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I think going to a country like Saudi Arabia, that has no free speech, no free association, no national elections, no political parties, no trade unions, where people like Raif Badawi, the blogger, is imprisoned for 10 years for blogging, where human rights lawyers are imprisoned for 15 years for defending human rights—it is appalling that Trump would go to Saudi Arabia and not even mention the issue of human rights, much less try to meet with one of the advocates for human rights, while he was visiting Saudi Arabia.

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Donald Trump has selected Saudi Arabia as the destination for his first trip abroad, strengthening U.S. ties to a regime that is fueling the very extremism, intolerance and violence that the US government purports to eradicate. Here’s 10 reasons why the United States should not be closely allied with the Saudi kingdom.

Read the list at Common Dreams.

“Why not paper over our differences, if it will result in unity? What’s happened to the anti-war movement? Where’s the more expansive vision of the Left? And what’s it got to do with immigration, trade and sanctuary?”

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“Barack Obama gave his farewell address last night and talked up the supposedly strong economy and his administration’s military action against terrorism. Is this really how history will remember him? What was left unsaid?”

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“Looking back at President Obama’s legacy, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko added up the defense department’s data on airstrikes and made a startling revelation: in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.”

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“Assuming you live in the United States, you should be aware of how much effort your government puts into facilitating and defending the crimes of Saudi Arabia. The Saud royal family keeps millions desperately poor. They send religion police around to beat the hell out of people, while they themselves party all over the globe with alcohol, cocaine, prostitutes, and gambling. Most religions are banned; you can be imprisoned, tortured, mutilated, or beheaded simply for being a follower of another religion.

With U.S. support, Saudi Arabia manages to be both the only nation that bans all churches and any non-Muslim religious building, and the leading proponent of global terrorism. In fact, Saudi Arabia spends three times as much per person as the U.S. does on its military, and it spends the biggest chunk of it buying weapons from U.S. profiteers. As the U.S. State Department is well aware, there are no civil liberties in Saudi Arabia. People are jailed, whipped, and killed for speaking out. Saudi Arabia didn’t ban slavery until 1962 and maintains a labor system referred to as “a culture of slavery.” Saudi schools have helped to create branches of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups across Western Asia and Northern Africa at least since the joint U.S.-Saudi operation in Afghanistan that created the Taliban, not to mention the Saudi role in Iran-Contra, in Boko Haram in Nigeria, in Yemen, in Syria and in Europe.”

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Saudi Arabia has become by far the number one purchaser of US weapons, with $115 billion deals under the Obama administration alone. Congress has just rubber-stamped every single one, says author and activist Medea Benjamin.

Saudi Arabia carried out 158 executions, 63 for non-violent drug crimes last year, often through public beheadings. Early this year, it executed 47 men for terrorism-related offenses, including the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. It practices gender apartheid against women, who are not allowed to drive, are banned from most jobs, and are controlled by male guardians. It prohibits freedom of expression, including freedom of religion. Homosexuals can be put to death.

It promotes a fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam throughout the Muslim world known as Wahhabism, which sanctifies violence against those considered infidels or apostates, including Sufis and Shiites. The autocratic Saudi royal family, whose wealth is estimated at 1.4 trillion dollars, lives in unimaginable extravagance, and often decadence. Yet Saudi Arabia is considered one of the US’ closest allies in the Middle East.

RT: Let’s talk about this special relationship with Saudi Arabia, especially in light of the fact, as you point out in the book, the US now takes only 13 percent of Saudi oil…

Medea Benjamin: Yes, certainly the relationship was started out on the basis of oil when the Saudi Kingdom was first established in 1932, then oil was discovered in the 1930s, and then for 12 different administrations, Republican and Democrat, a close relationship with the Saudis based on oil. But as the years went by, the US produced more of its own oil, imported more from Canada, and so oil is not as important as it was. The US wants to be able to control where that oil goes to other countries. But the relationship has really started to shift in terms of what is the big focus, and I think the big focus is now that they have become the number one purchaser of US weapons by far. $115 billion over the last eight years – that is just under the Obama administration alone. It is a staggering sum, and it is amazing that it has been 43 different deals just under the Obama administration, and Congress has just rubber-stamped every single one.

RT: What about Saudi society? Give us a profile what Saudi Arabia is like.

MB: One of the most repressive countries in the world, where there is no freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, no political parties, no unions allowed, where dissent is treated as treason. You can be beheaded for insulting Islam, for insulting the King, for spreading atheism, for being convicted of being a homosexual, for sorcery. There is discrimination against entire groups of people like women who are not only forced to fully cover in public, it is the only country where women aren’t allowed to drive. A guardianship system where women have to have a male legal guardian from the day they’re born to the day they die. It is the most sex-segregated society in the world. Immigrant population, which is huge – of a 30 million population, 10 million are migrant workers, many of whom are coming from some of the poorest countries in the world and are treated like indentured servants.

RT: Let’s talk about how they are treated.

MB: First, let’s say slavery was only eliminated in 1962 in Saudi Arabia, and with this huge oil money that has flooded the country, many people, including middle-class Saudis, have used the money to bring in foreign workers and it is a sponsorship program. You can’t just say: “I’m from the poor country in Bangladesh, I am going to go try my luck in Saudi Arabia.”. You have to have a sponsor, and the sponsor then becomes like your owner – you couldn’t even leave the country if you don’t get permission from your employer. And you’re treated like an indentured servant. You have no redress, you have no ability to fight back, the only thing you can do is try to contact your embassy, and good luck if they’re going to come to your town…

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“Benjamin discusses the hypocrisy of the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that brutally represses internal dissent and refuses to grant basic rights to women.

“Saudi Arabia spreads its extremist state ideology known as Wahhabism throughout the world. Benjamin notes that ISIS shares a similar fundamentalist ideology. As Salon has previously reported, recently released emails from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton show that, according to U.S. intelligence sources, the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have supported the Islamic State.”

Watch the full interview on Salon here.

“If Americans Can Sue Saudis over 9/11, Drone Victims Should Be Able to Sue U.S.”: MEDEA BENJAMIN talks to Democracy Now!

“Finally, we have an example of the U.S. Congress putting U.S. citizens above the relationship with the Saudi government,” says CodePink’s Medea Benjamin in response to the vote by Congress to allow Americans to sue Saudi Arabia over the 9/11 attacks, overriding President Obama’s veto of the bill. The legislation would allow courts to waive claim of foreign sovereign immunity after an act of terrorism occurs within U.S. borders. “If innocent families [of drone attacks] were able to take the U.S. to court instead of seeing joining ISIS or al-Qaeda as their only resort, that would be a very positive thing.”

Listen to the full interview on Democracy Now! here.