Impressions from India, Pt I: How India’s traffic chaos can teach us in the Western world a lesson.

The last two weeks I have been the guest of India; the second country in the world, when it comes to population.

I, together with a group of colleagues from my employer – a large supermarket chain in The Netherlands – had the opportunity to visit one of our key suppliers in India, in a sheer unforgettable business trip.

We all resided in Noida, a neighbouring city of Indian capital Delhi, and that was also the city were the supplier was established. It was the trip of a lifetime for me and the hospitality and friendliness of the Indian people have been heartwarming! I genuinely loved this country and its sometimes peculiar, but special, culture during the last two weeks made an enormous impression on me.

A trip to India is a culture shock for Western people, to say the least…

A street corner in Delhi, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

The streets are litterally clotted with masses of garbage and people living on the streets in tents… or just in a blanket or sleeping-bag. Beggars approach you everywhere and street sellers of litterally everything don’t take a simple ‘No’ for an answer, but try to persuade you into buying some of their stuff with enormous perseverance.

A Sunday market in Delhi, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

Poverty and backwardedness is always extremely palpable and tangible in India, wherever one goes. And so is the sheer wealth at some places.

Gathering at a hotel of the Lamborghini club of Delhi, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

These are the sometimes painful consequences of life in a Third World country, being in an unstoppable march towards more business success and prosperity than ever before: the dot on the horizon is very much visible, but the road towards it is long and winding.

Tens of thousands of stray animals (mainly dogs and (holy) cows) are walking in the streets and straight through the dense traffic or they are browsing through the massive stockpiles of garbage for their daily meal.

Two cows eating from a stockpile of garbage
in one of the streets of Noida, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

And last, but not least, the traffic itself makes Western people wonder…

One thing that probably strikes every Western visitor is the blatant chaos of Indian traffic and the 24*7 continuous honking of cars, scooter cars, motorbikes, lorries, rickshaws and anything else with a horn mounted (i.e. which is everything, except people, cows and dogs). 

“I honk and therefore I am”, could be a statement of an Indian René Descartes these days.

Where excess honking is a habit in traffic that can make people angry in about every other country in the world, the Indians react indifferent or even with an understanding smile. Some lorries even beg their fellow traffickers to user their horn as a warning signal!

A picture of the traffic in Delhi, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

When you honk, the Indians might give you a little bit of space. Just enough to not directly crash in the fifteen cars, lorries, rickshaws and scooter-cars immediately surrounding you.

For the rest the survival of the fittest rules in Indian traffic: if you don’t fight for your square meter of street space before you, someone else will claim that. Giving precedence to other traffic will make you a fool, who will wait forever. Simply because nobody else will give precedence to you. So you blow your horn with a confident smile, step on the gas and fight for every meter of space, without stopping too clearly for the other traffic or for pedestrians and bikers. They are aware of you and won’t move one centimeter to both sides.

If you can pass somebody with 20 cm of space, you clearly gave them too much room to drive. Stopping for other traffic is futile, so you blow your horn once more and pass them with serious speeds. Who goes first, wins. The others are clearly sheep in search of a shepherd.

At this moment you might wonder if the daily Indian traffic is not laden with the most gruesome accidents, seeing their driving style.

A picture of the traffic in Delhi, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

Well, it isn’t actually… That was the most amazing discovery that I did during my fortnight trip to India.

Taking the constant, 24*7 traffic chaos in consideration, there were amazingly few accidents. To be honest: I only saw one small quarrel caused by a tiny traffic accident, to be honest. For the rest, the traffic in Delhi seemed to run like a Swiss clockwork in all its chaos.

And that amazing fact set my mind to work: what if the totally disorderly “outlaw state” of Indian traffic, was actually safer than the watertight web of traffic regulations in The Netherlands?! It was almost impossible to believe!

The Netherlands is a country with a huge web, consisting of thousands and thousands of traffic rules for every possible situation and far, far beyond.

Pedestrians and bikes are protected by traffic laws that declare cars guilty for every accident, in which they are involved with the former.

Was the bike riding through red? Not paying attention to approaching cars? Riding in the middle of the road, while ignoring the other traffic? Looking at this telephone, while riding? Never mind! The car is guilty anyway.

The logical consequence is that bikers in The Netherlands stopped paying attention to the other traffic at all, until they find out the hard way that they are perhaps legally invulnerable, but far from immortal or physically invulnerable.

The same is true with other participants – cars, trucks, bikes and pedestrians – of Dutch traffic. Their instincts for the strange habits of their fellow-participants in traffic have all been replaced. Either by the vast web of Dutch traffic rules or by the pseudo-safety of airbags, extra strong cage constructions in cars and all kinds of modern technology, like anti-slip software and brake assistants.

