Saudi Royal Family Linked to 9/11 Shurely Shome Mishtake?

Is the Saudi Royal Family Connected to 9/11 Hijackers?

New evidence links the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida, who reportedly had contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the US prior to the attacks.
By Russ Baker
September 22, 2011

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.

As reported in the Herald, phone records documented communication, dating back more than a year, that connected a Saudi family then living in a house near Sarasota, Florida, with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, and his hijack pilots—as well as to eleven of the other hijackers. In addition, records from the guard house at the gated community tied Atta’s vehicle and his accomplice Ziad Jarrah to actual visits to the house. Although requiring further investigation, this information suggests that the house may have functioned as an operational base for the hijackers.

According to interviews and records examined by The Herald, Anoud and Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and their young twins abruptly departed their home in Sarasota only days before September 11, 2001 and traveled to Arlington, Virginia, where they stayed briefly at another house owned by Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi.

Then, still well before 9/11, the entire group, now including the father, flew to London and on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Sarasota house was sold in 2003, as was apenthouse apartment in another DC, suburb, Rosslyn, Virginia. The Ghazzawis do not seem to have set foot again in the United States.

New Revelations

Building on these revelations, WhoWhatWhy has found documents laying out the Ghazzawis’ royal connections through a nest of Saudi corporations that share the name EIRAD. Esam Ghazzawi is director of EIRAD Management Company, the UK division of EIRAD Trading and Contracting Co. Ltd., which among other things holds the Saudi franchise for many multinational brands, including UPS. Esam’s brother Mamdouh, whose name shows up on public records associated with family properties in the U.S., is the Executive Managing Director of the parent firm, EIRAD Holding Co. Ltd. EIRAD has connections to the US government via contracts. In 2008, records show, the State Department paid EIRAD $11,733 for rental of facilities, presumably in Saudi Arabia.

There is no indication that the company itself, or any of its officers or employees, have any connection to the 9/11 incident, or knowledge of anything regarding Mr. Ghazzawi’s activities in the United States. Calls for comment to the company’s main switchboard went unanswered during normal business hours; its website was not functioning properly and Saudi trade officials in the United States had not furnished alternative contact information at publication time.

But the now-revealed link between the Ghazzawis and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment reopens questions about the White House’s controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement—despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis.

In addition, the new revelations draw further attention to a web of relationships that include the long and close business, personal and political ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family.

Saudi money is woven throughout business ventures connected to the Bushes. Saudi funds even helped bail out George W. Bush’s failing oil company early in his life. Jim Bath, a close friend of Bush in the Texas Air National Guard, went on to start a business in conjunction with two sons of powerful Saudi families—Khalid bin Mahfouz, whose the family provides banking services to the Saudi royals, and Salem bin Laden, heir to the bin Laden family’s global construction empire and a half brother to Osama bin Laden. (For a detailed probe of the Bush family’s dealings with the Saudis, including substantial previously unreported material, see my book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.)

Details of The Herald’s Revelations

The Ghazzawi presence in the Sunshine State predated 9/11 by at least six years. In 1995 a young Saudi woman named Anoud Ghazzawi living in South Florida married a fellow Saudi native, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii (English spellings of his first name and surname vary, as is typical of Arabic names.) Anoud’s father, Esam, and his American-born wife Deborah bought the couple a stylish, three-bedroom house in a gated community in Sarasota. The house remained in the elder Ghazzawis’ names while the young couple lived there and began a family.

Six years later, less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, Anoud, Abdulazzi and their children left their home on or about August 30, 2001 in great haste, taking off in a white van. This was about the same time that the hijackers were purchasing their tickets for the targeted flights.

The family apparently left with no advance planning, leaving behind almost all their possessions, abandoning three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway. As the Herald article explained:

“there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms … all the toiletries still in place … all their clothes hanging in the closet … opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house … the pool running, with toys in it….The beds were made … fruit on the counter … the refrigerator full of food. … It was like they went grocery shopping. Like they went out to a movie … [But] the safe was open in the master bedroom, with nothing in it, not a paper clip. … A computer was still there. A computer plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they’d taken [another] computer and left the cord.”

After public disclosure of Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks, people in the gated community took note of the rushed departure and disappearance of the Ghazzawi-al-Hiijjiis. After all, the attackers were not just overwhelmingly of Saudi nationality, but three out of four of the future hijackers had lived and trained to fly in Venice, Florida, just 10 miles away from the house.

The complex’s security officer alerted the FBI, which began an investigation into the house at 4224 Escondito Circle. (In addition, a suspicious neighbor alerted the FBI by email on the day of the attacks.)

The Justice Department declined to give the Herald a statement, but, according to an unnamed senior counterterrorism officer who was one of two people who got into the house first and served as a key source for the paper, the investigation bore stunning fruit.

Phone records showed communication, dating back more than a year, that connected those in the house with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta and his accomplices, including eleven of the other hijackers. Other records, kept by guards at the gated community, documented numerousvisits to the house by a vehicle known to have been used by Atta, and indicated the physical presence in the car of Atta’s purported accomplice Ziad Jarrah. It appeared as if the Ghazzawi house was some kind of nerve center for the entire operation. Go to page 3 of 9

Hmmm, quite a little can of worms.

Wikileaks Sheds Light on the Land of Darkness: The Excesses of 'Al Saud Inc.'

I think if any regime was deserving of an uprising against it, Saudi Arabia, the Land of Darkness, must surely be at the top of the list.

As equally deserving, the takeover should be at the hands of women, enabling the lasses to give this backward bunch of misogynist goat fuckers, a taste of their own medicine for a justifiable change.

There is much on the land of darkness in the side-bar, usually tagged ''Us and Them'' or ''Women in Islam.''

click

US Cables Detail Saudi Royal Family's Lavish Lifestyles
Royals 'known for the stories of their fabulous wealth — and tendency to squander it'

By Simon Robinson
February 28, 2011


When Saudi King Abdullah arrived home last week, he came bearing gifts: handouts worth $37 billion, apparently intended to placate Saudis of modest means and insulate the world's biggest oil exporter from the wave of protest sweeping the Arab world.

But some of the biggest handouts over the past two decades have gone to his own extended family, according to unpublished American diplomatic cables dating back to 1996.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, provide remarkable insight into how much the vast royal welfare program has cost the country -- not just financially but in terms of undermining social cohesion.


