The unfortunate side effects of modern medical care — and no dragons. Joshua Keating, at Slate, on “Saudi Arabia’s Succession Time Bomb“:
On Monday, Saudi Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud reassured the country’s Cabinet about the health of King Abdullah, who has been hospitalized for almost a week and diagnosed with pneumonia, but rumors that the 90-year-old king is on his deathbed are still swirling online…
Since the first king of modern Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz, died in 1953, the country has been ruled by five of his sons in roughly descending age order. There were quite a few options available: Abdulaziz, who cemented alliances with tribal leaders by marrying their daughters, fathered 45 sons by at least 22 wives as well as an unknown number of daughters.
But the first generation of sons is getting up there in years. Salman, who is next in line for the throne and is thought to be Abdulaziz’s 25th son, is 79. In May, Abdullah took the unprecedented step of naming his youngest brother, Prince Muqrin, as deputy heir, making him second in line for the throne. The choice, which leapfrogged some older brothers, reportedly prompted some grumbling among palace insiders over the fact that Muqrin’s mother was a Yemeni concubine who was never formally married to Abdulaziz. But he’s a close adviser to Abdullah, has diplomatic experience, and at 69, is a spring chicken by House of Saud standards.
Sooner or later, of course, the crown will have to move to the next generation. At that point, things may get a little dicey. Under Saudi succession law, the king has to be a male descendant of Abdulaziz, but beyond that, the incumbent king has wide latitude to determine his successor. Given that many of the brothers took after Dad or even exceeded him—King Saud, the second king, had 53 sons—there are now thousands of these descendants, many of whom have senior government positions, and the potential for palace intrigue is high…
It’d be moderately entertaining, if not for the whole “petrodollars supporting fundamentalist terrorism” and “formally charging women who drive as terrorists” and such. Certainly throws some shade at the Hillary-versus-Jeb “dynastic succession” accusations…
**********
Speaking of dynastic intrigue, per NYMag, there’s a Game of Thrones “special featurette” scheduled for Sunday, February 8.
Apart from marking one’s calendars, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Bubblegum Tate
Back in the early 1990s, I happened to meet somebody who was a Saudi prince. He most certainly did not advertise this fact, primarily out of a desire to not be treated differently, but somebody else spilled the beans to me. When I expressed astonishment to the prince about his lineage, he said, “Don’t be too impressed–there’s a whole bunch of us.”
He, uh, wasn’t kidding.
Schlemazel
Who the hell edits this shit? Unless the guy fathered sons with one or more of his daughters this sentence sucks.
I’d be OK with a long, drawn out, bloody fight for the throne. Not only would it keep them busy but maybe they would allow us a respite from patrolling & bombing their perceived enemies while they actively fund ours.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
It would be irresponsible not to speculate….
PsiFighter37
When Saudi Arabia starts having internal dissent, that’s going to be one hell of a not-very-fun foreign policy mess for whomever is president down the road. A lot of these Middle Eastern states that are quite unsavory do provide us with a bit of a foreign policy buffer in that part of the region, but none is bigger (or more important) than Saudi Arabia.
There’s not really a good answer as to what the right answer / situation is to liberalizing the region, because the alternative is almost certainly a lot worse. I think we saw that with an extent to the Arab Spring (where pretty much nothing worked out in an ideal situation – and the best of them, Tunisia, is basically right back to where they started in terms of who is in charge).
Of course, McCain, Lindsey, and the rest of the warmongers would have been handing out weapons to everyone and turned the place into a flaming shitstorm multiple times the size of what Syria is now, so I guess we have to be thankful that we have Obama has kept the relatively unsavory balance in place…
NotMax
A country belatedly dragged into the 19th century by JFK, who kept up the pressure begun by FDR for Saudi Arabia to outlaw slavery, which finally happened in 1962.
Still recall the assassination of King Faisal; one of the ostensible reasons put forward for his being shot derived from his allowing the introduction of television in the mid-60s.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
with 22 wives he may easily have become confused!
I came across an interesting blog today. Under Gotham Labs is written by a security expert & elite hacker but many here will enjoy his comments on privacy & surveillance and will cheer wildly at his take on Mr. Greenwald.
http://www.belowgotham.com/
Emma
In my father’s favorite saying (when he doesn’t like any of the parties to an argument): throw all the knives in the air and let God distribute the luck!
Schlemazel
@efgoldman:
I don’t assume democracy, semi-functioning or not any time soon. Nor do I particularly care about a destabilized ME if we would just get the hell out.
Yes, I am aware that I am consigning large numbers of people to unnecessary suffering but I am not convinced things won’t suck for them anyway and they will have plenty of suffering. Maybe it would reduce the suffering in places that SA has gotten us to bomb so the total suffering might not be greater.
EIDT:@Emma:
yeah, that.
MomSense
Bringing my surviving cat to the vet tomorrow. At 15 or so he started drinking a ridiculous amount of water, is not eating, and is losing weight.