Where machines get smarter over the years, the humans operating them become inevitably less smart and less skilled. That is a law of nature! Or do you still know somebody, who can calculate his supermarket sales slips by heart or find a complex route without the usage of a navigation system?!

A picture of the traffic in Delhi, India
Picture copyright of Ernst Labruyère

So perhaps the Indians, with their utterly chaotic and seemingly hopeless traffic, are touching a sensitive point of the West indeed: that too many traffic rules and too much technology actually not make the traffic in Western countries much safer, but rather to the contrary. People lose their skill set and their ability to watch out for themselves.

That would be a surprising lesson to learn for us. This lesson is extremely hard to believe, but Indian traffic might prove that it could be right anyway. Then it would be an extremely important lessons for traffic officials too. 

So step in your car, blow your horn and let the survival of the fittest begin! In the meantime, I say “Hi” from India.

About alleged crime and very real retribution: Pt2, Bernie Sanders, the best President the United States never had

Ooh Superman where are you now

When everything's gone wrong somehow

The men of steel, the men of power

Are losing control by the hour.

Land of Confusion - Genesis

I couldn’t help being a fan of Bernie Sanders, one of the democratic candidates for the Presidential elections in 2016.

The man with the patient and wise charisma of a friendly, aging uncle and ideas that could be described as quite social-democrat for American standards (or “liberal” in the US vocabulary) ran for the nomination of the Democratic Party. He did this against Hillary Rodham Clinton, the dead-cert favorite for this presidential race and later candidate for the November 2016 elections.

Where Hillary attracted attention with her loud voice, her attacking style of debating and aggressive charisma, Bernie Sanders seemed quiet and somewhat shy and unassuming. Almost like President Jimmy Carter in his heyday. It seemed to be a battle between a barking, angry dachshund and a kind-hearted labrador dog. Eventually the noisy dachshund won and ran for president against Donald Trump. And everybody knows nowadays what the outcome of this battle was.

In hindsight, a lot of people thought that Bernie Sanders would have stood a much better chance in the presidential elections against the blunt Donald Trump – who turned into a working class hero in spite of his blatantly rich descent and lacking diplomatic skills – than Hillary Clinton did. Clinton seemed rather part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution, in contrary to Bernie Sanders.

This American problem was to these eyes the ubiquitous intertwinedness of politicians and officials, extremely rich Americans, multinational companies and financial institutions. This resulted in an overall extremely poor representation of less influential groups in the American political landscape. 

Winning elections had become extremely expensive in the USA over the years, so every private person and company that had much funding money on offer for the candidates, got a lot of listening ears to talk to. Hillary Clinton seemed much more contaminated with this American modus operandi than Sanders.

On top of that Hillary Clinton had made a bad mistake, with respect to receiving state secrets on her private email account. This and other things in her behaviour made her very vulnerable for below-the-belt attacks, by a candidate who had made his bluntness into a weapon of vocal mass destruction.

The reason that I loved Bernie Sanders so much, was that he really seemed determined to do something about the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots in American society.

There had been almost ten years of this depression-like crisis in the United States. Years, in which the American middle and lower classes had suffered badly from the consequences and lost almost all their built-up wealth. This turned their sheer survival in a day-to-day business. 

Especially the circumstances in which the poor classes in the US had to live, had been deteriorating very rapidly. Hence the Flint water crisis and the generally lackluster way in which the American government reacted to crises of nature, that smashed the futures of many poor people to pieces.  And nobody in charge really seemed to care about this, as those poor people were not decisive for their (re-)election and for the remainder of their political career.

And at the same time, there had been five years of sturdy economic growth for the rich parts of American society, due to the flooding of the American market with cash money coming from the Fed (i.e. quantitative easing) and the ample availability of borrowing money against near-zero interest rates.

This made borrowing large sums of money almost for free for the people with access to the money and capital markets: extremely wealthy Americans, multinational companies and the financial wizards of the hedgefunds and the private equity companies.

Hence, a situation had emerged in which the wealthy part of American society could avoid litterally everything, while Joe and Jane Sixpack had to deal with a stabilizing or even dropping real income and more private and public crises than they could stand.

The American society always had a religious, almost fundamental hate towards anybody, who they saw as a “commie bastard” (i.e. a communist) and against everybody carrying the reputation of being a social-democrat (i.e. sneeringly called “a liberal”). Nevertheless, there seemed to be more room for a social-democrat president than in the nearly fourty years before.

