Speaker 1: Also media, and we're back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Behind the Bastards Mohammad Ben Solomon
Speaker 2: Episodes Extravaganza. WHOA, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to introduce these episodes in an exciting way anymore.
Speaker 2: We're talking about bad people, the worst, and one of
Speaker 2: them is the current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. When
Speaker 2: we left off last episode, he had started what was
Speaker 2: becoming a genocide and Yemen. He had partied with Pittbull
Speaker 2: and he was orchestrating the downfall of his relative, Mohammad Benaief,
Speaker 2: who was the crown Prince before him. How are we doing, Dave,
Speaker 2: David Bell our guests.
Speaker 3: I'm doing well. I'm doing very well.
Speaker 2: Is doing Bell?
Speaker 4: Or?
Speaker 3: I didn't have a new dream in between these episodes
Speaker 3: that I could tell you about. That's probably it's just
Speaker 3: the same dream from before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that same upsetting dream.
Speaker 3: Sure, Yeah, just it wasn't It was a nice shower.
Speaker 2: It wasn't dream to me a little bit.
Speaker 3: It wasn't sexual.
Speaker 2: That's good. The more you say it wasn't sexual, But
Speaker 2: the more I believe it wasn't sexual, that's how telling
Speaker 2: someone something isn't sexual works.
Speaker 3: It was weird because, like, I don't dream about you
Speaker 3: often than you did. I wasn't thinking about the fact
Speaker 3: that we were recording today, and so I'm like, that's interesting,
Speaker 3: that's interesting that you made a came.
Speaker 2: And now I am hurt. Why don't you dream about
Speaker 2: me often?
Speaker 3: Dave? I'm not always dreaming about Here's what I'll start
Speaker 3: doing when I go to bed. I'll look at a
Speaker 3: photo of you every night. All right, that's good, nothing
Speaker 3: weird about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Dave. I will continue to have one
Speaker 2: dream about you per week where we captain the USS
Speaker 2: Enterprise together. Oh yeah, yeah, we would.
Speaker 3: Do terrible things. We would.
Speaker 2: We would that is not going to end well for
Speaker 2: anyone on board the ship.
Speaker 3: We would keep my go to every time I'd be
Speaker 3: hit with like a moral dilemma or like a problem,
Speaker 3: I just go beat them into space.
Speaker 2: Moving on, Get those assholes into space right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, into space? Here we go, just a trail of bodies.
Speaker 2: The Enterprise. That's the ship that keeps beaming people into space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the one move.
Speaker 2: I just watched The New Starfleet Academy, the first two episodes,
Speaker 2: and it is missing that whenever these are there's all
Speaker 2: these bad guys. Uh, there's the guy from Sideways on
Speaker 2: your ship just being into space. Get his ass, beam
Speaker 2: him into space.
Speaker 3: Him into space? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh god? You know who else was in the classic
Speaker 2: movie Sideways? Dave who Prince Mohammed Ben Solomon?
Speaker 3: Uh huh that chicks out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was the He was on one of the
Speaker 2: two male leads in Sideways. Pretty much basically close enough.
Speaker 2: Sure so, perhaps the key defining characteristic of Mohammed bin
Speaker 2: Salmon the most explains his success within the closed world
Speaker 2: of the Saudi royal family is simply the fact that
Speaker 2: he's got energy and he wants to do things. I
Speaker 2: cannot overemphasize how lazy most of these guys are.
Speaker 3: I mean that's America too at this point where it's like,
Speaker 3: well are they eighty? No, Okay, that's great.
Speaker 2: It's it's like again if you go to like nepotism
Speaker 2: with like the sons and daughters of like in Hollywood Royalty,
Speaker 2: where when you get that one guy who's like he's
Speaker 2: got the famous name and he's like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: like I will cover my body and shit and roll around.
Speaker 2: Does the role want me to be covered in shit
Speaker 2: and squirming around like a grub.
Speaker 3: I'll do it.
Speaker 2: I don't give I have no ego about this. I
Speaker 2: don't give a fuck. Like and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have a career, Nicholas.
Speaker 3: That was my Lily Rose death watching he knows Faratu
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh, you're willing to like.
Speaker 2: Oh you're weird, do it? You don't give a fuck? Yeah, right, okay,
Speaker 2: we can work with that. Yeah, yeah, you get to
Speaker 2: be a star. Mohammed ben Salomon is is like the
Speaker 2: Lily Rose dep of the Saudi royal family. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people, a lot of people have been
Speaker 2: saying that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in twenty sixteen, he continues both the war and
Speaker 2: Yemen and his conflict with Muhammad bin Nayef, and he
Speaker 2: launches a new war against one of the most powerful
Speaker 2: blocks in the kingdom, the religious police. Now the Mutawa
Speaker 2: or haya as they are also called, had been seen
Speaker 2: as almost untouchable by his predecessors. Right, these are the
Speaker 2: police of ice and virtue. These are the guys we're
Speaker 2: going around making sure you're not disobeying like the religious law.
Speaker 3: Right, fun police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are they're literally the literal fun police, right,
Speaker 2: and the men, and his father's generation and Mbian's generation
Speaker 2: would not fuck with these guys, right, Like they were
Speaker 2: scared of them. They really wanted them in their corner.
Speaker 2: But by twenty sixteen things had started to change. More
Speaker 2: than sixty five percent of Saudis were under thirty, and
Speaker 2: the young men of this generation had grown up with
Speaker 2: access to the Internet and social media. They and their
Speaker 2: peers shared their frustration with the abuses of the religious police. Right.
Speaker 2: They were talking to each other about how annoying these
Speaker 2: fuckers were, right right.
Speaker 3: They're on the internet. They're like, hey, everybody else is
Speaker 3: having fun. Yeah, Like we're learning about fun police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the man who would be king Karen House
Speaker 2: describes the fun Police's mo For decades, thousands of these men,
Speaker 2: often self appointed members of the Committee to Promote Virtue
Speaker 2: and Prevent Vice, had roamed Saudi streets carrying a long stick,
Speaker 2: forcing women to cover their heads, hurting Saudis into the
Speaker 2: mosket prayer time and sharing all shops and stores locked
Speaker 2: their door for half an hour at prayer time. And
Speaker 2: that Western influence like Barbie dolls or Pokemon cards didn't
Speaker 2: pollute Saudi youth in the waning years. Yeah, they're good
Speaker 2: after Pokemon card.
Speaker 3: Listen, it's if you're I know, it's not the same thing.
Speaker 3: But if you if you start a cult, right, one
Speaker 3: of the key things you gotta do to maintain that
Speaker 3: it makes your people are having fun, right.
Speaker 2: There gotta be something, right, Yeah, you just.
Speaker 3: Can't like if you're like, no Pokemon cards, it's like,
Speaker 3: this is not going to last.
Speaker 2: If you're saying no Pokemon cards, but you can all
Speaker 2: wife swap, then you might be able to keep a
Speaker 2: cult going. But if you're saying no swipe wipe swapping
Speaker 2: and no Pokemon cards, what's gonna keep people there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Right, you're out of business.
Speaker 2: You're out of business. You gotta you gott at least
Speaker 2: to get them on drugs or something, you know.
Speaker 3: Goddamn Pokemon cards. Yeah.
Speaker 2: To continue from that quote, in the waning years of
Speaker 2: the late King Abdullah's rule, the Hya had gotten completely
Speaker 2: out of control. Hearing music inside one family's car, the
Speaker 2: religious police chased the car until it rolled off an overpass,
Speaker 2: killing the driver and injuring his wife and two young children.
Speaker 2: A few months later, two young Saudi's died when HYA members,
Speaker 2: suspecting alcohol, chase the young men's car bumping it at
Speaker 2: high speed, causing the car to roll off a bridge.
Speaker 2: The religious police fled the scene still. Six members of
Speaker 2: the Hia were later acquitted off all charges. Saudi's tweeted
Speaker 2: their anger or on social media the higher are bloodthirsty.
Speaker 2: At Tallal tweeted. At Nahar wrote the highest situation is
Speaker 2: similar to many governmental entities in Saudi. They all need
Speaker 2: restructuring and fixing. So these guys are just a menace
Speaker 2: right where it's like they might be drunk, ram them
Speaker 2: off the road, you know, like they're cops. All cops
Speaker 2: are kind of more alike than different, right, It's a
Speaker 2: happy family situation.
Speaker 3: If you're okay. When I was a dishwasher, food stop
Speaker 3: becoming food. It was just this thing right where you're
Speaker 3: just like, I'm just doing this thing. When you're a
Speaker 3: cop of any kind, people stop becoming people. Just what happens,
Speaker 3: which is why I don't know. People should only be
Speaker 3: cops for like a few weeks at a time and
Speaker 3: then we swap it out.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna have cops, it should be a job
Speaker 2: where everyone is a cop for a little while and
Speaker 2: let me because you know what doesn't get enforced them
Speaker 2: is bullshit rules, right if everyone has to take them,
Speaker 2: and you're like, wait, I gotta got to enforce Merrijuana
Speaker 2: loss No that yeah, yeah, anything is better than having
Speaker 2: it just be like a job that a group of
Speaker 2: people hold and to protect their power, need to like
Speaker 2: protect their right to continue doing it with even greater
Speaker 2: bloodthirstiness and anything.
