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Author Topic: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????  (Read 12245 times)

space otter

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has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« on: January 03, 2016, 03:09:21 pm »
has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-arabia-executions-human-rights-council_56884809e4b06fa6888293d1

The Nation That Executed 47 People In 1 Day
Sits On The U.N. Human Rights Council
Saudi Arabia enjoys the support of allies like the U.S. and U.K. at the human rights body.
01/02/2016 06:52 pm ET

Charlotte Alfred




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-executions-nimr-iran_56893488e4b014efe0dab27d

Iran's Supreme Leader Predicts 'Divine Vengeance' After Saudis Execute Cleric
Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric along with dozens of others.
01/03/2016 09:57 am ET
 
 


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fiorina-carson-saudi-arabia-executions_56894931e4b0b958f65beac9
 
Fiorina And Carson Defend Saudi Government, Which Cites Sharia Law To Execute 47 People
“Saudi Arabia is our ally, despite the fact that they don’t always behave in a way that we condone," Fiorina said.
01/03/2016 12:12 pm ET

Jessica Schulberg




http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-35213158

Protests in Saudi Arabia at Shia cleric's execution
2 January 2016 Last updated at 14:53 GMT

Protesters have taken to the streets of Al Awamiya, Saudi Arabia, to voice their opposition to the execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.

Sheikh Nimr was among 47 people put to death after being convicted of terrorism offences - he was a supporter of the mass anti-government protests which took place in 2011.

Demonstrators marched from Sheikh Nimr's home village of al-Awamiya to the region's main town of Qatif.

They shouted the slogans "The people want the fall of the regime", and "Down with the al-Saud family", reminiscent of the 2011 protests.





https://www.rt.com/news/327820-saudi-cut-ties-iran/
Saudi Arabia cuts diplomatic ties with Iran over embassy storming
Published time: 3 Jan, 2016 20:20Edited time: 3 Jan, 2016 21:19

Offline Eighthman

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2016, 04:16:35 pm »
Excellent news.  Once upon a time, women in many secular Arab nations freely went to work or market without hijab or headcovering - as shown in photos of Nassar's funeral.  The Saudis have spread extremist Islam throughout the world - and were behind 9/11 as the classified 28 pages of the official report shows.

A civil war, however, could crash the dollar as the petrodollar system and their $600 billion of reserves could be involved.


Offline zorgon

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2016, 06:55:12 pm »
Yes the tide has turned...

Published on Sep 25, 2015
A Saudi prince has been arrested on charges of trying to force a worker at a Beverly Hills estate to perform oral sex, Los Angeles police said on Thursday.

This one doesn't have diplomatig immunity

[youtube]nved6CTbv6E[/youtube]


Offline zorgon

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2016, 07:07:40 pm »
Saudi prince arrested in Beirut in major drug bust (Lebanon)

[youtube]TiKgIyZ_rgY[/youtube]



[youtube]FxV4Lmcp5y8[/youtube]


space otter

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2016, 09:40:58 pm »


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-struggles-to-explain-alliance-with-saudis/ar-AAglIry?li=BBnb7Kz
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
2 hrs ago



U.S. Struggles to Explain Alliance With Saudis
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday confronted the fundamental contradiction in its increasingly tense relationship with Saudi Arabia. It could not bring itself, at least in public, to condemn the execution of a dissident cleric who challenged the royal family, for fear of undermining the fragile Saudi leadership that it desperately needs in fighting the Islamic State and ending the conflict in Syria.

The United States has usually looked the other way or issued carefully calibrated warnings in human rights reports as the Saudi royal family cracked down on dissent and free speech and allowed its elite to fund Islamic extremists. In return, Saudi Arabia became America’s most dependable filling station, a regular supplier of intelligence, and a valuable counterweight to Iran.

For years it was oil that provided the glue for a relationship between two nations that share few common values.

Today, with American oil production surging and the Saudi leadership fractured, the mutual dependency that goes back to the early 1930s, with the first American investment in the kingdom’s oil fields, no longer binds the nations as it once did.

But the political upheaval in the Middle East, and the American perception that the Saudis are critical to stability in the region, continues to hold together an increasingly fractious marriage. So when Saudi Arabia executed 47 people, including Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the dissident cleric, on Saturday, beheading many of them in a style that most Americans associate with the Islamic State rather than a close American partner, the administration’s efforts to explain the relationship became more strained than ever.

In fact, the executions were the culmination of a series of events in the past few years that have led to clashes between the two nations.

“We haven’t been on the same page with the Saudis for a long time,” said Martin S. Indyk, the executive vice president of the Brookings Institution and a former top aide to Secretary of State John Kerry. “And it starts with Mubarak.”

In 2011, Saudi leaders berated President Obama and his aides for failing to support President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt during the Arab Spring, fearing Mr. Obama might do the same thing if the uprisings spread to the kingdom.

The nuclear deal with Iran only fueled the Saudi sense that the United States was rethinking the fundamental relationship — and Saudi officials, on visits to Washington, openly questioned whether they could rely on their American ally. It was King Abdullah who was quoted in a 2008 State Department cable, released two years later by WikiLeaks, exhorting the United States to “cut off the head of the snake” — Iran — by launching military strikes. He died before last summer’s deal, but Saudi leaders, who still see Iran’s hand behind every destabilizing act in the Middle East, argued that the administration was naïve to think that Iran would abide by any negotiated accord.

So ever since that accord was reached in July, the Obama administration has been offering reassurance. Mr. Obama invited the Saudis to join a meeting at Camp David to reassure Arab allies that the United States was not abandoning them — and would sell them larger weapons packages than ever before. But the administration has also been sharply critical of the Saudi intervention in Yemen, seeing it as huge distraction from the bigger battle against the Islamic State.

To hear the Americans tell it, the new Saudi leadership struggling for influence under King Salman is headstrong, “more interested in action than deliberation,” in Mr. Indyk’s words.

