OF BRITISH BLACKMAIL AND SAUDI MANHOOD

OF BRITISH BLACKMAIL AND SAUDI MANHOOD

(Second d r a f t)

by tony khater and zein al-urban*
(*Pseudonym)


THE BRITISH BLACKMAIL


In late July of last year, Tony Blair blackmailed the Saudi royal family. He spoke about the Saudi government as a “regime,” and talked about Saudi Arabia’s need to democratize.

A specialist at satellite-mating (meaning he can’t get a female without standing besides a real male–the United States-- to fool the female into thinking that he has the real manly croak), Blair expressed his full support of the greater Middle East initiative–an Israel-inspired American plan to re-focus the Arabs and crush their dream of unity-- cultural, religious, economic, or otherwise.

A reporter asked him whether he had discussed “Saudi extremism” on his stop in Riyadh, on his way to Singapore, and whether he brokered an arms deal. Mr. Blair answered that he did raise the nature of the “regime.” Waving the blackmail club yet again, he said that the Saudi “regime” was doing its level best to protect the Saudi-Iraqi border. The threat: He could excite the big frog (the U.S.) enough to dismantle Saudi Arabia..


THE ANATOMY OF THE BRITISH BLACKMAIL

Were the members of the Saudi royal family terrified? You bet. ( We weren’t there; we’re guessing.) Madhawi al-Rashid, an occasional contributor to an Arab daily, once reminded that daily’s readers that the Saudi decision-makers have an inferiority complex towards the British. Could that explain their shedding of their manhood when Tony Blair blackmailed them? In part, probably. The reference to “regime” (instead of “government”), however, smacked of a larger blackmail scheme. The Brits and the Americans probably have so much dirt on the decision-makers in Saudi Arabia. Should these ever dare to not accommodate them (for the Brits, it means the payment of protection money–-arms contracts--even though the Brits can’t protect anyone), the Brits (and the Americans) would wage a slander campaign against the members of the Saudi royal family and beef up the Saudi opposition. (See below.)


THE ANATOMY: A SAUDI GEM, A BRITISH CLUB-IN-HAND

Better yet, somewhere in London, the British have a gem. No, not the type they can exhibit at an antique show. In fact, he’s not really scintillating at all. The gem is a Saudi opposition figure by the name of Dr. Saad al-Faqih. Dr. Saad heads a group by the name of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA). Early in the life of this newsletter, its editor used to read Dr. Saad’s website on a regular basis. Reading the website, one would never ever have thought that the man and his movement could inspire so much fear in the hearts of the Saudi decision-makers, especially the members of the royal family. But fear he did (and does) inspire.

The Saudis are so scared of the London-based opposition figure that they always bring him up in their dealings with British officials.

The wisdom of the story: If you’re a country that has lost its global military reach, and kowtows to Empire, and if you have a Prime Minister and a Foreign Secretary who kiss ass well, yet know how to blackmail, for good measure, you get yourself a Saudi opposition figure and give him the ability to broadcast a radio program directed at the Kingdom and to run an anti-government and anti-Saud website. You will land fat arms contracts.


THE PRIZE: AN ARMS CONTRACT TO END ALL ARMS CONTRACTS.

In early March of this year, about seven months or so after Tony Blair’s blackmail, we learned that the British nabbed a huge arms contract. The deal would be between 12 and 70 billion dollars. As SaudiPolitics had repeatedly speculated, the Saudis would like to channel the money to the big frog, the United States. But the invader of Arab Iraq hadn’t been popular in the Kingdom before the invasion and the dismantling of an Arab country. After the invasion, the Arab and Muslim public, including the Saudi, became convinced that the United States was doing a favor so to speak to Israel. Total linkage between Israel’s repression of its Palestinians and the American torture of Arabs at Abu Ghraib had been achieved. The United States, in the minds of the Arab and Muslim public, had thus moved from being resented for its support of Israel’s theft of Arab land to being outrightly hated as a proxy of Israel, not the other way around.

(This newsletter had warned about the linkage years ago. But the arrogant Euro-Caucasians, their native informants, and the Israel-centric entrepreneurs, liberal and others, were savoring their victory with the President.)

Hey, wait a minute. Britain too invaded Iraq!

No one takes the British seriously, or their armies, or their Prime Minister, or their Foreign Secretary. Viewing the fact that the Saudis had to pay off the United States, without incurring the wrath of their populace, Britain was the lesser evil, and the U.S. probably had chosen Tony Blair anyway to act as conduit Tony Blair’s blackmail probably was about the amount of the payoff that Britain can keep. The Saudis, in turn, wanted to keep as much money as possible to diversify their security away from Empire and Europe, towards China. The U.S. and Britain, after all, had been defeated. And they have little say in Tehran. China hasn’t been defeated and its say in Tehran (the country the Saudis need to worry about) is tremendous.


