Saudi Arabia

lots of sunshine

Mooted to be buying The Toon off Mike Ashley!

How does dismembering a journalist carry you through fit & proper person checks? Not to mention wahabism & beheadings galore and other assorted human rights abuses.

This is the arrogance, cut up a journalist and dump the body, then you have CNBC  giving them airtime to talk up how well there economy is doing, disgusting

it doesn't rain much.  And they like engerlisch soccerball

Nothing we can do, maybe invade ?

They have all our planes.

Yes, they have to be able to protect themselves from Iran

and they have lots of money

The home of Islam and as anyone knows muslims can do no wrong. It is their belief,not joking,they really do believe their faith prevents them from wrongdoing. Any criticism is purely distortion to attack Islam and they use it to rally support from the faithful.

saudi is indeed a vile desert sh1thole and should be shunned by all right-thinking people, but it is one of many. no state in the region is not a khazi. 100% of the middle east is unspeakably nasty intolerant and undemocratic.

horrible honeypots like dobuy aint much better than saudi, but shakemo allows limited freedoms to slimy ex-pats, as long as they are hidden from view and do not involve themselves in anything other than pocketing tax-free cash employing thai and bangli slave-labour. these miserable helots do everything. the arabs do nothing.

but why is there so little fuss made about other despotic regimes like china? it is a vicious dictatorship that executes more people than any other state. in secret. its murdered millions of its own people,and has slave-labour camps that even saudi does not have. never seen any demand for its ostracism, nor for the even worse north korea, a giant concentration camp that has rockets. the only korean who is not underweight is the obese dictator who murders his own family.

or iran, that beacon of liberty that recently sentenced a woman and her mother to 16(!) years for campaigning against wearing veils. four king hell, that must have been on the front page of the grauniad for a week. what? it wasnt? israel was. and always will be while the morally bankrupt intellectually dishonest psuedo-liberals continue to practise self-deceit on an epic scale.

truth is saudi gets an entirely justified bad press, but if we apply western, liberal standards of respect, democracy, human rights and freedom of expression there are very few qualifiers, and the large majority are in northern europe, north america and aus/nz. saying this probably makes me a white supremacist. mmm

but why do they fight one another

and can the millions killed by in fighting between the sects be blamed on the west

It's just a small thing, but don't watch or bet on sports events in SA. I was posting on an article with comments open of a well known UK paper, and got my comment deleted when I said the Spanish super cup games shouldn't be played there and to boycott sport in SA.

There is one democracy in the ME grappler.

well aware of that hank. but i didnt put it in, aside from an oblique reference because the wanchors that make up this audience immediately jump to the wrong conclusions at the mention of it, such is their reliance on received opinion

Why do we tolerate this vile state
I hope one day we will move on from deciding whether we should tolerate or not tolerate a foreign country. How about its none of our business what those waenkers are up to?

I think every European country would kill right now to have immigration laws like Saudia has. I believe its the same in the whole of Middle East. You don't get a passport even if you're born there. No right to stay permanently. Foreign workers need to hand over their passports to govt officers to be allowed to start work. They have it right.

Iran still hangs rape offenders publicly. Don't tell me you wouldn't want that in Britain.

I say let them live the way they want to live.

Historically, I read that Saud family was american supported back in the 30s(but this was a conspiracy theory article so not sure how true it is). Their love affair with america does support that thesis though. Britain becomes a saudi friend by default(america says so). The rest of Europe has to go along. Top 5 weapons exporters to Saudia are America, UK, France, Germany, Spain. We don't just tolerate them, we actively fund them, for whatever reason. I don't even know where they use these weapons.

Well, they are certainly getting some use of them in Yemen.

This is the only country where I detest vehemently the presence of a vast amount of oil. The ruler are/were obnoxious, backward and old-fashioned and dictatorial; the people lazy as hell; wealth wasted on vanity; etc.

Maybe global warming/climate change and alternative energy in the future will see the eclipse of this vile state in the Gulf.

As a foreigner you also cannot stay for more than 6 years in the country, no matter what your occupation.

It is such a delight reading their laws. We could really use their immigration laws.

What would have happened in the Middle East if Saddam Hussein had been allowed to annex Kuwait without the retaliation of Bush and Blair? The Kuwaitis rulers did not hang around long; loaded up their jumbo jets with gold and cash and scuppered soon after. Self-preservation preceded all others.

As a consequence many other states in the Middle East eg Iraq, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Syria, etc, had suffered and are still paying the price.

cor what a wanchor this traveller person is, although i suspect hes not from ratoath. i think you are of a different stripe altogether.

europe would 'kill' for laws like saudi has? dont fink so fatty. 'they have it right'. no passport, even if born there? 'foreign'. i.e all workers, as the locals dont do any, have to hand over their passports . no. only the banglis and thais suffer this indignity. westerners dont. vicious apartheid-style racism for which every arab state is renowned.

i doubt anyone in britain wants to bring back public execution. problem with your example is that iran doesnt just hang rapists, but unmarried mothers and homosexuals. and locks up women for 16 years for not wearing a veil. what a great place! 

i like this; 'let them live the way they want to live' live is an unfortunate term, given the amount of death involved. but they dont. they all want to scarper, to escape the very laws you espouse, and are horribly repressed by theocratic maniacs. all 'islamic' lands would be empty if the people could escape. they are all a human disaster, and you feeble attempts at justifying their vileness is nauseating.

i know. calm down.

I don't support any of their laws. Nor am I justifying any of their atrocities. But at the same time I would not worry about whatever they are doing in their own countries. We will never be able to repair them as any attempt to do so will be seen by them as taking over of their culture by the west. I have always said we need to isolate ourselves from them. Maybe in Britain the colonial past is what makes you think that like the OP, you somehow need to 'tolerate' or 'not tolerate' other countries. But we really don't need to give any fks at all.

You have to have some 'friends' in the area.
It's just good foreign policy, especially if you can make a few quid out of them too.

If it was up to me I'd level the whole lot but diplomacy is needed across this fractious world of ours.