When Mr. Kerry warned the Saudis against executing Sheikh Nimr, a Saudi-born Shiite cleric who directly challenged the royal family, he was ignored. “This is a concern that we raised with the Saudis in advance,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, acknowledged on Monday. He said the execution has “precipitated the kinds of consequences that we were concerned about.”

But that was about as strongly as the administration was willing to criticize the Saudis. Pressed to condemn Sheikh Nimr’s execution, officials urged calm on all sides. The State Department spokesman, John Kirby, urged the entire region to move on to the business of confronting the Islamic State and dealing with the Syria crisis.

“If you are asking whether we are trying to become a mediator in all this, the answer is no,” Mr. Kirby told reporters. “Real, long-term solutions aren’t going to be mandated by Washington, D.C.”

Privately, several American officials expressed anger at the Saudis for picking this moment to conduct the executions.

They noted that Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry have been in regular contact with members of the Saudi leadership. Mr. Obama called to urge the Saudis to join the Syrian peace process talks — across the table from the Iranians. Mr. Kerry traveled to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, and later asked the Saudis to organize the Syrian rebels into a single group to negotiate a cease-fire with President Bashar al-Assad.

But the Saudis were reluctant partners, telling their Western counterparts that they would go along, but predicting that Mr. Kerry’s effort would collapse because Iran would never agree to any process that led to Mr. Assad’s removal. Meanwhile, the Saudis’ early participation in airstrikes against the Islamic State petered out as they moved military assets to their campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Others who deal with the Saudis say there is a degree of stress on the leadership in Riyadh they have rarely seen before.

“The kingdom faces a potentially perfect storm of low oil income, open-ended war in Yemen, terrorist threats from multiple directions and an intensifying regional rivalry with its nemesis, Iran,” Bruce Riedel, a former senior C.I.A. officer with long experience in the region, wrote on Monday.

Patrick Clawson, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, saw a desire to send a pointed message to Washington. The Saudis were saying, Mr. Clawson wrote, that “if the United States will not stand up to Iran, Riyadh will do so on its own.”

The Saudi concern that the Obama administration
is about to embrace Iran is almost certainly overblown. Since the nuclear agreement, the Iranians have tested ballistic missiles twice, and the administration — after some delays — appears to be readying sanctions in return. And last week, Iranian naval ships fired rockets within 1,500 yards of a United States carrier group. The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ruled out cooperation with the United States — though the Iranians have shown up at the Syria talks.

On occasion, American officials muse about whether the United States and Iran might, one day, constitute more natural allies than the United States and Saudi Arabia. But that seems far off.

“It’s not as if you have an Iranian alternative,” a senior Gulf Arab official said recently. “And if you have no alternative, your best choice is to stop complaining about the Saudis.”



 

space otter

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #5 on: January 09, 2016, 11:18:48 am »
you hafta read more than the headline here


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trita-parsi/saudi-arabia-us-order_b_8938476.html

Trita Parsi
Posted:  01/08/2016 1:02 pm EST    Updated:  01/08/2016 1:59 pm EST

The Privilege Saudi Arabia Enjoyed Under U.S.-Led Order in the Mideast Is Over

At his first press conference after getting elected, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani singled out Saudi Arabia as the country his government would try particularly hard to build friendly relations with. He even referred to Saudis as Iran's "brothers."

Things didn't turn out quite as Rouhani had hoped.

 Middle Eastern geopolitics have changed dramatically since the mid-1990s, when Rouhani had helped engineer a Saudi-Iran rapprochement. The Iraq war had caused Saudi to lose both faith in American intentions and competence. The Arab Spring -- and what the Saudis viewed as the betrayal of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak by the U.S. -- convinced Riyadh that Washington would no longer uphold its promise to secure and protect pro-Western Arab dictators.
Moreover, by refraining from using military force against Syrian President Bashar Assad, America had proved that its desire to avoid new wars in the Middle East superseded its hegemonic obligations to uphold security and stability in region. It looks to the Saudis like America has simply abandoned its ally.

“The U.S.-led order for the region established in the 1990s was bound to collapse.



Moreover, Saudi oil has lost its lure. The U.S. has significantly increased its own oil production and reduced its dependence on Saudi oil. And as a result of the Iran nuclear deal -- which Saudi Arabia vehemently opposed -- Iranian oil will soon return to the world markets. Many states are planning to reduce their dependency on Saudi oil by shifting some of their consumption towards Iranian crude.

And then of course, Iran is no longer checked geopolitically by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Add to that the lifting of sanctions on Iran -- which "may be days away" according to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry -- and it becomes clear why Riyadh fears that its geopolitical decline will be exacerbated by Iran's ascendancy.

Despite this dramatically altered geopolitical map, the Rouhani government did attempt to mend fences with Saudi Arabia. Rouhani appointed Admiral Ali Shamkhani as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council -- Iran's equivalent of national security advisor. Shamkhani, who is ethnically Arab, received Saudi Arabia's highest medal in 2004, the Order of Abdulaziz Al Saud, for his efforts to improve relations with the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The thinking appears to have been -- at least in part -- that Shamkhani was the best suited official to orchestrate Iranian outreach to Saudi.


“American order was based on the exclusion of two of the region's most powerful states -- Iran and Iraq -- and could only be sustained as long as the U.S. was willing to pay for it through its own blood and treasure.



Furthermore, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif declared his willingness to travel to Riyadh but didn't receive an invitation until King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud died in January 2015. Zarif attended the king's funeral but no Saudi official agreed to meet with him during his visit. Months earlier, Zarif did have a brief sit-down with the then-foreign minister in New York, the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, but in retrospect it is clear that very little was achieved.

Part of Iran's problem in dealing with Saudi Arabia is Riyadh's inherent sense of insecurity, rooted in its dependence on the U.S. and the outsourcing of its security to Washington. As Iranian academic Nasser Hadian points out, Saudi Arabia outspends Iran on arms by a factor of six. Its military has the most modern American weaponry. It is the key state in the Gulf Cooperation Council -- a body that was created to balance Iran's power.

