Thursday, November 1, 2018

The Saudi Regime Change Operation Turns into Game of Thrones

by Scott Creighton

Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, the only remaining brother of the current king of Saudi Arabia and the uncle of Mohamed bin Salman (MbS), has been shipped from London, the epicenter of global neoliberalism (and it's birthplace), to Riyadh where he is supposedly going to try to make some kind of arrangement to bring MbS back under full Western control or to curb his powers or replace him outright. They are calling it "crisis control" and the estranged prince only agreed to go back once Western neoliberal powers promised him their help with his security detail.
"...  some analysts are calling a potential challenge to the authority of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman...

"I think the gesture means there is a change coming some time soon,"..

... agreed to return to Riyadh only after receiving security assurances from the UK and United States." al Jazeera
 Much is being made about this in places like the Middle East Eye which have been calling for KOS regime change since the beginning of 2018 (a place intimately connected to Jamal Khashoggi by the way) but in reality, MbS met Prince Ahmad on the tarmac and allowed him to meet with other heads of state without issue. Seems like MoB is fully confident in his job security at this point.
" Michael Stephens, an expert on the Gulf and a fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), a defence and security think tank, urged people to be cautious about Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz’s visit to Riyadh.

“Saudi court politics is always full of intrigue, but people should stop over-reading into things. [King] Salman has invested too much into MBS to watch him fall. Secondly, MBS still has the monopoly on security decisions, a threat emerging from a recalled prince is small indeed,” he said." The Independent
You see, the problem with regime changing Saudi Arabia is though there are literally thousands of Saud royal family members to choose from and to bribe, only a few in one of the 7 major tribes are actually in control of the government over there... and MbS along with the king, have made sure to put him in control of most of it.

Which is kind of what you would expect of a future king.

Which is kind of what you would expect the current king to do... make sure his son, MbS, is secure and ready to take control when he abdicates the crown.

King Salman suffers from Alzheimer's disease and though he is extremely wealthy, some things are beyond even his control.

So a father is in a position to ensure his son rises to power and nothing foreign leaders demand or his estranged London-based brother can say or do will change that decision.

Its all very Game of Thrones stuff when you think about it.




Money, power, ascendancy, legacy, betrayal, retribution, greed, lust, deceit. These are the kinds of things that make life in the royal family interesting since not a one of them ever has to worry about things like rent, mortgages, bills, employment... you know... stuff like that.

But a father's bond to his son, especially a king's to his prince, is something that eclipses all of that and this is what the globalists who are trying to force MbS to do as they say are coming up against.

It should be noted, as it was by little bloggers like myself and outstanding journalists like Whitney Webb of Mint Press News, that plans for a Saudi regime change have been in the works for a long time before Jamal Khashoggi became a household name. They had bigger reasons to want him gone or at least put on a very short leash when it comes to our "national interests" (read as "$$$$ for Big Business and Big Banking")
"Others have suggested that powerful Western financial interests were behind MBS’ rise, given that the king’s son had announced his willingness to sell Saudi state assets to the highest bidder in a January 2016 interview with the Rothschild-owned Economist a little more than six months before he became crown prince. The interview certainly made it clear to the international elite that MBS was willing to support neoliberal reforms that had been rejected by Saudi royals in the past. Indeed, wrapped within his economic reform program known as “Vision 2030,” MBS offered the Western elite something they had long coveted but had never been able to obtain. He agreed to privatize Saudi-state-held assets, including the biggest cash-cow of them all – Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, Aramco.

Though the media has long spun Vision 2030 as MBS’ “ambitious” plan to wean the Saudi economy off its dependency on oil, the plan itself is actually a free-for-all for private interests and involves the neoliberalization of Saudi state-owned assets. Among its pillars are the opening of Saudi financial markets to Wall Street and the privatization of essentially everything in the Gulf Kingdom, including healthcare and, of course, Aramco.

The fact that Vision 2030 was essentially a neoliberal wish-list should not come as a big surprise, however, given that it was based off a 2015 report authored by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the U.S.-based consulting firm McKinsey & Company — the “most prestigious” consulting firm in the world, known for its “neoliberal solutions to real-world problems”." Whitney Webb, MPN
When the economic vultures set their appetites to feast on a nation, they become something akin to a flock of sharks circling a dying killer whale. They don't dare attack but they become more and more frenzied the longer it takes for the opportunity to pick the bones clean to present itself.

