Screencap of a Saudi executioner
I’ve been tracking a broad theory of collapse. Namely, states collapse when they can’t pay off whoever is used to getting paid off. Basically, Mubarak and his ilk fell when they couldn’t find employment for a large amount of youth. Gaddafi stays (for now) because he is able to pay off mercenaries and thugs to kill his own people. I mention this because Reuters had a run down on some recent cables detailing the Saudi welfare state. If there has ever been a state that existed based on pay-offs, it is Saudi Arabia. If there’s one that more deserving of collapse I can’t think of it, even though the consequences might be a global recession.
Managed by the Ministry of Finance’s “Office of Decisions and Rules,” which acts like a kind of welfare office for Saudi royalty, the royal stipends in the mid-1990s ran from about $800 a month for “the lowliest member of the most remote branch of the family” to $200,000-$270,000 a month for one of the surviving sons of Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia.
Grandchildren received around $27,000 a month, “according to one contact familiar with the stipends” system, the cable says. Great-grandchildren received about $13,000 and great-great- grandchildren $8,000 a month.
“Bonus payments are available for marriage and palace building,” according to the cable, which estimates that the system cost the country, which had an annual budget of $40 billion at the time, some $2 billion a year.
This system all exists to pay-off the progeny of a man who stormed the city of Riyadh with about twenty men, made deals with the British and Americans for land, money and oil, and made a deal with an Islamic cleric to let his people eat hate. Now his son rules over a corrupt kingdom with no penal code, no real rights for women and rampant slavery and abuse among migrant labor. Anyways, an interesting article on the most direct form of state preservation available, literally paying people off.
Isn’t this the home of Islam? What a farce.
Abdul Aziz Ibn Al SAUD (Current Saudi ruling family) and other tribal leaders, heavily bribed, supported and facilitated by the British and the Jews to topple Ottomans and wipe out Islam from there. middle east was under a one rule (The Ottoman Empire) and a very peaceful region before the Europe invasion. European colonial rule could be described as the Dark Age in the Middle East. But, Post colonial rule was worst. Britain and France drew the boundaries of the new states in the Middle East with absolutely no input from the people of the region and installed their puppets. Saudi Arabia crated and SAUD became a king overnight. It is the only country in the world named after its ruling family. They called their barbaric rule as Islamic rule which is not true. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. moved in quickly to establish itself as the number-one power in the Middle East. Islamic movements in the region have struggled for a transformation. , Though U.S. views Islam as a grave threat at one time the U.S. actively promoted Islamic fundamentalism as a counterweight to Arab nationalism.
These unfolding transformations have been less of a surprise for those who have chosen to keep close to the Arab street, gauging its pulse and reflecting its aspirations. It was clear to them that a revolution was in the making, and it was happening far from the gaze of a tame and superficial establishment media that allied itself with the powerful centre – on the assumption that the centre is always safer and more important. Many media outlets failed to recognise what was happening among the Arab grass roots. Keen to conduct interviews with high-level officials and ever willing to cover repetitious news conferences, they remained oblivious to what was happening on the ground.
Some historical revisionism is apparent in the ‘Comment from an Arab’ above. The Ottoman Empire was tyrannical, corrupt and poverty-stricken – hence its contemporary description as ‘the sick man of Europe’ – and was run, essentially, by Eastern Europeans, former slaves who had infiltrated the power structure and actually told the Sultan what to do. The Arabs – especially those of the Arabian Peninsula in general and the Hejaz in particular – hated its guts and were only too happy to collaborate with the British to oust it.
Our Arab friend is also missing a little brushfire conflict known as the First World War. In that war, the Ottoman Empire was a declared ally of Germany, and therefore the declared enemy of Britain and France. Naturally it was incumbent upon the allies to attack it, defeat it and dispossess it of its imperium.
Arabs and Muslims have some legitimate grouses against the West – primarily the Balfour Declaration and the creation of the State of Israel – but only someone who knows no history can believe that there is some kind of Western conspiracy against Islam.
On a different note, the Saudis tend to limit the coddling largely to their royal family and their pet mullahs. In the Gulf states, particular Abu Dhabi, the rulers pay off everybody – all the locals, I mean, not the foreign helots who actually do the work in those countries (I used to be one, so I know whereof I speak). People get cash grants from the government for marrying, having kids and whatnot. They also get well-paid government sinecures instead of real jobs.
So, you say Western conspiracy against Islam is not true and The Ottoman Empire was tyrannical and corrupt. It seems you read/study only the histry books written by west which has many historical revisionism.