Saudi Arabia: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

saudi arabia birthplace of the prophet muhammad the prophet muhammad our graphics department must have decided against that one for some reason now saudi arabia has been in the news this week for a truly appalling reason and it has to do with saudi journalist jamal khashoggi a u.s resident and columnist for the washington post who has not been seen since he stepped to the saudi consulate in turkey to pick up some paperwork 12 days ago this is captured on closed circuit cameras stepping into what turkish authorities believe was a death trap turkish authorities have identified 15 saudi men as persons of interest only hours before khashoggi went missing several of them were caught on camera arriving in istanbul a turkish official tells the new york times saudi agents had dismembered his body with a bone saw they brought for the purpose it's absolutely horrific and the saudis deny it happened although let us all agree on this a bone saw in any context is an immediate red flag thanks so much for inviting me over for thanksgiving craig the turkey's delicious the stuffing is perfect that's a very large bum sauce and i just remembered i have to leave now now saudi officials have scrambled to explain all the suspicious activities surrounding his disappearance with the saudi-owned channel al-arabiya claiming that the 15 people who turned up in istanbul were just tourists which is clearly given that flight logs showed that most of the men arrived on a private charter plane at 3 13 am and that all of them departed the same day they arrived which is a pretty weird vacation isn't it i want to see istanbul but only for a few hours mostly at night and i need to bring my bonesaw also the whole we were just tourist excuse isn't even a new one in the wake of russia's poisoning of sergey sripal the russian suspects tried the same thing what were you doing there our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town salisbury a wonderful town yes there's the famous salisbury cathedral famous not only in europe but in the whole world it's famous for its 123 meter spire it's famous for its clock the one of the first ever created in the world that's still working okay so first i love how the reporter immediately became suspicious when they called salisbury a wonderful town she knows what's up it's like if you heard someone call celery a delicious treat look i don't know what else you're not telling the truth about but now i definitely know you're a liar and second it's famous for its 123 meter spire they sound like they're reading directly off the wikipedia page for salisbury oh why do i love salisbury it's simple the population is 40 302 and their member of parliament is john glenn a conservative whose eight year tenure has been widely viewed as a failure open brackets citation needed close brackets but look look for all the saudis in denials things are not looking good right now as the turkish government reportedly have audio and video proof of the assassination look this story is incredibly grim because while this may be the first that you have heard of jamal khashoggi he's long been a significant figure in saudi arabia a thoughtful and by no means radical critic of the saudi royal family and this is all worrying because the only reason to kill a journalist in your own consulate with 15 people and a bone saw you flew in that day it's because you wanted to send a message and you were sure you could get away with it which raises the question why would they be so sure of that and part of that answer may have to do with us so tonight let's take a look at america's relationship with saudi arabia because we have a long and morally compromised history in short in very short for decades we have had a relationship based on strategic interests not shared values they have oil we need it they opposed iran and so did we and for those and other reasons u.s presidents have to varying degrees been willing to pander to saudi arabia and in doing so we've conveniently turned a blind eye to a lot of things from human rights abuses to the saudi leadership's role in funding religious extremism even while partnering with us to fight it it's always been a very complicated relationship but in the last couple of years it's actually gotten significantly closer thanks to two new leaders trump and crown prince mohammed bin salman and let's take the prince first though his father the king is still alive since last year the prince has effectively been running the country and has branded himself as mbs the young new face of saudi arabia he made the cover of time magazine under the headline charm offensive and 60 minutes profiled him as a progressive voice for the country his reforms inside saudi arabia have been revolutionary he is emancipating women introducing music in cinema and cracking down on corruption now there is some truth to that he's attempted to reduce the influence of some hardline clerics uh he has agreed to let women drive and he's allowed movie theaters after a 35-year ban although i will note that one of the very first movies they showed there was and this is true the emoji movie which in hindsight is actually how it was always supposed to be seen by a group of people who had never seen a good movie to compare it to now now all of that has been combined with a major plan to reorient the saudi economy away from oil and toward technology called vision 2030. to that end mbs has gone on a world tour this year to reassure investors that saudi arabia is stable and progressive and that businesses should feel comfortable working with them he's taken meetings with tim cook bill gates and richard branson and has even had starbucks with michael bloomberg incidentally while the starbucks baristas miraculously nailed mohammed bin salman bloomberg still ended up with a cup reading mikey boomberg now as part of his pr push mbs started an annual business conference called the future investment initiative or as it's known davos in the desert the first one was held just last year at the ritz carlton in riyadh featuring leaders of many big name companies as well as the usual futuristic tech like this we have smart investors here and they are very selective about what they invest in well i think i'm special i can use my expressive face to communicate with people but why is it important for you to have an expressive most of the time i feel positive god oh god that is a creepy smile that's the exact same smile that i've seen the queen give when she has to interact with a commoner oh i believe you won some kind of contest to come to my house and look at my things what a positive day for one of us don't touch anything but mbs's pr push isn't just toward attracting businesses it's also toward changing the world's perception of saudi arabia to that end he struck a 10-year deal with one of the most popular and most american franchises there is world wrestling entertainment or wwe they held their first of many events there back in april and audiences around the world were treated to water war propaganda about the new saudi arabia including a video showing women happily driving men dancing and tourist destination beauty shots as well as constant excited compliments throughout the broadcast for the first time wwe bringing an event of this magnitude to saudi arabia this vibrant