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A toppled government in a fundamentalist region suffering economic fallout from the falling global demand for oil does nota democracy fuel. While I agree with e

A toppled government in a fundamentalist region suffering economic fallout from the falling global demand for oil does nota democracy fuel. While I agree with everyone that sees SA as a terror-governed state, perhaps you've been around for some portion of the past 50 or so years and have witnessed what Western-exported democracy looks like in the Middle East right now. SA's problems are plenty, but it shares the entire region's SPOF economy. Tackling that shouldn't be dismissed because we don't like the government. Suffering the hardest happens to the least of people, so making the transition to a post-oil economy as smooth as possible - House of Saud in tact - still prevents an incredible amount of suffering.

mafribe 11y ago
I agree with you in many ways, and have been critical of military means that were marketed as "bringing democracy". Irak, Libya, and Syria come to mind as terrifying recent examples. Incidentally the House of Saud supported the military actions in all three cases. But yhere is a world of difference between a journalist asking critical questions, and bombing a country. It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. The Bloomberg piece does not do this, instead raving "how comfortable meeting him was". The target audience of this piece is the US population. The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population, so as to ensure that the US continues its support of the status quo, which is highly convenient for the House of Saud, but a disaster for just about anybody else. See e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/saudi-government-has-vast-network-of-pr-lobby-firms-in-u-s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/... The question how to engineer a peaceful transition away from the House of Saud to a meaningful democracy (or even a more enlightened dictatorship such as Dubai), is a deep and complex one, and I don't purport to have an answer. But it's good to understand how autocratic rulers such as the House of Saud manipulate public opinion.
- themartorana 11y ago
  I agree with this. The piece itself is super fluffy. That said, I can understand, to a degree "comfort" netting him, etc. It is a head of state, but more importantly, the whole government/ruling family is quite mysterious. You have no idea how practical his ideas will be, especially at that scale. Still, though, you're right. Any amount of serious journalism here would have been welcome.
- nashashmi 11y ago
  >It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. Not always, unless you are doing a hit piece. Sometimes it is also a task to simply gather information on a subject that people know very little about. Sometimes the process of gathering info is so sensitive that you don't want to do anything to influence the observations you make like cause discomfort and create moments of silence. There were some important revelations in this article. It shows the leadership is trying to make changes. It highlights the stakes involved. It shows the geopolitical map of Saudi Arabia. That is not fluff.
- CPLX 11y ago
  > It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. No it's not. It is, as a whole, the job of journalism to do that, but not necessarily a specific journalist's job. A journalist's job is to tell the truth, not necessarily the whole truth. There is often quite a bit of value in getting the perspective of a single person or entity on a specific subject without attempting to add full and complete context.
- iheartmemcache 11y ago
  > "It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions." Yes in theory.. Look at it from a "who benefits and how, POV" and this puff piece makes sense. Oil's been bearish for a remarkable length of time. It's in Bloomberg's best interests to make the ME look less like a one-trick pony so general market consensus goes up (any volatility = TV going off mute + viewership retention & people going to their Bloomberg terminals, etc). It's in the journo's best interests because he gets '8 exclusive unprecedented hours' upping his profile so his executive editor will choose him for the next interview with Bill Gross or whomever. It's in the House of Saud's best interest for a wide variety of reasons. Everyone's got to get their pound (Franc, greenback, yen, ruble, or .. ) W/r/t having a nation with a PR/lobby in the US - I guarantee you every nation with a GDP of eh maybe half a trillion will have one. Look at the registered employee list of K-street firms and their clientele. The closest thing you'll get to 'hard hitting questions' (and I'm not talking hit-pieces, I'm talking about Kronkite and Murrow) is the BBC Newshour (Lyse Ducette and Owen Bennet Jones -- though Americans find it dry, I couldn't love their coverage more, although it's a bit of a family love-affair), PBS Newshour (basically everyone on their staff), and to some extent Shane & Sooresh's VICE which has retained some of the best producers and on-the-ground coverage I've seen in recent news.