Besides the huge monthly stipends that every Saudi royal receives, the cables detail various money-making schemes some royals have used to finance their lavish lifestyles over the years. Among them: siphoning off money from "off-budget" programs controlled by senior princes, sponsoring expatriate workers who then pay a small monthly fee to their royal patron and, simply, "borrowing from the banks, and not paying them back."

As long ago as 1996, U.S. officials noted that such unrestrained behavior could fuel a backlash against the Saudi elite. In the assessment of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh in a cable from that year, "of the priority issues the country faces, getting a grip on royal family excesses is at the top."

A 2007 cable showed that King Abdullah has made changes since taking the throne six years ago, but recent turmoil in the Middle East underlines the deep-seated resentment about economic disparities and corruption in the region.

A Saudi government spokesman contacted by Reuters declined to comment.


MONTHLY CHEQUES

The November 1996 cable -- entitled "Saudi Royal Wealth: Where do they get all that money?" -- provides an extraordinarily detailed picture of how the royal patronage system works. It's the sort of overview that would have been useful required reading for years in the U.S. State department.

It begins with a line that could come from a fairytale: "Saudi princes and princesses, of whom there are thousands, are known for the stories of their fabulous wealth -- and tendency to squander it."

The most common mechanism for distributing Saudi Arabia's wealth to the royal family is the formal, budgeted system of monthly stipends that members of the Al Saud family receive, according to the cable. Managed by the Ministry of Finance's "Office of Decisions and Rules," which acts like a kind of welfare office for Saudi royalty, the royal stipends in the mid-1990s ran from about $800 a month for "the lowliest member of the most remote branch of the family" to $200,000-$270,000 a month for one of the surviving sons of Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia.


Grandchildren received around $27,000 a month, "according to one contact familiar with the stipends" system, the cable says. Great-grandchildren received about $13,000 and great-great- grandchildren $8,000 a month.

"Bonus payments are available for marriage and palace building," according to the cable, which estimates that the system cost the country, which had an annual budget of $40 billion at the time, some $2 billion a year.

"The stipends also provide a substantial incentive for royals to procreate since the stipends begin at birth."


After a visit to the Office of Decisions and Rules, which was in an old building in Riyadh's banking district, the U.S. embassy's economics officer described a place "bustling with servants picking up cash for their masters." The office distributed the monthly stipends -- not just to royals but to "other families and individuals granted monthly stipends in perpetuity." It also fulfilled "financial promises made by senior princes."

The head of the office at the time, Abdul-Aziz al-Shubayli, told the economics officer that an important part of his job "at least in today's more fiscally disciplined environment, is to play the role of bad cop." He "rudely grilled a nearly blind old man about why an eye operation promised by a prince and confirmed by royal Diwan note had to be conducted overseas and not for free in one of the first-class eye hospitals in the kingdom." After finally signing off on a trip, Shubayli noted that he himself had been in the United States twice for medical treatment, once for a chronic ulcer and once for carpal tunnel syndrome. "He chuckled, suggesting that both were probably job-induced."


FOLLOWING THE MONEY

But the stipend system was clearly not enough for many royals, who used a range of other ways to make money, "not counting business activities."

"By far the largest is likely royal skimming from the approximately $10 billion in annual off-budget spending controlled by a few key princes," the 1996 cable states. Two of those projects -- the Two Holy Mosques Project and the Ministry of Defense's Strategic Storage Project -- are "highly secretive, subject to no Ministry of Finance oversight or controls, transacted through the National Commercial Bank, and widely believed to be a source of substantial revenues" for the then-King and a few of his full brothers, according to the authors of the cable.

In a meeting with the U.S. ambassador at the time, one Saudi prince, alluding to the off-budget programs, "lamented the travesty that revenues from 'one million barrels of oil per day' go entirely to 'five or six princes,'" according to the cable, which quoted the prince.

Then there was the apparently common practice for royals to borrow money from commercial banks and simply not repay their loans. As a result, the 12 commercial banks in the country were "generally leary of lending to royals."


The managing director of another bank in the kingdom told the ambassador that he divided royals into four tiers, according to the cable. The top tier was the most senior princes who, perhaps because they were so wealthy, never asked for loans. The second tier included senior princes who regularly asked for loans. "The bank insists that such loans be 100 percent collateralized by deposits in other accounts at the bank," the cable reports. The third tier included thousands of princes the bank refused to lend to. The fourth tier, "not really royals, are what this banker calls the 'hangers on'."

Another popular money-making scheme saw some "greedy princes" expropriate land from commoners. "Generally, the intent is to resell quickly at huge markup to the government for an upcoming project." By the mid-1990s, a government program to grant land to commoners had dwindled. "Against this backdrop, royal land scams increasingly have become a point of public contention."

The cable cites a banker who claimed to have a copy of "written instructions" from one powerful royal that ordered local authorities in the Mecca area to transfer to his name a "Waqf" -- religious endowment -- of a small parcel of land that had been in the hands of one family for centuries. "The banker noted that it was the brazenness of the letter ... that was particularly egregious."


Another senior royal was famous for "throwing fences up around vast stretches of government land."

The confiscation of land extends to businesses as well, the cable notes. A prominent and wealthy Saudi businessman told the embassy that one reason rich Saudis keep so much money outside the country was to lessen the risk of 'royal expropriation.'"

Finally, royals kept the money flowing by sponsoring the residence permits of foreign workers and then requiring them to pay a monthly "fee" of between $30 and $150. "It is common for a prince to sponsor a hundred or more foreigners," the 1996 cable says.


BIG SPENDERS

The U.S. diplomats behind the cable note wryly that despite all the money that has been given to Saudi royals over the years there is not "a significant number of super-rich princes ... In the end," the cable states, Saudi's "royals still seem more adept at squandering than accumulating wealth."

But the authors of the cable also warned that all that money and excess was undermining the legitimacy of the ruling family. By 1996, there was "broad sentiment that royal greed has gone beyond the bounds of reason". Still, as long as the "royal family views this country as 'Al Saud Inc.' ever increasing numbers of princes and princesses will see it as their birthright to receive lavish dividend payments, and dip into the till from time to time, by sheer virtue of company ownership."

In the years that followed that remarkable assessment of Saudi royalty, there were some official efforts toward reform -- driven in the late 1990s and early 2000s in particular by an oil price between $10-20 a barrel. But the real push for reform began in 2005, when King Abdullah succeeded to the throne, and even then change came slowly.


