“This investigation, if it had it gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations in investigations being made into the Saudi royal family,” Blair said at a meeting of the Group of Eight nations in Germany.
He added that, “My job is to give advice as to whether that is a sensible thing in circumstances where I don’t believe the investigation incidentally would have led anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship for our country. . . . Quite apart from the fact that we would have lost thousands, thousands of British jobs.”
This a week after Tony Blair heaps praise on the regime of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya as a major oil deal is signed with BP.
Corruption, the Arab world’s number one export. In fact when you think about it, between the Arabs’ petrodollars and the Israelis’ various mafias (diamonds, ecstasy, weapons, etc.), this region is probably the world’s nexus of sleaze.
Update: This story has more details on the Bandar-BAe-Blair scandal. And a note: sharmouta is Arabic slang for slut or whore.
So few people realize how close Israelis and Arabs really are, for better and worse.
But Israel’s worst export is trance music. I believe at some point in the 90s some huge majority of international trance DJs were Israeli? Ecstasy and gun-running I can understand and deal with. But bad techno?
It must be that philo-germanism. There’s a Hebrew word for it, I forget it, it was quite common among the first two generations of Zionists in Israel and was even seen as slightly suspicious by the Sabras. But while a lot of the influence of high, mostly German, “Mittel Europ” culture is positive (look at the many great Israeli classical music composers and musicians) I suppose bad techno is the price being paid by the younger generation.
Or maybe it’s just that post-military service drugs and partying subculture…