Why it
took so long for the Western mainstream media to 'discover' the war
in Yemen and the war crimes committed by the Saudi coalition in full
co-operation with the US?
One
might think that the humanitarian disaster there - caused also by the
blockade of goods for the relief of the civilians - has become so
obvious, condemned multiple times by the UN, that the media finally
forced to speak about it.
In
previous article
we attempted to explain the 'unexplained phenomenon' and the fact
that CNN surprisingly returned to the issue to openly condemn the US
support to the Saudi coalition atrocities against civilians in Yemen.
Yet,
despite that the Saudi regimes have been, traditionally, the best
allies of the Western neocolonialists, this time, the US had serious
reasons to overthrow the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman
(MBS). And, surprisingly enough, at the center of this underground
conflict lies an attempt by the US to privatize Aramco, Saudi
Arabia's state oil company.
As many
of you know, this is the same reason for which the US and the UK had
overthrown, through a coup, the democratically elected Iranian
president Mohammad Mosaddegh, back in 1953. And this is why the US is
trying to overthrow all Venezuelan administrations since Hugo Chavez
nationalized PDVSA, the state-owned oil and natural gas company, and
took it from the hands of the US corporations.
As
MintPressNews revealed:
(emphasis added)
Though
the media has long spun Vision 2030 as MBS’ “ambitious” plan
to wean the Saudi economy off its dependency on oil, the plan
itself is actually a free-for-all for private interests and
involves the neoliberalization of Saudi state-owned assets.
Among its pillars are the opening of Saudi financial markets to
Wall Street and the privatization of essentially everything in the
Gulf Kingdom, including healthcare and, of course, Aramco.
[...]
Vision
2030 certainly seemed to win MBS the affection of the
international elite across the board — and it seemed that the
new Crown Prince enjoyed the limelight, at least for a while.
However, it seems reality began to set in for MBS, and he has
consequently spent the past several months looking for a way to
indefinitely delay the plan’s implementation.
This
first became clear earlier this year following speculation in July
that the Saudi Aramco Initial Public Offering (IPO) — i.e., the
beginning of the partial privatization of the Saudi state oil
company through the selling of shares — may not materialize
after all. Then, it was announced in late August that the entire
IPO would be shelved. Bloomberg called this “the most
significant reversal in Prince Mohammed’s plans” and added:
“Rather than marking a watershed in one of the most ambitious
economic projects in history, it [the shelving of the Aramco IPO]
now highlights the unpredictability of the country under a young
leader who has centralized political power in his own hands since
becoming de facto ruler a little over a year ago.”
As a
result, what would have been the biggest IPO in history was called
off overnight. The move was surely a disappointment to Trump,
who had personally lobbied MBS to list Aramco on the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE), as doing so would have awarded the NYSE
with the largest stock market listing ever.
However,
it was a much, much bigger disappointment for the behemoth
financial institutions that had worked frantically to secure their
roles in the deal — Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and
CitiGroup, among others — as the shelving of the IPO meant that
all their work on the deal would now go without compensation, as
banks are typically only paid when such deals are finalized.
In other words, MBS’ decision to put the IPO indefinitely on
hold meant that the most powerful, politically-connected banks had
essentially been forced to work for free.
[...]
Far
beyond the cancellation of the IPO itself — MBS has endangered
other parts of the plan that these powerful financial interests
had been counting on for well over a year. That includes Vision
2030’s plan to increase the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) —
which is managed by a group of HSBC and Bank of America directors
and a CitiGroup investment banking alumnus — from its current
$230 billion in assets to a massive $2 trillion. The dramatic
increase in the fund’s size would make the PIF the largest
sovereign wealth fund in the world. Without that injection of cash
into the PIF from the Aramco IPO, media reports have warned of a
“ripple effect” on the U.S. economy, including massive U.S.
tech companies like Uber, given that the PIF has invested heavily
in such companies.
|
So, it
seems that the economic interests in this case are huge. The US
corporate dictatorship and the Wall Street mafia heavily invested on
the rapid neoliberalization of the Saudi Arabian economy, including
the privatization of the state-owned oil company. When Mohammed bin
Salman stepped back from the deal, the war has started.
The
Western mainstream media fired some warning shots against the Saudi
regime, as they suddenly 'discovered' the Saudi-coalition war crimes
in Yemen. But there was a problem. Exposing too much the humanitarian
disaster in Yemen, would expose the US and the Western involvement in
the war crimes to increasingly broader audiences.
So, the
Western mainstream media grabbed the opportunity and focused on the
assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. In the midst of continuing war
crimes in Yemen - with thousands still dying from famine and cholera
- the media turned all the lights to Khashoggi case for days, in
order to use it as a more convenient 'tool' against Mohammed bin
Salman. And they did it. The story went viral.
And the
US has already found the man who will replace Mohammed bin Salman in
power. His brother, prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, who flew back to
Riyadh from London on Tuesday:
The
whole story also explains why Mohammed bin Salman tried to approach
Russia and make some deals with Putin. But it is certain that this
move has brought additional anxiety to his Western 'allies' who
probably accelerated the process of his removal from power.
The US
big banks and corporations are still at risk of losing everything in
Saudi Arabia.
So, here
is a possible scenario: their puppet Donald Trump already pushes
for a ceasefire in Yemen, as the situation is
completely out of control and the US-Saudi coalition faces a dead
end. Nothing to gain there except an elevating rage by the global
community for the humanitarian disaster.
The
other puppet, Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, will be installed in Saudi Arabia
to restart the huge project of the neoliberalization of the Saudi
economy. Western banks and corporations will invade to grab all the
wealth while the people will continue to suffer from the continuing
brutality of the regime and the rising poverty.
The
well-paid corporate pundits of the mainstream media will forget
completely the destroyed Yemen. Donald Trump will be praised as an
'anti-interventionist', his popularity will rise. And in his second
term, he will focus on his most beloved target in the Middle East:
Iran.
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