About alleged crime and very real retribution! Part I: Saudi-Arabia and the Night of the Long Knives

Oh well he'll offer you a cigarette

he'll offer you a light.

But he hasn't finished with you yet

on another long knife night.

Nik Kershaw – Human Racing

The news that there was a ‘New Sheriff in Town’ in the religious kingdom of Saudi-Arabia became already apparent a few months ago. This happened with the appointment of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as the official crown prince for his father, King Salman bin Abdul Aziz.

The BBC:

Few people outside Saudi Arabia had heard of Prince Mohammed bin Salman before his father became king in 2015. But since then, the 31-year-old has become the most influential figure in the world's leading oil exporter.

He has now been elevated to the position of crown prince, replacing his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef - a move that had been widely expected and could shape the direction of the country for decades.

Mohammed bin Salman's rise to power began in 2013, when he was named head of the Crown Prince's Court, with the rank of minister. The previous year, Salman had been appointed crown prince after the death of Nayef bin Abdul Aziz - the father of Mohammed bin Nayef.

In January 2015, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz died and Salman acceded to the throne at the age of 79. He immediately made two decisions that surprised observers, naming his son minister of defence and Mohammed bin Nayef deputy crown prince.

One of Mohammed bin Salman's first acts as defence minister was to launch a military campaign in Yemen in March 2015 along with other Arab states after President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi was forced into exile by the Houthi rebel movement.

The appointment of Prince Mohammad bin Salman to official crown prince – after he allegedly organized a hostile knock over at gunpoint against former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef – was more or less expected by pundits, but it was nevertheless a surprising and very important move to the eyes of the outside world. A move that (again BBC) “could shape the direction of the country for decades”. Especially because of the very young age of the crown prince, who was only in his early thirties and could theoretically lead the country for at least fourty years.

The Kingdom’s tremendous prosperity was traditionally based upon the country’s seemingly endless flow of oil, that was pumped up since the start of the twentieth century, and the gazillions of dollars that the eternally oil-hungry Western World paid for this continuous flow towards the West. 

Especially in the United States, the cheap gasoline for the infamous V8 gas guzzlers and the energy for the fully airconditioned homes in deserts like Arizona and Nevada seemed to have become a human right, that must not be abolished at all cost. And Saudi Arabia was happy to deliver to the 'infidels' in the West, in exchange for their dollars and weapons.

However, since 2008 the global economic breakdown, that emerged from the American sub-prime mortgage crisis, struck the middle and lower classes of the world at a nearly unprecedented scale. Hence this led to less consumption worldwide. And thus to less stores and shopping malls, less imports and exports and less truck transport and commuter miles in the Western countries. And this all happened at a blistering scale that even forced the mostly ignorant, energy squandering middle-class Americans to look for more fuel-efficient ways of living and driving, in order to save a few bucks.

This fuel (and thus oil)saving effect was even reinforced by the emergence of the internet and (in its wake) online shopping. It was especially online shopping that – in combination with the depression-like recession – acted like a doomsday clock for many brick and mortar store chains, which all suffered from diminishing numbers of customers and diminishing sales.

This all caused that the oil price per barrel in 2014 dropped to levels well under $60 (source: Macrotrends.net) for a number of years in a row. 

The long-term development of Crude Oil Prices
Chart courtesy of Macrotrends.net
Click to enlarge

This sheer event was responsible for acute economic problems in  Russia, Venezuela and also Saudi-Arabia, as all three were very large oil exporters that – in the process – were almost totally dependent on their energy sector as their main source of national wealth.

  

And on top of that, Saudi-Arabia had also come under fierce pressure from the important insight that the flow of oil towards the West and the returning flow of Euros and dollars towards their treasury would not be endless after all. 

Under pressure of the emerging, potentially catastrophic climate change, the West was finally moving towards a less fossile fuel driven future, by adapting (partially) electric cars and doing research into hydrogen-driven cars that would not produce the exhaust, which made gasoline and diesel cars so bad for the global environment. 

This meant that Saudi Arabia needed to adapt its economy from being almost solely oil-driven to something more modern that prospered from other sources of income, like air transport, tourism and hospitality or state-of-the-art technology and innovation. 

All this should be akin to what already happened in Dubai, Qatar and the other gulf states. These countries built new sciencefiction-like cities, mega-airports, the sky-is-the-limit hotels, skyscrapers that reach into the clouds and bedazzling shopping malls with skiing slopes(!) in the desert at 50 degrees centigrade. 

