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Sources: White House deliberately leaked photo of ill Saudi King with breathing tube
World Tribune ^ | 4/20/14 | Staff

Posted on 04/20/2014 1:53:36 PM PDT by Nachum

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To: PapaBear3625; SunkenCiv

Since the death of Ibn Saud in 1953, the crown has always gone to one of his sons. Therefore you can be certain Abdullah’s successor will be a brother or half-brother. I don’t expect that to change until the last son of Ibn Saud dies.


41 posted on 04/20/2014 4:03:10 PM PDT by Berosus (I wish I had as much faith in God as liberals have in government.)
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To: Berosus
Since the death of Ibn Saud in 1953, the crown has always gone to one of his sons. Therefore you can be certain Abdullah’s successor will be a brother or half-brother. I don’t expect that to change until the last son of Ibn Saud dies.

Which means the kingship will be held by increasingly old men.

There's also the issue of the increasing size of the royal family. Looking through the list of princes in the wiki "line of succession" page, they generally have 10 or more children, each of whom presumably want to have the same opulent lifestyle as their dad. Meanwhile, oil revenue is NOT increasing by an order of magnitude each generation.

42 posted on 04/20/2014 4:34:56 PM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: AU72

I believe South Africa is still with us... China, Russia, Brazil, and India are NOT impressed with Obama...And that’s just the BRICS...


43 posted on 04/20/2014 4:52:37 PM PDT by GOPJ (MSNBC reporters couldn't spot a criminal if he was at the company Christmas party.)
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To: WellyP
Does Obama have ideas of trying to take down the Saudi Royals?

Obama is in league with the Muslim Brotherhood. So, the answer to your question is "Yes".

44 posted on 04/20/2014 5:03:09 PM PDT by okie01
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

One of these fine days the boy king is going to reap the whirlwind.

I sure hope I am around to see it.

**********

You, me, and millions of others brother.


45 posted on 04/20/2014 6:38:00 PM PDT by Psalm 144 (FIGHT! FIGHT! SEVERE CONSERVATIVE AND THE WILD RIGHT!)
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To: PapaBear3625

Back when it was called Siam, Thailand had the same problem with a growing royal family. Thus, when they revamped the Siamese law code in the fifteenth century, they declared that if you were separated from the current king by five or more generations, you were no longer part of the royal family. That worked until the twentieth century, when the kings stopped practicing polygamy and the royal family shrank. To fix that problem, a new law was added saying the crown could pass to women as well as men.

Maybe it’s time for the Saudis to lay down their rules of succession, too.


46 posted on 04/20/2014 6:44:47 PM PDT by Berosus (I wish I had as much faith in God as liberals have in government.)
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To: Nachum

Obama is angry that the Saudis no longer support his Moslem brotherhood pals


47 posted on 04/20/2014 8:07:15 PM PDT by Cronos (ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
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To: Zhang Fei

Actually if the house of Saud falls, then Saudi Arabia will split into multiple parts divided by tribes. The religious extremists lresdy took.over when the Saudis.chased out the hashemites.


48 posted on 04/20/2014 8:10:33 PM PDT by Cronos (ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
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To: Zhang Fei
The Saudi man on the street is a lot like the Iranian man on street before the Iranian Revolution in 1979. He's annoyed at the royals for being too Westernized, and avoiding the duty of every true Muslim to smite the infidel until he submits to the one true faith. If the Saudi royals fall, we will see a Sunni version of Iranian theocracy take over. The Iranian theocrats were always a fringe phenomenon because Shiite Islam is the religion of 10% of the world's Muslims, and much of its preaching is about as resonant with Sunni Muslims as Mormon preachings are to mainstream Christians. A Saudi version of Iran (and the country won't even be called Saudi Arabia any more, because Saud is the family name of the founding, and ruling, dynasty) would be staggering to contemplate.

You're right - and it would be staggering to contemplate...

49 posted on 04/20/2014 8:25:37 PM PDT by GOPJ (MSNBC reporters couldn't spot a criminal if he was at the company Christmas party.)
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To: Zhang Fei
If the Saudi royals fall, we will see a Sunni version of Iranian theocracy take over.

Such a theocracy is already partially in place, and has been for a long time (over 30 years). People have been led to believe that the country known colloquially as "Saudi Arabia" is run by a monolithic bloc known as "the House of Saud". Such is not, nor has been for decades, the case.

First, the "Royal family" is ridden with various factions, each with their own agendas, which they advance by intrigues which should be likened to any other period in history, such as Imperial Rome, or the like. I have been aware of this reality since 1980, when I was stationed there with the US Army, having been exposed to what the true situation was there, politically speaking soon after my my arrival in country. At that particular point in time, much conversation was held by Americans in country as to *WHO* would succeed the ailing King Khalid Prince Fahd, or Prince Abdullah, with the general consensus being that Fahd was preferable to Abdullah, who was considered more of a 'hardliner'. Prince Fahd succeeded his father, and I had hoped that Abdullah would never wear the crown, since his reputation was distinctly anti-American (at that time).

I'll admit, that when Abdullah became King after the death of Fahd, I was concerned that his attitude, as expressed in the past, could change the dynamics in that region of the world to our detriment. That did not actually come to pass, and I felt a small tinge of relief.

It was at that point that I recalled the *OTHER* major power bloc within the KSA, the Wahabbi clerics, and what *THEIR* agenda was. That particular group wants more than anything to have the title "Defender(s) of the Holy Places" bestowed not on the House of Saud's reigning monarch, but upon *THEM*. Why, you ask?

The answer is chillingly simple. Bestowal of *that* particular title catapults *them* into the position that the House of Saud currently holds, the recipient of all the money that The Hajj brings, which is an amount which rivals oil revenues, and unlike the latter, is not finite in nature.

Big stakes in this particular game, and, in my opinion, the proximate cause of the takeover of the Kaaba back in the day...

the infowarrior

50 posted on 04/20/2014 11:29:03 PM PDT by infowarrior
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To: Berosus
Maybe it’s time for the Saudis to lay down their rules of succession, too.

It's not as simple as that. The first king, Ibn Saud, had 22 wives. This wasn't because he was over-sexed, it was because he needed to take a wife from each of the most powerful families and tribes of the region, in order to secure their loyalty to his kingship.

Saudi Arabia is not a monarchy, it is an oligarchy of powerful families, with the kingship rotating among members of each tribe. Each wants a piece of the pie, and the pie slices are getting thinner and thinner.

51 posted on 04/21/2014 4:51:46 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: PapaBear3625; Berosus

I think of the King as Chairman of the Board of Directors or perhaps the Brit concept of Managing Director. The board mulls things over before passage

It is this concept of the powerful economic interests that practically all here don’t get or realize. It is the sons and nephews and perhaps daughters and grand daughters that have leadership of the vast family enterprises that provide the stability and unseen buffer to the radical wacko’s.Daughter? I think that management leadership passed to the grand daughter of the founder of the powerful and immensely rich Olean group.

Usama bin Ladin was such a person and rejected his role and birth right. His family and their enterprise then rejected him.

BTW ..... Bandar for KIng!!


52 posted on 04/21/2014 5:09:04 AM PDT by bert ((K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... History is a process, not an event)
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