February 23, 2018 • 64 mins
For decades Saudi Arabia has been at the heart of numerous controversies, from the policies of its strict theocratic, gender-segregated government to its influence over the oil market and continual involvement with religious extremist groups. Recently, the young Mohammad bin Salman became Crown Prince. Over the past few months since his ascension, Salman has spearheaded numerous reforms, routed many of the country’s billionaires, and signaled a fundamental change in the course of Saudi Arabian history. At least, to some, this appears to be the case. To others serious questions remain unanswered: What’s going on behind the scenes? What is the future of Saudi Arabia?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Our.
Comrade Noel Brown is out of the studio on an adventure,
but we'll be returning soon. Hello. They call me Ben.
We're joined with our super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly,
you are here, and you are you, and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt, Matt,
(00:47):
I've got I've got to ask, just for the sake
of the show. I feel like I already know the
answer to this. Have you ever traveled to the Middle
East in a way that you can reveal on air? No, okay,
fair enough, I've never traveled to the Middle East at all.
The furthest I've gone that way is the pretty much
(01:11):
the eastern edge of Spain. Uh, without going into it
too much trivia fact. I don't know if we've ever
mentioned this on the show before, but you and I
are very old friends, and you know this. There's some
countries that I'm not allowed to travel in as in
(01:31):
the I'm sure they would be glad to have me,
but I don't think I would get out. And some
of those are some of those are Middle Eastern countries.
So is one of them Saudi Arabia. No, I think
I'm fine, and Saudi Arabia is very US friendly. Bully.
I'm glad you mentioned Saudi Arabia because that's one of
(01:53):
the things we're exploring today. You have probably heard of
Saudi Arabia, or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it's
actually called. We're going to call it the k s
A at different parts in this podcast. It is one
of the most powerful countries in the Middle East. But
that's weird because frankly, here in the West, we don't
(02:14):
hear much about this kingdom, either good news or bad news. Now,
a lot of that has to do with cultures here
in the West, at least the media that's available to us. Uh,
it might show us very different things about what occurs
over there. Um, you know, Western versus Middle Eastern. Let's
say culture in general, it's over time has been represented
(02:39):
maybe let's say poorly on either side, oh the other Oh,
I agree, especially especially before the rise of secularism and
then the later rise of Islamophobia. Those are just things
here in the West. When you hear just of phrase
(03:00):
Saudi Arabia, Wait, what do you think of um? I
think of deserts. I think of oil. I think of
vast reserves of oil and money. I think about drifting
vehicles drifting because I've just seen so many videos of
that online. There's a huge culture of car stunts in
(03:22):
Saudi Arabia. It looks really cool. Also, the food looks great.
I'm just gonna point that, dude, the food does look great.
And I also think Islam because it's got some of
the holiest sites in all of Islam. Yeah, the Kabba
is considered the holiest site, followed by the Prophets mosque
uh and the this is the holiest site is also
(03:43):
referred to as the Cube. It's a building at the
center of the most sacred mosque in Mecca. Yeah, the Kebab,
the cube structure. That is the thing you may have
seen in videos on the internet where there are seas
of people moving in a counterclockwise position around it. Right,
(04:03):
It's part of one of the rituals for the Hajj.
And yeah, the the people making this pilgrimage run a
total of seven times counterclockwise, the first three times at
a faster pace, four times closer at a slower pace.
And that's that's one of the rituals. It's it's meant
(04:24):
to demonstrate the unity of the believers in the worship
of God as they move in harmony around this. It's
amazing to watch it is. It is amazing. It's a
powerful thing. We generally here in the West are not
going to hear too much about Saudi Arabia, which is
why I'm very interested to hear what automatically pops in
(04:45):
someone's mind if they are not from the Middle East
or they are not Muslim, right, I want to know
what occurs to people because I I thought of a
lot of the same things, you know, the empty quarter,
it's gigantic desert, uh, and I think of the very
specific dress that people have, the customs of dress, the food. Um.
(05:08):
We are examining something very strange that's happening in modern
Saudi Arabia as we record this, and to bring us
to the present moment, we're going to need to to
walk through the past a little bit. So I'm actually
I'm actually wearing my wild Stallion shirt from Bill and
(05:29):
Ted's excellent adventure. Yeah, you know, it's maintained its color
better than I expected that it would. Okay, I can
tell you guys, don't believe me because it's under my sweater.
Here he actually is wearing pao w y l D.
It's real. You guys thought I was messing around. I
had to pull a Superman on that. You had two
shirts on top of it. Buddy, I wear layers. It
(05:49):
is very cold outside today. But I also just said buddy,
and I know I should. I'm so sorry. Alright, So
side note, we have had matt uh and Nolan and
I have had an ongoing conversation about whether or not
calling someone buddy is condescending, and it's okay. I think
(06:11):
it's great. I like Buddy. I called you buddy like
eight years ago and you told me not to and
you said, my dog's name is Buddy. Oh that is true.
Did I say no? Yeah? You you were the way
shut it down. You were the one, all right, Well,
no more buddy than pal alright, buckaroo? Yeah no, wait,
let us know. Let us know if you think buddy
(06:32):
is condescending, if a stranger calls me buddy, I'm not
gonna take it as fighting words, you know what I mean. Agreed? Agreed.
So let's go back in time, yes, to look at
the history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. How did
it get here? Could we get a time travel cue o?
(06:53):
That last bit always gets me. Yes, Well, luckily we
made it. We made it, Matt. Here we are the
land that will later become known as the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia has an ancient history, and we're we're here
when the first signs of human habitation are in full swing.
(07:14):
If we're relying on far flung future research, this puts
us around nine thousand years ago, because in our modern age,
that's the first sign of humanity in this area. And uh,
it's you see that guy who's given us the finger?
(07:37):
Do that? Don't be salty. It's just a finger in
his culture. He doesn't know that what it means to us.
But it turns out that years later, uh, future archaeologists
are going to find a piece of that middle finger.
He's wagon at us. Wow, Oh that's really cool. He
just had a boo boo. Yeah, or perhaps he won't
(08:00):
of us to be part of history. That that middle
finger segment is later going to be found an archaeological
site called Tall's Algata close to a northwestern city called Taima.
This means, according to experts, that humans could have been
living in the area a long, long time ago. You
(08:21):
can read some different claims. The claims that you'll read
in the West are going to differ from the claims
that you'll read in Saudi Arabia or in Arabic literature rather,
and that happens. That happens pretty often. You'll see some
of the same differences are different conclusions, different conclusions. When
you look at research by Chinese institutions about ancient China
(08:45):
versus Western institutions. There at least as we're here now,
as we travel through time, we're predating Islam by a
wide margin. Uh. There are they're gonna be at least
thirteen ancient pre Islamic towns that will later be found
in this area. Uh though right now as you and
(09:08):
I are standing here in the ancient past, there are
probably going to be several more that are still lost
to time. So let's fast forward to the seventh century. Yeah,
that's when we're talking about Saudi Arabia becoming the global
seat of Islam. And like we said it. It just
has inside of it some of the holiest sites in
all of the religion. And then we get a little
(09:29):
bit further past the seventh century, we're going, actually a
lot further where we're going, we're going to the twentieth century.
Oh man, that's so fast and just you never expected. Um,
we're now in nineteen thirty when Saudi Arabia as we
know it begins to coalesce, when um Abdulla Ziz al
Saud founded the state itself. And let's go head forward
(09:55):
to the modern days since we're here today. The kingdom
occupies a unique space in the world of geopolitics. It
is both home to one of the world's most prominent
religions and it is also home to one of the
world's richest sources of oil. Yes, and it's full of
people who lives here, Okay, there are a lot. As
(10:19):
of right now, there are over twenty seven million human
beings living there. That is around twenty three million Saudi
nationals and eight point four non Saudi nationals. Um about
the population is under the age of twenty five, so
over half under twenty five, and that that's statistic is
(10:41):
as of February two thousand twelve, which is one of
the it's a little older, but it's the most reliable
data we can find at the time. Now, up until
the nineteen sixties, a lot of the population in Saudi
Arabia was nomadic or at least semi nomadic, So um
a lot more movement in the culture of those families
(11:02):
than just you know, getting to one place and staying
right this this comes from sort of a Bedouin tradition. Yes, Now,
the massive economic growth that Saudi Arabia has been experiencing
over these you know, past a few decades really has
changed the culture like crazy. More than of the population
(11:25):
is now settled. So a lot of this move A
lot of the money I guess that becomes generated over
these past few decades allows people to stay in one
place rather than having to move to you know, chase
whatever resource you're you're trying to chase. And of Saudia's
live in ten major urban centers. This this sounds like
a crazy statistic, just that rate of change, but Saudi
(11:51):
Arabia is not alone by any means in this. I
think it was just in the past what nine years
or something, since we've been working together that the major
pority of the world's population began to live in urban centers,
metropolitan areas. The rural lands are being Uh, there's a
huge brain drain going on. Strange. It's strange, but it
(12:14):
makes it makes sense. Um, That's why it's not as
weird as the rate of change may sound. Here. The
phenomenon itself is not by any means unique to Saudi Arabia.
Most most Saudi Arabians are ethnically considered Arabs, and the
majority of those are tribally considered Bedouin. So many Arabs
(12:36):
from nearby countries are employed in the Kingdom, particularly people
from Egypt. So you might identify yourself as an Arab
but not Saudi Arabian, and you travel to Saudi Arabia,
probably one of those ten major urban centers, in search
of employment. Right. Yeah. And another thing you'll find in
(12:57):
Saudi Arabia or the large numbers of expatriates people who
have come from other countries, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
the Philippines and recently because of the upheavals occurring around
the world, Syria and Yemen. Right and side note, in
the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, there was a pretty
(13:19):
large community of South Korean migrant laborers that were numbering
in hundreds of thousands, but most have since returned home.
Other than that, there are more than a hundred thousand
Westerners living in Saudi Arabia, most of whom live in
private compounds. That must be an interesting life. Yeah, yeah,
(13:42):
I wonder what life is like there, because you know,
a lot of people move there for business and they
bring their family along. And some of our friends, colleagues
and co workers have also been uh you know, been
traveling kids and lived in lived in these compounds, gone
to international schools. And if you have had this experience
(14:05):
then we would love to hear from you as well.
You can write to us at Conspiracy of How Stuff
Works dot com. So here we go. Religion, yeah, alright, religion,
all right, so make no bones about it. Saudi Arabia
is a strict theocracy governed by the House of Saud,
otherwise referred to as the Saud Family. They practice Sunni Islam,
(14:29):
not Shia Sunni Islam. That is the official state religion,
and for a long long time, Saudi Arabia's dominant faith
has been a type of Islam known as Wahabism. This
is an austere form of the religion that insists upon
a literal interpretation of the Kuran. Now that might sound
(14:52):
a bit strange to some people because they would say, well,
the Koran is interpreted literally. Other people as well. This
this is a little bit different because strict Wahabbies believe
that all those who do not practice not only Islam
but their form of the religion are heathens and enemies.
(15:15):
And before anybody decides to cast a stone, let us
consider that the majority of religions that have different denominations
have at least the couple that say the same thing, right, Like,
there's some extreme Christian sects who argue the same thing.
