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Comment by dfsegoat | Hacker News Reader

We should not be surprised. The Kingdom of Saud is rooted in wahhabism - an ultraconservative branch of Islam that also happens to be the primary influence of a little group called Daesh/ISIL.

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I knew this was suspected but I thought it was officially denied. Apparently it's acknowledged by the Saudis. This quote from a recent FT article [0] surprised me:

  After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even 
  the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, 
  remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our 
  [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia 
  Islamist ruling party of Iraq.

[0] https://next.ft.com/content/876a971c-0644-11e6-a70d-4e39ac32...

If you invest a lot of time, whether it's configuring your .vimrc/.emacs.d/init.el or throwing a lot of money at a specific car/tool brand, you're naturally going to have an emotional attachment with that. Read the comments on tool reviews on youtube - contractors have holy wars over their DeWalts vs Milkwakees. Slashdot in the mid 90s was emacs vs vim/GNOME2 vs KDE3 for the better part of a decade. It's not limited to only the Perl greybeards or contractors - it's quite common for tenured professors to be ousted as complete frauds after some other lab tries to replicate the findings only to yield entirely different results. "The results should have yielded this, so .." This is human nature - people are going to inherently defend anything they invested a lot of time in learning/using/doing.

With religion, it's 10x more intense because they can't put down the beaker or drill and go have a beer with their buddies - it's their entire identity. FT/Der Spiegel/The Guardian(usually)/the Newshours(BBC/PBS) all do a good job for the limited amount of time/column-lines they have to cover such a complicated topic such as religious factionism that goes back thousands of years. Then there's the Bismarckian Realpolitik which is certainly a large aspect of it.

There was certainly Saudi money behind it. But when you hear "state-sponsored terrorism" it could mean a lot of things. A governor or 8th son might have funded a non-profit NGO which later turned out to be mostly legitimate but 10% of those funds were diverted to purchase New-old-stock over-stock arms from the former USSR (then the question arises - was it with or without his knowledge?). because the House of Saud itself has politics that are so intricate internally that you'd have to spend years studying that exclusively. Start reading about the First Saudi state of 1744 (under Abdel Wahhab's rule in alliance with ibn Saud) and a few thousand pages later one might have half of a grasp on the internal politics. And that's just historical internal Saudi politics. Bring in religious subsets and hatred spawned from that, ethnic hatred (Persians are about as Arab, as Japanese are Chinese), international interests propping up different regimes and it's all a very complicated game.

Think of how complicated our government operates with just two parties - the capitalists who retain the lobbyists that influence the congressmen who have multiple interests that have to be simultaneously balanced in order to keep their constituents, donors, and party all happy enough so that you retain power. It's all a subtle game of spinning plates and we're working with just with two parties (effectively).

This. I think the fundamental human inability to acknowledge and anticipate the complex forces that drive an opponent was evolutionarily handy in the savannah, but is now quite the handicap in navigating geopolitics. This is something that mainstream media is adept at - describing Iran or China as a monolithic malevolent force plotting evil against the rest of the world might be elegant from a Manichean perspective (e.g. "Iran called off talks", "China moved its ships to the Spratly Islands", etc.), but does not do enough justice to the mind-boggling complexity of these ancient societies.

There is a fantastic Adam Curtis documentary about Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism called Bitter Lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film)

Due to various issues, you'll just have to find a way to watch it... (BBC iplayer blocked in us, copyright issues when posted on youtube, etc, etc, etc)

I feel like the problem with Adam Curtis' work is... well, Adam Curtis. It's very easy to dismiss his entire body of work as "conspiracy theory", because he only writes about these sorts of topics. And it does him and his work a disservice, because of course there is a lot of truth in what he writes and produces. As with anything, there is also a lot of unsubstantiated narrative, but for anyone who's on the fence I would highly recommend watching Bitter Lake. Even if you think Curtis is a crank, the film is beautiful and the score is fantastic (Burial, Four Tet, etc.) and you might find some of the facts interesting.

I really like Adam Curtis from an entertainment perspective (similar to charlie brooker/blackmirror), he feels like real life twilight zone.

If people haven't read Adam Curtis's THEN NOW, it's well worth the time - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-...

"HAPPIDROME - Part One" is great too - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/5a7b18b5-0ec3-...

His conspiracy theories remind me more of Alan Moore's definition. "Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up ... the main thing that I learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in the conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening; no-one is in control, the world is rudderless."

