Part Four: Prince Mohammed Bin Salman: The Tyrant of Saudi Arabia

We conclude the story of Saudi Arabia's blood-soaked crown prince, for now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media, and we're back.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome back to the Behind the Bastards Mohammad Ben Solomon
Episodes Extravaganza. WHOA, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know
how to introduce these episodes in an exciting way anymore.
We're talking about bad people, the worst, and one of
them is the current Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. When

(00:29):
we left off last episode, he had started what was
becoming a genocide and Yemen. He had partied with Pittbull
and he was orchestrating the downfall of his relative, Mohammad Benaief,
who was the crown Prince before him. How are we doing, Dave,
David Bell our guests.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I'm doing well. I'm doing very well.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Is doing Bell?

Speaker 4 (00:49):
Or?

Speaker 3 (00:49):
I didn't have a new dream in between these episodes
that I could tell you about. That's probably it's just
the same dream from before.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, that same upsetting dream.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Sure, Yeah, just it wasn't It was a nice shower.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
It wasn't dream to me a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
It wasn't sexual.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
That's good. The more you say it wasn't sexual, But
the more I believe it wasn't sexual, that's how telling
someone something isn't sexual works.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
It was weird because, like, I don't dream about you
often than you did. I wasn't thinking about the fact
that we were recording today, and so I'm like, that's interesting,
that's interesting that you made a came.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
And now I am hurt. Why don't you dream about
me often?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Dave? I'm not always dreaming about Here's what I'll start
doing when I go to bed. I'll look at a
photo of you every night. All right, that's good, nothing
weird about that.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, thank you, Dave. I will continue to have one
dream about you per week where we captain the USS
Enterprise together. Oh yeah, yeah, we would.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Do terrible things. We would.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
We would that is not going to end well for
anyone on board the ship.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
We would keep my go to every time I'd be
hit with like a moral dilemma or like a problem,
I just go beat them into space.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Moving on, Get those assholes into space right now?

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah, into space? Here we go, just a trail of bodies.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
The Enterprise. That's the ship that keeps beaming people into space.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, the one move.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I just watched The New Starfleet Academy, the first two episodes,
and it is missing that whenever these are there's all
these bad guys. Uh, there's the guy from Sideways on
your ship just being into space. Get his ass, beam
him into space.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Him into space? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Oh god? You know who else was in the classic
movie Sideways? Dave who Prince Mohammed Ben Solomon?

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Uh huh that chicks out?

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, he was the He was on one of the
two male leads in Sideways. Pretty much basically close enough.
Sure so, perhaps the key defining characteristic of Mohammed bin
Salmon the most explains his success within the closed world
of the Saudi royal family is simply the fact that
he's got energy and he wants to do things. I
cannot overemphasize how lazy most of these guys are.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
I mean that's America too at this point where it's like,
well are they eighty? No, Okay, that's great.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
It's it's like again if you go to like nepotism
with like the sons and daughters of like in Hollywood Royalty,
where when you get that one guy who's like he's
got the famous name and he's like no, no, no,
like I will cover my body and shit and roll around.
Does the role want me to be covered in shit
and squirming around like a grub.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
I'll do it.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
I don't give I have no ego about this. I
don't give a fuck. Like and it's like, well, yeah,
you're gonna have a career, Nicholas.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
That was my Lily Rose death watching he knows Faratu
and I was like, oh, you're willing to like.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh you're weird, do it? You don't give a fuck? Yeah, right, okay,
we can work with that. Yeah, yeah, you get to
be a star. Mohammed ben Salomon is is like the
Lily Rose dep of the Saudi royal family. You know,
a lot of people, a lot of people have been
saying that.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
So in twenty sixteen, he continues both the war and
Yemen and his conflict with Muhammad bin Nayef, and he
launches a new war against one of the most powerful
blocks in the kingdom, the religious police. Now the Mutawa
or haya as they are also called, had been seen
as almost untouchable by his predecessors. Right, these are the
police of ice and virtue. These are the guys we're

(04:35):
going around making sure you're not disobeying like the religious law.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Right, fun police.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, these are they're literally the literal fun police, right,
and the men, and his father's generation and Mbian's generation
would not fuck with these guys, right, Like they were
scared of them. They really wanted them in their corner.
But by twenty sixteen things had started to change. More
than sixty five percent of Saudis were under thirty, and
the young men of this generation had grown up with

(05:03):
access to the Internet and social media. They and their
peers shared their frustration with the abuses of the religious police. Right.
They were talking to each other about how annoying these
fuckers were, right right.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
They're on the internet. They're like, hey, everybody else is
having fun. Yeah, Like we're learning about fun police.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, and the man who would be king Karen House
describes the fun Police's mo For decades, thousands of these men,
often self appointed members of the Committee to Promote Virtue
and Prevent Vice, had roamed Saudi streets carrying a long stick,
forcing women to cover their heads, hurting Saudis into the
mosket prayer time and sharing all shops and stores locked
their door for half an hour at prayer time. And

(05:43):
that Western influence like Barbie dolls or Pokemon cards didn't
pollute Saudi youth in the waning years. Yeah, they're good
after Pokemon card.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Listen, it's if you're I know, it's not the same thing.
But if you if you start a cult, right, one
of the key things you gotta do to maintain that
it makes your people are having fun, right.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
There gotta be something, right, Yeah, you just.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
Can't like if you're like, no Pokemon cards, it's like,
this is not going to last.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
If you're saying no Pokemon cards, but you can all
wife swap, then you might be able to keep a
cult going. But if you're saying no swipe wipe swapping
and no Pokemon cards, what's gonna keep people there?

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah? Right, you're out of business.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
You're out of business. You gotta you gott at least
to get them on drugs or something, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
Goddamn Pokemon cards. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
To continue from that quote, in the waning years of
the late King Abdullah's rule, the Hya had gotten completely
out of control. Hearing music inside one family's car, the
religious police chased the car until it rolled off an overpass,
killing the driver and injuring his wife and two young children.
A few months later, two young Saudi's died when HYA members,
suspecting alcohol, chase the young men's car bumping it at

(06:50):
high speed, causing the car to roll off a bridge.
The religious police fled the scene still. Six members of
the Hia were later acquitted off all charges. Saudi's tweeted
their anger or on social media the higher are bloodthirsty.
At Tallal tweeted. At Nahar wrote the highest situation is
similar to many governmental entities in Saudi. They all need
restructuring and fixing. So these guys are just a menace

(07:12):
right where it's like they might be drunk, ram them
off the road, you know, like they're cops. All cops
are kind of more alike than different, right, It's a
happy family situation.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
If you're okay. When I was a dishwasher, food stop
becoming food. It was just this thing right where you're
just like, I'm just doing this thing. When you're a
cop of any kind, people stop becoming people. Just what happens,
which is why I don't know. People should only be

(07:46):
cops for like a few weeks at a time and
then we swap it out.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
If you're gonna have cops, it should be a job
where everyone is a cop for a little while and
let me because you know what doesn't get enforced them
is bullshit rules, right if everyone has to take them,
and you're like, wait, I gotta got to enforce Merrijuana
loss No that yeah, yeah, anything is better than having