HOW TO WIN ARMS CONTRACTS IN SAUDI ARABIA: THE FORMULA.


Do tell please, how does a country with an arms industry win contracts in Saudi Arabia?

Okay, here’s the formula. If you use it, we’d insist on a cut.


First: Become a satellite-mating country

Get under the umbrella of Empire and bark (or croak) along with it. In short, become a satellite- mating country. The big frog (the U.S.) stands alone and croaks impressively (Shock'n awe stuff) to attract a female (oil fields). The satellite-mating country (e.g., Britain) hides nearby and acts as if it’s the one doing the impressive croaking. The superior mating call of the big frog draws the females to the croak. One or more would arrive and some would spot the satellite-mating frog first, and think he is the one producing the impressive sound. They mate with him.

(That smart croaker is akin to what anthropologists have named the “sneaky fucker,” that monkey who waits until the head of the harem splits from the colony to fight off an intruder. Taking advantage of his absence, the sneaky fucker moves in on the alpha-monkey’s females and mates with them. Does he remind you of a friend of yours? The one who's always there?)

Second: Collect dirt.

Make sure you obtain a lot of dirt on the princes and the other decision-makers of Saudi Arabia.

Third: Invite an opposition figure to your country.

Invite an opposition figure to locate in your capital. Make sure he doesn’t starve. Get him access to an internet radio and have him post a website. (He’ll probably do all of these by himself, anyway.) In addition, attract an Arab newspaper or two, which make their pages available to the Saudi opposition. Meet the editor-in-chief at a restaurant and exchange briefcases that look alike. Or, better yet, Let Qatar finance them. Cheaper. Libya should soon follow.


Fourth: Learn to kiss ass and give your Saudis a cut.

Your Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary should take lessons in kissing ass, even (especially!) Iran’s. Put differently: Hooray U.S. invasions and disastrous policies, give these policies a multinational veneer, and kiss ass with Iran. (You don’t want to lose too many troops in Iraq. Kissing ass, therefore, is a must.) No, it’s not as difficult as you might think; your Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have been kissing ass throughout their life. Your Prime Minister, if he is anything like Tony Blair or Angela Merkel, already is an American asset (we have no proof; but we can smell these things.) He/she has kissed ass throughout his/her career.

And don’t forget to pay off your Saudis. There are plenty of ways to hide the cut. Be creative.

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NOTE: Intermission: THE LARGE PICTURE

*** Politicians love to take credit for matters that have nothing to do with their efforts. The mayor of a city, for instance, will take credit for a lower crime rate when in fact the lower rate is due to a lower birth rate a couple of decades before the mayor's tenure, and to lower interest rates during his/her tenure which created an abundance of construction jobs for those who would otherwise be selling illegal drugs.

*** Tony Blair’s good fortunes, we suspect, are due to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s cheap money policy, started by Alan Greenspan eighteen years ago, which bloated the globe, including Britain, with imperial U.S. currency and helped the British economy along.

*** The cheap money policies of the Fed created the bubble phenomenon–-in stocks, in real estate, in oil and precious metals. The bubbles in turn inculcated a sense of wealth in U.S. consumers and have contributed immensely to a party-like spending spree.

*** China in turn benefitted hugely from this phenomenon and piled up an impressive reserve of U.S. currency . It re-injected a good part of these reserves in the U.S. economy through the purchase (mostly) of ten-year bonds, accepting a relatively low return. Seller-financing, of sorts. The Chinese re-investment in U.S. bonds extended the period of “feeling wealthy” by the U.S. consumer and, with it, the spending on Chinese-made products. As a consequence, China itself has felt wealthy and its foreign policy mandarins have gained in power and prestige.

*** Instead of invading countries, China has used its large currency reserves to sign joint ventures–with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, with Sudan, with Venezuela, and so on. Instead of joint ventures, the United States opted to occupy the oil fields of Iraq, as a shortcut so to speak, to securing the flow of cheap oil and making money for those businesses that have an association with the administration.

*** Here, the failure of the United States in controlling the oil fields of Iraq, to exercise what Zbigniew Brzezinski had called “critical leverage” against China and Europe, has weakened the United States significantly. It is at present competing for oil with a country (China) which the United States had made wealthy. In this competition, China is ahead since it has relied for a while on the policy of joint ventures while the U.S. was dreaming of military occupation of oil fields.

*** This is to say that American politicians have weakened their country by weakening the non-military arms of the federal government, upon whom the responsibility would've fallen to pursue joint ventures, alternative energy, and so on of basic public policies that would prepare a country for the future. These politicians weakened the federal government by providing lavish tax cuts, refusing to raise the taxes on oil consumption, not investing–by government–in alternative energy–in short, by running the country as a free-for-all party.