Thus, Iran's power or military capabilities cannot explain Saudi Arabia's sense of insecurity. Rather, Hadian argues, Saudi's sense of vulnerability is inherent in the very political nature of the Saudi regime -- the fact that it is renting its security from the U.S. (which, incidentally, is increasingly reluctant to provide that protection). A tenant will never enjoy the same sense of security as a homeowner, so to say. This leaves Iran with limited options, as there is little Tehran can do to alleviate Saudi Arabia from this innate uncertainty, Hadian maintains.
What is the solution to the Saudi-Iranian conflict then?

 There are no obvious short-term solutions available. Rather, the first step must be to contain tensions and ensure that they don't spill over into other areas.

Second, there must be a recognition that the Middle East suffers from a diplomacy deficit. The limited diplomacy that exists must be strengthened. The recent Saudi-Iranian escalation cannot be permitted to collapse the existing diplomatic activity -- particularly not the Syrian negotiations.
While expectations on what the Syria talks can achieve must be tempered, the fact that all key outside players are at the table is an important achievement in and of itself. Neither the execution of a Shia cleric nor the sacking of an embassy -- however unacceptable -- can be permitted to scuttle the fragile Syria talks.

“Part of Iran's problem in dealing with Saudi Arabia is Riyadh's inherent sense of insecurity, rooted in its outsourcing of its security to Washington.



Third, the rhetoric must cool down on both sides and the Rouhani government must ensure that the vigilantes torching the Saudi embassy are brought to trial and punished. Iran has a shameful history of failing to protect foreign embassies, and any failure to bring the perpetrators to justice will be perceived as a lack of sincerity in reducing tensions with Saudi Arabia.

Fourth, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council must pressure both sides to deescalate and, if possible, explore opportunities to mediate the conflict. Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit Iran and Saudi Arabia later this month. Mindful of the strong relations China enjoys with both of these Persian Gulf powerhouses and mindful of China's own interest in stability in the region, Beijing may be able to play a helpful role in defusing tensions.

In the long run, however, sustainable security can only be ensured if a new inclusive security architecture is established for the region. Any power that is excluded will develop an interest in undermining the region's security precisely because its interests are not respected. This is why the U.S.-led order for the region established in the 1990s was bound to collapse. It was based on the exclusion of two of the region's most powerful states -- Iran and Iraq -- and could only be sustained as long as the U.S. was willing to pay for it through its own blood and treasure.


“It looks to the Saudis like America has simply abandoned its ally.



But until now, Saudi Arabia has sought to prevent Iran from being rehabilitated in the region's security structure. It opposed Iran's inclusion in the Syria talks, for instance, and only reluctantly agreed to partake after pressure from President Obama.

 Friends of Saudi Arabia need to intervene once more and convince Riyadh of the inevitable: Iran is part of the region; it is a major power and long-term stability necessitates its inclusion in any security order. The influence and privilege Saudi Arabia enjoyed under American order will no longer be the same -- because that order is no more.





space otter

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2016, 09:13:05 am »

   geeeze is there any one who we aren't in debt to...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/saudi-arabias-secret-holdings-of-us-debt-are-suddenly-a-big-deal/ar-BBoxymC?li=BBnb7Kz

Bloomberg
Andrea Wong and Liz Capo McCormick
16 hrs ago


Saudi Arabia's secret holdings of U.S. debt are suddenly a big deal

It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars: Just how much of America’s debt does Saudi Arabia own?
But now that question -- unanswered since the 1970s, under an unusual blackout by the U.S. Treasury Department -- has come to the fore as Saudi Arabia is pressured by plunging oil prices and costly wars in the Middle East.

In the past year alone, Saudi Arabia burned through about $100 billion of foreign-exchange reserves to plug its biggest budget shortfall in a quarter-century. For the first time, it’s also considering selling a piece of its crown jewel -- state oil company Saudi Aramco. The signs of strain are prompting concern over Saudi Arabia’s outsize position in the world’s largest and most important bond market.

A big risk is that the kingdom is selling some of its Treasury holdings, believed to be among the largest in the world, to raise needed dollars. Or could it be buying, looking for a port in the latest financial storm? As a matter of policy, the Treasury has never disclosed the holdings of Saudi Arabia, long a key ally in the volatile Middle East, and instead groups it with 14 other mostly OPEC nations including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria. For more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury provides a detailed breakdown of how much U.S. debt each holds.

“It’s mind-boggling they haven’t undone it,” said Edwin Truman, the former Treasury assistant secretary for international affairs during the late 1990s, and now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. Because relations were rocky and the U.S. needed their oil, the Treasury “didn’t want to offend OPEC. It’s hard to justify this special treatment for OPEC at this point.”

For its part, the Treasury “aggregates data where more detailed reporting might disclose the positions of individual holders,” spokeswoman Whitney Smith said in an e-mail.

While that position is consistent with the International Investment and Trade in Services Survey Act, which governs disclosures of investments made by foreign persons and governments, and shields individuals in countries where Treasuries are narrowly held, it hasn’t kept the Treasury from disclosing figures for a whole host of other countries -- large and small.

They range from the $3 million stake held by the island nation of the Seychelles, to the $69.7 billion investment from the oil-producing economy of Norway, and those of China and Japan, which are both in excess of $1 trillion.

Representatives for the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, known as SAMA, and the nation’s finance ministry declined to comment.

Apart from the kingdom itself, only a handful of Treasury officials, and those at the Federal Reserve who compile the data on their behalf, have a clear picture of Saudi Arabia’s U.S. debt holdings and whether they’re rising or falling.

For everyone else, it’s a guessing game.

The special arrangement, born out of the 1973 oil shock following the Arab embargo, is just one small concession among many that successive U.S. administrations have made over the years to maintain America’s strategic relationship with the Saudi royal family -- and its access to the kingdom’s deep reserves of oil.

The exception extends to 12 other countries in the Treasury’s oil-exporter group, all from the Middle East or Africa. Based on aggregate data released this week, that group has trimmed its stakes by a few billion dollars since March and held $289 billion as of November.

