[samsamsam]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-30945324

I wonder if there will be any changes in Saudi Arabia's approach to various things. Sounds like Salman has take over some responsibilities recently.

Edit: CNN is saying Abdullah was a reformer and his successor Salman is more conservative. I wonder how that translates into world politics.

Quote:

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has died in hospital, state TV says.

The announcement, made early on Friday, said his brother, Salman, had become king.

Before the announcement, Saudi television cut to Koranic verses, which often signifies the death of a senior royal.

King Abdullah, who was said to be aged about 90, had been in hospital for several weeks suffering from a lung infection.

Abdullah came to the throne in 2005 but had suffered frequent bouts of ill health in recent years.

King Salman, 79, had recently taken on the ailing monarch's responsibilities.

The late king's half brother Muqrin, who is in his late 60s, has been named the new crown prince, the official statement said.

All three are sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz, usually referred to as Ibn Saud, who died in 1953.

King Salman called on the royal family's Allegiance Council to recognise Muqrin as his crown prince and heir.

"His Highness Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and all members of the family and the nation mourn the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who passed away at exactly 1am this morning," the statement said.

Abdullah was the 13th of the 37 sons of King Abdulaziz. He is believed to have been born in August 1924 in Riyadh, although there is some dispute about his actual birth date.

He was seen as a reformer at home, albeit a slow and steady one.

He allowed mild criticism of his government in the press, and hinted that more women should be allowed to work.

[Pacesetter20]

Quote:

Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has died in hospital, state TV says.

The announcement, made early on Friday, said his brother, Salman, had become king.

Before the announcement, Saudi television cut to Koranic verses, which often signifies the death of a senior royal.

King Abdullah, who was said to be aged about 90, had been in hospital for several weeks suffering from a lung infection.

Abdullah came to the throne in 2005 but had suffered frequent bouts of ill health in recent years.

King Salman, 79, had recently taken on the ailing monarch's responsibilities.

The late king's half brother Muqrin, who is in his late 60s, has been named the new crown prince, the official statement said.

All three are sons of the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz, usually referred to as Ibn Saud, who died in 1953.

King Salman called on the royal family's Allegiance Council to recognise Muqrin as his crown prince and heir.

"His Highness Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and all members of the family and the nation mourn the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who passed away at exactly 1am this morning," the statement said.

Abdullah was the 13th of the 37 sons of King Abdulaziz. He is believed to have been born in August 1924 in Riyadh, although there is some dispute about his actual birth date.

He was seen as a reformer at home, albeit a slow and steady one.

He allowed mild criticism of his government in the press, and hinted that more women should be allowed to work.

[Quintus Curtius]

These guys are all about interchangeable.

[CactusCat589]

Why was the thirteenth born son made king? Did the twelve older brothers all bite the dust before it came around to him?

[JustlookingForAGoodTime]

The shit has been pretty deep in the Middle East for some time now and the Saudis have been heavily involved in fucking things up for the worst in the name of Wahhabism. It's only been recently that things are turning against them but who knows what'll happen next. Whoever the next king is his sectarian background will determine the course of action that'll be taken.

[Ensam]

(01-22-2015 08:21 PM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  

Why was the thirteenth born son made king? Did the twelve older brothers all bite the dust before it came around to him?

Well 6 of them were king before him, so that seems to be about how that works.

[El Chinito loco]

They will do the same thing as always..appease Wahhabists in the background while partying, whoring, racing around in their sports cars in the foreground. They'll continue to toe the line of U.S. foreign policy because it's in the royal family's best interests though.


The reason why the Saudis support Wahhabism is because if they don't the Wahhabists will take over Mecca again. It's obvious why they don't want that to happen. Whoever controls Mecca controls the Muslim world. For the Saudis the best option is to just send lots of money to the Wahhabist leaders instead.

[VolandoVengoVolandoVoy]

[Geomann180]

(01-22-2015 08:21 PM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  

Why was the thirteenth born son made king? Did the twelve older brothers all bite the dust before it came around to him?

Because 13 is a lucky number.

G

[Deluge]

(01-22-2015 08:21 PM)CactusCat589 Wrote:  

Why was the thirteenth born son made king? Did the twelve older brothers all bite the dust before it came around to him?

They're not chosen based on seniority. The family basically decides amongst themselves whose next in line from the senior Princes, usually choosing from brothers of the current King rather than his sons like in a European monarchy. It'll be interesting to see what happen once the current generation finally dies off (the ones left are all pretty old). The transfer of power to the next generation might get sticky.