Speaker 3: Just make cats cops, just just replace all cops cops.
Speaker 2: Especially Every cat has a drone with a gun on it,
Speaker 2: so when the cat needs to shoot somebody, the drone
Speaker 2: just starts firing, like whenever the cat gets angry, it
Speaker 2: just starts blasting. Get down, Get down the cat's angry
Speaker 2: food bowl.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not wrong, but it's still better.
Speaker 2: Than what we have. Right if protesters, right now, we're
Speaker 2: instead of trying to fight squadrons of like armored police
Speaker 2: with tanks and machine guns, there were just a bunch
Speaker 2: of cats with robots firing blindly into the air because
Speaker 2: they hadn't been let out and long enough at least
Speaker 2: easier problem tosault, mister.
Speaker 3: President, How did they get in here? How did they
Speaker 3: overthrow the government? Well, sir, they had raw salmon on them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: over we can do. Yeah, there's nothing.
Speaker 2: So NBS's first move in his war against the religious
Speaker 2: police was to ban them from stopping or detaining Saudi
Speaker 2: citizens in public. Great, first start, right, the thing that
Speaker 2: you were doing that was getting a lot of people killed,
Speaker 2: you just can't do anymore. So you're not allowed to
Speaker 2: just fuck with people in the world. His predecessors had
Speaker 2: tried to curb the influence of religious hardliners, but failed,
Speaker 2: most famously blocking for six years an attempt by King
Speaker 2: Abdullah to make it legal for women to work in
Speaker 2: lingerie stores selling underwear to other women, and like the
Speaker 2: religious the hardliner clerics to be like, no, women can't work.
Speaker 2: But then the problem is like, okay, so are men
Speaker 2: supposed to sell lingerie?
Speaker 3: So we have launch better, but women can't work in
Speaker 3: the low like yeah, you know. The luger industry was like, guys.
Speaker 2: Please, come on, you gotta give us something like what
Speaker 2: got We just want to sell you people underwear?
Speaker 3: But is wrong here? It's in here?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Where King Abdullah had been too frightened to confront
Speaker 2: the Mattawa directly, Mohammed ben Salomon simply ignored their protestations
Speaker 2: and used his father's absolute power to crush any opposition.
Speaker 2: The public was wildly supportive of his actions, and conservatives
Speaker 2: found themselves alone. Perhaps MBS's single most important quality was
Speaker 2: his ability to understand how the youth of Saudi Arabia felt.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just the morality police. Regular citizens knew it
Speaker 2: was impossible to get anything done through the government without bribery.
Speaker 2: The poor majority of the country were forced to watch
Speaker 2: while a handful of princes siphoned away the oil money
Speaker 2: that was supposed to be funding social programs and infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Right Like, people are pissed about this, and so NBS
Speaker 2: has a lot of support as he sets about dismanding
Speaker 2: his enemies the forces he saw is holding Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: and his own ambition back. He later said this of
Speaker 2: his decision to crack down or on the religious police.
Speaker 2: I am young. I don't want seventy percent of the
Speaker 2: Saudi population to waste their lives trying to get rid
Speaker 2: of this. We want to do it now, right, and
Speaker 2: this is we're going from like the genocide and the
Speaker 2: orchestrating internal fights with his family where he's the bad guy,
Speaker 2: to like, no, he's in the right side of this thing.
Speaker 2: These guys suck.
Speaker 3: To break situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the only thing that we'll get rid of them
Speaker 2: is a strong He's effectively the king, not literally, but
Speaker 2: is a strong regent who's being the fuck it. That's
Speaker 2: not how we do things anymore. I'm in chart right,
Speaker 2: Like nothing else was going to fix the situation because
Speaker 2: of how Saudi Arabia works. Right, I'm not saying every
Speaker 2: country is this way. We don't need a king to
Speaker 2: deal with the cops in our country. We could just
Speaker 2: stop having them be immune to everything. But whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like when Trump gets something right, it's like
Speaker 3: you don't have to hand it to him, you know.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's like, yeah, he is right. Those those
Speaker 2: little Japanese trucks are pretty sweet. We should be able
Speaker 2: to buy us here. Yeah, yeah, we don't need just
Speaker 2: f three fifties. We could use some little k's or whatever,
Speaker 2: or the Korean I forget which those little bitty trucks.
Speaker 2: We should. We need little bitty trucks here. He's right,
Speaker 2: you need that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need little bitty trucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's every anytime it's something truck related. He's got
Speaker 2: like a fifty percent chance of being right because he
Speaker 2: seems to just be a guy who periodically sees trucks
Speaker 2: and goes, ooh those two.
Speaker 3: The guy seems to know trucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I trust think he just likes them.
Speaker 3: If he was like Secretary of Trucks, I'd be fine
Speaker 3: with that, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like that video where he's inside that big
Speaker 2: dump truck or whatever pretending to drive around, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: that looked pretty fun. I'd be making the little faces too,
Speaker 2: Like who would do that?
Speaker 3: Most human moment for him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the no.
Speaker 3: Just getting rid of the fun police. Anybody could have
Speaker 3: done it.
Speaker 2: But anybody and everyone should have before him. It's shocking that,
Speaker 2: but like, he's the guy who does it right. By
Speaker 2: the end of twenty seventeen, he had developed a somewhat
Speaker 2: earned reputation as a reformer, but he was also the
Speaker 2: architect of what the international community was openly calling a
Speaker 2: humanitarian catastrophe and potentially an act of genocide. A twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one report by Watana for Human Rights, an independent
Speaker 2: Yeomeni human rights organization, concluded that by November of two
Speaker 2: thousand and fifteen, the Kingdom was aware of a food
Speaker 2: and security crisis in the regions they were striking. Over
Speaker 2: the next two years, NBS's Saudi led coalition increasingly and
Speaker 2: purposefully used hunger as a weapon to try and force
Speaker 2: hoothy surrender. Martha Mundy, an expert on Yemen, quotes a
Speaker 2: senior Saudi diplomat who described the coalition strategy this way.
Speaker 2: Once we control them, we will feed them.
Speaker 3: Huh hah. Is that the plan? Yeah? Okay, that's a
Speaker 3: good plant.
Speaker 2: You know you're the sistic cries right, like, first off,
Speaker 2: that's bad guy talk.
Speaker 3: I want to conte super villain.
Speaker 2: Yes, continue by quoting from a twenty twenty five article
Speaker 2: in the Journal for Genocide Research unnoticing Yemen. A UN
Speaker 2: panel of experts similarly determined and a report published in
Speaker 2: January twenty eighteen that the Saudi blockade is essentially using
Speaker 2: the threat of starvation as a bargaining tool and an
Speaker 2: instrument of war. The Yemen Data Project, a major source
Speaker 2: of information about Yemen, has documented the persistence of the
Speaker 2: tendency of the Saudi coalition to target civilian places and infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Almost a third of all coalition air strikes throughout the
Speaker 2: war have been aimed at such targets, especially at farms.
Speaker 2: Right so they are. Food is a weapon.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of people in a fund way, but
Speaker 2: not in a fun way, not in a fun way,
Speaker 2: not like on a food fight way. Yes, Dave. Despite
Speaker 2: each new atrocity, there appeared to be no end in sight.
Speaker 2: King Solomon had taken power and brought his son with him,
Speaker 2: but they'd inherited an utter mess of an economy. Oil
Speaker 2: revenue accounted for eighty percent of the federal budget, but
Speaker 2: global oil prices had collapsed, leading to a fifty percent
Speaker 2: decline in revenue. One of King Solomon's first moves was
Speaker 2: to bring in the kingdom's foreign currency reserves. With one
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollar budget deficit and the warring Yeomen alone
Speaker 2: costing half a billion dollars a month, the World Bank
Speaker 2: estimated Saudi Arabia could only afford to go on for
Speaker 2: four years before running out of money. There was no
Speaker 2: way to begin tackling the problem without cutting benefits to
Speaker 2: Saudi citizens, much of this in the form of benefits
Speaker 2: to government employees. These cuts slashed the average Saudi man's
Speaker 2: income by around fifty percent. That's how to the boned.
Speaker 2: Because these people, all their jobs are fake, and all
Speaker 2: their jobs are like, oh, you know, to use a typewriter.
Speaker 2: There's an extra twenty percent to your salary, right, that's
Speaker 2: the stuff he's getting.
