KDelphi, I am delighted that my point was not lost on the intelligent

nimblehuman—“they are corrupt fat rulers who have gotten rich through no effort of their own, by exploiting the resources (under the sand they live on) using cheap labor from poorer Arab countries and places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, to name just a few.”

Almost sounds like our “Capts of INdustry”—except for the “sand they live on” part…doesnt it?

The oil sheikhs of the Persian Gulf are no caliphs; they are corrupt fat rulers who have gotten rich through no effort of their own, by exploiting the resources under the sand they live on using cheap labor from poorer Arab countries and places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines, to name just a few.

Real khalifas would never treat their subjects (including guest workers) with such contempt.

•  “Strangely, this very same nonsense is still being recycled about in obtuse weird language designed to convince everyone that they must know what they are talking about, because you can not understand a word of it.”

beerdoc,

I think it’s that THEY don’t know what they’re talking about, (the right hand is nearly always detached from the left one in most bureaucracies, which is how they get away with this stuff) and so the phenomena that you describe here is an attempt to baffle us with bullshit since they can’t dazzle with brilliance.

It’s not working too good though, since the folks have had pitchforks, ropes, lanterns, and all of the other lynching equipment at the ready for some time now. I only wish several million more of us had noticed the disaster IN THE MAKING, because we didn’t get to this collapse overnight. In fact, it’s been a full generation in the making…MINE, and I suspect yours as well.

Now that we are at this point though, (and can’t undo the damage that has been wrought) I at least would like to have some hope that we can LEARN from this, and not allow it again.

Maya Angelou says it best:

“History, despite it’s wrenching pain, cannot be unlived; but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”

I suspect our largest collective tragedy has been our reluctance to actually examine our history, and ACKNOWLEDGE IT, and connect the appropriate dots, so that we at least know what NOT to do!

Maybe the “keepers of the faith”  should get realistic about the ridiculously high birthrate in the Middle East and quit exproting hatred to the West.

SAUDI PUBLICATIONS ON HATE IDEOLOGY INVADE AMERICAN MOSQUES (2005)
http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/45.pdf

The hijacking of British Islam (2007)
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/307.pdf

re: cyrena

Thanks for the Robert Vitalis and Ships of Shame links. You know we have a Caliphate system in the United States, two of the high princesses are Sam Walton’s daughters, with their $30 billion trust fund. The dark side of the market forces, held in such high regard by both parties, who deliberately refuse to acknowledge the destructive iniquities imposed on the human condition. The “Yes You Can In Yucatan” program cooked up by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a couple of decades ago, when supply side trickle economics was the fountain of wisdom. Strangely, this very same nonsense is still being recycled about in obtuse weird language designed to convince everyone that they must know what they are talking about, because you can not understand a word of it. So I hear that Geithner and Summers are now in charge of the automobile industry loans? Wonders never cease.

thebeerdoctor, February 16 at 4:11 am
•  “Hearing the talk on the video about imported Arab labor, I am reminded of the saying circulated around during the first Gulf War, that Kuwait was ready to fight for their country… right down to the last Egyptian!
Considering the inequity between the rulers and the actual people, it is not surprising that “guest workers” would simply walk away. The Caliphs and power brokers always treated these workers as disposable anyway.”
~*~
Bingo beerdoctor.
Considering this thing about Arab and all other imported or otherwise CONTRACTED (sort of) labor, it doesn’t ALWAYS involve importing the labor, since oftentimes we ship it out to them.
The long term practice of sending old (mostly commercial) ships to be stripped down to get the last bit of scrap value (instead of figuring out another way to dispose of the things) is another way that not just the Caliphs but ALL of the power brokers, (specifically the corporate ones) treat those workers as disposable, and have for decades.
Here’s a brief intro to the documentary film, “Ships of Shame”:

“The hard-hitting investigative team of Heilbuth and Bulow ..now turn their cameras on a major environmental/human rights issue.

They focus on India, where thousands of workers are risking their lives breaking up the ships the West has discarded. The scrapping of ships is a perfect example of the ‘have’ nations exploiting the ‘have nots.’ As European ships raise their safety standards to protect their passengers, older ships become obsolete. The shipping companies, anxious to make the last revenue from these aging vessels, sell them to Indian and other impoverished countries for scarp. They know full well that the laborers who break up the ships will be exposed to asbestos and other toxins, and subject to industrial accidents. The ill-equipped workers are expendable and despite their pitiable wages, there are ten workers to take the place of any that are killed or disabled.

While the head of Greenpeace in India deplores the situation, the Minister of Environment piously points to safety standards written into India’s laws. These laws however are not enforced. There are international treaties forbidding the dumping of toxins onto other nations, but the Europeans claim the old vessels are ships, not trash.”
http://www.lib.unc.edu/house/mrc/films/full.php?film_id=8028

Saudi Arabia’s entire oil infrastructure was built by imported and native Arab/African labor in what was clearly a Jim Crow system.

America’s Kingdom
Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier

Robert Vitalis
“America’s Kingdom debunks the many myths that now surround the United States’s “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia, or what is less reverently known as “the deal”: oil for security.

Taking aim at the long-held belief that the Arabian American Oil Company, ARAMCO, made miracles happen in the desert, Robert Vitalis shows that nothing could be further from the truth. What is true is that oil led the U.S. government to follow the company to the kingdom. Eisenhower agreed to train Ibn Sa’ud’s army, Kennedy sent jets to defend the kingdom, and Lyndon Johnson sold it missiles. Oil and ARAMCO quickly became America’s largest single overseas private enterprise.

Beginning with the establishment of a Jim Crow system in the Dhahran oil camps in the 1930s, the book goes on to examine the period of unrest in the 1950s and 1960s when workers challenged the racial hierarchy of the ARAMCO camps while a small cadre of progressive Saudis challenged the hierarchy of the international oil market. The defeat of these groups led to the consolidation of America’s Kingdom under the House of Fahd, the royal faction that still rules today.”

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5446

Welcome to the Global Recession! Unfortunately, the working class will only suffer more in the Middle East. The Kings, Sheiks,and Emirs will only have to downsize their sandcastles from 300+ bedrooms to about 200!

Hearing the talk on the video about imported Arab labor, I am reminded of the saying circulated around during the first Gulf War, that Kuwait was ready to fight for their country… right down to the last Egyptian!
Considering the inequity between the rulers and the actual people, it is not surprising that “guest workers” would simply walk away. The Caliphs and power brokers always treated these workers as disposable anyway. The owners will “cut back”; perhaps that extended holiday is not in the cards at present. Construction projects will sit idle with partially completed dug out holes, and skids of unused building materials. Due to economic restraints, the Grand Plan to produce even more money, has been put on hold indefinitely.