Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts

Saturday, April 08, 2023

The Hammer Of Peaceful Activism

Putin, in his speeches, falls to the gender topic as a reflex action. I need to stay in power or they will come and turn your children into transvestites! I needed to go to war or they might have come and dressed your children into drag queen attires! Send 300,000 men to the front or they might come and turn men into women, and women into men! It is bizarre logic.

Alexei Navalny was safe. He did not have to go back to Russia. It was certain they would jail him and worse. But still he went. And he has indeed been subjected to jail and worse.

Zelensky fights for Navalny.

One man suffers so his country might not have to suffer indefinitely. Navalny chose to go. He was safe abroad.

But the thing about the moral fiber of someone like Alexei Navalny is it is a rope. It ties him to you, and it ties him to me. There is no escape route. You don't have the option to be quiet. You don't have the luxury of inaction. This is the spiritual reality. Just like your soul is a spiritual reality. It is true. It exists. It is indestructible. It is not the pancreas that a surgeon might dig out. But it is much more real. Your soul is more real than heaven and earth.

By choosing to go to jail and suffer Alexei Navalny communicates with the rest of us at the level that souls talk to each other. You can not look the other way. This man speaks for a nation.

Russians are not a different species. Or they might not have been able to produce the world class literature they have. Russians are long accustomed to the life of the mind. They are one of the best suited for this knowledge economy.

I am a friend of Russia. I want the best for Russia. I want a Russia that is richer, more secure, and yes, I want a Russia that is a power. Major powers like the United States and even China need other power centers. The global system needs a strong Russia to provide a counterbalance. How can there be freedom of thought and freedom of speech and freedom of conscience if truth can not be told to power? Be that to powerful America or to a powerful China?

The fight is inside Russia. The fight is in Moscow. All it will take is for one million Russians to take over the streets and not leave until Putin resigns.

I am not liking the war in Ukraine. I want peace. The path to peace is not this talk or that talk. The path to peace is a mass movement for democracy inside Russia that installs Navalny as the country's interim president who steers the country to elections to a constituent assembly. A democratic, federal Russia will make NATO irrelevant, keep Russia one, and shift the center of gravity in Europe to Kyiv.

Putin is a blight on the Russian conscience. Navalny is Russia's Mandela.



The Kremlin throws cold water on China mediating peace in Ukraine as Macron urges Xi to 'bring Russia to its senses' "So far there are no prospects for a political settlement," the Kremlin said. ....... The Kremlin on Thursday said there were "no prospects" for China to play the role of mediator in Moscow's unprovoked war against Ukraine at present, as French President Emmanuel Macron met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and urged him to "bring Russia to its senses." .......... Peskov said there were "no other ways" forward for Russia aside from continuing its offensive in Ukraine, signaling that Moscow has no interest in negotiations in the foreseeable future. ....... This came after Macron in Beijing said that Russia had dealt a blow to international stability by invading Ukraine, and called on Xi to push Russia to see reason and "bring everyone back to the negotiating table." ......... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has invited Xi to visit Ukraine and repeatedly expressed a desire to speak with him. The two leaders have not spoken since Russia invaded over a year ago. ........ China has claimed that it's neutral in the Ukraine war and unveiled a peace plan in February on the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion. ........ The war in Ukraine has made Putin a global pariah and isolated Russia economically and politically, but the Russian leader on Wednesday insisted that his country remains a "respected center of world politics." .

China’s Ambassador to the E.U. Tries to Distance Beijing From Moscow The ambassador, Fu Cong, said China was not on Russia’s side in the war in Ukraine. “‘No limit’ is nothing but rhetoric,” he said, referring to a statement from last year about the countries’ relationship......... China tries to present itself as a mediator, insisting that it respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine while endorsing some of Moscow’s narrative about the war. ...... China had not provided military assistance to Russia, nor recognized its efforts to annex Ukrainian territories, including Crimea and the Donbas. ........... Beijing has not condemned the invasion, he said, because it understood Russia’s claims about a defensive war against NATO encroachment, and because his government believes “the root causes are more complicated” than Western leaders say. ......... In her speech, Ms. von der Leyen described the E.U.-China relationship as having become “more distant and more difficult,” and endorsed the view of China as an assertive global player seeking to become “the world’s most powerful nation.” ............. the bloc should “de-risk” its relationship with China by setting new ground rules rather than “decoupling” or withdrawing. ........... China was the third-largest destination of E.U. exported goods in 2022, and the largest exporter of goods to the bloc ......... He said Europe should carve out its own policies and develop more “strategic autonomy,” instead of following Washington’s lead. ......... the backdrop to Mr. Macron’s visit, as it was to the visit of Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in November, with both accompanied by businessmen eager to continue to do deals with China. ...... “E.U. claims to be a big center, a power center in the world, an independent power center in the world, as much as the United States, as much as China,” Mr. Fu said. “So why does it have to listen to the United States all the time?” .