Speaker 3: Hey, we talked about that where it's like, sorry, guys,
Speaker 3: nothing you do matter. So you're kind of you know.
Speaker 2: And the country's fallen apart now because of the war.
Speaker 2: The Prince launch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we want to do this war. So we're going
Speaker 3: to pay you less to do nothing. No, what's a
Speaker 3: hero in this?
Speaker 2: I guess when's a hero?
Speaker 3: But also I would be pissed. I'm like, listen, you
Speaker 3: promised me money to do nothing for a very long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you promised me money for nothing. In the Chicks
Speaker 2: for free, man, I don't have exact.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I'm spoiled, but I don't want less money
Speaker 3: so you can go to a war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the chicks still aren't free, you know.
Speaker 3: No, No, we're.
Speaker 2: Not even allowed to play guitar. Well, actually now we are.
Speaker 2: We are allowed to play the guitar.
Speaker 3: Now, that's sobbing.
Speaker 2: It's something right, and the man who would be King
Speaker 2: Karen House rights. Despite warnings from some of his ministers
Speaker 2: that economic growth would grind to a halt, MBS preceded
Speaker 2: to add insult to injury. The Saudi Civil Service Minister
Speaker 2: took to television to accuse government employees of working only
Speaker 2: an hour a day. These cuts were paired with slashes
Speaker 2: to subsidized water power and gasoline. Fuel prizes rose by
Speaker 2: fifty percent, bringing gas up to a horrifying ninety six
Speaker 2: cents per gallon. When Saudi economists described the situation thuslye
Speaker 2: we had Christmas every day and Gridge has stolen it.
Speaker 3: First, it's a hero.
Speaker 2: Now it's a hero. Like shit, man, Like, should you
Speaker 2: have had Christmas every day? Is that a good way
Speaker 2: to run a country?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: So, I like, I'm all for living in a utopian
Speaker 3: society where it's Christmas every day.
Speaker 2: But not when it's being paid for by oil money.
Speaker 2: It's only Christmas for a tiny chunk of the population.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where it's just this group at the cost of
Speaker 3: everybody else. That's not good. But I understand that it's
Speaker 3: It's that sort of thing where everybody thinks of the
Speaker 3: underdog of their own life. It doesn't matter how rich
Speaker 3: you are, you want more and you feel like you're
Speaker 3: not getting enough. So it's like these people clearly were
Speaker 3: living in their little utopia and then they're like, sorry,
Speaker 3: life has to get slightly realer for you, and they're.
Speaker 2: Like, this is bullshit, bullshit, you want me to do stuff? Yeah. No.
Speaker 2: So government spending was a huge problem, as was the
Speaker 2: fact that basically no citizens were working, but just annihilating
Speaker 2: everyone's income turned out to have negative impacts. By the
Speaker 2: start of twenty seventeen, economic growth was at point four percent,
Speaker 2: a state of affairs most economists would describe as fucked up.
Speaker 2: Social media boiled with resentment, A protest movement began to
Speaker 2: bubble up up and on April twenty second of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: King Solomon was forced to issue a royal decree declaring
Speaker 2: takes these backsies on all cuts and allowances, benefits and bonuses.
Speaker 2: The Civil Services Minister was fired for insulting Saudi workers,
Speaker 2: and again he's right, these guys are at most, in
Speaker 2: a lot of cases do it an hour a day
Speaker 2: of work.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because it's there's certain things in this that
Speaker 3: I admire and then certain things where I'm like, again,
Speaker 3: like okay, like I would love to not work much
Speaker 3: and get paid, but I always great, Like it's definitely
Speaker 3: a sign that things are going bad. I do wish
Speaker 3: more governments issued takes these backsies like policy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're allowed to go. Hey, everybody, oops.
Speaker 2: You know what the Department of Homeland Security was mistake, Yeah,
Speaker 2: taking away the TSA. Just get on planes now, we'll
Speaker 2: figure it out, you know. Yeah, it works like the
Speaker 2: nineties again, just run right up to the plane, right.
Speaker 3: But because that's not normalized, them doing that in this
Speaker 3: case is like, oh, you really fucked up. Hunh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you made a mistake. You realized that you
Speaker 2: were about to be overthrown.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: NBS was not fired after this fuck up, but his
Speaker 2: popularity and reputation took a major hit. Perhaps one reason
Speaker 2: why it was so hard for Saudi citizens to accept
Speaker 2: any cuts to their benefits was that they'd seen the
Speaker 2: al Saud family's personal finances balloon during the same period,
Speaker 2: and they have a point where it's like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: guys aren't really working a lot of you where you're
Speaker 2: doing barely a job compared to what you're getting paid for.
Speaker 2: But the al Soud family is worth an insane amount
Speaker 2: of money and they do nothing at all. Right, even
Speaker 2: as the government revenues have collapsed, they continue to be
Speaker 2: the family net worth as this as the states' finances
Speaker 2: are in free fall. The Soud family net worth is
Speaker 2: one point four trillion dollars. So I get why these
Speaker 2: people are like, we gotta make cuts.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? Yeah? The story of everything right
Speaker 3: where it's like the rich people like, sorry, you're gonna
Speaker 3: have to tighten the belt. Yeah, I mean I need,
Speaker 3: I need my super yacht. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Look, man, if I don't like I can only eat
Speaker 2: one piece of steak per cow and we've got to
Speaker 2: burn the rest of the cow. And oh yeah, no
Speaker 2: one else got light on the same private jet twice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm being a cow share. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Now I will say one point four trillion dollars
Speaker 2: is the networth of the family that is spread. There's
Speaker 2: tend like more than ten thousand descendants. Now it's not
Speaker 2: evenly split up, right, right, but it is split up
Speaker 2: between them, you know, so it's not quite as insane,
Speaker 2: but it's still a lot.
Speaker 3: You know, things Things are tense, right, It's like.
Speaker 2: Things are tense by mid twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because they basically it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it feels like the same vibes of if we were
Speaker 3: on a lifeboat and I was like, sorry, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: shoot you because I want all the food. Also I
Speaker 3: don't like you. And then you realize there's no bullets
Speaker 3: and you're like, sorry, never mind.
Speaker 2: You know what that test just to test, Yeah, just
Speaker 2: testing you guys, see if you ever ready to share
Speaker 2: with me and running this boat.
Speaker 3: They're not wrong, but it sounds like he along with
Speaker 3: being like, we're cutting your money, but also by being
Speaker 3: like and you deserve to have your money cut like
Speaker 3: it's yeah, like you're not doing anything, So.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, you're not doing anything. But you
Speaker 2: know who is doing something?
Speaker 3: No, sorry, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Sponsors of this podcast. They're doing hard work. You know,
Speaker 2: they're earning their pay. If you let them run Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: they'll they'll do it. You know they'll run it Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: They'll definitely do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're back. I've run it too, by the way,
Speaker 2: times do you run it too?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I bet you could run, Dave. Yeah, what's your first move?
Speaker 3: I don't know if I can do it. I'm just
Speaker 3: saying I will do it. If someone was like, do
Speaker 3: you want to do this, I do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For at least a week, and then you'd never hear
Speaker 3: from me again. Yeah, I would be dead. It's it's
Speaker 3: you know, but I'll do it.
Speaker 2: My first move. I'm changing the country's name to what
Speaker 2: from Saudi Arabia to Free Ecstasy Town. You know, we
Speaker 2: just let the tourist dollars flood in. We let those
Speaker 2: Germans and Spaniards come on over. You know, someone will
Speaker 2: provide the ecstasy. That's not my job. They're in Free
Speaker 2: Ecstasy Town right now, zero downsides.
Speaker 3: That's so smart. What if? Okay, hold on, what if
Speaker 3: like I named my apartment that like and put it
Speaker 3: on like got it, got it on like Google maps.
Speaker 3: It's like free Ecstasy Town. Because you're right, is that
Speaker 3: if you do that and then people show up, eventually.
Speaker 2: There will be a free ecstasy exactly.
Speaker 3: It's a problem that I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Come back in like two weeks and start the episode.
Speaker 2: So our friend David Bell has been raided by the Dea.
Speaker 2: He flew too close to the sun.
Speaker 3: That's just so smart. I don't know, that's such a
Speaker 3: smart idea.
Speaker 2: I think it'll work. I think it'll work anyway. Ads
Speaker 2: and we oh we did? Are we back from ads?
Speaker 2: Were I thought, what's wrong with me? What's wrong?
Speaker 3: Much ecstasy.