I have a bad feeling about this.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Arguably on the outskirts of the Middle East (depending on the cartographer), but how about Tunisia?
And then there’s always Lebanon, which waxes and wanes regarding democratic imperturbation.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@MomSense: Diabetes?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Headline on tonight’s Charlotte Observer:
Firefighters battle blaze at Charlotte home owned by Panters coach Ron Rivera
(We don’t need no steenkin’ editors!)
KG
@PsiFighter37: if/when democracy happens, it will hopefully come in the form of a population calling for change and a royal house willing to change. a constitutional monarchy may be the best bet they have. of course, in Europe that wasn’t exactly an easy process…
Face
Polygamy is a tenet of Islam? I did not know this.
MomSense
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
That or hyperthyroidism or a bunch of other possibilities. He is not himself and it’s hard to see such a badass cat lethargic and out of sorts.
Schlemazel
From the below gotham link I posted above:
Glenn Greenwald Blames The Hostage
In his latest piece at the Intercept Glenn Greenwald posits that governments “don’t walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power.” Instead he advocates relying on consumer demand to solve the failings of cyber security. This is very telling. That we turn to corporate interests to protect us.
Yet our government cedes power and authority on a regular basis, and corporations pathologically lure customers with clever marketing without actually providing better security. Indeed this is how the hi-tech industry has operated for years. The techno-libertarians are masters of security theater. Profits can be decoupled from genuine security in a society defined by secrecy, propaganda, and state capture.
Read my full response to Greenwald here (there’s also an HTML version at Counterpunch). Let’s hope Mr. Greenwald responds like an adult.
Henry Giroux adds the following:
Baud
@Face:
I thought Islam capped wives at four.
KG
@Schlemazel: if we learn any lesson from the last decade and a half, it should be that you can’t impose democracy.
JoyfulA
@efgoldman: In our youth—and I have the ashtray to prove it!—Lebanon was called the Switzerland of the Middle East.
Schlemazel
@KG:
yes, that is why I never suggested we try.
Mike in NC
Wonder if JEB! is counting on the House of Saud to bankroll his campaign. His entire family is too cozy with those bastards.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel:
Bookmarked, thank you.
Schlemazel
AL – can I get some help getting a comment out of moderation? TOO MANY links I believe
THANKS!
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel: You’ll get nothing and like it!
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
you know me so you should suspect the reply
I’m used to it!
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel: “I got a rock.”
Roger Moore
@Baud:
That has never stopped the rich and powerful from doing WTFTW.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
I figured out why I am in mod & fixed it
The link in moderation has a bloody take-down of GG:
Glenn Greenwald Blames The Hostage
In his latest piece at the Intercept Glenn Greenwald posits that governments “don’t walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power.” Instead he advocates relying on consumer demand to solve the failings of cyber security. This is very telling. That we turn to corporate interests to protect us.
Yet our government cedes power and authority on a regular basis, and corporations pathologically lure customers with clever marketing without actually providing better security. Indeed this is how the hi-tech industry has operated for years. The techno-libertarians are masters of security theater. Profits can be decoupled from genuine security in a society defined by secrecy, propaganda, and state capture.
Henry Giroux adds the following:
“What is odd about Greenwald’s piece is that he has no understanding of how traditional state sovereignty has given way to corporate sovereignty or for that matter how under neoliberalism power is global and politics is local. Corporations are the problem in that they are the life line for a form of [banned word for house of gambling] capitalism in which capital is all that matters and market fundamentalism is the template for governing not merely economics but all of social life. What is at stake here is imagining a notion of democracy that is not compatible with capitalism.”
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
As a kid I got a few religious tracts – at least they were not as heavy as a rock!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: @Roger Moore: Dim recollection from a comparative religion class oh so many years ago suggests that the rule is/was multiple wives are okay if one can truly treat and love each of them equally. So from one point of view, it is never permissible because one can never treat and love each one equally – there are always differences. OTOH, if one treats all of them like shit and views them as chattels, then one is treating them equally and multiple wives are okay. Obviously, one of these views is far more reprehensible than the other.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: But you can’t build a bridge out of them.
NotMax
Drone moan zone.
Exclusive: U.S. Drone Fleet at ‘Breaking Point,’ Air Force Says
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thats kinda negative. :)
One year we collected a ton of them & dumped them on the givers porch in the rain so they would stick.
Goblue72
Let’s just call them what they are: harems. 21st century harems.
Looking forward to the day somebody invents a working fusion reactor so we finally send these medieval arseholes a big flip off finger.
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
I know I am not very bright but I think I have a solution for this problem.
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: Newt must be regretting going Catholic.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
… at any one time. I was told this was because the Prophet had four wives, officially, but I’m nowhere near expert enough to know the proper theology. Since I went to a parochial school and learned quite a bit about the marital history of European royalty and its theological “arguments”, it’s not as if the Saudis (and GRR Martin) were the only ones playing those games!
