Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who went missing October 2 after having entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, was “a mild critic” of the Saudi government, peace activist Medea Benjamin told Radio Sputnik Tuesday. Nonetheless, “the royal family makes sure” dissidents are rarely heard, she said, even abroad.
Listen to the full interview here.
Fears are growing over the fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkish officials say they believe was murdered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last week. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States, entered the Saudi Consulate in Turkey seeking a document he needed to get married and has not been seen since. .
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The regime of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is punishing satire on social media with 5 years in prison and sentencing women’s rights activists to death. CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin speaks about the Western whitewash of MBS..
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A Saudi-led coalition airstrike reportedly struck a school bus transporting dozens of children, taking 50 lives and injuring 77 other people, according to a US NGO. The US, which supports the coalition, and the UN, called on Saudi Arabia to conduct an investigation.
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Tony Blair, fmr Prime Minister of the UK and an architect of the Iraq War, is a mercenary that Saudi Arabia hired to present themselves as modernizers and cover for their invasion of Yemen, says Medea Benjamin, the author of Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.
Watch the full interview here.
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An excerpt from KINGDOM OF THE UNJUST:
“We know that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. We know that the bin Laden family had close ties to the family of George W. Bush. We know that right after the attack, wealthy Saudis living in the United States frantically contacted the Saudi Embassy in Washington asking to leave because they feared a backlash. Just days after the attack, some 140 Saudis, including about two dozen members of the bin Laden family, were mysteriously spirited out of the country with little questioning by the FBI.”
Read the full excerpt from KINGDOM OF THE UNJUST: BEHIND THE U.S.-CONNECTION here.
“While there have been major gains for Saudi women in the past decades due to campaigns by women themselves and reforms implemented by the late King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia remains the most gender-segregated nation in the world. The discriminatory male guardianship system persists despite government pledges to abolish it. Under this system, a woman, no matter her age, is treated as a minor and must live under the supervision of a wali, or guardian. This is a legally recognized male — her father, husband, uncle, or some other male relative (even her son) — who must grant formal permission for most of the significant issues affecting her life. Some refer to this system as a form of gender apartheid.”
To hear more, visit Truthout.
“Set out in an accessible self-answered Q&A-style format, the book’s
first half summarizes the political, economic and social conditions in
the theocratic Gulf monarchy. All public gatherings are prohibited, with
no freedom of worship and a near total intolerance of dissent. Trade
unions are banned, the death penalty implemented for non-violent crimes
and women continue to be treated as minors who must be supervised by a
male relative. Reform is painfully slow.”
To read more, visit Red Pepper.
“In 2013, United States President Barack Obama spoke in Washington, D.C., on the issue of national security and drone policy. Not long into his speech, a woman got up and asked him to close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She was Medea Benjamin, one of the founders of the activist group CODEPINK. She was relentless. She interrupted Obama thrice. Medea Benjamin, who is 10 years older than Obama, was nonplussed when he called her a “young lady”. Fear does not seem to be part of her lexicon. With Medea Benjamin undaunted, Obama said: “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.”
To read more, visit Frontline.
“Medea Benjamin’s new book – Kingdom of the Unjust – is an activist’s dossier of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and American complicity. She is like an accountant of suffering – lining up columns and columns of information about human rights abuses, denial of basic democratic freedoms and export of nastiness that borders on terrorism. The United States government is aware of everything in Medea Benjamin’s book – for, after all, she makes good use of US reports on these violations of basic questions of human dignity.”
To read more, visit Alternet.
“They tried to hide this as much as they could. I mean, a Friday afternoon, when Congress is going on its summer vacation, when the conventions are starting. They really wanted to bury this.
What is in the 28 pages? Well, I think the way the administration and the Saudi officials tried to downplay it, you have to question: Well, then why they were hiding it for 14 years? What we see in the 28 pages is 10 different Saudi individuals who were named and details about their connections to the Saudi government and their connections to helping the hijackers. This is mostly, Amy, the ones that were living in San Diego. Two-thirds of the hijackers, though, were living in Florida. We don’t have any information that’s released about them. And there’s, according to Bob Graham, 8,000 pages of documents that he and others are still trying to get released.”
To read more, visit Democracy Now.
“Just one case of many abuses that Saudi workers are suffering from.”
To read more, visit Russia Today
Over a period of decades, the United States has supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests.
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UNRAVELING THE U.S.–SAUDI TANGLE: LET’S FIGURE THIS OUT
What is the origin of this strange alliance between two countries that seemingly have very little in common?
Why, over a period of decades, has the United States supported a regime shown time and again to be one of the most powerful forces working against American interests?
Let CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin be your guide to unraveling this massive, and deadly, conundrum.
With extremism spreading across the globe, a reduced U.S. need for Saudi oil, and a thawing of U.S. relations with Iran, the time is right for re-evaluation of our close ties with the Saudi regime.
Kingdom of the Unjust ships in August. Pre-order now.
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In other CODEPINK news, protesters interrupted last week’s Republican National Convention with banners in support of refugees. Via Jezebel:
“We’re here to say we don’t like the language coming out of the RNC presumptive nominee’s campaign with regards to the anti-Muslim rhetoric and the anti-immigration rhetoric,” Code Pink demonstrator Toni Rozsahegyi told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, July 17. The Times reported that many anti-Trump protests began during the weekend, preceding the convention’s kickoff.
Dressed as Lady Liberty to honor the labor of immigrants and refugees, Rozsahegyi explained, “our country was made on [their] backs, and we love refugees. They’re welcome here. And if we want to stop having refugees, we need to end war.” 1
KINGDOM OF THE UNJUST
Behind the U.S.–Saudi Connection
In Kingdom of the Unjust, Medea Benjamin shines a light on one of the most perplexing elements of American foreign policy: the strange alliance between between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. More |
Drone Warfare
Killing by Remote Control
“In this remarkably cogent and carefully researched book, Medea Benjamin makes it clear that drones are not just another high-tech military trinket. Drone Warfare sketches out the nightmare possibilities posed by this insane proliferation.” —Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed More |
FINKS
How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers
When news broke that the CIA had colluded with literary magazines to produce cultural propaganda throughout the Cold War, a debate began that has never been resolved. Finks is a tale of two CIAs, and how they blurred the line between propaganda and literature. More |
“You talked about the dry run that was in 1999. It was actually two Saudis that were on their way to a party at the Saudi Embassy, with tickets paid for by the Saudi government, that tried to get into the cockpit twice, with an emergency landing, and then the FBI decided not to further investigate it. You mentioned Thumairy. Thumairy was allowed to go back to Saudi Arabia. When he was interviewed again in Riyadh in 2004, he denied that he had any contact with the hijackers, despite being presented with phone records. There are so many connections between individuals related to the Saudi government and these hijackers that it’s hard to even see why the U.S. government, whether it’s under the Bush administration or the Obama administration, continues to consider Saudi Arabia an ally. Of course, if you look deeper into it, you see things like $97 billion worth of weapon sales, so there’s a lot of money involved in this alliance.”
To hear more, visit Democracy Now!