Speaker 2: By mid twenty seventeen, the King's son was in a
Speaker 2: very mixed position Politically. He'd earned accolades as a reformer
Speaker 2: for his hobbling of the religious police and his seeming
Speaker 2: support for some social liberalization, but he was also the
Speaker 2: author of an unpopular austerity policy. The king and his
Speaker 2: son faced increasing resistance, both from the populace and within
Speaker 2: their own family. Mbin, who'd made no secret of his
Speaker 2: critiques of MBS's policies, was an obvious rallying point for resistance,
Speaker 2: and so on June twenty first, twenty seventeen, Mohammed bin
Speaker 2: Salman acted to take him down. Karen House writes that
Speaker 2: fateful evening of June twenty first, twenty seventeen, Mbien was
Speaker 2: called to a palace in Mecca. Once there, his guards
Speaker 2: were forbidden to accompany him. Inside, all phones were surrendered
Speaker 2: to palace guards. Mbian was taken to a room where
Speaker 2: Turkey Alashik, a contemporary and friend of MBS and now
Speaker 2: Minister of the General Entertainment Authority, and others began bullying
Speaker 2: him to resign. Denied contact with his men and the
Speaker 2: painkillers to which he was said to be addicted. He
Speaker 2: finally succumbed early the next morning after Prince Khalid al Faisal,
Speaker 2: the governor of Mecca, urged him to obey the king.
Speaker 2: Huh so that's how he gets rid of his cousin. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 2: that was abrupt. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was super abrupt. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And by the way, that fella Turkey ala Shikh who
Speaker 2: was handling like the torturing of Mohammed Bineef, like cutting
Speaker 2: him off from his guards and his painkillers and like
Speaker 2: forcing him to resign. The guy who handles all that.
Speaker 2: Do you know what? He got more? And he's become
Speaker 2: famous for doing more recently.
Speaker 3: Oh no, a hint.
Speaker 2: He's the Minister of the General Entertainment Authority.
Speaker 3: What did he do?
Speaker 2: He's the guy who ran the Riad Comedy Festival that
Speaker 2: all our favorite comedians. Yeah baby, yeah, yeah, he's not
Speaker 2: only in charge of it entertainment than the kingdom. He's
Speaker 2: been Salmon's hatchet man. Yes, yeah, he has a whole
Speaker 2: prison named after him. Yes, the guy who paid Dave
Speaker 2: Chappelle six million dollars.
Speaker 3: I mean not surprised. I guess I don't know. Nah, did.
Speaker 3: Who else was there? It was Louis k At that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he was, Yeah, pretty sure he was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the Simpsons moment with the burlesque house and
Speaker 3: Barney comes out and they're like, oh, Barney, it's that
Speaker 3: where like Louis k At there. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: no one was shocked.
Speaker 2: I guess yeah, it's I don't feel any worse about
Speaker 2: Louis c k or about Dave Chappelle that I did
Speaker 2: previously about like, yeah, yeah, I bet they. If you
Speaker 2: told me some comedians took millions of dollars from the
Speaker 2: Saudi royal family, those would have been my two first guesses, right,
Speaker 2: not shocked.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised by a lot of comedians, frankly,
Speaker 3: because no, you're a comedian. I don't know. It's the
Speaker 3: same with Pitt Bull at that thing where I'm just like,
Speaker 3: I don't like it, but I'm I guess I'm not surprised.
Speaker 2: I'm a little surprised by the well because I think
Speaker 2: most people, if you say, like you want to make
Speaker 2: six million dollars for a day's work, you have to
Speaker 2: make peace with working for a really bad man. But
Speaker 2: all you have to do is something otherwise innocuous, most
Speaker 2: people will do it, which isn't good. It's just six
Speaker 2: million dollars. But if you have a lot of six
Speaker 2: millions of dollars, that's to say, that's where it's like,
Speaker 2: what like you're not starving, you don't have to pay
Speaker 2: for your your mom's dialysis.
Speaker 3: Damn well. And that's the if most people was like
Speaker 3: I did it, I wouldn't be like, I'm disappointed in you.
Speaker 2: I'd say so, yeah, I mean you still had student loans.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can I have some? I guess yeah. But yeah,
Speaker 3: when it's an already rich person, it's just like people
Speaker 3: didn't need that. Yeah, but that's rich people.
Speaker 2: That's rich people. That's how you get that rich. So
Speaker 2: to the international public, it seemed as if the air
Speaker 2: apparent and most powerful man in the Saudi security state
Speaker 2: had completely collapsed overnight as a center of power. Now,
Speaker 2: as we've covered, Muhammad bin Niev's position had been degrading
Speaker 2: for years. Right, he was not totally well, He did
Speaker 2: not have a grip on things, and MBS had been
Speaker 2: slowly cutting him off from his sources of power for
Speaker 2: several years. At this point. So this is the result
Speaker 2: of a fairly long family conflict. For most of the
Speaker 2: twenty first century, Saudi Arabia had been ruled not just
Speaker 2: by the king, but by the Black Prince and another
Speaker 2: senior prince, a guy named Sultan who headed the defense
Speaker 2: ministry before MBS. All three of these men died between
Speaker 2: twenty twelve and twenty sixteen. So now a year, just
Speaker 2: like two years into King Solomon's being the king, right
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen, he and his father have neutered the
Speaker 2: clerics and the religious police. They've eliminated Crown Prince Naief
Speaker 2: and the other crown princes who might have acted as
Speaker 2: barriers to their total power were gone. They are the
Speaker 2: ones running everything. There are no other major power centers.
Speaker 2: They've done this in about two years, right, so this
Speaker 2: is a very successful consolidation of power.
Speaker 3: Have some game of throne and shit like.
Speaker 2: Yeah it really is. Yeah. Now, all they had to
Speaker 2: do was discipline a squabbling cadre of lesser princes and officials,
Speaker 2: some of whom had supported rival princes and others who
Speaker 2: of whom may have eventually represented a threat themselves. More
Speaker 2: to the point, they were all corrupt and King and
Speaker 2: Prince Salomon both knew their continued support would hing on
Speaker 2: being seen as fighting corruption. In the fall of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Mohammed bin Salmon spoke before a major investment conference in
Speaker 2: Riyad that had earned a reputation for being the Davos
Speaker 2: of the Desert. In a bid to attract foreign investment
Speaker 2: into the kingdom, he deliberately played down the country's connection
Speaker 2: to Wahabism and announced that by June of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia would finally allow women to drive. Hey, what
Speaker 2: a reformer, huge move, what a feminist icon, Mohammad been Salomon.
Speaker 3: It really is like if you have a society where, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, people are running around stabbing other people
Speaker 3: randomly all the time.
Speaker 5: This policy it's like the United Kingdom, Sure, yeah, like
Speaker 5: shows up and they're like number one stabbing. Yeah we
Speaker 5: would it didn't It wouldn't matter how like not progressive
Speaker 5: they were.
Speaker 3: We'd be like good for them. I like them. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna vote for them. Like it's just yeah, really, low
Speaker 3: bar is my.
Speaker 2: Point, extremely low bar. The bar is in the fucking
Speaker 2: below the toilet. It has been flushed into the sewer. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so this is also not quite the promise that it seems.
Speaker 2: Now he avoids bringing up, and nobody present feels pressed
Speaker 2: to ask about the Saudi women's rights activists who are
Speaker 2: already in prison for campaigning for their right to drive
Speaker 2: on stage at the Davos, like, there's already women in
Speaker 2: Nobody's like, what about them? Are they getting out? And
Speaker 2: NBS doesn't say shit about that. The next thing he
Speaker 2: brings up on stage at the Davos of the Desert
Speaker 2: event is an exciting history making new Project NEO or
Speaker 2: n e O M, a city built as a one
Speaker 2: Titanic wall, stretching from the Red Sea to the mountains.
Speaker 2: The wallsized skyscraper covered in solar panels. The inside is
Speaker 2: a whole climate controlled city. People. It's gonna be like
Speaker 2: the perfect living place for human beings and our college
Speaker 2: wall town.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the book, NBS quote, businessmen would write the
Speaker 2: laws and entice the world's top minds to innovate on
Speaker 2: Saudi soil, planning for a post carbon future and taking
Speaker 2: advantage of the Saudi sun. The city would be powered
Speaker 2: by solar energies and staffed by so many robots that
Speaker 2: they might outnumber the human inhabitants. Neom Mohammad ban Salmon said,
Speaker 2: would cost five hundred billion dollars and be a place
Speaker 2: for dreamers. It was not an economic development project, but
Speaker 2: a civilizational leap for humanity. At that point, the lights
Speaker 2: dimmed and a video like this one played, and Sophie's
Speaker 2: gonna display that for you now, dave ah sweet.
Speaker 4: For too long, humanity has existed within dysfunctional and polluted
Speaker 4: cities that ignore nature. Now a revolution in civilization is
Speaker 4: taking place. Imagine a traditional city and consolidating its footprint, cramit,
Speaker 4: designing to protect and enhance nature. The line will be
Speaker 4: home to nine million residents and will be built with
Speaker 4: a footprint of just thirty four square kilometers, and we
Speaker 4: are designing it to provide a healthier, more sustainable quality
Speaker 4: of life. The line's communities are organized in three dimensions.
