Leftists who constantly chide Americans for our so-called wastes and over-indulgence, rarely point out the outlandish spending that goes on in other countries. The Saudi royal family chooses to spend money on things like golden toilets. In fact, the late King Abdullah gave a golden toilet to his daughter as a wedding present just last year. Talk about taking a royal dump!
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bought an Airbus A380 for $400 million. This plane is so sick (to use terminology of the Millennials) it includes a concert hall! And if that’s not enough, the plane includes a Turkish spa, and 20 first class seats and beds.
The Saudis remind me of the big lottery winners; people who just spend like there’s no tomorrow. In 1937 little did the American surveyors know when they discovered the vast oil reserves in the Saudi region, that they were handing this Bedouin crowd the winning lottery ticket.
It has been said that the royal family consists of about 15,000 members, with about 2,000 of those who control the money. For the most part, the majority of the Saudi Arabian people are poor and at the mercy of the kingdom, ergo the government. Roughly one third of the people are subsidized. For now, they are peaceful, but that’s as long as they are taken care of.
In a way, the Saudi princes buy the people’s silence. They don’t want any lip from their subjects about how to run the country. This is similar to how our government treats Americans on welfare. America is witnessing what happens when the money runs out, with examples like Ferguson, Baltimore, and just about every major metropolitan area, where young black men (the most egregiously unemployed) showcase their anger with the lack of opportunity.
Remember, a large number of young Saudis are fertile soil for the likes of ISIS, and why wouldn’t they be? They are said to be attracted by the totality of commitment required by the jihadist group. Basically, these are young people looking for a cause in which to give their life because in reality, the one they have now stinks. Furthermore, it makes perfect sense that the people low on the totem pole look at their own royalty and see the hypocrisy of worldly living from a group that pushes strict, theocratic Islam. This is the type of person ISIS capitalizes on.
How ironic that the Saudi royalty may fall as a result of the very ideology it has peddled throughout the world, and this is the way much of the money was spent. Lavish living on one hand, while on the other creating swaths of people steeped in a Wahhabi or Salafist type ideology of Islam who end up joining affiliates like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
In an article, Alastair Crooke, former MI-6, explains the complex duality of Saudi Arabia’s kingdom and it’s Wahhabi history. Many apparently have been horrified by the violence of ISIS and its draw over Sunni youth.
“But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia’s ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, ‘Don’t the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?’”
It seems to be a perfect storm scenario, the fall of crude with the rise of ISIS. A Washington Times article states:
“According to the CIA’s World Factbook, some 47 percent of the kingdom’s citizens are under the age of 25. And there is debate about what the majority of them actually want.”
It continues quoting Joshua Landis, Center for Middle East Studies:
“When the Arab Spring began in late 2010, the ‘royal family was gripped by fear that they could be next, and so they began to just throw money at their youth bulge problem. They locked themselves into this mega spending based on $100 oil, and then the market collapsed.’”
We all know what can happen to a house of cards when the slightest disturbance occurs. If this house falls, the implications to the instability of the Middle East and the world would be particularly worrisome, especially as to who would be running Saudi Arabia. It seems as though Saudi Arabia may experience the saying of what goes around comes around.