(08:09):
it just be like a job that a group of
people hold and to protect their power, need to like
protect their right to continue doing it with even greater
bloodthirstiness and anything.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Just make cats cops, just just replace all cops cops.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Especially Every cat has a drone with a gun on it,
so when the cat needs to shoot somebody, the drone
just starts firing, like whenever the cat gets angry, it
just starts blasting. Get down, Get down the cat's angry
food bowl.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
I mean, you're not wrong, but it's still better.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Than what we have. Right if protesters, right now, we're
instead of trying to fight squadrons of like armored police
with tanks and machine guns, there were just a bunch
of cats with robots firing blindly into the air because
they hadn't been let out and long enough at least
easier problem tosault, mister.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
President, How did they get in here? How did they
overthrow the government? Well, sir, they had raw salmon on them. Unfortunately,
over we can do. Yeah, there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
So NBS's first move in his war against the religious
police was to ban them from stopping or detaining Saudi
citizens in public. Great, first start, right, the thing that
you were doing that was getting a lot of people killed,
you just can't do anymore. So you're not allowed to
just fuck with people in the world. His predecessors had
tried to curb the influence of religious hardliners, but failed,

(09:37):
most famously blocking for six years an attempt by King
Abdullah to make it legal for women to work in
lingerie stores selling underwear to other women, and like the
religious the hardliner clerics to be like, no, women can't work.
But then the problem is like, okay, so are men
supposed to sell lingerie?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
So we have launch better, but women can't work in
the low like yeah, you know. The luger industry was like, guys.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Please, come on, you gotta give us something like what
got We just want to sell you people underwear?

Speaker 3 (10:12):
But is wrong here? It's in here?

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah. Where King Abdullah had been too frightened to confront
the Mattawa directly, Mohammed ben Salomon simply ignored their protestations
and used his father's absolute power to crush any opposition.
The public was wildly supportive of his actions, and conservatives
found themselves alone. Perhaps MBS's single most important quality was
his ability to understand how the youth of Saudi Arabia felt.

(10:37):
It wasn't just the morality police. Regular citizens knew it
was impossible to get anything done through the government without bribery.
The poor majority of the country were forced to watch
while a handful of princes siphoned away the oil money
that was supposed to be funding social programs and infrastructure.
Right Like, people are pissed about this, and so NBS

(10:57):
has a lot of support as he sets about dismanding
his enemies the forces he saw is holding Saudi Arabia
and his own ambition back. He later said this of
his decision to crack down or on the religious police.
I am young. I don't want seventy percent of the
Saudi population to waste their lives trying to get rid
of this. We want to do it now, right, and

(11:18):
this is we're going from like the genocide and the
orchestrating internal fights with his family where he's the bad guy,
to like, no, he's in the right side of this thing.
These guys suck.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
To break situation.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah, the only thing that we'll get rid of them
is a strong He's effectively the king, not literally, but
is a strong regent who's being the fuck it. That's
not how we do things anymore. I'm in chart right,
Like nothing else was going to fix the situation because
of how Saudi Arabia works. Right, I'm not saying every
country is this way. We don't need a king to
deal with the cops in our country. We could just

(11:52):
stop having them be immune to everything. But whatever.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, it's like when Trump gets something right, it's like
you don't have to hand it to him, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
But yeah, it's like, yeah, he is right. Those those
little Japanese trucks are pretty sweet. We should be able
to buy us here. Yeah, yeah, we don't need just
f three fifties. We could use some little k's or whatever,
or the Korean I forget which those little bitty trucks.
We should. We need little bitty trucks here. He's right,
you need that.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
Yeah, we need little bitty trucks.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Yeah, it's every anytime it's something truck related. He's got
like a fifty percent chance of being right because he
seems to just be a guy who periodically sees trucks
and goes, ooh those two.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
The guy seems to know trucks.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, yeah, I trust think he just likes them.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
If he was like Secretary of Trucks, I'd be fine
with that, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, It's like that video where he's inside that big
dump truck or whatever pretending to drive around, and I'm like, no,
that looked pretty fun. I'd be making the little faces too,
Like who would do that?

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Most human moment for him?

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, yeah, the no.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Just getting rid of the fun police. Anybody could have
done it.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
But anybody and everyone should have before him. It's shocking that,
but like, he's the guy who does it right. By
the end of twenty seventeen, he had developed a somewhat
earned reputation as a reformer, but he was also the
architect of what the international community was openly calling a
humanitarian catastrophe and potentially an act of genocide. A twenty
twenty one report by Watana for Human Rights, an independent

(13:17):
Yeomeni human rights organization, concluded that by November of two
thousand and fifteen, the Kingdom was aware of a food
and security crisis in the regions they were striking. Over
the next two years, NBS's Saudi led coalition increasingly and
purposefully used hunger as a weapon to try and force
hoothy surrender. Martha Mundy, an expert on Yemen, quotes a
senior Saudi diplomat who described the coalition strategy this way.

(13:40):
Once we control them, we will feed them.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Huh hah. Is that the plan? Yeah? Okay, that's a
good plant.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
You know you're the sistic cries right, like, first off,
that's bad guy talk.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
I want to conte super villain.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yes, continue by quoting from a twenty twenty five article
in the Journal for Genocide Research unnoticing Yemen. A UN
panel of experts similarly determined and a report published in
January twenty eighteen that the Saudi blockade is essentially using
the threat of starvation as a bargaining tool and an
instrument of war. The Yemen Data Project, a major source
of information about Yemen, has documented the persistence of the

(14:21):
tendency of the Saudi coalition to target civilian places and infrastructure.
Almost a third of all coalition air strikes throughout the
war have been aimed at such targets, especially at farms.
Right so they are. Food is a weapon.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
You know.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
That's a lot of people in a fund way, but
not in a fun way, not in a fun way,
not like on a food fight way. Yes, Dave. Despite
each new atrocity, there appeared to be no end in sight.
King Solomon had taken power and brought his son with him,
but they'd inherited an utter mess of an economy. Oil
revenue accounted for eighty percent of the federal budget, but
global oil prices had collapsed, leading to a fifty percent

(14:56):
decline in revenue. One of King Solomon's first moves was
to bring in the kingdom's foreign currency reserves. With one
hundred billion dollar budget deficit and the warring Yeomen alone
costing half a billion dollars a month, the World Bank
estimated Saudi Arabia could only afford to go on for
four years before running out of money. There was no
way to begin tackling the problem without cutting benefits to
Saudi citizens, much of this in the form of benefits

(15:19):
to government employees. These cuts slashed the average Saudi man's
income by around fifty percent. That's how to the boned.
Because these people, all their jobs are fake, and all
their jobs are like, oh, you know, to use a typewriter.
There's an extra twenty percent to your salary, right, that's
the stuff he's getting.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Hey, we talked about that where it's like, sorry, guys,
nothing you do matter. So you're kind of you know.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
And the country's fallen apart now because of the war.
The Prince launch.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yeah, we want to do this war. So we're going
to pay you less to do nothing. No, what's a
hero in this?

