Dynamics of the Saudi Royal Family

Omar Ali · November 11, 2018 · 1 comment

From Dr Hamid Hussain

This piece written in summer of 2017 is a backgrounder for Kingdom at a crossroad.  This will help in understanding the background to my upcoming piece about challenges faced by the Kingdom in the aftermath of Jamal Khashoggi murder. Stay tuned.

Hamid

Royal Rumble – Dynamics of Saudi Royal Family

Hamid Hussain

 ‘In a western democracy, you lose touch with your people, you lose elections; in a monarchy, you lose your head’.  Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Former Saudi ambassador to Washington.

 

 In the last two years, Saudi Arabia has gone through many changes.  Absolute monarchies are not easy to decipher.  There are many opacities and it is very difficult for any outside observer to have a real sense of events.  Two main factors are very limited expression by Saudis in their own country and opaque decision making process in the form of decrees with flavor of palace intrigue.  A Saudi will not express his honest view in the presence of another Saudi due to fear factor.  In view of these limitations, the perspective of an outsider has severe limitations.

Current system of governance of the country is based on accession to throne of one of the sons of the founder of the country Abdul Aziz bin Abdur Rahman al-Saud (d. 1953).  He works with other family members especially senior princes, Council of Ministers (most of whom are also royal family members) and Council of Senior Clerics in running day to day affairs of the country.  There is a fair amount of competition among all these groups about various issues and King carefully balances his act to avoid open conflict.

In January 2015, Salman bin Abdul Aziz ascended to Saudi throne after the death of his brother Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.  He came quite late into the complex inner power circle of the al Saudi royal family.  He was appointed Governor of Riyadh province in 1962; a post he held until 2011 when he was appointed Defence Minister.  For five decades, his main influence was in business and media through his sons and a half-brother (Sattam bin Abdul Aziz).  His sons controlled different business and media interests.  Abdul Aziz was Assistant & Deputy Minister of Oil and now Minister of State for Energy Affairs, Faisal owned Sharq-al-Awst newspaper and appointed Governor of Medina in 2013.  Sultan is a pilot and worked at Saudi Ministry of Information.  He now heads tourism commission with the rank of a minister.  Khalid is also a fighter pilot and in April 2017 appointed ambassador to Washington.  Turki, Saud, Rakan and Nayef are little known and involved in various business ventures.  Fahad; a business tycoon and Ahmad with media interests died in their 40s from heart disease.  Continue reading Dynamics of the Saudi Royal Family

Race, class and birthday dinners..

X.T.M · November 11, 2018 · Comments Off on Race, class and birthday dinners..

In case you missed Anan’s post it was LV’s birthday this week. We went to a different part of the country and on the birthday night went to a very nice French restaurant.

The reason I mention this is a curious incident. There were three sets of diners; us, another older Anglo-American couple (I couldn’t grab the accent) and a group of 11 much older gentleman.

They were all white, WASPs (I hear them mention Italian and Jews) and in their 60’s. They were loud and interesting enough that we could overhear much of their conversation (country club Republican not a fan of Trump but decidedly pro-Kavanaugh).

As the evening wore on they became a bit more raucous (understandable for a group of 11) and they went on about hunting and the politics at their club (we were at corner ends apart and a column separated us so the fact that so much could be overhead is a testament to their volume).

Even the other couple were a bit weary of the crowd . However what happened next was an egregious breach of etiquette; the “chef” appeared and started dancing about the table. He engaged in general revelry and everyone at the restaurant was a bit surprised that the chef was so pally with this table.

It turned out it was one of the guest playacting on his way from the toilet. The reason this was such a faux pas is that this restaurant is very well-known for being a husband and wife team. The husband is the chef and the wife is front of the house.

It was by default a way to insult her husband since even though it was innocuous it just was not the done thing at such establishments.

I later mentioned to V that since my natural instincts are quite sympathetic to Waspy Republicans (I only moonlight on social media as a Social Justice Ghazi) I didn’t mind them to much.

However I imagine that if it had been a table of 11 Pakistani men up to the same antics I would have immediately been livid and ashamed of them “letting down our people.” I also suspect the matron would have done much the same even if it was a large table.

