS coalition has held a “political” discussion about a potential ground troop deployment in Syria. Riyadh’s statements have been criticized by Damascus as destructive and a threat to regional security.

In an interview with Reuters, an aide to Saudi Arabia's defense minister, Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, confirmed that defense ministers from the anti-Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) coalition debated placing ground troops on the ground in Syria during a ministerial meeting in Brussels last month.

“It was discussed two weeks ago in Brussels,” Asseri said, clarifying that the discussions took place on the “political” level only without going into details of a potential “military mission.”

RT
‘We will participate’: Saudi military admits US coalition mulling ground invasion in Syria

Marko Marjanović — Uncle Sam in Arabia: 'Modernity for Me, but Not for Thee' – Why West Deposes Arab Secularists but Backs Arab Kings

Another paradox of liberalism.

A quick glance at a map of US military bases in the Middle East will immediately tell you that Washington's friends in the region are crowned heads. The Emirs of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE. The Saudi king in Riyad and the Hashemite king of Jordan. 

Meanwhile its historic chosen enemies in the Arab world have been secularist Arab nationalist regimes. Nasser in Egypt, Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, Assads in Syria…

Why?

Retrograde Arab monarchies reinforce the Western Orientalist idea of hierarchy of civilizations – Arab modernizers challenge it

The current geopolitical dynamic can be viewed as colonies challenging their former colonizers. While this may not true be of Russia, the goal of the US to turn Russia into a vassal state. Most Atlanticists don't view Russia as part of Western civilization.

Russia Insider
Uncle Sam in Arabia: 'Modernity for Me, but Not for Thee' – Why West Deposes Arab Secularists but Backs Arab Kings

Marko Marjanović

David Lazare — The Coming Saudi Crack-up?

The center of the snake pit.

Consortium News
The Coming Saudi Crack-up?

David Lazare

See also

Mint Press
UK Blames Saudi Arabia After Hackers Trace ISIS Accounts To UK Gov’t

Rage Against The (Saudi) Machine.

Brahma Chellaney — Saudi Arabia’s Phony War on Terror

Containing the scourge of Islamist terror will be impossible without containing the ideology that drives it: Wahhabism, a messianic, jihad-extolling form of Sunni fundamentalism whose international expansion has been bankrolled by oil-rich sheikhdoms, especially Saudi Arabia. That is why the newly announced Saudi-led anti-terror coalition, the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, should be viewed with profound skepticism.…

While this is well known, it's interesting that it is appearing at Project Syndicate, which is an organ of the System. Formerly, it was a persona non grata like Noam Chomsky saying this and getting no exposure.

Project Syndicate
Saudi Arabia’s Phony War on Terror
Brahma Chellaney | Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin

NATO's covert alliance with ISIS and other jihadis

This alliance with the West and the influx of enormous oil revenues since the 1970s have allowed Saudi Arabia to export its brand of Sunni Islam, named Wahhabism after its founder Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, encouraging the homogenization of Islamic practices around the world after the model of the Wahhabiya. Known for its rejection of pre-Islamic history, visitation of tombs, the mixing of men and women, its zeal to purify Islam from allegedly deviant practices (such as Sufism and Shiism) and its disdain for other religions, the Wahhabiya was a puritan movement that gave religious legitimacy to the conquests of the Al Saud.…

The key ideological difference between ISIS and the early Saudi-Wahhabi movement is that the Islamic State wants to establish a caliphate, and regards monarchy as an un-Islamic form of government. Frightened by this challenge, which the Gulf states helped to create, Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its alliance with the conservative Wahhabi religious forces in the country.

But in ISIS, Saudi Arabia now has a foe that is so close to its own religious interpretation of Islam, that Saudi Arabia can not be seen to be fighting ISIS very strongly because it would undermine its authority at home. And so the West’s support for Middle East dictatorships continues to fuel the flames that have given rise to Al Qaeda and ISIS, despite a growing awareness that these alliances are a double-edged sword.

Nothing about actual support for ISIS and other jihadi groups coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other fundamentalist Sunni states and admission of this by key US officials, however.

Red Pill Times
When the US supports Saudi Arabia, it is also supporting ISIS

Toby Matthiesen | senior research fellow in the international relations of the Middle East at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Originally appeared at The New York Times

NEO
What Stinks in Saudi Ain’t the Camel Dung

F. William Engdahl

Not just KSA.

Czech President Milos Zeman has allegedly slammed the idea of Turkey joining the EU, stressing that Ankara appears to act as if it was an ally of Daesh (the Islamic state) militant group rather than that of western powers.