Because its holdings are believed to be the largest, Saudi Arabia’s moves have drawn scrutiny, particularly as other central banks in emerging markets sell Treasuries to raise cash in defense of their currencies. (The Treasury doesn’t break out private and public holdings, but its disclosures say about two- thirds of foreign holdings are held by official institutions such as central banks.)

Those sales have had a small, but visible impact on America’s funding costs. According to Deutsche Bank AG, selling by foreign central banks since March has added 0.3 percentage point to yields on 10-year Treasuries, which ended Thursday at 2.03 percent.

SAMA’s own figures show reserve assets held in foreign securities have fallen by a record $108 billion in 2015. The Saudi central bank, which doesn’t disclose separate figures for Treasuries, owned $423 billion in overseas securities as of November.

“I come down on the side of thinking there should be more transparency,” said Jeff Caughron, chief operating officer at Baker Group, which advises community banks with more than $45 billion in investments. But at the same time, “the Treasury is constrained by political sensitivities and that comes into conflict with market participants that crave more transparency. It’s an understandable conflict.”

And events in recent months, from President Barack Obama’s landmark nuclear deal with Iran to Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric who challenged the royal family, underscore just how sensitive U.S.-Saudi relations have become. The longstanding rationale for the alliance has also been undercut by America’s domestic oil boom, which has made it far less dependent on Saudi exports.

Whatever the political considerations, some analysts speculate Saudi Arabia may actually be trying to hold onto its Treasuries as part of a strategy to bulk up on dollar assets amid the deepening turmoil in global financial markets.

“You need dollars if you’re an oil producer, you want to make sure you have dollars on your balance sheet,” said Sebastien Galy, Deutsche Bank’s director of foreign-exchange strategy, who suggests SAMA could be raising cash by liquidating riskier investments such as stocks, real estate and private equity. Holding dollars also makes sense as a hedge against the plummeting price of oil, which is priced in the U.S. currency.

Figures from SAMA suggest the kingdom might be reallocating some of its reserves into short-term, liquid assets to help the finance ministry meet budget commitments and defend its 30-year- old currency peg of 3.75 riyals to the dollar.

The central bank has increased foreign currencies and deposits held abroad by 7 percent in the first 11 months of 2015, while at the same time reducing foreign securities, consisting of equities and longer-term debt, by 20 percent.

That cash has become key. Oil’s slump to less than $30 a barrel, from more than $100 two years ago, has eroded the petrodollar-fueled wealth that quadrupled per-capita income since the late 1980s and provided Saudi Arabia with the largess to offer free health care, gasoline subsidies and routine pay increases.

“When SAMA is required to raise liquidity for the Ministry of Finance, you’d see deposits and cash go up and they’d liquidate other assets,” said Khalid Alsweilem, SAMA’s former head of investment. “They know when the Ministry of Finance will spend all their riyals. So they prepare certain amount of cash available based on such expectations.”

Alsweilem, who spent 20 years at SAMA and now advocates for fiscal reforms as a fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, says market watchers may overestimate how much money the central bank actually allocates to Treasuries.

SAMA isn’t a typical central bank because it acts as a quasi-sovereign wealth fund, he said. As such, it aims for higher returns as a buffer against falling oil revenue and invests in a wide array of risky assets, which explains why it has only recently started to become more transparent, Alsweilem said.

To hear Peterson Institute’s Truman tell it, more clarity by central banks is long overdue -- particularly when it comes to the U.S. Treasury.

“In the old days at the Treasury and central banks, transparency wasn’t the word of the day” and politics made special treatment a non-issue, he said. Now, “it’s simply a legacy issue. You want to deal with it sooner or later.”



--With assistance from Deema Almashabi, Kasia Klimasinska and Andrew Mayeda.

To contact the reporters on this story: Andrea Wong in New York at awong268@bloomberg.net; Liz Capo McCormick in New York at emccormick7@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Boris Korby at bkorby1@bloomberg.net Michael Tsang, Mark Tannenbaum


Offline zorgon

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2016, 03:48:16 pm »
Otter Bait :P

Lets Play Connect the Dots

1. Operation Hornets Nest  Stir up trouble in the Middle East  keep the area in turmoil.

1a. Ed Snowden leaked this operation. http://conservative-headlines.com/2014/07/operation-hornets-nest-alleged-snowden-document-says-usukisrael-are-behind-isis/]Operation Hornets Nest: Alleged Snowden document says US/UK/Israel are behind ISIS
 
1b. Bush mentions it in a video "Bush says Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11

[youtube]f_A77N5WKWM[/youtube]

2. Price of OIL dropping like a lead balloon  May hit $10.00 a barrel  GOOD NEWS for us as gas prices drop and so will natural gas and electricity. It is predicted that this will last till 2017  BUT WHY?

2a. Inside Story - What's behind the falling price of oil?


[youtube]4XPpHOfFniQ[/youtube]

2b.  Where to Buy Gasoline for $0.002 a Gallon, Seriously
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-25/where-to-buy-gasoline-for-0-002-a-gallon-seriously

2c. In 2014 USA became the BIGGEST OIL PRODUCER
U.S. Seen as Biggest Oil Producer After Overtaking Saudi
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-04/u-s-seen-as-biggest-oil-producer-after-overtaking-saudi

2d. For the first time in 40 years...  The U.S. Exported Oil For The First Time In 40 Years And This Is Why You Should Care This is actually a huge deal. It could change the world economy and alter the global balance of power.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/nicolasmedinamora/the-us-exported-oil-for-the-first-time-in-40-years-and-you-r#.tkOEVo88m

So   USA stirs up the middle east... makes policy that pisses us off against Muslims by bring in know 'refugees' that run amuck...  becomes the biggest oil producer (all these years our oil was capped in reserve wells) and now we start exporting and Venezuela's oil is dirt cheap

Perhaps the days of the rich Oil Shieks is coming to an end

Since Arabs don't do the work, but use their oil money to buy everything, what will they do when the oil money is gone?

