Talk:Al-Yamamah arms deal/Archives/2012

Discussion about attempts to move the Serious Fraud Office investigation to a separate page
Possibly move the Serious Fraud Office investigation to a page of its own. Any thoughts? Goatchurch 13:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 10 minutes is not enough for a discussion! I have merged Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Al Yamamah corruption allegations back into this. Mark83 16:47, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Discussion transferred from Talk:Eurofighter Typhoon

I have merged it into Al Yamamah - there is no need at all for a seperate article. The SFO investigation was about Al Yamamah, so why would a distinct page be required? I'm not happy about the way the information was removed, if there was a valid reason, no problem. However I expect to see that valid reason in an edit summary. Mark83 16:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Also what is replaced by is unsatisfactory, "This deal was reported to be under threat unless the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Al Yamamah corruption allegations was discontinued. This investigation was discontinued on the 14th of december 2006." That clearly suggests that it's quid pro quo - My paragraph presents all the (cited) information and allows the reader to make the judgement. Mark83 17:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Err... That was me. It's an ongoing and really quite long-running saga (ie since 2001) that I really thought warranted a page on its own.  The December 2006 incident is part of the story, but gets nowhere near to the bottom of it.  I had imagined it that it was very obvious we needed a single place for all the multiple articles which concerned it (Eurofighter, Al Yamamah, Serious Fraud Office, BAE), because the story didn't belong to any of them; it belongs to all of them.  It certainly doesn't belong on the Al Yamamah page, because that's really just an old 1980s contract who's investigation is affecting arms corruption as it is happening today.  Clearly the case wasn't quite as obvious as I had imagined.  I have no idea how to ressurect the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the Al Yamamah corruption allegations page, so I'll let you do it if you can.  I suspect it needs a CurrentEvent tag at the top because there will be a lot of statements and leaks about it in the coming weeks.Goatchurch 18:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I disagree. "It certainly doesn't belong on the Al Yamamah"?? The investigation was into Al Yamamah. The Al Yamamah contracts were not just contracts for a few planes, they were contracts for enduring support of Saudi defence capabilites. Al Yamamah is a blanket term for BAE operations in Saudi Arabia to this day (see http://www.projectay.co.uk/). If the investigation had nothing to do with Al Yamamah why was the SFO seeking the NAO report on it and why has every major news source described it as an invesigation into it? The SFO investigation does belong at that page with summaries at each of the other articles. The only way I would support separating the info again is if you can provide some rationale or explanation as to how the SFO inquiry was somehow detached from Al Yamamah. Mark83 18:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sure. Whatever.  I mean, corporate chronology on these matters can be pretty difficult.  It never fits any pattern, and is often deliberately obscure.  But clearly Eurofighters weren't even invented at the time the Thatcher government was doing all those deals.  It's a bit like Rocky III, Rocky IV; they're actually different movies from Rocky (which wasn't 'I'), where they've copied the plot, brought back the same stars, but they weren't really envisaged as part of the original movie.  They came later when the Hollywood executives found they could build a franchise.  Anyways, there's quite a discussion about the original contracts in the book Armour-Plated Ostrich, which maybe I'll reread and put in some material from at some point.  (Referring to the Mark Thatcher connection, Tim Webb reported that the deal was sometimes known in the trade as "Who's Ya Mama".)  You didn't quite get my point.  I didn't say the investigation has nothing to do with Al Yamamah.  I merely said that this was a separate story in of itself.  Kind of like how Al Fayed's campaign to investigate Diana's car crash isn't really part of the story of her life.  Anyway, it's just a matter of opinion, and I don't care very deeply.  Of course places that link to this story should carry a summary of it -- once we know what exactly should be summarized.  I don't want people to miss the 10 day ultimatum that came two weeks ago, and precipitated this announcement.  It's unfortunate that the linking to subsections of a wiki page is such a nuisance.  Did you like any of the stuff I added?Goatchurch 20:28, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Forgive me, that should have been the first thing I said. A lot of the stuff was great, particularly the Radio 4 programme info. which provided some concrete allegations rather than just a general term of "corruption". Well I respect your decision and we'll just have to agree to disagree. You're right, I didn't get your point, sorry. My thinking is that the investigation (and corruption allegations) is integral to the Al Yamamah article - which is why I made a subsection in the article. I don't think the information is any less useful just because it doesn't have it's own article.
 * As for Mark Thatcher, I read a newspaper article recently which claimed it was rubbish to suggest that he had any influence, i.e. that Thatcher was intent on the deal for the economic benefit and that the Saudis mistakenly believed her son needed buttering up. Sorry I don't have a reference, I'll need to find it again. Mark83 21:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I can believe that the Mark Thatcher connection was spurious. But with bribes flying all over the place, people living "way beyond the life style of most film stars", all kinds of stuff happen, and none of it can be planned.  It was an exciting time.  It's ultimately about the oil and the money, of course.  Maybe this section could be moved to the bottom of the article, and you can have a clear time-line breakdown of the different episodes in this contract at the top (which I know little about, but do know they were negotiated by different governments), so it's not this great big blob in the middle.  I still think it's less useful as a section than its own article, for technical reasons that it can be better tagged and more easily linked to from, say, the page on the Serious Fraud Office (which didn't exist for the duration of most of this contract).  So long as the information is there, it can be moved around later.Goatchurch 22:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I had actually wondered about the formatting. You make a good point, to show my good faith (i.e. I'm not being intransigent) I have moved the section to the bottom of the article and I will try to work on a timeline. Mark83 23:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Weapons content
The article is a bit weak on information about the gear that was actually delivered, where it's based, and what it actually does. Do they simply patrol the borders of Saudi Arabia with these jets once a day, or what? How does it fit into the context of Saudi Arabia's defence needs? Surely someone somewhere has an interest in this sort of thing. The story can't all be about corruption payments, much as this interests me. Goatchurch 18:26, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Move
The arms deals were named after the region of al-Yamama, therefore I suggest that this article be moved to something like "Al-Yamamah Arms Deals", since the title "Al Yamamah" should be reserved for the geographical region after which the deals were named. -- Slacker 03:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose - Why? The spelling is different for a start. Also this article has a header "For the historical district in central Saudi Arabia, see al-Yamama." and that article has a header "For the Saudi-British arms deals, see Al Yamamah." Where exactly does the possibility of confusion arise? Mark83 11:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose as above. In English-language media, "Al Yamamah" is usually understood to refer to the arms deal.  Grover cleveland 13:42, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Support The useage of the name Al-Yamamah is to discribe the historical area around todays Riyadh. Also, The name is used to too too many companies , conglomerates and orgnizations inside and outside Saudi Arabia. This name is also used to discribe some kind of Doves Ammar  (Talk - Don't Talk) 15:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - Wikipedia policy is that when the vast majority of usage is for one instance of a word then the article should take that title and other titles/articles should be disambig-ed. This is the case here. Where are all the articles on the "many companies, conglomerates and orgnizations" anyway? Mark83 15:38, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * They will be created someday soon or later, why don't we rename the article to Al-Yamamah arm deals or something like that ? whats the big diffrence ? this gonna be a better discribtion. Ammar  (Talk - Don't Talk) 15:45, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well gramatically it should be Al Yamamah arms deals - not arm deals. But back to the point - "what's the big difference" is not a compelling argument! There is no possibility of confusion at present. Mark83 15:57, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh yes i mean arms deals . Anyways, i think my friend Slacker is planning to create an article about the historical region of Al-Yamamah . and i really think he has the right to use this name for the other article , because this name originally belong to that region . or at least let's merge both of the two articles into a disambiged page. Ammar  (Talk - Don't Talk) 18:27, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In fact, i was right . here is the article : (Al-Yamama) but it lacks the H. Ammar  (Talk - Don't Talk) 18:30, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The spelling is just a matter of transliteration. As you know, there can be many ways of transliterating an Arabic word into Roman characters.  However, "al-Yamama", "al-Yamamah", and "Al Yamamah" all refer to the same Arabic word.  It makes no sense to have one transliteration point to one thing, and another transliteration point to another.  That would be like having the article "Muhammad" point to the Islamic prophet, and "Mohammed" point to some other person by that name.  Alternate transliterations should point to one page, even if that page is a disambiguation page.  I added both headers that Grover mentioned as a temporary solution to avoid confusion.  However, as it now stands this is just sloppy titling in my opinion.


