Saudi billionaire eyes new links with News Corp.

By TAREK EL-TABLAWY

The Saudi billionaire whose investment firm is one of the biggest stakeholders in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. said he is looking to expand his alliances with the media giant, in the latest indication that his appetite for growth remains robust even as his company retrenches.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king and who was listed last year by Forbes as the world's 22nd richest person, met with News Corp.'s chief executive Rupert Murdoch on Jan. 14 in a meeting that "touched upon future potential alliances with News Corp.," according to a statement released by his Kingdom Holding Co. late Saturday.

Media reports have indicated that News Corp, parent to Fox News and Dow Jones & Co., among others, may be thinking of buying a stake in Alwaleed's Rotana Media Group, which includes a number of satellite channels that air in the Middle East.

Neither company has commented publicly on the possible deal, but the talks offer an indication yet that such an agreement may yet be in the offing.

Kingdom Holding's statement said Alwaleed is already the second largest stakeholder in News Corp., with 5.7 percent of the shares of the media company. The stake is held through Kingdom Holding, in which Alwaleed holds a 95 percent stake.

The investment company has a diverse portfolio, ranging from hotels to shares in Apple, eBay and Citigroup.

Alwaleed, and the investment firm, were hit hard by the global meltdown.

He has since focused on shoring up borrowing power, in part through a recent decision to transfer 180 million of his shares in Citigroup to Kingdom Holding. In a statement last week, he described the move - valued at about $600 million - as key to facilitating future borrowing and growth.

The Saudi royal also met last week with Citigroup's chief executive Vikram Pandit, according to a statement by Kingdom Holding e-mailed Sunday.

Alwaleed told Pandit that the "honeymoon is now over," a clear indication that one of the banking giant's largest investors wants solid results this year, according to a transcript of an interview that aired Thursday on Fox Business News.

"I told him that clearly the market gave you two years leeway, but I think now it's time to deliver," Alwaleed said. "And 2010 is really for him is year to make it or break it, and he has to deliver. "

Alwaleed raised his stake in Citigroup to 5 percent in late 2008 from less than 4 percent in a move that came as the company was facing a possible collapse. Kingdom Holding says Alwaleed is the single largest shareholder in Citigroup.

Citigroup has repaid the money it borrowed from the U.S. government during the financial crisis, but still faces a new fee to be levied on banks by the Obama administration to recoup $120 billion in taxpayer money used to support faltering companies.

Alwaleed said he was opposed to the move, arguing that "I believe taxing the banks right now is not the right time at all."

"It's like you have a patient just coming out of ICU, intensive care unit, and all of sudden bang him with another tax. I think it's too much, it's too early for that if it's going to have that happen," he said, according to the transcript.

The $120 billion recovery goal is the most that administration officials expect to lose from the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program that bailed out banks, automakers and other financial firms.

Alwaleed's Rotana already has an alliance with News Corp.

In 2008, the two companies teamed up to bring Fox Movies to the Arab world and then last year, Rotana and Fox International Channels signed a multi-year output deal with The Walt Disney Co. to provide a range of programing to viewers in the Middle East, according to the statement by Kingdom Holding.

Alwaleed has also been meeting with officials in Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich emirate that recently bailed out Dubai, its glitzy neighbor awash in debt.

A statement by Kingdom Holding said the Saudi royal met with senior officials in Abu Dhabi, which holds the presidency of the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven semiautonomous city-states.

Abu Dhabi's largest sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, alleges "fraudulent misrepresentations" by Citigroup over the fund's $7.5 billion investment in the banking giant. ADIA has said it is seeking compensation or an exit from the deal.

KansasCity.com

Fort Hood and the Academic Apologists

by Cinnamon Stillwell

In the wake of the horrific attack at the Fort Hood military base in Texas earlier this month, and the mounting evidence that the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated by Islamist beliefs, the media has turned to Middle East studies "experts" for enlightenment.

Instead, what the media, and, by extension, the American public, has received are the moral relativism and obfuscation that too often meet any effort to address Islamism or jihadism in an intellectually honest manner.

Writing for the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, John Esposito, professor and founding director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, extends his long tradition of issuing apologias for radical Islam by conflating Hasan's actions with "extremists" of all religions.

In the process, he professes ignorance as to why there might be suspicion directed towards Islam in the wake of 9/11, the worst Islamic terrorist attack in U.S. history:

Why this common tendency and double standard towards Islam and Muslims post-9/11? We judge the religion and majority of mainstream Muslims by the acts of an individual or an aberrant minority of extremists.

Yet, when Jewish fundamentalists kill a prime minister or innocent Palestinians or Christian extremists blow up abortion clinics or assassinate their physicians, somehow the media is capable of sticking to all the facts and distinguishing between the use and abuse of a religion.