Speaker 2 (15:52):
I guess when's a hero?

Speaker 3 (15:54):
But also I would be pissed. I'm like, listen, you
promised me money to do nothing for a very long time.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Yeah, you promised me money for nothing. In the Chicks
for free, man, I don't have exact.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
Yeah, maybe I'm spoiled, but I don't want less money
so you can go to a war.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah, and the chicks still aren't free, you know.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
No, No, we're.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Not even allowed to play guitar. Well, actually now we are.
We are allowed to play the guitar.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Now, that's sobbing.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
It's something right, and the man who would be King
Karen House rights. Despite warnings from some of his ministers
that economic growth would grind to a halt, MBS preceded
to add insult to injury. The Saudi Civil Service Minister
took to television to accuse government employees of working only
an hour a day. These cuts were paired with slashes
to subsidized water power and gasoline. Fuel prizes rose by
fifty percent, bringing gas up to a horrifying ninety six

(16:41):
cents per gallon. When Saudi economists described the situation thuslye
we had Christmas every day and Gridge has stolen it.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
First, it's a hero.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Now it's a hero. Like shit, man, Like, should you
have had Christmas every day? Is that a good way
to run a country?

Speaker 4 (16:57):
Well?

Speaker 3 (16:58):
So, I like, I'm all for living in a utopian
society where it's Christmas every day.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
But not when it's being paid for by oil money.
It's only Christmas for a tiny chunk of the population.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, where it's just this group at the cost of
everybody else. That's not good. But I understand that it's
It's that sort of thing where everybody thinks of the
underdog of their own life. It doesn't matter how rich
you are, you want more and you feel like you're
not getting enough. So it's like these people clearly were
living in their little utopia and then they're like, sorry,

(17:31):
life has to get slightly realer for you, and they're.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Like, this is bullshit, bullshit, you want me to do stuff? Yeah. No.
So government spending was a huge problem, as was the
fact that basically no citizens were working, but just annihilating
everyone's income turned out to have negative impacts. By the
start of twenty seventeen, economic growth was at point four percent,
a state of affairs most economists would describe as fucked up.

(17:56):
Social media boiled with resentment, A protest movement began to
bubble up up and on April twenty second of twenty seventeen,
King Solomon was forced to issue a royal decree declaring
takes these backsies on all cuts and allowances, benefits and bonuses.
The Civil Services Minister was fired for insulting Saudi workers,
and again he's right, these guys are at most, in
a lot of cases do it an hour a day

(18:18):
of work.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
It's interesting because it's there's certain things in this that
I admire and then certain things where I'm like, again,
like okay, like I would love to not work much
and get paid, but I always great, Like it's definitely
a sign that things are going bad. I do wish
more governments issued takes these backsies like policy. Yeah, yeah,
we're allowed to go. Hey, everybody, oops.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
You know what the Department of Homeland Security was mistake, Yeah,
taking away the TSA. Just get on planes now, we'll
figure it out, you know. Yeah, it works like the
nineties again, just run right up to the plane, right.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
But because that's not normalized, them doing that in this
case is like, oh, you really fucked up. Hunh.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, no, you made a mistake. You realized that you
were about to be overthrown.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
NBS was not fired after this fuck up, but his
popularity and reputation took a major hit. Perhaps one reason
why it was so hard for Saudi citizens to accept
any cuts to their benefits was that they'd seen the
al Saud family's personal finances balloon during the same period,
and they have a point where it's like, yeah, you
guys aren't really working a lot of you where you're
doing barely a job compared to what you're getting paid for.

(19:30):
But the al Soud family is worth an insane amount
of money and they do nothing at all. Right, even
as the government revenues have collapsed, they continue to be
the family net worth as this as the states' finances
are in free fall. The Soud family net worth is
one point four trillion dollars. So I get why these
people are like, we gotta make cuts.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Are you kidding me? Yeah? The story of everything right
where it's like the rich people like, sorry, you're gonna
have to tighten the belt. Yeah, I mean I need,
I need my super yacht. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
Look, man, if I don't like I can only eat
one piece of steak per cow and we've got to
burn the rest of the cow. And oh yeah, no
one else got light on the same private jet twice.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Yeah, I'm being a cow share. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Absolutely. Now I will say one point four trillion dollars
is the networth of the family that is spread. There's
tend like more than ten thousand descendants. Now it's not
evenly split up, right, right, but it is split up
between them, you know, so it's not quite as insane,
but it's still a lot.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
You know, things Things are tense, right, It's like.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Things are tense by mid twenty seventeen.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, yeah, because they basically it's like, I don't know,
it feels like the same vibes of if we were
on a lifeboat and I was like, sorry, I'm gonna
shoot you because I want all the food. Also I
don't like you. And then you realize there's no bullets
and you're like, sorry, never mind.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
You know what that test just to test, Yeah, just
testing you guys, see if you ever ready to share
with me and running this boat.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
They're not wrong, but it sounds like he along with
being like, we're cutting your money, but also by being
like and you deserve to have your money cut like
it's yeah, like you're not doing anything, So.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
That's right, that's right, you're not doing anything. But you
know who is doing something?

Speaker 3 (21:18):
No, sorry, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Sponsors of this podcast. They're doing hard work. You know,
they're earning their pay. If you let them run Saudi Arabia,
they'll they'll do it. You know they'll run it Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
They'll definitely do it.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, and we're back. I've run it too, by the way,
times do you run it too?

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (21:45):
I bet you could run, Dave. Yeah, what's your first move?

Speaker 3 (21:48):
I don't know if I can do it. I'm just
saying I will do it. If someone was like, do
you want to do this, I do it?

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
For at least a week, and then you'd never hear
from me again. Yeah, I would be dead. It's it's
you know, but I'll do it.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
My first move. I'm changing the country's name to what
from Saudi Arabia to Free Ecstasy Town. You know, we
just let the tourist dollars flood in. We let those
Germans and Spaniards come on over. You know, someone will
provide the ecstasy. That's not my job. They're in Free
Ecstasy Town right now, zero downsides.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
That's so smart. What if? Okay, hold on, what if
like I named my apartment that like and put it
on like got it, got it on like Google maps.
It's like free Ecstasy Town. Because you're right, is that
if you do that and then people show up, eventually.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
There will be a free ecstasy exactly.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
It's a problem that I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Come back in like two weeks and start the episode.
So our friend David Bell has been raided by the Dea.
He flew too close to the sun.

Speaker 3 (22:54):
That's just so smart. I don't know, that's such a
smart idea.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
I think it'll work. I think it'll work anyway. Ads
and we oh we did? Are we back from ads?
Were I thought, what's wrong with me? What's wrong?

