Sound the alarm over THIS
A six month undercover investigation by the UKs Center for Climate Reporting (CCR) has turned up something chilling. First, permit me to give it to you in the dry language of the report. “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,” the CCR has found, “is overseeing a sweeping global investment program” intended to “ensure that emerging economies across Africa and Asia become vastly more dependent on oil.”
In other words, like any ambitious drug pusher, MBS is finding ways to get his poorer neighbours in the ‘hood hooked on his product. And that product is oil. This is achieved by embedding a high-carbon, fossil fuel-dependent development model in countries across Africa and Asia.
Using meticulous, highly sophisticated plans to drive a major increase in gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles and boost jet fuel sales via increased air travel, the Saudi Crown Prince is ensuring that worldwide demand for oil remains strong. Then, no matter how scarce oil becomes over time, he and his OPEC friends can control the price and maximise their profits.
The bottom line is the bottom line. MBS knows that with oil reserves drying up, with global warming becoming an extinction level event and with alternative energy sources on the rise, he has determined to take a short term view that’s bad for everyone, including his very own country. He’s doing it in the name of immediate profits and he’s passing on the dire consequences to the rest of the world. After all, a man’s got to take care of his family, even when that family is worth an estimated $3 trillion.
This amount of short-sighted lunacy isn’t just about greed alone, of course, it’s about a headlong pursuit of power. And it’s incomprehensibly evil. In fact “evil” is too soft a word. What other word can we find to describe a man who is already obscenely rich and who would then betray the entire world to become even more obscenely rich? When is ultimate wealth and power enough? Would $4 trillion do the trick? Five trillion? A hundred trillion?
MBS is, of course, a friend to dictators and fascists. He loves people like Trump, loves the idea of a world enslaved, where only he and his rich male friends can bask in the luxury and intoxication of power at the very top of the pyramid.
MBS is a cruel, vicious, barbaric husband. On one occasion the bastard beat his wife so severely she required hospitalisation. She has been a victim of brutal domestic violence since the day of their marriage. Like many abusers, the affable, friendly, charismatic image he projects is a lie.
Saudi Arabia’s government is monstrous, ignorant and ultimately pointless. It is a land where women are treated like chattel and atheism is a capital crime, where public beheadings by sword are a weekly entertainment event. It’s a land of unremitting horror where the men of the royal family at the very top enjoy free access to women and alcohol and drugs and endless parties. MBS rules a land of loathsome, self-indulgence and hypocrisy.
Of course, and lest we forget, Mohammed bin Salman was also the man behind the bonesaw murder of dissident reporter Jamal Khashoggi, with help from Jared Kushner and the Trump family in covering it up. He is one of the world’s great villains, standing shoulder to shoulder in infamy with the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping and Recep Erdogan. Like a deranged Bond villain, MBS is a tyrant bent on destroying the world for his own greedy purposes and perverted pleasures.
Powerful though America may be, it is still dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil. That is yet another reason why America and the rest of the world must aggressively pursue alternative energy sources and sever its dependency on fossil fuels. Much of the world’s fossil fuel resources are in the hands of dictators — particularly oil. It’s time for the world to grow up. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.