[GeroMeroHero]

Meet the new boss, same as the ol' salafist

[Excelsior]

This is a pretty notable geo-political event. Here's a very informative video on the topic. It came out a while ago and was intended to explain the nature of the House of Saud and some of the complexity of the Saudi succession situation.

[Easy E]

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Isn't it a tad unwise to choose a new monarch who is already 79? He'll die or go senile before he can do anything significant. I don't see how a kingdom is served by having a new ruler every 10 years.

[Saweeep]

(01-22-2015 08:48 PM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

They will do the same thing as always..appease Wahhabists in the background while partying, whoring, racing around in their sports cars in the foreground. They'll continue to toe the line of U.S. foreign policy because it's in the royal family's best interests though.


The reason why the Saudis support Wahhabism is because if they don't the Wahhabists will take over Mecca again. It's obvious why they don't want that to happen. Whoever controls Mecca controls the Muslim world. For the Saudis the best option is to just send lots of money to the Wahhabist leaders instead.

Possibly.

It's quite possible that they support Wahhabism in order to "export" their potential domestic problems.

The one thing the Saudi royals fear is a revolution. They'd end up in a hole in the ground like Saddam.

[lskdfjldsf]

(01-23-2015 02:23 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Isn't it a tad unwise to choose a new monarch who is already 79? He'll die or go senile before he can do anything significant. I don't see how a kingdom is served by having a new ruler every 10 years.

This provides the monarchy with greater legitimacy as an institution, rather than as individual politicians. A monarchy without short terms looks more like a dictatorship.

[El Chinito loco]

(01-23-2015 05:23 AM)Blick Mang Wrote:  

(01-23-2015 02:23 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

Isn't it a tad unwise to choose a new monarch who is already 79? He'll die or go senile before he can do anything significant. I don't see how a kingdom is served by having a new ruler every 10 years.

This provides the monarchy with greater legitimacy as an institution, rather than as individual politicians. A monarchy without short terms looks more like a dictatorship.

It's just the royal version of political stagecraft. The king is dead..all hail the king. One old fucker passes another old crooked fucker dons the same garb and ascends.

Even when the immediate lineage dies out (from pussy overdose) there are so many successors they will eventually sort it out kind of like how dogs nominate an alpha leader. I really don't believe there will be any crazy uprising or coup when everyone is on the dole with sweet gulf oil money. When royalty becomes deprived of their proper alottment of pussy, drugs, and cars that's when things will go awry.

Just for reference the Saudis give a serious amount of money to Wahhabists..the estimate is upwards of hundreds of millions to a billion. If they can afford this extortion payoff then they can afford to keep a few hundred princes docile and swimming in wet vagina indefinitely.

[Sp5]

It's nauseating reading about how Obama praises that guy. They just were flogging a blogger who was mildly critical of the monarchy and the imams in SA. If you trace all the problems with Islam around the world back to the source, follow the money, the origin is Saudi Arabia.

Even in the 19th century, Iraqis, other Arabs and the Ottomans had to beat back the Wahhabis from an insurgency.

Remember, there is a still-classified 28 page section of the 9/11 Commission Report which deals with Saudi involvement and support for the 9/11 hijackers. How the fuck can they hide the cause of an event which led to long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comm...ight-pages
http://28pages.org/

Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia does not have a population yearning for liberal secularism and democracy. Because the monarchy has pandered to the Wahabis in educational curriculum and culture, if anything the common person in SA has worse views than the ruling families.

Eventually there will be disaster, a collapse of the Al Saud monarchy, an attempt of ISIS (they just killed the Saudi general in charge of security on the Iraqi border) or some like group to take power, and someone (mostly the USA again, probably) will have to come in and fight a bloody war. The USA should have invaded SA after 9/11, put the Hashemites back in charge, and be done with it. It would have been more effective than the flailing around it's done since 9/11.

[El Chinito loco]

(01-23-2015 06:59 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

Eventually there will be disaster, a collapse of the Al Saud monarchy, an attempt of ISIS (they just killed the Saudi general in charge of security on the Iraqi border) or some like group to take power, and someone (mostly the USA again, probably) will have to come in and fight a bloody war. The USA should have invaded SA after 9/11, put the Hashemites back in charge, and be done with it. It would have been more effective than the flailing around it's done since 9/11.

