11-07-17

Rami Khouri of the American University of Beirut and Harvard Kennedy School analyzes the Saudi kingdom’s arrest of elite figures at home and its apparent role in the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

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The Clinton and Bush era of the last 30 years is about to come to an end in light of the sudden Saudi Arabian purge of Clinton and Bush allies.

New Saudi Power Grab Follows Big Losses

Source Real News

Trump Behind Purge Of Saudi Globalists

Inforwarrior

Massive Corruption Purge in Saudi Arabia

Source BP Earthwatch

Saudi Arabia’s move towards Zionist War with Iran. (What happened this week)

Source Tyranny Unmasked

#arabSpring #saudipurge #overthrow #globalist #arrestedPrinces #assassination #deepstate #isis #corruption

Ritz-Carlton Has Become a Gilded Cage for Saudi Royals

From the stately rows of palm trees on its 52-acre grounds to the grand double staircase to the glittering ballroom chandeliers, it is easy to see why the six-year-old Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, has played host to billionaires, heads of state and members of the Saudi royal family.

Which is why it is all the more jarring that former government ministers, prominent businessmen and members of the royal family — the House of Saud — are being held captive in the five-star hotel, which was swiftly converted over the weekend into what is almost certainly the world’s most luxurious prison.

In a shaky video that appears from its metadata to have been shot early Monday morning in the hotel’s Ballroom B, people can be seen lying on mats covered with brightly colored blankets in floral motifs while guards in dark uniforms are visible in the background. In a corner stands a rifle, which appears to be an American standard military-issue M4, its civilian variant or a copycat.

Saudi Arabia finds itself in the midst of a crackdown on corruption that began on Saturday night with the arrest of dozens of people, at least 11 of whom were princes, including the billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. By Monday, American officials tracking the situation said that has many as 500 people had been rounded up in the ongoing sweep.

The country’s attorney general, Sheikh Saud al-Mujeb, said on Monday that detainees had been subjected to detailed interrogations. He said the investigations were being conducted in secret to protect the integrity of the legal procedures and to ensure that the detainees’ high social status would not exempt them from justice.

Members of the royal family have been prohibited from leaving the country, sparking fear and concern. It was a striking turnabout for elites accustomed to lives of extreme privilege and the freedom to jet off to Paris, London or New York at the drop of a hat.

While the stated goal of the arrests was fighting corruption, some observers see the crackdown as part of the consolidation of power by the country’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Less than two weeks earlier, powerhouses of global capital including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen A. Schwarzman, were among the 3,500 invitees, estimated to control $22 trillion in assets, who streamed down the red carpet and into the hotel for the Future Investment Initiative, a conference that was nicknamed “Davos in the Desert.”

Back in May, the Riyadh Ritz was festooned with American flags as the palatial hotel played host to President Trump on his first trip abroad as commander in chief. His predecessor, President Barack Obama, stayed at the hotel in 2014.

Ballroom B, where the video footage appears to have been taken, is just shy of 20,000 square feet, and can be used as a banquet room seating 1,400 people or a reception accommodating 2,000 people.

As with most public spaces in the kingdom, the hotel does not permit shorts, skirts or tank tops. It asks that guests dress modestly, either in local attire, smart casual or formal wear.

The hotel’s website said on Monday: “Due to unforeseen circumstances, the hotel’s internet and telephone lines are currently disconnected until further notice.” A spokesman for the hotel did not immediately respond to a request on Monday night for a comment about the detained guests.

NEW YORK TIMES

MORE on SaudiArabia from Due Diligence:

Massively Major! Shocking Saudi Coup! Something Very Big Going Down in Saudi Arabia & the Mandalay Bay Connection (Videos) click here

‘Act of War’ – Saudi Arabia Blames Iran for Missile Launched from Yemen | Saudi Purge: King Rounds Up Disloyal Royals (Videos) click here

Coincidence? Saudi Prince Plus 8 Other High-Ranking Officials Dead in Helicopter Crash! (Videos) click here

‘This is a revolution’: Saudis absorb crown prince’s rush to reform

Consolidation of power in Mohammed bin Salman’s hands has upended all aspects of society, including previously untouchable ultra-elite

Outside a Riyadh shopping centre last month, Zeina Farhan was walking with her headscarf around her shoulders when the religious police pulled up. She froze in fear as a man in the driver’s seat lowered his window. “Please madam, can you just cover your hair during prayer time,” he asked. “I said OK, he said thank you, and he drove off. That was it. It was stunning.”