Brooke Shields and the Curse of Great Beauty “Pretty Baby,” a new documentary on Hulu, explores the toll that sexual and commercial objectification takes on women....... Ms. Shields was a generational touchstone of the 1970s and ’80s, an omnipresent vision — in magazines, television ads and films — of astonishing natural beauty. Luminous deep-blue eyes under those famous dark brows, delicate features, dimpled smile and a glossy brunette mane. By the time she was a preteen, her look had developed — or rather, been groomed into — an improbable blend of Renaissance angel and vamp. ....... We use beautiful young women’s sexuality to sell products (including films); we conflate the women with the products; we imagine women need to be ever newer, younger and shinier — like products. As a result, we grow inured to seeing barely pubescent girls presented as “things,” as erotic commodities. (Driving the point home, the film features an old television ad for toys made in Ms. Shields’s likeness, with the tagline “Brooke Shields: She’s a real living doll.”) ....... The film offers many examples of the exploitation and abuse (including one outright sexual assault) suffered by Ms. Shields ........ a loving but troubled (and alcoholic) single mother, Teri Shields, who also served as her manager, and Ms. Shields understood early that her career provided the family’s sole income. ........ Ms. Shields’s uncannily adult persona remained as impeccable and serene as her appearance. But there is a static quality to her in these clips, a blankness suggesting the practiced deflection of disturbing emotion, as if being treated constantly as an object had nearly turned her into one. ......... Recounting the director Franco Zeffirelli’s attempts to extract from her, 16 and a virgin, a scene of erotic “ecstasy” in the film “Endless Love,” Ms. Shields recalls: “I just dissociated.” (Off camera, to try to simulate passion, Mr. Zeffirelli repeatedly twisted Ms. Shields’s toe, causing her to cry out and contort her face in pain.) In such moments, she says she was “zooming out, seeing a situation but you are not connected to it. You instantly become a vapor of yourself.” ......... Eventually Ms. Shields overcame this vaporous existence, largely through the saving grace of a college education. Encouraged by her professors at Princeton to voice her own opinions, Ms. Shields says she “learned I could think for myself,” which “morphed into this big rebellion.” ........... She set boundaries with her controlling mother, discovered her untapped talents for comedy and dance (with which she could break free of those beautiful blank-slate roles) and, for the first time, found a boyfriend. .........

the story of the terrible toll that sexual and commercial objectification takes on women

....... When Ms. Shields’s image is on the screen, it’s almost impossible to look away. It’s that magnetism that everyone wants to bottle and sell. It’s what launched her career.
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‘It Was Not Love at First Sight’ It took Samantha Weinstein and Philip Della Noce a few years to form a friendship, and another few more to become romantic......... “I got to Toronto, and the first person I called was Samantha,” Mr. Della Noce said. “We FaceTimed every single day.” .

U.S. Economy May Be Heading to a Place That Must Not Be Named A hard landing? A banana? Euphemisms for recession have a long history in Washington. Whatever the Fed is stating, it seems to be expecting something ugly, our columnist says. .

@dasha_navalnaya Пошли на аквадискотеку (?) #дашанавальная #навальный #navalny #dashanavalnaya #навальная #partygirl #parents ♬ how would they know bad girls club - Chris Gleason

Thursday, November 17, 2022

Peace Moves Are Political Warfare

Affirm The Dignity Of Your Adversary “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.”



Maoists like to say, the party controls the gun. The political has to control the military.

