 |
Theresa May and Mohammad bin Sulman in May 2018
|
It's not often I find myself agreeing with Owen Jones, Marxist weasel that he is.
But here I do. Saudi Arabia really is an odious regime. Nasty nasty nasty. And yet again, nasty. It's been like that for a long time. And it's been known for a long time. Some of its worst doings are the funding of radical Islamist schools, madrasas, in east and west, turning out graduates who know only the Koran — their greatest achievement is to memorise it in its entirety — and so are driven to kill the hated kuffar. That would be us, non-Muslims of every faith and none.
It's not just governments who lick the boots of these nasties (do they wear boots?). Nice lefties like Richard Branson see fit to add to their billions with filthy lucre from the Saudis. Shame on them too. It doesn't help that Sir Richard pulls out of the Saudi conference on now, the so-called "Davos in the desert" (yeah, right). What, Branson just discovered that Saudi princes kill their opponents?!
Labour's Paul Williams cooed that his "previous notions have been blown out of the water"; that he had "seen a modern, progressive Saudi Arabia that has totally changed my view of this country". His Saudi funders must have been delighted: the rate of beheadings has doubledunder the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman; women's rights activists and the country's most prominent dissident have been arrested; and thousands have been butchered by the Saudis in Yemen. Shipping over gullible British parliamentarians on stage-managed trips to project a false image of reform is a good investment. Williams protests that he can see "the absolutely atrocious things the regime does", but stresses the "economic and social reforms taking place", unable to accept that he was used.