Kuwait Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawy Why are the Arab countries not progressing like European countries?

[youtube]4MX6BlTIZ2o[/youtube]

« Last Edit: January 22, 2016, 03:52:07 pm by zorgon »

space otter

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #8 on: January 22, 2016, 07:40:35 pm »

 this probably isn't what you are looking for but
if this guy (Mohammed bin Salman, 30) gets the top job you are looking at a  real earthquake scenario


right now if you pay attention to the local stuff (news)  there are major pipelines being build to carry our abundance of gas to port for export..while the gas company have bought as much mineral rights as they could..and paid big money there for awhile..there are cracker plants moving into industrial parks and along the rivers where manufacturing has lost it's place
they are slowed down big time right now but the movement has a foothold in this country...
municipal vehicles are being changed from gasoline to  natural gas...the pres  has put the crimps onto coal for electricity because of pollution..several are refitting to natural gas.
this country is standing on the brink of being the next energy ruler...

but first some things need to change and the world powers are busy with that right now

how do I know this...because the gas companies moved into this part of pa. a few years back and I have been paying attention to what they are doing
before saud's flooded the market to keep prices down  mineral rights would get you 18% of gross production of your spot with bonus singing of 3500 per acre

right now is's a down swing but the upswing is gonna knock some folks for a loop....
I am kinda hoping I won't be here for it...sigh..it's going to be ugly

check out north Dakota and you'll see what I mean



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-power-struggle-between-king-salman-and-mohammed-bin-salman-could-bring-down-the-a6706801.html

Hugh Miles      Friday 23 October 2015

Saudi Arabia: Eight of King Salman's 11 surviving brothers want to oust him
A growing number of members of the royal household support a move to oust King Salman and replace him with his younger brother 


in the article

“Either the King will leave Saudi Arabia, like King Saud, and he will be very respected inside and outside the country,” he told The Independent. “Alternatively Prince Ahmed will become Crown Prince, but with control of and responsibility for the whole country – the economy, oil, armed forces, national guard, interior ministry, secret  service, in fact everything from A to Z.”

Unhappiness at King Salman’s own diminishing faculties – he is reported to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease – has been compounded by his controversial appointments, the continuing and costly war in Yemen and the recent Hajj disaster. Earlier this week the International Monetary Fund warned that Saudi Arabia may run out of financial assets within five years unless the government sharply curbs its spending, because of a combination of low oil prices and the economic impact of regional wars.

The King’s appointment of his favourite son, Mohammed bin Salman, 30, to the novel post of Deputy Crown Prince in April, and the decision to make him Defence Minister – enabling him to launch a proxy war in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who forced the pro-Saudi former President to flee – have heightened tensions. He is said to have assumed too much power and wealth since being elevated to this position. “Any paper or phone call to his father goes through him,” said the prince. The current Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, 56, a nephew of King Salman, is also unpopular.


....................



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/prince-mohammed-bin-salman-naive-arrogant-saudi-prince-is-playing-with-fire-a6804481.html
Patrick Cockburn     Saturday 9 January 2016

Prince Mohammed bin Salman: Naive, arrogant Saudi prince is playing with fire
German intelligence memo shows the threat from the kingdom’s headstrong defence minister



Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the powerful 29-year-old favourite son of the ageing King Salman AFP/Getty Images
 
 
At the end of last year the BND, the German intelligence agency, published a remarkable one-and-a-half-page memo saying that Saudi Arabia had adopted “an impulsive policy of intervention”. It portrayed Saudi defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – the powerful 29-year-old favourite son of the ageing King Salman, who is suffering from dementia – as a political gambler who is destabilising the Arab world through proxy wars in Yemen and Syria.
 
Spy agencies do not normally hand out such politically explosive documents to the press criticising the leadership of a close and powerful ally such as Saudi Arabia. It is a measure of the concern in the BND that the memo should have been so openly and widely distributed. The agency was swiftly slapped down by the German foreign ministry after official Saudi protests, but the BND’s warning was a sign of growing fears that Saudi Arabia has become an unpredictable wild card. One former minister from the Middle East, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “In the past the Saudis generally tried to keep their options open and were cautions, even when they were trying to get rid of some government they did not like.”

The BND report made surprisingly little impact outside Germany at the time. This may have been because its publication on  2 December came three weeks after the Paris massacre on 13 November, when governments and media across the world were still absorbed by the threat posed by Islamic State (IS) and how it could best be combatted. In Britain there was the debate on the RAF joining the air war against IS in Syria, and soon after in the US there were the killings by a pro-IS couple in San Bernardino, California.

It was the execution of the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others – mostly Sunni jihadis or dissenters – on 2 January that, for almost the first time, alerted governments to the extent to which Saudi Arabia had become a threat to the status quo. It appears to be deliberately provoking Iran in a bid to take leadership of the Sunni and Arab worlds while at the same time Prince Mohammed bin Salman is buttressing his domestic power by appealing to Sunni sectarian nationalism. What is not in doubt is that Saudi policy has been transformed since King Salman came to the throne last January after the death of King Abdullah.

The BND lists the areas in which Saudi Arabia is adopting a more aggressive and warlike policy. In Syria, in early 2015, it supported the creation of The Army of Conquest, primarily made up of the al-Qaeda affiliate the al-Nusra Front and the ideologically similar Ahrar al-Sham, which won a series of victories against the Syrian Army in Idlib province. In Yemen, it began an air war directed against the Houthi movement and the Yemeni army, which shows no sign of ending. Among those who gain are al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, which the US has been fruitlessly trying to weaken for years by drone strikes.

None of these foreign adventures initiated by Prince Mohammed have been successful or are likely to be so, but they have won support for him at home. The BND warned that the concentration of so much power in his hands “harbours a latent risk that in seeking to establish himself in the line of succession in his father’s lifetime, he may overreach”.