And Saudi Arabia – as the natural leader of the pack in the area – must preferably do it better and with more royal grandure. That is still the challenge for which the country stands.

Another specific Saudi-Arab problem is the swelling number of princes and other royalty, with their respective court circles within the kingdom. And all these princes and officials want to have a slice of the pie of the tremendous wealth of the Saud family, based upon the oil of the country and the countless offshore and building projects that happen overthere. 

In the past this already led to the infamous and widespread Saudi-Arab corruption and “quid pro quo” mentality, driving most Western oil, offshore and building companies crazy. This unavoidable corruption led to priceless projects on the Arab peninsula, of which at least 40% of the final invoices was paid in bribery money, meant to pay off everybody and their sister. No slush money?! Then no projects! Take it or leave it!!!

This ubiquitous corruption, in combination with the notion that the peace and quiet within the country could only be upheld with a topheavy welfare state, as well as with the suppression of minorities, like immigrants, women and (religious) opposition, made things even worse for the rulers of the Kingdom. Total suppression of people costs a lot of money: also in times of low oil prices, when the influx of dollars is not so obvious.

This is one of the reasons that the Arab state oil company Aramco is cautiously brought to the global stock exchanges. When the oil does not yield sufficient money anymore, than the firesale of the underlying oil companies must do the job. 

But the undisputed elephant in the room for Saudi Arabia is their extremely rigid version of the Islam. The Wahabism, as it is called, seemed to be one of the underlying causes for the emergence of Al Qaida and ISIS terrorism in the world. Especially this Wahabism increasingly alienated the Western World from the desert kingdom, as did recently the seemingly endless and very bloody proxy war against Iran in Yemen.

Mix all this together and one has a very poisonous mixture for the future of the desert kingdom.

Enter Prince Mohammad bin Salman as the new crown prince and de facto the new man in charge in Saudi Arabia, under the cover of old King Salman, who is probably the leader of the country in name only.

The first thing that Prince Mohammad did, after being appointed in the pivotal role of defence minister (i.e. in control of the army) a few months ago, was getting rid of his main adversary for the leadership of the country: crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef. This was the first strike for Mohammad...

And a few months later, the new Saudi-Arab government tried to lure the Western world with a few privileges for the blatantly underprivileged Saudi-Arab women: driving a car or visiting a football stadium would become "possible-ish". And their voice would finally be heard in the parliament of the Kingdom. At least, that was what we heard in the West... 

All this was a shocking new development for these Saudi Arab women that previously had nothing to say and nothing to do without the consent of their man and “owner”, in the country that was almost akin to a medieval kingdom in Europe.

When the country eventually promised to return to a less rigid form of the islam one week ago, the Western world was happily surprised and full of expectations about the winds of change in the country.

Yesterday, however, the world saw two events in Saudi Arabia with probably large implications for the desert kingdom. 

First, a Burqan 2H long range missile – allegedly fired by the Houthi rebels of Yemen – was intercepted above the airport of Riyadh. This could push the envelope even further for this bloody war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

And even more important: yesterday saw the establishment of an anti-corruption bureau in SA, And this bureau directly came into action by arresting a few, very high profile leaders and officials within the country. 

The list of arrested officials in Saudi Arabia
List courtesy of the Ahmadiyya Times
Click to enlarge

ABC News about these shocking events:

Saudi Arabia has arrested dozens of princes, senior military officers, businessmen and top officials, including a well-known royal billionaire with extensive holdings in Western companies, as part of a sweeping anti-corruption probe that further cements control in the hands of its young crown prince.

A high-level employee at Prince Alwaleed bin Talal's Kingdom Holding Co. told The Associated Press that the royal— who is one of the world's richest men— was among those detained overnight Saturday. The company's stock was down nearly 9 percent in trading Sunday on the Saudi stock exchange.

The surprise arrests, which also reportedly include two of the late King Abdullah's sons, were hailed by pro-government media outlets as the greatest sign yet that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is keeping his promise to reform the country, long been plagued by allegations of corruption at the highest levels of government.

Well, I have news for you: the arrests themselves are a fact, but IMHO these arrests have nothing to do with an emerging war against corruption in the country, even though the large news outlets are reporting this as news.

Fourty years ago, when my father worked for a large building company in The Netherlands, doing business with Saudi Arabia simply meant paying massive amounts of bribe money to everybody with a status and an important role overthere. And now about half a century later hardly anything has changed with respect to that: only the royal family became much, much bigger, as became their need for (bribe) money.