 * It's not true that "al-Yamamah" in English mostly refers to the arms deals. In most cases where it's referred to, it's referred to as "al-Yamamah arms deal" or "al-Yamamah arms agreement" or "contract", etc., and even if that was the case, that is a very recent phenomenon (less than a year or two).  If you were to search actual books and academic journals, you would find that the word almost always refers to the geographical region.  Even if for the time being the arms deals are of more interest to British readers, that is only a temporary situation.  Anyway, can you imagine the title "tomahawk" pointing directly to an article about cruise missiles?  Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense IMHO.


 * A third point is that the deals are not actually called al-Yamamah; they do have an official name with the word "Yamamah" in it, so wouldn't it be more appropriate to use that? I mean does the title "Howard" point directly to "Howard University"? Also, the move won't affect users' ability to search for the arms deal using the word "Yamamah" only. Slacker 09:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

PBS
Frontline had a show on this called "Black Money". --63.150.225.10 (talk) 16:16, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Relationship between the UK Government, BAe, and Panavia/Eurofighter
One thing I've never understood is that these deals are always spoken about in terms of BAe and the United Kingdom Government, but the Tornado wasn't purely a BAe project, so did the British state buy these aircraft from the panvia consortium, then sell them on? or did part of the Panavia deal include BAe having exclusive rights to sell the design for export? RFT (talk) 16:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper articles, eg: "Prince Andrew's four-letter tirade that shocked the American ambassador"
In today's Daily Mail: See also: --Mais oui! (talk) 07:55, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "The Duke of York condemned the Serious Fraud Office for its ‘idiocy’ in probing claims of corruption in the Al-Yamama arms deal between the British defence firm BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia, according to a secret cable written by a U.S. diplomat... Mrs Gfoeller, a career diplomat who speaks six languages, wrote: ‘Rude language a la British ... (Andrew) turned to the general issue of promoting British economic interests abroad. He railed at British anti- corruption investigators, who had had the "idiocy" of almost scuttling the Al-Yamama deal with Saudi Arabia..."
 * http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/8169315/WikiLeaks-Duke-of-Yorks-candid-attack-on-British-Government.html
 * http://www.channel4.com/news/prince-andrew-caught-up-in-wikileaks-row

Lib Dem campaign website replaced with Spam Links..
I have noticed that the website "http://www.corruptionisacrime.com" has been replaced with a spam article website, with links to the usual weight loss, casinos and the like. I would fix the link myself, however, I work for BAE Systems, so I don't want there to be even the hint of anything inappropriate. Can someone else remove that link please?

FDCWint (talk) 17:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)