(15:36):
If it's not our brand of Christianity, then it might
as well be Satanism. Well yeah, and it's specifically, if
you don't interpret our Holy Text literally and with the
words that are being said at least as interpreted and
transcribed from the languages that they originate, than you are
doing the wrong thing. And I have been a part
(15:58):
of something kind of like that, at least in a
belief structure of my own creation. Are you a I cool? Yeah,
we're cool. Now I think I'm cool. Now I'm alright,
I'm not in. Yeah, you know what, Okay, alright, that
sounded like you were on the fence. So just for
(16:19):
a moment, I appreciate you take it a step there
and knowles into right. Well, I mean not currently, We'll
have to see really. Yeah, I like him, he's cool.
He's cool. The only people that are in are the
ones that I can see in this present moment. So
is that is that one of the tenants system? Quite literally,
if I don't see you, you don't exist. Cell Phones
(16:42):
supposed to be really complicated, don't understand well speaking in
fantastic segues. Critics argue that the rigidity of this particular
interpretation of Islam has led it to misinterpret and distort
the the practices and platforms of this religion and of
(17:04):
the Quran, which seems counterintuitive because one would think that
a literal interpretation would be possibly closest to what the author,
the prophet Mohammed originally meant, right, unless, of course, they
were writing a metaphor, and that's a that's a whole
other bag of badgers. We can we can reach out
(17:26):
to some of our friends who research the evolution of
a religion itself a controversial term, we understand to get
a little more insight on that, but these critics would
typically point to religious extremists such as Osama bin Laden
or the Taliban and the explosive growth of this this concept,
(17:51):
this denomination, for lack of a better term, began in
the nineties seventies when Saudi charities started funding schools or
mud russas and mosque all across the world, from Islamabad
all the way out to Culver City, California. So they
took it global right, and critics will also further further
(18:15):
ad or further attempt to drive their objections home by
noting that factions of Saudi Arabia's elite have participated and
funded terrorists or religious extremist or paramilitary operations around the world,
whatever you want to call it, waging a religiously motivated
proxy war or something dressed as a religious war. And
(18:37):
a lot of times those funds get channeled through the
charities by the the what they would call the elite
from Arabia's elite, and then it goes to various places
and we're we're talking about some disturbing stuff here and
a lot of it is stuff that people have heard
on some level before. But we're in no way, We're
(19:00):
in no way saying that the the actual people are
individuals of this region are in any way different from you,
different from any of your friends listening. Uh. We're we're saying,
we're talking about the institutions, the organizations, and we're gonna
continue with some cultural issues that are being dealt with
(19:23):
in the k s A and have being have been
dealt with for a long time, and they're pretty dark.
We're gonna get into them right after a quick word
from our sponsor and we're back. Thanks for providing that
breath of fresh air, MAP, because we are diving into
(19:44):
one of the things that I'm convinced most Westerns have
heard of. If even if you're not very familiar with
Saudi Arabia in general, uh, and that is human trafficking. Uh.
Exploitative employment, right would be would be one way to
phrase it. But what it is in practice is the
(20:06):
fact of slavery. Saudi Arabia has huge problems with human
traffic game, primarily in the field of migrant labor. And this, again,
this is not just Saudi Arabia. This this encompasses. This
problem encompasses the Gulf States in general. The Global Slavery
Index estimates that over ninety two thousand people are currently
(20:28):
enslaved in Saudi Arabia. Wow. Yeah, And there there are
two ways this. Two primary avenues here, uh, construction workers
held in debt bondage. You know, you your employer has
your passport, controls or visall bring you to Saudi Arabia
(20:49):
with you know, the hopes of reaching enriching your life
and perhaps the lives of your families, and you then
owe them. They have to recoup their expenses on the
plane ticket, but then surprise, they have to recoup the
expenses on your food where you're lodging, which might be horrible.
And there's interest and there's no you know, there's no
(21:10):
such thing as OSHA, which is the organization here in
the United States that is meant to enforce workplace safety.
I said there would be interest, and we've got a
listener mail a long time ago and did little research.
Apparently there would not be interest. It's a gift. There's
a gift thing that functions like interest, but it's not usury. Right.
(21:33):
The other the other avenue of this facto enslavement will
be the idea of household servants primarily from some of
the country's matt mentioned earlier. These will primarily be women
from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. There is
an ongoing epidemic of abuse here on the rape and
(22:00):
assaults are largely at least in the past, have largely
been supported by the state level interpretation of Islam, which
hinges upon this argument that you can consider some women
(22:20):
as things quote your right hand possesses, and that's been
interpreted as slaves, most immediately sanctioned sex slaves. So the
idea that you are paying someone to be a living
made or a babysitter or something here just sounds like
(22:46):
a job, right, But there it has become conflated with
concubines and slavery. And this is of course completely non
consensual on the parts of people who thought they were
being hired to have a job. And it it should
be said here that the United States has um for
(23:09):
various stated reasons, sometimes just speculated reasons, failed in the
opinion of I think, the global community to push for
any kind of human rights in the Gulf States and
in general or in particular in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, the
United States has a heartbreaking, just I'm laughing out of helplessness,
(23:36):
that absolutely disgusting record when it comes to any kind
of advocacy for human rights in the Middle East, across
the board from from Oman all the way up through
Jordan's Syria, et cetera. Is just the Middle East in
(23:57):
general for one reason or another. I'm not knocking the
individuals in the State Department. I'm saying that US policies
have not prioritized the importance of you know, gender equality
or human rights as to near the degree that other
people would expect the world's police force to do. If
(24:17):
that's what the US purports itself to be. And then
if we move on, speaking of rights, what about people
who are citizens? What about people who are born there,
who are born there, it's there a native land, and
they're not a migrant laborer. They're not suffering under this
abuse system. One of the biggest issues is the concept
(24:40):
of equality for women. Historically, Saudi Arabia have been a
very very very difficult place to be a woman. The
genders are sharply segregated, and obviously Saudi Arabia is not
currently the kind of place that would engage in gender fluidity.
You're not going to find in a unisex bathroom. No,
(25:01):
it's a very black and white situation. You're a man
or you're a woman. And until fairly recently, women were
not allowed to do things like vote, or drive, or
go somewhere unaccompanied, pursue higher education and so on. That
appears to be changing. And just just some background before
(25:23):
we get to in the geopolitics here, Saudi Arabia has
a lot of economic heft and it's based on fossil fuels. Yeah,
it's home to the world's most valuable company. Who I mean,
how that's how many people can say that it's not Apple.
It's not Apple. It's called Saudi Aramco. It's an oil company.
(25:47):
It's responsible for the production of the kingdom's fossil fuel
exports and this energy let's call it behemoth. It's valued
at anywhere this is a large range here, anywhere from
one point to to ten trillion dollars. Uh. Wow, that's
a large valuation. And it's because the amount of oil
(26:09):
that has existed underneath Saudi Arabia that's accessible for drilling
and for exporting, for decades and this, uh, this company,
Saudi Aramco, controls it pretty much all of it. You know,
one of my old professors used to is a bit
of a partisan. He used to call he would say
(26:31):
that Saudi Arabia is the most cantankerous member of OPEC,
and he said the he said that the Organization of
Patroleum Exporting Companies, and he said that OPEC only exists
to make oil more expensive and to restrict the flow
of it. And I thought, well, that's kind of cynical,
(26:56):
Like I don't you know, I don't know. I would
love to hear your union on OPEC as well, folks.
And speaking of this interaction here, we didn't even talk
about arms deals. We did not talk about arms deals
coming in and out of Saudi Arabia. The United States
likes to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, and the United
Kingdom cut a like sank and buried a very important
(27:22):
legal investigation because Saudi Arabia threatened not to go through
with a military hardware deal if they continued investigating. And
you know, we're just saying here, but you bring in
a lot of weapons, military grade weapons from countries that
specialize in developing these weapons. You can do with them
(27:45):
what you please, and if you need to sell them,
there's another good source of income. Just saying, and this
leads us to relationships with other countries, which is something
we could examine at length in a different episode or
a different show. So as the seat again of holy
(28:06):
sites in Islam, and as one of the world's most
influential petrol exporters, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias swings far
above its weight class in the world of geopolitics. The
elites of the United States and the ruling tribe of
uh Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, have a long running,
(28:27):
very close and often controversial relationship because the US provides
support on everything from infrastructure to military might, and Saudi
Arabia and the United States are at least factions of
the Saudi Arabian elite, and factions of the US elite
have been thickest thieves ever since Nixon sold them on
the Petro dollar. Ye, and it feels very strange to
(28:50):
even say this, but Saudi Arabia has a problem there.
Let's say they're notorious for using a wealth and power
that it's uh that it's gotten to prevent the elites
amongst its people from meeting justice for crimes abroad. So
if they're in another country and they do something let's say,
(29:13):
let's say something like theft, or maybe they're smuggling drugs,
or some kind of abuse occurs, some physical or sexual abuse.
Even let's say one of the elites kills somebody in
another country. Um, they can get away. It goes beyond
what we would imagine as diplomatic community. It's because of
the power. Yeah, in a very real sense, these individuals
(29:34):
are considered above the law. And uh, you can read
numerous accounts, as Matt said, of each of those crimes
being committed and the person who committed them not ever
seeing justice in one in the country in which they
committed the crime. And of course we do have to
(29:56):
add a grain ex salt here. Is it possible that
we are only hearing Western propaganda or only hearing one
side of the story. Absolutely, that's why. Yes, that's why
I feels so strange to say it, because you know,
the elite, at least from this country, have a certain
amount of that. Probably, I mean, okay, is that all
(30:19):
Western propaganda? Though? Matt? Is it is? It? Is it? Paul?
It's possible, but it's not plausible. It's not plausible. There
couldn't be that. There cannot be that many reports from
Southeast Asia, to Indonesia, to the United States, even unto
(30:42):
Beverly Hills. I mean, you can even see videos of
Saudi elites doing abuse, like horrible things to what I
guess they would call their um. There are workers people theirs. Yes,
you can see it, and nothing occurs, nothing happens, and
(31:03):
it's just I don't know, it's like you said, heartbreaking.
So again, it would be cartoonishly unfair for us to
say this applies to every single member of this fans.
Every family has a has a couple of you know,
(31:24):
every family has a couple of jerks in and just
because someone has happens to be higher on whatever, uh,
whatever temporary hierarchy exists in society at the time. That
doesn't mean that they're all good or bad people. They're
just they're just people whose parents make different choices. So
(31:47):
who the hecks a charge here? Right? If this is
very is very family based. Right. Similar to the Democratic
People's Republic of Career North Korea, Saudi Arabia is absolutely
ruled by a single family and their close relations. And
this means and you know how this stuff irritates me, Matt.
(32:07):
This means that if you were born as someone who
is on the outside of this hierarchy, even if you
are a Saudi Arabian national, even if you're brilliant, even
if you're brilliant, then you have apps. If you are
the Saudi Arabian Elon Musk and you are not a
member of this single family, you have virtually no chance
(32:29):
of succeeding in government, regardless of your abilities. You are
just born wrong. And as a result, ministerial positions, very
powerful ones are assigned based on who has been the
most successful u currying favor in court. And this brings
us to we said things are going to get crazy.
(32:50):
This this brings us close to that point. There's someone
very important that we want to tell you about. After
a word from our sponsor, friends and neighbors, ladies and gentlemen,
we would like to introduce you to Mohammed bin Salman
(33:12):
bin Abdulaziz al Saud. Yes. Yeah, he recently became the
Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, effectively becoming
the power behind the throne. At the time of our recording.