Speaker 3: Man, now, so I love that they're Like? Too long
Speaker 3: have cities not been wall based.
Speaker 2: In big walls? Also, cities don't live in harmony with nature,
Speaker 2: unlike a giant line. Right, like a huge silver wall
Speaker 2: that cuts off birds from their migratory patter.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, birds are gonna be smacking into that thing.
Speaker 3: It's it's so tough because like when when when I
Speaker 3: first heard of Wall City, right, I'm like, that's cool
Speaker 3: and cyberpunk and like that's fun. Then watching that ad
Speaker 3: where they take a city and cram it, I was like, oh, right,
Speaker 3: that's that's that's blade Runner, right.
Speaker 2: And it's there's some like bits of wisdom in that,
Speaker 2: like denser urban developments are a lot easier on the
Speaker 2: environment than sprawling ones. Sure, there's probably a future. One
Speaker 2: of the suggested futures of how we would build cities
Speaker 2: is that they are denser, which doesn't mean of low quality,
Speaker 2: but like that they're that you have, like there's a
Speaker 2: lot more space for nature. No one is suggesting a
Speaker 2: giant wall hundreds of feet high and dozens of miles long,
Speaker 2: Like I guess that's the insane thing to build.
Speaker 3: It's neat because it's like what blade Runner would have
Speaker 3: lived in. This is the thing. This is the issue
Speaker 3: I have with everything from the goddamn cyber truck to this,
Speaker 3: which is that I love this. I I'm not embarrassed
Speaker 3: to say that I love the look at the cyber truck.
Speaker 3: I love that bullshit futurist aesthetic. I know it looks
Speaker 3: like shit objectively. But all these dildos it's the same problem,
Speaker 3: which is like they're like, I want to make a
Speaker 3: world like Star Trek, and I think, okay, so number one,
Speaker 3: we get rid of money, and they're like, no robots,
Speaker 3: and it's like.
Speaker 2: No, just a lot of robots. Yeah, we just want
Speaker 2: to make it tall, right.
Speaker 3: They want to make it look like Star Trek. They
Speaker 3: don't want to actually make it Star Trek, where it's
Speaker 3: actually like, oh, we we eliminate like money, and we
Speaker 3: we pour a bunch of efforts into medicine and lifting
Speaker 3: up the lower classes. No, none of that. We just
Speaker 3: want fucking cool, smooth things and like I get it,
Speaker 3: so do I, but I'd rather have the other stuff first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like wouldn't we all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wall City. I'm like, I guess, I mean, there's
Speaker 3: too many of us. We should stay out in nature's way.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's who's doing it. And again it's clearly
Speaker 3: that they're just like they started with, like, he's clearly
Speaker 3: someone who's like, well City, that's cool, right, and.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea as they went from there. We
Speaker 2: may do a dedicated episode about this later because we
Speaker 2: didn't have time in this but this is impossible. The
Speaker 2: project is already run into terminal issues like it is.
Speaker 2: Cost overflows are massive. The Kingdom's financial situation today is
Speaker 2: still not good because again every effort to transition off
Speaker 2: of being entirely reliant on oil money has failed, and
Speaker 2: they never really got over a lot of these central
Speaker 2: issues that were massive problems for the country when MBS
Speaker 2: took power. Like they've been patching over them, but there's
Speaker 2: still problems. And the goal was to get a bunch
Speaker 2: of foreign investment to make this thing possible. Again, they
Speaker 2: were looking at five hundred billion dollars and it's likely
Speaker 2: it'll cost way more than that if they were to
Speaker 2: actually finish this thing. They've dug a bunch of hole.
Speaker 2: They've started construction. It's never going to get built. It's impossible.
Speaker 3: They're starting with the conclusion and not getting there. It's
Speaker 3: again like the cyber truck. I think looks cool, but
Speaker 3: it's clear that he started with the look and then
Speaker 3: the insides are shit and don't make any sense. So
Speaker 3: it's like you're not starting with that fundamental idea of
Speaker 3: like how do people live? How should we how should
Speaker 3: we build a city more efficiently? It started with what
Speaker 3: if Wall makes that.
Speaker 2: We're going to build the city of the future, where
Speaker 2: like a modern society, you know, built by businessmen. All
Speaker 2: of the world's innovators will want to live here. It's like,
Speaker 2: but like alcohol still illegal and women right can't like
Speaker 2: don't shit toget Like, yeah.
Speaker 6: A very non original idea. Man's like, what if I
Speaker 6: start a city? What if I make my own town
Speaker 6: like that? That's a very common thing I fear. And
Speaker 6: if you meet that guy, go please leave me alone
Speaker 6: and then taste them.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a teenager's dream where it's like you
Speaker 3: draw a character where you're like, and he has a
Speaker 3: cool sword and he's that like cool armor, and then
Speaker 3: you think of like what's his personality? Like you're you're
Speaker 3: going backwards right where you're like and it's that where
Speaker 3: they're just like cool Wall city, but are our our
Speaker 3: actual what they said, designed by businessman the laws.
Speaker 6: Imagine meeting that guy at a.
Speaker 2: Bar designed by businessman. Yes, just imagine.
Speaker 1: Meeting that guy not knowing anything about him.
Speaker 6: But the guy comes up to you and is like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm gonna build this uh city. The line it's just
Speaker 6: like one really big wall right, you'd be like, please
Speaker 6: get away from me.
Speaker 2: You're terrifying.
Speaker 3: I'd be like, are you Peter Teal? Are you Peter?
Speaker 6: Oh, it's like classic libertarian ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it is such a libertarian boat city. Oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, I'm not.
Speaker 6: Cool if it was not just like every single time
Speaker 6: it's like the worst people in the world are like exactly.
Speaker 2: I would live on a boat if it was like
Speaker 2: a pirate radio kind of situation, because that movie rips.
Speaker 2: But I'm simply not going to live on a boat
Speaker 2: with a bunch of bitcoin guys.
Speaker 3: I'd rather like That's the thing is, like I if okay,
Speaker 3: if we can't get the good futuristic stuff, I still
Speaker 3: would be it would be cool if my house looked neat,
Speaker 3: you know, like if I had some cyberpunk brutalist house,
Speaker 3: Like that's something at least. But the best version of
Speaker 3: this has ever been Walt Disney designing Epcot and being like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make a future city and then it got
Speaker 3: too hard and he's like, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 3: to make a theme park. Yeah, he goals, you know,
Speaker 3: he was like, Okay, I'm not the guy to make
Speaker 3: a future city, the experimental prototype City of Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Turns out that sucks ass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just put some fucking rides in there.
Speaker 1: Like he's like, not tomorrow but tomorrow Land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like good on him.
Speaker 2: As we've famous good guy.
Speaker 3: Well, this good.
Speaker 2: Guy the real hero of these episodes.
Speaker 3: It's a nice reminder that these rich dildos have been
Speaker 3: trying to make cities for a.
Speaker 2: Wivery because they all want to prove they can do
Speaker 2: it better. They want to prove they know what's wrong
Speaker 2: with society. But what none of them understand, and so
Speaker 2: why this is impossible is that it's hard to make
Speaker 2: a good city or a good country because people are
Speaker 2: messy and don't get along. And if your whole thing
Speaker 2: is I don't understand people or like to listen to them,
Speaker 2: you're gonna fail.
Speaker 3: It's that, and it's it's also like Disney famously was
Speaker 3: also like, you know what, I hate zoning laws. These
Speaker 3: rich people they also just don't like following the rules
Speaker 3: of law. So they're like, oh, what if I made
Speaker 3: a city and then it's everybody will love my cool city,
Speaker 3: and then everybody has to do what I say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you forget to have any measures to
Speaker 2: prevent the outbreak of cholera. Uh right, so everybody dies.
Speaker 3: Every libertarian city. I feel like every pitch falls apart
Speaker 3: when you go, Okay, and what do you think the
Speaker 3: age of consent will be there? Yeah? Like, because it's
Speaker 3: always a dark answer.
Speaker 2: I see the age of consenting, like, what's gonna who's
Speaker 2: gonna be in charge of the poop? What's gonna happen
Speaker 2: with the poop? You know, where's the poop gone?
Speaker 3: Right? Where's the poop going?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That's the if you're ever hanging out in like
Speaker 2: an alternate living situation or where someone's trying to like
Speaker 2: build their own community and the first thing they show
Speaker 2: you or close to the first thing isn't and here's
Speaker 2: our toilet solution, those people are going to fail, right,
Speaker 2: you know, unless it's all around poop city, it's poop
Speaker 2: city University, it's all poop oriented.
Speaker 3: There you go, Dave, Yep, you take showers with your buddies. Okay, sorry, wow, sorry,
Speaker 3: thanks Dave. So two weeks after going on this slightly
Speaker 3: fevered Steve Job style rant about how the future was
Speaker 3: a big line city and a country where most people
Speaker 3: didn't think TV should be legal.
