One sometimes wonders if one has woken up in a psychedelic 'Alice in Wonderland'-type world, where a mad queen shouts "Off with the head!" at anyone daring to criticise her.

Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland
You are excused if you are feeling a little schophrenic over our Western leaders' utterings of late. It is a sign of a good mental health in the bizarro world that we currently inhabit.
Just two weeks after the Paris shooting, where 40 Western heads of states gathered to 'march for freedom of speech' and formed a 'coalition of the willing' to fight the 'Islamic State', the ruler of Saudi Arabia (the REAL Islamic State!), King Abdullah Al Saud, died at the age of 90. Considering that he effectively has ruled this Arabian country for 20 years since his half-brother had a stroke, and given the things I will outline shortly, one would think that the Western media would be overjoyed at his passing, and see it as another opportunity to 'democratize the Middle East'. I mean, they seem to really enjoy watching Arabian leaders being lynched, e.g. Colonel Gaddafi's death at the hands of Western-sponsored goons was greeted by Hillary Clinton with the upbeat words: "We came, we saw, he died!"

But no, Western media lamented the death of this "great leader and reformist". The British queen was "saddened" by his death, the flag at Whitehall in Britain was lowered to half-mast, and as I write leaders from across the Empire of Chaos - including Obama, Cameron, Hollande, the prince of Wales, and the crown prince of Denmark - are flocking to Saudi Arabia to pay their last respects. John Kerry tweeted that Abdullah was "a man of wisdom and vision". Joan Smith in an excellent opinion piece in the Independent wrote in response to the drivel coming from head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde:
So what the hell was the IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, thinking about when she described Abdullah as a "strong advocate of women"? She did add "in a very discreet way".
Yes, you can say that again!

CNN wrote in their piece on his death:
Most Saudis will remember him fondly.
One can rightfully ask, on what basis did they make such a statement?

As mentioned above, King Abdullah was at the helm for 20 years, enough time for any leader to have real effect in a country, and thus criticism is justified. Take a look at the following policies and see if you would qualify any of them as coming from a 'visionary' and 'reformist', in line with the values that the West allegedly fights to defend:
  • Wahhabism is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. It supports the ruling dynasty and the dynasty supports Wahhabism. This is a 'holy alliance' that was put into power in an orgy of murder by the British when they betrayed Sherif Hussein and the Arab Revolt against the Turkish Ottoman Empire after WW1. Thus the state religion is Wahhabism, an aberrant and extreme form of Islam that is a minority sect and is in no way representative of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims. Sharia law applies, women are to be completely veiled, and a strict adherence to the Wahhabi version of Islam rules the kingdom.
  • Wahhabism is also the religion of 'Islamic State'. Saudi Arabia has been the key supporter of ISIS, who, not surprisingly, have the same liking for misogyny, beheadings, floggings, car-bombs, and rule by violence and terror.
  • Saudi Arabia has been hell-bent on regime change in Syria, arming and training all kinds of terror groups for this purpose. This has been coordinated with Western governments and Israel. Saudi clerics have been actively recruiting 'believers', including prisoners on death-row that are pardoned if they agree to help remove the 'apostate' Bashar Al-Assad and cleanse Syria of ordinary Muslims.
  • Saudi Arabia has funded thousands of radical religious schools, madrassas, all over the world. These venues - from the Maghreb to Indonesia - have provided ample cannon-fodder through which the Empire of Chaos raised dozens of proxy armies to secure its hegemony. As Vali Nasr, an authority on Islamic fundamentalism, wrote:
    ... In order to have terrorists, in order to have supporters for terrorists, in order to have people who are willing to interpret religion in violent ways, in order to have people who are willing to legitimate crashing yourself into a building and killing 5,000 innocent people, you need particular interpretations of Islam.

    Those interpretations of Islam are being propagated out of schools that receive organizational and financial funding from Saudi Arabia. In fact, I would push it further: that these schools would not have existed without Saudi funding. They would not have proliferated across Pakistan and India and Afghanistan without Saudi funding. They would not have had the kind of prowess that they have without Saudi funding, and they would not have trained as many people without Saudi funding.
  • Beheadings are common practice in Saudi Arabia, and happens every fourth day, on average.
  • Free speech is non-existent. A blogger, Raif Badawi, who crossed the line in an article he recently published, was sentenced to '1,000 lashes of the whip', which is being administered at 50 lashes per week. In a show of 'leniency', the Saudi court allowed the second scheduled weekly flogging to be postponed because the wounds from his first flogging had not yet sufficiently healed.
  • In 2011, Saudi Arabia sent its military into Bahrain to quell an uprising, where the ruling Al-Khalifa clan were being challenged by people wanting reform and democracy. Bahrain is home to the US fifth fleet, so a compliant dictator helps minimize costs from bringing in your own 'boots on the ground'.
  • Saudi Arabia has brutally suppressed dissidents in the Kingdom, especially in the Qatif province.
  • Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, the only country on Earth where this is the case. Two women who defied the ban are currently on trial.
  • Apostasy - having and expressing beliefs contrary to the medieval tenets espoused under Wahabbism - is punishable by death. See blasphemy laws in Saudi Arabia.
  • Torture is routinely used in the Kingdom.
  • Gay rights... What gay rights?
  • The king, who Christine Lagarde called "a strong advocate of women" has kept at least two of his daughters under house arrest for the last 13 years. As the article about this affair says:
    Under Saudi law, girls and women are forbidden from travelling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without the express permission of their male guardians.

    Sahar said that the sisters had enjoyed a pampered adolescence but that animosity towards her and her sisters had grown after they began to complain to their father about the poverty endured by most of the Saudi people.

    Some of the young princes had also criticised them because of their party-loving lifestyle.

    'We slowly watch each other fading away into nothingness'

    But it was in the late Nineties that matters came to a head when Hala, who has a degree in psychology, complained that the regime's political opponents were being locked up in the psychiatric wards of the hospital where she worked.
  • Remember 9/11? 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were Saudi nationals. Assuming Western governments believe this to be true, isn't it a mite strange that there were absolutely no negative repercussions for Saudi Arabia? No sanctions, no condemnation, no carpet-bombing, no occupation, nothing. Had the hijackers been Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, North Korean, Venezuelan or Russian, do you think Uncle Sam would have turned a blind eye?
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Ideological brothers? Prince Charles dresses up in Arab garb on a visit to the real Islamic State.

Saudi Arabia under the rule of Abdullah and the House of Saud has been the most autocratic, 'Islamist', backwards country in the Middle East. And the primary regional sponsor of 'Islamic' terrorism. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has played an important role in orchestrating regime change in a number of Muslim countries, and even in other parts of the world with Muslim populations (the KLA in Kosovo, for example, or the Chechnyan terrorists in the Caucasus). Saudi Arabia fuelled the West's demonization of Islam. The Wahhabi religion and its many splinter groups divide the Muslim world and pit Muslims against Muslims, Shia against Sunni, moderate against intolerant. It has been the red rag the West holds up to justify its demonization of all Muslims and its imperial conquest of the Middle East and the wider Muslim world.

I don't blame you if your head is spinning from the sight of Western leaders lamenting the loss of a 'great' leader like Abdullah Saud. There is nothing positive to say about Abdullah and the putrid kingdom he led. Remember, every fourth day, on average, the regime that Abdullah presided over screams "Off with his head"...