I agree. I highly recommend Bitter Lake, because it's mostly history. But the ending and the "thesis" (as I interpreted it) isn't quite convincing for me.

I thought Bitter Lake was an amazing documentary.

Can anyone recommend related or similar work of the same quality?

"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace", an amazing 3-part documentary about computers, society, the shortcomings of systems-thinking. Also by Adam Curtis.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

"The Century of Self" is probably his seminal work. Remember that Adam Curtis is .. well.. Adam Curtis. His story is going to have a spin (as anyone's will - but it's important to be cognizant of that; when one reads Zinn's Peoples History of the US, I tell them to read "The Origin of Politics" just to get another take from an equally well-educated, articulate writer). I try really hard to get both sides of the story from internally consistent sources.

It's easy for me to immediately dismiss most modern neo-con sources, since their (amazingly effective) strategy is mostly based on emotional scaremongering with internally inconsistent arguments. I'm not their target demographic and they know it.

They're not idiots (in fact, re: education - Fox News has a surprisingly large percentage of hosts with degrees from well-revered instituions; which makes it all the more ironic when one points out that nice blonde lady denigrating the "liberal East coast elites" trying to emotionally connect with the midwestern housewife, herself is Harvard educated) but there definitely is another side to the story and it's important to at least hear their argument before you dismiss it.

I have a habit of growing my amazon wish list from hacker news comments. I own Zinn's People's History of the US, I can't seem to find The Origin of Politics on amazon. There are many similarly named books, but all slightly different, do you know the author for that?

This is such a great comment! Could I ask you for further reading recommendations, please?

I recently watched "The Century of Self" -- it was excellent and I can thoroughly second iheartmemcache's recommendation.

As for getting the balance of hearing all arguments, I have a habit of doing the same. I regularly read The Economist for its free-market bias (and excellent writing, btw), for example.

Pretty much everything by Adam Curtis is excellent. There's also The Mayfair Set, The Trap, Pandora's Box, and The Power of Nightmares. The Power of Nightmares is about Islamic extremists and the Neocons.

In addition to century of the self - watch "human resources documentary"

Here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji

Watched it a couple of weeks ago and as always was deeply impressed by Curtis' work.

His style is so unique in that he approaches the subject matter from a totally unexpected angle, connecting seemingly unrelated events and concepts to create a unique and original painting of history.

Highly recommended.

I just watched that - wow. That was really interesting and super depressing.

Afghanistan is hell on earth. I felt so bad for any children I saw in that.

And that guy who was torturing people and lied about being in the military and he was basically doing it for fun! What the fuck!?

Also, we should not be surprised if the rest of the documents will be declassified when, for various reasons, there will be an acute need of war with Saudi Arabia.

> Also, we should not be surprised if the rest of the documents will be declassified when, for various reasons, there will be an acute need of war with Saudi Arabia.

There will never be a war with KSA. This place is way too sensitive even the US wouldn't dare touch it. It would be an instant war with the Muslim world. The US has other ways to pressure KSA if needed. I don't think anybody in the US would be that foolish and attack the Mecca .

Maybe I'm naive, but I think there are contingency plans for (almost) everything. Imagine for example there is a coup in KSA and "the bad guys" end up in power and they do crazy things with "our fuel".

Place Mecca & Medina under international Muslim custodianship* , and then proceed with your war plans. You realize that those two cities constitute only a small geographic area of the Hijaz region let alone the whole Arabia?

*: BTW this is an actual demand of Iran and many other predominantly Muslim countries to have the Islamic holy sites under int'l custodianship and not be treated as part of House of Saud's possessions as it seems the case with time passing while these people in power.

Like the Swiss are custodians for the Vatican, not the Italians.

No, that's because Switzerland is the Templar state!

> Place Mecca & Medina under international Muslim custodianship

Why would the Saudis accept that ? They wouldn't.

He's talking about attacking the Saudis. Clearly in those circumstances you wouldn't care what they will accept.

I'm curious who that custodian would be that would not incite a shit storm.

A union of Muslim-majority countries. Let the Muslims decide who control and oversee their holy sites. These are not House of Saud's possessions and shouldn't be treated as such.

Well if the US does go to war with Saudi Arabia, I hope it's an economic one. Stuff like funding electric cars and clean energy to cut off Saudi Arabia's oil money. But that's probably not going to happen.