He is thirty two years old. He became crown Prince
on June one, seventeen. But weight Ben, you might be saying,
(33:35):
but wait, Matt, hold your horses. Isn't there supposed to
be a king of Saudi Arabia. Yes, but he is
not making the calls the way that the crown princes. No,
he's older at this point in the crown Prince is
just taking the reins of power. Essentially. The current king
(33:55):
is Salmon bin Abdulaziz al Saud. He has been the
king since twenty fifteen. His his major initiatives include some
progressive things and then some dangerous things. Uh. He is
the one who made the call to intervene in the
(34:16):
civil war and yeomen uh. He also is the one
who is technically responsible for the decree in seventeen allowing
women to drive in the country. But back to Crown
Prince Mohammed ben Salomon, who's making all all these comments.
And when in Arabic, when you hear Ben, it's spelled
(34:38):
b i n and it's like son of So it's
really Mohammed, son of Salomon's son of Abdul Aziz al Suh.
So his ascension to power. Mohammed ben Solomon was accompanied
by the typical trappings of any state power transfer. You
hear about it in elections in the United States, even
(35:00):
if it's just a state representative or a city council member.
Someone's like, you know, I'm gonna change things. Yeah, it
sounds good from a podium. There's gonna be a better
life for the citizens. Yeah, they're the ones who live
here and pay the taxes or whatever. Right, Yeah, not
anybody from out of country. Right. I love the idea
(35:21):
of somebody making these grandiose speeches for local office, like
as city comptroller, I'm gonna what is I'm gonna drain
the swamp. I'm gonna drain the comptrolling swamp. Uh. Yeah,
better life for citizens, more progressive stance toward energy economics,
he said, a modernized culture, and so on. All good
(35:43):
things to hear, right, and even better if they actually
come true. It's the standard fare of a lot of
newly emergent politicians, dictators, and rulers. But Mohammed ben Salmon
was a little bit different. He did not he and
he said this on record. He did not consider Saudi
Arabia a normal country and he had not considered it
(36:03):
a normal country for at least three decades. And he
said he did not come to continue business as usual,
which you know, of course everybody says when they when
he get elected or you know, um, if people are
unhappy with the current set up, right, I'm I'm different right. Uh. Instead,
he said he wanted to remake Saudi Arabian society in
(36:27):
its entirety, and as we record this, that's exactly what
he is trying to do. Here's where it gets crazy. Well,
it turns out the Prince wasn't just laying down some
of that pillow talk, blowing a little bit of those
smoke rings towards you, towards all of us and his people. Um.
(36:48):
At the end of September, seen, he started taking some
pretty brutal actions to consolidate power for himself. The culmination
of this process that kicked into full gear in June
when he official became the Crown Prince. Um, it's been
in no uncertain terms, the culmination of what we would
say is a real conspiracy, you know, one of those
(37:10):
things that we don't it's not a theory, right right,
it is not. It's not he planned and colluded and
conspired in secret to uh to. He would probably clean
call it cleaning up the town or whatever, but he
took down a lot of people. And this conspiracy has
real world, immediate implications for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(37:33):
and then the larger Middle Eastern region and the globe.
So what happened his rise to power is largely possible
due to the death of the old Guard, particularly the
long serving ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense and the Interior,
themselves also princes. And he was able to do this
(37:55):
because when they died there was a power vacuum. There
was fluidity in upper echelons of government for years beforehand,
each of these princes kind of consolidated their own sphere
of influence and then you would have these calcifications right
into into fiefdom's verticals, little verticals. Yeah, and so Mohammed
(38:18):
bin Salmon was on a mission essentially to soften some
of the notoriously puritanical theological stances that Saudi Arabia had
held for a long time, and he has pretty much
he's made some genuine changes, especially in the field of
gender equality. Right, that's exactly true, But this isn't entirely
(38:38):
heroism in terms of this conspiracy, there may be a
dark side to it as well. It turns out he
held several billionaires hostage. Yeah, true story. I know it
sounds like a weird opener, but it's true. As part
of his vision for Saudi Arabia, Ben Salmon arrested first
arrested eleven Saudi princes in November. This is unprecedented, all
(39:01):
caps bold, those letters, full stop. It's kind of on
the level of, imagine the vice president at the time
that we are in the studio today. The vice president
is Mike Pence. Imagine if one day that guy just said,
you know what, I'm arresting unilaterally, multiple members of Congress,
(39:24):
all you you you you you get thee to the
Ritz Carlton. Because that's what he did, right, That's what
Salmon did. Yeah. They kicked out all of the paying
customers at this Ritz Carlton, at least most of them,
I think all of them. And he put these people
in there and their families in the Ritz Carlton and
when he downed a lot of the or grounded a
(39:46):
lot of the private aircraft so that people couldn't escape,
cut communication lines, held them hostage, essentially I mean, we
could call it arrested to make it so more official,
but hey, at least they were at the Ritz. At
least they were at the rich you know. And also
if you were just one of the people who who
was there at the time, would you want to stay.
(40:07):
I wouldn't want to be a by standard to that.
That's a very scary situation. If they if they offered
me the choice and I knew what was going on,
and I would say, you know, thank you very much.
It was nice to meet everyone. I'm going I'm going
to the holiday and hey, anyone who lives in Saudi Arabia,
(40:28):
is there a holiday inn there anywhere? Let us know,
we just want to go to a hotel where we
won't be by standards. It uh mass arrest of billionaires.
So one of the people that was arrested was a
guy named is a guy named Prince al Walid bin Talala,
(40:50):
one of the richest individuals in the world, when the
richest men in the world. He controls an investment firm,
Kingdom Holding, and he owned or has over his career,
owned major stakes in twenty first century Fox City Group, Apple, Twitter,
many many other companies that you have heard about ad Nauseam. Additionally,
(41:11):
he controls media outlets. He controls satellite television networks that
are huge across the Arabic speaking world. All in all,
more than two hundred people were arrested in what was
framed as a crackdown on corruption. How could you be
mad at that? It was a nice framing, really is.
And according to the authorities, they conducted a huge sweeping probe.
(41:36):
They got everybody, and they found at least one hundred
billion dollars had been misused through embezzlement and corruption over
the past three decades, and over seventeen hundred bank accounts. Uh,
we're frozen, seventeen hundred They were all being apparently um
used as personal accounts, and these were not business accounts.
So these are just individuals embezzling money, according to the authorities, right, right,
(42:02):
and all at all, Fighting corruption is a good thing,
right it is. Let's go back to our controller example.
You don't want to power mad controller taking all the
controlling money. He's got all the TPS reports and all
the tape. No, we're just I think we're just throwing
around words. I think it might be increasingly obvious that
(42:24):
neither of us knows exactly what controllers do. There's a
lot of printer paper involved, maybe no Excel spreadsheets. He's
in charge of the the Microsoft Excel serial numbers. That's
what it is. So none of his employees can log
in unless he allows them to. I feel like you're
(42:45):
improvising this. Oh wait, wait, you're right. It's just looked
up the effectively the chief financial officer of a public body. Yeah,
you nailed it. Hold of what I apologize, man, I'm
sorry I ever doubted you. Problem that was my dad
was an accountant. Was he a controller? No, he was
a controller though, No, he didn't have the comp He
(43:07):
didn't have the comp. Well, we may have to walk
away from this controller example. But uh, but it it
is true that corruption is not desirable, at least culturally.
It's it's considered undesirable here in the West. But here's
(43:27):
the problem when we go will we look at this
through a different lens. Saudi Arabia is an executive monarchy,
and this means that it does not possess written constitution.
It does not have independent government institutions like a parliament
or courts. And yes, of course, of course we know
that a lot of the so called independent government institutions
(43:51):
in countries across the world are independent on paper, right,
like the the legislative body of North Rhea is independent
on paper. Yeah, it's true. Uh, the there's a difference
between paper and practice, is what we're saying. But accusations
of corruption are difficult to evaluate when even in theory,
(44:16):
these institutions would be evaluating this are not, in any
shape fashion reform independent, and the boundaries between what would
be considered public funds and what would be considered the
wealth of the royal family are pretty murky, and corruption
the way that many other countries would describe it is
(44:38):
believed to be massively widespread, you know, like in the
in the United Kingdom, there's the personal wealth of the monarch,
whoever happens to be, you know, in charge of that
tribal system at that time. And then there's the wealth
of the crown, which is sort of the office that
(44:58):
a monarch holds again entirely, entirely based on who their
parents were, in no way based on any qualifications. I'm
not saying that they're unqualified to be a monarch. I'm
saying that no one is qualified to be a monarch
because it's a really stupid system. Sick burn. No, I'm
(45:19):
just I I gotta stop harping on that. I feel
like once a year I start ranting about how am
I just mad that I'm not an emperor some of
these princes and princesses and crown kings. I turned my
nose at the I think I think you would be
a pretty I think you'd be a pretty decent uh,
(45:39):
monarch of some sort. Matt, that's an awful thing to say. Well,
I don't think you would be a good dictator. I
think you'd be a good monarch. Okay, Yeah, I mean
I could totally open doors, walk out, you know, and
look at my subjects and go here. Yeah here, yeah,
my loyal subject. Everyone will be enjoying a Cuca Cola
(46:04):
classic today, Sugar. Wait are you doing? Is? Is your
monarchy has sponsorships? He does? Yes, there we go. That's
very that's very forward thinking of you. Man. Yeah, dude,
this robe was brought to you by Coca Cola. I
you know what, I'm kind of into this idea. I
would vote for you. Oh no way, I'm not allowed
to because it's a monarchy. I guess I would see
(46:26):
if I can sell you a sponsorship deal. But the
you know, yeah, the line between my wealth as a
monarch and the the funds that come from my sponsors,
it is pretty murky. It is murky. It's pretty murky.
You know. I haven't ever seen you pay for a soda?
What can I say? So? Um and yeah, of course,
(46:48):
all right, I'll say it. It is true. Being a
monarch is a very demanding job. You are attempting to
hold disparate unions of people together, and that's always always
going to be a tall order. I just think not
choosing I just think choosing people on some system other
than merit is a terrible way to go about it,
(47:12):
and its tradition and traditions are not automatically correct. Which
is crazy that that's still a controversial statement in whatever.
Don't hire your family just because they're your family. Oh
you're too controversial, Then you're too controversial. So it might sound,
it might sound noble to call this movement some kind
(47:32):
of stab against the corruption that's occurring in Saudi Rabia
that hasn't existed there for decades. But the truth is
the rests, these particular rests seemed to center right smack
dab on the crown princes competitors, were talking about his rivals,
his enemies, pretty much anybody who who could be in
line for the throne or have enough money and influence
(47:52):
to get in the in his way for whatever he
wants to do. It appears to be this way right exactly.
And there's another hugely important fact here. Several of those
people that were, as Matt noted, shipped off to that
Ritz Carlton arrested for corruption were released after they gave
(48:15):
up massive amounts of cash, or stocks or other assets.