Speaker 3 (23:08):
Much ecstasy.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
By mid twenty seventeen, the King's son was in a
very mixed position Politically. He'd earned accolades as a reformer
for his hobbling of the religious police and his seeming
support for some social liberalization, but he was also the
author of an unpopular austerity policy. The king and his
son faced increasing resistance, both from the populace and within
their own family. Mbin, who'd made no secret of his

(23:29):
critiques of MBS's policies, was an obvious rallying point for resistance,
and so on June twenty first, twenty seventeen, Mohammed bin
Salman acted to take him down. Karen House writes that
fateful evening of June twenty first, twenty seventeen, Mbien was
called to a palace in Mecca. Once there, his guards
were forbidden to accompany him. Inside, all phones were surrendered

(23:50):
to palace guards. Mbian was taken to a room where
Turkey Alashik, a contemporary and friend of MBS and now
Minister of the General Entertainment Authority, and others began bullying
him to resign. Denied contact with his men and the
painkillers to which he was said to be addicted. He
finally succumbed early the next morning after Prince Khalid al Faisal,
the governor of Mecca, urged him to obey the king.

(24:11):
Huh so that's how he gets rid of his cousin. Yeah, wow,
that was abrupt. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was super abrupt. Yeah.
And by the way, that fella Turkey ala Shikh who
was handling like the torturing of Mohammed Bineef, like cutting

(24:32):
him off from his guards and his painkillers and like
forcing him to resign. The guy who handles all that.
Do you know what? He got more? And he's become
famous for doing more recently.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Oh no, a hint.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
He's the Minister of the General Entertainment Authority.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
What did he do?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
He's the guy who ran the Riad Comedy Festival that
all our favorite comedians. Yeah baby, yeah, yeah, he's not
only in charge of it entertainment than the kingdom. He's
been Salmon's hatchet man. Yes, yeah, he has a whole
prison named after him. Yes, the guy who paid Dave
Chappelle six million dollars.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
I mean not surprised. I guess I don't know. Nah, did.
Who else was there? It was Louis k At that.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I think he was, Yeah, pretty sure he was.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah, it's the Simpsons moment with the burlesque house and
Barney comes out and they're like, oh, Barney, it's that
where like Louis k At there. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
no one was shocked.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
I guess yeah, it's I don't feel any worse about
Louis c k or about Dave Chappelle that I did
previously about like, yeah, yeah, I bet they. If you
told me some comedians took millions of dollars from the
Saudi royal family, those would have been my two first guesses, right,
not shocked.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
I wouldn't be surprised by a lot of comedians, frankly,
because no, you're a comedian. I don't know. It's the
same with Pitt Bull at that thing where I'm just like,
I don't like it, but I'm I guess I'm not surprised.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
I'm a little surprised by the well because I think
most people, if you say, like you want to make
six million dollars for a day's work, you have to
make peace with working for a really bad man. But
all you have to do is something otherwise innocuous, most
people will do it, which isn't good. It's just six
million dollars. But if you have a lot of six
millions of dollars, that's to say, that's where it's like,

(26:22):
what like you're not starving, you don't have to pay
for your your mom's dialysis.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Damn well. And that's the if most people was like
I did it, I wouldn't be like, I'm disappointed in you.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
I'd say so, yeah, I mean you still had student loans.
I don't know, I get it.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, can I have some? I guess yeah. But yeah,
when it's an already rich person, it's just like people
didn't need that. Yeah, but that's rich people.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
That's rich people. That's how you get that rich. So
to the international public, it seemed as if the air
apparent and most powerful man in the Saudi security state
had completely collapsed overnight as a center of power. Now,
as we've covered, Muhammad bin Niev's position had been degrading
for years. Right, he was not totally well, He did
not have a grip on things, and MBS had been

(27:10):
slowly cutting him off from his sources of power for
several years. At this point. So this is the result
of a fairly long family conflict. For most of the
twenty first century, Saudi Arabia had been ruled not just
by the king, but by the Black Prince and another
senior prince, a guy named Sultan who headed the defense
ministry before MBS. All three of these men died between

(27:31):
twenty twelve and twenty sixteen. So now a year, just
like two years into King Solomon's being the king, right
in twenty seventeen, he and his father have neutered the
clerics and the religious police. They've eliminated Crown Prince Naief
and the other crown princes who might have acted as
barriers to their total power were gone. They are the
ones running everything. There are no other major power centers.

(27:54):
They've done this in about two years, right, so this
is a very successful consolidation of power.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Have some game of throne and shit like.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah it really is. Yeah. Now, all they had to
do was discipline a squabbling cadre of lesser princes and officials,
some of whom had supported rival princes and others who
of whom may have eventually represented a threat themselves. More
to the point, they were all corrupt and King and
Prince Salomon both knew their continued support would hing on
being seen as fighting corruption. In the fall of twenty seventeen,

(28:24):
Mohammed bin Salmon spoke before a major investment conference in
Riyad that had earned a reputation for being the Davos
of the Desert. In a bid to attract foreign investment
into the kingdom, he deliberately played down the country's connection
to Wahabism and announced that by June of twenty eighteen,
Saudi Arabia would finally allow women to drive. Hey, what
a reformer, huge move, what a feminist icon, Mohammad been Salomon.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
It really is like if you have a society where, like,
I don't know, people are running around stabbing other people
randomly all the time.

Speaker 5 (28:59):
This policy it's like the United Kingdom, Sure, yeah, like
shows up and they're like number one stabbing. Yeah we
would it didn't It wouldn't matter how like not progressive
they were.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
We'd be like good for them. I like them. I'm
gonna vote for them. Like it's just yeah, really, low
bar is my.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Point, extremely low bar. The bar is in the fucking
below the toilet. It has been flushed into the sewer. Right, Yeah,
so this is also not quite the promise that it seems.
Now he avoids bringing up, and nobody present feels pressed
to ask about the Saudi women's rights activists who are

(29:40):
already in prison for campaigning for their right to drive
on stage at the Davos, like, there's already women in
Nobody's like, what about them? Are they getting out? And
NBS doesn't say shit about that. The next thing he
brings up on stage at the Davos of the Desert
event is an exciting history making new Project NEO or
n e O M, a city built as a one

(30:01):
Titanic wall, stretching from the Red Sea to the mountains.
The wallsized skyscraper covered in solar panels. The inside is
a whole climate controlled city. People. It's gonna be like
the perfect living place for human beings and our college
wall town.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, for the book, NBS quote, businessmen would write the
laws and entice the world's top minds to innovate on
Saudi soil, planning for a post carbon future and taking
advantage of the Saudi sun. The city would be powered
by solar energies and staffed by so many robots that
they might outnumber the human inhabitants. Neom Mohammad ban Salmon said,
would cost five hundred billion dollars and be a place

(30:41):
for dreamers. It was not an economic development project, but
a civilizational leap for humanity. At that point, the lights
dimmed and a video like this one played, and Sophie's
gonna display that for you now, dave ah sweet.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
For too long, humanity has existed within dysfunctional and polluted
cities that ignore nature. Now a revolution in civilization is
taking place. Imagine a traditional city and consolidating its footprint, cramit,
designing to protect and enhance nature. The line will be