The overreaching gets worse by the day. At every stage in the confrontation with Iran over the past week Riyadh has raised the stakes. The attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad might not have been expected but the Saudis did not have to break off diplomatic relations. Then there was the air strike that the Iranians allege damaged their embassy in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen.

None of this was too surprising: Saudi-Iranian relations have been at a particularly low ebb since 400 Iranian pilgrims died in a mass stampede in Mecca last year.

But even in the past few days, there are signs of the Saudi leadership deliberately increasing the political temperature by putting four Iranians on trial, one for espionage and three for terrorism. The four had been in prison in Saudi Arabia since 2013 or 2014 so there was no reason to try them now, other than as an extra pinprick against Iran.

Saudi Arabia has been engaging in something of a counter attack to reassure the world that it is not going to go to war with Iran. Prince Mohammed said in an interview with The Economist: “A war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the beginning of a major catastrophe in the region, and it will reflect very strongly on the rest of the world. For sure, we will not allow any such thing.”

The interview was presumably meant to be reassuring to the outside world, but instead it gives an impression of naivety and arrogance. There is also a sense that Prince Mohammed is an inexperienced gambler who is likely to double his stake when his bets fail. This is the very opposite of past Saudi rulers, who had always preferred, so to speak, to bet on all the horses.

A main reason for Saudi Arabia acting unilaterally is its disappointment that the US reached an agreement with Iran over Tehran’s nuclear programme. Again this looks naive: close alliance with the US is the prime reason why the Saudi monarchy has survived nationalist and socialist challengers since the 1930s. Aside from the Saudis’ money and close alliance with the US, leaders in the Middle East have always doubted that the Saudi state has much operational capacity. This is true of all the big oil producers, whatever their ideological make-up. Experience shows that vast oil wealth encourages autocracy, whether it is in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya or Kuwait, but it also produces states that are weaker than they look, with incapable administrations and dysfunctional armies.

This is the second area in which Prince Mohammed’s interview suggests nothing but trouble for the Saudi royal family. He suggests austerity and market reforms in the Kingdom, but in the context of Middle East autocracies and particularly oil states this breaches an unspoken social contract with the general population. People may not have political liberty, but they get a share in oil revenues through government jobs and subsidised fuel, food, housing and other benefits. Greater privatisation and supposed reliance on the market, with no accountability or fair legal system, means a licence to plunder by those with political power.

This was one of the reasons for the uprising in 2011 against Bashar  al-Assad in Syria and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. So-called reforms that erode an unwieldy but effective patronage machine end up by benefiting only the elite.

Oil states are almost impossible to reform and it is usually unwise to try. Such states should also avoid war if they want to stay in business, because people may not rise up against their rulers but they are certainly not prepared to die for them.




.......................




http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/world/middleeast/saudi-prince-mohammad-bin-salman-interview.html?_r=0

Aramco Share Sales Would Help ‘Transparency,’ Saudi Official Says
By LIAM STACK   JAN. 7, 2016





Prince Mohammad bin Salman with Saudi military officials in March 2015. Credit Saudi Press Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency 
 

Saudi Arabia is reviewing whether to sell public shares in its state-owned oil company, Aramco, with a decision coming in the next few months, the country’s defense minister and deputy crown prince told The Economist in an interview published Thursday.

“Personally I’m enthusiastic about this step,” said Prince Mohammad bin Salman, 30. “I believe it is in the interest of the Saudi market, and it is in the interest of Aramco, and it is for the interest of more transparency, and to counter corruption, if any, that may be circling around Aramco.”

The discussions about selling shares in the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, better known as Saudi Aramco, come as energy prices are dropping and the country seeks to diversify its economy. The prince mentioned mining and revenue from religious tourism.

In the interview, according to a transcript posted online Wednesday, Prince Mohammed also defended his country’s military operations in Yemen and said he did not believe the kingdom’s tensions with Iran would escalate into a war. He said that war with Iran was “something that we do not foresee at all, and whoever is pushing towards that is somebody who is not in their right mind.”

“Because a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the beginning of a major catastrophe in the region, and it will reflect very strongly on the rest of the world,” he added. “For sure we will not allow any such thing.”

The prince, one of the most powerful men in Saudi Arabia, spoke to The Economist on Monday, two days day after protesters set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Iran.

The protests that culminated in the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran followed the execution of an outspoken Shiite cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, and 46 others in 12 prisons across Saudi Arabia.

Critics saw the mass execution as a warning to Saudi dissidents. Human Rights Watch condemned the executions and said that the charges against Sheikh al-Nimr were vague and “apparently based largely on his peaceful criticism of Saudi officials.”

Sheikh al-Nimr was an outspoken government critic and an advocate for Saudi Shiites, who form a majority in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province and complain of discrimination and mistreatment.

The prince defended the mass execution, telling The Economist that the men had been “sentenced in a court of law” and describing the judicial proceedings as fair and transparent.

He said the execution of the sheikh, a Saudi citizen, had nothing to do with Iran and said the Iranian response to his death “proves that Iran is keen on extending its influence over the countries of the region.”

Prince Mohammad also defended the kingdom’s role in the conflict in Yemen, where its rivalry with Iran has exacerbated a civil war that began last year.

The Saudi monarchy began a military intervention in Yemen last March to combat Shiite rebels, the Houthis, whom the Saudis sees as a proxy force for Iran.

Prince Mohammad said the kingdom went to war in Yemen because the “Houthis usurped power in the capital.” He described the group as a heavily armed “militia carrying out exercises on my borders.”

“Is there any country in the world who would accept the fact that a militia with this kind of armament should be on their borders?” he said.

The United Nations says that some 2,800 civilians have been killed in the conflict, most by airstrikes launched by the Saudi-led coalition.



.............


Transcript: Interview with Muhammad bin Salman

http://www.economist.com/saudi_interview
« Last Edit: January 22, 2016, 08:19:44 pm by space otter »

space otter

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #9 on: January 29, 2016, 07:41:54 am »


did you ever wonder why certain news places had certain agenda's?


