The Saudi Connection

THE ABSURD TIMES

The Saudi Connection

More on what's really going on.

Trump and his followers with the retweets and other hate speech examples pose a real danger of making ISIS seem a rational response.  It isn't, of course, but things are relative.

Trump has now caused a massive shift in attitude in Iran away from the moderates towards the religious right.  We are seeing signs of a return to the early days of the overthrow of the Shah and Savak.  Anybody remember Shapur Baktiar?  I didn't think so.

Now that Gaddafi is gone, we see slave auctions in Libya. 

We get response from Al Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's recent controversial column, "Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at Last." Hasan argues the piece is absurdly sympathetic to Saudi Arabia, and that Trump's friendly relations with the country mean he "is not just a liar and a conspiracy theorist, he's a hypocrite. He goes on about 'radical islamic terrorism' but cozies up to Saudi Arabia, which many would argue has done more to promote ideologically and financially radical Islamic terrorism than any other country on earth."

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to go to another issue, which is related to what we've just been covering. A recent opinion piece by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman titled "Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at Last." Friedman writes in this piece, quote, "Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi-style. Unlike the other Arab Springs—all of which emerged bottom up and failed miserably, except in Tunisia—this one is led from the top down by the country's 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, and, if it succeeds, it will not only change the character of Saudi Arabia but the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe."

Friedman then goes on to say that Mohammad bin Salman is not only leading an anticorruption drive in the kingdom, but is also bringing Saudi Islam "back to its more open and modern orientation." To what MBS described as, quote, "A moderate, balanced Islam that is open to the world and to all religions and all traditions and peoples."

Now Mehdi Hasan, in an article for The Intercept headlined The Reverse Midas Touch of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is Turning the Middle East to Dust, you have presented a completely different perspective on the kingdom. So could you respond to Friedman's piece, and then also the fact that as Trump vocally criticizes practically everything to do with Islam, he chose to make his first state visit to Saudi Arabia?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah. Let's just deal with Friedman, first. A nauseating piece, as a lot of people have pointed out in recent days. An embarrassment of a piece. I mean, if the Saudi Arabian government were to set up a Ministry of Truth and Propaganda, they could offer the job of minister to Tom Friedman. He did a great job for free, for them, on that visit to Saudi Arabia. I mean, it was absurd on every level.

Let me just start with the most offensive part of the piece, Nermeen, and you guys on Democracy Now! have covered the conflict in Yemen. It's the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe. Mohammad bin Salman is at the heart of that catastrophe. It's a war he started as defense minister, pushed for, defended, promoted, escalated. Is continuing to do so, as Crown Prince. And Friedman gives it one passing reference, one passing paragraph, in the piece, as if that's not—you know, "Oh, here's a moderate modernizer, who by the way is bombing the Middle East's poorest country and starving them into submission, or trying and failing to starve them into submission."

As for this nonsense about returning Saudi Arabia to moderate Islam, Saudi Arabia has never been the home of moderate Islam. This idea that MBS, Mohammad bin Salman, is pushing, and that journalists like Tom Friedman in the West credulously just repeat and regurgitate, that pre-1979 Saudi Arabia was some kind of moderate bastion of liberalism and pluralism, a multi-faith utopia, is absurd. As long as the Saud family have been in charge of that country and imposing their brand of very intolerant, very reactionary Salafi Islam, it has not been moderate in any shape or form.

The Saudi Arabians have been exporting their particularly puritanical, intolerant brand of Islam to the rest of the Muslim-majority world since 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. So this nonsensical argument from the Crown Prince that "Oh, if we could just go back to pre-1979, pre the Iranian Revolution, pre the attack on Mecca by extremists, we would all be moderate again" is absurd.

Yes, it is very easy to say we will give women drivers the right to drive. You know, something—the only country in the world that didn't do that to begin with. Great, we all applaud that. But there is much more that this Crown Prince has to be done before he can even begin to talk about a moderate Islam coming out of Saudi.

And yes, you mentioned, Nermeen, Donald Trump, after accusing Saudi Arabia of being behind 9/11 during the election campaign, President Trump decided to make his first trip in the world not to Mexico or Canada, as previous U.S. presidents, but to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he danced with swords and received lovely gifts and endorsed every Saudi geopolitical plan in the region from blockading Qatar—full disclosure, I work for Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar—to bombing Yemen, to escalating a conflict of a war of words which could become a hot war with Iran.