In my opinion, the notion that Saudi Arabia will become less corrupted as a consequence of these dozens of arrests, is therefore preposterous. For the simple reason that the chance that something with such a long history as corruption in Saudi Arabia changes overnight, is minute.

As far as I’m concerned, what happened yesterday was nothing less than a Night of the Long Knives: a coup d’etat executed by the (new) people in charge of Saudi Arabia in order to wipe out all their political opponents! 

In this case under the moniker of “fighting corruption”, which is probably not a very hard case to proof overthere, but not the real reason at all. 

Wiping out the adversaries of the new crown prince was the first and only purpose of what has happened yesterday. Don’t believe anything else...

And to be frank with you: last night can be the beginning of something that could very well end up in a civil war in Saudi Arabia. This might happen, when the largest factions within the huge Saud family decide to take an aim at each other, using the countless American weapons stashed away in the country to take up the fight.

Expect more arrests and perhaps more deaths to emerge from these events very soon. And expect more and harsher suppression of everybody who does not agree with the official line of leadership in the country. Fighting corruption is a container that can cover a lot of actions, executed by the powers that be. 

Prince Mohammad will play for keeps to get/stay in charge of the country, as there is no turning back for him anymore. And so will his adversaries, as far as they have not been arrested yet or left the country in the meantime.

The only chance of these events not ending in a massive bloodshed, is when the former rulers understand there is a new sheriff in town indeed. In that case they will cut their losses soon and sit still while being shaven.

However, the chance that the family (and future heirs(?)) of billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal wave their massive wealth goodbye without a fight, is very dim in my opinion.

As long as these people can make use of the vast bank accounts of Prince Alwaleed, they can call for help from all directions, including the American army or even private soldiers of fortune from South Africa or Israel. 

The same is true for the former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef and his family, who now all should worry about their health and – as a matter of fact – their sheer survival of these emerging events. They will probably also not give in without a fight to the new rulers of the country.

What is at stake for all these people is not only the political direction and the future of Saudi Arabia, but especially their own future... 

Will they continue their life of exuberant wealth? Or will they flee the country as rich exiles, in order to not end on the infamous Chop Chop Square, where all the public executions take place. And even though everything behind all this is still very well under the cloak of secrecy, I am darn sure that it is not the war against corruption that caused these events. No way!

So the worst has probably yet to come in Saudi Arabia, as more and bloodier events will undoubtedly unroll in the coming weeks and months. 

This all is not about enhanced freedom for women. And probably also not about a more enlightened view on the Islam overthere. Those were all just words to lure the Western countries into accepting the new leadership of Saudi Arabia.

But a different view on religion? Seeing is believing, but I don’t see it coming soon. This all is just a grab for absolute power: a Night of the Long Knives!

Soon, part II in this story about Bernie Sanders: the best President the United States never had!

The unreliable and uncredible government. Is it just a coincidence?

The unreliable and uncredible government. Is it just a coincidence? Or part of a disturbing trend in which the assertive and justifiably displeased citizen is deliberately ‘sent out into the forest’ with false claims and appeasements?!

In the Dutch polder of Flevoland, both Schiphol Amsterdam Airport and the Dutch government are involved in the development of a new airport, called Lelystad Airport.

Lelystad Airport, which is developed on the foundation of a local airfield for small airplanes, will become the new, designated charter airport of The Netherlands in 2019. Room (for expansion) is amply available in the polder around Lelystad, so it is not very hard to understand why this area is chosen by Schiphol Group as the location for the new charter airport.

The road between Schiphol Amsterdam
Airport and Lelystad Airport
Map courtesy of Google Maps
Click to enlarge

Lelystad Airport is meant for taking away the low-end charter flights from Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, which struggles with its expansion possibilities, and handling those in the polder near Lelystad, Flevoland. 

By doing this, Schiphol Group hopes to increase the number of ‘moneymaking’, high-end transit flights, in which Schiphol acts as a hub for long, intercontinental flights between the US and the Middle or Far East. Otherwise Schiphol fears to lose these rewarding flights to Dubai or Istanbul Airport. The opening of Lelystad Airport is therefore a very good opportunity to let Schiphol increase its number of ‘high quality’ travellers. 

Together with an already planned, autonomous expansion of 15,000+ flights per year (to roughly 515,000 per year from almost 500,000 now), Schiphol sees good opportunities to make more money, based upon more, as well as 'higher grade’ travellers. 

