Sheikh what Yamamah gave you

[webofevil]

BAE Systems workers are celebrating after a corruption probe into a defence deal with Saudi Arabia was dropped.

The Serious Fraud Office withdrew its investigation into a £6bn defence deal with Saudi Arabia after warning it could damage national security.

There had been reports Saudi Arabia was considering pulling out of a deal to buy 72 Eurofighter jets from BAE.

Labour MP Lyndsay Hoyle said BAE workers welcomed the news because they feared that jobs would have been lost. “Tens of thousands of jobs were put at risk by a 1980s issue,” he said.

Saudi defence deals never disappoint. Vast sums are spent, enormous commissions are pocketed*, a few British jobs are secured for another few years, and the Saudis end up with the prestige of owning the very latest in defence equipment, most of which will sit unused and gathering sand, the rest destined to be used on a lucky minority of their own population.

*In fact, a tip for any Brits looking forward to their share this time around: obviously the authorities can’t gain access to Swiss bank accounts, but MI5 do keep a close watch on those banks to see who pops in. That’s how they knew about Ken Clarke, among others, after the al-Yamamah deal. If you can, try and find a representative with no known connection to you to deposit your money. I’m sure, for example, that any of the readers of this journal would happily oblige.

It was of course a division of BAE which was caught years ago by Dispatches selling electro-shock batons to the Saudis to be used internally (in both senses) against their political and religious dissidents. As the salesmen knew all too well, eyewitness accounts have the victims, male and female, being covered in water and then having the batons inserted. Bear that in mind the next time you see an indignant BAE statement about how irresponsible the Serious Fraud Office has been.

[In Saudi Arabia] political parties are illegal and so is the right of peaceable assembly. Members of the Committee for the Advancement of Virtue and Elimination of Sin [religious police] have been known to walk in on dinner parties to determine whether the guests, even when their numbers are no more than four or five, are indulging in political discussion. The people look over their shoulders and mention the King and members of his family in whispers and referring to them without affixing respectful titles can lead to stiff jail sentences.

All non-Muslim religious manifestations, including wearing a crucifix, are against the law and foreign workers, who represent one in four of the population, have very few rights: American and British citizens have been arrested for celebrating Christmas, and Yemeni and Pakistani workers accused of minor crimes have disappeared in Saudi prisons without trace. There is no academic freedom, and question-and-answer sessions between teachers and students are deemed dangerous and have been known to lead to the arrest of both. Although the Qur’an is the constitution of the land, even this wide, inexact and basically generous method of determining things is restricted further by the fact that the Wahhabi interpretation of the book is the only one acceptable. Among many others, a 40-year-old woman, Zahra Al Nasser, died in detention for carrying a Shia prayer book. Ali Salman Al-Ammar, 16, was detained for two years for the same reason, and a Shia religious student, Sadiq Al Illah, was executed for heresy...

Some [fellow Arabs] have been deported for not being respectful enough in the presence of a lowly but full-of-himself bureaucrat, women have been beaten with sticks for not dressing modestly and others found themselves without residence visas because their Saudi employers objected to their asking for salary increases.

In addition, Saudi Arabia materially opposes the existence of political parties, parliaments, a free press, the granting of rights to women and the ownership of pets... Official pressure was exerted on Kuwait and Bahrain to stop them holding parliamentary elections; the Saudis threatened to cut off aid until the Lebanese Government imprisoned some critical journalists; Arabs working in Saudi Arabia are discouraged from having their wives join them there for fear they might teach Saudi women a thing or two and pressure has been applied to ban alcoholic drinks on all Arab airlines. The darkness which envelops Saudi Arabia is being geographically extended through the use of money to influence other Arab countries.

Violations of any of these unwritten rules governing Saudi Arabia’s relationships with other Arab countries are considered dangerous because what others do is deemed infectious. Such offences to the Saudi Stone Age sensibilities have been met with unjustified and mostly unannounced retaliatory actions which have included the cancellation of aid programmes and the refusal to grant citizens of the “guilty” country entry visas and work permits. The Yemen’s refusal to accommodate Saudi pressure to support its Gulf War stance led to the deportation of 800,000 Yemeni workers and the near destruction of the Yemeni economy...

The Saudi treatment of the Muslim countries resembles that given to the Arab countries. Recently the House of Saud has taken to pressuring the Muslim countries into banning drink—curious when you remember that most members of the House of Saud, including Fahd [the then King], drink heavily. The Saudis also try to induce fellow Muslims to curtail the educational curriculum for women. Certainly anything which includes sports is disapproved of, but naturally the House of Saud has swimming pools where its female members indulge regularly and hold parties. Again, these are no more than demonstrations of Saudi Arabia trying to hold back Muslim countries because changes in them might be emulated by its own increasingly unhappy people.

You’re quoting this at us why, webofevil? Well,

In the larger international arena, particularly in terms of its special relationship with America and Britain, the House of Saud’s policy is again to hold the line against change. This means attempting to maintain the blind support which it has traditionally received from its “allies”. Neutralising the sources of Arab and Muslim pressure automatically increases the importance of maintaining Western support. Here again the Saudis use their wealth to perpetuate the inclination of America and other Western countries to ignore their misdeeds, though in this case mostly in an indirect way. The House of Saud is willing to provide the world with cheap oil and political support in their problems with the Arabs and Muslims in return for the elimination of all criticism. It goes further and uses the awarding of huge defence contracts for the same purpose. In reality, the twin policy of using oil and awarding defence contracts is no more than blackmail; they protect the Western economies from high oil prices and buy their arms in return for silence. I cannot unearth a single public statement by a Western leader about the country’s abominable human rights record. Only Kennedy objected to it, and that secretly.