As I said below, what if the leadership of Saudi Arabia is seized by some hostile factions which attack the US & EU interests in the area ? What if these factions denounce the US - Saudi alliance and switch sides demanding help from the Chinese ? You think US & EU would place sanctions and wait like they do with the Russians ? I think US & EU would pull out all the files (support for terrorism, human rights abuses, democracy, yada, yada) they have against "ex-Saudi" Arabia and punch their way in before the Chinese move an inch.

I've heard the comparison that this group is the same kind of caliphate style setup where they wear white instead and stability is granted through oil and money.

However, I don't know how accurate such a statement is. I've also heard SA compared to a bunch of tribes that are continually bribed to behave cohesively.

It is accurate. Daesh follow wahabism, the Saudi branded form of Islam that is much more extreme as did Osama Bin Laden. The HuffPo isn't my favorite news source, but this is a good article:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-yousaf-butt-/saudi-wahhabis...

Moreover, the current Saudi state (dynasty?) was established using the same method that Daesh is using.

Which monarchies aren't rooted in violence?

The difference is they still preach it as the right thing

Daesh according to the docs found written by Haji Bakr, the ex Iraqi military officer who was the chief architect of that group, have their own sect http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-file...

It's a mix of Sururiyya, which is influenced by Wahhabism and Ba'athism where a state is ruled by a vanguard party. They removed the disloyal parts of Sururiyya which called for questioning inept leaders and replaced it with the unwavering loyalty obligations of a typical Ba'athist dictatorship.

The fact that Saddam era henchmen who clashed with KSA over the pillaging of Kuwait are running Daesh, plus the propaganda coming out from them calling for the removal of the house of Saud as custodian of the two holy mosques, and considering Saudi military defectors and political dissenters make up the majority of Daesh recruits it seems suicidal they would support them in anyway. Maybe there are political opposition in KSA doing so but even that would risk their own status since Daesh proved they don't care about agreements when they invaded Mosul and promptly executed the local elite who helped them get in.

Yep. This is a bit trivialized, but is accurate and to the point: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303...

There's an article entitled "Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/saudi-arabia-an-is...

It's already messed up that one of U.S. "allies" would be behind the 9/11 attacks, and that U.S. went ahead and invaded a whole other country for it anyway, but at least there could be an argument to be made that it wasn't the Saudi government behind it (which seems rather likely that it wasn't).

But protecting who the culpable parties were in the biggest attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor, because it "might endanger relationships" with that country (and after already invading Iraq for supposedly the same reason), is beyond messed up. Everyone involved in covering it up should be tried as traitors, as I don't just say that as a hyperbole.

> Everyone involved in covering it up should be tried as traitors, as I don't just say that as a hyperbole.

Don't expect them to speak out then.

we invaded afghanistan because bin laden was residing there and those in charge, the taliban, were protecting him (or the other way around given real political strength). it's fun to imagine the entire us intelligence apparatus as corrupt and criminal, but reality's plenty interesting.

The Taliban offered to put bin Laden on trial before 9/11 even happened (for earlier acts of terror). The US refused. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2011/09/20119115334167663...

After 9/11, the Taliban also offered to hand bin Laden over to the US. The Bush administration rejected the offer, as it would require 1) proof of a connection and 2) an end to the bombing of Afghanistan. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.ter...

The Taliban and al Qaeda were not close allies. Mullah Omar, founder of the Taliban, actually despised bin Laden's tactic of attacks on the West and anywhere outside the area the Taliban ruled.

Offered him up during Clinton administration, too, with result being Clinton bombing some people. Got to the point that some people thought bin Laden was an informant.

In any case, bin Laden said he had nothing to do with 9/11 then a FBI spokesman in (2006?) said they had no evidence tying him to 9/11. I don't need any wild speculation to think they might be scapegoating him for something. Maybe simply tying up loose ends from CIA's prior work on things like training terrorists to beat superpowers. You bet they didn't interrogate him on purpose and not out of anger. ;)

here come the crazies! inside jobses, metal beams don't melt!!!!

I was quoting the FBI. You can tell them how crazy you think they are. Meanwhile, the 9/11 Commission Report itself indicated attackers were funded by and tight with Saudi elites. You might, based on official report, wonder why our Presidents and counterterror efforts are tight with the one country they said sponsored 9/11 and other terrorism. ;)

i've read the report, and it's very very clear: osama bin laden and al qaeda were behind every facet of the attack.