One businessman reportedly at tens of millions of Saudi reals
the currency withdrawn from his account after he signed a
release deal. In another case, of former senior official consented
to hand over ownership of roughly one point zero six
billion dollars worth of shares. So so there's a question
(48:39):
here is this Is this the crown Prince taking back
money that belongs to the people in the state, quite possibly,
or is it the crown Prince removing, yeah, removing the
financial power someone would have to rise up against him
or or raise, you know, raise their own faction. Also,
(49:04):
there there's an ongoing war in Yemen. I think we
mentioned it briefly here. Earlier in the show, uh Mohammed
Ben Salmon is actively waging that proxy war in Yemen,
fighting Iranian influence in a continual Iranian Saudi Arabian conflict
that predates his ascension. The US is supporting this war,
(49:27):
although you might not hear much about it if you
only tune into broadcast news. But then again, if you
listen to this show, you probably don't only listen to
broadcast news. Especially might not have heard about it for
quite a while because of how many things are occurring
geopolitically right now. It's kind of fallen by the wayside,
which is awful, but it is very real, and people
(49:49):
is very real, and people are dying without much help.
Ben Salmon, by the way, blames the nineteen seventy nine
Iranian Revolution for spark in the brutally strict state of
Saudi theocracy today, So in his mind, he is he
sees it as a reaction. He sees those two events
(50:13):
as interrelated. So that's the that's the lay of the land.
The current most powerful official other than the king in
Saudi Arabia, the current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is
seeking to modernize the country says he's doing so, has
taken steps to do so, uh, and arrested anyone who
(50:37):
would be a threat and effectively seems to have effectively
neutered them. What does this mean for the world. We
can make some guesses at the end, but of course
we would be remiss if we didn't mention the other
conspiracies or conspiracy theories that are present in Saudi Arabian
cultured today. And this could be its own episode, But
I think we're running a little long already. Uh. So Ben,
(51:01):
just tell me about Saudi Arabia and Iran. So Sunni
versus Shia Islam, right, Uh, the same religion, different different interpretations, um.
And this is an argument that goes back a long time.
So there's the religious conflict, but then there's also the
(51:21):
desire to be the regional hegemon. Both control. Both control
fossil fuels, right, and Iran controls something called the Strait
of Hormus, which we mentioned previously, which is a vital
water transit route for fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia has partnered
(51:43):
with other countries to help restrict the influence of Iran.
The t two very influential countries. There would be the
United States and Israel. Saudi Arabia is very well known
for staunch public anti Semitism. But as we've said in
(52:03):
previous episodes, take that with a grain of salt, because
the stuff what was the word we used, performative, The
performative speeches somebody might make to their domestic crowd might
be way different when they actually, you know, they meet
the prime minister of the other country and there's a
just stacks and stacks of cash available for deals and
(52:25):
their kids go to the same colleges and stuff, telling
you fingers on the hand and as different as you
might think. Uh, and then Matt tell me a little
bit about the global sphere. We knew this was gonna
come up. What's maybe even just as a teaser for
Saudi Arabia and the attacks on September eleven two one
(52:48):
oh yeah. There are a lot of allegations at Saudi
Arabia funds terrorism, as we said, through those charities that
have been set up, and it's a well, it's a
known known that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers from the
September eleventh attacks were from Saudi Arabia, and they're they're
a handful of the classified documents. Well, there are loads
(53:11):
of declassified documents that show the United States was actively
investigating contact between some of the hijackers and several individuals
involved with the Saudi Arabian government at varying levels. And
then we have a quote here from Fox News of
all places, um it says, quote the nine eleven Commission
(53:32):
report found no evidence that the Saudi government as an
institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the attacks al
Qaeda masterminded. But the commission also noted the likelihood that
Saudi government sponsored charities did. So one more time, Saudi
government sponsored charities did. Oh, come on, So the government
(53:55):
at all, the big g government didn't do it, but
these government spawn or charities probably did. That's what that states.
So that's it. No money went out the front door, Yes,
that's exactly what they're saying. But there was a backdoor there.
There is a prominent backdoor that's been set up for
a long time to send money to places that would
(54:16):
do something like this. Doors, by the way, on different
sides of the same building. And we're just going to
use this visual now, all right. There's also the missing
twenty nine pages from that nine eleven Commission report that
was mentioned by that Fox article. Um it directly addresses
the involvement of Saudi Arabian government actors who were likely
acting pretty much as their own factions, like as there
(54:37):
what do we call verticals without the king's approval. So
the king had no knowledge of a lot of this happening,
but maybe these other little groups with power did. And
we will delve into that in a future future episode
I think will need to be the triumvirate of us here. Uh,
probably two part or two. And when we say government actors,
(54:58):
we mean people who were affiliated with the government, even
if they weren't acting in their capacity as you know,
an officialist or an official. Yet there's another one, though,
that you had told me a little bit about, which
was the idea of controlling gas prices. Yes, uh, where
this is from a house stuff Works article. We're gonna
jump right in. On April then Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed
(55:20):
Ben Solomon announced the implementation of this thing called Vision
twenty thirty and it's this ambitious plan the Kingdom has that,
in the Prince's words, would rid the country of its
addiction to oil. Ben you actually made a video on this,
I believe, m or now for how stuff works? Now,
did I? Yes? Oh wait, yes I did. I think
(55:42):
a lot of this comes directly from your words. I
forgot about this, Matt. Yeah, it's it's a smart move,
and it's something that quite a few Golf states are
aiming to do, or several Gulf seats are aiming to do.
As we know, alternative sources of energy collection, distribution are
on a precipitous rise, and in your lifetime if you're
(56:05):
listening to this, uh, the odds are the odds that
you will have and an electric powered vehicle or solar
power infrastructure of some sort of rising precipitously, especially if
you live in a country that didn't completely botch alternative
energy like the US did in the eighties. Yeah. So,
the the the idea here is is noble, it's understandable,
(56:28):
and it's quite practical. Right. Yeah. The plans interesting. So
they're gonna set up five percent steak in Saudi Aramco,
remember that giant company, the oil company we talked, a
most valuable company. It's gonna be a public offering, an
initial public offering, an I p O. And then they're
gonna pour a lot more funding into their public investment
fund and it's gonna make it one of the world's
(56:49):
largest public investment funds. And the third thing they're gonna do,
this is the dangerous one for the Crown prints it
is because it's gonna be unpopular just with the people
that that he uh, I don't know what you call it.
He controls, he lords over, he prints is over the citizens.
The citizens well yeah, uh, the Kingdom is gonna cut
(57:10):
various government benefits because there is a there are a
lot of benefits to living in Saudi Arabia if you're
a citizen there. As a citizen, this, yeah, you'll have
you'll have a pretty solid job. Healthcare is taking care
of their various other subsidies. They're going to save an
estimated sixty one billion dollars per year doing this. But
(57:30):
then also they're gonna have and a rise in um
I don't want to say unemployment, but there will. The
government will need to find some kind of way to
translate the skills these people already have into business and government, yeah,
and create the jobs somehow for that many points. Uh. So,
(57:50):
while this is happening, the Prince also aims to raise
non oil revenue to a hundred and sixty billion dollars
by and two hundred sixty billion by twenty THO. That's
a lot of money. Here's the problem, UH, two years ago,
in two thousand fifteen, that number that's supposed to be
a hundred and sixty billion was only forty three point
(58:11):
six billion. Oh and also you can just to show
you how unpopular stuff can be. UM, if you live
in the US, then I'm sure you remember gas prices
spiking in the past. Recently in I believe it was
January seventeen, gas prices in Saudi Arabia rose by one
hundred and twenty seven percent. So the domestic population is
(58:35):
beginning to feel the heat. And we'll see if this again,
this is an executive monarchy, so we'll see whether those
government subsidies actually end and what the results would be
if they do. And now we want to close with
a question what what's likely to me? It seems likely
(58:55):
that unless there's UH an internal domestic or financial catastrophe,
aut Arabia may well be on the road to an
increasingly diversified economy, maybe even a more moderate culture. That's
that's optimism or unfortunately, or as several other I guess pundits,
(59:16):
analysts and critics have suggested, maybe this could just be
some sort of Western friendly dressing, you know, like maybe
they just dolloped a little bit of ranch to soak
over this salad, this house salad of despotism. They loomed
it up with ranch. Ranch was the most American salad
dressing that I could think of. I think you hit
(59:36):
it on the head right there with that, and then
it did in Alaska, you know it, I did not
know that it's true. Um, for my for my opinion,
you know, I'm I'm feeling a bit cynical about a
lot of this, But I think I personally need to
learn a little bit more about the situation, right. I
(59:57):
think that's maybe how a lot of people listening a
lot you might feel that same way. Like I've before,
truly understanding this, I need to spend some more time
with it and then feel it out. But the cynic
in me, the one that views the world pretty much
the same way over says man, this is some ranch dressing. Really. Yeah,
I'm surprised because I think the Wow, maybe this situation
(01:00:22):
where I'm more optimistic, I think it is, But again
I think it's because you know a little bit more
than I do, and for me seeing a lot of
it on the surface, it feels like, oh, I'm suspect
of all this. I would love to hear from Saudi
Arabian national or someone who has spent time in the kingdom.
Oh that's great, Please write to us less No, we
(01:00:43):
we are getting the signal here from our producer. Fortunately,
we're going to have to call it a day. We
know when a little bit long, but we do hope
you enjoyed this episode. Again, this was not a conspiracy theory.
The Crown Prince worked cluded his secret and then arrested everybody,
(01:01:03):
which was just you know, it makes me think of
the Untouchables with Kevin cost Is that where they would
go in and arrest everybody? Did that? Have? The Untouchables
are to the crew, right, the Motley crew of guys
when they're Tommy guns. Yeah yeah yeah. So, as as
(01:01:23):
you know, Matt, Noel, Paul and I consider you, specifically,
you the most important part of this show. And if
you follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook or any
other social media platform, you see that occasionally we reach
out and ask you for the ideas that you would
like to hear in the future. Well, we're going to
(01:01:43):
kick it up a notch, or maybe we should say,
go a little further down the rabbit hole, a little
deeper into the black mirror accidentally sci fi reference. We're
starting a Facebook group where we can all interact with
each other directly, and we'd like your help. Yeah, specifically,
if you ever listened to an episode and then wanted
(01:02:04):
to go deeper down the rabbit hole and maybe post
some of your findings somewhere where other people who are
going down their rabbit hole with you could find it
and then talk with those people about what you found. Well,
this is what this new Facebook group is going to
do for all of us, including Ben and Nolan. I
you know, I I've I've been skeptical of Facebook groups
(01:02:25):
in the past, you guys, but I actually was just
invited to join one the other day by our illustrious
graphic designer Pam Peacock here in the office. And it's
called now Playing. And it's literally just a Facebook group
where people post pictures and little comments about the Vinyl
records they're listening to. Totally up my alley. I love it.
It's in part of my life now. So this can
(01:02:47):
be that thing for you, and it will be for
me for sure, because I'm as into this stuff as
I am in listening to vinyl records. So I'm excited
to be part of two Facebook groups. Excellent. I'm I'm
pretty excited about being able to post further reading four
shows that we do for for specifically people who are
listening and really want to get deeper in things and
who knows. The stuff we uh talk to you guys
(01:03:09):
about on that Facebook group could yield entire episodes or
maybe even a whole side conversation in the form of
some kind of spinoff down the line. Who knows. So
we're in the early stages of this. We're still figuring
out a name. We'd like to hear your suggestions. As
a matter of fact, if you have a if you
have a swell idea, and if you would like to
get involved, We're looking for, as Indiana Jones would say,
(01:03:34):
or to paraphrase Indiana Jones, top people, right, We're looking
for top folks. Only the top, only only the top,
the creme Dela conspiracy Creme. If you would like to
serve as a moderator for the Facebook group. We'd like
to hear from you. You can send us an email directly.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt Our.
