Saudi ‘House of Pseud’ Thrives on Deception

By Finian Cunningham

Saudi Arabian Deputy Minister for International Financial Affairs Sulaiman al-Turki (L) and Director General of Saudi Export program Ahmed al Ghannam (R) attend the opening session for the Arab-Africa economic forum in Kuwait City November 11, 2013. REUTERS/Stephanie McGehee

The House of Saud is such a decrepit domain of duplicity it is hard to know where to begin in listing its numerous deceptions, but suffice to say that any appraisal should start, in the first instance, with a name change. Henceforth, in the cause of truth and plain language, the Saudi rulers would be better referred to as the House of Pseud.

A “pseud” is a poser, a pretender, and this term is eminently applicable to a regime that rules by fear, terror and tyranny, yet which claims to represent the Muslim World – the Ummah – by pointing to itself as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Islam”.

The truth is that this “custodian” has inflicted more suffering and violence among Muslims than perhaps any other agency in history, through its sponsorship of sectarianism, hatred and terrorism. The Saudi rulers with their obscurantist Wahhabi version of Islam are anathema to the worldwide diversity and collectivism that truly reflects the religion and spirit of “Islam” – meaning “peace”.

Syria’s information minister Omran al-Zoubi hit the nail on the head this week when he lambasted the Saudi regime for “betraying” the Arab world and Islam.

Indeed, one could say that since its inception as a state in 1932 at the hands of the British Empire, Saudi Arabia has continually betrayed the Arab people, including its own population, in the service of imperialist interests. The Saudi rulers, from the first so-called King Ibn Saud to the present King Abdullah, have siphoned off the oil riches of the Arabian Peninsula while the ordinary people struggle with unemployment, homelessness and poverty. The lion’s share of wealth of the world’s biggest oil exporter feeds the Saudi elite and their foreign patrons, and what’s more this wealth is used to suppress and oppress.

Roughly, the lifetime of the Saudi state parallels the genocide of the Palestinians since at least the 1930s. Yet in all that time, the Saudi rulers have done nothing to alleviate or defend the rights of their Arab brothers and sisters in Palestine. Indeed, as the Zionist regime now turns to dispossessing the Ummah of its third holiest site – al Aqsa Mosque in East Al Quds (Jerusalem), the Saudi royals have not bothered to raise even a whimper of objection.

The Custodian of the Two Holy Sites is hardly in any position to complain since the Saudi rulers are also busy demolishing religious sanctities in Mecca and Medina to make way for new apartments and shopping malls for their family’s profiteering.

When Saudi Arabia rejected the United Nations’ offer of a non-permanent seat on the Security Council last month it said that it was in protest at the “inaction of the Council to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. This is a classic example of the House of Pseud, given its pathetic inaction over more than seven decades to lift a finger for the Palestinians.

Moreover, no sooner had the Saudi crocodile tears for the Palestinians dried up than reports emerged of the kingdom’s intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al Saud, holding secret meetings in Jordan with his Israeli counterpart, Tamir Bardo, the director of Mossad. Such a meeting is, as it turns out, a matter of routine between the Israeli regime and the Saudis, as well as the latter’s Wahhabi clients in Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

All of these reactionary, dictatorial regimes collude with each other in their heinous common interest of destroying democracy across the Middle East.

This illustrates the real political motives of the Saudi rulers. Religion and the fraternity of Arabs and Muslims do not, remotely, come into their calculus. They operate on the basis of preserving their elite class interests of material privilege and luxury. Those interests are preserved by working assiduously with the enemies of Muslims and the mass of Arabs.

The greatest immediate enemy of the Arabs is the Western-backed Zionist regime and yet the Saudi rulers do not have any compunction about colluding with this enemy. In fact, they are impelled to collude in order to preserve their own corrupt position.

Earlier this week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal again repeated his country’s dissatisfaction with the United States and Europe for not intervening more in Syria. “We can’t have these high moral values if we do nothing here,” he said during a meeting with US secretary of state John Kerry.

Meanwhile, the Saudi minister’s brother, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who was formerly the kingdom’s intelligence chief, told US media that the way to stop violence in Syria was for the US and Europe to send more arms to the militants fighting in that country. “We need to level the playing field,” he said, adding: “to checkmate the military superiority of [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad and force him to come to the negotiating table.”

How is that for twisted logic and morality? With 100,000 dead Syrians already from a two-and-a-year conflict, the aging Saudi playboys want to fuel even more violence so as to satisfy their criminal desire for regime change in a sovereign country. Yet, they make this pathologic sound like a virtue.

As for the proposed peace talks at Geneva, the Saudis have done everything to ensure that there will be no negotiations. They have instructed the artificial opposition, the pampered exile group known euphemistically as the Syrian National Coalition, to snub the process at every opportunity. And the Western governments and media have gone along with this charade by ignoring several legitimate internal Syrian opposition groups who are willing to attend a Geneva conference.

The fact is Saudi Arabia, like the Zionist genocidal regime and the other Wahhabi monarchies, does not want peace, justice or democracy anywhere in the Middle East. They need and thrive on conflict, enmity, hatred and division. That is why the Saudi rulers have emerged as partners in crime with Tel Aviv in sponsoring conflict and terrorism in Bahrain, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, as well as crushing dissent within their own domains.

The House of Pseud is anything but the “Custodian of the Two Holy Sites of Islam”. It is the centre of state-sponsored terrorism against Muslims, Arabs, Christian and anyone else who dares challenge their tyrannical despotism.

And yet this week, US secretary of state John Kerry groveled and indulged these despots with ridiculous compliments about being the region’s “senior players”. Which just goes to show, Kerry and his Western ilk are also honorary members of the “House of Pseud”.

Finian Cunningham is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. The author was deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by regime forces. He is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and the Strategic Culture Foundation.

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