If you
wonder why the banking/corporate occupied media in the West remain
silent against Saudi Arabia, one of the most brutal regimes at the
same time they declared war on the democratically elected government
of Venezuela, here are three good reasons, for a start, as described
by Vijay Prashad to Paul Jay and the Real News:
There are
perhaps three reasons, and there are probably many more, why the
United States in its current class configuration, in other words, the
kinds of people who run the United States, have fealty and have a
very close tie with Saudi Arabia.
The first
one is Saudi oil. It's important to mention because when the Saudis
decide to pump more oil or reduce oil, they can manipulate oil prices
and break the power of OPEC, that is the oil cartel, without actually
breaking OPEC. By the fact of their volume, they can make real mayhem
in the world. It's a worthwhile question to ask when commodity prices
were high, when these commodity prices enabled the new powers from
emerging.
Brazil,
Russia, Venezuela, these powers were given a kind of lift in the
1990s and 2000s in particular, when oil prices and energy prices in
general were high. When the Saudis started to pump enormous amounts
of oil against their own economic interest, it created Syria's
problems in these emerging powers and weakened them. Their use of the
oil weapon against adversaries of the world order, let's call them,
Venezuela, Brazil, Russia, etc., is a worthwhile reason to have a
close tie with Saudi Arabia. It's well worth asking why the Saudis
have maintained low oil prices when this has hurt their own economy.
It has to be political, it's definitely not economic.
The second
reason where there's a longterm connection between the kind of class
that rules the west and the Saudis, is that for at least the last 40
years, the Saudis have recycled their petro dollars. That is, the
profits that they earn from selling oil, they've recycled these into
western banks.
They don't
hold them in their own banks in large amounts. Of course, there's a
sovereign fund, but they put most of it into western banks. It's the
Saudi money that essentially has underwritten whatever growth has
taken place in the global north. It's the Saudi money that's enabled
the explosion of Wall Street, of derivatives, etc. It liquefies the
financial world. This is a very important role that the Saudis play.
They are leaders among the Gulf countries in so-called recycling
their profits into the west. This therefore makes the west somewhat
complicate in Saudi relations with the world.
The third
reason is really quite important and often neglected. This is that
it's not that the United States has an alliance with Saudi Arabia for
oil and money alone. It has an alliance with Saudi Arabia because it
relies on both Saudi Arabia and Israel for intelligence in the
region, and to operate a decisively anti-left, anti-nationalist kind
of agenda across the so-called Muslim lands.
In 1960s,
Saudi Arabia created a group called the World Muslim League, which
was set up essentially as an anti-communist block. They would produce
literature against the left, against Arab nationalism, against
third-world nationalism, and distribute it from Indonesia, up to
Dagestan, then in the Soviet Union, and out to Algeria. The point of
this was, Saudi Arabia was the sort of sphere of the
counter-revolution in the third-world block and played a very
important role. This old role comes to a head in 1977, '78, '79 when
Saudi Arabia basically provided the intellectual work, alongside the
CIA and Pakistani intelligence, for the creation of the Mujahideen in
Afghanistan. This political role, and to some extent military role
that the Saudis play is very important. The current class that
dominates in Washington DC and in the United Kingdom, Germany,
France, etc., they're interested in maintaining a kind of order in
these lands at all costs.
If disorder
is necessary, it's a kind of disorder that produces order for them.
Continues to recycle petro dollars, ensures that there's no emergent
power that can challenge western homogeneity. Saudi Arabia has been
an absolutely invaluable ally for this. Whereas, somebody who's a
liberal looks at this and says, "Well, why is the United
States allied with Saudi Arabia? Look, they're beheading people."
This is not how the ruling class sees it. The ruling class has a
completely different understanding of Saudi Arabia and that is why
this relationship for them is completely untouchable.
Now you see
why the Western clowns, the banking/corporate puppets, have declared
war on Venezuela, pretending that they care about human rights there,
when at the same time they are doing business with the Saudis, the
most brutal regime in the Middle East that continues to bombard
Yemen, provoking a humanitarian disaster.
So, briefly,
the real reason is oil, power and money, not human rights.
If you want
to get an idea of how corrupted and degenerated the neoliberal West
has become, 'measure' the hypocrisy. Currently, hypocrisy has reached
historic levels. So, you know the rest ...
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