I Amuse Myself

Yeah well, there needs cleanup on a lotta aisles.

The US fer starters...the current regime is not helpful just the opposite. Jefferson was right.

Basically Attaturk overthrew the Sultan in a military coup and subsequent coups kept Turkey secular not Islamic.

The UN should be put in the dustbin of history like the League of Nations and replaced by a simple treaty organization.

Canada, the US, France, the UK, Germany, South Korea, Japan, the Anzacs have little or no benefit to being a member. The corrupt 3rd world despots and dictators who dominate the UN only contribute corrupt bureaucrats.....no financing.

I know a number of people in the oil industry and the general consensus from their perspective is that Saudi Arabia is the most reliable and easiest of the OPEC nations to deal with. Their leaders are western educated and know how western businesses operate. They understand the importance of upholding contract law and, unlike many nations, present a very low likelihood of doing something like nationalizing foreign assets or imposing abusive or arbitrary taxes and regulations.

Politically, there is a tremendous conflict between SA's rulers and its population which resents the closeness of the royal family to western businesses and western governments. Bin Laden tapped into that resentment. The balancing act that the ruling class maintains between staying on good terms with the west and catering to the cultural sensibilities of its population is becoming harder with the population boom in the Arab world. The brutality of the Saudi government will probably increase in order to keep its increasing population in line. Be-that-as-it-may, the Saudi government is quite stable. The House of Saud is large and keeps the country on a tight leash. An assassination or two wouldn't topple the government. There is no single strong man on whom the entire government depends.

Comparing SA to ISIS is absurd. SA doesn't have territorial or military conquest ambitions. SA treats its large foreign western workforce with reasonable latitude, allowing them to live unmolested in protected enclaves. SA's wealth is not stolen, but has been earned legitimately with co-operation with the West. SA doesn't murder westerners on camera for the purpose of filling westerners with fear.

Up until Bush the Younger's toppling of Hussein, SA was arguably, one of the US's most reliable allies. Anytime the US needed some ad hoc funds for some international effort, SA would pony up. When the US needed the use of military airbases or to overfly, SA was always willing to comply. Bush effed that all up when he overthrew Hussein and attempted to set up a puppet government in Iraq. The Arab "street" didn't like a western power conquering an Arab nation, no matter how odious the nation's government, and all the talk of replacing an Arab regime because it was authoritarian made the Saudi government uncomfortable.

There has been a low level PR campaign taking place that is attempting to smear Saudi Arabia and portray it as some kind of a threat to the West. The campaign has been part of a larger effort to blur the distinction between a variety of distinct groups in the ME each of which has its own agenda. Al Qaeda is not the Taliban. The Taliban is not ISIS. ISIS is not Hamas. And Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with any of them except for throwing out an occasional rhetorical tidbit or financial morsel in order to keep its own population pacified.

SA is certainly not a western nation with a western government and western culture and western sensibilities, but none of those things are necessary in order for it to be an important ally and trading partner. An effort by the West to change SA would be one of the stupidest projects imaginable.

Good Points.

As LBJ use to say, I'd rather have them inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

If anything, the Royal family are business men first, and they're careful whose head they chop off. Which is one reasons why the Jihadists consider them Kuffar.

An effort by the West to change SA would be one of the stupidest projects imaginable.

I, for one, look forward to the first annual Riyadh pride parade.

I, for one, look forward to the first annual Riyadh pride parade.

As do I, if it is organized and attended by western members of the Professional Left. The cognitive dissonance roiling in the brains of any survivors would make their heads cycle through a series of colors like some tacky 1970s mood light.

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia are not at all treated with any care or respect, Sadistic Eristic. There are many documented cases of migrant/foreign workers being badly treated:

http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/saudi-arabia?page=2

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/12/saudi-arabia-41-people-arrested-for-plotting-to-celebrate-christmas

SA has a very thin veneer of civilization. Remember Frank Gardner?
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/apr/19/saudiarabia.broadcasting