The military-industrial complex in the United States can not be allowed to have the upper hand like in Afghanistan. We are on the brink of possible nuclear disaster. The world can not count on Putin being rational. The world can not count on Putin's orders for nuclear strike being disobeyed. The world should not have to count on a coup inside Russia.

I was glad when the HIMARS landed inside Ukraine and the tide turned.

But a war where the military-industrial complex is steering the wheel is a mercenary war. Follow the money. This has to be a war for liberty. This has to be primarily a political fight.

Peace efforts have to be made. The political players have to be primary. A peacemaker necessarily has to be a neutral player. Right now only India qualifies. I see a Nobel Peace Prize here for the Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar.

India is now president of the G20. By the end of the decade it will have become a larger economy than the United States. And it is the only big power that is equally close to both Russia and the United States.

I actually see Putin's point. When there are ethnic riots in Indonesia, or Malaysia, it is the ethnic Chinese that suffer. India blockaded Nepal for months several years ago when the ethnic Indians inside Nepal were short shifted in the country's new constitution that was drawn in smoky rooms instead of a constituent assembly. My guess is the ethnic Russians inside Ukraine are in some sort of a predicament. Jaishankar was the top bureaucrat in the Indian Foreign Ministry at the time and was specifically tasked to fly over to Kathmandu by Modi for some last minute messaging. He was rebuffed.

You can not make peace unless you really, really listen to both sides. A power that sides with the US in knee-jerk manners could not make peace. A power that might be the next Russia (read: Taiwan) can not make the peace moves. Only India can. And India should jump into the fray. You don't need permission. Whose permission?

A Russian missile did land in Poland. Lithuania is nervous. The world can not afford this game of Russian roulette.



What does Russia want? Russia wants the ethnic Russians inside Ukraine to have political equality. What does Ukraine want? Ukraine wants its 1991 borders. Russia promised to respect that. Is it possible Putin is not being straight? It is. But peace can only be made by the wise and the strong. Jaishankar is no bit player. This is the Indian diplomats' momement to shine. India wants veto power. It should earn it by forging this peace.

Russia has to be willing to withdraw its military completely. But that territory can not be handed over to Ukraine. UN peacekeeping forces should step in. Something like a year should be allowed. A referendum should be organized under global supervision. Ukraine will have the option to put forth power devolutions such that these regions where the ethnic Russians are in majority feel there is plenty of local autonomy. Ukraine can proactively offer that kind of federalism long before the votes are cast. I thik this much political work Ukraine has to be willing to do. The war can not be about land. The tussle has to be about people.

Politics inside Russia is a separate topic. That is not an agenda for the peace process. But a peace process that gets the Russian military to vacate all of Ukraine will also bring back all those Russians who have fled, including those who dodged the draft. There is high chance they might take to the streets in organized fashions. But that is domestic Russian politics. That is not something for the peace process.

As the peace process advances, other topics can also be tackled. Reconstruction and neutral war crime investigations can be carried out. Both leave room for some creativity. Maybe there are powers like Saudi Arabia that will be happy to chip in some. That can be allowed. Why not?

The political has to be above the military. A top US General just went on record to say he does not see how Ukraine can militarily push out Russia from all of Ukraine any time soon. So why not use the winter for peace efforts and political moves?

India does not need America's permission. Use the same oil and food logic you have been using to keep buying Russian oil. To that add nuclear radiation fears. You don't want nuclear radiation in New York and London. There is a very famous Indian in London these days. His name is Rishik Sunak.

I was very actively involved with Nepal's peace process in 2005 and 2006. The American ambassador at the time kept arguing there was only a military solution. The Maoists must be defeated at the point of a gun. It was so obvious to me that was not an available path. In trying lied thousands of dead bodies and mayhem. Only the political path was possible. The political path was taken. Nepal saw rapid peace. The Moist supremo and his deputy both became Prime Minister. Both are still active politically. The supremo is right now campaigning in a national election. He is peacefully asking for votes and is pretty good at it.

American shine can mask a lot of uncivility and crude thinking. The gun speaks is one such thinking. It is bad thinking. Look at the gun deaths in America. There are people who worry the US might see a civil war in the future. There are 50,000 gun deaths every year in America. In any other country you would call that a civil war. It is not a very civil situation. Nepal's civil war lasted 10 years and cost 17,000 lives.

