http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 79,00.html
New book by Mideast expert Mitchell Bard claims Arab lobby, headed by Saudis, 'has unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on merits of their arguments'
WASHINGTON - The Arab lobby and most particularly the Saudi lobby, one of the strongest in America—even stronger than Israel’s, according to a controversial new book penned by an American expert on the Middle East.
Mitchell Bard's "Arab Lobby" was written as a sort of response to those who warn of AIPAC's influence over Washington. Bard, who serves as executive director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), claims that "one of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the Arab lobby is that it has no popular support. While the Israeli lobby has hundreds of thousands of grass root members and public opinion polls consistently reveal a huge gap between support for Israel and the Arab nations-Palestinians, the Arab lobby has almost no foot soldiers or public sympathy. It's most powerful elements tend to be bureaucrats who represent only their personal views or what they believe are their institutional interests, and foreign governments that care only about their national interests, not those of the United States.
"What they lack in human capital in terms of American advocates, they make up for with almost unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on the merits of their arguments," he writes in the book.
Due to this lack of support, according to Bard, "The Saudis have taken a different tact from the Israeli lobby, focusing a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying. As hired gun, J. Crawford Cook, wrote in laying out his proposed strategy for the kingdom, 'Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond.'"
Attorney Alan M. Dershowitz wrote about Bard's book in The Daily Beast: "The primary means by which the Saudis exercise this influence is money. They spend enormous amounts of lucre to buy (or rent) former state department officials, diplomats, White House aides, and legislative leaders who become their elite lobbying corps. Far more insidiously, the Saudis let it be known that if current government officials want to be hired following their retirement from government service, they had better hew to the Saudi line while they are serving in our government.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfyMAYc3XtY[/youtube]ALEX JONES: "The country 20 years ago passed the line of being more foreign-owned than owned by Americans. Well now there's almost nothing American. All these companies got no-bid contracts, cause they're American. Like Halliburton and the rest of em that have moved to Dubai, or moved to Saudi Arabia. It's gone. Most of the movie-theater chains, Hollywood is owned by the Arabs...uh, and the Israelis for some reason. But the actual financing, I've looked into it, is mainly Saudi...and Jordanian...and folks from Dubai, and Qatar, and a few other places. And then British, of course. And what was left was defense industries and stock markets.
And I knew the Arabs owned the majority of some stock markets, but I was reading the Financial Times of London and learned that the majority of world stock markets are now owned by the Arabs. HAHAHAHA!! That is the ma...but as if it wasn't enough that two Middle-Eastern countries own 49% of the London Stock Exchange, now they're about to bid and own the majority. And that's just two countries. I mean, you add them all together, uhh, the Arabs own it almost outright...70 plus percent. And same thing with Dow Jones, because Arabs own FOX. You see, you didn't know that did you? You didn't know that Arabs....you see, Murdoch's only got a minority stock now. But the way the agreements were set, he still has Board control. But, uhh, Saudis own more than he does. But there's one Saudi with 14%...last year, uhh, but I mean so the point is they just own everything. I mean, they control the whole deal. Now it's defense stocks, though. And they're gonna destroy their neighbors. I mean, you think Israel hates the Iranians. Oh, nothing like the Wahhabist Saudis. They hate those Shi'ites so much..."
