It’s unbelievable that so much firepower was directed for so long against what the authorities claim was just a toy drone that strayed over restricted airspace. Nobody seems to believe Saudi Arabia’s official explanation that the extendedgunfire that reportedly took place near the royal palace over the weekend was the result of a single toy …
Continue reading Saudi Arabia’s Drone Scare Might Have Really Been a Coup Attempt
In a 2 April 2018 interview in the Atlantic, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman publicly declared that the Israelis “have a right to live in their own land just like the Palestinians.” It is a problematic assumption, given that the Israelis’ “own land” is the land they took away from the Palestinians. This, and much else, …
The Crown Princes of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and the Malaysian Sultanate of Johor are all staking their respective claims to authority that have far-reaching consequences beyond their own potentates. The princelings of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi are heirs apparent. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) is the designated heir to the aged …
Continue reading Three Muslim Crown Princes Stake Their Claims
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s insistence that “Israel” has a “right to exist” shouldn’t be surprising no matter how “politically incorrect” it is, nor should the Ummah’s relatively muted reaction be either. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS) dropped what should have been a bombshell of an announcement in an exclusive interview …
Continue reading Saudi Arabia and “Israel”: The Open Secret is Now Official
If Saudi Arabia is acting a bit unhinged of late, it’s easy to see why: the Kingdom has all the troubles of Ayyub, as Job is known in the Qur’an. Its economy is in recession due to a 50 percent drop in oil prices. It’s on bad terms with nearly all its neighbors after bombing …
Continue reading Will the Saudi Kingdom Collapse Under the Resource Curse?
The current US tour of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS, is a triumph of multi-million-dollar post-truth public relations. The fact that MbS also happens to be destroying Yemen is just a minor glitch. Smooth PR is always able to secure the maxim that not all dictators, Arab or otherwise, are equal; after …
Continue reading MbS Feted in the US Despite War Atrocities in Yemen
In a sensational interview with the Washington Post, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and de-facto leader Muhammad bin Salman has blamed the US and its allies for putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to export the extremist Wahhabi ideology during the Cold War as a means to counter the influence of the Soviet Union in the wider …
There are few countries on earth more oppressive than Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy shaped by Sunni theocracy. It stones adulterers and hurls gay men off buildings by judicial decision. The State Department routinely, matter of factly, reports widespread human rights abuses in the country. International human rights organizations use Saudi Arabia as the poster …
Continue reading Trump, the Crown Prince and the Whole Ugly Big Picture
One of the more intriguing news reports about the rapid rise to power of the 32-year-old Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), concerns how he isolated his mother, placing her under house arrest for a time. He kept her away from his father, the mentally declining King Salman, and devised phony explanations to the …
