Debate
Saudi-Arabia's role in US foreign policy
By Desert Man
It's very naive to believe that the corrupted reactionary arab puppets of US-imperialism in Persian Gulf would do anything to boost the welfare of the islamic world or even their own nations.
From a domestic perspective,their role is to protect the colonial interests of the alien colonial powers, i e to preserve their country's dependency to west, preven regional co-operation (read good relations to Iran) and keep their nations off from real progress and freedom, and of course, to flood the world market with cheep oil and buy expensive weapons from USA in order to protect american interests!
No wonder why these feodal arcaic states are called moderate allies to western democracies at the international political scene. At the cultural and religious scene they are presented as true represents of islamic traditions, and the western governments do their best to get mosques and moslem media under Saudi control. Even in arab world Saudis make their best to get the control over the arab media.
Something that have caused protests in Lebanon and even Egypt. After the definitive death of the so called arab-israeli peace process, the failure of talibans takeover efforts of Afghanistan, and the emergence of Iran asthe last hope for democaray and freedom, the situation is getting critical for both Israelis and the camp of reactionary arab states (and Turkey and Pakistan as well).
As a result of pressures from the Oil lobby (representing investments of oil interests in Central Asia and Caucasus which are looking for ways out of the landlocked countries) and the defeat of the US-Saudi-Pakistani backed neandertalibans in Afghanistan, the US administration is softening its sanction policy toward Iran, which makes Iran as the future focal point for the world's energy distribution.
An Iran capitalizing of its location in the middle of 75 percent of the world oil reserve and representing the most advanced democracy in the region has made Israel lobbies, politicains and think tanks sleepless.
Like Shimon Peres, Natanyahu is traveling around the world to stop Russia, China and other countries to stop them dealing with Iran.
But they are realising that the fact speaks for its own and time is not working for neither Israel nor moderate arab states. And now, as the geo-political, cultural and ecnomical centre of gravity is moving from arab world to Iran and Central Asia there's sign of desperation among Israelis and its arab allies.
As Israel is planning for its pre-emptive military attack to Syria and Lebanon (to promote peace and security), some Saudi power centres are thinking about declaring a full scale economi warfare in order to destroyor cut off the troat of the islamic world's economy.
It wouldn't surprize if Israel and Saudies would organize and launch new 'conservative' 'puritans' in Central Asia in order to sabotage and distabilize the economy of central asian states.
Read the below:
Monday August 25 6:08 AM EDT
Yamani's son urges Saudi to flood oil market
By William Maclean
LONDON, Aug 25 (Reuter) - Saudi Arabia should flood the world with oil to boost market share and regain influence over prices, according to the businessman son of former Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani. In a rare public call for sweeping economic change by a member of the merchant establishment, Hani Ahmed Zaki Yamani says the world's largest oil producer should hike output to 20 million barrels a day (bpd) from the current eight million bpd over the next five years to inject new strength into the ageing Saudi-led OPEC cartel.
``To regain control over the oil markets and our destiny, we must open the taps and flood the world with the cheapest supplies,'' writes the 36-year-old millionaire entrepreneur in a book ``To Be A Saudi.'' ``Saudi Arabia has no alternative to this pricing policy and we may be surprised at how much support we will receive when we eventually apply it.'' Advance copies of the book have been sent to reviewers ahead of publication in November.
Yamani, from one of the kingdom's top merchant families, has worldwide interests in construction, banking and aerospace. Yamani's proposal runs counter to current Saudi policy, which limits output to eight million bpd to help support sagging prices.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has watched helpless this year as a revenue windfall from a firm market in 1996 has been wiped out by a 30 percent price slump. Cash-pinched populous Third World producers like Venezuela, Nigeria and Algeria already prefer to maximise revenues by running supplies at full tilt, ignoring consequences for the market.
Saudi Arabia, Iran and some other Gulf states have been castigating the quota-busters for years for their overproduction, but to no avail. Saudi Arabia has been particularly careful not to indicate that it would increase its production in retaliation after a disastrous attempt in the mid-1980s to regain lost market share led to a collapse in oil prices.
Yamani argues the mid-1980s price war was not carried on long enough to be successful. Some analysts say a similar policy today would be equally disastrous, as the influence of futures markets such as the New York Mercantile Exchange, which each session trades several times the world's daily oil production, have continued to increase.
Yamani argues that a successful bid to control the oil market would help Saudi Arabia protect its long-term prosperity while promoting global economic growth. ``We will be told that our actions threaten the very existence of large fellow Moslem countries and will cause widespread misery around the world,'' he writes.
But he added:``Saudis must address their own existence and prosperity before they start solving the problems of other people. He says Saudi Arabia could raise maximum output capacity to 10.5 million bpd within six months, raise it again to 16 million bpd within three years and raise it again by another four million bpd two years after that.
Yamani recommends signing 10-year fixed price oil contracts with customers pegged at an average of $10 a barrel for the first five years, with annual 7.5 percent increases for at least five years after that. Yamani's ideas are in tune with those of his father's Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES), a think tank that has warned OPEC's Arab Gulf producers that output restraint spells decline for their oil industries.
``OPEC may look different in the future, but it will represent over 50 percent of global oil production with world demand for the commodity probably increasing at much faster rates of growth because of the lower prices,'' the younger Yamani writes Twenty years ago OPEC's Gulf core, including Iraq and Iran as well as Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia, accounted for 56 percent of oil produced in the world outside the United States and the former Soviet Union, with a share in reserves of 67 percent. By 1995 the OPEC Gulf core's share in production had fallen to 35 percent while reserves rose to 72 percent.
Other reforms proposed by Yamani include privatising Saudi Aramco's downstream oil refineries and distribution channels and the Saudi Basic Industries Corp 1/8SBIC.CN petrochemical companies, and the full or partial selling of water, telephones, highways and hospitals. He also wants a 20 percent income tax on expatriates, a 10 percent Value Added Tax on all goods and services, levying a tax on visitors on the Moslem Haj pilgrimage and creating tax-free export zones at Jubail and Yanbu.
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