From The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud, Saïd K Aburish

---

A faculty bulletin board at King Saud University in Riyadh instructing women how to dress correctly. The woman on the right is a “good” Muslim; she is completely covered, and, importantly, she is not carrying a handbag, which could contain a mobile phone with which she could commit SIN. As a result, she is going to heaven—which, understandably for people living in a hot, arid country, is represented by a deserted copse in Berkshire.

The woman on the left, as well as revealing her eyes and shamelessly flaunting her handbag, is also committing two more grave sins which will see her burn in the toastiest flames of Jahannam: she has some kind of pattern around the hem of her abaya, and the garment itself is too tight, with the result that you can see her shameful outline. It’s almost as if she’s some kind of “female”.

This is not aimed at teaching Sharia to four-year-olds. It is in one of Saudi Arabia’s main universities.

Comments

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

Blisteringly righteous. Good work.

[internetsdairy.livejournal.com]

This makes me think I would actually support a war against Saudia Arabia for regime change. Maybe that's our long-term clandestine plan, and we've built secret remote destructors into all the weapons we've sold them?

[(Anonymous)]

I read the pictogram thingy differently. The one on the left is clearly a woman. Women are wrong. The one on the right is clearly a butt plug.

Butt plugs are ok.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Chuh! Work computers. That was me.

Although, sadly, you probably knew that.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

I had a small bet with myself, yes.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

*looks insincerely ashamed*

[uitlander]

You know, my guardian reading, middle class upbring (with added joint hnours degree in Anthropology for good measure)says 'we should respect the differences of other cultures'. But shesh and bloody hell. That is insane.

[barnacle.livejournal.com]

That copse isn't deserted. I can see David Kelly, two policemen and a suspicious third man from here.

[srk1.livejournal.com]

That last photo is remarkable. If it was satire, it would be amusing.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Excellent, though I would say that as for many years I have been of the opinion that the House of Saud is about as much the legitimate government of the Hejaz as the Taleban are of Afghanistan, and if anything even less so than those fun-loving much-missed Ba'athists were in Iraq. But I don't hear any talk of "regime change" or "the axis of evil" applied to this sleazy, morally bankrupt shower from the conservatives (or, for that matter, from the left, "decent" or otherwise)

[srk1.livejournal.com]

I certainly think the rule of the House of Saud presents a greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein's Iraq did, and perhaps even slightly more than Taleban Afghanistan did.

[publicansdecoy.livejournal.com]

I was sent here by Bagrec. Excellent article. Mind if I add you?

-x-

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

> Mind if I add you?

Please do.


> Excellent article.

Thank you, although obviously the bulk of it comes from the, in turn, excellent Saïd K Aburish, scourge of the Saudi "royal family" in particular, but also of shoddy Arab leaders generally. Detailed, well researched and furious, his books are well worth a read for a comprehensive understanding of exactly has been, and is, going horribly wrong in the Arab world.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

The final photograph is real. It was taken on a cameraphone and featured on a blog, now sadly deleted, called "Farah's Sowaleef". Farah was a bright and irreverent Saudi girl in her early 20s, fluent in English, bored and entirely fed up with living in a society that insisted on treating her like a vegetable; in fact, she embodied much about Saudi's young female population that terrifies the House of Saud. She was desperate to get the hell out of Saudi and study in the West, and I can only hope she managed to do exactly that. On the other hand, the Saudi authorities have been cracking down on feisty blogs recently, especially female ones, so that may be the prosaic fate her journal has met.

In turn, I found her blog through the entertaining Religious Policeman, also now sadly defunct, but archived here (http://muttawa.blogspot.com/). He parsed the "two women" photo beautifully (http://muttawa.blogspot.com/2005/10/heaven-and-hell.html).

[argyraspid.livejournal.com]

Nah.

Saudi Arabia is an objectionable regime. If we want to stop them bring an objectionable regime, we can damn well invade them, persuade, repress or kill anyone who wants to keep it an objectionable regime, and let them grow in a humane culture.

Why on earth should we pussyfoot around and not sell them electroshock batons and fighter jets when there are dozens of other countries willing to flog them electroshock batons and fighter jets? Why should we kid ourselves that in not taking their money we're doing something wonderfully virtuous? Unless enough of the rest of the world joins in, it's a meaningless gesture that loses us lots of money. I don't honestly believe that turning a blind eye to evil, which is essentially what is proposed, is an improvement worth the bother.

Britain can use that money in reverse to advance a worldwide humane agenda and maybe put an end to the whole abusive shebang. Otherwise nations like Saudi Arabia can buy their armaments off the likes of Russia and China (with their enviable human rights records) so that the less good nations of the world can feed off each other whilst we twiddle our fingers and think about ourselves piously.

In an ideal world, such items of repression would never be used. But whilst they are, I'd rather the beneficiaries of such sales aren't other dire regimes who make *no* effort to consider the repercussions of their actions on individuals.

And for the record, we're not talking about £6billion. The sum, for numerous contracts over many years, is much, much higher. Secondly, advocating throwing away "tens of thousands of jobs" is a much easier proposition when one's job is not one of those to go.