  - usefulcat 11y ago
    > Oil's been bearish for a remarkable length of time. Yes, and it's largely because of Saudi Arabia: "Saudi Arabia has maintained a high level of oil production despite the slump in crude oil prices, arguing it needs to protect its market share in an economy in flux because of the glut of U.S. oil." http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Industry/2015/07/13/Saudi-oil-production-at-new-high/5171436789895/ http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Industry/2015/07/13/...
  - vidarh 11y ago
    > I guarantee you every nation with a GDP of eh maybe half a trillion will have one. Look at the registered employee list of K-street firms and their clientele. Case in point: Here[1] is an article that spends a considerable chunk talking about how Norway pours money into Brookings Institution and Center for Global Development and others to influence US policy. "The country has committed at least $24 million to an array of Washington think tanks over the past four years, according to a tally by The Times, transforming these nonprofits into a powerful but largely hidden arm of the Norway Foreign Affairs Ministry. " Lobbying the US government is basically essential for any foreign power because of the outsize influence the US has on the world. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers...
- nksjndfdf 11y ago
  > The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population So do the US power structures, and at a much larger scale. As a Canadian, Saudi foreign policy looks like a cute little puppy compared to the fire-breathing dragon that is US's.
- nksjndfdf 11y ago
  > The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population So do the US power structures, and at a much larger scale. As a Canadian, Saudi foreign policy looks like a cute little puppy compared to the fire-breathing dragon that is US's.
- kobayashi 11y ago
  Now you're just getting your facts wrong. Saudi Arabia most certainly did not support the second Iraq war. They went along with it but were mortified when the US essentially handed it over to Iranian control/influence. I am not a lover the SA regime, but it's important that one's lack of geopolitical knowledge doesn't spread more misinformation.
  - mafribe 11y ago
    Yes, you are right. Sorry. Alas, I can't edit my original message any more.
alanwatts 11y ago
>Western-exported democracy By democracy, you mean dictatorship, right? The Shah and Saddam were both supported by Western oil, industrial, and finance interests and were hardly "democratic".
devishard 11y ago
> perhaps you've been around for some portion of the past 50 or so years and have witnessed what Western-exported democracy looks like in the Middle East right now. Does it occur to you that the problem here is that Western-exported democracies aren't democracies, but instead puppet states? This has little resemblance to a real democracy founded by members of its own nation with their own cultural values. There's a big difference between invading Saudi Arabia and setting up a banana republic, and journalism that criticizes the Saudis for their authoritarianism. > Tackling that shouldn't be dismissed because we don't like the government. No one is doing that. We can accurately describe all of Saudi Arabia's issues, including their authoritarian rulers.
- klibertp 11y ago
  There's a related blog post here (also many other insightful posts): https://geopoliticsmadesuper.com/2016/04/20/why-saudi-arabia-doesnt-want-those-28-pages-declassified/ https://geopoliticsmadesuper.com/2016/04/20/why-saudi-arabia... In short: liberal democracy requires liberal elites to be present and not vastly outnumbered. Without this condition fulfilled what you get after a revolution is what you had before despotism: tribalism and sectarianism, permanent civil war and the likes.
  - ktRolster 11y ago
    liberal democracy requires liberal elites to be present and not vastly outnumbered. If the elites are not vastly outnumbered, they kind of aren't elite anymore, they're just normal people.
    - klibertp 11y ago
      I mean liberal elites vs. conservative elites, not elites vs normal people, obviously :)
  - devishard 11y ago
    Sure, we should definitely just give up and accept that there just aren't enough liberal elites in Saudi Arabia, so they won't ever be able to handle democracy. /sarcasm It's an entirely Western colonist idea that poor people in developing countries can't handle democracy and therefore have to accept dictatorships (which just happen to align with Western interests).
astazangasta 11y ago
I question your implicit presumption that democracy has to be western-exported, and that the Saudi government must be toppled by outsiders to change (although I am doubtful of internal forces yielding any such change any time soon).