(31:18):
home to nine million residents and will be built with
a footprint of just thirty four square kilometers, and we
are designing it to provide a healthier, more sustainable quality
of life. The line's communities are organized in three dimensions.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Man, now, so I love that they're Like? Too long
have cities not been wall based.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
In big walls? Also, cities don't live in harmony with nature,
unlike a giant line. Right, like a huge silver wall
that cuts off birds from their migratory patter.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Oh yeah, birds are gonna be smacking into that thing.
It's it's so tough because like when when when I
first heard of Wall City, right, I'm like, that's cool
and cyberpunk and like that's fun. Then watching that ad
where they take a city and cram it, I was like, oh, right,
that's that's that's blade Runner, right.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
And it's there's some like bits of wisdom in that,
like denser urban developments are a lot easier on the
environment than sprawling ones. Sure, there's probably a future. One
of the suggested futures of how we would build cities
is that they are denser, which doesn't mean of low quality,
but like that they're that you have, like there's a

(32:35):
lot more space for nature. No one is suggesting a
giant wall hundreds of feet high and dozens of miles long,
Like I guess that's the insane thing to build.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
It's neat because it's like what blade Runner would have
lived in. This is the thing. This is the issue
I have with everything from the goddamn cyber truck to this,
which is that I love this. I I'm not embarrassed
to say that I love the look at the cyber truck.
I love that bullshit futurist aesthetic. I know it looks
like shit objectively. But all these dildos it's the same problem,

(33:10):
which is like they're like, I want to make a
world like Star Trek, and I think, okay, so number one,
we get rid of money, and they're like, no robots,
and it's like.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
No, just a lot of robots. Yeah, we just want
to make it tall, right.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
They want to make it look like Star Trek. They
don't want to actually make it Star Trek, where it's
actually like, oh, we we eliminate like money, and we
we pour a bunch of efforts into medicine and lifting
up the lower classes. No, none of that. We just
want fucking cool, smooth things and like I get it,

(33:47):
so do I, but I'd rather have the other stuff first.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, like wouldn't we all?

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, Wall City. I'm like, I guess, I mean, there's
too many of us. We should stay out in nature's way.
But yeah, it's who's doing it. And again it's clearly
that they're just like they started with, like, he's clearly
someone who's like, well City, that's cool, right, and.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
That's a great idea as they went from there. We
may do a dedicated episode about this later because we
didn't have time in this but this is impossible. The
project is already run into terminal issues like it is.
Cost overflows are massive. The Kingdom's financial situation today is
still not good because again every effort to transition off

(34:32):
of being entirely reliant on oil money has failed, and
they never really got over a lot of these central
issues that were massive problems for the country when MBS
took power. Like they've been patching over them, but there's
still problems. And the goal was to get a bunch
of foreign investment to make this thing possible. Again, they
were looking at five hundred billion dollars and it's likely

(34:55):
it'll cost way more than that if they were to
actually finish this thing. They've dug a bunch of hole.
They've started construction. It's never going to get built. It's impossible.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
They're starting with the conclusion and not getting there. It's
again like the cyber truck. I think looks cool, but
it's clear that he started with the look and then
the insides are shit and don't make any sense. So
it's like you're not starting with that fundamental idea of
like how do people live? How should we how should
we build a city more efficiently? It started with what

(35:25):
if Wall makes that.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
We're going to build the city of the future, where
like a modern society, you know, built by businessmen. All
of the world's innovators will want to live here. It's like,
but like alcohol still illegal and women right can't like
don't shit toget Like, yeah.

Speaker 6 (35:43):
A very non original idea. Man's like, what if I
start a city? What if I make my own town
like that? That's a very common thing I fear. And
if you meet that guy, go please leave me alone
and then taste them.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
It's a it's a teenager's dream where it's like you
draw a character where you're like, and he has a
cool sword and he's that like cool armor, and then
you think of like what's his personality? Like you're you're
going backwards right where you're like and it's that where
they're just like cool Wall city, but are our our
actual what they said, designed by businessman the laws.

Speaker 6 (36:22):
Imagine meeting that guy at a.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Bar designed by businessman. Yes, just imagine.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Meeting that guy not knowing anything about him.

Speaker 6 (36:29):
But the guy comes up to you and is like, yeah,
I'm gonna build this uh city. The line it's just
like one really big wall right, you'd be like, please
get away from me.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
You're terrifying.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I'd be like, are you Peter Teal? Are you Peter?

Speaker 6 (36:46):
Oh, it's like classic libertarian ship.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah yeah, it is such a libertarian boat city. Oh
my god.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Again, I'm not.

Speaker 6 (36:59):
Cool if it was not just like every single time
it's like the worst people in the world are like exactly.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
I would live on a boat if it was like
a pirate radio kind of situation, because that movie rips.
But I'm simply not going to live on a boat
with a bunch of bitcoin guys.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
I'd rather like That's the thing is, like I if okay,
if we can't get the good futuristic stuff, I still
would be it would be cool if my house looked neat,
you know, like if I had some cyberpunk brutalist house,
Like that's something at least. But the best version of
this has ever been Walt Disney designing Epcot and being like,
I'm gonna make a future city and then it got

(37:36):
too hard and he's like, you know what, I'm going
to make a theme park. Yeah, he goals, you know,
he was like, Okay, I'm not the guy to make
a future city, the experimental prototype City of Tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Turns out that sucks ass.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, I'll just put some fucking rides in there.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
Like he's like, not tomorrow but tomorrow Land.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Yeah, Like good on him.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
As we've famous good guy.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Well, this good.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Guy the real hero of these episodes.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
It's a nice reminder that these rich dildos have been
trying to make cities for a.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Wivery because they all want to prove they can do
it better. They want to prove they know what's wrong
with society. But what none of them understand, and so
why this is impossible is that it's hard to make
a good city or a good country because people are
messy and don't get along. And if your whole thing
is I don't understand people or like to listen to them,
you're gonna fail.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
It's that, and it's it's also like Disney famously was
also like, you know what, I hate zoning laws. These
rich people they also just don't like following the rules
of law. So they're like, oh, what if I made
a city and then it's everybody will love my cool city,
and then everybody has to do what I say.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Yeah, and then you forget to have any measures to
prevent the outbreak of cholera. Uh right, so everybody dies.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Every libertarian city. I feel like every pitch falls apart
when you go, Okay, and what do you think the
age of consent will be there? Yeah? Like, because it's
always a dark answer.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
I see the age of consenting, like, what's gonna who's
gonna be in charge of the poop? What's gonna happen
with the poop? You know, where's the poop gone?

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Right? Where's the poop going?

