Saudi Arabia: Reinventing a Rogue State
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
Leave to the NYT, claiming an emerging Arab Spring in the kingdom under crown prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), a ruthless character. More on him below.
The 2011 Arab Spring was made in the USA - its aim to replace unpopular despots with new ones Washington controls. Real spring never bloomed, just the illusion of change for the better, pure deception, the idea behind making scheme work.
Saudi Arabia is the Arab world’s most ruthless dictatorship, a despotic crime family owning a nation, masquerading as legitimate governance.
It’s notorious for public beheadings, whippings, torture, political imprisonments, sponsoring terrorism, wars of aggression and other lawless actions.
Despotic rule is absolute, no opposition tolerated, no civil or human rights afforded ordinary Saudis - no speech, media or academic freedoms, nor right of assembly, association, internal movement, foreign travel, or religion.
No right to choose their government or have easy access to education, healthcare, public housing, legal services or social ones. Political parties are banned. So are collective bargaining rights and Internet access.
Arbitrary arrests and detentions are commonplace. So are state-sponsored kidnappings and disappearances - due process and judicial fairness denied. Torture and other abuses substitute.
MBS supports ISIS and other terrorist groups. He’s responsible for waging naked aggression on Yemen, massacring civilians, creating an epic disaster.
Leave it to the NYT to reinvent Saudi Arabia under his coming leadership, the task assigned to pseudo-journalist Thomas Friedman. His commentaries are shallow, deceptive, arrogant, misguided, and worthless reading.
Case in point is his absurd claim about a Saudi Arab Spring, saying “(t)he most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in” the kingdom.
“The crown prince has big plans to bring back a level of tolerance to his society.” Can any thinking person accept this rubbish as journalism the way it should be? No responsible editor would touch it. Times editors featured it.
MBS is as despotic and ruthless as previous Saudi rulers, including his father king Salman. Friedman interviewed MBS, praised his arrest of hundreds of princes, ministers and business figures, a ruthless power grab, solidifying his upcoming rule left unexplained.
According to London’s Daily Mail, “American mercenaries are torturing Saudi elite rounded up by new crown prince - and billionaire Prince Alwaleed was hung upside down ‘just to send a message,’ “ others mistreated the same way.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Blackwater USA mercenaries are involved in torturing them - MBS’ notion of instituting “moderate, open Islam” - keeping things like they’ve always been in the kingdom, as brutal and lawless.
Friedman accepted his willful deception about what’s happening in the kingdom without explaining otherwise. MBS’ so-called anti-corruption drive is cover for his real objective - solidifying power, eliminating potential threats to his rule once his father steps down.
MBS disgracefully called Iran’s “supreme leader…the new Hitler of the Middle East,” not a whimper of truth from Friedman, failing to denounce the Big Lie - instead saying “I, for one, am rooting for him to succeed in his reform efforts” - the kind assuring continued Saudi ruthlessness internally and abroad.
Friedman gives journalism a bad name. The Times has a stable of others like him. What they suppress is far more important than so-called news and information they report.
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