And Dame Cameron is correct – this is a book of biased polemic masquerading as historical analysis and easily the worst book I have read in years.ĭame Averil and I are in agreement on this – this book is tripe. On the other hand, no less an authority than the esteemed historian of Late Antiquity, Dame Averil Cameron, calls Nixey’s book “a travesty”, roundly condemning it as “overstated and unbalanced”.
DAVID TWEETEN REAL DISTINCTION PHILSOPHY MODS
Some lingering shreds of discretion prevent me from posting this over there while sticking my tongue out at the mods and going “nyah-nyah-nyah”, but vindictiveness urges me on to share this with you, my dear fellows: I have served my term of banishment from the sub-reddit and have now regained commenting privileges (how long that will last until I trip another trigger remains to be seen) but today what did I find in my email inbox but this post, by the excellent History for Atheists blog, on the very volume that was the cause of my downfall and bannitude for being rough-tongued and vicious over on the sub-reddit? That this was government money disbursed by the British government is part of why they tried to sit on any investigation (fairly successfully, I don’t think the SFO investigation has as yet resulted in any convictions or court cases). This was all assumed to simply be part of doing business in Saudi if you wanted to sell your gear to the army/whomever, you had to grease a few palms so the Minister for Whatever would sign a contract with your firm and not an American or European one. So while the purge certainly had to do with the Crown Prince consolidating power and removing rivals, there equally are legitimate corruption charges to be answered. Some of the guys purged recently were related to or were some of these princes, or succeeded them in jobs such as Head of the National Guard.
DAVID TWEETEN REAL DISTINCTION PHILSOPHY MOD
If there’s anyone interested in matter related to the recent purges on anti-corruption grounds in Saudi Arabia, here’s a report by Private Eye on the SANGCOM affair, a contract beginning in 1978 by the British Ministry of Defence to provide communications technology to the Saudi National Guard one of the companies involved was the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office in 2012, and the British government as represented by the MOD refused to release information on security grounds.īasically, there was a lot of cash sloshing around as bribes and inducements, this was all baked into the contract under the headings of “administrative fees” and the like, and the money invoiced was then passed on to various Saudi ministers/princes.
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