The report does claim that. It cites the government agencies whose declassified documents say they armed him in the first place. They lied about that for a long time. They were caught repeatedly lying, esp on torture or surveillance effectiveness, during that administration. Using CIA's own intelligence framework, their source integrity rating would be very, very low even if I trusted 9/11 Commission to faithfully do their part. I mean, think about it, do we really trust CIA and DOD to give us evidence that they're guilty of negligence with direct access to source materials by 9/11 Commission? Or should we reject those parts as tainted? The latter is standard in every criminal investigation in U.S. outside of cases involving "national security."

In any case, the other thing the report said was that Arab-Americans working for CIA posed as Saudi's to trick AQ operatives into cooperating. Turned out, they thought they were saved by their Saudi friends and gave all kinds of unlisted numbers to royalty, etc. The revelation that funding and connected personnel came from the Saudi's means we should've torn up Saudi Arabia looking for them if our goal was stopping/punishing terrorists. Instead, Afghanistan and... Iraq...? While giving arms and military training to the Saudis through private military companies? And sharing terrorist intelligence with them when they just funded 9/11? What... the... hell...?

Now, fast forward to today, the Obama Administration is still protecting the pages showing level of Saudi involvement. The Saudi's still don't want their info or people in a courtroom. You indicate OBL and Afghanistan are all we gotta worry about whereas the 9/11 report on Saudi involvement, that classified doc, and U.S. government working their ass off to protect Saudi's that funded 9/11 seems to suggest very opposite of your or official claims.

That is, if OBL did it at all, he was just a tool for a large, Saudi organization connected to their financial and political elites that murdered 3,000 Americans. That connection is in official report, but downplayed. And U.S. government, for whatever reason, is doing everything they can to cover that up and keep justice from happening. If that's not evidence of supporting terrorism or negligence re 9/11 then I don't know what is.

Note: We've been able to show complicity or U.S. support of terrorism without resorting to anything beyond their own official report and actions. No conspiracy sites, no thermite, nothing. Just their own claims and hard work to protect Saudi crooks.

how about less ad hominem ?

Usually good. Fun part, though, is that doing ad hominem fairly would find all the times the FBI, DOD, CIA, NSA, and so on mislead the public or courts. Then, their credibility would be at zero just like some conspiracy nuts. Then, moderates like myself would win by default given we're the only ones presenting, but not forging, evidence. So, I tell them to bring the character assessments on but apply them fairly and equally.

you presented no evidence. you presented quotes.

Evidence was elsewhere. You know where to find it. You had already dismissed the whole topic with an ad hominem with plenty assumptions and no references whatsoever. If anything, I acted above your standard of discussion. I've replied in another comment with more details focusing on just one angle from government docs and activity only.

This is a lot of revisionism. The Taliban offered to "discuss" handing over bin Laden on the condition the US stopped bombing them. It was a clear delay tactic. They demanded evidence that he was responsible and would only turn him over to a neutral third party. Way too little too late.

It's totally false that Talbian and al Qaeda were not allies. Al Qaeda trained members of the Taliban army. If the Taliban despised al Qaeda tactics, why didn't they agree to the US demands after 9-11. Or why didn't they boot al Qaeda out of the country before 9-11.

Taliban were complicit before and after the attacks.

mullah omar was dick cheney with a wig. you should really read up on this stuff.

It's interesting that this is the result of a country practicing a hands off policy, instead of the "cultural imperialism" many complain about. The Saudi's chose to work with the US over the brits because we agreed to firewall our operations to keep their culture/society "pure" as possible.

I've always found the way security/terrorism issues are portrayed in movies or the news, especially in the U.S. to be really "cute".

The manicheism of it all made me believe that either every news anchor really has no clue about how it works, or that they're exceptionally good actors.

I also found that many times, events tend to be seen as discrete things that live in a vacuum rather than rooted to some previous event (isn't it interesting that these documents are resurfacing during a transition period where the U.S. is turning its back to Saudi Arabia and warming it up with Iran? Small pieces of content and info injected here and there).

An interesting piece if you have a few minutes to spare:

https://20committee.com/2014/09/25/what-if-everything-you-kn...

So you know how the Bush family is in bed with the Saudis (bandar bush for example) - after watching bitter lake i am more convinced the Saudis did it, but the neocon Hawks and bush family was complicit.

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