Having written this post while news of Hasan's fanatical leanings and possible terrorist connections was still developing, Esposito warns against a "rush to judgment" that might, as he puts it, "negatively impact the American public's perception of Islam."

Heaven forbid Americans start to suspect that Islam itself contains the seeds for Islamism. Contrary to popular belief, this awareness need not implicate all Muslims. Rather, it asks the faithful to address Islamist violence and aggression by implementing theological and cultural reform.

Esposito continues the moral equivalency and non sequiturs in a later "On Faith" post:

No major faith, including the five major world religions I have studied and taught, threatens the safety and security of the U.S. or its citizens. Religious extremists of any faith are a threat but they should be treated as any other extremists, religious or non-religious.

Yes -- but the 14, 374 terrorist attacks worldwide over the past eight years weren't perpetrated at random by members of diverse world religions. They were executed by radical Muslims, every one.

Ingrid Mattson, professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, director of the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary, and president of the Islamic Society of North America, is well-known for expressing her own Islamist sympathies. This may be why, in a November 8, 2009 New York Times article, Mattson made this clumsy attempt at obfuscation:

I don't understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him. The Army has had at least as much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as the Muslim community.

Arguing that the U.S. military was responsible for cultivating Hasan's Islamist beliefs is laughable.

So is the idea that the Muslim-American community bears no responsibility. After all, the "community" includes radical clerics such as Anwar Al-Awlaki, the former spiritual leader of the Virginia mosque Hasan attended (and who has since praised Hasan for the attack), along with organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose sole purpose is to intimidate into silence anyone who connects Islamic terrorism with Islam.

Read more,,,,

Source: Middle East Forum

Tony Blair cashes in on contacts

The 'statesman for hire' earns a fortune as he flips roles between public official and private consultant, writes Jon Ungoed-Thomas

TONY Blair has cashed in on his contacts from the Iraq war and his role as Middle East peace envoy for a private business venture expected to earn him more than pound stg. 5 million ($8.9m) a year.

The former British prime minister has sold his political and economic expertise to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, via his fledgling private consultancy. He also represents the investment bank JPMorgan in the region.

Mr Blair has been working pro bono in the Middle East as a peace envoy while amassing a fortune from the US lecture circuit. By offering himself to the Arab states as a statesman for hire, he could double his annual earnings.

His consultancy, the London-based Tony Blair Associates, emulates the New York partnership Kissinger Associates, founded by Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser to US president Richard Nixon.

A friend of Mr Blair said: "TBA has been set up to make money from foreign governments and major companies. There's a focus on the Middle East, because that's where the money is."

His expanding business interests as he roves across the Middle East mean he flips his roles on a daily basis in official meetings. One hour he is the official peace envoy meeting a Middle East minister or ruler, the next he is a representative of TBA or JPMorgan.

In some meetings with Arab states, where Mr Blair is introduced as the peace envoy, he has been flanked by Jonathan Powell, his former chief of staff, who accepted a job with Morgan Stanley, another US investment bank, after leaving Downing Street. Mr Powell has no role in the peace process, but is a senior adviser to TBA and helps to win business in the Middle East.

Peter Brierley, 59, from Batley, West Yorkshire, whose son Shaun, 28, was killed near the Kuwait-Iraq border in March 2003 and who refused to shake Mr Blair's hand at a memorial service this month, said: "This beggars belief.

"It's absolutely scandalous that he's now trying to make money from his contacts in the region. It's money from the blood and lives of the soldiers who died in Iraq."

Hours after he stepped down from No10 in June 2007, Mr Blair became the Middle East envoy, on behalf of the European Union, the UN, US and Russia. Four months after leaving office, Blair signed a pound stg. 5m book deal with Random House. He is working on his memoirs, which are pencilled in for publication this time next year.

His fees for talks, along with contracts with JPMorgan and Zurich Financial Services, are estimated to put his earnings -- excluding the book deal -- well in excess of pound stg. 5m a year.

TBA's annual earnings in the Middle East alone could be expected easily to double his current income, according to business sources in the region.

Mr Blair disclosed last December that he had formed TBA to advise on "political and economic trends and governmental reform". One of his first recruits was Mr Powell.

On January 17, Blair was in Saudi Arabia in his peace envoy role to hold talks with King Abdullah on the Gaza strip and the need to end Israeli aggression. Mr Powell was also on the trip. Two days later, Mr Blair and Mr Powell met the nephew of the king, Prince Alwaleed, the wealthiest businessman in the Middle East, with a fortune of more than $26 billion.

Read more here,,,,

Source: The Australian

Saudi Arabia Moves Backward

July 22 by Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
Executive Director, Center for Islamic Pluralism

Since his accession to the throne in 2005, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abd Al-Aziz has been viewed hopefully, by many Muslims, as a reformer. With wide contacts in the kingdom, we at CIP shared this optimism.