*** The Republican party bears a lot of the responsibility for this: Its old guard have historically pushed a weaken-the-federal-government agenda, while its new populist base (the Christian-Jewish right) has pushed a spend-without-limitations agenda. Both of these have weakened the country’s foreign policy. It would take a recession to force China to spend its huge reserves on domestic consumption and welfare programs, to make up for the unemployment that would result from the recession in the United States. That would level the playing field for the U.S.in acquiring oil contracts.

*** But can American politicians afford a recession by raising taxes? Our guess is that this recession would have to be engineered by the Federal Reserve, more to dampen demand for the limited oil resource and avoid a more severe recession that would result from the eventual failure of the cheap money policies. (The Fed doesn’t take into account foreign policy considerations, except that it might coordinate its interest rate policies with those of Europe and Japan.)

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Fifth: Learn how to fail but act as if you care

Fail as much as you want in resolving the issues that are closest to the heart of the Saudi public–the Palestinian state and the Joulan. No hurry. The Saudi decision-makers are as failed as you are. Just act as if you care.

Sixth: Learn to relax: the Saudi leaders lack creativity.

This factor doesn’t require you to do any work. Your Saudi decision-makers lack creativity. And so, you’re dealing with patsies. How so, you might ask. Here’s a case study:

The (poor)French President has worked so hard to obtain an arms contract with Saudi Arabia. And he’s failed. Now, it would make sense for the Saudis to give France a contract that would free France somewhat from Empire’s hold. This relative freedom would give the French the role of a catalyst to speed some things up: a Middle East settlement, which would rob the Saudi and Arab street of the most potent mobilization issues, dear to the street’s heart: The Israel-Palestine conflict and the Joulan. Not to mention that the resolution of these issues would de-link U.S. foreign policy from that of Israel, and push forward a Western country in competing with Russia.

(Note: The Bush Administration mobilized what communities it could to gather up a base of support for its invasion of Iraq. It targeted the right-wing and liberal sections of the Jewish community who lent their support to the Iraq project, unaware that they are being used–cynically-- by the political strategists of the Bush Administration, and equally unaware that weakening Iraq would not necessarily be helpful for Israel. Too late.)


It would also (relatively) liberate the Saudi decision-makers. As soon as Britain issues a threat, for example, Saud al-Faisal would head to Paris, order a pain-au-chocolat and a café noir, and sign another contract with the French arms industry. As a consequence, the British would have to think twice before they blackmail the Saudis. They can’t compete. They really don’t have the cuisine. To quote Frasier Crane’s words to Daffney, “Why don’t you boil some meat?” In addition, should Britain beef up their Saudi opposition, a pro-Arab France would act as an antidote in the Saudi street.


Not to mention that France should provide an alternative to Iran. Surprise. Surprise. Allow us, if you would, to explain. The Arab and Muslim public believes that the entire West is made up of heartland Christian Crusaders and urban right wing (we’ll add liberal) Israel-centric extremists, who find Arabs and Muslims revolting–call it a new anti-Semitism.


(Please don’t talk to us about the United States’s public charm campaign to win the hearts of the Arab and Muslim public. It’s either naive, or stupid. Choose. Or maybe it’s the product of Caucasian European minds which haven’t evolved since the days they had raped the people of the globe. You can’t dismantle an Arab country, kill tens of thousands of Arabs who had nothing to do with September 11, orphan their children, torture them at Abu Ghraib, —and then ask to win their hearts!)

So, a pro-Arab France would be a breath of fresh air for the West. The French seemed to have wanted this. But Empire encircled them. It even snatched Algeria away from them and will probably have bases there or, at a minimum, naval access, to buttress the failed Greater Middle East project. Empire even succeeded in having one of its assets ( Angela Merkel) win elections and become German Chancellor, robbing France as a consequence of its strategic industrial depth–Germany.

Seventh: Say you love Saudi democracy.

Last, but not least, be prepared to state convincingly, after you gain the contracts, that the Saudi democratic experiment is a proven success. So, on or about April 18 of this year, Jack Straw appeared in Riyadh in what was labeled as “Congress of the Two kingdoms.” Now that the Saudis had surrendered their manhood, and gave Britain (and the United States) a $12 to $70 billion arms contract, the Foreign Secretary did his share, in exchange. He praised Saudi Arabia for its political reforms. Wow!



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NOTE: I’m currently reading John R. Bradley, Saudi Arabia Exposed. The Introduction and Chapter One foretell a good book. It reads like a mix of political analysis and travel literature, making it insightful and exciting. I’ll try to review it of I get the time. The Editor.