India must jump in and help make the peace. Peace necessarily involves give and take. The final outcome can not be fully foreseen. There will be twists and turns along the way. But right now there is zero effort. Stop asking for permission. Whose permission? New York City announced nuclear attack drills months ago.

Before the tactical nuclear strike, there can be electrical outages. That is plenty of bad news. If there is a nuclear strike, however small, the US has made explicit its intention to completely destroy the Russian military in all of Ukraine and the Black Sea. At that point Russia backs down or it launches the strategic nukes which is Mutually Assured Destruction, the so-called MAD situation. That will not spare any country, not China, not India. No territory, no ideology, no value is worth that destruction. So step in and help the two powers step back. De-escalate. Help de-escalate.

Ukraine has to be willing to forge a most cutting edge federalism for all of Ukraine. That is no price to pay to keep all of its territory.







Indonesia’s Widodo calls on G20 to work to ‘end the war’ Indonesian president appears to reference Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as he opens key global summit in Bali. .

Russia’s Road to Economic Ruin The Long-Term Costs of the Ukraine War Will Be Staggering ........ After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the Russian economy seemed destined for a nosedive. International sanctions threatened to strangle the economy, leading to a plunge in the value of the ruble and Russian financial markets. Everyday Russians appeared poised for privation. ......... More than eight months into the war, this scenario has not come to pass. Indeed, some data suggest that the opposite is true, and the Russian economy is doing fine. The ruble has strengthened against the dollar, and although Russian GDP has shrunk, the contraction may well be limited to less than three percent in 2022.......... Look behind the moderate GDP contraction and inflation figures, however, and it becomes evident that the damage is in fact severe: the Russian economy is destined for a long period of stagnation. The state was already interfering in the private sector before the war. That tendency has become only more pronounced, and it threatens to further stifle innovation and market efficiency. The only way to preserve the viability of the Russian economy is through either major reforms—which are not in the offing—or an institutional disruption similar to the one that occurred with the fall of the Soviet Union. .......... unrealistic expectations of what economic measures can do ......... Economic sanctions did, of course, have other immediate effects. Curbing Russia’s access to microelectronics, chips, and semiconductors made production of cars and aircraft almost impossible. From March to August, Russian car manufacturing fell by an astonishing 90 percent, and the drop in aircraft production was similar. The same holds true for the production of weapons, which is understandably a top priority for the government. Expectations that new trade routes through China, Turkey, and other countries that are not part of the sanctions regime would compensate for the loss of Western imports have been proved wrong. The abnormally strong ruble is a signal that backdoor import channels are not working. If imports were flowing into Russia through hidden channels, importers would have been buying dollars, sending the ruble down. Without these critical imports, the long-term health of Russia’s high-tech industry is dire. ............ Even more consequential than Western technology sanctions is the fact that Russia is unmistakably entering a period in which political cronies are solidifying their hold on the private sector. This has been a long time in the making. After the 2008 global financial crisis hit Russia harder than any other G-20 country, Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially nationalized large enterprises. In some cases, he placed them under direct government control; in other cases, he placed them under the purview of state banks. To stay in the government’s good graces, these companies have been expected to maintain a surplus of workers on their payrolls. Even enterprises that remained private have in essence been prohibited from firing employees. This has provided the Russian people with economic security—at least for the time being—and that stability is a critical part of Putin’s compact with his constituents. .......... But an economy in which enterprises cannot modernize, restructure, and fire employees to boost profits will stagnate. Not surprisingly,

Russia’s GDP growth from 2009 to 2021 averaged 0.8 percent per year, lower than the period in the 1970s and 1980s that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union.