This happens, however, at the expense of the charter travellers, who are in fact treated as second-rate travellers and will be banished to Lelystad, which will be a very small and basic airport without many facilities at the time of opening. Nevertheless, Lelystad Airport has many economic advantages for Schiphol and The Netherlands, doesn't it?! 

As a matter of fact, it doesn't!

The circumstance that the new airport Lelystad Airport lies in the middle of some of the most beautiful nature parks in The Netherlands, like De Oostvaardersplassen, De Weerribben and De Veluwe is conveniently ‘forgotten’ by the government and municipality officials from Flevoland. These officials simply see the Euro-signs in their eyes from international air travelling and forget the undeniable (economic) value of beautiful nature for tourism and leisure.

The inevitable consequence of this particular location between all those nature parks is that countless large land and water birds, like geese, swans, storks, harriers, herons and ducks, are very close by. This is 'forgotten' too by the powers that be. And large water and land birds are all – by nature – quite hazardous for the jet engines of planes, due to their size and weight.  

Especially the emigration and immigration of wild geese twice per year, which are flying in their characteristic V-shape with groups of 20 – 30 birds and have their home in the polder of Lelystad, is a serious hazard for jet planes; these are big birds that could really demolish a jet engine, when two or three are sucked in at the same time.

But to cut a long story short: in the end the opening of Lelystad Airport was a government decision, which we as citizens have to respect.

One of the difficulties of the new airport is that the Dutch airspace is already very (over)crowded from the massive numbers of flights on and off Schiphol and the other large airports Rotterdam and Eindhoven. And now Lelystad Airport needs to be ‘squeezed in’ with a soon considerable number of flights per year.

To avoid interference between the air traffic taking off and landing on Schiphol and the charter traffic from Lelystad taking off and landing at the same time, the Dutch airspace has been divided in layers of different altitudes. The planes  coming from Schiphol directly move to the higher altitude layers after taking off, while the planes from Lelystad have to remain at a lower altitude for multiple kilometers to avoid the Schiphol airtraffic.

And that is where the problems start to emerge…

The lower altitude air traffic in a large perimeter around Lelystad is causing more noise pollution, air pollution and nuisance to the people and animals living beneath it, as the planes are much closer to the ground than normally.

To investigate the amount of noise pollution the Dutch government ordered a so-called ‘Environmental Effect Report’-investigation (i.e. MER in Dutch). And this investigation did not measure the amount of noise pollution close to Lelystad Airport, using microphones and other measuring equipment, but calculated (!) it based upon scientific models.

And as one of the main adversaries of Lelystad Airport – the very involved and driven ICT specialist Leon Adegeest (@LeonAdegeest1 on Twitter) – found out, those calculations that the government made were – deliberately(?) – full of fatal flaws, that made the value of the conclusions in fact null and void.

For instance, the calculation that the government made for the approach to Lelystad Airport, was based upon the jet engines running in stationary mode for most of the glide path within The Netherlands. One Tweep sighed that there was a name for this type of flight mode at this low altitude: “crashing down”!

And so there were many more assertions in the MER report that seemed rather based upon wishful thinking and ‘science fiction’, than upon sound engineering.

Leon Adegeest, who ran the gauntlet on behalf of the worried citizens, was initially mocked away by various governmental bodies on a number of occasions, calling him an amateur who dared to challenge the professionals with his simple Excel sheets. 

However, when Adegeest finally came in the picture on national TV with his own investigations about the amount of noise pollution, State Secretary Sharon Dijksma (Infrastructure & Environment) reluctantly admited that there had been flawed conclusions in the official government investigation, according to Het Financieele Dagblad.

Of course, in case of Lelystad Airport, it made sense to calculate the amount of noise pollution instead of measuring it, as planes will only fly there in the future (i.e. as of 2019) and current measurements are consequently not possible.

However, Schiphol Airport Group and the Dutch government, which are all perfectly capable of measuring the amount of noise pollution around Schiphol, also use this arbitrary calculation method for finding out the amount of noise pollution, air pollution and general nuisance for the people living close to the airport. And also in this situation Leon Adegeest found out that the same flawed calculation methods had been used, making the sheer value of the MER for Schiphol also null and void.

To make things worse, every time when the boundaries for the number of flights towards and from Schiphol came close in the past, there came a new noise pollution calculation method or new standards and constraints for the tolerable amount of noise and air pollution and for air traffic safety. All these measures led to only one inevitable conclusion: Schiphol can grow further and nobody will be hurt by this!

