[Nettime-bold] Re: Ground Zero and the Saudi connection

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Yes, this is true. There is that subtle distinction between Saudis 
and Romanovs. While they both presided over decadent 
monarchies with idle, runaway, mostly foreign educated elites, 
whose offspring peculiarly started to romantically identify itself with 
the majority of deprivileged 'subjects' - Romanovs, at least, did not 
finance their own mortal enemies.

Saudis want and need the US to protect them from their own 
creation, while not wanting to part with it. This is a very tough 
proposition. It is like an alcoholic that demands help but wouldn't 
give up the bottle. How about creating WA (Wahhabis Anonymous) 
and a 12 steps program for overcoming the religious zealotry 
addiction?

ivo

Date sent:      	Fri, 28 Sep 2001 18:33:43 -0400
Send reply to:  	International Justice Watch Discussion List
             	<JUSTWATCH-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
From:           	Andras Riedlmayer <riedlmay@FAS.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject:        	Re: Ground Zero and the Saudi connection
To:             	JUSTWATCH-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

> ancient feudal monarchy to stay in power so long by bribing
> everybody around into protecting them. Meanwhile, their youth built
> very dangerous beliefs, that are now slowly coming back to
> threaten the old monarchy - not very different than the relation
> between Bolshevism and Tsarist Russia - only that


The Saudi monarchy is unlike the Romanovs (who were anything but promoters
of revolutionary ideas).  As both Schartz and Tariq Ali point out, the
Saudi monarchy is still publicly espousing Wahhabism and financing its
propagation abroad.  But the young Wahhabi radicals - most of whom get
their training and their extreme ideas in Saudi-financed fundamentalist
mosques and madrasas in Pakistan and elsewhere - despise the monarchy
as having betrayed the Wahhabi ideals in exchange for Western protection
and Western decadence.  "Running dogs" who must be "cleansed" along
with the West, the ultimate source of corruption.

If one had to search for a historical parallel, I'd say the relationship
btw the Saudi monarchy and the Islamist radicals is more analogous to
that btw the old-guard Communists in China and the Red Guards who turned
upon their aging mentors, denouncing them as corrupt "running dogs" of
Western imperialism who had to be done away with. Some millions of deaths
later, the Cultural Revolution fizzled out.  Let's hope this one will
not be as costly.

Andras


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