It seemed that Bernie Sanders could have become the right president at the right time and place, in order to restore the confidence of the poor and middle class citizens in their political leaders. Just like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman had done three quarters of a century before him… But Bernie did not get the nomination eventually and had nothing else to do than withdrawing from the presidential race.

Hillary’s campaign, however, was destined to end in tears, frustration and incomprehension about what went wrong! Especially for all the people who did not see this trainwreck campaign coming and wondered where Donald Trump came from and what he had done to win the elections from a seemingly hopeless position…

Roughly two weeks ago, a story emerged that made clear that Hillary Clinton had not won the Democratic candidacy just by coincidence or as a consequence of the fact that she was so much better and more experienced than her liberal adversary Sanders.

The writer of this shocking story was the unsuspected chairwoman of the Democratic Party, Donna Brazil. She claimed that Hillary Clinton “wheeled and dealed” herself into getting the democratic nomination, by using “every dirty trick in the book” and lots of other cunning tricks.

The following pertinent snippets came from the political magazine Politico and were written bij Donna Brazil, the chairwoman of the American Democratic Party:

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested.

Debbie [Wasserman Schultz, the previous chairman of the Democratic National Party - EL] was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was.

“What?” I screamed. “I am an officer of the party and they’ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.”

That wasn’t true, he [Gary Gensler, the Chief Financial Officer of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign – EL] said. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s [Democratic National Committee] books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

Gensler described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead.

I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee.

There you have it. The to these eyes most suitable candidate for the American presidency was sidelined before he even stood a chance. And this happened by a candidate that was as close to being charged with corruption as she could be. That is at least when everything that Donna Brazil stated, is indeed true.

It is stated by the red and bold snippets from Donna Brazil, that the victory fund was not eventually for the official winner of the nomination, but was used instead as a private piggy bank at the disposal of Hillary Clinton. And Clinton also purchased a make or break decision with respect to the party’s communications manager and the decisive vote with respect to the other executive staff and anything else important in the DNC. No questions asked…

The candidacy of Bernie Sanders was now in fact a car with four empty tyres and no gasoline on board. The race was over before it even started.

Bernie Sanders was an “unamerican”, almost European candidate in his charisma. No self-inflicted, overly brown tan, no “wintersports” teeth, no voice that could shatter glass in a jiffy and no $1000 haircut. Summarized, he was a little bit older looking and not so smooth as the Clintons, but with the battle scars of a few decades in politics. He seemed an elderly politician with a lot of experience and (to these eyes) the wisdom to make the right decisions and not one who would start yet another useless war.

I  am convinced that Bernie Sanders would have been a really good president and a very acceptable candidate for the overlooked workers and poor people all over America, who had suffered dearly from the Second Great Depression. 

He was not hit so hard by scandals and not so contaminated with the stench of Wall Street money as Hillary Clinton was. On top of that he seemed a nice and honest guy to these eyes and a decent chap. But we all saw what happened in the months before the official nomination of Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate in the national elections. By controlling the money flow from the victory fund and by increasing her influence within the executive levels of the Democratic party itself, Hillary Clinton could “rig” the democratic elections, without acting illegally.

Hillary Clinton, however, was not liked and sometimes even hated by many low class workers and “white trash” and also by many – normally democratic voting – middle-class people within the party’s grassroots. People, who hated her husband’s filandering and his shameless lying about it. 

Or people who disliked Hillary’s arrogant charisma and distractedness from the likes of Joe and Jane Sixpack, in favour of the ‘fat cat’ bankers on Wall Street. In spite of the fact that Hillary Clinton could count on the black votes in the United States, it was not enough to save her from the angry majority, even though everybody anticipated that in advance. I believe that many votes for Donald Trump were in fact votes against Hillary and Bill Clinton and against everything she stood for in reality...

So many Americans – including the very religious Republican voters from the deep South and South-East and the Democratic “pentitos” who were deeply disappointed in their own party’s candidate – decided to vote for “Pied Piper” Donald Trump. 

Trump told them his stories about shutting out the Mexicans with a wall. And he promised them to tell their truths and opinions, about mass production outside the US and dumping of iron on the American market, to the Chinese government. And, last but not least, he promised to bring factories and jobs back to the United States, away from the low wage countries.

The fact that Trump himself was an accident-prone businessman at best and was not very diplomatic in his utterings against women and minorities, did not scare his voters away. And so Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States and scared the shit out of many people all over the world. 

We will never know if Bernie Sanders would indeed have become a better president than either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Nevertheless, I think that Bernie Sanders is the best president the Americans never had.

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!