ShockingBadBuy
Often disappointed, never discouraged
Not going to be a popular view, this, but here goes ...
Is anyone at all troubled that half the club has been bought by a member of the Al Saud family ? I'm no fan of Toby Foster, as a rule, but if he's been banging on about Amnesty International this morning on Radio Sheffield, then good luck to him. The Al Saud family run a regime whose use of arbitrary detention, torture and an A-Z of human rights abuse has been widely catalogued, and not just by the usual suspects in human rights groups. There's plenty of level-headed and informed opinion on this knocking about.
Here's a paragraph from The Spectator this March, describing events in Saudi Arabia during a visit by Prince Charles. While Charles was there,
"the country executed seven men by firing squad for a robbery committed while they were still juveniles. One had originally been sentenced to death by crucifixion although King Abdullah [our new investor's grandpa, I think ?]intervened to bring his sentence in line with that of his peers. Then, courts in Riyadh also handed draconian prison sentences to two founders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association. Both were given 10 year sentences along with five year travel bans on their release. The government had told Qahtani and Hamed they would be spared custodial sentences if they agreed to dissolve ACPRA and stop campaigning for human rights. Both refused".
The point of this story was that the Al Sauds are so shameless about the way they do their thing that they couldn't be arsed to postpone any of this while a visitor like HRH was around, at a time when there's great political sensitivity and a lot of media attention attached to such a visit.
That's before we get to the question of the Al Sauds' long partnership with the CIA and the Pentagon, and the part this has played in stimulating the shitstorm currently kicking off across much of the Arab world. Anyone doubting the importance of this partnership should track down what Osama bin Laden, for example, had to say about US-Saudi relations. As a Saudi, it is absolutely bang central to his political thinking. It was a major contributory factor in the 9/11 attacks, and everything that has followed. Until the war in Iraq, the US had tens of thousands of troops still stationed in Saudi Arabia as a hangover from the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Currently, among other things, the CIA operates a drone base in Saudi Arabia which is used for targeted assassinations in the region, particularly in Yemen.
Domestic opponents of the Saudi regime will describe a family dynasty which has enriched itself over generations while impoverishing its people, partly through ruthless repression of political opposition and partly by selling the country's oil to the US at cut-price rates--in return for which the US has offered military and intelligence training and, at times of crisis like the Gulf War, military protection.
Does none of this matter ? (serious and well-intentioned question).
Is anyone at all troubled that half the club has been bought by a member of the Al Saud family ? I'm no fan of Toby Foster, as a rule, but if he's been banging on about Amnesty International this morning on Radio Sheffield, then good luck to him. The Al Saud family run a regime whose use of arbitrary detention, torture and an A-Z of human rights abuse has been widely catalogued, and not just by the usual suspects in human rights groups. There's plenty of level-headed and informed opinion on this knocking about.
Here's a paragraph from The Spectator this March, describing events in Saudi Arabia during a visit by Prince Charles. While Charles was there,
"the country executed seven men by firing squad for a robbery committed while they were still juveniles. One had originally been sentenced to death by crucifixion although King Abdullah [our new investor's grandpa, I think ?]intervened to bring his sentence in line with that of his peers. Then, courts in Riyadh also handed draconian prison sentences to two founders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association. Both were given 10 year sentences along with five year travel bans on their release. The government had told Qahtani and Hamed they would be spared custodial sentences if they agreed to dissolve ACPRA and stop campaigning for human rights. Both refused".
The point of this story was that the Al Sauds are so shameless about the way they do their thing that they couldn't be arsed to postpone any of this while a visitor like HRH was around, at a time when there's great political sensitivity and a lot of media attention attached to such a visit.
That's before we get to the question of the Al Sauds' long partnership with the CIA and the Pentagon, and the part this has played in stimulating the shitstorm currently kicking off across much of the Arab world. Anyone doubting the importance of this partnership should track down what Osama bin Laden, for example, had to say about US-Saudi relations. As a Saudi, it is absolutely bang central to his political thinking. It was a major contributory factor in the 9/11 attacks, and everything that has followed. Until the war in Iraq, the US had tens of thousands of troops still stationed in Saudi Arabia as a hangover from the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Currently, among other things, the CIA operates a drone base in Saudi Arabia which is used for targeted assassinations in the region, particularly in Yemen.
Domestic opponents of the Saudi regime will describe a family dynasty which has enriched itself over generations while impoverishing its people, partly through ruthless repression of political opposition and partly by selling the country's oil to the US at cut-price rates--in return for which the US has offered military and intelligence training and, at times of crisis like the Gulf War, military protection.
Does none of this matter ? (serious and well-intentioned question).