mafribe 11y ago

I agree with you in many ways, and have been critical of military means that were marketed as "bringing democracy". Irak, Libya, and Syria come to mind as terrifying recent examples. Incidentally the House of Saud supported the military actions in all three cases. But yhere is a world of difference between a journalist asking critical questions, and bombing a country. It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. The Bloomberg piece does not do this, instead raving "how comfortable meeting him was". The target audience of this piece is the US population. The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population, so as to ensure that the US continues its support of the status quo, which is highly convenient for the House of Saud, but a disaster for just about anybody else. See e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/saudi-government-has-vast-network-of-pr-lobby-firms-in-u-s/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/20/... The question how to engineer a peaceful transition away from the House of Saud to a meaningful democracy (or even a more enlightened dictatorship such as Dubai), is a deep and complex one, and I don't purport to have an answer. But it's good to understand how autocratic rulers such as the House of Saud manipulate public opinion.

themartorana 11y ago
I agree with this. The piece itself is super fluffy. That said, I can understand, to a degree "comfort" netting him, etc. It is a head of state, but more importantly, the whole government/ruling family is quite mysterious. You have no idea how practical his ideas will be, especially at that scale. Still, though, you're right. Any amount of serious journalism here would have been welcome.
nashashmi 11y ago
>It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. Not always, unless you are doing a hit piece. Sometimes it is also a task to simply gather information on a subject that people know very little about. Sometimes the process of gathering info is so sensitive that you don't want to do anything to influence the observations you make like cause discomfort and create moments of silence. There were some important revelations in this article. It shows the leadership is trying to make changes. It highlights the stakes involved. It shows the geopolitical map of Saudi Arabia. That is not fluff.
CPLX 11y ago
> It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions. No it's not. It is, as a whole, the job of journalism to do that, but not necessarily a specific journalist's job. A journalist's job is to tell the truth, not necessarily the whole truth. There is often quite a bit of value in getting the perspective of a single person or entity on a specific subject without attempting to add full and complete context.
iheartmemcache 11y ago
> "It's a journalist's task to ask autocratic rulers critical questions." Yes in theory.. Look at it from a "who benefits and how, POV" and this puff piece makes sense. Oil's been bearish for a remarkable length of time. It's in Bloomberg's best interests to make the ME look less like a one-trick pony so general market consensus goes up (any volatility = TV going off mute + viewership retention & people going to their Bloomberg terminals, etc). It's in the journo's best interests because he gets '8 exclusive unprecedented hours' upping his profile so his executive editor will choose him for the next interview with Bill Gross or whomever. It's in the House of Saud's best interest for a wide variety of reasons. Everyone's got to get their pound (Franc, greenback, yen, ruble, or .. ) W/r/t having a nation with a PR/lobby in the US - I guarantee you every nation with a GDP of eh maybe half a trillion will have one. Look at the registered employee list of K-street firms and their clientele. The closest thing you'll get to 'hard hitting questions' (and I'm not talking hit-pieces, I'm talking about Kronkite and Murrow) is the BBC Newshour (Lyse Ducette and Owen Bennet Jones -- though Americans find it dry, I couldn't love their coverage more, although it's a bit of a family love-affair), PBS Newshour (basically everyone on their staff), and to some extent Shane & Sooresh's VICE which has retained some of the best producers and on-the-ground coverage I've seen in recent news.
- usefulcat 11y ago
  > Oil's been bearish for a remarkable length of time. Yes, and it's largely because of Saudi Arabia: "Saudi Arabia has maintained a high level of oil production despite the slump in crude oil prices, arguing it needs to protect its market share in an economy in flux because of the glut of U.S. oil." http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Industry/2015/07/13/Saudi-oil-production-at-new-high/5171436789895/ http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Industry/2015/07/13/...
- vidarh 11y ago
  > I guarantee you every nation with a GDP of eh maybe half a trillion will have one. Look at the registered employee list of K-street firms and their clientele. Case in point: Here[1] is an article that spends a considerable chunk talking about how Norway pours money into Brookings Institution and Center for Global Development and others to influence US policy. "The country has committed at least $24 million to an array of Washington think tanks over the past four years, according to a tally by The Times, transforming these nonprofits into a powerful but largely hidden arm of the Norway Foreign Affairs Ministry. " Lobbying the US government is basically essential for any foreign power because of the outsize influence the US has on the world. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers...
nksjndfdf 11y ago
> The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population So do the US power structures, and at a much larger scale. As a Canadian, Saudi foreign policy looks like a cute little puppy compared to the fire-breathing dragon that is US's.
nksjndfdf 11y ago
> The house of Saud invests a great deal of money in misleading the US population So do the US power structures, and at a much larger scale. As a Canadian, Saudi foreign policy looks like a cute little puppy compared to the fire-breathing dragon that is US's.
kobayashi 11y ago
Now you're just getting your facts wrong. Saudi Arabia most certainly did not support the second Iraq war. They went along with it but were mortified when the US essentially handed it over to Iranian control/influence. I am not a lover the SA regime, but it's important that one's lack of geopolitical knowledge doesn't spread more misinformation.
- mafribe 11y ago
  Yes, you are right. Sorry. Alas, I can't edit my original message any more.

alanwatts 11y ago

>Western-exported democracy By democracy, you mean dictatorship, right? The Shah and Saddam were both supported by Western oil, industrial, and finance interests and were hardly "democratic".

devishard 11y ago

> perhaps you've been around for some portion of the past 50 or so years and have witnessed what Western-exported democracy looks like in the Middle East right now. Does it occur to you that the problem here is that Western-exported democracies aren't democracies, but instead puppet states? This has little resemblance to a real democracy founded by members of its own nation with their own cultural values. There's a big difference between invading Saudi Arabia and setting up a banana republic, and journalism that criticizes the Saudis for their authoritarianism. > Tackling that shouldn't be dismissed because we don't like the government. No one is doing that. We can accurately describe all of Saudi Arabia's issues, including their authoritarian rulers.

klibertp 11y ago
There's a related blog post here (also many other insightful posts): https://geopoliticsmadesuper.com/2016/04/20/why-saudi-arabia-doesnt-want-those-28-pages-declassified/ https://geopoliticsmadesuper.com/2016/04/20/why-saudi-arabia... In short: liberal democracy requires liberal elites to be present and not vastly outnumbered. Without this condition fulfilled what you get after a revolution is what you had before despotism: tribalism and sectarianism, permanent civil war and the likes.
- ktRolster 11y ago
  liberal democracy requires liberal elites to be present and not vastly outnumbered. If the elites are not vastly outnumbered, they kind of aren't elite anymore, they're just normal people.
  - klibertp 11y ago
    I mean liberal elites vs. conservative elites, not elites vs normal people, obviously :)
- devishard 11y ago
  Sure, we should definitely just give up and accept that there just aren't enough liberal elites in Saudi Arabia, so they won't ever be able to handle democracy. /sarcasm It's an entirely Western colonist idea that poor people in developing countries can't handle democracy and therefore have to accept dictatorships (which just happen to align with Western interests).

astazangasta 11y ago

I question your implicit presumption that democracy has to be western-exported, and that the Saudi government must be toppled by outsiders to change (although I am doubtful of internal forces yielding any such change any time soon).