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-prince-alwaleed-donald-trump_us_56aafa72e4b0010e80e99806


Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Trolls Trump: 'I Bailed You Out Twice'
The prince has offered to bail Trump out a third time, too.

? 01/29/2016 03:59 am ET



Ed Mazza
Overnight Editor, The Huffington Post ?
 


A Saudi prince may have just beaten Donald Trump at a game of Twitter trolling.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on Twitter that he's bailed the billionaire out twice -- and suggested the GOP presidential frontrunner might need his help a third time.

The exchange was initiated by Trump, who had retweeted a badly Photoshopped image showing the prince with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, calling him a co-owner of the network:

 a bunch of tweets and a photo I can't seem to grab..sigh


The prince's tweet included news stories showing that he bought Trump's yacht in 1991, which had been turned over to creditors when he was $900 million in debt, according to Buzzfeed.

He also included a link to a story showing that he was part of the group that bought New York City's Plaza Hotel from Trump in 1995. As part of the deal, bin Talal paid off Trump's debt on the hotel in what the New York Times said was "a defeat for the real estate developer."

Trump's tweet also claimed bin Talal is "co-owner" of Fox News. While the prince is an investor in News Corp, his stake is worth 1 percent, according to CNN.

Trump and bin Talal also tangled on Twitter last month.

After the candidate's incendiary call to ban Muslims from entering the United States, bin Talal urged him to quit the race:


Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.



.....................................

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/a-saudi-prince-burns-donald-trump


As far as we know, Trump’s finances are much sounder now than they were back then, and he is in no need, as bin Talal’s taunt suggested, of a third infusion of cash. Still, the gibe is a reminder that even though, so far, Trump’s G.O.P. rivals have struggled to make much capital out of his somewhat checkered business history, there are others who are more than willing to bring it up.


..................................

http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-prince-alwaleed-donald-trump-megyn-kelly-2016-1

Billionaire Saudi prince fires back after Donald Trump promotes fake photo of him and Megyn Kelly

ah-ha and finally got the photshopped photo




I can just see them dancing in glee waiting for him to be pres when they have a hold already

Offline zorgon

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #10 on: January 29, 2016, 01:54:00 pm »
We are DOOMED

If these politicians are fighting it out on twitter going for the twitterhead vote, there is no hope for us

Look at this one

Chelsea joins #OscarsSoWhite controversy, but it BACKFIRES big time…



Quote
If there’s an opportunity for pandering, you can count on a Clinton to be on it like white on rice. (Racist? I don’t think so.)

And, sure enough, at least one Clinton waded into the #OscarsSoWhite controversy that’s been center stage during the past week. But judging from the backlash Chelsea Clinton’s received on Twitter in response to her remarks, perhaps next time she should just stay mum — and let her mum step in it on her own.

Via Daily Mail:

Chelsea Clinton launched a scathing attack on actress Charlotte Rampling on Friday in anger over her comments about the Oscars race row.

Hillary’s daughter took to Twitter and blasted the veteran actress and Oscar nominee.

Rampling entered the debate early on Friday saying that plans to boycott the Oscars were misguided and calls to get more minority nominees were ‘anti-white racism’.

British star, 69, said such politically correct thinking was a form of racism in itself.

Speaking on Europe 1 radio station in Paris, where she now lives, Ms Rampling said: ‘It’s anti-white racism. Maybe black actors don’t deserve to be on the final stretch?’

Ms Rampling, who first made her name in classic films including Georgy Girl in the 1960s, said she was also opposed to quotas being introduced to promote black actors.

Clinton called her standpoint ‘outrageous, ignorant and offensive’.

http://www.allenbwest.com/2016/01/chelsea-joins-oscarssowhite-controversy-but-it-backfires-big-time/

Don't know how to make them show up in here so here are the tweet links

https://twitter.com/ChelseaClinton/status/690644492819496960

But many on Twitter, even self-proclaimed liberals, rallied to the actress’ side:

https://twitter.com/GailScudieri/status/690874372236689408

However, it seems what a majority of respondents on Twitter actually found offensive were Clinton’s own comments:

https://twitter.com/Hamilton4007/status/690870894227361792

https://twitter.com/DuncanWhitehead/status/690682566056218624

https://twitter.com/marthaHigh/status/690815502579568640


  Many Twitterers went even further to attack the Democrat party:

https://twitter.com/JustOGG/status/690738837882994688

https://twitter.com/RepStevenSmith/status/690916166361972736

  And the Clinton family itself:

https://twitter.com/ThisIsMajorTom2/status/690771155490222080

https://twitter.com/GeneticSequence/status/690769837354692608

https://twitter.com/StaceySuzanne/status/690783497586360321

https://twitter.com/ZarkoElDiablo/status/690935290974879744



Frankly, there are too many worthy responses to Chelsea’s remarks to list here, so I encourage you to check out her Twitter feed yourself if you’re so inclined.

The Daily Mail continues:

Rampling released a statement to CBS Sunday Morning soon after, saying; ‘I regret that my comments could have been misinterpreted this week in my interview with Europe 1 Radio.

‘I simply meant to say that in an ideal world every performance will be given equal opportunities for consideration. I am very honored to be included in this year’s wonderful group of nominated actors and actresses.’

If there are two things the American electorate are sick and tired of, it’s political correctness and pandering. Chelsea Clinton once again showed her family’s tone-deafness — and opportunism — with her comments that in one fell swoop commit both sins.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2016, 02:04:42 pm by zorgon »

Offline Eighthman

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2016, 05:13:46 pm »
I have never been so profoundly aware of how distorted and corrupt US news reporting is until this year past. In particular, this has been true of reporting about Russia.  Putin is a "thug", a "murderer", Russia is "corrupt", ready to "implode",  their weapons are "poorly made", and so on. 

There is one simple truth here: the US military-industrial complex has very expensive weapons to sell and terrorist threats won't market them.  Only China and Russia as threats can get this high tech stuff sold and so the need is created by headlines that warn of attack. Russia exports food, doesn't need 'living space', doesn't have an aggressive communist ideology,  and even sells gas to its outright enemies.  They knew the US coup would take away their Crimean port and the rest is just trying to keep NATO away from its borders (as with their WW2 experience).