It’s always good to expose one’s own hypocrisies and biases and examine them. I suspect since I am on the periphery of Asianess and on the edge of white society; I’m always trying to knit two very different identities together, sometimes spectacularly sometimes abysmally.

It also goes to show that much as I feel British; I am very buttoned up in Britain. I always want to put my best foot forward (model minority syndrome) which is why I rag on the Mirpuris. When I am back home in South Asia I don’t need to *prove* my social status to anyone, it is simply assumed.

Some controversial thoughts on Remembrance Day & Kashmir

X.T.M · November 11, 2018 · 74 comments
For our Serbian Comrade, Milan.

Britain of course is Ground Zero for Remembrance Day.

I find it a bit tiresome as to how both World Wars are constantly spun as being for “freedom.”

It’s a bit like how Mel Gibson retconned history in the Patriot so that a slave was fighting for the Americans as opposed to the British.

1.5mm Indians fought for the Empire in WW1 and after that war, as well as WW2, we were still subjects (slaves) of a foreign king.

It doesn’t matter that the British Empire was, by and larger, more benevolent than other Empires of its ilk but Freedom is Freedom. WW1 & WW2 weren’t fought in my name (my grandfather was a medic-doctor on the Burmese in the Second War) and while I respect the observation; I suspect it’s near hysterical commemorations.

Thankfully I can express these thoughts on BP since we have space here for privacy and nuance. However when I moonlight as a “Social Justice Ghazi” I notice the almost persistent humble brag of WASP civilisation.

History is always written by the conquerors especially English history. It’s probably a reflection of my deeply colonised mind that I can only read, write and think deeply in the English language; I’m short of any other perspective.

These thoughts sit squarely on this play I saw last night “the Djinns of Eidgah.” It’s about Kashmir and it was extraordinarily powerful. Incidentally it was written by a Bengali Hindu (Abhishek Majumdar) and the script was sterling.

I was surprised by how anti/India it was and of course as I saw the play my part-Pakistani blood, always latent always poisonous, was steaming in solidarity with my Kashmiri kin-folk.

There were some extraordinarily powerful scenes but having a blond girl play an Indian soldier and exclaim she is “Marathi” stretched incredulity. Another part was where the Arab actor (playing a Kashmiri youth) was pronouncing the lead “Bilal’s name in an Arabic rather than desi accent.

Kashmir of course is the Palestine of the Sub-continent. The Kashmiris are an arrogant, attractive and resilient people and their conflict is the zeitgeist that tends to overshadow other perhaps even equally worthy causes (Tamils, NorthEasterners, Baluch etc).

As a counter-factual if Kashmir had been joined to Pakistan (as it should have been) would there even have been a whisp out of that region today? I suspect not because the Muslims of Kashmir would have melded into Pakistan without trace or incident.

These are slightly unvarnished thoughts and I’m sympathetic that India can’t “retreat” from Kashmir without a huge loss of face. But it’s increasingly clear that Pakistan is a peripheral player in the India-Kashmir dynamics; the local Kashmiris are themselves in revolt.

The play “plays” on the tendency of the Kashmiris to refer to the Indians as “Indians.” The fact that India is seen as an entirely separate entity to Kashmir reflects that Freedom is a difficult quality to define and sometimes so is nationhood.

Racism at its best

X.T.M · November 10, 2018 · 6 comments

I just heard this story.

One of Cambridge’s best colleges has a pretty good bar. The bar did a Diwali special and accordingly the Indian girls wearing saris thronged the dance floor.

At that point one of the students (Coloniser ethnicity) whispered to another “this actually looks like Pakistan.”

Only in the Land of the Pure

X.T.M · November 8, 2018 · 31 comments

The reality in Pakistan and India may (or may not) be the same however the political and philosophical aspirations of the two societies are in entirely different directions.

There may be many families in India who would disown their child for marrying outside of caste & religion however none of them would have the temerity to post it publicly in a newspaper. In Pakistani culture the shame isn’t on the parents for doing so but the young man for marrying out.

I was going to remove my previous post as it was quite incendiary and with Aasia extradited but Paki liberals need to be shamed into action.

Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act on Affirmative Action

Razib Khan · November 8, 2018 · 13 comments

Three comments

1 – He was relatively fair. I mean you knew what talking points he was going to deploy and what his conclusion was going to be.

2 – Minhaj is very American. A particular sort of American. Though the episode focuses on “Asian Americans”, Minhaj sounds like he was birthed out of The Daily Show comedy-clone factory.

3 – I don’t think it was that funny. And I don’t think the audience found it particularly funny either.

Happy Birthday VL!

AnAn · November 7, 2018 · 6 comments

Turin, Pakistan, Tianzhu, Hodu, Aryavarsha, Hindustan, Bharata, Hindus, Aja Nabha Varsha, Jambu Dweepa, Sapta Sindu, the holy land sung of in infinite ways in many tongues cried out for a savior. All seemed lost. But the transcendent remembered Her (obviously female, duh) holy promise:

Whenever there is decay of Dharma, O Bharata, And there is exaltation of Adharma (opposite of Dharma), then I come forth; for the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers; for the sake of firmly establishing Dharma, I incarnate from age to age.

The transcendent came not alone, but brought Her eternal ever sweet, ever happy, ever loving, ever free, ever stitapragnya (one whose bliss is unaffected and unruffled by all circumstances) companions. And one such companion would soon grace us all.

 

Zx was in a sorry state. Hopeless despair. He was only 98 percentile with seemingly no prospect of further improvement [translation for non Deshis who don’t understand impossibly high Deshi expectations . . . Zx was a LOSER]. He was compassionate. He was smart. He was potentially wise . . . but it was as if he was waiting for something.

The symphony of symphonies, note of notes,  the pattern that is composed of all patterns was so close and yet so far. Zx’s mentors BĂĄb and BahĂĄ’u’llĂĄh had hinted at a connection between cosmology, fleeting morality, chaos, vastness and patterns (female, male, love, beauty). Some say that when they are in alignment, in tune, in harmony, melody . . . grace comes.

Zx had toiled hard for alignment. But where was the grace? The grace that could save Zx. And transform Zx into a 1 basis point [1/10,000] winner. What could melt the heart of this vicious dangerous ugly beast? What alchemy could transmute ugly into graceful studliness? What light could inspire majesty and wisdom from stubbornness? What could calm and tame this wild tempest of emotion?

And then December 18th, 2016 arrived:

Soulmates . . . two halves of the same soul joining together in life’s journey. Once in a while right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.

“A lover’s heart is not from fleshly pine. Let love proceed from this or other cause. However well we strive love to portray we blush thereat when love our hearts doth sway”

And then it happened. That which poets, poems, songs, art, mystics, dreamers, lovers, saints and sages touch. The goose bump cold chills up and down the spine and brain. Kabir’s crooked door, so tiny and so everything:

Happiness

The boy had died. And a man was born. Our hero. Our leader of Brown Pundits.

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai’s seven queens of Sindh were as One. Beauty, light, grace, sweetness, strength and elegance given form.

We celebrate her anniversary of arrival in our Bhu lokha (earth) on this extremely auspicious chaturdashi Kali Puja day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEb20iwYanc

Happy Birthday VL from all of us at Brown Pundit 🙂 Thank you for being the sweetness of Aryavarsha and Sanathana Dharma. Thank you for marrying us with the Ba’hai family–the youngest sister in our Arya family in whom we are most proud. And thank you for saving Zx!

Seven Beauties of Sindh

Enough with the dog-whistling

X.T.M · November 6, 2018 · 3 comments

A short post but I’m astonished by the constant racism we are seeing, especially from the relatives of the “First Family” of Pakistan..

As Asia continues her inevitable rise it won’t be long before us Orientals, of all hues, migrate back “home.”

What is shocking in the UK is the extent to which the white chattering classes are so oblivious to the rise of the “Asian Model Minority” as is happening in North America.

There is a very big reason and that’s because the two great Universities in the UK remain lily-white. Just as in the Ivy Leagues the mystical admissions process is designed to replicate a power structure completely at odds with the demographics of modern Britain..

Brown Pundits