By February 2007, according to a second cable entitled "Crown Prince Sultan backs the King in family disputes", the reforms were beginning to bite. "By far the most widespread source of discontent in the ruling family is the King's curtailment of their privileges," the cable says. "King Abdullah has reportedly told his brothers that he is over 80 years old and does not wish to approach his judgment day with the 'burden of corruption on my shoulder.'"

The King, the cable states, had disconnected the cellphone service for "thousands of princes and princesses." Year-round government-paid hotel suites in Jeddah had been canceled, as was the right of royals to request unlimited free tickets from the state airline. "We have a first-hand account that a wife of Interior minister Prince Naif attempted to board a Saudia flight with 12 companions, all expecting to travel for free," the authors of the cables write, only to be told "to her outrage" that the new rules meant she could only take two free guests.

Others were also angered by the rules. Prince Mishal bin Majid bin Abdulaziz had taken to driving between Jeddah and Riyadh "to show his annoyance" at the reforms, according to the cable.


Abdullah had also reigned in the practice of issuing "block visas" to foreign workers "and thus cut the income of many junior princes" as well as dramatically reducing "the practice of transferring public lands to favored individuals."

The U.S. cable reports that all those reforms had fueled tensions within the ruling family to the point where Interior Minister Prince Naif and Riyadh Governor Prince Salman had "sought to openly confront the King over reducing royal entitlements."

But according to "well established sources with first hand access to this information," Crown Prince Sultan stood by Abdullah and told his brothers "that challenging the King was a 'red line' that he would not cross." Sultan, the cable says, has also followed the King's lead and turned down requests for land transfers.

The cable comments that Sultan, longtime defense minister and now also Crown Prince, seemed to value family unity and stability above all. Reuters

The Kingdom in the Closet 'The land of sand and sodomites'

The first of three posts on religion and sex. (2) (3)

The article below was linked from, and is the essence of, Pat Condell's video.

The Kingdom in the Closet
Nadya Labi
May 2007

Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet
By Nadya Labi

Yasser, a 26-year-old artist, was taking me on an impromptu tour of his hometown of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on a sweltering September afternoon. The air conditioner of his dusty Honda battled the heat, prayer beads dangled from the rearview mirror, and the smell of the cigarette he’d just smoked wafted toward me as he stopped to show me a barbershop that his friends frequent. Officially, men in Saudi Arabia aren’t allowed to wear their hair long or to display jewelry—such vanities are usually deemed to violate an Islamic instruction that the sexes must not be too similar in appearance. But Yasser wears a silver necklace, a silver bracelet, and a sparkly red stud in his left ear, and his hair is shaggy. Yasser is homosexual, or so we would describe him in the West, and the barbershop we visited caters to gay men. Business is brisk.

Leaving the barbershop, we drove onto Tahlia Street, a broad avenue framed by palm trees, then went past a succession of sleek malls and slowed in front of a glass-and-steel shopping center. Men congregated outside and in nearby cafés. Whereas most such establishments have a family section, two of this area’s cafés allow only men; not surprisingly, they are popular among men who prefer one another’s company. Yasser gestured to a parking lot across from the shopping center, explaining that after midnight it would be “full of men picking up men.” These days, he said, “you see gay people everywhere.”

Yasser turned onto a side street, then braked suddenly. “Oh shit, it’s a checkpoint,” he said, inclining his head toward some traffic cops in brown uniforms. “Do you have your ID?” he asked me. He wasn’t worried about the gay-themed nature of his tour—he didn’t want to be caught alone with a woman. I rummaged through my purse, realizing that I’d left my passport in the hotel for safekeeping. Yasser looked behind him to see if he could reverse the car, but had no choice except to proceed. To his relief, the cops nodded us through. “God, they freaked me out,” Yasser said. As he resumed his narration, I recalled something he had told me earlier. “It’s a lot easier to be gay than straight here,” he had said. “If you go out with a girl, people will start to ask her questions. But if I have a date upstairs and my family is downstairs, they won’t even come up.”

Notorious for its adherence to Wahhabism, a puritanical strain of Islam, and as the birthplace of most of the 9/11 hijackers, Saudi Arabia is the only Arab country that claims sharia, or Islamic law, as its sole legal code. The list of prohibitions is long: It’s haram—forbidden—to smoke, drink, go to discos, or mix with an unrelated person of the opposite gender. The rules are enforced by the mutawwa'in, religious authorities employed by the government’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The kingdom is dominated by mosques and malls, which the mutawwa'in patrol in leather sandals and shortened versions of the thawb, the traditional ankle-length white robe that many Saudis wear. Some mutawwa'in even bear marks of their devotion on their faces; they bow to God so adamantly that pressing their foreheads against the ground leaves a visible dent. The mutawwa'in prod shoppers to say their devotions when the shops close for prayer, several times daily. If they catch a boy and a girl on a date, they might haul the couple to the police station. They make sure that single men steer clear of the malls, which are family-only zones for the most part, unless they are with a female relative. Though the power of the mutawwa'in has been curtailed recently, their presence still inspires fear.

In Saudi Arabia, sodomy is punishable by death. Though that penalty is seldom applied, just this February a man in the Mecca region was executed for having sex with a boy, among other crimes. (For this reason, the names of most people in this story have been changed.) Ask many Saudis about homosexuality, and they’ll wince with repugnance. “I disapprove,” Rania, a 32-year-old human-resources manager, told me firmly. “Women weren’t meant to be with women, and men aren’t supposed to be with men.”

This legal and public condemnation notwithstanding, the kingdom leaves considerable space for homosexual behavior. As long as gays and lesbians maintain a public front of obeisance to Wahhabist norms, they are left to do what they want in private. Vibrant communities of men who enjoy sex with other men can be found in cosmopolitan cities like Jeddah and Riyadh. They meet in schools, in cafés, in the streets, and on the Internet. “You can be cruised anywhere in Saudi Arabia, any time of the day,” said Radwan, a 42-year-old gay Saudi American who grew up in various Western cities and now lives in Jeddah. “They’re quite shameless about it.” Talal, a Syrian who moved to Riyadh in 2000, calls the Saudi capital a “gay heaven.”

This is surprising enough. But what seems more startling, at least from a Western perspective, is that some of the men having sex with other men don’t consider themselves gay. For many Saudis, the fact that a man has sex with another man has little to do with “gayness.” The act may fulfill a desire or a need, but it doesn’t constitute an identity. Nor does it strip a man of his masculinity, as long as he is in the “top,” or active, role. This attitude gives Saudi men who engage in homosexual behavior a degree of freedom. But as a more Westernized notion of gayness—a notion that stresses orientation over acts—takes hold in the country, will this delicate balance survive?

