The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi authorities is horrific, but not surprising, given the Saudis' bloodthirsty idea of criminal jurisprudence. The cynical part of me tells me that the sustained outrage about his death is largely due to the fact that the guy lived in the US and probably had lunch with American journalists on numerous occasions. Meanwhile, the executions of poor women accused of sorcery is a mere sidebar in the news. One well-connected guy is valued more than any number of working class women- the whole 'NPC meme' is nothing new, I guess.
I don't wish to minimize the death of Mr Khashoggi, but where the hell were all of the pearl-clutchers over the past century of stonings, dismemberments, beheadings? Saudi money is a corrupting influence, and the current maladministration is ass-deep in the stuff, so I suspect that the current outrage will die down soon. Sure, Jamal Khashoggi might have been a lunch buddy, but the Saudis can pick up much bigger tabs than he ever could.
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3 comments:
Hear, hear!
All true, but don't look at it through that simplistic a lens.
The key here is the budding US/Saudi/Israeli alliance against Iran (and sort of against Turkey). That is the fundamental foreign policy position of the Trump administration, and a little extra-judicial murder won't derail it...
The U.S. Saudi alliance that mikey refers to is about as reliable as a truck chassis made out of raw hamburger meat, but likely less tasty. While our pot sometimes calls other nations' kettles black a bit too much, this is not one of those "too much" occasions. So the Saudis will cut us off from their oil? Aren't we supposed to have a massive surplus of it from fracking? And won't that also further hurt the Saudis themselves? Perhaps this finally is the time to plunge full speed ahead into building alternative energy sources. Screw both MBS and Trump — and the camel they rode in on.
Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank
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