While doing this, the Schiphol lobby was mostly followed by the average Dutch citizen, who believed in the fairytale of the ‘Schiphol mainport’ concept, that would offer economic growth and additional jobs for eternity without any drawbacks. 

The ‘few people living in close range to Schiphol’ just had tough luck! It had been their own choice to live so close to an airport anyway. Too bad for them!

A former minister for the environment, Pieter Winsemius of the liberal-conservative VVD, called this modus operandi of Schiphol with one, new Dutch verb: “Schiphollen”. 

He meant with this quite offensive word that when the constraints and standards did not fit Schiphol anymore, Schiphol would come up with new and more convenient ones. Ones, that would leave ample room for growth under all circumstances. 

Schiphol has done so in the past on many occasions and will continue to do so, bending and distorting the truth at will. National and local politicians will swallow this over and over again, like they always did.

This can only lead to two fundamental questions:

• Are the Dutch government, as well as Dutch stateowned corporations really fair and honest to the Dutch citizens living under their sphere of influence?
• How serious does the Dutch government take its role of protecting the Dutch population against hazards from inside and outside the country.

And the expansion of Schiphol is not the only situation in which the Dutch government seems not fair and even dishonest to the Dutch people, quite often on behalf of large corporations:

The Netherlands is a tax haven for large multinationals and has already been that for many, many years. Not so much due to the rate of its corporate tax (i.e. that is currently 25%), but especially for enabling the nearly free transfer of money coming from foreign dividends, foreign sources of income and legal fees (f.i. in the music and video industry), towards the tax havens in the Carribean. 

By doing this, The Netherlands has become a pivot point for many multinationals and internationally operative institutions that want to dodge paying taxes.

And now the future Dutch Cabinet Rutte III has decided to decrease the corporate tax to 21% from the aforementioned 25% and bring the dividend tax down to nought from 15%, to the tune of roughly €2 billion in diminished national income. Not that the large multinationals really need this money – they don’t with the current stockpiles of cash money(!) everywhere – but just to lure them even more into our tax-friendly kingdom.

And the Dutch citizen will foot the bill for this negative tax hike for corporations; in this case by an increase of 3% on the low VAT rate of currently 6%, bringing it to 9% on all basic food supplies and necessities for all households. That does not seem fair at all.

On top of this, the new Dutch government agreement of Rutte III contained a ‘hidden’ increase in income expenses. In a small paragraph, stashed away in an attachment, the government announced another austerity measure to the tune of €2.1 billion on healthcare costs. 

As the healthcare expenses themselves will hardly drop under the current circumstances, it is clear that the Dutch citizens have to pony up this extra austerity, by either paying more money for their healthcare or getting less healthcare offered for the same amount of money. The fact that this austerity measure was not presented openly, but only disguised in the government agreement, makes clear that the intentions of the new government are not so clean cut as one would hope.

And a few months ago, a devastatingly explosive report about lethally unsave situations in the Dutch military apparatus causing at least three casualties, sat for nearly three months at the Defence Ministery without anyone taking any clear action, including the Minister and the chief of staff. 

At the same time the Minister – who later resigned due to this report being discussed in the Second Chamber of Parliament – shamelessly pondered upon a new Minister’s position in the new cabinet Rutte III, seemingly not aware of the explosive contents of the report.

Until roughly one year ago there had been the continuing soap opera around allegedly lost bills and invoices on the Security and Justice department. These bills would shed a unfavourable light on the State Secretary, who had worked as a public prosecutor in an earlier life and had struck a very favourable deal with a drugs criminal, leaving the latter with roughly €5 million in cash.

Both the State Secretary and Minister stated that these bills could not be found… until they were found after all by a smart ICT specialist. In the aftermath of these events, that continued even longer, two Ministers of Security and Justice and one state secretary had lost their jobs. And the Dutch population lost a large share of their trust in the government.

All these incidents together raise the question whether “the unreliable and uncredible government” is just a coincidence or a very disturbing trend of the last years.

The cases of Schiphol Amsterdam Airport and Lelystad Airport prove that an uncredible government is not only inconvenient, but can put the lives and wellbeing of people under jeopardy. Especially in a crowded country like The Netherlands, where noise and air pollution are serious, health-threatening problems and where a plane crash can cause havoc and massive loss of lives.

As long as the Dutch people cannot trust the Dutch government to defend their interests and safety in the end, the situation is opaque and dangerous. So I ask the Dutch government: please tell the truth when you can, even if it is inconvenient for the powers that be and the large stakeholders involved.