Comrade Noel Brown is out of the studio on an adventure,
but we'll be returning soon. Hello. They call me Ben.
We're joined with our super producer Paul Decant. Most importantly,
you are here, and you are you, and that makes
this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt, Matt,
(00:47):
I've got I've got to ask, just for the sake
of the show. I feel like I already know the
answer to this. Have you ever traveled to the Middle
East in a way that you can reveal on air? No, okay,
fair enough, I've never traveled to the Middle East at all.
The furthest I've gone that way is the pretty much
(01:11):
the eastern edge of Spain. Uh, without going into it
too much trivia fact. I don't know if we've ever
mentioned this on the show before, but you and I
are very old friends, and you know this. There's some
countries that I'm not allowed to travel in as in
(01:31):
the I'm sure they would be glad to have me,
but I don't think I would get out. And some
of those are some of those are Middle Eastern countries.
So is one of them Saudi Arabia. No, I think
I'm fine, and Saudi Arabia is very US friendly. Bully.
I'm glad you mentioned Saudi Arabia because that's one of
(01:53):
the things we're exploring today. You have probably heard of
Saudi Arabia, or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as it's
actually called. We're going to call it the k s
A at different parts in this podcast. It is one
of the most powerful countries in the Middle East. But
that's weird because frankly, here in the West, we don't
(02:14):
hear much about this kingdom, either good news or bad news. Now,
a lot of that has to do with cultures here
in the West, at least the media that's available to us. Uh,
it might show us very different things about what occurs
over there. Um, you know, Western versus Middle Eastern. Let's
say culture in general, it's over time has been represented
(02:39):
maybe let's say poorly on either side, oh the other Oh,
I agree, especially especially before the rise of secularism and
then the later rise of Islamophobia. Those are just things
here in the West. When you hear just of phrase
(03:00):
Saudi Arabia, Wait, what do you think of um? I
think of deserts. I think of oil. I think of
vast reserves of oil and money. I think about drifting
vehicles drifting because I've just seen so many videos of
that online. There's a huge culture of car stunts in
(03:22):
Saudi Arabia. It looks really cool. Also, the food looks great.
I'm just gonna point that, dude, the food does look great.
And I also think Islam because it's got some of
the holiest sites in all of Islam. Yeah, the Kabba
is considered the holiest site, followed by the Prophets mosque
uh and the this is the holiest site is also
(03:43):
referred to as the Cube. It's a building at the
center of the most sacred mosque in Mecca. Yeah, the Kebab,
the cube structure. That is the thing you may have
seen in videos on the internet where there are seas
of people moving in a counterclockwise position around it. Right,
(04:03):
It's part of one of the rituals for the Hajj.
And yeah, the the people making this pilgrimage run a
total of seven times counterclockwise, the first three times at
a faster pace, four times closer at a slower pace.
And that's that's one of the rituals. It's it's meant
(04:24):
to demonstrate the unity of the believers in the worship
of God as they move in harmony around this. It's
amazing to watch it is. It is amazing. It's a
powerful thing. We generally here in the West are not
going to hear too much about Saudi Arabia, which is
why I'm very interested to hear what automatically pops in
(04:45):
someone's mind if they are not from the Middle East
or they are not Muslim, right, I want to know
what occurs to people because I I thought of a
lot of the same things, you know, the empty quarter,
it's gigantic desert, uh, and I think of the very
specific dress that people have, the customs of dress, the food. Um.
(05:08):
We are examining something very strange that's happening in modern
Saudi Arabia as we record this, and to bring us
to the present moment, we're going to need to to
walk through the past a little bit. So I'm actually
I'm actually wearing my wild Stallion shirt from Bill and
(05:29):
Ted's excellent adventure. Yeah, you know, it's maintained its color
better than I expected that it would. Okay, I can
tell you guys, don't believe me because it's under my sweater.
Here he actually is wearing pao w y l D.
It's real. You guys thought I was messing around. I
had to pull a Superman on that. You had two
shirts on top of it. Buddy, I wear layers. It
(05:49):
is very cold outside today. But I also just said buddy,
and I know I should. I'm so sorry. Alright, So
side note, we have had matt uh and Nolan and
I have had an ongoing conversation about whether or not
calling someone buddy is condescending, and it's okay. I think
(06:11):
it's great. I like Buddy. I called you buddy like
eight years ago and you told me not to and
you said, my dog's name is Buddy. Oh that is true.
Did I say no? Yeah? You you were the way
shut it down. You were the one, all right, Well,
no more buddy than pal alright, buckaroo? Yeah no, wait,
let us know. Let us know if you think buddy
(06:32):
is condescending, if a stranger calls me buddy, I'm not
gonna take it as fighting words, you know what I mean. Agreed? Agreed.
So let's go back in time, yes, to look at
the history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. How did
it get here? Could we get a time travel cue o?
(06:53):
That last bit always gets me. Yes, Well, luckily we
made it. We made it, Matt. Here we are the
land that will later become known as the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia has an ancient history, and we're we're here
when the first signs of human habitation are in full swing.
(07:14):
If we're relying on far flung future research, this puts
us around nine thousand years ago, because in our modern age,
that's the first sign of humanity in this area. And uh,
it's you see that guy who's given us the finger?
(07:37):
Do that? Don't be salty. It's just a finger in
his culture. He doesn't know that what it means to us.
But it turns out that years later, uh, future archaeologists
are going to find a piece of that middle finger.
He's wagon at us. Wow, Oh that's really cool. He
just had a boo boo. Yeah, or perhaps he won't
(08:00):
of us to be part of history. That that middle
finger segment is later going to be found an archaeological
site called Tall's Algata close to a northwestern city called Taima.
This means, according to experts, that humans could have been
living in the area a long, long time ago. You
(08:21):
can read some different claims. The claims that you'll read
in the West are going to differ from the claims
that you'll read in Saudi Arabia or in Arabic literature rather,
and that happens. That happens pretty often. You'll see some
of the same differences are different conclusions, different conclusions. When
you look at research by Chinese institutions about ancient China
(08:45):
versus Western institutions. There at least as we're here now,
as we travel through time, we're predating Islam by a
wide margin. Uh. There are they're gonna be at least
thirteen ancient pre Islamic towns that will later be found
in this area. Uh though right now as you and
(09:08):
I are standing here in the ancient past, there are
probably going to be several more that are still lost
to time. So let's fast forward to the seventh century. Yeah,
that's when we're talking about Saudi Arabia becoming the global
seat of Islam. And like we said it. It just
has inside of it some of the holiest sites in
all of the religion. And then we get a little
(09:29):
bit further past the seventh century, we're going, actually a
lot further where we're going, we're going to the twentieth century.
Oh man, that's so fast and just you never expected. Um,
we're now in nineteen thirty when Saudi Arabia as we
know it begins to coalesce, when um Abdulla Ziz al
Saud founded the state itself. And let's go head forward
(09:55):
to the modern days since we're here today. The kingdom
occupies a unique space in the world of geopolitics. It
is both home to one of the world's most prominent
religions and it is also home to one of the
world's richest sources of oil. Yes, and it's full of
people who lives here, Okay, there are a lot. As
(10:19):
of right now, there are over twenty seven million human
beings living there. That is around twenty three million Saudi
nationals and eight point four non Saudi nationals. Um about
the population is under the age of twenty five, so
over half under twenty five, and that that's statistic is
(10:41):
as of February two thousand twelve, which is one of
the it's a little older, but it's the most reliable
data we can find at the time. Now, up until
the nineteen sixties, a lot of the population in Saudi
Arabia was nomadic or at least semi nomadic, So um
a lot more movement in the culture of those families
(11:02):
than just you know, getting to one place and staying
right this this comes from sort of a Bedouin tradition. Yes, Now,
the massive economic growth that Saudi Arabia has been experiencing
over these you know, past a few decades really has
changed the culture like crazy. More than of the population
(11:25):
is now settled. So a lot of this move A
lot of the money I guess that becomes generated over
these past few decades allows people to stay in one
place rather than having to move to you know, chase
whatever resource you're you're trying to chase. And of Saudia's
live in ten major urban centers. This this sounds like
a crazy statistic, just that rate of change, but Saudi
(11:51):
Arabia is not alone by any means in this. I
think it was just in the past what nine years
or something, since we've been working together that the major
pority of the world's population began to live in urban centers,
metropolitan areas. The rural lands are being Uh, there's a
huge brain drain going on. Strange. It's strange, but it
(12:14):
makes it makes sense. Um, That's why it's not as
weird as the rate of change may sound. Here. The
phenomenon itself is not by any means unique to Saudi Arabia.
Most most Saudi Arabians are ethnically considered Arabs, and the
majority of those are tribally considered Bedouin. So many Arabs
(12:36):
from nearby countries are employed in the Kingdom, particularly people
from Egypt. So you might identify yourself as an Arab
but not Saudi Arabian, and you travel to Saudi Arabia,
probably one of those ten major urban centers, in search
of employment. Right. Yeah. And another thing you'll find in
(12:57):
Saudi Arabia or the large numbers of expatriates people who
have come from other countries, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
the Philippines and recently because of the upheavals occurring around
the world, Syria and Yemen. Right and side note, in
the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, there was a pretty
(13:19):
large community of South Korean migrant laborers that were numbering
in hundreds of thousands, but most have since returned home.
Other than that, there are more than a hundred thousand
Westerners living in Saudi Arabia, most of whom live in
private compounds. That must be an interesting life. Yeah, yeah,
(13:42):
I wonder what life is like there, because you know,
a lot of people move there for business and they
bring their family along. And some of our friends, colleagues
and co workers have also been uh you know, been
traveling kids and lived in lived in these compounds, gone
to international schools. And if you have had this experience
(14:05):
then we would love to hear from you as well.
You can write to us at Conspiracy of How Stuff
Works dot com. So here we go. Religion, yeah, alright, religion,
all right, so make no bones about it. Saudi Arabia
is a strict theocracy governed by the House of Saud,
otherwise referred to as the Saud Family. They practice Sunni Islam,
(14:29):
not Shia Sunni Islam. That is the official state religion,
and for a long long time, Saudi Arabia's dominant faith
has been a type of Islam known as Wahabism. This
is an austere form of the religion that insists upon
a literal interpretation of the Kuran. Now that might sound
(14:52):
a bit strange to some people because they would say, well,
the Koran is interpreted literally. Other people as well. This
this is a little bit different because strict Wahabbies believe
that all those who do not practice not only Islam
but their form of the religion are heathens and enemies.
(15:15):
And before anybody decides to cast a stone, let us
consider that the majority of religions that have different denominations
have at least the couple that say the same thing, right, Like,
there's some extreme Christian sects who argue the same thing.
(15:36):
If it's not our brand of Christianity, then it might
as well be Satanism. Well yeah, and it's specifically, if
you don't interpret our Holy Text literally and with the
words that are being said at least as interpreted and
transcribed from the languages that they originate, than you are
doing the wrong thing. And I have been a part
(15:58):
of something kind of like that, at least in a
belief structure of my own creation. Are you a I cool? Yeah,
we're cool. Now I think I'm cool. Now I'm alright,
I'm not in. Yeah, you know what, Okay, alright, that
sounded like you were on the fence. So just for
(16:19):
a moment, I appreciate you take it a step there
and knowles into right. Well, I mean not currently, We'll
have to see really. Yeah, I like him, he's cool.
