The great investigative journalist Andrew Cockburn, in the January 2016 issue of Harpers Magazine, has come forth with what may be the best public-affairs article I’ve ever seen (it’s at that link), because he has interviewed key individuals in the U.S. government's CIA and other intelligence agencies, some of whom he even identifies by name (i.e., they’re retired), and all of whom provide different details of the very same stunning huge story, a story that I have been reporting only in bits and pieces over the past year, but for which Cockburn offers an astounding amount of fuller and entirely new documentation — it blows everything else away. 

To boil it all down (which he sadly doesn’t): The fundamentalist-Sunni royal family of the Sauds have bought the highest levels of the U.S. government in order to control U.S. foreign policies, especially the ongoing wars to take down the governments of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and ultimately (they hope) of Russia itself, which latter nation has allied itself instead with Shiia countries. The controlling entities behind American foreign policies since at least the late 1970s have been the Saud family and the Sauds’ subordinate Arabic aristocracies, which are the ones in Qatar (the al-Thanis), Kuwait (the al-Sabahs), Turkey (the Tuktic Erdoğans, a new royalty), and UAE (its six royal families: the main one, the al-Nahyans in Abu Dhabi; the other five: the al-Maktoums in Dubai, al-Qasimis in Sharjah, al-Nuaimis in Ajman, al-Mualla Ums in Quwain, and al-Sharqis in Fujairah). Other Saudi-dominated nations — though they’re not oil-rich (more like Turkey in this regard) — are Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On December 15th, the Sauds formed their own Sunni-Islamic version of the American aristocracy’s NATO; and, though it shares one existing member with the 28-member NATO military alliance, which is Turkey, the other 34+ nations in it are, like the Sauds’ Kingdom itself, ruled by Wahhabist-Salafist leaders, and are likewise vigorously against both Russia and Shiite-led countries — just as NATO itself also is. 

Cockburn mentions by name only the al-Sauds, but he documents the cooperation of the other Kingdoms in the ringleading Sauds’ fundamentalist-Sunni plan, for, essentially, a Saud Caliphate, which dream had actually started when Muhammad Ibn Saud and Muhammad Ibn Wahhab in the year 1744 swore their mutual oaths to one-another that started Saudi Arabia: Saud’s descendants would be authorized by Wahhab’s clerics to be approved by God to rule, in return for which the Sauds would impose upon their subjects the Wahhabist-Salafist version of Islam, and would allow the Wahhabist clerics to make the country’s laws, with the approval of (and enforcement by) the Sauds. It’s the traditional deal between a nation’s aristocrats and its clergy, but superpowered in the Sauds’ case with ‘god’s’ gift of oil, and America’s commitment of weapons (which is an endless boon to America’s weapons industry).

As I have documented previously, the bookkeeper for Al Qaeda, who also was their traveling bagman who personally collected in cash each one of the many multi-million-dollar donations to al-Qaeda, has testified in stunning detail, under oath (not merely as the interviewee of some journalist), regarding the identities of the chief funders of al-Qaeda; and, he said, to summarize, that, “Without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing”; but, even Hillary Clinton, in a much quoted 2009 wikileaked cable telling America’s Ambassadors what to say to the Islamic-nation rulers (quoted from also by Cockburn), mentioned this Saudi problem, when she addressed the issue indirectly to the Sauds, via the U.S. Saudi Ambassador:

While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) takes seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.  Due in part to intense focus by the USG over the last several years, Saudi Arabia has begun to make important progress on this front and has responded to terrorist financing concerns raised by the United States through proactively investigating and detaining financial facilitators of concern.  Still, donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide. … In contrast to its increasingly aggressive efforts to disrupt al-Qa'ida's access to funding from Saudi sources, Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT-groups that are also aligned with al-Qa'ida and focused on undermining stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

So: we know that al-Qaeda was an operation financed chiefly by the Saud family not only pre-9/11, but until at least 2009.

She went on to request, almost to plead with them:

We would like to stress our interest in broadening and deepening this dialogue and information exchange as we still lack detailed information on the ultimate sources of terrorist financing emanating from the Kingdom.

No sanctions against them were threatened: a subordinate doesn’t threaten his (or her) master.

She also requested their:

cutting off the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia to foreign religious, charitable, and educational organizations that propagate violent extremist ideologies to vulnerable populations. 