For all of her adult life, a run-in with the feared enforcers of Saudi Arabia’s societal norms would have led to a much harsher outcome. A woman who dared uncover her hair in public at any time, let alone during prayer, probably would have faced a fine and maybe jail. “Insults, prisons, whippings, shame,” said Farhan, 32. “To see them like that showed how much things have changed.”

The religious police, the bane of many Saudi women’s lives, have been steadily stripped of their roles over the past year, losing powers to arrest and to define what is right or wrong. Last week, a decree was signed to absorb them into the interior ministry – a death knell for an organisation central to generations of social and religious austerity in a kingdom resistant to change. 

Most of what was known about the opaque kingdom has in the past six heady months been thrown out and steadily replaced by a series of reforms that are upending all aspects of Saudi society. A transformation started by the new Saudi leadership of King Salman and his son and heir, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has already shaken most corners of the country; on Saturday it reached the previously untouchable ultra-elite, when 30 senior royals were arrested on graft charges.

“To say that was a shock to the system is an understatement,” said a senior Saudi official. “This was a message to the people here and to the world that we are open for business, but on your terms, not ours. Investors need to have confidence that they can come here and do business transparently.”

As the royals and scores of other prominent citizens remain detained in one of Riyadh’s most opulent hotels, the Ritz Carlton, Saudi citizens were on Monday trying to make sense of what marks a profound departure from the way rulers have done business throughout the modern history of the kingdom.

Analysis Royal purge sends shockwaves through Saudi Arabia’s elites

Move consolidates power of Prince Mohammed bin Salman as he attempts to reform kingdom’s economy and society

“He is shredding a moribund system that had favoured the royals above all else,” said a senior Saudi businessman. “He is shattering the accommodation that had existed between the elite and the state. They were one and the same. This is at least partly about creating citizens from subjects.”

In a country long governed by conferring and consensus – especially among the tribes of the various branches of the founding monarch, Abdulaziz – the arrest of the royals alone goes straight to the heart of a new form of governance. Add to that the cultural reforms that next year will allow women to drive and enter sports stadiums, for concerts to be held, and tourists to visit archeological sites that pre-date the Islamic era. 

“The message is that everything that used to be Saudi Arabiais no longer the case,” said a senior minister, who like all other officials refused to put his name to his views. “This is a revolution,” he explained. “Everything is so sensitive. We must be patient until it all settles down.”

Underpinning the cultural reforms is Prince Mohammed’s pledge last month to “return Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam”, in effect a commitment to break the founding alliance between clerics who adhere to the rigid teachings of 17th century preacher Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab and the kingdom’s modern rulers.

The crown prince said a hardline interpretation of Islam had taken root in Saudi Arabia after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. “We didn’t know how to deal with it,” Prince Mohammed told the Guardian. “And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.”

No Saudi leader has previously come close to confronting the accommodation between clerics and rulers.

Dr HA Hellyer, senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the sharp change in rhetoric did not necessarily mean that the new Saudi leadership was disavowing Wahhabism.

“A change of philosophical levels, where the Saudi religious establishment is no longer Wahhabi? That would be a monumental shift, and I’m not sure MBS [Prince Mohammed] is all that interested in taking that up.

“If we were to expect a non-conservative religious approach to take root in Saudi, I think we’re daydreaming,” he said. “But the question is how much such a society can genuinely revert to a more normative religious outlook – especially over a short period of time. The approach thus far seems to be about restraining the more radical impulses, rather than getting into the root of where that comes from. 1979 is crucial in understanding how the Saudi state was restricting or loosening the amount of space the religious establishment had – not in terms of the religious basis of that establishment.”

Several members of Saudi’s business elite, with regular access to Prince Mohammed, disagreed. “He is positioning himself as leader of the Sunni world,” said one senior figure. “And the only way he can do that is if he publicly and strongly acknowledges that we lost our way as a society.”

A second veteran business leader said: “The only way that this could take place – change of this scale – was if there was a young leader who had the patience. Every Saudi leader before him has been 70 or 80 years old when they took the throne and they have not had the capacity to attempt anything like this.

“Yes, you can say that people are too afraid to talk, because power is so centralised now. But he is doing what he has to do. He is consolidating his power as anyone must in this situation. There will always be casualties.”