‘They will seduce you’

When Yasser hit puberty, he grew attracted to his male cousins. Like many gay and lesbian teenagers everywhere, he felt isolated. “I used to have the feeling that I was the queerest in the country,” he recalled. “But then I went to high school and discovered there are others like me. Then I find out, it’s a whole society.”

This society thrives just below the surface. During the afternoon, traffic cops patrol outside girls’ schools as classes end, in part to keep boys away. But they exert little control over what goes on inside. A few years ago, a Jeddah- based newspaper ran a story on lesbianism in high schools, reporting that girls were having sex in the bathrooms. Yasmin, a 21-year-old student in Riyadh who’d had a brief sexual relationship with a girlfriend (and was the only Saudi woman who’d had a lesbian relationship who was willing to speak with me for this story), told me that one of the department buildings at her college is known as a lesbian enclave. The building has large bathroom stalls, which provide privacy, and walls covered with graffiti offering romantic and religious advice; tips include “she doesn’t really love you no matter what she tells you” and “before you engage in anything with [her] remember: God is watching you.” In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”

This analogy came up again and again during my conversations. As Radwan, the Saudi American, put it, “Some Saudi [men] can’t have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated”—men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women’s purity—“how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?” Tariq, a 24-year-old in the travel industry, explains that many “tops” are simply hard up for sex, looking to break their abstinence in whatever way they can. Francis, a 34-year-old beauty queen from the Philippines (in 2003 he won a gay beauty pageant held in a private house in Jeddah by a group of Filipinos), reported that he’s had sex with Saudi men whose wives were pregnant or menstruating; when those circumstances changed, most of the men stopped calling. “If they can’t use their wives,” Francis said, “they have this option with gays.”

Gay courting in the kingdom is often overt—in fact, the preferred mode is cruising. “When I was new here, I was worried when six or seven cars would follow me as I walked down the street,” Jamie, a 31-year-old Filipino florist living in Jeddah, told me. “Especially if you’re pretty like me, they won’t stop chasing you.” John Bradley, the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), says that most male Western expatriates here, gay or not, have been propositioned by Saudi men driving by “at any time of the day or night, quite openly and usually very, very persistently.”

Many gay expatriates say they feel more at home in the kingdom than in their native lands. Jason, a South African educator who has lived in Jeddah since 2002, notes that although South Africa allows gay marriage, “it’s as though there are more gays here.” For Talal, Riyadh became an escape. When he was 17 and living in Da­mas­cus, his father walked in on him having sex with a male friend. He hit Talal and grounded him for two months, letting him out of the house only after he swore he was no longer attracted to men. Talal’s pale face flushed crimson as he recalled his shame at disappointing his family. Eager to escape the weight of their expectations, he took a job in Riyadh. When he announced that he would be moving, his father responded, “You know all Saudis like boys, and you are white. Take care.” Talal was pleased to find a measure of truth in his father’s warning—his fair skin made him a hit among the locals.

Marcos, a 41-year-old from the Philippines, was arrested in 1996 for attending a party featuring a drag show. He spent nine months in prison, where he got 200 lashes, before being deported. Still, he opted to return; he loves his work in fashion, which pays decently, and the social opportunities are an added bonus. “Guys romp around and parade in front of you,” he told me. “They will seduce you. It’s up to you how many you want, every day.” Go to page two.

It Would Increase Prostitution Pornography Homosexuality and Divorce: Anything Else?

'End of virginity' if women drive, Saudi cleric warns
By Sebastian Usher
2 December 2011


A report in Saudi Arabia has warned that if Saudi women were given the right to drive, it would spell the end of virginity in the country.

The report was prepared for Saudi Arabia's legislative assembly, the Shura Council, by a well-known conservative academic.

Though there is no formal ban on women driving in Saudi Arabia, if they get behind the wheel, they can be arrested.

Saudi women have mounted several campaigns to try to overturn the ban.

Aside from the practical difficulties it creates, they say it is also illogical as in trying to keep them under family control and away from men, it actually puts them in daily contact with a male driver.

The issue has received huge international attention.

Some Saudi women feel it has attracted too much interest, obscuring other equally important issues.

As part of his careful reform process, King Abdullah has allowed suggestions to surface that the ban might be reviewed.

This has angered the conservative religious elite - a key power base for any Saudi ruler.

Now, one of their number - well-known academic Kamal Subhi - has presented a new report to the country's legislative assembly, the Shura.

The aim was to get it to drop plans to reconsider the ban.

The report contains graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.

A Saudi woman who has campaigned for women drivers told the BBC that the report was completely mad.

She said the head of the Shura had assured women campaigners that he was still open to hearing the case for lifting the ban. BBC

Saudi Arabia Executes Woman Convicted of Sorcery

Update: A little more on the story here.

Saudi Arabia executes woman convicted of 'sorcery'

Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery.
12 Dec 2011

The Saudi Interior Ministry says in a statement the execution took place on Monday, but gave no details on the woman's crime.

The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 per session.

The paper said a female investigator followed up, and the woman was arrested in April, 2009, and later convicted in a Saudi court.

It did not give the woman's name, but said she was in her 60s.

The beheading took to 73 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year.

In September, Amnesty International called on the Muslim kingdom where 140 people were on death row to establish an "immediate moratorium on executions."

The rights group said Saudi Arabia was one of a minority of states which voted against a UN General Assembly resolution last December calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.

Amnesty says Saudi Arabia executed 27 convicts in 2010, compared to 67 executions announced the year before. Telegraph

Iran: The Cruelest Nation The Never Ending Evil

If Ever a Pair of Eyes Promised Paradise Jezebel It Was You.

Far too early in the morning for a rant, drive on.

Saudi moral committee threatens to cover “tempting” women’s eyes 
Manar Ammar
16 November 2011

 Women with sexy eyes in Saudi Arabia may be forced to cover them up, according to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom.

Spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet said the committee has the right to stop a women whose eyes seem “tempting” and order her to cover them immediately.

Saudi women are already forced to wear a loose black dress and to cover their hair and in some areas, their face, while in public or face fines or sometimes worse, including public lashings.

