Saudi Arabia

[sne]

 

[Ingram85]

**** Saudi Arabia. 

[foreveryoung]

I hope there's some professionals asking the questions in all this. It could get sour very quickly with the goodies vs the baddies.

[Chindie]

I'm sure China will happily sell them bombs to continue wiping out Yemen as well. Might take the strain off BAE.

[chrisp65]

With friends like these, who needs enemies.

[HanoiVillan]

  

On 13/03/2022 at 09:00, LondonLax said:

When Biden was ringing around to find sources of oil to replace Russian oil and help lower petrol prices apparently bin Salman wouldn’t even answer the phone to him

 

4 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

With friends like these, who needs enemies.

It's genuinely pretty galling. 'We' provide them with endless weaponry for them to pursue an incredibly destructive, pointless and inhumane war on a poverty-stricken neighbour *and* provide them diplomatic cover so nobody can ever ask any questions *and* place them at the heart of our strategy for regional stability for decades on end. And the thanks 'we' get is they won't even turn the **** taps on the one time we desperately need it, because apparently he's got the huff that Biden criticised them on the campaign trail.

I am once again begging America to act like the global hegemon it actually is and bully them into submission. But no, that'll never happen, too many people in Washington living high on the hog on Saudi cash in one way or another, from 'think tank experts' to defense contractors.

[HanoiVillan]

we have ways of making you race . . .

 

[Chindie]

We have ways of... dismembering you.

[Genie]

Who’d have thought selling their souls to the devil could have repercussions?

[chrisp65]

Downforce, in car cameras, pit stops, bone saws. All equally important in F1.

[sne]

Quote

Saudi Arabia's petro-dollar exit: A global finance paradigm shift

The financial world is bracing for a significant upheaval following Saudi Arabia's decision not to renew its 50-year petro-dollar deal with the United States, which expired on Sunday, 9 June, 2024.

 

he crucial decision to not renew the contract enables Saudi Arabia to sell oil and other goods in multiple currencies, including the Chinese RMB, Euros, Yen, and Yuan, instead of exclusively in US dollars. Additionally, the potential use of digital currencies like Bitcoin may also be considered.

This latest development signifies a major shift away from the petrodollar system established in 1972, when the US decoupled its currency from gold, and is anticipated to hasten the global shift away from the US dollar.

Cross-border CBDC transactions

In a more recent move, Saudi Arabia has announced its involvement in Project mBridge, a project which explores a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform shared among participating central banks and commercial banks. It is built on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to enable instant cross-border payments settlements, and foreign-exchange transactions.

The project has more than 26 observing members including the South African Reserve Bank, which was greenlighted as a member this month.

The better known observing members of mBridge are those of the Bank of Israel, Bank of Namibia, Bank of France, Central Bank of Bahrain, Central Bank of Egypt, Central Bank of Jordan, European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the World Bank.

In tandem, the project steering committee has created a bespoke governance and legal framework, including a rulebook, tailored to match the platform's unique decentralised nature.

https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/saudi-arabias-petro-dollar-exit-a-global-finance-paradigm-shift-670911a#:~:text=The financial world is bracing,Sunday%2C 9 June%2C 2024

[sne]

Quote

 The Biden administration is close to finalizing a treaty with Saudi Arabia that would commit the U.S. to help defend the Gulf nation as part of a deal aimed at encouraging diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing U.S. and Saudi officials.

The possible deal, widely telegraphed by U.S. and other officials for weeks, is part of a wider package that would include a U.S.-Saudi civil nuclear pact, steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state and an end to the war in Gaza, where months of ceasefire efforts have failed to bring peace.

 

Approval of the treaty, which the WSJ said would be known as the Strategic Alliance Agreement, would require a two-thirds majority vote in the U.S. Senate, a threshold that would be difficult to achieve unless the treaty were tied to Israeli-Saudi normalization.

The draft treaty is modeled loosely on Washington's mutual security pact with Japan, the newspaper cited U.S. and Saudi officials as saying.

 

In exchange for the U.S. commitment to help defend Saudi Arabia if it were attacked, the draft treaty would grant Washington access to Saudi territory and airspace to protect U.S. interests and regional partners, the newspaper reported.

It is also intended to bind Riyadh closer to Washington by prohibiting China from building bases in the kingdom or pursuing security cooperation with Riyadh, the WSJ quoted officials as saying.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-saudi-arabia-close-finalizing-draft-security-treaty-wsj-reports-2024-06-09/

[bielesibub]