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah? That's the if you're ever hanging out in like
an alternate living situation or where someone's trying to like
build their own community and the first thing they show
you or close to the first thing isn't and here's
our toilet solution, those people are going to fail, right,
you know, unless it's all around poop city, it's poop
city University, it's all poop oriented.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
There you go, Dave, Yep, you take showers with your buddies. Okay, sorry, wow, sorry,
thanks Dave. So two weeks after going on this slightly
fevered Steve Job style rant about how the future was
a big line city and a country where most people
didn't think TV should be legal.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Mohammed had been well powerful people didn't think TV should
be legal. Mohammad bin Salomon launched his final gambit towards
consolidating absolute power. He'd spent the days since the Big
Davos in the Desert event sending his secret police out
to arrest and transport hundreds of the most powerful people
in the kingdom to one location. And this included multiple
members of the royal family as well as billionaire financiers

(40:25):
who had helped to build the nation's economy. These men
were taken to the Ritz Carlton and Riyad, one of
the finest hotels in the world. It was locked down
for normal business. Its staff was replaced by security officers
and secret policemen. Guests were made to surrender their cell
phones and devices. They were separated from their guards and
sometimes vast fortunes. One of these men was Prince Alwalid

(40:48):
bin Tallul. He was the most famous businessman in the kingdom.
A billionaire great grandson of King Abdulaziz, Prince Alwalid was
as protected a nobleman as you could imagine. He was
called by the royal one morning in ordered to visit
the king another billionaire, while Lead al Ibrahim had found
himself in the same situation a day before. So these
are guys who should not have been vulnerable to something

(41:12):
like this, right, But the reality is, and King Salmon
knows this. These guys are not as rich in reality
as they seem to be on paper because for decades
they'd relied on the Saudi state purse and public funds
to prop up their bad investments and smooth over any
mistakes they made. And all of the richest people in
Saudi Arabia were doing this. This is part of why

(41:32):
the economy was in the shitter, is these guys start
making bad bets and they're using the kingdom as a
checkbook to cover their asses. So this mass detainment that
King Salomon orchestrates of all these guys sends a message
none of you are untouchable anymore. And I want to
quote from a summary of what happened by from an
NBC report by Dan de Luce, Kindlanian and Robert Windram.

(41:54):
The involuntary guests were told they had to sign away
large chunks of their assets to be released. The attention
involve both psychological abuse and in some cases torture. Current
and former US officials say the move, described by Saudi
authorities as a crackdown on rampant corruption, allowed the Crown
Prince to tighten his grip and sent a shockwave through
the kingdom as elites, This was a shakedown operation and

(42:15):
a power consolidation operation, said one former senior US official
who was in office at the time. The RITZ detentions
were designed to remind people going forward that their wealth
and their well being would depend on the Crown Prince
and not on anything else, which is why it was
so upsetting for many in the royal family, said the
former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. What
was that a quote from This is from an NBC report.

(42:39):
I just love yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Involuntary guest, perfect.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, yeah, voluntary guest of the RITZ Carlton, Yes, may
have been tortured. Involuntary guest. Just call him prisoners at
this point. So this is what brings us to Mohammed
and Salmon's most notorious crime, although certainly not his worst,
the brutal murder of Washington postureournalist Jamal Koshogi. Now, Jamal,
if you have haven't heard much about this guy, he

(43:05):
came from almost as rarefied a social circle as Mohammed
Bnsalman himself. His grandfather, a doctor, had treated MBS's grandfather,
the King. He was a close relative to billionaire arms
dealer ad Non Koshogi, who was involved in like eighty
percent of the shady deals that took place in the
nineteen nineties. Jamal got involved in the Muslim Brotherhood while

(43:26):
in college, and he worked as a journalist for an
English language paper out of Jeddah. Once he graduated, he
winds up on the ground floor of reporting on the
Musjahdeen's resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Kashogi arguably
crossed the line from reporter to participant during at least
one part of the conflict. He became a well known
figure within the world of Islamic militancy and secured an

(43:47):
invitation to talk with another influential Saudi militant, Osama bin Laden. Right,
so this is a journalist who's reporting on this, you know,
jihad against the Soviets. He'd at least at one point
crosses for being a journalist to being a combatant, and
as a result he has a lot of klout with
these other militants, and so he gets to hang out
with bin Laden. Now. Ultimately, Kashogi winds up disillusioned by

(44:11):
the failure of the revolution in Afghanistan. He had been
a guy who had hoped will create something better than
what had existed before, if we can kick the Soviets out,
and instead we get the Taliban. And Kashogi's not delusional.
He can see the Taliban is bad, and so he
comes home being like, well, that didn't fucking work, right, Yeah, shit,
what do I do with my life now?

Speaker 3 (44:34):
It's tough. It's tough when your buddy has become the Taliban.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Yeah, it's tough when your buddies become the Taliban. Nobody
wants that to happen to their buddies. Dave, No, I'm
happy that you've continued writing for the Internet as opposed
to becoming the Taliban.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
Right now, I had that crossroads, but yeah, it would.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Have been logistically confusing too, yeah oh yeah. Yeah. So
when he returns home to Saudi Arabi, he's arguably the
most influential journalist in the kingdom. He's one of them,
and he's developed close working relationships with several highly placed
members of the royal family, and he spends the next
couple of decades as both an influential critic and pillar

(45:09):
of the power system. So he is integrated tightly within
kind of the upper strata of Saudi Arabia. He's very
well regarded. He's also someone who can periodically critique what
decisions that are being made by the powerful in Saudi Arabia,
and he sees himself as like a mouthpiece for the
poor in Saudi Arabia, for the working class. As a
result of that, he can occasionally speak some truth to power,

(45:31):
right or speak truth to the rest of the world
about what's going on in Saudi Arabia. That's at least
how you'll see this guy written about speaking of people
who speak truth to power. These ads will speak truth
to the greatest power in the world. Your wallet, Wow,
not by wallet and we're back. So Jamal Kashogi, after

(46:03):
a period of time as one of the more influential
journalists in Saudi Arabia, is going to do kind of
the most dangerous thing you can do in the kingdom,
which is express support for reforms that everyone knows are necessary,
but that the Crown, Prince and King haven't embraced yet right,
He's going to be ahead of the curve on some
important things, and that's going to make him a lot

(46:24):
of enemies. Ben Hubbard writes. He was appointed editor of
Al Watan newspaper and used it to push for women's
rights while criticizing the role of the religious establishment. He
didn't last long after all, Kaita bombings killed twenty five
people in Riyad in two thousand and three. Koshogi pinnon
editorial attacking not only the terrorists but the clerics who
gave them power. Jamal wound up driven to the United States,

(46:45):
where he would live at time through the coming years,
whenever things got too hot for him. Back in the Kingdom,
he was predictably a big supporter of the Arab Spring,
which further caused consternation among the powerful. During the rise
of Isis, Koshogi compared the terrorist movements ideology to the
kingdom's own Wahabist beliefs. He initially supported Solomon as king

(47:05):
and was bullish on the reforms that he and MBS
introduced against the religious police and endemic corruption. So when
MBS first comes to power, Kaushogi's a big backer because
he sees this guy's kind of the answer to his prayers,
someone who will stick up to the worst and most
like conservative elements in our society. Right, this guy might
be a sign of hope. Koshogi acted for a while

(47:26):
as a dogged defender of the new king to international critics.
He was important enough to be included in a public
meeting between Mohammed and Salmon and a group of clerics
and intellectuals in twenty sixteen. Ben Hubbard reports that MBS
talked to the crowd about his plans for economic and
political reform. Kashogi asked him, why don't you talk about
any of this in public? If you're in favor of
all these reforms, why won't you tell people about them?