And then we have US news media purchased by Israel, the Saudis and the CIA.  It's just sickening. Call it a feeling of revenge, but I rejoice in seeing Yahoo fall apart - after all the NSA/CIA monitoring of message boards and NeoCon news. 

Offline zorgon

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #12 on: January 29, 2016, 05:40:07 pm »
THIS is why...

The NDAA Legalizes The Use Of Propaganda On The US Public

Quote
The newest version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes an amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on the American public, reports Michael Hastings of BuzzFeed.

The amendment — proposed by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and passed in the House last Friday afternoon — would effectively nullify the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which explicitly forbids information and psychological operations aimed at influencing U.S. public opinion.

Thornberry said that the current law “ties the hands of America’s diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way,” according to Buzzfeed.

The vote came two days after a federal judged ruled that an indefinite detention provision in the annual defense bill was unconstitutional.

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who released a highly critical report regarding the distortion of truth by senior military officials in Iraq and Afghanistan, dedicated a section of his report to Information Operations (IO) and states that after Desert Storm the military wanted to transform IO "into a core military competency on a par with air, ground, maritime and special operations."

Davis defines IO as "the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own."

IO are primarily used to target foreign audiences, but Davis cites numerous senior leaders who want to (in the words of  Colonel Richard B. Leap) "protect a key friendly center of gravity, to wit US national will" by repealing the Smith-Mundt Act to allow the direct deployment of these tactics on the American public.

Davis quotes Brigadier General Ralph O. Baker — the Pentagon officer responsible for the Department of Defense’s Joint Force Development (i.e. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines) — who defines IO as activities undertaken to "shape the essential narrative of a conflict or situation and thus affect the attitudes and behaviors of the targeted audience" and equates descriptions of combat operations with standard marketing strategies:

For years, commercial advertisers have based their advertisement strategies on the premise that there is a positive correlation between the number of times a consumer is exposed to product advertisement and that consumer’s inclination to sample the new product. The very same principle applies to how we influence our target audiences when we conduct COIN.

Davis subsequently explains the "cumulative failure of our nation’s major media in every category" as they continually interviewed only those senior U.S. officials who had top-level access, even as the officials given that clearance were required to stick to "talking points" given to them by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

If the NDAA goes into effect in its current form, the State Department and Pentagon can go beyond manipulating mainstream media outlets and directly disseminate campaigns of misinformation to the U.S. public.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5

space otter

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2016, 02:23:45 pm »


bold print is mine

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/saudi-arabia-presents-plan-to-move-beyond-oil/ar-BBoGpYr

Reuters
By Andrew Torchia and Katie Paul
6 days ago

Saudi Arabia presents plan to move beyond oil



Saudi Arabia outlined ambitious plans on Monday to move into industries ranging from information technology to health care and tourism, as it sought to convince international investors it can cope with an era of cheap oil.

A meeting and presentation at a luxury Riyadh hotel was held against a backdrop of low oil prices pressuring the kingdom's currency and saddling it with an annual state budget deficit of almost $100 billion - the biggest economic challenge for Riyadh in well over a decade.

Top Saudi officials said they would reduce the kingdom's dependence on oil and public sector employment. Growth and job creation would shift to the private sector, with state spending helping to jump-start industries in the initial stage.

"It's going to switch from simple quantitative growth based on commodity exports to qualitative growth that is evenly distributed" across the economy, said Khalid al-Falih, chairman of national oil giant Saudi Aramco.

Over 2,400 people, including local and foreign officials, business, consultants and academics, registered for the event, staged by the government's investment promotion agency.

Commerce and industry minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah said Saudi Arabia had been a victim of the "Dutch disease" - a condition in which the oil sector had crowded out other parts of the economy - but was now working to correct that.

Under the reforms, parts of the national health care system would be converted into independent commercial companies, officials said.

Participants in the conference, including the chief executives of U.S. aerospace firm Lockheed Martin and Pepsico, discussed subjects ranging from how to foster entrepreneurs to ways of developing dynamic cities and increasing the role of Saudi women in the business world.

OBSTACLES

The heavy presence of foreign business representatives suggested many saw opportunities in the Saudi strategy. Although Riyadh is burning through its foreign assets to cover the budget gap, it still had $628 billion in November, enough to finance years of new projects.

Some participants expressed doubt about the scale of the planned change in a country where about two-thirds of local workers are in the public sector, preferring it to more rigorous private employment.

There is little tradition of entrepreneurship in the world's biggest oil exporter, and financial and legal systems have not been set up to encourage it.

"The transition away from being a rentier state is not a comfortable one,” said David Chaudron, managing partner of the California-based Organized Change Consultancy, which works with Saudi companies.

"They’re trying. But the fundamental question is: will their trying bear enough fruit before the downside of the current system hits? Or is it a day late and a dollar short? Will the forces of change ultimately be enough to overcome the inertia of the current system? I don’t know.”

The U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Joseph Westphal, pointed to risks in administering the plans.

"Saudi Arabia has to have a government system that is adaptable," he said, adding that top officials would need to delegate decisions and authorities would have to be willing to take risks in the recognition that there would be some failures.

Nevertheless, many participants at the conference recognized that strong political momentum had now built up behind the reform plans, many of which had previously been discussed for years without result.

The momentum has increased since King Salman took the throne in January last year and created a powerful Council of Economic and Development Affairs chaired by his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The government is believed to have hired hundreds of Western consultants to work on the plans.

Falih said that in addition to using its spending to start industries such as shipbuilding, Saudi Aramco would use its extensive educational and vocational training program to help create the human capital needed for the transformation.

"Saudi Aramco will be a bridge for a transition away from itself," he said.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)









 


Offline zorgon

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Re: has the tide turned on the House of Saud ?????
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2016, 03:31:58 pm »
[youtube]4MX6BlTIZ2o[/youtube]


 


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