There will be a disaster maybe multiple disasters and attacks (that we never hear of) but the Saudi service is actually fairly competent. They do torture, kill, and throw people into dark holes fairly regularly who challenge their immediate authority in more than symbolic ways. They are also heavily CIA and military backed. S.A. is a strange outpost but an outpost nontheless. If it falls then you know the U.S. has truly fallen...as the canary in the coal mine.

That's why the staging of U.S. troops in S.A. offended Bin Laden so much. It was a slap in the face of what was an obvious hierarchy.

[Saweeep]

(01-23-2015 06:59 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

They just were flogging a blogger who was mildly critical of the monarchy and the imams in SA.

Did you see the leaked footage of this "flogging"?

I've whipped girls harder than that!

Made me wonder what the point was other than to troll the West.

[El Chinito loco]

(01-23-2015 07:19 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  

(01-23-2015 06:59 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

They just were flogging a blogger who was mildly critical of the monarchy and the imams in SA.

Did you see the leaked footage of this "flogging"?

I've whipped girls harder than that!

Made me wonder what the point was other than to troll the West.

Proper way to flog dissident girl.

Position immediate behind offending unclothed subject.

Command position grabbing hair of offender, pull

Hard thrusts into offender.

Moans.

[lskdfjldsf]

I love what Bill Maher said about this - along the lines of "They're only doing 50 lashes per week so he's not harmed too much? See, there are moderate Muslims!"

[Sp5]

(01-23-2015 07:09 AM)El Chinito loco Wrote:  

(01-23-2015 06:59 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  

Eventually there will be disaster, a collapse of the Al Saud monarchy, an attempt of ISIS (they just killed the Saudi general in charge of security on the Iraqi border) or some like group to take power, and someone (mostly the USA again, probably) will have to come in and fight a bloody war. The USA should have invaded SA after 9/11, put the Hashemites back in charge, and be done with it. It would have been more effective than the flailing around it's done since 9/11.

There will be a disaster maybe multiple disasters and attacks (that we never hear of) but the Saudi service is actually fairly competent. They do torture, kill, and throw people into dark holes fairly regularly who challenge their immediate authority in more than symbolic ways. They are also heavily CIA and military backed. S.A. is a strange outpost but an outpost nontheless. If it falls then you know the U.S. has truly fallen...as the canary in the coal mine.

That's why the staging of U.S. troops in S.A. offended Bin Laden so much. It was a slap in the face of what was an obvious hierarchy.

It is a strange outpost which demonstrates the lie behind the USA's human rights complaints about places like Assad's Syria and Iran, which are freer places in every way than SA.

The basic problem is that the ruling ideology in SA is Wahabi Islam. The population is educated and indoctrinated in it. Its precepts are enforced. All those security service guys, at least in the rank-and-file, have internalized those precepts.

There are two sources of tension. The first is between Wahabi precepts and the lifestyle of the monarchy and the elite, including decadent luxury and foreign travel.

The second is income. SA has a pretty big population, 30 million. The per capita GDP (PPP) is only $31,000, not that big. But the median income is less than $20,000, with a lot of poor people in the country.

The religious and economic arguments against the ruling regime are congruent - they are morally decadent and they are immorally stealing the nation's wealth and impoverishing the ummah being morally decadent.

The only thing which would sustain the regime is cynicism and self-interest. As population grows, there won't be enough money to bribe enough people.

Even within the Al Saud family, the number of princes and princesses is growing. That will be another source of problem, as they can't all be supported in opulence forever.

Plus there are a large Shia minority which are attacked and marginalized by the Wahabis.

It seems the suicide bombing the the major general in charge of the northern border had to be an inside job to some degree, as someone informed on the general's movements. SA is building an Iron Curtain type of border fence on the border with Iraq. The fence will be useless if ISIS sympathizers on the Saudi side open the gates.

[Cincinnatus]

(01-23-2015 03:42 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  

It's quite possible that they support Wahhabism in order to "export" their potential domestic problems.

It certainly seems that way. I think the quoted post below, from a discussion on reddit about Abdullah's death, gives a concise insight into Saudi Arabia's internal situation and its relations with neighbors in the Islamic world:

Quote:

This is going to be an interesting few years for Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah was considered a reformer - his brother and predecessor, King Fahd, was a conservative who drove Saudi Arabia far deeper into Wahhabi Islam, in order to appease the clerics. King Abdullah, on the other hand, pushed quietly for a lot of reform for females and tried to reverse a lot of the change the hard-line conservatives in the country did during his predecessor's reign.