The announcement came days after the Saudi newspaper al-Watan reported that a Saudi man was admitted to a hospital after a fight with a member of the committee when he ordered his wife to cover her eyes. The husband was then stabbed twice in the hand.

The CPVPV is Saudi’s Sharia, Islamic law, executive arm and was founded in 1940 to ensure Islamic laws are not broken in public, yet over the years, the committee has been largely criticized over its human rights violations.

In 2002, the committee refused to let female students out of their burning schools in Mecca for “not wearing the proper head cover,” which contributed to a large number of dead. (See previous)

15 young girls died in the fire and dozens more were injured. The CPVPV men banned the firemen and policemen from accessing the girls as “it is not okay for girls to be seen without their full Islamic dress in front of strangers.”

The committee, which only accepts and trains volunteers, has questionable powers on the Saudi street, as they operate under the supervision of the King himself.

A Wikileaks document released last year mentioned that “wild Western-style parties” are regularly held at royal palaces in Jeddah, away from the reach of the committee, who stands helpless against any royal violations.

It was reported that the parties had alcohol, drugs, dancing and sex, according to American consulate wires published by the whistle-blower organization. bikyamasr.com

Saudi cleric favours one-eye veil

Australian Man Faces 500 Lashes in Saudi Arabia For Blasphemy

Do you think there may be a chance that one day this lot might apply to become a member of the twenty first century?

Australian man faces 500 lashes in Saudi Arabia for blasphemy
By Brian Walker
December 7, 2011

Australia appealed for leniency after one of its citizens was sentenced Wednesday to 500 lashes and a year in prison by a Saudi Arabian court.

Mansor Almaribe, 45, was found guilty of blasphemy after he was arrested last month in Medina while on a pilgrimage, Australian officials said.


It's unclear what Almaribe, a Shia Muslim from Victoria state, said or did to get arrested.

"The ambassador has urgently contacted Saudi authorities and will make strong representations, including to key figures in the Saudi government, seeking leniency," said Kate Sieper, a foreign affairs spokeswoman.

Family members said they are worried about his health.

"He is sick, and he has back injuries and he has diabetes," his son, Issam Almaribe, told CNN affiliate 9 News Australia.

Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman Usama Al-Nugali said that the court system has an appeal process that Almaribe can resort to.

"We don't comment on court decisions or legal procedures. However, any court pleading, primary and judicial decisions could be appealed in the appeals court. All individuals have the right for a defense attorney, including non-Saudis who also enjoy the right of the presence of their diplomatic mission," he said.

Consular officials have contacted Almaribe several times by phone since his arrest in mid-November, and were in the courtroom during the reading of the verdict.

Australian officials said they were informed he was convicted of blasphemy and "making comments insulting to prophet Mohammed's relatives."


His sentence was originally two years imprisonment along with the 500 lashes, but the court reduced the sentence by a year, consular officials said. It was unclear when the lashing punishment will be carried out.

Blasphemy is punishable by up to a death sentence under the strict Muslim law in Saudi Arabia. CNN

h/t Anon News

Deranged sheep.

Saudi Sunday: Where Have All The Flowers Gone

Methinks today I shall give the land of darkness some attention.

[T]uesday, February 14, 2006, (a flower shop owner closed his stores for three days in order to avoid harassment from the moral police. Al-watan daily reported. valentine's day is favorite target of the committee for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, viewed by the religious police as a holiday that promotes immoral behavior. Red roses often disappear from stores before, during and after the holiday in order to avoid attracting the attention of the police patrols, specially in the kingdom's capital .

I personally had witnessed many flower shops remain closed on the Valentine's Day, because they were fined last year for opening their doors on this day. They must remain closed even when they do not sell any roses at all. The religious police forces this closure because they do not want students and young people to emulate the infidels. These religious zealots are afraid that these young people might fall in love with the infidels. The religious authority does not tolerate any reason to love a non-Muslim. They must promote hatred towards the non-Muslims to erase from the minds of young Saudi any trace of love or compassion for them (non-Muslims). The saddest reality is that they (religious police) are very successful in creating fear and utter disdain for the non-Muslims through coercion, intimidation, terror and through sheer brute force-the almighty force of Islam.

In summary, I can say that signs of love are a great sin in Saudi Arabia. Music is "Satan's sound" and loving a non-Muslim is a serious crime, sometimes punishable with severe punishment. All these depravity and inhuman acts are perpetrated right in front of government's eye. It is, in fact fully supported by the state through money and infrastructure. Please note that all Islamic organizations in Saudi Arabia are supported by the government. The government is a silent supporter of all religious extremism in Saudi Arabia. This silent support for the Islamist bigots is to ensure that no one dares to criticize the royal family. The Saudi royal policy to wards the Islamist terrorists can be summed up in these few words: Burn the whole world if you (the Islamist terrorists) want, but do not say or do anything against us.

Therefore, who could really believe that Saudi Arabia is against the terrorists? Please do think this over.

A Sense Of humour InThe Land Of Darkness

Right: Jacko Bahrain.

I stumbled on a defunct site once run by a Saudi National, this was his last post, April 2004.

Temporary Lull

Folks, maybe it's a result of that last terrorist attack, maybe it's just me being paranoid, but i'm seeing a lot more "unusual activity" both out in the town and in the neighborhood. I'm going to lie low. The blog and my email contacts will hibernate for a while. Better safe than sorry. In the meantime, many thanks for your compliments, observations, questions, discussions. Ma'a salaama.

Saudi or not he was a true blogger in every sense of the word, and given his attacks on the Saudi establishment, a brave bloggger at that.
Again, Saudi or not, he certainly has a sense of humour, and here I hope I have the right tense and he hasn't fallen into the clutches of the forces of darkness.
So I shall be lifting stuff direct from his blog and posting it here.

MADINAH, 14 April 2004 — Police in Madinah arrested an 18-year-old man in woman’s dress including a veil in a Madinah shopping center. Al-Madinah reported that people noticed strange movements and felt the person was not walking like a woman. His arms were also noticed to be hairy. People said the person was following women and annoying them. The police were called and they arrested the man saying that he might be mentally ill

The thing about wearing an abaya and a veil, it could be anybody in there. It could be Hulk Hogan. It could be Osama Bin Laden. It could be Clyde, the Orang Utang. Just don't show your hairy arms.

As for the man's mental health, I agree. Any Saudi man who would rather be treated like a Saudi woman, is by definition nuts. Emphasis mine.

