The Marie Antionette of Jordan

[Ruhi_Rose]

 

 
Both Rania and Abdullah are damned lucky that unlike the 18th century French, the present-day Jordanians are generally a lot more docile.  Otherwise, the time for a revolution (not a revolt)  had long been ripe in that cesspool called Jordan. 

These two are fast becoming the Marie Antionette and Louis XVI of Jordan .... corrupt and hypocritical up to their necks, they are going haywire stealing the country blind under cover of "serving the people."   Their brigandry has made inflation a serious problem in Jordan.  Items of daily use are hardly affordable by the common people.
 
Soon after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, more than 35 leaders of Jordan's main Bedouin tribes published an open letter addressed to Abdullah II accusing his wife, Rania Yasin, of gross corruption and bluntly stating the "king is illegal."
 
"We call on the king to return to the treasury land and farms given to the [queen's] Yasin family. The land belongs to the Jordanian people," the letter demanded.  However, the greedy king and queen have returned nothing so far of what rightfully belongs to the Jordanian people.
 
The letter further warned that Jordan "will sooner or later face the flood of Tunisia and Egypt due to the suppression of freedoms and looting of public funds."  It endorsed several of the demands expressed by the Islamist opposition.

The queen often appears on the covers of gossip magazines with endless comment on her glittering lifestyle and overly expensive wardrobe.  Her lavish 40th birthday bash in August 2011 at the Wadi Rum desert was rude enough even to make the humble Jordanians quite sick.

Quoting a few very important excerpts from Mary Ann Sieghart's article:

"Six hundred guests were flown in from all over the world. Two giant figure‘40’s were beamed on to mountainous outcrops — although the neighbouring villages don’t even have electricity.  Locals still speak of the water used to dampen down the sand so that the guests could walk more easily, though there were desperate water shortages nearby ...."

Fares Al-Fayez a senior figure in the Bani Sakher tribe was not afraid to speak: "She’s spending a lot of money on clothes, jewellery and shoes. Some people say she’s like Imelda Marcos. Then there was her birthday party. Poor people see that — they have eyes — and this hurts their feelings. I want the king to stop her. Some people spend hundreds of millions and others have nothing to eat but bread and tea. It’s painful and sad.’

A Jordanian journalist, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said  " .. She lost any connection with the people when Nicole Kidman and Naomi Campbell became important to her.  The expenditure is not fine. The exposure is not fine."

The power starved and luxury loving queen seems to have lost all sense of balance and tact.  Mesmerized in her very high lifestyle with elites and her Hollywood celebrity friends around the world, she couldn't care less how selfish she appears or how unconnected she is from the Jordanian people.

The eyes of the Jordanian people have now opened up to the extent that they are able to see the glaring similarity between their queen and Marie Antoinette, the corrupt and disgraced 18th century French queen.  While the West praises the queen of Jordan, it's a very different story at home.  Contemptuous comparisons between Rania Yasin and Marie Antionette are getting more and more common in Jordan. 

Another serious allegation says that she's become recklessly nosy and interfering in politics .. something which only adds fuel to the fire in the eyes of the Jordanian people. According to Sieghart's article, a European journalist recently went to Jordan to interview the king.  He discovered that his wife insisted on being present at the interview.  Not just that, but she also kept interrupting and contradicting her busband's comments.
 
She is being accused of massive favoritism not only towards her own family but also toward friends and acquaintances.  Jordanian people say that she's directly involved in appointing ministers and local politicians.  Many of her close friends and associates have ended up getting top jobs despite their lack of merits.  A senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood party in Jordan said: "She is the wife of a king and a citizen — no more than that. We don’t want her to have power. But she goes around inside the kingdom and abroad. She gives and she takes and she forbids. We don’t like that."  The Jordanians complain that the queen has granted Jordanian citizenship to thousands of Palestinians during the last few years, creating a crunch in the job market for the Jordanians which they certainly don't appreicate.  They are frowning with a feeling that they are being alienated on their own land.
 
Even the young and liberal Jordanians sound pretty disgusted.  A young Jordanian who recently organized the country's reform protests through twitter spoke up: "The queen is not allowed to get involved politically in the country. She’s only the wife of the king. We’re standing against the queen because of her interference in political issues. She’s using her position as the wife of the king and making business all the time with her family. Look at her brother, for instance. Where did he get all his money from?" 

The Marie Antoinette of Jordan is now engulfed with stories of nepotism, corruption, "looting the country" and wasting millions of dollars of public fund to improve and ciruclate her personal image abroad while the common Jordanians literally starve. 
 
