I’m not sure what is more shocking – butchering a Washington Post Journalist or that it’s taken that murder to outrage everyone about Saudi Arabia when they’ve already killed thousands of civilians in Yemen.
Why we had to bribe this country with sheep to get a free trade deal is utterly beyond me, Saudi Arabia crucify human beings – I get the old line ‘if we only traded with people we agree with we would hardly trade with anyone’, but surely you have to draw the line somewhere and surely a country that beheads, crucifies and chops up journalists in Embassies should be that line right?
100% correct there Martyn.
Saudi Arabia are a reckless arrogant regime today that will start a third world war for sure now as they are intent on forcing their political and religious extremes upon us all.
We should remember how the sheep deal went sour between NZ and Saudi’s went?
From shortly after the Saudi family took control of the region and set up the country in 1930 as a family business it has been mostly about oil.
Over 10 million barrels a day, more than 10% of current global ‘production (extraction), gives Saudi Arabia a lot of political clout. And it provides the Saudis with an awful lot of money to throw at whatever they choose -bribes, gold plated toilet seats, wars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production
Correct, except that the important trade deal here is the USA’s earning mega bucks selling weaponry to Saudi Arabia,and NZ now has a habit of trying to be nice to everyone important to the United States.
Saudi Arabia slaughtering civilians in Yemen – killing innocent men, women, little girls and boys and beautiful babies – helps to keep Americans in jobs, and keeping folk in jobs, and keeping the money rolling in, helps to keep Trump in his, and is good for the US of A.
I guess that bribing the Saudis with sheep was Murray McCully unwittingly providing apt symbolism of what constituted the National Govt, and exactly what he represented.
We need to start weaning ourselves of oil and anything else we get of these evil people the sooner the better. State sanctioned murder is bad especially when we have a lock dem up culture in our own country but in the meantime its business as usual. I find this to be sick ! I see the Saudi prince is spinning some bullshert saying a rogue group did it. What was the 15 men sent to the consulate for, they must think we are all fucken stupid and naïve like the putin does. Lets see which world leader has any spine to take on these horrid people that are a law unto there own.
What about a boycott of Saud?. Why don’t you arrange a protest in all major cities across the country and chant things like “stone the Saudis”. Then your response to this regime will be similar to how you treat Israel.
time to stop trading with these people they are murderers and we put our murderers in prison we don’t do deals with them.
Part of the same problem, nobody knows about Yemen because increasingly being an investigative journalist is a death sentence.
It also helps to be independently rich, because you ain’t going to survive on that journalist gig wage from the dwindling independent media among the multinational converging media (that has started ‘influencing’ independent voices).
Victims have been captured and tortured for years, so at least there is growing interest and disgust and condemnation of the practise.
Maybe it is because he is a US citizen, maybe because it was so blatant, maybe because the journalist comes from a powerful family and has many backers, but at least it is calling into question the despicable practise of government sanctioned assassination and torture hits on targets they don’t like on both local and foreign soil.
Saudi Arabia could have been dropped over ISIS but they are a protected breed because of Mecca and supplying the U.S and China with oil that means they don’t need a useful military so any move against Saudi Arabia will be blocked.
The Crown Prince chucks down to the King but every one agrees the Prince is basically in charge, and has been smart to disappear particular members of the opposition when others would have expected him to be about the typical business of living large, placating everyone and just basically that.
Instead he’s helped defang the religious police, imprisoned dozens of imams (those that weren’t already in royal pay as part of the ulema council) before he made the announcements regarding female driving and has made use of the Yemeni conflict as a way to veteranize the Saudi military in a safe conflict while also using it to dismiss and remove multiple military commanders and royal relatives in established positions.
The days of the royal family sponging off the oil money and getting cushy appointments seems set to be ending sooner rather than later for the sake of his vision of a modern Saudi Arabia.
Whether or not he’s actually going to effect positive results beyond “reform everything” remains to be seen however. Reformist or not he’s still Al Saud and I just don’t have a high opinion of them personally.
I see we exported around 400 million dollars of products to the saudis in 2017 mostly dairy products. I think we need to get some guts, the guts john never had and we need to ditch this trade deal and hook up a trade deal with England. We should not be doing any business with cold blooded killers when we have been debating about prisons and locking our own people up for lesser crimes. This behaviour does not sit with our PMs kindness view. Lets start making moves to rid ourselves of these people they are pure evil and so will we be if we turn a blind eye to this atrocity.
…or Trump boasting of the billions of dollars of US armaments sold to Saudi every year
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