Shakespeare in Riyadh, “Princes in the Tower”

originally published in 2017

By Claudio Resta

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of Salman [York]
Why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies,
Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep’s disturbers
Are they that I would have thee deal upon:
Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.
(Shakespeare)

The global media mainstream system often acts as an incendiary for obvious cassette reasons.

So news that in itself is irrelevant but politically sensitive, because it victimizes a gender, social or ethnic group that is commonly believed, wrongly or reasonably, already a victim of persecution, the same news is propagated, enormously amplified, around the world in a game of rebounding agencies that indirectly end up also to maximize headline sales.

At other times (and this is the case I’m about to draw attention to now), the global media mainstream system acts inexplicably (apparently inexplicably) as a firefighter trying to extinguish the fire, failing to adequately important news and I would also say that is spectacular in itself. This is paradoxical because in a Society of the Spectacle like ours (Guy Debord) not exploiting the “spectacular” is also a waste of resources, or rather the most valuable resource on the economic level in communication. Just as if the cynical and colorful Circus presentationist would present the numbers of his artists in a shy way in a low voice and with understatement rather than loudly and with emphasis as it actually happens.

Not only that but here we have the case with a piece of extremely important news, and I would also say that after being announced in error, inexplicably it has had no echoes or repeats on the mainstream media for twenty days and passes so far. As if it were a mistake, a refusal. Not even so.

The news is that on November 4, 2017, informs us of the arrest in Saudi Arabia of (about) fifty dignitaries, government ministers, senior officers, eleven princes of the royal family including the famous Alwaleed Bin Al Talal, well-known investor global and philanthropic, Bakr Bin Laden, brother of the most famous Osama (only whose next kinship would have to raise some curiosity for so many reasons) and so many others.

The accusation is, or rather, corruption, but it is unclear what meaning it actually has such a term in a country with a political and economic order like that of Saudi Arabia. It seems so much like a pretext. Much more if used against the representatives of the most prominent Saudi business community. Though and above all admissible and did not give the good faith of the accusation.

The alleged guilty ones are then currently detained in a hotel that is extremely brilliant: the Ritz – Carlton of Riyadh (but I would not want to be in their place now!) As if that was not enough amazing and spectacular in a Debord sense in this context, there was also the slaughter of an escaping helicopter on which Prince Mansour Bin Muqrinand other dignitaries were, all killed. Escaping from what I consider to be the purges wrought by Mohammed Bin Salman to consolidate his power over the succession to the throne and perhaps also to demand redemption of the kind: your money or your life, as it seems to support Al Jazeera.

So the global media system that always bothers us so much for any minimal human rights violation issue in countries such as Russia and China, exploiting, I argue, here seems to show off a superior Olympic stiff upper lips indifference to these “poor” billionaires, unjustly and arbitrarily arrested, and who, perhaps, one might suppose, also subjected to mistreatments and, who knows it, perhaps even tortures in a country, which constitutional guarantees such as Habeas Corpus seem to offer very poor protection.

I used ironically the term “poor” billionaire oxymoron because the occasion was too good for not spending such an exceptionally rare event, but, seriously speaking, my humanitarian concern for them is authentic and deep and I think such it should be felt from all people with a conscience.

The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh

Think of this tragedy that I don’t hesitate to define Shakespearean not just for the victims at present detained in Ritz – Carlton of Riyad possibly subjected to mistreatment and perhaps even torture if still alive, those killed in the helicopter slaughter, as well as for their families and for their many employees, dependents, and partners in the world. The fears, sorrows, worries, and embarrassment of all these people.

Then, above all, I do not understand the silent silence of the Western Chancelleries and of the United Nations in this respect. Usually, the people who detain power despite a hypocritical appearance of good feelings have an inner attitude of indifference to the sufferings of the poor, though many, but they never are indifferent to the suffering of the rich, though few. So this silent silence of the people who detain power in the world is now strange and suspect in this case.

And the great rich as those who were arrested usually do not suffer anytime from privations, at best they can be deprived of their life, being assassinated by their enemies like Enrico Mattei, who, while living at another age, and in another country, on the opposite side of consumer countries and not that of oil producers, it reminds me somehow somewhat similar or at least as mirror symmetrical as that of Alwaleed, both top brasseurs d’affaires in oil and finance international business.

Really strange the silent silence of Western Chancelleries and of the United Nations and even more that of mainstream media, that is supposed to play generally the role of incendiary, in this particular regard as a firefighter, unless. . .

