There is a state, a regional power actually, which is named after its royal family: Saudi Arabia. The family of Saud, like modern monarchs, who base their power on the oil reserves of their “estate”, not only enforced a medieval dystopia for the vast majority of the workers (yes, the vast majority of the inhabitants of S. Arabia actually are either workers in the oil industry or servants of the aristocracy) but also try to export this dystopia in all Middle East, having the ambition to export it to the rest of the world as well.
Examples are numerous. What ISIS and its caliphate do, happens in S. Arabia for decades, in front of everyone. ISIS’s actions shocked and then angered everyone on the planet, while Saudis’ actions are accepted by the “civilized” world. Decapitations for adultery (mostly for women), mutilations for thieves in the middle of crowded stadiums, total subjection for women, kidnappings and executions for political opponents and people from LGBT community. This application of the most cruel version of Sharia of course does not at all affect the aristocrats who live in luxury and enjoy any possible or impossible kind of freedom, just like their western, capitalist counterparts.
It is worth noting that slavery in this country was abolished as late as 1962, although only in theory. Today, legal immigrants that live there, account for 30% of the population, illegal immigrants apart. They live in real slavery conditions in oil drills and oil refineries, while a big part of them are slaves in emirs’ mansions and manor houses. Extremely low wages, sexual abuses, tortures, murders: that is the reality of the working masses in a supposedly rich country. If we also add poor Saudis, religious and national minorities, what we see is a barbarian stratified society in which a small minority has direct right of life or death on the vast majority.
But the problem does not stay in the interim. The Sauds hope to play an imperialist geopolitical role based on their financial power and on their religious symbolical capital as suzerains of holy sites and historical patrons of Wahhabi branch of Islam. Since the Brittish defined the borders in the area of Middle East, Saudi Arabia became both
sponsor and indermediary for the Anglosaxon axis in the area, and it finally became the muslim “Israel” for US interests. It was from this position that the Sauds began promoting their own aggressive foreign politics. There is absolutely no Sunni fundamentalist organization worldwide not financed by the house of Saud. Al Qaeda before 9/11 were “freedom fighters”, fighting soviets in Afghanistan. Other islamist guerrillas operate in Africa and Middle East, puppet governments, Sunni fronts like the one we see demolishing Yemen to the ground, all of them financed and supported by Saudi Arabia.
However, Saudi Arabia is too big to be treated like ISIS. Saudi Arabia buys international tolerance and pays on cash with petrodollars. Either French imperialism expecting to get 3 billion dollars for selling weapons to the state of Lebanon or, respectively to its current position on imperialistic hierarchy, the Greek state expecting some dozens of millions for expired artillery ammunition, everyone is willing to have a piece. The relative discussion in the Greek Parliament constitutes a mere example of hypocrisy. Everyone pretended not to understand that this sale was all about an attempt of a preventive action against the
embargo of weapon sales to this murderous regime. Of course it all ended up to a farse: Syriza, the center-left rulling party, a few days later voted in the E.U. for the embargo, while main opposition, the center-right New Democracy party voted against the embargo…
This hypocricy runs across all greek regime: islamophobic far rights who target and discriminate every poor-devil refugee, bend with subservience to the Sheickhs who are financing global Jihad. For refugees there are fences in concentration camps, while for Jihad sponsors there are luxurious resorts in Mykonos. For refugees there is hunger and cold, for the Sheicks there are investment opportunities in crisis-struck Greece.
We are against that hypocrisy, as should be anyone with social consciousness. But its not just a moral matter. As we said after breaching into the Pentagon, Greece is part of an international coalition that includes Egypt, Israel, Cyprus and of course S. Arabia. This bloc, under the patronage of the US, opposes the Russian bloc that includes Turkey, Iran, Assad’s Syria and possibly Qatar.
We already saw where this conflict is heading to. First in Syria and then at the unknown war of Yemen, there where the imperialist politics of S. Arabia were deployed in full scale. Composing an international coalition of Sunni states under Saudi hegemony, they created a real hell with tens of thousands dead people, hunger and catastrophe, aiming to control the power in the country, in full competition with the other “beacon” of religious fundamentalism in the region, Iran, which of course is anything else than innocent.
A real genocide is committed in Yemen. Western media are silent as much as they can for the atrocities. Governments, greek government included, are looking the other way. It is one of their obligations for their participation in imperialistic coalitions.
It is of crucial importance to struggle so that there is no engagement in the conflict that has already broke and tends to expand at East Mediterranean and the Middle East. A conflict that is already here with refugees drowning at Aegean in their effort to save their lives, with new American bases in Greece and the older ones being updated, like Souda. Greece sinks more and more deep to this mess. Those who like big fat words like “multidimensional foreign affairs” and “realism” on international affairs, lets start preparing their excuses for the time when there will be gunfights next to the refugees’ mourning at the Aegean Sea.
As anarchists we know that the only definitive answer lies on internationalist solidarity between organized, struggling oppressed peoples. We are under no illusions that at this point the still infant solidarity can overturn the plans of the global rulers. Under current
circumstances what can be achieved is giving small battles, there where it is possible, in order to sabotage the war process that is under way. [This is necessary in order] to preserve social awareness, [in order] to be capitalized in case avoiding hell becomes inevitable. That is why we attacked S. Arabian embassy in Athens. In terms of a highly symbolic protest, we call for everyone to think about that staying apathetic to these events equals to staying apathetic to our own misery. The one that we live now, as well as the -even worse- one that is coming.
ΑGAINST EVERY IMPERIALISM, TO SET A BARICADE TO THE ONCOMING WAR
AGAINST RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM AND ITS PATRONS
WE CALL THE PEOPLE TO BE IN COSTANT ACTION AND VIGILANCE
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