Spot The Crumpet

Like many Saudis, I like the occasional drink when I can get one. But I don't do drugs. If I want to enter a world of bizarre and strange fantasy, I go out of my front door.

It's "keep it light" day today, a fellow gets tired of all the doom and gloom.
A few posts lifted directly from a defunct Saudi blog, the guy is not without a bit of humour.



Explore Saudi Arabia

It's an educational site for English-speaking children, full of fascinating facts about Saudi Arabia.

Here's an example from the FAQ

Q: What rights do women have?
A: Women have the same rights to education as men and are increasingly taking up jobs in the community working in a wide range of professions from teaching and medicine to business and public relations.

A 2003 directive by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques says that it is important that women are now granted the same rights as men in all areas of public life. Women have always played a strong role within Saudi society and several women were recently appointed as advisors to the Al-Shura Council.

Just goes to show, it all depends on the question you ask. Try "What rights do women not have?", or "Do women have the same rights as men?"

However, let us not quibble. One of the sections promotes school twinning, whereby a Western and a Saudi school establish links. This is a Good Thing. The more we see of each other, the more we will understand each other, and the greater is the chance that we will live in peace and harmony.

But wouldn't it be great if they went the whole way, and had Exchange Visits? And did it for the teenagers, not just the younger ones? Talk about culture shock! We Saudis wouldn't go for it, imagine our girls, unveiled, being approached by young boys in the streets of Stockport, Cheshire! And young English boys coming back to the UK, having learnt the elaborate courting rituals of the Saudi male, flicking pieces of paper at girls with their telephone numbers on!

It's actually a nice site. Look at the videos. You'll see the 18/8 dance on Video 3. Then go thru all the videos, playing "Spot the Woman".

Wikileaks Not Half As Much As That Reactor

Update: Opinion-US reactors.

" Nuclear plants are incredibly complex technological devices for locating earthquake faults."........

There are robust souls who look on the bright side. Some of them are in the pay of the nuclear industry -- President Obama for example, who took plenty of money from the nuclear industry for his presidential campaign, and in his State of the Union address last January reaffirmed his commitment to "clean, safe" nuclear power, about as insane a statement as pledging commitment to a nice clean form of syphilis. more

Update: 2100 Friday With Photo's

The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens The Wail

Update: Japan Raises Severity of Accident. You do surprise me, I guess it must have been, avoiding "unnecessary" fears, as quoted below. But wait a minute, avoiding "unnecessary" fears was before the accident, so what was it this time, avoiding reality?

And why am I getting the feeling Level 5 is going to be like a £4 gallon of petrol.

TOKYO -- Japan's nuclear safety agency raised the severity rating of the country's nuclear crisis Friday from Level 4 to Level 5 on a seven-level international scale, putting it on par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. more huffpo

Japan syndrome shows why we need WikiLeaks

IN December 2008, an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed to "a serious problem" with nuclear reactors in areas of Japan prone to earthquakes.

Recent earthquakes "have exceeded the design basis for some nuclear plants", he told a meeting of the Nuclear Safety and Security Group of the Group of Eight countries. Moreover, safety guides for seismic activity had been revised only three times in the past 35 years, he added.

The information was recorded in a US diplomatic cable and comes to us courtesy of WikiLeaks. So do other cables, including one two years ago in which American officials described Tomihiro Taniguchi, a senior IAEA nuclear safety official and former head of the Japanese agency responsible for nuclear plant security following earthquakes, as "a weak manager and advocate, particularly with respect to confronting Japan's own safety practices". A few months earlier, Japanese MP Taro Kono told US diplomats the government was covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry. The following year, the government reversed a court ruling that a nuclear plant in western Japan had to be closed because it could withstand an earthquake of only 6.5 magnitude.

Unfortunately, all this information, including the original cables, was released only this week, through The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian newspapers in Britain. If publicised earlier it might have increased public pressure on the Japanese government to do more to ensure the safety of reactors.

But without WikiLeaks most of it probably never would have seen the light of day. One of the justifications governments use for not releasing information is to avoid "unnecessary" fears.

The Japanese government did not completely ignore the IAEA concerns: it built an emergency response centre at the Fukushima plant. But it was designed to withstand a magnitude 7.0 quake, whereas last week's was 9.0.

The damaged third and fourth reactors of the Fukushima No1 power plant.

This week Julia Gillard said she had a lot of respect for whistleblowers. Deep Throat had done the right thing in leaking information about Watergate, she told the ABC1's Q&A program. So had those who had exposed information about the operations of the big tobacco companies.

"They've acted for a moral purpose," she said. "I respect that. At the centre of WikiLeaks, I don't see that moral purpose I can respect whistleblowing if your motivation is to right wrong." But Julian Assange's motivation was "sort of anarchic". Gillard's attitude is a rationalisation of her feeling that she has to side with the US on this issue. It is for the same reason that she earlier claimed Assange was acting illegally, though she has been unable to identify which law he has broken.

The Obama administration portrays Assange as a spy, if not terrorist, who is endangering national security. He is not: he heads an organisation that is the recipient of information, which invites leaks but says it does not actively solicit them. It releases documents through news organisations, which then apply normal journalistic procedures, including considering risks to national security or whether any lives could be put in danger.

Assange's motivation, as interpreted by Robert Manne writing in The Monthly and Inquirer, seems to be to break down authoritarian structures that are preventing the free flow of information. Whether or not that is anarchic, it sounds impossibly idealistic. The US is responding to the leak of cables by increasing the security of its internal communications rather than giving up the fight and opening its files.

In the absence of threats to national security -- and the US has yet to identify any -- many of the diplomatic cables released so far fall into the same category as Watergate, as well as the Pentagon papers, which exposed US lies about the Vietnam war.

Sometimes governments do not live up to the democratic ideal. If their leaders say one thing in public and another in private, then voters deserve to know.

One clear example of this is in a cable released by WikiLeaks canvassing US concerns that the Rudd government's 2009 defence white paper appears to rule out support for an American missile defence system because it would harm nuclear deterrence.

This, explained Defence Department deputy secretary Michael Pezzullo to the American embassy in Canberra, had been written to appeal to the anti-Star Wars attitude in Labor's Left, "but in reality will allow the GOA [government of Australia] to continue its missile defence research and development co-operation with the United States".

Rudd's attitude was very different from that of the Left, Pezzullo assured the Americans.

Sure enough, the Gillard government is continuing Australia's co-operation with development of a missile defence system, which it says publicly is a threat to global nuclear stability. That such a leak is acutely embarrassing to the government is obvious. More important is that Australians deserve to know the truth.