Everything begins and falls within the context of the out-of-routine and surprising announcement of the King of Saudi Arabia of the unexpected new Prince of the Crown in the person of his young son Mohammed Bin Salman to be the successor of the King to the throne of Saudi Arabia 21 June 2017 against the claims and expectations of those who had long been considered legitimate successors.

It is also logical, at least in terms of possibilities, that they may have acted in order to restore the legitimate succession in their favor.

Incidentally, I note that the anomaly in the succession of Mohammed Bin Salman to the throne of Saudi Arabia is that in the Middle Ages and Renaissance Italy was called Nepotism.

Subsequently, Trump goes on a state visit to Saudi Arabia on May 20, 2017, and it is conceivable that he had a meeting with Mohammed Bin Salman and that he might have given a free way at least in part to the Prince’s geopolitical project as it is, in return of very substantial business for US companies.

Then, just 10 days later, on May 30, 2017, Mohammed Bin Salman flew to Moscow where he meets Putin where he is supposed to replicate the contents of his previous meeting with Trump as they are, even here to get at least a partial zero osta to his geopolitical project always changing business for companies, this time Russian ones.

Until the purges of November 4, 2017, as I have already said, plotted by Mohammed Bin Salman, I believe, to consolidate his power over the succession to the throne and perhaps also to demand redemption of the kind: your money or your life, everything in view of the realization of his Sunni imperial and theocratic geopolitical project. And here, once described the scale of global magnitude and geopolitical importance of it, and the parallel silent silence that welcomes this project, welcomed by that conspiracy of silence proper of the Mafia system, to which the mainstream media system in the West appears to be aligned. Those who so abdicate the role of journalism watchdog of democracy.

By the way, I think of two of Mussolini’s lapidary phrases that fit into this incredible press silence:

Do not disturb the driver. (then Mussolini, this time Mohammed Bin Salman)

and again:

Here is no talk of high politics and high strategy, you work.

These are mottos, and I would like to emphasize that they were, however, functional to a fascist and autocratic regime like that of Mussolini and not to a system that we would like to be of liberal democracies like ours! Animated by freedom of expression and critical spirit, as it should.

Of course, I know, or at least I imagine what the economic power of Saudi Arabia’s Government, even outside its borders, which, thanks to its weight in the international capital market, obviously is able to secure complete control of global information through the ” self-censorship of all publishers and journalists.

Much more at a time of the decline of the American Empire, which today even tries to outsource its functions of global political and military control by funding its huge trade unbalance just thanks to the Dollar Standard in the rest of the world.

Maximally thanks to the agreement of the President of the United States and of the President of the Russian Federation.

But, as I have already said, this is a question of global democracy for which the journalist is, and must necessarily be, the watchdog of democracy, in the face of the very existence of such a (supposed) democracy.

To return to our historical narrative, in short, so Saudi Arabia, after having supported the guerrilla war in Yemen for years (Shia underlined); Now, and this time in the person of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, officially states he wants to be the leader of a great alliance for the war on terror. As the US has already done since 2001 and how Russia has been doing this for some time.

My suspicion, anyway, is that, beyond any formal and ideal motivation, like the war on terror, Mohammed Bin Salman in fact wants to realize the imperialist project of a Greater Sunni Arabia. As well as it wants to erase Shiite Islamicism anywhere and mainly where it is a majority as in nations like Yemen and, above all, Iran.

As well as erasing Secularism, too, in Arab countries like Syria and Iran (not Arab but in someway secular, too)
in a project that is so imperialist, but also theocratic and absolutist. . .

In the end, I am asking myself also if such a future monolithic uniformed Greater Sunni Arabia Empire in perspective could be more dangerous to the safety of Israel than some smaller, weaker, and divided, differently cultured, Arab countries.

Claudio Resta

Claudio Resta was born in Genoa, Italy in 1958, he is a citizen of the world (Spinoza), a maverick philosopher, an interdisciplinary expert, oh, and an artist, too.

Grew up in a family of scientists where many sciences were represented by philosophy to psychoanalysis, from economics to history, from mathematics to physics, and where these sciences were subject to public display by their subject experts family members, and all those who they were part of could participate in a public family dialogue/debate on these subjects if they so wished.  Read Full Bio

• Latest Articles (2023-Present)
• Archived Articles (2019-2022)