Abdullah encouraged a positive vision of the Saudi future by, among other actions, creating a department of women’s education, headedby a woman. He had supported an interfaith meeting between representatives of all the world religions in Madrid last year, and although it accomplished nothing important, it represented a breakthrough in that Muslims had never before sat down with representatives of the Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, and Shinto communities, on an equal footing.

Finally and most importantly, Abdullah had taken steps to curb the notorious mutawiyin, usually mislabeled a “religious police” by foreign observers, and to make them accountable for their frequent abuse of ordinary people. In reality, the mutawiyin are not a police agency, but a paramilitary body similar to the Iranian Basij who spy on citizens in totalitarian countries like Cuba and China.

The mutawiyin patrol the Saudi streets to enforce the rigid pseudo-moralistic habits prescribed by Wahhabism, the Saudi state religion. They accost couples they suspect of being unmarried; they arrest women who drive vehicles, and beat, with leather-covered sticks, women who allow a thin margin of the abaya, a garment covering the whole body, to slip, exposing an ankle; they harass vendors of allegedly heretical or subversive books; they raid homes where they suspect liquor is consumed; they walk the streets of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, preventing Shia and Sufi pilgrims from engaging in prayers of which the Wahhabis disapprove… and they kill people.

Limiting the activities of the mutawiyin, and even abolishing the institution altogether, was long seen by progressive Saudis and forward-looking Muslims around the world as a necessary first step for the kingdom to become something approximating a rationally-governed state.

Although few reform-minded Saudis imagined the country could suddenly leap from the reactionary utopia of Wahhabism to Western democracy, many hoped that Saudi Arabia could become more like the zone that Saudis call “the crescent of normality” - those countries from Kuwait to Yemen in which non-Wahhabi Muslims, as well as Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist expatriates and immigrant workers (and in Bahrain and Yemen, a few Jews) where people are allowed religious freedom; women are prominent in various professions, dress as they wish, and can drive cars; and other freedoms can be taken for granted.

But in March 2009 the Saudi clock began running backward. Prince Nayef bin Abd Al-Aziz, half brother of Abdullah and interior minister, became second deputy prime minister. Read more here ...

Source: Hudson New York

Saudi film festival is cancelled in state crackdown on culture

By Souhail Karam, Reuters, in Riyadh | 20 July

Saudi Arabia's only film festival has been cancelled, dealing a blow to reformist hopes of an easing of clerical control over culture that was raised by the low-key return of cinemas in December.

In a country where cinemas were banned for almost three decades, the Jeddah Film Festival has since 2006 presented aspiring Saudi film-makers and actors with a rare opportunity to mingle with more experienced peers from other countries. On the eve of the festival, Mamdouh Salem, one of the festival's organisers, received a call. He said: "The governorate of Jeddah notified us of the festival's cancellation after it received instructions from official parties. We were not told why."

Abdullah al-Alami, a Saudi writer, said he was not sure why the fourth Jeddah festival, expected to start in the Islamic kingdom's most liberal city this weekend, was cancelled.

"However, there is a trend of attacking cultural festivities," he added. "This is a dark day for art and literature in our modern history." King Abdullah has tried cautious reforms in the kingdom, a US ally which has no elected parliament, but diplomats say he is facing resistance from conservatives opposing changes.

Many Saudi religious conservatives believe films from more liberal Arab countries such as Egypt could violate religious taboos. Some also view cinema and acting as a form of dissembling inconsistent with Islam.

"The film festival was cancelled upon indirect instructions from the interior ministry," said an official at the information and culture ministry.

Cinema made a low-key return in December with the showing in Jeddah and another southern city of the Saudi comedy Menahi. The film, produced by a company owned by King Abdullah's nephew, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, attracted such large numbers that it had to be screened up to eight times a day. It was shown before mixed audiences, a rare thing to happen in a country that bans unrelated men and women from mixing.

But there was a sharp reaction from Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the former head of the kingdom's religious police, which showed the opposition from hard-liners to efforts to open up the society. He said cinema was an evil, although he eased his tone 24 hours later to say cinemas should show good things and not violate teachings of Islam.

In February, King Abdullah removed Mr Ghaith and another influential cleric in a wide government reshuffle. However, when the film came to the the more conservative capital, Riyadh, local newspapers reported that conservative Saudis, including volunteers with the religious police, tried to disturb the screening. The Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, later signalled his backing for the religious police saying they were on a par with the security forces.

Prince Alwaleeed was undettered. His company, Rotana, boldly put itself up as the main sponsor of the Jeddah festival, donating proceeds from his film.

The week-long festival was to have featured a competition between eight feature films made in the Gulf – two from Saudi Arabia itself – and show dozens more shorts by local and regional film-makers.

Source: The Independent