Czech President strongly opposes Turkey entering the EU, because its a Daesh ally

Alexrpt

The leader of the group "Jabhat al-Nusra", the Emir, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, in an interview aired by Arab TV channel Orient News, has revealed Turkey's plans to create so-called "security zone" in Northern Syria. The leader of the militants, whose face was hidden from cameras, directly accused Erdogan's regime of creating a buffer zone " which will not weaken, but will strengthen ISIS". This was reported by "Russian spring".

"Turkey will allow ISIS to further expand its influence in the areas around the border", - said the leader of the militants.

Ankara, according to Abu Muhammed, "tends to have preference to attack Kurdish forces, and chooses to not fight with ISIS in Northern Syria".

Jabhat al-Nusra is reputedely an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Fort Russ
Leader of the Nusrats: "Erdogan is strengthening ISIS"
Tvzvezda

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ

U.S. Remains Tight with Saudis In Spite of Support for Terrorism — Sharmini Peries interviews Toby C. Jones

But the German foreign ministry, much like the U.S. State Department or another, or the British government, David Cameron in the UK, for example, all see Saudi Arabia as an ally, as a partner in a series of, in a series of important or critical strategic interests. The first and most obvious of which is they claim, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, that Saudi Arabia is committed to anti-terrorism. But there are other things at work here, including oil, as well as Saudi Arabia's ability to generate massive amounts of wealth and then to redistribute that wealth into Western economies.

It's important to remember Tim Mitchell and Bob Vitalis and other scholars have written about this, that the easiest way for Western powers to get a hold of some of the oil wealth that gets generated in the Middle East is to sell very expensive weapons systems to those places. There's nothing that returns as much on oil revenue as buying Western weapons. You can't sell enough cars, you can't sell enough milk or eggs, or even nuclear technology or desalination technology. So keeping the pipeline open, an economic pipeline, between Saudi Arabia and the other oil producers and Western arms-producing countries, is critical for those places. They see these as engines of wealth and as sources of revenue for themselves.

So on balance, trying to criticize or taking a step to criticize Saudi Arabia on its human rights record, or even possibly in its role in funding terrorism, pales in comparison to these places who think that getting some money back from the region is more important…

So there you have it. Again, follow the munnie. The rest is "collateral damage."

So you've got a convergence of a lot of things here, some of which you've mentioned. That PR money flows through Congress, so Congressional representatives are unlikely and unwilling to criticize the Saudis, because it's materially beneficial for them not to do so. The White House is stuck in the middle between various forces in the U.S. policymaking establishment. It's really probably a weak partner when it comes to maintaining relationships like the one with Saudi. The Pentagon is entirely insulated. And it both benefits materially from the sale of weapons and strategically from having access to important military networks in the region.

So the forces against a reasonable American policy are deeply entrenched, and they're difficult to break through.

And democracy is only in the interest of the US when it results in a government that is friendly to the US and compliant with US interests.

I think what's most interesting, and most problematic, particularly now in the wake of not 9/11, but in the wake of the Arab uprisings, is that Saudi Arabia was viewed by American policymakers as a pillar in the region against the forces of rogue states like Iran, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and even Syria under Assad in a previous iteration. That is to say that the Saudis were viewed as precisely the kind of stabilizing force that was necessary to strengthen other friendly regimes that just happened to be autocratic in the Middle East. Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and others who were hardly democratic but were useful to the United States for precisely those reasons. Historically democratic open systems, from the perspective of American power, is problematic.

Saudi Arabia emerged from the 2011 uprisings as the last-standing strong regional autocratic power. And the United States sees them as important for precisely that reason, not in spite of it. So that means this. That it's Saudi Arabia's stable, autocratic presence, and its willingness to promote a reorientation towards the old autocratic order after the failed revolutions, that I think many American strategic policymakers and thinkers see as desirable. They prefer stability, in spite of Saudi Arabia's dalliances with terrorism, and the threat that ISIS may play in places like Syria. They see Saudi Arabia as more of a stabilizing force than it is a destabilizing one.

Now, we can debate whether that's true or not. But that's widely believed to be the case.

Real News Network
U.S. Remains Tight with Saudis In Spite of Support for Terrorism

Sharmini Peries interviews Toby C. Jones, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University

Robert Parry — Blocking Democracy as Syria’s Solution

Good article from the political standpoint but it omits that this is foundationally economic — control of oil and pipelines. Hence it is about neocolonialism, since the economics of the region is based on geopolitics. If that means replacing the secular state of Syria under Assad with reactionary Islamism through forced regime change, so be it.

Consortium News
Blocking Democracy as Syria’s Solution

Robert Parry

See also

Alistair Crooke, Cornering Russia, Risking World War III

Meduza, More than 95 percent of Russia’s nukes are launch-ready, day or night, defense minister says

And this:

At the same meeting with Russian defense officials, Vladimir Putin stressed that military expenditures must be tightly controlled. “I have said this more than once, and I want to emphasize it again: we do not have extra money,” said the president.