Talking about hypocrisy, we can only marvel at the extent to which Saudi Arabia has the US over a barrel. The Saudis supply not only oil but terrorists, including 15 of the 19 who hijacked the 9/11 planes. Instead of waging war against Saudi Arabia, the US sells it large amounts of defence equipment and keeps pleading with it to do more about terrorism.

In a cable sent to embassies in Riyadh and other capitals in the region in 2009, Hillary Clinton wrote that it had been "an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority".

Though there had been some important progress, "donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide More needs to be done, since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Toiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack] and other terrorist groups, including Hamas, which probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan."

International relations can involve some least worst choices, particularly if you are a superpower. But it still comes as a surprise that the US can have so little regard for the wishes of even its most important allies. Russia insisted in negotiations over a new arms control treaty that it be given more information about Britain's Trident nuclear missiles. The US asked Britain to agree but it refused. The US gave the Russians the information anyway.

In other respects, the US sometimes behaves as though the Cold War never ended. The cables reveal the US spied on British Foreign Office ministers to collect gossip on their private lives and professional relationships. What are friends for if not to be able to compromise them?

US diplomats do not spend all their time reporting on momentous events. Two years ago, the US embassy in Tripoli passed on to Washington "a cautionary tale" about dealing with Libya.

Italy paid for a Libyan to join students from other countries in a training program in Rome on underwater explosives. After several days of classroom instruction, the instructor told the students to jump into the pool. When the Libyan did not comply, the instructor pushed him in. He "sank like a stone" and had to be pulled out of the pool and have water pumped out of his lungs.

Rather than the anticipated government employee, the non-swimming frogman was the cousin of an official "and had simply wanted a vacation in Rome". When the Italians raised the matter with Libya, they received "a formal written reply [averring] that it was the responsibility of the Italian government to ensure that candidates for its training programs were properly qualified and that the Italians should have taught him how to swim".

If they had, he might be mining a few rebel vessels right now. The Australian
H/T Anonymous

This is the clip from the huffpo link, will you listen to this bugger, cool and calm or what? I'd a been shitting bricks I don't mind telling you.

Wikileaks The Vatican's Meddling in Venezuelan Politics

''Manning in Shackles''

I haven't bothered with the story, it's nothing you haven't heard before or will again, and let's face it, it's only rhetoric. All the words and all the column inches in all the world, or calling Bradley Manning hero, Nobel nominee, or whatever, ain't going to make this slightest bit of difference to any of it.

Bradley Manning is already convicted and his fate predetermined. The US government will go through the motions and then they will throw him in a hole for the rest of his natural. Which I have a feeling, won't be all that long. By design or accident, the system will eat him alive.

More interesting than the story by far, which can be found at the bottom of the page, is the sin list, or a tiny part thereof, that the leaked emails have exposed.

And what a list it is. The first thing that hits you, and square in the face at that, is, well you only have to look at today's graphic to get a hint of that, but for me, and although there are far worse, was this:

The Vatican told the United States it wanted to undermine the influence of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in Latin America because of concerns about the deterioration of Catholic power there. It feared that Chávez was seriously damaging relations between the Catholic church and the state by identifying the church hierarchy in Venezuela as part of the privileged class.

Isn't that nice, the Buggery Club asking the US to undermine a democratically elected president, who has done more to better the lot of his people, than probably any other head of state, that is, or has ever been.

We have already seen the effects of the influence of the Catholic Church in that neck of the woods, it's not good, and of course it's not good for those possessed of the Devil's gateway, women.

The Saga of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks, to be put to ballad and film
by William Blum
March 06, 2012

...... Here is a sample of some of the other Wikileaks revelations that make the people of the world wiser:

: In 2009 Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano became the new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which plays the leading role in the investigation of whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons or is working only on peaceful civilian nuclear energy projects. A US embassy cable of October 2009 said Amano "took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded the [American] ambassador on several occasions that ... he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."

: Russia refuted US claims that Iran has missiles that could target Europe.

: The British government's official inquiry into how it got involved in the Iraq War was deeply compromised by the government's pledge to protect the Bush administration in the course of the inquiry.

: A discussion between Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and American Gen. David H. Petraeus in which Saleh indicated he would cover up the US role in missile strikes against al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh told Petraeus.

: The US embassy in Madrid has had serious points of friction with the Spanish government and civil society: a) trying to get the criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of killing a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad during a 2003 unprovoked US tank shelling of the hotel where he and other journalists were staying; b )torture cases brought by a Spanish NGO against six senior Bush administration officials, including former attorney general Alberto Gonzales; c) a Spanish government investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; d) a probe by a Spanish court into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for American extraordinary rendition (= torture) flights; e )continual criticism of the Iraq war by Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, who eventually withdrew Spanish troops.

: State Department officials at the United Nations, as well as US diplomats in various embassies, were assigned to gather as much of the following information as possible about UN officials, including Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, permanent security council representatives, senior UN staff, and foreign diplomats: e-mail and website addresses, internet user names and passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer account numbers, work schedules, and biometric data. US diplomats at the embassy in Asunción, Paraguay were asked to obtain dates, times and telephone numbers of calls received and placed by foreign diplomats from China, Iran and the Latin American leftist states of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. US diplomats in Romania, Hungary and Slovenia were instructed to provide biometric information on "current and emerging leaders and advisers" as well as information about "corruption" and information about leaders' health and "vulnerability". The UN directive also specifically asked for "biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats". A similar cable to embassies in the Great Lakes region of Africa said biometric data included DNA, as well as iris scans and fingerprints.

: A special "Iran observer" in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku reported on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff, Mohammed Ali Jafari, allegedly got into a heated argument with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and slapped him in the face because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of the press.

: The State Department, virtually alone in the Western Hemisphere, did not unequivocally condemn a June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras, even though an embassy cable declared: "there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch". US support of the coup government has been unwavering ever since.

: The leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party — neutral, pacifist, and liberal Sweden, so the long-standing myth goes — visited the US embassy in Stockholm and asked for advice on how best to sell the war in Afghanistan to a skeptical Swedish public, asking if the US could arrange for a member of the Afghan government to come visit Sweden and talk up NATO's humanitarian efforts on behalf of Afghan children, and so forth. [For some years now Sweden has been, in all but name, a member of NATO and the persecutor of Julian Assange, the latter to please a certain Western power.]