Speaker 2: Mohammed had been well powerful people didn't think TV should
Speaker 2: be legal. Mohammad bin Salomon launched his final gambit towards
Speaker 2: consolidating absolute power. He'd spent the days since the Big
Speaker 2: Davos in the Desert event sending his secret police out
Speaker 2: to arrest and transport hundreds of the most powerful people
Speaker 2: in the kingdom to one location. And this included multiple
Speaker 2: members of the royal family as well as billionaire financiers
Speaker 2: who had helped to build the nation's economy. These men
Speaker 2: were taken to the Ritz Carlton and Riyad, one of
Speaker 2: the finest hotels in the world. It was locked down
Speaker 2: for normal business. Its staff was replaced by security officers
Speaker 2: and secret policemen. Guests were made to surrender their cell
Speaker 2: phones and devices. They were separated from their guards and
Speaker 2: sometimes vast fortunes. One of these men was Prince Alwalid
Speaker 2: bin Tallul. He was the most famous businessman in the kingdom.
Speaker 2: A billionaire great grandson of King Abdulaziz, Prince Alwalid was
Speaker 2: as protected a nobleman as you could imagine. He was
Speaker 2: called by the royal one morning in ordered to visit
Speaker 2: the king another billionaire, while Lead al Ibrahim had found
Speaker 2: himself in the same situation a day before. So these
Speaker 2: are guys who should not have been vulnerable to something
Speaker 2: like this, right, But the reality is, and King Salmon
Speaker 2: knows this. These guys are not as rich in reality
Speaker 2: as they seem to be on paper because for decades
Speaker 2: they'd relied on the Saudi state purse and public funds
Speaker 2: to prop up their bad investments and smooth over any
Speaker 2: mistakes they made. And all of the richest people in
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia were doing this. This is part of why
Speaker 2: the economy was in the shitter, is these guys start
Speaker 2: making bad bets and they're using the kingdom as a
Speaker 2: checkbook to cover their asses. So this mass detainment that
Speaker 2: King Salomon orchestrates of all these guys sends a message
Speaker 2: none of you are untouchable anymore. And I want to
Speaker 2: quote from a summary of what happened by from an
Speaker 2: NBC report by Dan de Luce, Kindlanian and Robert Windram.
Speaker 2: The involuntary guests were told they had to sign away
Speaker 2: large chunks of their assets to be released. The attention
Speaker 2: involve both psychological abuse and in some cases torture. Current
Speaker 2: and former US officials say the move, described by Saudi
Speaker 2: authorities as a crackdown on rampant corruption, allowed the Crown
Speaker 2: Prince to tighten his grip and sent a shockwave through
Speaker 2: the kingdom as elites, This was a shakedown operation and
Speaker 2: a power consolidation operation, said one former senior US official
Speaker 2: who was in office at the time. The RITZ detentions
Speaker 2: were designed to remind people going forward that their wealth
Speaker 2: and their well being would depend on the Crown Prince
Speaker 2: and not on anything else, which is why it was
Speaker 2: so upsetting for many in the royal family, said the
Speaker 2: former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. What
Speaker 2: was that a quote from This is from an NBC report.
Speaker 2: I just love yeah.
Speaker 3: Involuntary guest, perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, voluntary guest of the RITZ Carlton, Yes, may
Speaker 2: have been tortured. Involuntary guest. Just call him prisoners at
Speaker 2: this point. So this is what brings us to Mohammed
Speaker 2: and Salmon's most notorious crime, although certainly not his worst,
Speaker 2: the brutal murder of Washington postureournalist Jamal Koshogi. Now, Jamal,
Speaker 2: if you have haven't heard much about this guy, he
Speaker 2: came from almost as rarefied a social circle as Mohammed
Speaker 2: Bnsalman himself. His grandfather, a doctor, had treated MBS's grandfather,
Speaker 2: the King. He was a close relative to billionaire arms
Speaker 2: dealer ad Non Koshogi, who was involved in like eighty
Speaker 2: percent of the shady deals that took place in the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties. Jamal got involved in the Muslim Brotherhood while
Speaker 2: in college, and he worked as a journalist for an
Speaker 2: English language paper out of Jeddah. Once he graduated, he
Speaker 2: winds up on the ground floor of reporting on the
Speaker 2: Musjahdeen's resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Kashogi arguably
Speaker 2: crossed the line from reporter to participant during at least
Speaker 2: one part of the conflict. He became a well known
Speaker 2: figure within the world of Islamic militancy and secured an
Speaker 2: invitation to talk with another influential Saudi militant, Osama bin Laden. Right,
Speaker 2: so this is a journalist who's reporting on this, you know,
Speaker 2: jihad against the Soviets. He'd at least at one point
Speaker 2: crosses for being a journalist to being a combatant, and
Speaker 2: as a result he has a lot of klout with
Speaker 2: these other militants, and so he gets to hang out
Speaker 2: with bin Laden. Now. Ultimately, Kashogi winds up disillusioned by
Speaker 2: the failure of the revolution in Afghanistan. He had been
Speaker 2: a guy who had hoped will create something better than
Speaker 2: what had existed before, if we can kick the Soviets out,
Speaker 2: and instead we get the Taliban. And Kashogi's not delusional.
Speaker 2: He can see the Taliban is bad, and so he
Speaker 2: comes home being like, well, that didn't fucking work, right, Yeah, shit,
Speaker 2: what do I do with my life now?
Speaker 3: It's tough. It's tough when your buddy has become the Taliban.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough when your buddies become the Taliban. Nobody
Speaker 2: wants that to happen to their buddies. Dave, No, I'm
Speaker 2: happy that you've continued writing for the Internet as opposed
Speaker 2: to becoming the Taliban.
Speaker 3: Right now, I had that crossroads, but yeah, it would.
Speaker 2: Have been logistically confusing too, yeah oh yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: when he returns home to Saudi Arabi, he's arguably the
Speaker 2: most influential journalist in the kingdom. He's one of them,
Speaker 2: and he's developed close working relationships with several highly placed
Speaker 2: members of the royal family, and he spends the next
Speaker 2: couple of decades as both an influential critic and pillar
Speaker 2: of the power system. So he is integrated tightly within
Speaker 2: kind of the upper strata of Saudi Arabia. He's very
Speaker 2: well regarded. He's also someone who can periodically critique what
Speaker 2: decisions that are being made by the powerful in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: and he sees himself as like a mouthpiece for the
Speaker 2: poor in Saudi Arabia, for the working class. As a
Speaker 2: result of that, he can occasionally speak some truth to power,
Speaker 2: right or speak truth to the rest of the world
Speaker 2: about what's going on in Saudi Arabia. That's at least
Speaker 2: how you'll see this guy written about speaking of people
Speaker 2: who speak truth to power. These ads will speak truth
Speaker 2: to the greatest power in the world. Your wallet, Wow,
Speaker 2: not by wallet and we're back. So Jamal Kashogi, after
Speaker 2: a period of time as one of the more influential
Speaker 2: journalists in Saudi Arabia, is going to do kind of
Speaker 2: the most dangerous thing you can do in the kingdom,
Speaker 2: which is express support for reforms that everyone knows are necessary,
Speaker 2: but that the Crown, Prince and King haven't embraced yet right,
Speaker 2: He's going to be ahead of the curve on some
Speaker 2: important things, and that's going to make him a lot
Speaker 2: of enemies. Ben Hubbard writes. He was appointed editor of
Speaker 2: Al Watan newspaper and used it to push for women's
Speaker 2: rights while criticizing the role of the religious establishment. He
Speaker 2: didn't last long after all, Kaita bombings killed twenty five
Speaker 2: people in Riyad in two thousand and three. Koshogi pinnon
Speaker 2: editorial attacking not only the terrorists but the clerics who
Speaker 2: gave them power. Jamal wound up driven to the United States,
Speaker 2: where he would live at time through the coming years,
Speaker 2: whenever things got too hot for him. Back in the Kingdom,
Speaker 2: he was predictably a big supporter of the Arab Spring,
Speaker 2: which further caused consternation among the powerful. During the rise
Speaker 2: of Isis, Koshogi compared the terrorist movements ideology to the
Speaker 2: kingdom's own Wahabist beliefs. He initially supported Solomon as king
Speaker 2: and was bullish on the reforms that he and MBS
Speaker 2: introduced against the religious police and endemic corruption. So when
Speaker 2: MBS first comes to power, Kaushogi's a big backer because
Speaker 2: he sees this guy's kind of the answer to his prayers,
Speaker 2: someone who will stick up to the worst and most
Speaker 2: like conservative elements in our society. Right, this guy might
Speaker 2: be a sign of hope. Koshogi acted for a while
Speaker 2: as a dogged defender of the new king to international critics.
