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It’s
Nice to Have Friends
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In
Saudi, helping the police with their enquiries can mean systematic
torture in a room described by a British man roped in in 2001 as having
“…years’ worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean”.
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As
a TV spectacle it was some way behind Coronation Street’s
Sarah Platt and Jason Grimshaw navigating their way through a
chaotic, unpromising wedding. The other soap opera, at Buckingham
Palace, had a cast of hundreds, rather more expensively dressed than
our Sarah and Jason and making their way to the banquet through a
corridor of bowing flunkeys. At their head the Queen strode as grimly
as if she was flouncing out of (or should that be into?) a session
with a top society photographer. Prince Philip’s face hinted that
he might have been reviewing his stock of undiplomatic racist quips.
And there was the king of Saudi Arabia otherwise known as The
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Abdullah Bin Abdul Azaz Al Saud,
whose very presence reveals a lot about that country – for example
the fact that he is one of his father’s 37 sons.
About
Saudi Arabia more later. Of more pressing interest about the guests
at that banquet to welcome the 82 year old dictator of that brutal.,
oil rich country was Gordon Brown parading rigidly encased in white
tie and tails, perhaps trying to hide his embarrassment in submerged
conversation with a wide-eyed, scuttling Lord Chancellor Jack Straw,
similarly garbed. What did they find to talk about, so intently? Was
it the fact that Brown always made a point of refusing to get himself
up in the manner demanded by the etiquette of such occasions – like
the London Lord Mayor’s Mansion House banquet? Brown’s stand on
this matter – he once let it be known it was all to do with
principle – would cause not a few crimson robes to rustle and not a
few chains of office to jangle, in disapproval. His going back on
what he called principle was an indication that this was an event far
more important than any gathering of over-fed, over-rich City
grandees slapping each others’ backs and their own comfortable
stomachs.
Oil
Saudi
Arabia means oil, which also means the attention, and wherever
possible the intrusion, of capitalism’s great economic and
military
powers. Crucially, Saudi oil lies close to the surface, which enables
it to be extracted faster and cheaper. The first concession to get at
the black, vital stuff was granted to a British company in 1933;
another, to the American firm Standard Oil Company, in 1934.
Symbolically, the company’s name was changed in 1944 to ARAMCO –
Arabian American Oil Company - and as larger reserves were found
other companies came in with capital investment, effectively exerting
a stranglehold on the country. Predictably, other American companies
were commissioned by ARAMCO to develop the country’s infrastructure
– the giant Bechtel imported their mammoth plant to lay down roads,
ports, power plants and the schools and hospitals to support them.
TWA provided a passenger air service, the Ford Foundation advised
(which may not be exactly the correct word for what they provided) on
administration; and the US Army Engineers set up a TV and
broadcasting service and helped develop Saudi Arabia’s “defence”
industry. The first great oil boom in the early 1950s dramatically
altered the country from a bleak, infertile slab of the Middle East,
enabling royals who, for all their exalted status, had been able to
do little better than live on local dates and milk from camels, to
swan around the flesh pots of the Mediterranean in their gleaming
yachts and to practically take root in the casinos. This was a
startlingly abrupt change, overwhelmingly to the benefit of the
ruling families; at a recent air show in Dubai a billionaire Saudi
prince ordered a personal luxury version of the Airbus 380 which,
with a few essential extras, will set him back somewhere in the
region of two hundred and thirty million pounds.
Common
Values
At
the banquet in Buckingham Palace the Queen took the opportunity to
inform the Saudi royal about her esteem for his country and the
comfort she takes from the close ties between Saudi and Britain: “It
is a great pleasure to welcome King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia,
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to London once more….We have
shared values that stem from two great religious traditions…we must
continue to work together to promote common values…” Harping on
the same happy theme was Kim Howells, who during the 1960s was a left
wing student firebrand, then official in the National Union of
Mineworkers during the 1984 strike and is now Labour MP for
Pontypridd and Foreign Office Minister. Howells is famous for
speaking his mind no matter what the consequences; for example as
Minister of Culture he felt free to lash out at the Turner Prize
candidates as “cold, mechanical, conceptual bull”. He is also on
record as describing the royal family as “all a bit bonkers” but
this did not prevent him agreeing with the Queen about Saudi Arabia
as he rhapsodised about those same “shared values” .
We
have not yet been told by either the Queen or Howells what they meant
by the phrase .Was it the fact that Saudi Arabian women are treated
as rather lower than second class, forbidden to go out unless with a
male under pain of being beaten up by the uniformed thugs of the
chillingly titled Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice? Perhaps they hope that Britain copies the penal
system in Saudi, where helping the police with their enquiries can
mean systematic torture in a room described by a British man roped in
in 2001 as having “…years’ worth of blood on the floor that
nobody bothered to clean”. Or the extravagant use of the death
penalty for, among other offenders, actively gay people or anyone
having extra-marital sex. According to Amnesty International there
have been 124 executions so far this year. These have been mostly by
beheading and sometimes in public; an official executioner has set
the grisly scene by assuring everyone that he keeps his sword razor
sharp and that his children learn to grow up into good Saudis by
helping him clean it. “People” he tells us proudly “are amazed
at how fast it can separate the head from the body”.
In
fact it would probably be difficult to find anyone to take seriously
that nonsense about “shared values”. What connects the ruling
elites of Britain and Saudi Arabia is much harsher – the fact that
so much of the world’s oil is under Saudi control (one estimate
puts it as high as 25 percent] and the existence of a mouthwateringly
massive export market, including one for billions of pounds worth of
armaments, all nourished through an artery of bribery. This is yet
another example of human debasement driven by capitalism’s profit
motive justifying untold lies, cruelty, corruption, murder. It can
also persuade Gordon Brown to dress up for an evening out with a
pitiless international gangster.
IVAN