There’s also a lot of theological-cum-legal arguments about the distinction between “wives” and “concubines”, most of it concerned with the inheritance of property by the next generation.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
You just have to pick your rock correctly. The state rocks of Utah and West Virginia burn like champs.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
I see what you did there.
Roger Moore
@Goblue72:
Nature provided us with a wonderful, working fusion reactor a conveniently safe 93 million miles from here. We can harvest plenty of power from it.
BubbaDave
@MomSense:
My cat Razzle had another healthy and happy 8 years or so after being diagnosed with diabetes. Sub-cutaneous insulin injections didn’t faze her, and Hills’ MD prescription canned food eventually got her under control enough to taper down insulin entirely.
If it’s hyperthyroidism, there are vets who can do radiation therapy– kill the thyroid with targeted radiation and then add thyroid supplements back into the cat’s diet. Not an inexpensive treatment, but much less dangerous to an older fellow than traditional surgery.
Here’s hoping for the best….
MomSense
@BubbaDave:
Thanks. I just love this cat. He’s a survivor judging from his condition when he came to my door 15 years ago. As long as the treatment doesn’t cause him discomfort, I’m ready to do whatever it takes. If he has cancer, I don’t think I want to put him through that.
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
This splendid kingly devotion to matrimony is not necessarily all about sex. Remember the long-standing, and in some places still extant, tradition in all cultures of sealing alliances with a marriage. Often of the king/sultan/big boss himself, but not necessarily, to some princess of the other side. (If I remember rightly, Osama bin Laden married his daughter off to the head of the Taliban in Afghanistan.) I think some of the Saudi Kings’s marriages reflect this, rather than merely a taste for, ahem, variety.
There’s also a tradition of marrying widows to provide for them and their orphans, in the absence of a proper social welfare system (less applicable here, I think).
Among lesser mortals, I guess it’s more likely an inability or unwillingness to work at sustainng one’s longterm relationships. My late Pak Long (eldest uncle) had six wives, but mostly one at a time.
Villago Delenda Est
The Bandit House of Saud needs to be wiped out.
Just like the Bush Crime Family.
BubbaDave
@MomSense:
Yeah, it was a diagnosis of lung cancer for Rajah that made the decision for me to put her down last summer. There’s a line from Marian Call’s Good Old Girl: “It’s far too much to take, but my girl don’t know when to break” — she’d handled diabetes and renal failure, but cancer was going to take too much of a toll and she was too majestically stubborn to throw in the towel. So I did it for her.
The fact that your fellow is drinking lots of water makes me think diabetes is the more likely diagnosis, though, and if that’s the case you have a good chance of being able to control it and give him years more of high-quality life. Fingers are crossed for him….
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, marking the distinction between modern Muslim polygamy and good-all-American-Christian “serial monogamy” is an art probably best left to anthropologists.
When I was younger, there were people with whom I truly wanted to share a legal polygamous relationship, but the ever-shifting desires of human personalities are even more of a burden than the strictures of modern capitalism. I’d still like to see our legal standards shifted to provide for non-monogamous marriages between consenting adults — especially, as you point out, so that children and child-rearers would have more protection — but at pushing-sixty, I understand why it’s a hard slog far better than I did at pushing-thirty!
MomSense
@BubbaDave:
Thank you so much for your good wishes. I’m sorry you had to say goodbye to Rajah but you did the right thing.
chopper
if i were a conspiracy theorist, i would put forth that the kingdom’s half-inexplicable decision to not reduce output and helping drive down oil prices is based on this; the king is going to die soon and he knows that a group of his children are plotting something.
Chris
@efgoldman:
Lebanon was a “jewel” if you were part of the dominant Christian sect or affiliated Westernized secularists, I believe; for most of the Sunni and Shi’a population (which had been growing and growing for years, but had their representation in government capped by quotas), less so.
In terms of who fucked it up, you have to go back to the conflict in Jordan between the monarchy and the PLO (the size of the Palestinian population in Jordan was phenomenal. Still is), which ended in the king expelling the PLO… which up and moved to Lebanon, joining an already large (and often badly treated) Palestinian refugee population. After that, things spiraled into a civil war because of the PLO increasingly running amok in Lebanon, or because of the horrific way Palestinians in refugee camps were treated by the Lebanese, depending on who you listen to. The Israeli invasion came out of that.
I think the image of Lebanon as a “jewel” before the civil war is like the image of Iran as a model of pro-Western modernization before the revolution – in large part a Potemkin village, masking some serious shit that was never not going to boil over.
Chris
@Baud:
It caps wives at four, and only if you can treat your multiple wives equally. I’ve heard that some people nowadays argue that that’s impossible and consider the “only if you can treat them equally” to be a stealth monogamist commandment, but I don’t think that’s a majority view. In fairness, there was no cap at all before Islam (not in Arabian paganism and not, I believe, in Jewish or Christian scripture).