Speaker 2: He was important enough to be included in a public
Speaker 2: meeting between Mohammed and Salmon and a group of clerics
Speaker 2: and intellectuals in twenty sixteen. Ben Hubbard reports that MBS
Speaker 2: talked to the crowd about his plans for economic and
Speaker 2: political reform. Kashogi asked him, why don't you talk about
Speaker 2: any of this in public? If you're in favor of
Speaker 2: all these reforms, why won't you tell people about them?
Speaker 2: Why are we having this meeting in private? And Nbs says,
Speaker 2: in short, you can just write about what I've said here,
Speaker 2: put it in the newspaper, tell everybody what I'm saying. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm giving you permission to make this public, right, okay.
Speaker 2: So Jamal is like, all right, I fucking will, and
Speaker 2: he takes this as an invitation to report openly on
Speaker 2: the Prince's crusade to modernize the kingdom. This would prove
Speaker 2: to be something of a.
Speaker 3: Mistake, man, because it's like, yeah, go write it. I'd
Speaker 3: be like, mmm, do you really want that?
Speaker 2: Never trust the prince when he's like, oh, I want
Speaker 2: a journalist to hold my feet to the fire. Are
Speaker 2: you kidding me? Accountability That's what kings.
Speaker 3: Love, man. I mean, I'm not blaming him, like, it's
Speaker 3: just like it's just like you can see it all
Speaker 3: unfolding here. Yeah, because saying I'd go like, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Ok I guess yeah. In the fall of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: having silenced his most powerful detractors, nbs A security forces
Speaker 2: launched a crack down on their little enemies. Eighty dissidents
Speaker 2: were arrested. Most were clerics who were either too conservative
Speaker 2: or too progressive. The rest were political reformers and as
Speaker 2: been rights individuals who had annoyed MBS and his aids
Speaker 2: in some way or another. One was an economist who
Speaker 2: had questioned the wisdom of privatizing a Ramko. Another was
Speaker 2: a poet who had called on journalists to avoid harsh
Speaker 2: language and a dispute with Cutter. So these are just
Speaker 2: guys getting arrested for bugging, you know, Turkey uh or
Speaker 2: Mohammed Ben Salomon you know, yes, for any reason.
Speaker 3: I'm going to do my petty tour here, Mike asshole tour.
Speaker 2: I've gotten rid of the big enemies. One prominent detainee
Speaker 2: was a cleric named Salmon Alauda. In his younger days,
Speaker 2: he'd been an extreme fundamentalist, and he'd spent time in
Speaker 2: prison for demeaning the royal family arguing against their right
Speaker 2: to rule. In more recent years, he'd become almost a progressive,
Speaker 2: hosting popular shows on YouTube and television, and building a
Speaker 2: massive younger following on social media with generally positive, upbeat
Speaker 2: videos about Islam and modern life. What really got him
Speaker 2: in trouble was his growing embrace of constitutional monarchy. I'llauda
Speaker 2: frame this as an attempt to help the Kingdom and
Speaker 2: House of South avoid an Arab spring of their own.
Speaker 2: He gently suggested that the government might try to listen
Speaker 2: to its people a little more, rather than governing by
Speaker 2: the whims of Mohammed bin Salmon and his ailing father.
Speaker 2: He was arrested and has been held in solitary confinement
Speaker 2: from September of twenty seventeen up to the present day.
Speaker 2: His brother complained about the arrest on Twitter and has
Speaker 2: also been detained. If his case ever comes to trial,
Speaker 2: he could get the death penalty, although given the fact
Speaker 2: that his health is deteriorated by in bars, that may
Speaker 2: not be he could be dead now I don't think
Speaker 2: we know. Um wow, there's a lot of guys like that.
Speaker 2: The whole RITZ Carlton affair was carried on in a
Speaker 2: very hush hush manner by the Kingdom Security Forces. They
Speaker 2: obviously wanted everyone to know the broad strokes of what
Speaker 2: had gone down, and there were specific names they wanted publicized,
Speaker 2: but the government never released a comprehensive list of names,
Speaker 2: and only accused them vaguely of intelligence activities for the
Speaker 2: benefit of foreign parties and engaging in espionage while having
Speaker 2: contact with external entities. The Muslim Brotherhood was named as
Speaker 2: a specific example. Long term consequences ranged from prison terms
Speaker 2: to home detention. Some people were let go entirely with
Speaker 2: the equivalent of a warning. Nearly all spent days or
Speaker 2: weeks detained at the RITZ without any charge or clear
Speaker 2: idea of what crimes they were expected to answer to.
Speaker 2: Some were certainly executed, Although it's impossible for us to
Speaker 2: make any clear estimates about how many people suffered. Want punishments.
Speaker 3: The crime was bugging him. It was crime was bugging them.
Speaker 2: Bugging them, Yeah, bugging him or other people like you, Yes,
Speaker 2: the two great crimes. On June twenty fourth, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia officially lifted its ban on women driving. Prince
Speaker 2: Alwalid bin Tallal, fresh off being released from the RITZ
Speaker 2: praised the move on social media and went on a
Speaker 2: public drive with his daughter and granddaughter. He tweeted, there
Speaker 2: is no doubt that the thoughts of my brother Mohammed
Speaker 2: ben Salomon led to this great result. Women have now
Speaker 2: taken off gotten their freedom. That's all they needed was
Speaker 2: to drive.
Speaker 3: God that may.
Speaker 2: Mere weeks earlier, NBS's police had carried out a massive
Speaker 2: crackdown on women's rights activists. Ten women and seven men
Speaker 2: at least were arrested over their work campaigning to end
Speaker 2: the driving band that Muhammad himself Ben Solomon himself had
Speaker 2: ordered ended. From an article in The Guardian, Amnesty said
Speaker 2: that according to three testimonies it obtained, some of the
Speaker 2: activists were repeatedly given electric shocks and flogged, leaving some
Speaker 2: unable to walk or stand properly, and one instance an
Speaker 2: activist was hung from the ceiling. Another testimony said one
Speaker 2: of the detained women was subjected to sexual harassment by
Speaker 2: interrogators wearing face masks. Jesus, so these are this is
Speaker 2: like weeks before he ends the band, and their crime
Speaker 2: is not that they want the band in. The crime
Speaker 2: is that they're advocating. They're saying that the country's doing
Speaker 2: something wrong, that a law needs to change because it's wrong,
Speaker 2: and that's criticism. We can't have that, no, sir.
Speaker 3: It's just that it's that fucking that vibe, right, the
Speaker 3: like hashtag girl boss vibe where it's like on top
Speaker 3: of just some of the worst things ever, it's short
Speaker 3: circuits your brain where they're like patenting themselves on the
Speaker 3: back at the same time they're doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just setting yeah, yeah, yeah, you hate to
Speaker 2: see it. A Saudi female race car driver and again
Speaker 2: there's this, there's weeks long pr push in the wake
Speaker 2: of this. A Saudi female race car driver is given
Speaker 2: her license in a grand ceremony in Riod and allowed
Speaker 2: to take a celebratory lap through the capitol. Weeks before
Speaker 2: she would help to open the French Grand Prix. Journalists
Speaker 2: were warned that she would not make any comment about
Speaker 2: women's rights. This eloquently showcased Ben Salmon's attitude towards social progress.
Speaker 2: He would do the minimum necessary, but he would also
Speaker 2: brutally punish anyone who made the mistake of embracing change
Speaker 2: before he did, and he'd expect to be right.
Speaker 3: It's just I'm going to give you what I give you,
Speaker 3: and you better not ask for more, and you.
Speaker 2: Better not have asked for what I'm giving you previously.
Speaker 6: Because he wants people to like him, he wants to
Speaker 6: he wants to be worshiped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're also to praise me every step of the way.
Speaker 2: You're going to be thanking me for what I've given you.
Speaker 3: I mean, we had a discussion like that, you know,
Speaker 3: when we legalized weed. It became this thing of like
Speaker 3: maybe we should let the people in jail for that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like it's it's similar. But except if you say that,
Speaker 3: you'll be executed.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, you shouldn't say that. So yeah. Luayne al
Speaker 2: Hathlul had gained notoriety in twenty fourteen when she was
Speaker 2: arrested for trying to drive her car from the UAE
Speaker 2: into Saudi Arabia. She was released after more than seventy
Speaker 2: days in prison the month after Salomon was made king.
Speaker 2: This was initially seen as a reason for optimism towards
Speaker 2: the new king and his son. Al Hathlul had continued
Speaker 2: to speak out against the kingdom's laws and participated in
Speaker 2: a major foreign documentary that criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record.
Speaker 2: She'd been living overseas with her husband when she returned
Speaker 2: home in twenty seventeen and was arrested as part of
Speaker 2: NBS's wider crackdown on dissent. She was released and expanded
Speaker 2: the scope of her activism, pushing against the kingdom's guardian
Speaker 2: ship laws, which made women basically legal miners in perpetuity.