So Trump, shock horror, he is not just a liar and a conspiracy theorist, he's a hypocrite. He goes on about 'radical Islamic terrorism' but cozies up to Saudi Arabia, which many would argue has done more to promote ideologically and financially, radical Islamic terrorism, than any other country on earth.

Oral arguments are scheduled for next week in both federal appeals court cases of President Trump's proposed travel ban, which blocks various people from eight countries, six of them with Muslim majorities, from entering the United States. Mehdi Hasan, award-winning British journalist and broadcaster at Al Jazeera English, discusses the impact Trump's recent retweets of Islamophobic messages and videos could have on the cases and notes, "This is the way he's always been."

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Mehdi Hasan, we wanted to turn to the issue of Trump's proposed travel ban, which blocks various people from eight countries, six of them with Muslim majorities, from entering the United States. But federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii have partially blocked its implementation. Oral arguments are scheduled for next week in both federal appeals court cases.

Neal Katyal, a lawyer on the Hawaii travel ban case, posted a link to news coverage Wednesday of the president's tweets, writing, "Thanks! See you in court next week." What impact do you think Trump's retweets of these videos that have been so widely condemned across the political spectrum will have on his attempt to enforce this third iteration of a travel ban? What many call a Muslim ban.

MEHDI HASAN: It is a very good point, Amy. And every judge who has looked at this since January, when the first version of the Muslim ban came out, has actually referred to Trump's tweets, Trump's statements during the campaign, to point out that when the Trump administration says this has nothing to do with religion or Islam, hold on, the president of the United States himself said either in office, on Twitter, or on the campaign trail, that it is to do with Islam. It is to do with Muslims.

And interestingly, it is not just Neal Katyal, the lawyer, pointing to the tweets. Yesterday, Amy, the Deputy White House Press Secretary on board Air Force One, Raj Shah, when asked by journalists is the president hostile toward Muslims, does he have a problem with Muslims given these tweets, what did the White House Deputy Press Secretary say? He said, "Well, I think the president has addressed that with his travel order."

So the White House Deputy Press Secretary himself referred to the travel order as being about Muslims. So when the White House next lies and says it has nothing to do with Muslims, their own administration keeps undermining them by keep—you know, occasionally, accidentally, the most dishonest administration in modern history tells the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: The terms "unhinged," "unbound," "untethered," "losing it," "unstable." The New York Times writing a major piece about what is going on in the White House right now with Trump tweeting out conspiracy theories, once again talking about President Obama being illegitimate, that he wasn't born in the United States. Saying that perhaps the "Access Hollywood" video in fact wasn't real, wasn't his voice, even though he acknowledged it and apologized for it. And then last night, when talking about the tax plan, reading script that said something like rocket fuel for the economy, got inspired to say, oh by the way, rocket fuel, rocket man, and then called the North Korean leader "a sick puppy." All of this is happening in the midst of this major escalation with North Korea that could lead to a nuclear war, as he attacks his closest ally, the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who he might need in this case. What about this? This most unstable time?

MEHDI HASAN: I think the main way to deal with Trump, to try and respond to Trump, is to stop being surprised. We have to—I know it is hard for us to stop being shocked, because he is so good at shocking us, but I think we have to try and stop being shocked if we are going to tackle the menace that he poses to global stability and peace.

Because look, he said he was a conspiracy theorist during his campaign. He went on Infowars and thanked Alex Jones. He told us he was a conspiracy theorist. We shouldn't be shocked when he is a conspiracy theorist in office. He told us he was a white nationalist on the campaign trail. He retweeted accounts like White Genocide when he was a candidate. So we shouldn't be shocked when he becomes president and starts promoting white nationalists on Twitter.

This is who he has always been. Dangerous, unstable, a white nationalist, a conspiracy theorist. It's who he has always been over the decades. So I'm not sure why so many journalists, especially people who go to the White House and ask these questions every day of Sarah Huckabee Sanders—you know, start from the premise that he is who he says he is. He is a white nationalist. He is a conspiracy theorist. He is unstable. Some of America's leading psychiatrists have put together a book pointing out that he is a danger to us all because he is so unstable. And therefore we have to start recognizing what's in front of us, and stop pretending that this is any kind of normal president. He is not.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, we want to thank you for being with us. Award-winning British journalist, broadcaster at Al Jazeera English, host of Al-Jazeera program "UpFront," columnist for The Intercept. We will link to your piece on the criticism of Thomas Friedman's piece in The New York Times. Also contributing editor to the New Statesman magazine in the U.K. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we will be speaking with the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Stay with us.

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