He's cool. The only people that are in are the
ones that I can see in this present moment. So
is that is that one of the tenants system? Quite literally,
if I don't see you, you don't exist. Cell Phones
(16:42):
supposed to be really complicated, don't understand well speaking in
fantastic segues. Critics argue that the rigidity of this particular
interpretation of Islam has led it to misinterpret and distort
the the practices and platforms of this religion and of
(17:04):
the Quran, which seems counterintuitive because one would think that
a literal interpretation would be possibly closest to what the author,
the prophet Mohammed originally meant, right, unless, of course, they
were writing a metaphor, and that's a that's a whole
other bag of badgers. We can we can reach out
(17:26):
to some of our friends who research the evolution of
a religion itself a controversial term, we understand to get
a little more insight on that, but these critics would
typically point to religious extremists such as Osama bin Laden
or the Taliban and the explosive growth of this this concept,
(17:51):
this denomination, for lack of a better term, began in
the nineties seventies when Saudi charities started funding schools or
mud russas and mosque all across the world, from Islamabad
all the way out to Culver City, California. So they
took it global right, and critics will also further further
(18:15):
ad or further attempt to drive their objections home by
noting that factions of Saudi Arabia's elite have participated and
funded terrorists or religious extremist or paramilitary operations around the world,
whatever you want to call it, waging a religiously motivated
proxy war or something dressed as a religious war. And
(18:37):
a lot of times those funds get channeled through the
charities by the the what they would call the elite
from Arabia's elite, and then it goes to various places
and we're we're talking about some disturbing stuff here and
a lot of it is stuff that people have heard
on some level before. But we're in no way, We're
(19:00):
in no way saying that the the actual people are
individuals of this region are in any way different from you,
different from any of your friends listening. Uh. We're we're saying,
we're talking about the institutions, the organizations, and we're gonna
continue with some cultural issues that are being dealt with
(19:23):
in the k s A and have being have been
dealt with for a long time, and they're pretty dark.
We're gonna get into them right after a quick word
from our sponsor and we're back. Thanks for providing that
breath of fresh air, MAP, because we are diving into
(19:44):
one of the things that I'm convinced most Westerns have
heard of. If even if you're not very familiar with
Saudi Arabia in general, uh, and that is human trafficking. Uh.
Exploitative employment, right would be would be one way to
phrase it. But what it is in practice is the
(20:06):
fact of slavery. Saudi Arabia has huge problems with human
traffic game, primarily in the field of migrant labor. And this, again,
this is not just Saudi Arabia. This this encompasses. This
problem encompasses the Gulf States in general. The Global Slavery
Index estimates that over ninety two thousand people are currently
(20:28):
enslaved in Saudi Arabia. Wow. Yeah, And there there are
two ways this. Two primary avenues here, uh, construction workers
held in debt bondage. You know, you your employer has
your passport, controls or visall bring you to Saudi Arabia
(20:49):
with you know, the hopes of reaching enriching your life
and perhaps the lives of your families, and you then
owe them. They have to recoup their expenses on the
plane ticket, but then surprise, they have to recoup the
expenses on your food where you're lodging, which might be horrible.
And there's interest and there's no you know, there's no
(21:10):
such thing as OSHA, which is the organization here in
the United States that is meant to enforce workplace safety.
I said there would be interest, and we've got a
listener mail a long time ago and did little research.
Apparently there would not be interest. It's a gift. There's
a gift thing that functions like interest, but it's not usury. Right.
(21:33):
The other the other avenue of this facto enslavement will
be the idea of household servants primarily from some of
the country's matt mentioned earlier. These will primarily be women
from Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. There is
an ongoing epidemic of abuse here on the rape and
(22:00):
assaults are largely at least in the past, have largely
been supported by the state level interpretation of Islam, which
hinges upon this argument that you can consider some women
(22:20):
as things quote your right hand possesses, and that's been
interpreted as slaves, most immediately sanctioned sex slaves. So the
idea that you are paying someone to be a living
made or a babysitter or something here just sounds like
(22:46):
a job, right, But there it has become conflated with
concubines and slavery. And this is of course completely non
consensual on the parts of people who thought they were
being hired to have a job. And it it should
be said here that the United States has um for
(23:09):
various stated reasons, sometimes just speculated reasons, failed in the
opinion of I think, the global community to push for
any kind of human rights in the Gulf States and
in general or in particular in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, the
United States has a heartbreaking, just I'm laughing out of helplessness,
(23:36):
that absolutely disgusting record when it comes to any kind
of advocacy for human rights in the Middle East, across
the board from from Oman all the way up through
Jordan's Syria, et cetera. Is just the Middle East in
(23:57):
general for one reason or another. I'm not knocking the
individuals in the State Department. I'm saying that US policies
have not prioritized the importance of you know, gender equality
or human rights as to near the degree that other
people would expect the world's police force to do. If
(24:17):
that's what the US purports itself to be. And then
if we move on, speaking of rights, what about people
who are citizens? What about people who are born there,
who are born there, it's there a native land, and
they're not a migrant laborer. They're not suffering under this
abuse system. One of the biggest issues is the concept
(24:40):
of equality for women. Historically, Saudi Arabia have been a
very very very difficult place to be a woman. The
genders are sharply segregated, and obviously Saudi Arabia is not
currently the kind of place that would engage in gender fluidity.
You're not going to find in a unisex bathroom. No,
(25:01):
it's a very black and white situation. You're a man
or you're a woman. And until fairly recently, women were
not allowed to do things like vote, or drive, or
go somewhere unaccompanied, pursue higher education and so on. That
appears to be changing. And just just some background before
(25:23):
we get to in the geopolitics here, Saudi Arabia has
a lot of economic heft and it's based on fossil fuels. Yeah,
it's home to the world's most valuable company. Who I mean,
how that's how many people can say that it's not Apple.
It's not Apple. It's called Saudi Aramco. It's an oil company.
(25:47):
It's responsible for the production of the kingdom's fossil fuel
exports and this energy let's call it behemoth. It's valued
at anywhere this is a large range here, anywhere from
one point to to ten trillion dollars. Uh. Wow, that's
a large valuation. And it's because the amount of oil
(26:09):
that has existed underneath Saudi Arabia that's accessible for drilling
and for exporting, for decades and this, uh, this company,
Saudi Aramco, controls it pretty much all of it. You know,
one of my old professors used to is a bit
of a partisan. He used to call he would say
(26:31):
that Saudi Arabia is the most cantankerous member of OPEC,
and he said the he said that the Organization of
Patroleum Exporting Companies, and he said that OPEC only exists
to make oil more expensive and to restrict the flow
of it. And I thought, well, that's kind of cynical,
(26:56):
Like I don't you know, I don't know. I would
love to hear your union on OPEC as well, folks.
And speaking of this interaction here, we didn't even talk
about arms deals. We did not talk about arms deals
coming in and out of Saudi Arabia. The United States
likes to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, and the United
Kingdom cut a like sank and buried a very important
(27:22):
legal investigation because Saudi Arabia threatened not to go through
with a military hardware deal if they continued investigating. And
you know, we're just saying here, but you bring in
a lot of weapons, military grade weapons from countries that
specialize in developing these weapons. You can do with them
(27:45):
what you please, and if you need to sell them,
there's another good source of income. Just saying, and this
leads us to relationships with other countries, which is something
we could examine at length in a different episode or
a different show. So as the seat again of holy
(28:06):
sites in Islam, and as one of the world's most
influential petrol exporters, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias swings far
above its weight class in the world of geopolitics. The
elites of the United States and the ruling tribe of
uh Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, have a long running,
(28:27):
very close and often controversial relationship because the US provides
support on everything from infrastructure to military might, and Saudi
Arabia and the United States are at least factions of
the Saudi Arabian elite, and factions of the US elite
have been thickest thieves ever since Nixon sold them on
the Petro dollar. Ye, and it feels very strange to
(28:50):
even say this, but Saudi Arabia has a problem there.
Let's say they're notorious for using a wealth and power
that it's uh that it's gotten to prevent the elites
amongst its people from meeting justice for crimes abroad. So
if they're in another country and they do something let's say,
(29:13):
let's say something like theft, or maybe they're smuggling drugs,
or some kind of abuse occurs, some physical or sexual abuse.
Even let's say one of the elites kills somebody in
another country. Um, they can get away. It goes beyond
what we would imagine as diplomatic community. It's because of
the power. Yeah, in a very real sense, these individuals
(29:34):
are considered above the law. And uh, you can read
numerous accounts, as Matt said, of each of those crimes
being committed and the person who committed them not ever
seeing justice in one in the country in which they
committed the crime. And of course we do have to
(29:56):
add a grain ex salt here. Is it possible that
we are only hearing Western propaganda or only hearing one
side of the story. Absolutely, that's why. Yes, that's why
I feels so strange to say it, because you know,
the elite, at least from this country, have a certain
amount of that. Probably, I mean, okay, is that all
(30:19):
Western propaganda? Though? Matt? Is it is? It? Is it? Paul?
It's possible, but it's not plausible. It's not plausible. There
couldn't be that. There cannot be that many reports from
Southeast Asia, to Indonesia, to the United States, even unto
(30:42):
Beverly Hills. I mean, you can even see videos of
Saudi elites doing abuse, like horrible things to what I
guess they would call their um. There are workers people theirs. Yes,
you can see it, and nothing occurs, nothing happens, and
(31:03):
it's just I don't know, it's like you said, heartbreaking.
So again, it would be cartoonishly unfair for us to
say this applies to every single member of this fans.
Every family has a has a couple of you know,
(31:24):
every family has a couple of jerks in and just
because someone has happens to be higher on whatever, uh,
whatever temporary hierarchy exists in society at the time. That
doesn't mean that they're all good or bad people. They're
just they're just people whose parents make different choices. So
(31:47):
who the hecks a charge here? Right? If this is
very is very family based. Right. Similar to the Democratic
People's Republic of Career North Korea, Saudi Arabia is absolutely
ruled by a single family and their close relations. And
this means and you know how this stuff irritates me, Matt.
(32:07):
This means that if you were born as someone who
is on the outside of this hierarchy, even if you
are a Saudi Arabian national, even if you're brilliant, even
if you're brilliant, then you have apps. If you are
the Saudi Arabian Elon Musk and you are not a
member of this single family, you have virtually no chance
(32:29):
of succeeding in government, regardless of your abilities. You are
just born wrong. And as a result, ministerial positions, very
powerful ones are assigned based on who has been the
most successful u currying favor in court. And this brings
us to we said things are going to get crazy.
(32:50):
This this brings us close to that point. There's someone
very important that we want to tell you about. After
a word from our sponsor, friends and neighbors, ladies and gentlemen,
we would like to introduce you to Mohammed bin Salman
(33:12):
bin Abdulaziz al Saud. Yes. Yeah, he recently became the
Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, effectively becoming
the power behind the throne. At the time of our recording.