Speaker 2: She was invited to speak at the UN where she
Speaker 2: directly called kingdom representatives out for denying the existence of
Speaker 2: guardianship laws. This was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Speaker 2: A month after this, she was kidnapped from her home
Speaker 2: in Abu Dhabi and flown to Saudi Arabia. She was
Speaker 2: released after a month, but forbidden from leaving the country. Then,
Speaker 2: just before the driving band was repealed, she was swept
Speaker 2: up in a mass arrest with other prominent women's rights activists,
Speaker 2: and this is like part of this big sweep that
Speaker 2: I had talked about just a second ago. Right Punishments
Speaker 2: for these activists and their supporters ran the gamut, from
Speaker 2: jail time to travel bands to torture. The Kingdom's captive
Speaker 2: news media embarked in a campaign of slandering the reputations
Speaker 2: of those incarcerated, and some prisoners, including al Hdlul, were
Speaker 2: tortured by officers of the Rapid Intervention Group. This was
Speaker 2: a recently assembled team of black ops guys overseen by
Speaker 2: a guy named Sawud al Katani, and operated as the
Speaker 2: personal enforcers of Muhammeddan's Solomon. Anyone who annoyed him was
Speaker 2: fair game for kidnapping, torture, and murder. The women were
Speaker 2: kept in tiny rooms with covered windows. They were taken
Speaker 2: to be interrogated and tortured frequently by men who mostly
Speaker 2: wanted to humiliate them. They were sexually harassed a lot.
Speaker 2: They were shocked with like cattle prods. They were just
Speaker 2: beaten the old fashioned way. El Hathlwell was waterboarded on
Speaker 2: several occasions. Al Katani oversaw her torture directly. Sometimes he
Speaker 2: would threaten to rape her repeatedly and throw her body
Speaker 2: in the sewer. This is the kind of stuff that
Speaker 2: they're doing. And they're doing this during Ramadan. He and
Speaker 2: his men are torturing her throughout the night.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And they forced her to eat after the sun comes up,
Speaker 2: when she's not supposed to be eating. So, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a pretty gross stuff, right.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Robert, because because Dave Chappelle said it's
Speaker 3: easier to talk in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: It's easier to talk in Saudi Arabia unless.
Speaker 3: Because of wokeness here they don't have Jesus's fucking Christ. Yeah, horrific.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would be operatives of the same Rapid Intervention
Speaker 2: Group that Mohammad bin Salmon called upon to murder now
Speaker 2: dissidant journalist Jamal Kashogi. He had written critically if the
Speaker 2: princes ritz Carlton kidnapping spree the previous year and about
Speaker 2: the ongoing detention of women's driving advocates. What he didn't
Speaker 2: know was that mere months before MBS started his campaign
Speaker 2: to destroy a cent, he sent agents of his Rapid
Speaker 2: Intervention Group, mostly military veterans, to the US so they
Speaker 2: could train with a private security firm the Tier one Group.
Speaker 2: Per The New York Times, the mercenary firm Quote is
Speaker 2: owned by the private equity firm Serveris Capital Management. The
Speaker 2: company says the training, including safe marksmanship and countering an attack,
Speaker 2: was defensive in nature and designed to better protect Saudi leaders.
Speaker 2: One person familiar with the training Senate also included work
Speaker 2: in surveillance. Yes, said the good Man. It's Serverist Capital
Speaker 2: Management have a private army that the trade Mohammad bin
Speaker 2: Salmon's goon squad.
Speaker 3: Rich people for the longest time. It's the weirdest thing
Speaker 3: that how how are just like palenteer, Like they're just
Speaker 3: you know what, We're not gonna even murnerk. Yeah, We're
Speaker 3: just we're let's call it like it is. It's like
Speaker 3: the only honesty they have. It's so weird. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my new capital management firm, I just shot a
Speaker 2: baby Incorporated. Yeah yeah, named after the time I shot
Speaker 2: a baby. Oh, it's great stuff.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Kushogi himself had fled Saudi Arabia in June of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: having seen the writing on the wall of the RITZ.
Speaker 2: He had escalated his criticisms of the regime and NBS
Speaker 2: in particular and had launched a series of projects with
Speaker 2: the aim of collecting and amplifying foreign descent against the government.
Speaker 2: Because he was too clever to fly back into the country,
Speaker 2: Saudi operatives had to nab him overseas in order to
Speaker 2: stop his inconvenient criticisms. Saud Al Katani, NBS's triggerman, is
Speaker 2: known to have organized an effort to take the effort
Speaker 2: to take out Kushogi. They finally caught him in Turkey.
Speaker 2: A fifteen member intervention group team fell upon the journalist
Speaker 2: as he visited the Saudi consulate and stenbull seeking papers
Speaker 2: to make his marriage to his fiance official. Well she
Speaker 2: waited outside, the tam attacked him. The Kingdom would later
Speaker 2: claim their job was just to take him back to
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, but he resisted and so was injected with
Speaker 2: a large dose of something that killed him. His body
Speaker 2: was then dismembered. NBS the government insisted had no knowledge
Speaker 2: of any of this. Subsequent investigations and reporting had revealed
Speaker 2: that one member of the negotiation team was a coroner
Speaker 2: explicitly hired to dismembered mister Koshogi's corpse after he was killed,
Speaker 2: which would suggest they never wanted to take him alive, Right,
Speaker 2: you don't bring a coroner along if you think you're
Speaker 2: going to get this guy out of the building alive.
Speaker 3: Who among us was like, we just want to we
Speaker 3: just want to talk to him. Oh damn it. We
Speaker 3: dismembered him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ah fuck yeah, yeah, yep, good god. So we
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what went down in the room, but
Speaker 2: we have a pretty good idea and all of the
Speaker 2: evidence shows mister Koshogi was assassinated, dismembered, and disposed of
Speaker 2: by a team that had been sent to Turkey to
Speaker 2: do ja that all credible experts believe Mohammad and Salmon
Speaker 2: gave the orders. And that's kind of where we leave
Speaker 2: things off. There's more to say, I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: lot more to get into the Trump years and stuff,
Speaker 2: but these are the broad strokes of how he came
Speaker 2: to be where he is right Our current president has
Speaker 2: even broken with the conclusions of his own CIA to
Speaker 2: insist that NBS is probably innocent. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: do we trust the CIA or do we trust Donald Trump?
Speaker 6: Here?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, no, it's just a real like you've identified
Speaker 3: a bastard, but it really resonates of like the other
Speaker 3: all the people who fucking are doing business with this
Speaker 3: guy and being like yeah, it's great there. It's just like, oh,
Speaker 3: fuck all those people.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep, Because you know, the tempo of operations
Speaker 2: in Yemen with Saudi Arabia is a lot lower than
Speaker 2: it was, but the damage from the peak of operations
Speaker 2: was catastrophic. Per an article and Genocide Watch, in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, Saudi strikes have directly killed over two twelve
Speaker 2: thousand civilians. Only half of the hospitals continue to operate.
Speaker 2: Saudi naval blockades have cut off food and supplies. Thousands
Speaker 2: of children have died of starvation. A cholera epidemic afflicted
Speaker 2: eight hundred thousand civilians and killed thousands. Eighty percent of
Speaker 2: the population depends on humanitarian relief. The Many Archive and
Speaker 2: Oxvan report that the Saudi led coalition has systematically destroyed
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty bridges essential for delivery of humanitarian aid.
Speaker 2: Whothies have also prevented food aid from reaching populations and
Speaker 2: areas they control. At least two hundred and thirty three
Speaker 2: thousand civilians have died in yemen Civil war. Right so cool, horrific.
Speaker 3: Not good? Person. I will not be subscribing to The
Speaker 3: Wall City.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, no no, And I won't listen to his
Speaker 2: podcast when it comes out.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was surprised because you talk about all these
Speaker 3: people who are just getting pale on money sitting around.
Speaker 3: I was like, surely a lot of podcasts, Yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of terrible podcasts.
Speaker 2: Call it the Southcast. You know you got a right there.
Speaker 3: Bam, you did it.
Speaker 2: M well, bam, gotta plug anything.
Speaker 3: I don't know, okay, uh uh oh uh gamefully unemployed.
Speaker 3: That's the podcast network I co run with Tom Ryman,
Speaker 3: and we talk about movies and TV and and and
Speaker 3: you know, stuff like that The X Files. I am
Speaker 3: the head writer of Some More News, which is a
Speaker 3: you know, it's like a news show on the YouTube. Uh.
Speaker 3: And that's it for now, maybe more in the future.
Speaker 3: Someday I will be able to say other things. That's it.
Speaker 2: Excellent? Cool, Well, everybody say other things with us and
Speaker 2: to yourself and go away. The episode's done, Get out
Speaker 2: of here, m HM.
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