........ government officials, military generals, and high-ranking bureaucrats—many of them Putin’s friends—became multimillionaires. The living standards of ordinary Russians, in contrast, have not improved in the past decade. ......... Since the beginning of the war, the government has tightened its grip on the private sector even further. Starting in March, the Kremlin rolled out laws and regulations that give the government the right to shut down businesses, dictate production decisions, and set prices for manufactured goods. The mass mobilization of military recruits that started in September is providing Putin with another cudgel to wield over Russian businesses because to preserve their workforces, company leaders will need to bargain with government officials to ensure that their employees are exempt from conscription. ......... To be sure, the Russian economy has long operated under a government stranglehold. But Putin’s most recent moves are taking this control to a new level. As the economists Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny have argued, the one thing worse than corruption is decentralized corruption. It’s bad enough when a corrupt central government demands bribes; it is even worse when several different government offices are competing for handouts. ....... That could create a dynamic reminiscent of the 1990s, when Russian business owners relied on private security, mafia ties, and corrupt officials to maintain control of newly privatized enterprises. Criminal gangs employing veterans of the Russian war in Afghanistan offered “protection” to the highest bidder or simply plundered profitable businesses. The mercenary groups that Putin created to fight in Ukraine will play the same role in the future. .......... Russia could lose the war, an outcome that would make it more likely that Putin would lose power. A new reformist government could take over and withdraw troops, consider reparations, and negotiate a lifting of trade sanctions. ......... Russia will emerge from the war with its government exercising authority over the private sector to an extent that is unprecedented anywhere in the world aside from Cuba and North Korea. ........ Particularly at first, they will target the most profitable enterprises, both at the national and local level. ......... The collapse of the Soviet state made institutions of that era irrelevant. A long and painful process of building new institutions, increasing state capacity, and reducing corruption followed—until Putin came to power and eventually dismantled market institutions and built his own system of patronage. The lesson is grim: even if Putin loses power and a successor ushers in significant reforms, it will take at least a decade for Russia to return to the levels of private-sector production and quality of life the country experienced just a year ago. Such are the consequences of a disastrous, misguided war.
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Thursday, January 13, 2022

Russia And The US: Modi Should Mediate

When China and India were blowing hot and blowing cold up in the Himalayas, Russia, a friend to both, stepped in and mediated a winding down. India is a friend both to Russia and the United States. It should reciprocate. Modi should mediate. Several major European powers as well the US seem to think we are on the brink of war. Russia might invade Ukraine. That would be a bad development for Russia, the US, Europe, and the world. It was not just the USA but also Russia that defeated the Soviet Union. Russia hit the final, decisive blow. It was Russia's victory. The US was a spectator. 

Ukraine's sovereignty is sacrosanct, but Russia is one of the major powers alongside China and the US. Its economy might be minor, in no small measure due to the mismanagement and large-scale giveaways to today's oligarchs after the Soviet Union fell like a house of cards after Yeltsin's decisive blow and courageous stand. 

I am aware the West would like to see a Western-style democracy in Russia when no two western powers have identical political systems. But opening up Russia or reforming Russia need not go by way of a war in Ukraine. Russia's domestic political processes have their own idiosyncrasies. Stalin had his extreme left fire to burn. Putin seems to turn up the extreme right fire far and wide. 

There is no need to convince Russia of the US position, or the US of Russia's position. That is not what peace is about. There just is an urgent need to wind down the tension that can be facilitated by another power that is considered a friend by both. 

India dreams of becoming a permanent member of the Security Council. It has to be willing to play a role here to get there. This is a necessity as well as an opportunity. This is not a war either Russia or the US want. But sometimes you just need to be able to save face. You need help climbing down the pole. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Yemen's Roadmap To Peace

I know very little about Yemen. I have read very little. But the crisis there must be big enough that I have skimmed a ton of headlines while just going out and about. I am a news junkie. I skim news daily, almost.

This is what I do know. Yemen is not oil-rich. Sand and oil are two different things. It might surprise a lot of people but just because you have sand does not seem to mean you also have oil. Yemen is a poor Arab country. In that Yemen allows for time travel. The oil-rich countries all used to be poor like Yemen. That was only a few decades ago.

Yemen had a president who had been president for a long time, something like 30 years. He was toppled by a group of rebels inspired by the Arab Spring. He was gone and that created a vacuum, quickly filled by the two poles of the regional cold war, Iran and Saudi Arabia. And since there has been a civil war, lurching this way and that. There is widespread misery and mayhem. Fighters are not even 0.1% of the population. But the suffering is across the board.

Iran and Saudi Arabia can't go to war with each other, and they know it. The global economy would have a heart attack if they do. But Yemen is a poor, inconsequential country. War in Yemen does not rattle anyone except the poor, non-fighting Yemenis. This is a sad situation.

And, of course, the military-industrial complex in the United States fishes in every muddied pond. Yemen has been the reason that complex has sold over a hundred billion dollars worth of military hardware. 100 billion dollars is a lot of money.