He is thirty two years old. He became crown Prince
on June one, seventeen. But weight Ben, you might be saying,
(33:35):
but wait, Matt, hold your horses. Isn't there supposed to
be a king of Saudi Arabia. Yes, but he is
not making the calls the way that the crown princes. No,
he's older at this point in the crown Prince is
just taking the reins of power. Essentially. The current king
(33:55):
is Salmon bin Abdulaziz al Saud. He has been the
king since twenty fifteen. His his major initiatives include some
progressive things and then some dangerous things. Uh. He is
the one who made the call to intervene in the
(34:16):
civil war and yeomen uh. He also is the one
who is technically responsible for the decree in seventeen allowing
women to drive in the country. But back to Crown
Prince Mohammed ben Salomon, who's making all all these comments.
And when in Arabic, when you hear Ben, it's spelled
(34:38):
b i n and it's like son of So it's
really Mohammed, son of Salomon's son of Abdul Aziz al Suh.
So his ascension to power. Mohammed ben Solomon was accompanied
by the typical trappings of any state power transfer. You
hear about it in elections in the United States, even
(35:00):
if it's just a state representative or a city council member.
Someone's like, you know, I'm gonna change things. Yeah, it
sounds good from a podium. There's gonna be a better
life for the citizens. Yeah, they're the ones who live
here and pay the taxes or whatever. Right, Yeah, not
anybody from out of country. Right. I love the idea
(35:21):
of somebody making these grandiose speeches for local office, like
as city comptroller, I'm gonna what is I'm gonna drain
the swamp. I'm gonna drain the comptrolling swamp. Uh. Yeah,
better life for citizens, more progressive stance toward energy economics,
he said, a modernized culture, and so on. All good
(35:43):
things to hear, right, and even better if they actually
come true. It's the standard fare of a lot of
newly emergent politicians, dictators, and rulers. But Mohammed ben Salmon
was a little bit different. He did not he and
he said this on record. He did not consider Saudi
Arabia a normal country and he had not considered it
(36:03):
a normal country for at least three decades. And he
said he did not come to continue business as usual,
which you know, of course everybody says when they when
he get elected or you know, um, if people are
unhappy with the current set up, right, I'm I'm different right. Uh. Instead,
he said he wanted to remake Saudi Arabian society in
(36:27):
its entirety, and as we record this, that's exactly what
he is trying to do. Here's where it gets crazy. Well,
it turns out the Prince wasn't just laying down some
of that pillow talk, blowing a little bit of those
smoke rings towards you, towards all of us and his people. Um.
(36:48):
At the end of September, seen, he started taking some
pretty brutal actions to consolidate power for himself. The culmination
of this process that kicked into full gear in June
when he official became the Crown Prince. Um, it's been
in no uncertain terms, the culmination of what we would
say is a real conspiracy, you know, one of those
(37:10):
things that we don't it's not a theory, right right,
it is not. It's not he planned and colluded and
conspired in secret to uh to. He would probably clean
call it cleaning up the town or whatever, but he
took down a lot of people. And this conspiracy has
real world, immediate implications for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
(37:33):
and then the larger Middle Eastern region and the globe.
So what happened his rise to power is largely possible
due to the death of the old Guard, particularly the
long serving ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense and the Interior,
themselves also princes. And he was able to do this
(37:55):
because when they died there was a power vacuum. There
was fluidity in upper echelons of government for years beforehand,
each of these princes kind of consolidated their own sphere
of influence and then you would have these calcifications right
into into fiefdom's verticals, little verticals. Yeah, and so Mohammed
(38:18):
bin Salmon was on a mission essentially to soften some
of the notoriously puritanical theological stances that Saudi Arabia had
held for a long time, and he has pretty much
he's made some genuine changes, especially in the field of
gender equality. Right, that's exactly true, But this isn't entirely
(38:38):
heroism in terms of this conspiracy, there may be a
dark side to it as well. It turns out he
held several billionaires hostage. Yeah, true story. I know it
sounds like a weird opener, but it's true. As part
of his vision for Saudi Arabia, Ben Salmon arrested first
arrested eleven Saudi princes in November. This is unprecedented, all
(39:01):
caps bold, those letters, full stop. It's kind of on
the level of, imagine the vice president at the time
that we are in the studio today. The vice president
is Mike Pence. Imagine if one day that guy just said,
you know what, I'm arresting unilaterally, multiple members of Congress,
(39:24):
all you you you you you get thee to the
Ritz Carlton. Because that's what he did, right, That's what
Salmon did. Yeah. They kicked out all of the paying
customers at this Ritz Carlton, at least most of them,
I think all of them. And he put these people
in there and their families in the Ritz Carlton and
when he downed a lot of the or grounded a
(39:46):
lot of the private aircraft so that people couldn't escape,
cut communication lines, held them hostage, essentially I mean, we
could call it arrested to make it so more official,
but hey, at least they were at the Ritz. At
least they were at the rich you know. And also
if you were just one of the people who who
was there at the time, would you want to stay.
(40:07):
I wouldn't want to be a by standard to that.
That's a very scary situation. If they if they offered
me the choice and I knew what was going on,
and I would say, you know, thank you very much.
It was nice to meet everyone. I'm going I'm going
to the holiday and hey, anyone who lives in Saudi Arabia,
(40:28):
is there a holiday inn there anywhere? Let us know,
we just want to go to a hotel where we
won't be by standards. It uh mass arrest of billionaires.
So one of the people that was arrested was a
guy named is a guy named Prince al Walid bin Talala,
(40:50):
one of the richest individuals in the world, when the
richest men in the world. He controls an investment firm,
Kingdom Holding, and he owned or has over his career,
owned major stakes in twenty first century Fox City Group, Apple, Twitter,
many many other companies that you have heard about ad Nauseam. Additionally,
(41:11):
he controls media outlets. He controls satellite television networks that
are huge across the Arabic speaking world. All in all,
more than two hundred people were arrested in what was
framed as a crackdown on corruption. How could you be
mad at that? It was a nice framing, really is.
And according to the authorities, they conducted a huge sweeping probe.
(41:36):
They got everybody, and they found at least one hundred
billion dollars had been misused through embezzlement and corruption over
the past three decades, and over seventeen hundred bank accounts. Uh,
we're frozen, seventeen hundred They were all being apparently um
used as personal accounts, and these were not business accounts.
So these are just individuals embezzling money, according to the authorities, right, right,
(42:02):
and all at all, Fighting corruption is a good thing,
right it is. Let's go back to our controller example.
You don't want to power mad controller taking all the
controlling money. He's got all the TPS reports and all
the tape. No, we're just I think we're just throwing
around words. I think it might be increasingly obvious that
(42:24):
neither of us knows exactly what controllers do. There's a
lot of printer paper involved, maybe no Excel spreadsheets. He's
in charge of the the Microsoft Excel serial numbers. That's
what it is. So none of his employees can log
in unless he allows them to. I feel like you're
(42:45):
improvising this. Oh wait, wait, you're right. It's just looked
up the effectively the chief financial officer of a public body. Yeah,
you nailed it. Hold of what I apologize, man, I'm
sorry I ever doubted you. Problem that was my dad
was an accountant. Was he a controller? No, he was
a controller though, No, he didn't have the comp He
(43:07):
didn't have the comp. Well, we may have to walk
away from this controller example. But uh, but it it
is true that corruption is not desirable, at least culturally.
It's it's considered undesirable here in the West. But here's
(43:27):
the problem when we go will we look at this
through a different lens. Saudi Arabia is an executive monarchy,
and this means that it does not possess written constitution.
It does not have independent government institutions like a parliament
or courts. And yes, of course, of course we know
that a lot of the so called independent government institutions
(43:51):
in countries across the world are independent on paper, right,
like the the legislative body of North Rhea is independent
on paper. Yeah, it's true. Uh, the there's a difference
between paper and practice, is what we're saying. But accusations
of corruption are difficult to evaluate when even in theory,
(44:16):
these institutions would be evaluating this are not, in any
shape fashion reform independent, and the boundaries between what would
be considered public funds and what would be considered the
wealth of the royal family are pretty murky, and corruption
the way that many other countries would describe it is
(44:38):
believed to be massively widespread, you know, like in the
in the United Kingdom, there's the personal wealth of the monarch,
whoever happens to be, you know, in charge of that
tribal system at that time. And then there's the wealth
of the crown, which is sort of the office that
(44:58):
a monarch holds again entirely, entirely based on who their
parents were, in no way based on any qualifications. I'm
not saying that they're unqualified to be a monarch. I'm
saying that no one is qualified to be a monarch
because it's a really stupid system. Sick burn. No, I'm
(45:19):
just I I gotta stop harping on that. I feel
like once a year I start ranting about how am
I just mad that I'm not an emperor some of
these princes and princesses and crown kings. I turned my
nose at the I think I think you would be
a pretty I think you'd be a pretty decent uh,
(45:39):
monarch of some sort. Matt, that's an awful thing to say. Well,
I don't think you would be a good dictator. I
think you'd be a good monarch. Okay, Yeah, I mean
I could totally open doors, walk out, you know, and
look at my subjects and go here. Yeah here, yeah,
my loyal subject. Everyone will be enjoying a Cuca Cola
(46:04):
classic today, Sugar. Wait are you doing? Is? Is your
monarchy has sponsorships? He does? Yes, there we go. That's
very that's very forward thinking of you. Man. Yeah, dude,
this robe was brought to you by Coca Cola. I
you know what, I'm kind of into this idea. I
would vote for you. Oh no way, I'm not allowed
to because it's a monarchy. I guess I would see
(46:26):
if I can sell you a sponsorship deal. But the
you know, yeah, the line between my wealth as a
monarch and the the funds that come from my sponsors,
it is pretty murky. It is murky. It's pretty murky.
You know. I haven't ever seen you pay for a soda?
What can I say? So? Um and yeah, of course,
(46:48):
all right, I'll say it. It is true. Being a
monarch is a very demanding job. You are attempting to
hold disparate unions of people together, and that's always always
going to be a tall order. I just think not
choosing I just think choosing people on some system other
than merit is a terrible way to go about it,
(47:12):
and its tradition and traditions are not automatically correct. Which
is crazy that that's still a controversial statement in whatever.
Don't hire your family just because they're your family. Oh
you're too controversial, Then you're too controversial. So it might sound,
it might sound noble to call this movement some kind
(47:32):
of stab against the corruption that's occurring in Saudi Rabia
that hasn't existed there for decades. But the truth is
the rests, these particular rests seemed to center right smack
dab on the crown princes competitors, were talking about his rivals,
his enemies, pretty much anybody who who could be in
line for the throne or have enough money and influence
(47:52):
to get in the in his way for whatever he
wants to do. It appears to be this way right exactly.
And there's another hugely important fact here. Several of those
people that were, as Matt noted, shipped off to that
Ritz Carlton arrested for corruption were released after they gave
(48:15):
up massive amounts of cash, or stocks or other assets.
One businessman reportedly at tens of millions of Saudi reals
the currency withdrawn from his account after he signed a
release deal. In another case, of former senior official consented
to hand over ownership of roughly one point zero six
billion dollars worth of shares. So so there's a question
(48:39):
here is this Is this the crown Prince taking back
money that belongs to the people in the state, quite possibly,
or is it the crown Prince removing, yeah, removing the
financial power someone would have to rise up against him
or or raise, you know, raise their own faction. Also,
(49:04):
there there's an ongoing war in Yemen. I think we
mentioned it briefly here. Earlier in the show, uh Mohammed
Ben Salmon is actively waging that proxy war in Yemen,
fighting Iranian influence in a continual Iranian Saudi Arabian conflict
that predates his ascension. The US is supporting this war,
(49:27):
although you might not hear much about it if you
only tune into broadcast news. But then again, if you
listen to this show, you probably don't only listen to
broadcast news. Especially might not have heard about it for
quite a while because of how many things are occurring
geopolitically right now. It's kind of fallen by the wayside,
which is awful, but it is very real, and people
(49:49):
is very real, and people are dying without much help.