Prince Mohammed’s critics say his headlong rush to revolutionise is driven by a push for unprecedented power, which the 32-year-old can leverage over many decades as monarch. Among those arrested are family rivals who are opposed to many aspects of the reforms. “How can you get away with something like this?” asked a relative of one of the arrested princes. “Don’t mistake people’s silence for consent.”

In the same hotel as the arrested royals, highly paid consultants from Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey and Deloitte have been drafting plans to overhaul an economy that has been anchored by patronage networks, which have often required foreign companies to partner with a royal to start any venture. A sclerotic public sector has made the going tough for investors and locals alike, and the economic reforms are seen as essential to winning the backing of a sceptical – and conservative – base, many of whom are unsettled by such change.

“This is change management and shock tactics rolled up as one,” said the senior minister. “People will get used to it. They have to.”

THE GUARDIAN

Saudi Arabia Charges Iran With ‘Act of War,’ Raising Threat of Military Clash

LONDON — Saudi Arabia charged Monday that a missile fired at its capitalfrom Yemen over the weekend was an “act of war” by Iran, in the sharpest escalation in nearly three decades of mounting hostility between the two regional rivals.

“We see this as an act of war,” the Saudi foreign minister, Adel Jubair, said in an interview on CNN. “Iran cannot lob missiles at Saudi cities and towns and expect us not to take steps.”

The accusation, which Iran denied, came a day after a wave of arrests in Saudi Arabia that appeared to complete the consolidation of power by the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, 32. Taken together, the two actions signaled a new aggressiveness by the prince both at home and abroad, as well as a new and more dangerous stage in the Saudi cold war with Iran for dominance in the region.

“Today confrontation is the name of the game,” said Joseph A. Kechichian, a scholar at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who is close to the royal family. “This young man, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is not willing to roll over and play dead. If you challenge him, he is saying, he is going to respond.”

The accusations raise the threat of a direct military clash between the two regional heavyweights at a time when they are already fighting proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, as well as battles for political power in Iraq and Lebanon. By the end of the day Monday, a Saudi minister was accusing Lebanon of declaring war against Saudi Arabia as well.

War will stimulate our economy since we make very little other than weaponry here and Donald Trump will float about all the jobs he created….

Lot of misbehavior by Saudi and its new King. Seems like a purge going on there too. But we should not let Saudi bad actions persuade us…Even before the launching of the missile on Saturday, which was intercepted en route to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the crown prince had staged another surprise demonstration of the kingdom’s newly aggressive posture toward Iran and Lebanon. The prince hosted a visit from Saudi Arabia’s chief Lebanese client, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who stunned the region by announcing his resignation, via video from Riyadh, in protest against Iran’s undue influence in Lebanese politics.

Even some of Mr. Hariri’s rivals speculated that his Saudi sponsors had pressured him into the statement. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia, said over the weekend that the Saudis had all but kidnapped Mr. Hariri. Mr. Nasrallah urged Mr. Hariri to return to Lebanon for power-sharing talks “if he is allowed to come back.”

On Monday, Saudi Arabia released a photograph of Mr. Hariri meeting with King Salman that was widely seen as an effort to contradict the theory that the prime minister was effectively a hostage.

The Saudi claims that Iran had provided the missile could not be independently verified.

Mr. Jubair, the foreign minister, said the missile had been smuggled into Yemen in parts, assembled in Yemen by operatives from Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, and fired from Yemen by Hezbollah.

A statement from the Saudi Arabian news agency said “experts in military technology” had determined from the remains of that missile and one launched in July that both had come from Iran “for the purpose of attacking the kingdom.”

Citing allegations of Hezbollah’s role, Thamer al-Sabhan, minister of state for Persian Gulf affairs, said Monday that Saudi Arabia considered the missile attack an act of war by Lebanon as well.

“We will treat the government of Lebanon as a government declaring a war because of Hezbollah militias,” Mr. Sabhan told the Saudi-controlled Al Arabiya network. “Lebanon is kidnapped by the militias of Hezbollah and behind it is Iran.”

The top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran called the accusation of Iranian involvement in the missile attack “baseless.”

“These missiles were produced by the Yemenis and their military industry,” the commander, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, told the semiofficial news agency Tasnim.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, accused Saudi Arabia of “wars of aggression, regional bullying, destabilizing behavior & risky provocations,” in a statement on Twitter. Saudi Arabia “bombs Yemen to smithereens, killing 1000’s of innocents including babies, spreads cholera and famine, but of course blames Iran,” Mr. Zarif said.

NYT

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