There are a LOT of people who don't quite understand the dynamic between the Saudi people and the Saudi government - an absolute monarchy - and why blaming splitting/spurning Saudi Arabia could hurt us a lot more than trying to keep reforms in Saudi Arabia going. The following is a bit of a history lesson, but very relevant to the struggle going on there.

First, we must go back to December 1979, a pivotal month year in modern Islam.

At the end of 1979, Islamists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, during the hajj, when millions around the world came for pilgrimage. Hundreds of pilgrims were taken hostage - hundreds died and the ringleaders were beheaded.

That same December, Ayatollah Khomeini officially became the 1st Supreme Leader of Iran. In doing so, his revolution had successfully created a Shia theocracy in Iran, a rival of the Arabs and in particular Saudi Arabia.

Also in December of 1979, the Soviet Union, an atheist state, invaded Afghanistan, an Islamic state.

Why do all of these tie in together?

For one, the Saudi royal family sees themselves as the caretakers of Mecca and Medina - a sort of royal protector of Islam like an Islamic Vatican State. In Iran in 1979, however, there was a new rival in both culture (Arabs vs Persian), religious sect (Sunni vs Shia), and now in government (monarchy vs theocracy). Note that many hardline Islamists do not believe that monarchies can exist in strict Islam - as thus, the Saudi royal family was nothing more than a western, imperialist creation that was ultimately un-Islamic. Furthermore, the agreement they've had with the US for protection (established by FDR during WW2 actually, after he met with the founder of Saudi Arabia, in exchange for logistics bases for the war) was seen as a mortal sin - dealing with an infidel country.

The Saudi family feared that Iran would become a model for the commoners to rise up. The Saudi populace is very conservative and while the Saudi royal family has been famous for its debauchery and westernized living (especially abroad), for the most part the population had been quiet. The Seizure of the Grand Mosque, however, sent a shockwave through the Saudi family - they were not immune. They feared they too would be toppled by an Iranian-style revolution by those who deemed them not Islamic-enough.

As thus, the Saudis embarked on appeasing the hardliner clerics with more strict laws, a tougher moral police, etc. Prior to all this, Saudi Arabia didn't have such strict laws as requiring women to be covered in public, foreign females could drive legally, etc. In exchange, the clerics continued the agreement to legitimize the Saudi family.

Furthermore, the Soviet invasion was an unexpected boon - the Saudi government encouraged young Islamist-leaning males to go fight in holy jihad against the atheist commies and defend Islam in Afghanistan. Also, many Saudi citizens donated money to establish mosques in Pakistan and Afghanistan to preach their ideology and send more fighters against the Soviets. All of this was welcomed by the Saudi government -this relieved a lot of the pressure internally as those fighters and money went away from funding fundamentalists internally.

Where did it all go wrong? Well, fast forward to 1991 and the Gulf War. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, Osama bin Laden - through his family connections - petitioned the Saudi king to let him and his hardened fighters in Afghanistan come and fight the Iraqis.

The Saudi King refused - instead, he requested the US and an international coalition come help. The Saudis volunteered their soil for US bases.

To Osama, this was the last straw - the Saudi King let an infidel army establish bases on the holiest soil in Islam. In turn, Osama declared war not just on the US and the west - but also on the Saudi government and its royal family.

This is why all the talk about removing our support from Saudi Arabia, etc. simply isn't going to happen. Yes, most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens - but the Saudi government itself has been under attack by people of those same ideologies. The Saudi government has had to play a balancing act between its western-leaning royal family and the hardliner citizens that make up its population.

This is also why we need the Saudi government to come aboard in cracking down harder on its citizens - after a string of attacks in the 90s and 2000s, they finally came to a realization that they had to do something and it's made a lot of headway in the fight against Islamists.

And that's why Saudi Arabia has supported toppling Gaddafi (because he's a clown) and Assad (because he's an ally of Shia Iran), whether there are Islamist rebels or not -- its radical citizens have a place to go wage jihad away from home -- but also has supported toppling Morsi (because he's a hardline Islamist) and re-establishing the secular rule of the Egyptian military.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comme...ied_at_90/

[GeroMeroHero]

Apparently David Cameron is tongue bathing him? Despite walking in a march for free speech and the blogger lashing.