The sad part is the civil war in Yemen might not see a quick resolution. But it is also true that if it goes for long enough, there are going to be implications beyond Yemen's borders. So it makes sense to proactively put out the civil war fire.

The best way would be for Iran and Saudi Arabia to wind down their Cold War. But that can feel too ambitious for the short term. It is possible to eke out peace inside Yemen even if Iran and Saudi Arabia do not normalize their relations. But it is hard.

There has to be a mediator for the peace talks. I think Imran Khan of Pakistan might be the only available neutral party who has some gravitas. Yemen could be the dress rehearsal for the eventual peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Get the warring factions to meet and talk. Unite their fighters into one unified army for Yemen. Form an interim government. Hold elections to a constituent assembly. Something along those lines.




Yemen crisis: Why is there a war? Yemen, one of the Arab world's poorest countries, has been devastated by a civil war. ......... The conflict has its roots in the failure of a political transition supposed to bring stability to Yemen following an Arab Spring uprising that forced its longtime authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in 2011.......... Alarmed by the rise of a group they believed to be backed militarily by regional Shia power Iran, Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states began an air campaign aimed at restoring Mr Hadi's government........The coalition received logistical and intelligence support from the US, UK and France........... At the start of the war Saudi officials forecast that the war would last only a few weeks. But four years of military stalemate have followed.........

Yemen is experiencing the world's worst man-made humanitarian disaster....... The UN says Yemen is on the brink of the world's worst famine in 100 years if the war continues...... About 80% of the population - 24 million people - need humanitarian assistance and protection.

............ About 20 million need help securing food, including almost 10 million who the UN says are just a step away from famine. Almost 240,000 of those people are facing "catastrophic levels of hunger"........ More than 3 million people - including 2 million children - are acutely malnourished, which makes them more vulnerable to disease........ With only half of the country's 3,500 medical facilities fully functioning, almost 20 million people lack access to adequate healthcare. And almost 18 million do not have enough clean water or access to adequate sanitation..... Consequently,

medics have struggled to deal with the largest cholera outbreak ever recorded

, which has resulted in more than 1.49 million suspected cases and 2,960 related deaths since April 2017......... The war has also displaced more than 3.3 million from their homes, including 685,000 who have fled fighting along the west coast since June 2018....... Separatists seeking independence for south Yemen, which was a separate country before unification with the north in 1990, formed an uneasy alliance with troops loyal to Mr Hadi in 2015 to stop the Houthis capturing Aden......... The situation was made more complex by divisions within the Saudi-led coalition. Saudi Arabia reportedly backs Mr Hadi, who is based in Riyadh, while the United Arab Emirates is closely aligned with the separatists. ....... Gulf Arab states - backers of President Hadi - have accused Iran of bolstering the Houthis financially and militarily, though Iran has denied this........ Yemen is also strategically important because it sits on a strait linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, through which much of the world's oil shipments pass.



Why Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter rivals Historically Saudi Arabia, a monarchy and home to the birthplace of Islam, saw itself as the leader of the Muslim world. However this was challenged in 1979 by the Islamic revolution in Iran which created a new type of state in the region - a kind of revolutionary theocracy - that had an explicit goal of exporting this model beyond its own borders. ....... Fast-forward to 2011 and uprisings across the Arab world caused political instability throughout the region. Iran and Saudi Arabia exploited these upheavals to expand their influence, notably in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, further heightening mutual suspicions........ Iran's critics say it is intent on establishing itself or its proxies across the region, and achieving control of a land corridor stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean....... The strategic rivalry is heating up because Iran is in many ways winning the regional struggle....... In Syria, Iranian (and Russian) support for President Bashar al-Assad has enabled his forces to largely rout rebel group groups backed by Saudi Arabia...........Saudi Arabia is trying desperately to contain rising Iranian influence while the militaristic adventurism of the kingdom's young and impulsive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - the country's de facto ruler - is exacerbating regional tensions........ In the pro-Saudi camp are the other major Sunni actors in the Gulf - the UAE and Bahrain - as well as Egypt and Jordan. ....... In the Iranian camp is Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, a member of a heterodox Shia sect, who has relied on pro-Iranian Shia militia groups, including the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, to fight predominantly Sunni rebel groups..... Iraq's Shia-dominated government is also a close ally of Iran....... This is in many ways a regional equivalent of the Cold War, which pitted the US against the Soviet Union in a tense military standoff for many years.....Iran and Saudi Arabia are not directly fighting but they are engaged in a variety of proxy wars (conflicts where they support rival sides and militias) around the region........ For a long time the US and its allies have seen Iran as a destabilising force in the Middle East. The Saudi leadership increasingly sees Iran as an existential threat and the crown prince seems willing to take whatever action he sees necessary, wherever he deems it necessary, to confront Tehran's rising influence...... Saudi Arabia's vulnerability has been demonstrated by these latest attacks on its oil installations. If a war breaks out, it will be more perhaps by accident rather than design.


