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Home / Politics

Brian Rudman: Welcome to 'lickspittles to foreign dictators' club

Brian Rudman
By Brian Rudman
Columnist·NZ Herald·
27 Jan, 2015 04:00 PM4 mins to read

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Prime Minister John Key has gone one step further and sent Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae halfway around the world to the Saudi Arabia head office, to pay our respects. Photo / NZME.

Prime Minister John Key has gone one step further and sent Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae halfway around the world to the Saudi Arabia head office, to pay our respects. Photo / NZME.

Brian Rudman
Opinion by Brian Rudman
Brian Rudman is a NZ Herald feature writer and columnist.
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The things you have to do to keep on side with your oil merchant. Even, it seems, holding your nose and obsequiously lowering your national flag on public buildings throughout the land when he dies.

To be on the safe side, Prime Minister John Key has gone one step further and sent Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae halfway around the world to the Saudi Arabia head office, to pay our respects.

Wouldn't a polite card and bouquet of pohutukawa blossoms have been enough to ensure our oil supply wasn't suddenly cut off, or shiploads of Fonterra's milk powder mysteriously rejected?

Mr Key's spokeswoman says he was just following custom when ordering flags be half-masted on public and government buildings throughout the land on Monday.

She pointed to NZ Flag Notice 1986, which requires this practice on the death of the sovereign, members of the royal family, present and former New Zealand governors-general and prime ministers, and Commonwealth and foreign prime ministers and heads of state.

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They must be a healthy lot. According to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, only one of the above has popped off in the past year. That was the President of Zambia, Michael Chilufya Sata, whose funeral was last November 11.

Flags were lowered on that occasion, and on August 4, a one-off, to mark the centenary of World War I.

Contrarily, no such honour was accorded Gough Whitlam, the larger-than-life Aussie PM, who died a few days before President Sata.

His problem, it seems, was he didn't die in office.

It seems an odd protocol that offers no discretion. Does this mean if Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un dies in office, flags will be half-masted?

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Mr Key, in a carefully crafted eulogy, called King Abdullah "a leading figure in the Middle East, an advocate for Arab unity ... and a strong voice for peace".

He skipped over the ugly reality that the King was a hereditary despot who subjugated his subjects - in particular the female half - with the aid of an archaic, "eye for an eye" legal system, that includes public stonings, limb amputations, judicial blindings, public beheadings for "sorcery" and drug smuggling, and, just last week, the start of 1000 lashes - 50 a week - for a "disobedient" blogger.

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How he can be eulogised as a "liberal" and fighter for women's rights beggars belief.

As for Mr Key's claim he was a "strong voice for peace", surely deeds count for more than mere words, and on that score, Saudi Arabians and their extreme fundamentalist ideology have been the major accelerant in the current war on terrorism - and not on the side Mr Key is keen we sign up to.

Sir Jerry, United States President Barack Obama and the who's who of elected leaders and constitutional princelings who have flown in to join in the mourning are conveniently ignoring that 15 out of the 19 terrorist-hijackers who flew planes into prominent US buildings on September 11, 2001, were Saudis. So was Osama Bin Laden, who masterminded the strike, and his backers who helped fund the whole exercise.

In documents released by WikiLeaks the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in December 2009 that "Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for [al-Qaeda], the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan] and other terrorist groups". Today more than 2000 Saudi nationals are estimated to be amongst the Isis (Islamic State) fighters Mr Key is itching to take on.

Recently, British General Jonathan Shaw, a former commander of British forces in Iraq and assistant chief of the Defence Staff, told the Telegraph that Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Qatar had ignited a "time bomb" by spending billions of dollars funding the global spread of its radical fundamentalist brand of Islam.

He said the ideology Isis was trying to spread was "the violent expression" of the state religion of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Wahabist Salafism.

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It's ironical that Isis has now turned its guns on the Saudi regime for being corrupt and not pure enough.

Britain has gone through the same flag-lowering farce. Not even Westminster Abbey escaped. Former Conservative MP Louise Mensch said she was "disgusted and revolted" and criticised the Foreign Office as being "lickspittles to foreign dictators".

I couldn't have put it better.

Debate on this article is now closed.

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