Ben Salmon, by the way, blames the nineteen seventy nine
Iranian Revolution for spark in the brutally strict state of
Saudi theocracy today, So in his mind, he is he
sees it as a reaction. He sees those two events
(50:13):
as interrelated. So that's the that's the lay of the land.
The current most powerful official other than the king in
Saudi Arabia, the current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is
seeking to modernize the country says he's doing so, has
taken steps to do so, uh, and arrested anyone who
(50:37):
would be a threat and effectively seems to have effectively
neutered them. What does this mean for the world. We
can make some guesses at the end, but of course
we would be remiss if we didn't mention the other
conspiracies or conspiracy theories that are present in Saudi Arabian
cultured today. And this could be its own episode, But
I think we're running a little long already. Uh. So Ben,
(51:01):
just tell me about Saudi Arabia and Iran. So Sunni
versus Shia Islam, right, Uh, the same religion, different different interpretations, um.
And this is an argument that goes back a long time.
So there's the religious conflict, but then there's also the
(51:21):
desire to be the regional hegemon. Both control. Both control
fossil fuels, right, and Iran controls something called the Strait
of Hormus, which we mentioned previously, which is a vital
water transit route for fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia has partnered
(51:43):
with other countries to help restrict the influence of Iran.
The t two very influential countries. There would be the
United States and Israel. Saudi Arabia is very well known
for staunch public anti Semitism. But as we've said in
(52:03):
previous episodes, take that with a grain of salt, because
the stuff what was the word we used, performative, The
performative speeches somebody might make to their domestic crowd might
be way different when they actually, you know, they meet
the prime minister of the other country and there's a
just stacks and stacks of cash available for deals and
(52:25):
their kids go to the same colleges and stuff, telling
you fingers on the hand and as different as you
might think. Uh, and then Matt tell me a little
bit about the global sphere. We knew this was gonna
come up. What's maybe even just as a teaser for
Saudi Arabia and the attacks on September eleven two one
(52:48):
oh yeah. There are a lot of allegations at Saudi
Arabia funds terrorism, as we said, through those charities that
have been set up, and it's a well, it's a
known known that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers from the
September eleventh attacks were from Saudi Arabia, and they're they're
a handful of the classified documents. Well, there are loads
(53:11):
of declassified documents that show the United States was actively
investigating contact between some of the hijackers and several individuals
involved with the Saudi Arabian government at varying levels. And
then we have a quote here from Fox News of
all places, um it says, quote the nine eleven Commission
(53:32):
report found no evidence that the Saudi government as an
institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the attacks al
Qaeda masterminded. But the commission also noted the likelihood that
Saudi government sponsored charities did. So one more time, Saudi
government sponsored charities did. Oh, come on, So the government
(53:55):
at all, the big g government didn't do it, but
these government spawn or charities probably did. That's what that states.
So that's it. No money went out the front door, Yes,
that's exactly what they're saying. But there was a backdoor there.
There is a prominent backdoor that's been set up for
a long time to send money to places that would
(54:16):
do something like this. Doors, by the way, on different
sides of the same building. And we're just going to
use this visual now, all right. There's also the missing
twenty nine pages from that nine eleven Commission report that
was mentioned by that Fox article. Um it directly addresses
the involvement of Saudi Arabian government actors who were likely
acting pretty much as their own factions, like as there
(54:37):
what do we call verticals without the king's approval. So
the king had no knowledge of a lot of this happening,
but maybe these other little groups with power did. And
we will delve into that in a future future episode
I think will need to be the triumvirate of us here. Uh,
probably two part or two. And when we say government actors,
(54:58):
we mean people who were affiliated with the government, even
if they weren't acting in their capacity as you know,
an officialist or an official. Yet there's another one, though,
that you had told me a little bit about, which
was the idea of controlling gas prices. Yes, uh, where
this is from a house stuff Works article. We're gonna
jump right in. On April then Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed
(55:20):
Ben Solomon announced the implementation of this thing called Vision
twenty thirty and it's this ambitious plan the Kingdom has that,
in the Prince's words, would rid the country of its
addiction to oil. Ben you actually made a video on this,
I believe, m or now for how stuff works? Now,
did I? Yes? Oh wait, yes I did. I think
(55:42):
a lot of this comes directly from your words. I
forgot about this, Matt. Yeah, it's it's a smart move,
and it's something that quite a few Golf states are
aiming to do, or several Gulf seats are aiming to do.
As we know, alternative sources of energy collection, distribution are
on a precipitous rise, and in your lifetime if you're
(56:05):
listening to this, uh, the odds are the odds that
you will have and an electric powered vehicle or solar
power infrastructure of some sort of rising precipitously, especially if
you live in a country that didn't completely botch alternative
energy like the US did in the eighties. Yeah. So,
the the the idea here is is noble, it's understandable,
(56:28):
and it's quite practical. Right. Yeah. The plans interesting. So
they're gonna set up five percent steak in Saudi Aramco,
remember that giant company, the oil company we talked, a
most valuable company. It's gonna be a public offering, an
initial public offering, an I p O. And then they're
gonna pour a lot more funding into their public investment
fund and it's gonna make it one of the world's
(56:49):
largest public investment funds. And the third thing they're gonna do,
this is the dangerous one for the Crown prints it
is because it's gonna be unpopular just with the people
that that he uh, I don't know what you call it.
He controls, he lords over, he prints is over the citizens.
The citizens well yeah, uh, the Kingdom is gonna cut
(57:10):
various government benefits because there is a there are a
lot of benefits to living in Saudi Arabia if you're
a citizen there. As a citizen, this, yeah, you'll have
you'll have a pretty solid job. Healthcare is taking care
of their various other subsidies. They're going to save an
estimated sixty one billion dollars per year doing this. But
(57:30):
then also they're gonna have and a rise in um
I don't want to say unemployment, but there will. The
government will need to find some kind of way to
translate the skills these people already have into business and government, yeah,
and create the jobs somehow for that many points. Uh. So,
(57:50):
while this is happening, the Prince also aims to raise
non oil revenue to a hundred and sixty billion dollars
by and two hundred sixty billion by twenty THO. That's
a lot of money. Here's the problem, UH, two years ago,
in two thousand fifteen, that number that's supposed to be
a hundred and sixty billion was only forty three point
(58:11):
six billion. Oh and also you can just to show
you how unpopular stuff can be. UM, if you live
in the US, then I'm sure you remember gas prices
spiking in the past. Recently in I believe it was
January seventeen, gas prices in Saudi Arabia rose by one
hundred and twenty seven percent. So the domestic population is
(58:35):
beginning to feel the heat. And we'll see if this again,
this is an executive monarchy, so we'll see whether those
government subsidies actually end and what the results would be
if they do. And now we want to close with
a question what what's likely to me? It seems likely
(58:55):
that unless there's UH an internal domestic or financial catastrophe,
aut Arabia may well be on the road to an
increasingly diversified economy, maybe even a more moderate culture. That's
that's optimism or unfortunately, or as several other I guess pundits,
(59:16):
analysts and critics have suggested, maybe this could just be
some sort of Western friendly dressing, you know, like maybe
they just dolloped a little bit of ranch to soak
over this salad, this house salad of despotism. They loomed
it up with ranch. Ranch was the most American salad
dressing that I could think of. I think you hit
(59:36):
it on the head right there with that, and then
it did in Alaska, you know it, I did not
know that it's true. Um, for my for my opinion,
you know, I'm I'm feeling a bit cynical about a
lot of this, But I think I personally need to
learn a little bit more about the situation, right. I
(59:57):
think that's maybe how a lot of people listening a
lot you might feel that same way. Like I've before,
truly understanding this, I need to spend some more time
with it and then feel it out. But the cynic
in me, the one that views the world pretty much
the same way over says man, this is some ranch dressing. Really. Yeah,
I'm surprised because I think the Wow, maybe this situation
(01:00:22):
where I'm more optimistic, I think it is, But again
I think it's because you know a little bit more
than I do, and for me seeing a lot of
it on the surface, it feels like, oh, I'm suspect
of all this. I would love to hear from Saudi
Arabian national or someone who has spent time in the kingdom.
Oh that's great, Please write to us less No, we
(01:00:43):
we are getting the signal here from our producer. Fortunately,
we're going to have to call it a day. We
know when a little bit long, but we do hope
you enjoyed this episode. Again, this was not a conspiracy theory.
The Crown Prince worked cluded his secret and then arrested everybody,
(01:01:03):
which was just you know, it makes me think of
the Untouchables with Kevin cost Is that where they would
go in and arrest everybody? Did that? Have? The Untouchables
are to the crew, right, the Motley crew of guys
when they're Tommy guns. Yeah yeah yeah. So, as as
(01:01:23):
you know, Matt, Noel, Paul and I consider you, specifically,
you the most important part of this show. And if
you follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook or any
other social media platform, you see that occasionally we reach
out and ask you for the ideas that you would
like to hear in the future. Well, we're going to
(01:01:43):
kick it up a notch, or maybe we should say,
go a little further down the rabbit hole, a little
deeper into the black mirror accidentally sci fi reference. We're
starting a Facebook group where we can all interact with
each other directly, and we'd like your help. Yeah, specifically,
if you ever listened to an episode and then wanted
(01:02:04):
to go deeper down the rabbit hole and maybe post
some of your findings somewhere where other people who are
going down their rabbit hole with you could find it
and then talk with those people about what you found. Well,
this is what this new Facebook group is going to
do for all of us, including Ben and Nolan. I
you know, I I've I've been skeptical of Facebook groups
(01:02:25):
in the past, you guys, but I actually was just
invited to join one the other day by our illustrious
graphic designer Pam Peacock here in the office. And it's
called now Playing. And it's literally just a Facebook group
where people post pictures and little comments about the Vinyl
records they're listening to. Totally up my alley. I love it.
It's in part of my life now. So this can
(01:02:47):
be that thing for you, and it will be for
me for sure, because I'm as into this stuff as
I am in listening to vinyl records. So I'm excited
to be part of two Facebook groups. Excellent. I'm I'm
pretty excited about being able to post further reading four
shows that we do for for specifically people who are
listening and really want to get deeper in things and
who knows. The stuff we uh talk to you guys
(01:03:09):
about on that Facebook group could yield entire episodes or
maybe even a whole side conversation in the form of
some kind of spinoff down the line. Who knows. So
we're in the early stages of this. We're still figuring
out a name. We'd like to hear your suggestions. As
a matter of fact, if you have a if you
have a swell idea, and if you would like to
get involved, We're looking for, as Indiana Jones would say,
(01:03:34):
or to paraphrase Indiana Jones, top people, right, We're looking
for top folks. Only the top, only only the top,
the creme Dela conspiracy Creme. If you would like to
serve as a moderator for the Facebook group. We'd like
to hear from you. You can send us an email directly.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
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