(47:49):
Why are we having this meeting in private? And Nbs says,
in short, you can just write about what I've said here,
put it in the newspaper, tell everybody what I'm saying. Right,
I'm giving you permission to make this public, right, okay.
So Jamal is like, all right, I fucking will, and
he takes this as an invitation to report openly on
the Prince's crusade to modernize the kingdom. This would prove

(48:10):
to be something of a.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
Mistake, man, because it's like, yeah, go write it. I'd
be like, mmm, do you really want that?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Never trust the prince when he's like, oh, I want
a journalist to hold my feet to the fire. Are
you kidding me? Accountability That's what kings.

Speaker 3 (48:29):
Love, man. I mean, I'm not blaming him, like, it's
just like it's just like you can see it all
unfolding here. Yeah, because saying I'd go like, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Ok I guess yeah. In the fall of twenty seventeen,
having silenced his most powerful detractors, nbs A security forces
launched a crack down on their little enemies. Eighty dissidents
were arrested. Most were clerics who were either too conservative
or too progressive. The rest were political reformers and as
been rights individuals who had annoyed MBS and his aids

(49:03):
in some way or another. One was an economist who
had questioned the wisdom of privatizing a Ramko. Another was
a poet who had called on journalists to avoid harsh
language and a dispute with Cutter. So these are just
guys getting arrested for bugging, you know, Turkey uh or
Mohammed Ben Salomon you know, yes, for any reason.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
I'm going to do my petty tour here, Mike asshole tour.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
I've gotten rid of the big enemies. One prominent detainee
was a cleric named Salmon Alauda. In his younger days,
he'd been an extreme fundamentalist, and he'd spent time in
prison for demeaning the royal family arguing against their right
to rule. In more recent years, he'd become almost a progressive,
hosting popular shows on YouTube and television, and building a
massive younger following on social media with generally positive, upbeat

(49:49):
videos about Islam and modern life. What really got him
in trouble was his growing embrace of constitutional monarchy. I'llauda
frame this as an attempt to help the Kingdom and
House of South avoid an Arab spring of their own.
He gently suggested that the government might try to listen
to its people a little more, rather than governing by
the whims of Mohammed bin Salmon and his ailing father.

(50:10):
He was arrested and has been held in solitary confinement
from September of twenty seventeen up to the present day.
His brother complained about the arrest on Twitter and has
also been detained. If his case ever comes to trial,
he could get the death penalty, although given the fact
that his health is deteriorated by in bars, that may
not be he could be dead now I don't think
we know. Um wow, there's a lot of guys like that.

(50:34):
The whole RITZ Carlton affair was carried on in a
very hush hush manner by the Kingdom Security Forces. They
obviously wanted everyone to know the broad strokes of what
had gone down, and there were specific names they wanted publicized,
but the government never released a comprehensive list of names,
and only accused them vaguely of intelligence activities for the
benefit of foreign parties and engaging in espionage while having

(50:54):
contact with external entities. The Muslim Brotherhood was named as
a specific example. Long term consequences ranged from prison terms
to home detention. Some people were let go entirely with
the equivalent of a warning. Nearly all spent days or
weeks detained at the RITZ without any charge or clear
idea of what crimes they were expected to answer to.
Some were certainly executed, Although it's impossible for us to

(51:16):
make any clear estimates about how many people suffered. Want punishments.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
The crime was bugging him. It was crime was bugging them.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Bugging them, Yeah, bugging him or other people like you, Yes,
the two great crimes. On June twenty fourth, twenty eighteen,
Saudi Arabia officially lifted its ban on women driving. Prince
Alwalid bin Tallal, fresh off being released from the RITZ
praised the move on social media and went on a
public drive with his daughter and granddaughter. He tweeted, there
is no doubt that the thoughts of my brother Mohammed

(51:46):
ben Salomon led to this great result. Women have now
taken off gotten their freedom. That's all they needed was
to drive.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
God that may.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Mere weeks earlier, NBS's police had carried out a massive
crackdown on women's rights activists. Ten women and seven men
at least were arrested over their work campaigning to end
the driving band that Muhammad himself Ben Solomon himself had
ordered ended. From an article in The Guardian, Amnesty said
that according to three testimonies it obtained, some of the
activists were repeatedly given electric shocks and flogged, leaving some

(52:18):
unable to walk or stand properly, and one instance an
activist was hung from the ceiling. Another testimony said one
of the detained women was subjected to sexual harassment by
interrogators wearing face masks. Jesus, so these are this is
like weeks before he ends the band, and their crime
is not that they want the band in. The crime
is that they're advocating. They're saying that the country's doing

(52:41):
something wrong, that a law needs to change because it's wrong,
and that's criticism. We can't have that, no, sir.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
It's just that it's that fucking that vibe, right, the
like hashtag girl boss vibe where it's like on top
of just some of the worst things ever, it's short
circuits your brain where they're like patenting themselves on the
back at the same time they're doing this.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Yeah, it's just setting yeah, yeah, yeah, you hate to
see it. A Saudi female race car driver and again
there's this, there's weeks long pr push in the wake
of this. A Saudi female race car driver is given
her license in a grand ceremony in Riod and allowed
to take a celebratory lap through the capitol. Weeks before

(53:27):
she would help to open the French Grand Prix. Journalists
were warned that she would not make any comment about
women's rights. This eloquently showcased Ben Salmon's attitude towards social progress.
He would do the minimum necessary, but he would also
brutally punish anyone who made the mistake of embracing change
before he did, and he'd expect to be right.

Speaker 3 (53:47):
It's just I'm going to give you what I give you,
and you better not ask for more, and you.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Better not have asked for what I'm giving you previously.

Speaker 6 (53:54):
Because he wants people to like him, he wants to
he wants to be worshiped.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Yeah, you're also to praise me every step of the way.
You're going to be thanking me for what I've given you.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
I mean, we had a discussion like that, you know,
when we legalized weed. It became this thing of like
maybe we should let the people in jail for that. Yeah,
Like it's it's similar. But except if you say that,
you'll be executed.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Right, Yeah, you shouldn't say that. So yeah. Luayne al
Hathlul had gained notoriety in twenty fourteen when she was
arrested for trying to drive her car from the UAE
into Saudi Arabia. She was released after more than seventy
days in prison the month after Salomon was made king.
This was initially seen as a reason for optimism towards

(54:39):
the new king and his son. Al Hathlul had continued
to speak out against the kingdom's laws and participated in
a major foreign documentary that criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record.
She'd been living overseas with her husband when she returned
home in twenty seventeen and was arrested as part of
NBS's wider crackdown on dissent. She was released and expanded
the scope of her activism, pushing against the kingdom's guardian

(55:02):
ship laws, which made women basically legal miners in perpetuity.
She was invited to speak at the UN where she
directly called kingdom representatives out for denying the existence of
guardianship laws. This was the straw that broke the camel's back.
A month after this, she was kidnapped from her home
in Abu Dhabi and flown to Saudi Arabia. She was
released after a month, but forbidden from leaving the country. Then,

