Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/10/saudi-prince-mbs-ordered-opera.html
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On the one hand…
On the other hand, sometimes the obvious reality has to be pointed out to people.
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We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a nasty corrupt authoritarian country, which just happens to have a decades-long set of cozy ties with the U.S.
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Just to check, you’re being sarcastic, right?
Because that’s no coincidence.
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Well, we don’t encourage killing dissidents but we tolerate it. The U.S.also backed Pinochet, and the Shah in Iran. Nothing they did to their dissidents made the slightest impression.
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Wait… that one guy mentioned Donny Big Bucket walking a tight rope.
That, for me, is almost impossible to imagine.
There is no period during which he actually walks along said rope, there is only the period where he has fallen off of one side or another. And also, the period where the tries to convince others that he was pushed.
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Reminds me of the #1 lesson I learned taking martial arts:
Never let an attacker take you to a secondary location.
They told us if someone has a knife or gun it’s good to just give up your wallet or phone, but if they try to force you to go somewhere you fight for your life.
He probably (rightfully) freaked out, maybe grabbed a weapon from a guard or managed a few good hits and either was outright killed or they suffocated him in the process of subduing him.
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“Though I cannot comment on intelligence matters, I can say definitively the United States had no advance knowledge of [Khashoggi’s] disappearance,”
What a pile of BS. If he can’t comment on intelligence matters then he can’t bloody make a definitive statement that there was no advance knowledge of Saudi plans to kidnap this U.S. resident. Or perhaps he’s using “disappearance” in the context of sorcery or a stage magician’s act.
Too many previous U.S. administrations have given this scumbag monarchy a free pass, but count on this one to out-awful them all.
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Yes, but why?
Was Jamal about to break a story? Does SA have a nuke program? or Turkey? And why are but three US Senators who have defense contract interests with SA and Turkey the only ones who seem at all concerned?
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Look at MBS’s reaction to a very minor hand slap from Canada, and it seems logical that he would want to torture and kill someone like Khashoggi
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not actually true 
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In addition to @KingGhidorah’s point above, the days of U.S. administrations having to pretend to care about an independent press or about protecting the country’s residents from kidnapping have come to an end. The president* sees the press as “the enemy of the people” and put in place a policy that took children away from their parents and put them in camps.
Right-wing authoritarian regimes across the globe are just taking advantage of this new normal.
They’re worried that their masters will end up losing contracts with one of the two countries if Turkey continues to object to a KSA consulate being used as a kidnapping way station.
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Soooo … does anyone understand how we jumped from “hey, anybody seen Jamal recently?” to “tortured, dismembered, killed”?
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Oh, now they’re f’ing concerned.
Took some time, but each finally realized that they a business stake in the region.
“Under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, the president, upon receipt of a letter from the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, must make a determination and is authorized to impose sanctions with respect to a foreign person responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, or other gross violations of internationally recognized human rights violations against individuals who seek to obtain, exercise, defend, or promote human rights and freedoms, including freedom of expression.”
WH: 
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The Shah of Iran isn’t even in the same league as the House of Saud. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1980/03/23/the-shah-as-tyrant-a-look-at-the-record/218c6a8e-dcb7-4168-ac9c-8f23609f888f/?utm_term=.a8fc8c7e52d2
Of US-backed governments, the Shah’s was one of the better.
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The reverse is also true of course
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This looks like why.
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Jared should visit his buddy more often. Maybe develop s close friendship with his wife.
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Most of the conspiracy theories about 9/11 stem from the true belief there was a coverup. The only thing is, the coverup is mundane - the hijackers were overwhelmingly Saudi, funded by Saudi money, couriered by Saudi embassy employees.
The paranoid part of me wonders if certain elements stoke the crazier conspiracy theories about 9/11 so that when people mention the true part (the parts redacted from the 9/11 report) they’re lumped in with people who think the towers were blown w/ explosives, that a missile hit the pentagon, and other false theories.
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