Tag: Saudi Arabia

As Obama prepares to visit the Gulf Kingdom, controversy surrounding the 28 pages has been renewed.

In as little as fifteen to twenty years, petroleum may be illegal in some places; and will be in retreat everywhere.

In the end, the oil attrition wars may lead us not into a future of North American triumphalism, nor even to a more modest Saudi version of the same, but into a strange new world in which an unlimited capacity to produce oil meets an increasingly crippled capitalist system without the capacity to absorb it.

U.S. activists must follow the example of our European allies and demand that our government stop supplying the Saudi rulers with weapons to bomb civilians in Yemen and repress its own citizens.

The killing of Sheikh Al-Nimr should serve as a prime moment for the U.S. to reconsider its alliance with the Saudi regime, a regime that not only denies human rights to its own people but exports death and destruction abroad.

To paraphrase one Middle Eastern prophet, the leadership and media of western countries need to remove the log from their own eye before they will ever be able to help the greater Middle East remove the splinter from its own.

President Obama is responsible for a major increase in weapons sales with the majority of weapon exports going to the Middle East and Persian Gulf. The Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any other administration since World War II.

Sweden has cancelled an arms sale with Saudi Arabia because of the way they jailed and fogged blogger Raif Badawi, which has ultimately hurt the two country's relationship. This may lead to Sweden focusing more on green energy since their petroleum purchase usually comes from Saudi Arabia.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of staff, wants to honor King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia as a military hero. Claiming he's “a man of remarkable character and courage,” Dempsey might want to think again.

The Saudi Arabian government has issued a series of 1,000 public lashings and 10 years in prison to an activist blogger Raif Badawi for insulting Islam. U.S. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki requested an end to this punishment, but it does not look like Saudi authorities will end this brutality.