(55:23):
just before the driving band was repealed, she was swept
up in a mass arrest with other prominent women's rights activists,
and this is like part of this big sweep that
I had talked about just a second ago. Right Punishments
for these activists and their supporters ran the gamut, from
jail time to travel bands to torture. The Kingdom's captive
news media embarked in a campaign of slandering the reputations

(55:44):
of those incarcerated, and some prisoners, including al Hdlul, were
tortured by officers of the Rapid Intervention Group. This was
a recently assembled team of black ops guys overseen by
a guy named Sawud al Katani, and operated as the
personal enforcers of Muhammeddan's Solomon. Anyone who annoyed him was
fair game for kidnapping, torture, and murder. The women were

(56:06):
kept in tiny rooms with covered windows. They were taken
to be interrogated and tortured frequently by men who mostly
wanted to humiliate them. They were sexually harassed a lot.
They were shocked with like cattle prods. They were just
beaten the old fashioned way. El Hathlwell was waterboarded on
several occasions. Al Katani oversaw her torture directly. Sometimes he

(56:26):
would threaten to rape her repeatedly and throw her body
in the sewer. This is the kind of stuff that
they're doing. And they're doing this during Ramadan. He and
his men are torturing her throughout the night.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
And they forced her to eat after the sun comes up,
when she's not supposed to be eating. So, yeah, this
is a pretty gross stuff, right.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
I don't know, Robert, because because Dave Chappelle said it's
easier to talk in Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
It's easier to talk in Saudi Arabia unless.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
Because of wokeness here they don't have Jesus's fucking Christ. Yeah, horrific.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Yeah, it would be operatives of the same Rapid Intervention
Group that Mohammad bin Salmon called upon to murder now
dissidant journalist Jamal Kashogi. He had written critically if the
princes ritz Carlton kidnapping spree the previous year and about
the ongoing detention of women's driving advocates. What he didn't
know was that mere months before MBS started his campaign
to destroy a cent, he sent agents of his Rapid

(57:21):
Intervention Group, mostly military veterans, to the US so they
could train with a private security firm the Tier one Group.
Per The New York Times, the mercenary firm Quote is
owned by the private equity firm Serveris Capital Management. The
company says the training, including safe marksmanship and countering an attack,
was defensive in nature and designed to better protect Saudi leaders.

(57:42):
One person familiar with the training Senate also included work
in surveillance. Yes, said the good Man. It's Serverist Capital
Management have a private army that the trade Mohammad bin
Salmon's goon squad.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Rich people for the longest time. It's the weirdest thing
that how how are just like palenteer, Like they're just
you know what, We're not gonna even murnerk. Yeah, We're
just we're let's call it like it is. It's like
the only honesty they have. It's so weird. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Yeah, my new capital management firm, I just shot a
baby Incorporated. Yeah yeah, named after the time I shot
a baby. Oh, it's great stuff.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
So.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Kushogi himself had fled Saudi Arabia in June of twenty seventeen,
having seen the writing on the wall of the RITZ.
He had escalated his criticisms of the regime and NBS
in particular and had launched a series of projects with
the aim of collecting and amplifying foreign descent against the government.
Because he was too clever to fly back into the country,
Saudi operatives had to nab him overseas in order to

(58:44):
stop his inconvenient criticisms. Saud Al Katani, NBS's triggerman, is
known to have organized an effort to take the effort
to take out Kushogi. They finally caught him in Turkey.
A fifteen member intervention group team fell upon the journalist
as he visited the Saudi consulate and stenbull seeking papers
to make his marriage to his fiance official. Well she
waited outside, the tam attacked him. The Kingdom would later

(59:07):
claim their job was just to take him back to
Saudi Arabia, but he resisted and so was injected with
a large dose of something that killed him. His body
was then dismembered. NBS the government insisted had no knowledge
of any of this. Subsequent investigations and reporting had revealed
that one member of the negotiation team was a coroner
explicitly hired to dismembered mister Koshogi's corpse after he was killed,

(59:30):
which would suggest they never wanted to take him alive, Right,
you don't bring a coroner along if you think you're
going to get this guy out of the building alive.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
Who among us was like, we just want to we
just want to talk to him. Oh damn it. We
dismembered him.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Yeah, ah fuck yeah, yeah, yep, good god. So we
don't know exactly what went down in the room, but
we have a pretty good idea and all of the
evidence shows mister Koshogi was assassinated, dismembered, and disposed of
by a team that had been sent to Turkey to
do ja that all credible experts believe Mohammad and Salmon
gave the orders. And that's kind of where we leave

(01:00:06):
things off. There's more to say, I mean, there's a
lot more to get into the Trump years and stuff,
but these are the broad strokes of how he came
to be where he is right Our current president has
even broken with the conclusions of his own CIA to
insist that NBS is probably innocent. And I don't know,
do we trust the CIA or do we trust Donald Trump?

Speaker 6 (01:00:26):
Here?

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
Yeah? Yeah, no, it's just a real like you've identified
a bastard, but it really resonates of like the other
all the people who fucking are doing business with this
guy and being like yeah, it's great there. It's just like, oh,
fuck all those people.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Yep, yep, yep, Because you know, the tempo of operations
in Yemen with Saudi Arabia is a lot lower than
it was, but the damage from the peak of operations
was catastrophic. Per an article and Genocide Watch, in twenty
twenty one, Saudi strikes have directly killed over two twelve
thousand civilians. Only half of the hospitals continue to operate.

(01:01:03):
Saudi naval blockades have cut off food and supplies. Thousands
of children have died of starvation. A cholera epidemic afflicted
eight hundred thousand civilians and killed thousands. Eighty percent of
the population depends on humanitarian relief. The Many Archive and
Oxvan report that the Saudi led coalition has systematically destroyed
one hundred and thirty bridges essential for delivery of humanitarian aid.
Whothies have also prevented food aid from reaching populations and

(01:01:25):
areas they control. At least two hundred and thirty three
thousand civilians have died in yemen Civil war. Right so cool, horrific.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Not good? Person. I will not be subscribing to The
Wall City.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Yeah, sorry, no no, And I won't listen to his
podcast when it comes out.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Yeah. I was surprised because you talk about all these
people who are just getting pale on money sitting around.
I was like, surely a lot of podcasts, Yeah, a
lot of terrible podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Call it the Southcast. You know you got a right there.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Bam, you did it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
M well, bam, gotta plug anything.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
I don't know, okay, uh uh oh uh gamefully unemployed.
That's the podcast network I co run with Tom Ryman,
and we talk about movies and TV and and and
you know, stuff like that The X Files. I am

(01:02:28):
the head writer of Some More News, which is a
you know, it's like a news show on the YouTube. Uh.
And that's it for now, maybe more in the future.
Someday I will be able to say other things. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
Excellent? Cool, Well, everybody say other things with us and
to yourself and go away. The episode's done, Get out
of here, m HM.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
Behind the Bastard is a production Zone Media. For more
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(01:03:20):
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