With so many allegations and at unfavorable times when a wave of unrest is sweeping across the Middle-East, one would expect a corrupt monarchy to at least mantain a low profile.  But 'Marie and Louis' haven't been able to do that either.   The decadent law of a minimal of three years in prison for critisizing the "royalty" still stands firm in the country.  A Jordanian website which published stories of the Queen's corruption was immediately ordered to remove those contents.  When it refused, the website was shut down.  This isn't the only such incident.  Scores of critics have complained of being systematically intimidated and harassed. 

To dupe the Jordanian people, the "royal" crooks of Jordan have forged a phoney family tree calling themselves descendents of the "Hashmite" family, also appearing on Jordanian stamps.   
 
By now, Jordan has already been plundered so relentlessly by its "royals" that even if by some stroke of fabulous luck Abdullah II is kicked out, what precisely will he lose?  Basically nothing, except his "royal" title and that of his wife.  Their luxuries will remain intact no matter where they live in exile.  With all those billions of dollars stashed up in the US, UK, Switzerland and Dubai by swindling the Jordanian national treasury and faithfully serving the Western intelligensia, Mr. & Mrs. Abdullah and several generations of their family will continue rolling and floating on riches throughout their temporary earthly lives. 
 
It's only when their souls depart on their final Journey, would be a completely different story .. and that would be the real Day to watch when these enemies of Allah are herded together.  Gone are the glittering bejeweled tiarras, those Giorgio Armani gowns and the plush royal chambers.  Hellfire will be roaring and eager to roast those stolen billions and the hands and faces that stole them.  Alas!  How people waste their lives by trusting their discrepant vision!!

[Heba E. Husseyn]

Lovely piece sis    and so, so true!  These 2 "royals" - king Rania and queen Abdullah  have f***ed up Jordan.  But thieves never stop stealing until they are stopped.  Since the Jordanian people have woken up to this extent, I request them to wake up completly and rise like Tunisia and Egypt did and topple this monarch, make sure they don't run away and try & hang them like Marie Antoinette and her husband.  Unless that happens, the condition of the masses will keep getting worse and the thieves will keep flourishing. 

Come on Jordan, have some guts in your pants and clean up this cesspool.  It's really stinking bad!

[N. Truth Seeker]

I join in the clapping too     Mr. & Mrs. Abdullah are professional robbers and cut throats.  They even surpass their predecessors, Mr. & Mrs. Hussein.  The Jordanian people have been reported to organize various "reform" protests in the recent past.  And it's also nice to read here that they are at least aware of the people at the root of all corruption in the Jordanian society.  Therefor, their future protests must contain the most important condition, that is, removal of the monarchy.  Otherwise asking for reforms will be a waste of time.

king Rania and queen Abdullah 

      very well said sister Heba!

[Zainab_M]

I call this post a masterpiece, sister Rose!  so very true!!  Thanks a big bundle.  It's another example of how money can corrupt people by making them take a 360 degree turn.  Initially when this couple became king & queen, rania started off a little more civilized.  She showed some concern for the sufferings of those in Palestine.  She also maintained a lower profile compared to now.  But gradually she really began to play her hards badly, like a calculating and greedy moron.  And now she's even worse than her half-British and half-witted husband who has no qualms playing America and Israel's rent boy.  It all revolves around money and power.  Also, isn't this ironic.  Abdullah allowed her to take up the limelight  because he suffered his own guilt for being half British, thinking that his wife being an Arab and belonging to the much oppressed land of Palestine will make him look better and diminish his Brit roots in the eyes of the Jordanian people.  But it didn't happen that way at all.  His wife's corruption upset his plan completely.  On the contrary, the situation now is even worse.  He is looked upon as being half Brit who cannot even speak proper Arabic.  And her Palestinian origin has turned out to be much more of a liability than an asset, as Abdullah expected and wanted.  This couple is only hanging on because of the unconditional support of the Zions and US.  The majority of the Jordanians hate them just as majority of the Egyptians hated the Mubarak family.  It's an identical situation.  As in Mubarak's case, it's only a fraction of the elites who support the Jordanian "royals." 

I pray to Allah Almighty for their rapid downfall so that power can be given to the people at the earliest. 

Just as cultures like slavery and racism have become obsolete in the 20th and 21st centuries, so has the system of monarchy.  Even a constitutional monarchy is a decadent idea, let alone a monarchy like the ones in Jordan and Morroco.  These are a shame to civilization!