Is Saudi Arabia The Ultimate Evil Empire?

Better now? I just trashed about 40 posts with no direct or indirect reference to Saudi Arabia.

 

Yes - it was the British who set up the Sauds as rulers of Arabia after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And that relates to your previous point that western governments support the regime, which is one of my biggest concerns where Saudi human rights abuses are concerned. As long as they do this, they have blood on their hands IMO. My own local member of Parliament has close ties to Saudi. I've written numerous times on behalf of Amnesty International, but he evidently doesn't consider this worthy of his time, as I have never had a reply of any kind. Typical of the attitude of right wing western politicians.

The Iranian Revolution was carried out by the Iranians. It was a reaction to the brutal regime of the Shah, again supported by his American allies. Probably the human rights situation prior to the revolution was no better than it is now.

 

Without any american (and british!) meddling in Iran it is even arguable if there would have been ayatollahs with this much governmental power. Again of course, a big if. Nobody knows what kind of government Iran would have had these days if there wasn't that coup in the 1950's. Another huge mistake with unwanted consequences, not coming from righteous intent but of course greed and power. It's really really hard to measure the ultimate evil empire/nation

 

Lets not take the 'ultimate evil empire' too literally. Nations such as Britain and America have had imperial agendas for a very long time, and have caused much suffering in the world (as well as some good things).

According to Amnesty, 80% of executions in 2013 were carried out in Iran,Iraq and Saudi. The US killed 39 people, the numbers for China are unknown but probably run into thousands. So if it was only the death penalty we were discussing, China tops the league.

http://www.amnesty.org.uk/death-penalty-2013-report-use-statistics-executions#.VcsrcLS7rIU

But it isn't. There are also the other types of cruel punishment such as flogging and amputation to take into account, as well as the general situation faced by women in Saudi. There's also the question of funding of terrorism emanating from the kingdom.

I am quite sure that if western governments had a real will to do something about this, much pressure could be put on the regime. The fact that they don't do anything, but on the contrary, continue to unstintingly support the Sauds, implicates them in these crimes as far as I can see.

In the case of my own above mentioned MP, he's actually openly gay - yet still supports a regime that routinely flogs and imprisons his fellow gays. An unconscionable piece of shit IMO.

 

Sure, just felt like pointing out that without those western nations there could very well have been no situation/chance that put those ayatollahs in the iranian government. There were no ayatollahs in their government ever before. It was a direct reaction to the regime of the Sjah that, with western support, got rid of the democratically chosen prime minister. So when people make critiical comments on other nation's dubious leaders it is worthwile to add they would probably not gotten in that position without some of our nation's dubious practices in the first place!

 

I agree.

 

I wonder if he gets any cash directly from there.

Literally, every time anybody buys a gallon of gas that comes from Saudi crude oil, a percentage of the money goes to funding Islamic terrorism.

... absolutely nothing in the Middle East would be the way it is today.

Axis of evil? (the G.W. Bush list) I would at least rank them above North Korea, in terms of what they've been able to accomplish outside their own borders. NK is still figuring how they're going to do that, without money.

 

It's hard to think of a worse nation in the world today. Take away their western support, and they'd be nowhere. And that's what really gets to me on this whole issue.

 

It is what makes me think any smart and inquiring person should know better than pointing the finger to some middle eastern nation and their society/culture. That, and the fact that we as societies became only recently (kind of) civilized ourselves (in terms of rights and equalities and really impanting them in our society). And that people who toot their own nation/society's horn and talk about how barbaric and backwards most middle eastern countries are, are kind of pretentious and demanding about how the rest of the world should conform to us, enlightened western nations. In that way I agree with the point Pressed Rat made in this thread.

To be sure, I now understand where OP came from with the title of this thread and do not take that literally (but otherwise..! )

 

SA can feel free to become better than the US, if they like. It won't hurt my feelings.

No country owns a copyright on tolerance.

 

It is not a competition who is the better country, or how to become better than the freaking US. Why would they even need to look at the US to become better? Can't they find their own way. Well maybe they could if the rest of the world wasn't focussing on getting their natural resources

 

I didn't say they should. You brought that up.

As far as I can tell, no.

 

Cool! Just asking

Maybe we should not expect it to happen in the same pace our societies happen to went through these changes.

 

I hope you don't see me as tooting my own society's or countries horn. That is very far from my intention. I'm well aware of the bad things done both in the past and in the present by Britain.

Our society has got a bit better, but during my own lifetime, we used to lock up gays,birch troublesome prisoners, and hang people. Who knows what abuses were carried out in Northern Ireland, or during the 2 recent wars.
My view though is that once any advance is made in terms of human rights, we should immediately think of that as the norm, and seek it's universal implementation. In that way perhaps we can secure the general advance of human rights for everyone on the planet. Or maybe I am simply a misguided idealist.

Saudi Arabia is a bad place, but there are many other places where abuses go on. This thread is about Saudi, but another one could be abuses in China, Iran, America, Russia - the list is a long one.

 

No. I had other people in mind when I wrote that

That's clear! Sometimes I even think you sound a bit harsh on your country when you speak about their current declining state as a former empire.

No, sounds good. Although we can't always make everyone accepting that as the norm (or even if we could that seems the wrong approach). We can only try to make it the norm for us and our society first and carry it out in international policies.

 

That would be fine, if people currently living in that area had a hundred years to wait.

I wish that the best practices from all over the world could be emulated by everyone. Northern Europe has done very well.

 

Wait for what? Our standard of living?

 

They'll wait a long time for that. At least the ordinary citizens. The rulers of course already have their flying palaces and so on.

It's a problematic area though that you're highlighting here. The west had the renaissance followed by the so called enlightenment. Islam has had no such thing. There has been no growth of secular values,no concept of humanism, no challenges to religious authority. The western imperialist agenda has probably served to deepen the entrenchment of Islamic culture. I feel it has certainly helped to stoke up the fundamentalism we see today.

What the solution to this might be I have no idea. Probably if western governments and corporations took a firm stand against human rights abuses and refused to do business in countries with a poor record, change might come, as the rulers of Saudi and the other gulf states do like their money. But I doubt that would change the underlying culture. And reform of Islam from within doesn't seem that likely, although perhaps it might be possible.

Northern Europe is about the best IMO. However, worth recalling that it's only 70 odd years ago that one of the leading countries of Europe was gassing Jews.

 

It's important to be aware of impulses to export provincial values across borders, but we must also be cautious to not discount real human progress and virtue because it appears within a larger context of problems.

It's possible that Society A would be better off if it adopted the values of Society B, even though Society B is not perfect. This seems a difficult point for many to understand; you don't need to have a perfect system of values in order to be a desirable state of being. You just have to be better than what's currently on offer in A.

 

I tend to agree. Many other cultures seem to have no problem importing western technologies,styles of dress and many other things, so why not humanistic values/ideas too.