....

Saudi purge demonstrates ruthlessness of crown prince Big things are happening in Saudi Arabia. Princes, ministers and top businessmen are being arrested, detained in a luxury hotel, accused of corruption, their planes grounded and their assets seized........ Corruption is rampant in Saudi Arabia. Bribes, sweeteners and lavish kickbacks have long been an integral part of doing business in the world's richest oil-producing nation........ Many of those appointed to key positions amassed astronomical wealth - in some cases running into billions of dollars - far beyond their government salaries, much of it stashed away in offshore accounts.......... The government he leads would love to get its hands on some of these offshore private assets, estimated by some to total as much as $800bn (£610bn)....... The ruling Al Saud family has never revealed how much of the nation's oil wealth goes to which princes and their families, and there are thousands of them. .......... many ordinary Saudis are welcoming this purge of the rich and famous, in the hopes that some of their wealth will be redistributed to the general population...... At 32 years old, Prince Mohammed bin Salman - or MBS, as he is known - has already amassed extraordinary control over the key levers in the country.........He is the youngest defence minister of any major country, and is also driving an economic development programme, declaring his intention to wean Saudi Arabia off its dependence on oil revenues......... He is largely popular with the young, despite dragging the country into a seemingly unwinnable war in Yemen and executing a damaging boycott against neighbouring Qatar. .......

The old guard in Saudi Arabia are rattled.

....... The crown prince knows that to drive through his modernising reform programme he may meet resistance, but he is now demonstrating a steely ruthlessness in removing anyone or anything that could get in his way. ........ There is no-one left in Saudi Arabia with any obvious powerbase to challenge the rise to power of the crown prince and he could well become king and rule for the next half-century........ Some among the royal family are grumbling that he is taking on too much too quickly, but perhaps

more worrying is how the religious conservatives will react in the long-term

.......... The Al Saud depend on these clerics for their legitimacy to rule the home of the two holiest places in Islam, Mecca and Medina (the king carries the title "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques")........ So far, the clerics have accepted the curbs on their power and in September acceded to the lifting of the ban on women driving, which they always resisted....... In time, history will decide whether the purge begun on Saturday night has set the course for a better, cleaner Saudi Arabia, or whether it has started to melt the glue that holds this complex country together. 

Crown prince says Saudis want return to moderate Islam Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said the return of "moderate Islam" is key to his plans to modernise the Gulf kingdom........ He told reporters that 70% of the Saudi population was under 30 and that they wanted a "life in which our religion translates to tolerance"......... He made the comments after announcing the investment of $500bn (£381bn) in a new city and business zone.......... Dubbed NEOM, it will be situated on 26,500 sq km (10,230 sq miles) of Saudi Arabia's north-western Red Sea coast, near Egypt and Jordan......... Last year, Prince Mohammed unveiled a wide-ranging plan to bring social and economic change to the oil-dependent kingdom known as Vision 2030......... As part of those reforms, the 32-year-old has proposed the partial privatisation of the state oil company, Saudi Aramco, and the creation of the world's largest sovereign wealth fund....... The government also wants to invest in the entertainment sector. Concerts are once again being held and cinemas are expected to return soon................

"We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said.

....... "We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he added....... The prince stressed that Saudi Arabia "was not like this before 1979", when there was an Islamic revolution in Iran and militants occupied Mecca's Grand Mosque....... Afterwards, public entertainment in Saudi Arabia was banned and clerics were given more control over public life.



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