And if that whale begins to recover and grows stronger as it swims to open waters where it can maneuver and defend itself, the maddened scavengers become blinded by desperation in their need to feed.
"... As this litany of lunacy shows, Prince Mohammed is not and can no longer be viewed as a reliable or rational partner of the United States and our allies. If we fail to punish him directly and target only those around him, the crown prince will be further emboldened to take extreme actions. If we do punish him, which we must, Prince Mohammed, petulant and proud, is equally likely to behave more irresponsibly to demonstrate his independence and exact retribution against his erstwhile Western partners. Either way, the Trump administration must assume that Prince Mohammed will continue to drive his country and our bilateral relationship over the proverbial cliff.

Unfortunately, King Salman seems unwilling or unable to rein in his rogue son. With critics cowed into submission and rivals pushed aside, there is no obvious alternative-in-waiting who might provide Saudi Arabia with sober, responsible leadership.

Absent a change at the top, we should brace ourselves for a future in which Saudi Arabia is less stable and more difficult to govern. In this scenario, the potential risks to American security and economic interests would be grave. The United States was wrong to hitch our wagon to Prince Mohammed, but we would be even more foolish to continue to do so.

Looking ahead, Washington must act to mitigate the risks to our own interests. We should not rupture our important relationship with the kingdom, but we must make clear it cannot be business as usual so long as Prince Mohammed continues to wield unlimited power. It should be United States policy, in conjunction with our allies, to sideline the crown prince in order to increase pressure on the royal family to find a steadier replacement..." Susan Rice
In this Op-Ed written by a woman who worked for the man who killed 23 children in Yemen with two cruise missiles in 2009, Susan Rice carefully peppers her essay with hints about what this is all about. They want what MbS has not delivered and they demand someone step-in and relieve him of his authority over such decisions so their craven masters can swoop-in and pick Saudi Arabia to the bone.

It should be said that Rice is a former member of the boards of directors of the regime change NGOs the National Democratic Institute (NED) and the Atlantic Council and is still a member of the regime change think-tanks, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Group.

It should also be noted that Susan Rice helped promote the destruction of the state of Libya for our benefactors in France and Britain and she lied repeatedly and often about what caused the attack on our weapons transferring program in Benghazi (the CIA and State Department were shipping the illegal weapons from Libya to Syria after our regime change terrorists didn't need them anymore)

Notice how she instructs the rest of the politicos and even the complicit media in how they should address the killing of Khashoggi (if he's really dead) giving talking points once again, like she did with Benghazi.
"We must be consistent and public in our judgment that the United States believes the killing could not have occurred without Prince Mohammed’s blessing or, more likely, his order." Susan Rice
We must all repeat the same unconfirmed, biased opinion, says Rice, that the guy they want removed so they can fully neoliberalize Saudi Arabai once and for all, is responsible for the death of this ONE GUY... as if that really matters to her.

4guys died in Benghazi and she lied about that constantly, did she not? Didn't seem to bother her too much back then.

Gen. James Mattis has issued something of a decree when it comes to Saudi Arabia. He says we will stop aiding and abetting the Saudis in their brutal attacks on civilians in Yemen... until further notice I guess... which means until we get our hooks in the country and they privatized enough to satiate our masters.

Funny isn't it? Obama killed 23 kids in Yemen LONG before Saudi Arabia got involved and LONG before the people of the country successfully over-though our dictator and ushered him out of office and back then, hardly anyone gave a shit about the people of Yemen... cus they were so drunk on Hopey-Changy wine in their middle class cul-de-sacs.

In fact, it was Obama who struck a deal with the Saudia, with MbS specifically, to get them to attack and invade Yemen on behalf of our "national interests" like Hunt Oil for one.

But here is Mattis, getting credit from fake alt-left websites, for supposedly standing up for dead and suffering civilians in Yemen as if any of them made one bit of difference to Mad Dog Mattis.

People can be so gullible, can't they? 
"In November 2005 US marines in Iraq committed a massacre of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The slaughtering of unarmed men, women, children and elderly people, shot multiple times at close range, was retribution for a roadside bomb attack...