She went on also to mention, regarding Kuwait (whose Sabah family are ruling there only because the Sauds want them to):

the specific activities of terrorist financiers in country, Kuwaiti charities financing terrorism abroad, and Kuwait's lack of a comprehensive anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime. … Al-Qa'ida and other groups continue to exploit Kuwait both as a source of funds and as a key transit point. … A particular point of difference between the U.S. and Kuwait concerns Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS). In June 2008 the USG domestically designated all RIHS offices RIHS under Executive Order 13224 for providing financial and material support to al-Qa'ida and UN 1267-listed al-Qa'ida affiliates, including Lashkar e-Tayyiba, Jemaah Islamiyah, and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya.

To Kuwait's Sabahs themselves, she said:

We remain concerned that the continued absence of counterterrorism legislation criminalizing terrorist financing will continue to prevent effective counterterrorist efforts.

She noted regarding Qatar:

Qatar has adopted a largely passive approach to cooperating with the U.S. against terrorist financing. Qatar's overall level of CT cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region.

However, she said nothing at all to the rulers, the Thanis, themselves.

To UAE’s Nahyans, she concluded by saying:

We urge your government to strengthen its regulatory and enforcement regime to interdict cash couriers transiting major airports. 

To Pakistan’s rulers, she said:

We urge your government to support the international community's efforts to combat terrorist financing. … We urge your government to comply with UN and domestic legal obligations to enforce sanctions on the Pakistan-based, UN-proscribed NGOs al Rashid Trust and al Akhtar Trust, and all successor organizations that continue to funnel money and provide other forms of support to the Taliban and LeT. … We emphasize that social services provided by NGO extremist organizations, such as Jamaat-ud Dawa (JUD) challenge the legitimacy of your government to provide for its people.

The clergy in all of those countries are mainly Wahhabist, which outside Saudi Arabia is instead called Salafist. This is the fundamentalist wing of Sunni Islam, and it is rabidly anti-Shiite. It dominates not only Arabia but also Pakistan and Afghanistan; it’s the jihadist wing of Islam, the wing that promotes restoring the “Caliphate” or Islamic Empire.

Secretary of State Clinton had nothing to say in this cable, to Shiite-dominant countries, such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria, nor to Bahrain which is Sunni-ruled, by the Salafist al-Khalifa family, who continue to rule their majority-Shiite population only because in 2011, U.S. weapons and Saudi soldiers slaughtered opponents of the regime. Here was the never-telecast U.S. news-report about that, and here is an interview with its reporter, who was fired and blackballed from U.S. media for having tried to report it. (A youtube news-medium, Vice News, wasn’t as corrupt: they allowed their report to run.)

So, it’s remarkable that Andrew Cockburn is able to get his extraordinarily honest article published in a mainstream American news-medium. Perhaps Harpers  Magazine is suddenly testing the limits of what the U.S. aristocracy will tolerate to be published. But whatever the reason is, it’s to be welcomed, and applauded. 

The only scientific study that has yet been done of whether or not the U.S. is a democraacy or instead a dictatorship found that it’s a dictatorship; and now the international extension of that dictatorship, if not the chief figures in this dictatorship (if America’s aristocracy actually is subordinate to the Sauds), can be more clearly understood. But, perhaps, one can safely say that the alliance between the U.S. aristocracy and the royal Sauds, is emerging as a global dictatorship, a dictatorial type of world government. Because, clearly: those two aristocraciues have been, to a large extent, ruling the world together, for several decades now. From their perspective, jihadists are themselves a weapon, not merely a political nuisance.

This is a more realistic explanation of America’s decades-long catastrophic failures to make significant progress in eliminating even a single one of the numerous jihadist groups around the world: that’s how things have been planned to be. It’s not just ‘intelligence errors’ or ‘not being tough enough.’ Those ‘explanations’ are just cover-stories, propaganda, PR from the aristocrats. It’s skillful ‘crowd control’: keeping the people in their ‘proper’ places.

Listening to America’s Presidential campaign ‘debates’ in this light enables a viewer to understand better the pressures upon each one of the candidates — and upon the moderators who ask the questions, and who don’t ask the follow-up questions that will expose the lies in the answers. It’s not merely a contest between the candidates; it is all part of a collective war by the aristocracy against the public, to keep them in their ‘proper’ places.