: The US pushed to influence Swedish wiretapping laws so communication passing through the Scandinavian country could be intercepted. The American interest was clear: Eighty per cent of all the internet traffic from Russia travels through Sweden.

: President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy told US embassy officials in Brussels in January 2010 that no one in Europe believed in Afghanistan anymore. He said Europe was going along in deference to the United States and that there must be results in 2010, or "Afghanistan is over for Europe."

: Iraqi officials saw Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the biggest threat to the integrity and cohesion of their fledgling democratic state. The Iraqi leaders were keen to assure their American patrons that they could easily "manage" the Iranians, who wanted stability; but that the Saudis wanted a "weak and fractured" Iraq, and were even "fomenting terrorism that would destabilize the government". The Saudi King, moreover, wanted a US military strike on Iran.

: Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a Texas oil refinery investment unless the US government intervened to stop Saudi Aramco from being sued in US courts for alleged oil price fixing. The deputy Saudi oil minister said that he wanted the US to grant Saudi Arabia sovereign immunity from lawsuits

: Saudi donors were the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

: Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial 1996 drug trial involving children with meningitis.

: Oil giant Shell claimed to have "inserted staff" and fully infiltrated Nigeria's government.

: The Obama administration renewed military ties with Indonesia in spite of serious concerns expressed by American diplomats about the Indonesian military's activities in the province of West Papua, expressing fears that the Indonesian government's neglect, rampant corruption and human rights abuses were stoking unrest in the region.

: US officials collaborated with Lebanon's defense minister to spy on, and allow Israel to potentially attack, Hezbollah in the weeks that preceded a violent May 2008 military confrontation in Beirut.

: Gabon president Omar Bongo allegedly pocketed millions in embezzled funds from central African states, channeling some of it to French political parties in support of Nicolas Sarkozy.

: Cables from the US embassy in Caracas in 2006 asked the US Secretary of State to warn President Hugo Chávez against a Venezuelan military intervention to defend the Cuban revolution in the eventuality of an American invasion after Castro's death.

: The United States was concerned that the leftist Latin American television network, Telesur, headquartered in Venezuela, would collaborate with al Jazeera of Qatar, whose coverage of the Iraq War had gotten under the skin of the Bush administration.

: The Vatican told the United States it wanted to undermine the influence of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in Latin America because of concerns about the deterioration of Catholic power there. It feared that Chávez was seriously damaging relations between the Catholic church and the state by identifying the church hierarchy in Venezuela as part of the privileged class.

: The Holy See welcomed President Obama's new outreach to Cuba and hoped for further steps soon, perhaps to include prison visits for the wives of the Cuban Five. Better US-Cuba ties would deprive Hugo Chávez of one of his favorite screeds and could help restrain him in the region.

: The wonderful world of diplomats: In 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the question of visas for two wives of members of the "Cuban Five". "Brown requested that the wives (who have previously been refused visas to visit the U.S.) be granted visas so that they could visit their husbands in prison. ... Our subsequent queries to Number 10 indicate that Brown made this request as a result of a commitment that he had made to UK trade unionists, who form part of the Labour Party's core constituency. Now that the request has been made, Brown does not intend to pursue this matter further. There is no USG action required."

: UK Officials concealed from Parliament how the US was allowed to bring cluster bombs onto British soil in defiance of a treaty banning the housing of such weapons.

: A cable was sent by an official at the US Interests Section in Havana in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned Movement conference. He noted that he was actively looking for "human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess". [Presumably to be used to weaken support for Cuba amongst the member nations at the conference.]

: Most of the men sent to Guantánamo prison were innocent people or low-level operatives; many of the innocent individuals were sold to the US for bounty.

: DynCorp, a powerful American defense contracting firm that claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from US tax dollars, threw a "boy-play" party for Afghan police recruits. (Yes, it's what you think.)

: Even though the Bush and Obama Administrations repeatedly maintained publicly that there was no official count of civilian casualties, the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this claim was untrue.

: Known Egyptian torturers received training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

: The United States put great pressure on the Haitian government to not go ahead with various projects, with no regard for the welfare of the Haitian people. A 2005 cable stressed continued US insistence that all efforts must be made to keep former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom the United States had overthrown the previous year, from returning to Haiti or influencing the political process. In 2006, Washington's target was President René Préval for his agreeing to a deal with Venezuela to join Caracas's Caribbean oil alliance, PetroCaribe, under which Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying only 60 percent up front with the remainder payable over twenty-five years at 1 percent interest. And in 2009, the State Department backed American corporate opposition to an increase in the minimum wage for Haitian workers, the poorest paid in the Western Hemisphere.

: The United States used threats, spying, and more to try to get its way at the crucial 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen.

: Mahmoud Abbas, president of The Palestinian National Authority, and head of the Fatah movement, turned to Israel for help in attacking Hamas in Gaza in 2007.

: The British government trained a Bangladeshi paramilitary force condemned by human rights organisations as a "government death squad".

: A US military order directed American forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis.

: The US was involved in the Australian government's 2006 campaign to oust Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

: A 2009 US cable said that police brutality in Egypt against common criminals was routine and pervasive, the police using force to extract confessions from criminals on a daily basis.

: US diplomats pressured the German government to stifle the prosecution of CIA operatives who abducted and tortured Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen. [El-Masri was kidnaped by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia on December 31, 2003. He was flown to a torture center in Afghanistan, where he was beaten, starved, and sodomized. The US government released him on a hilltop in Albania five months later without money or the means to go home.]

: 2005 cable re "widespread severe torture" by India, the widely-renowned "world's largest democracy": The International Committee of the Red Cross reported: "The continued ill-treatment of detainees, despite longstanding ICRC-GOI [Government of India] dialogue, have led the ICRC to conclude that New Delhi condones torture." Washington was briefed on this matter by the ICRC years ago. What did the United States, one of the world's leading practitioners and teachers of torture in the past century, do about it? American leaders, including the present ones, continued to speak warmly of "the world's largest democracy"; as if torture and one of the worst rates of poverty and child malnutrition in the world do not contradict the very idea of democracy.

: The United States overturned a ban on training the Indonesian Kopassus army special forces — despite the Kopassus's long history of arbitrary detention, torture and murder — after the Indonesian President threatened to derail President Obama's trip to the country in November 2010.

: Since at least 2006 the United States has been funding political opposition groups in Syria, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country. Full story