When it came time to bring the marines responsible for the massacre to justice, Mattis was the convening authority over the eight charge...

Mattis went on to dismiss all of the charges leveled against the marines who had been accused of killing the civilians..." Truthout
Just like President Trump's torturer/evidence destroying CIA head, Mattis is a monster who couldn't give a rat's ass about people suffering in Yemen. If he did he could have brought an end to it a long time ago. In fact, it seems he takes a sort of perverse pleasure in it.
"Mattis was the head of Camp Pendleton’s 1st Marine Division in Iraq and played a lead role during both of the US sieges of Fallujah in 2004.

During the April 2004 siege, more than 700 civilians were killed by the US military, according to Iraqi doctors in the city whom I interviewed in the aftermath of that attack.

While reporting from inside Fallujah during that siege, I personally witnessed women, children, elderly people and ambulances being targeted by US snipers under Mattis’ command. Needless to say, all of these are war crimes.

During the November siege of Fallujah later that same year, which I also covered first-hand, more than 5,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. Most were buried in mass graves in the aftermath of the siege.

Mosques were deliberately targeted by the US military, hospitals bombed, medical workers detained, ambulances shot at, cease-fires violated, media repressed, and the use of depleted uranium was widespread. All of these are, again, war crimes." Truthout
James Mattis, like most neoliberals, feel it's perfectly acceptable to make the general population suffer for the sins of their leadership. That's what sanctions do. That's what indiscriminate slaughter of cities does. That what the assassination of an entire town does when they allow a bomber to get away with planting roadside IEDs that took the lives of our soldiers.

It's all very Game of Thrones when you think about it.

Sending a message is what it is all about. Making the people suffer until their leaders give in is what it is all about. And that is what we do in war and in peace time. With our enemies ... and with our allies.

We do that because we DEMAND fealty to the masters of the universe.

And we will send in economic hit-men, impose sanctions that target the population, impose blockades that cripple economies.

And ultimately, if none of that works... then we call in Special Ops to recruit, forge, train and unleash terrorist proxies to physically attack the defenseless people, the softer the targets the better, who are already starving and suffering because their leaders have yet to give in.

It is cowardly terrorism which has infected our military and foreign policy decision makers at the highest level... because cowardly terrorism works.

And that is what Mattis is. And that is what Susan Rice is.

Lowly, cowardly, duplicitous terrorists.

And that is what we did and are doing to Yemen and Syria and Libya and so many other nations in the name of looking out for our "national interests"

And that is what they will eventually have to do to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately for the planners of our New American Century who seem to still be behind most of this, Saudi Arabia has traditionally been our go-to source for most of our terrorist sub-contractors over the past few decades. Guess they are going to have to find a new venue from which to outsource our terror stream.

5 comments:

  1. It's a bitch for the West to neoliberalize a kingdom when the favored heir apparent is in charge & goes rogue.

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    1. ain't it though? Happens a lot actually. Newly neoliberalized dictators start getting cold feet, like Whitney Webb points out in her latest article on the subject, and they start turning away from the austerity process out of fear the people will rise up against them. That's usually what happens of course, so they have to have the CIA come in and create and train death squads to help them stay in power. Lots of our puppets have tried to cut the apron strings so to speak, and they always meet with the same fate. The Mammon lord giveth and the Mammon lord taketh away.

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  2. Have you noticed that André Vltchek published Saudi regime change agitprop on his NEO blog? It breaks my heart. Either he suddenly turned into a dumb fool, or he may not be the committed humanist I thought he was (where does he get the money to stay frequently at African and Asian luxury hotels, by the way?). Wouldn't those sanctions be brutally damaging to the oil and natural gas trades? You have the not-very-bright left brigades on Reddit getting drunk on this and the Greater Kurdistan Kool-Aids- not to mention that someone on SLS for libeling Gaddhafi, the man who gave Libya Africa's highest living standard only for NATO to destroy it all, a "dictator with Micheal Jackson's taylor". Damned idiots.

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    1. yeah but New Eastern Outlook also hosted several faux-alt writers who did the same with Libya and Thailand for example, so I am not surprised. He also writes for Global Research which is compromised these days.

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