progressive city our host tonight it's all part of course of the saudi vision 2030 king abdullah city stadium just got on its feet that area has been reserved for the saudi royal family the house of assad i want to send a genuine thank you to the kingdom of saudi arabia wow it seems the wwe is overtly pro-saudi arabia as it is blatantly homoerotic which is to say intensely but the truth is mbs is far from the political reformer that he's been presented as in fact scratch any positive story about him and you will find a much grimmer truth underneath for instance while the country did get headlines for ending its ban on women driving just weeks before authorities arrested about a dozen female activists who'd campaigned for the right to drive even that investment conference had a dark code because just one week later at the exact same hotel this happened new footage from inside the ritz-carlton hotel in saudi arabia's capital riyadh shows a dramatic transformation from a favorite haunt of the well-heeled into arguably the world's most luxurious prison it's true mbs used that ritz carlton to lock up hundreds of businessmen and members of the royal family in a so-called anti-corruption campaign at least 17 detainees were reportedly hospitalized for physical abuse and one saudi military officer died in custody which is obviously insane and horrifying because the only hotel where you expect to be murdered is a days inn hence their slogan days in expect to be murdered here meanwhile bin salman has been aggressive with his neighbours launching a blockade of qatar last year that continues to this day as does an absolutely brutal war in yemen that has resulted in over 16 000 casualties and killed over 1200 children the saudi campaign of air strikes has been catastrophic as this man attested while standing in front of what used to be is hung saudi arabia bombs without care how many of your family were killed 27 lives 27 people from one family can you think of any reason why your family and this house might have been struck i am not a leader or anything i work as a barber i that's clearly terrible and for the record at the very least there is no justification for violence against a barber and that is coming from me if anyone has a justification for a blood grudge against barbers it would be yours truly because of what they did to me and yet and yet as all of this has happened our current president has continued to bend over backwards to accommodate and ignore bin salman's worst excesses and sometimes even celebrate them after that clampdown on corruption at the ritz carlton many around the world sounded the alarm but trump went the other way trump endorsed crown prince mohammed bin salman's new corruption crackdown tweeting quote i have great confidence in king salman and the crown prince of saudi arabia they know exactly what they are doing right but just because they know what they're doing doesn't mean that what they're doing is good michael jordan knew exactly what he was doing when he wore this mustache in a haines commercial he was seeing how far this whole michael jordan thing could take him and the answer was apparently through hitler and beyond and that that actually fits with the larger pattern of donald trump and saudi arabia because since taking office he has catered cater to them at every single turn he made saudi arabia the first foreign country he visited as president and he seemed to have an absolutely great time there dancing with a sword and famously groping a weird glowing orb after which i assume michael cohen instinctively offered the orb 130 000 and told it to keep quiet and look it really shouldn't be that surprising to anybody that trump has so enthusiastically embraced the saudi royal family they have the two qualities he admires most in the world having a lot of money and giving it to him he basically said as much on the campaign trail saudi arabia and i get along great with all of them they buy apartments from me they spend 40 million 50 million am i supposed to dislike them i like them very much yeah of course buying an apartment from trump is a sure-fire way to get him to like you along with wearing one of his hats being under 25 years old with a size 32 double d and not being eric he's a he's a simple man with simple tastes and trump's businessman view of the saudis is just people with money don't ask too many questions has carried over now that he's president when bin salman came to the white house trump called a press conference in the oval office where he boasted about the amount of arms that they were buying from us essentially using mbs as a human easel some of the things that have been approved and are currently under construction and will be delivered to saudi arabia very soon and that's for their protection but if you look in terms of dollars three billion dollars 533 million dollars 525 million dollars that's peanuts for you you've increased it 880 million dollars 645 million dollars six billion dollars that's uh for frigates first first has any human in the history of the world more obviously just learned a word than he just learned the word frigates frigates but second look at bin salman's face there as it hits him just how much trump likes money it's like the face of a babysitter who realized you can pacify a screaming kid with twizzlers oh i thought this was going to be difficult but if all you want is twizzlers i've got loads of them here take all you want and shut the up and look look i am by no means saying that trump is the first u.s president to make distasteful arms deals with the saudis we've been doing it for decades the obama administration still sold them weapons even as saudi arabia got involved in yemen but trump has continued doing so even a signed amount of saudi recklessness in airstrikes two months ago they dropped an american-made bomb on a school bus full of children but just a month later trump's defense secretary said that saudi arabia was doing everything it could to prevent civilian casualties and we carried on supporting them my point here is at every turn trump has gone out of his way to accommodate the saudis he doesn't even have an ambassador to the kingdom our relationship with them is being handled personally by jared ivanka trump's real doll and and the saudis seem understandably very happy with that situation kushner took an unannounced trip to saudi arabia in 2017 to meet with the young prince months later mbs reportedly boasted that kushner was quote in his pocket which bin salman denied yeah of course he's in their pocket he's jared that face was born to be maneuvered into someone's pocket his secret service nickname is probably wallet keys and a little bit of lint so so while the fact that the us has enabled saudi arabia is nothing new the extent to which trump is prioritizing money above all else is really dangerous is it any wonder that they have been emboldened here after mbs's roundup of his rivals trump tweeted his support after his blockade of qatar trump for some reason took credit for it and that kind of has consequences time and again trump has chosen extreme friendliness with mbs a leader who in the words of one saudi critic has created a climate of fear and intimidation going on to say we saudis deserve better that critic was jamal khashoggi the journalist who is widely thought to have been murdered in the saudi consulate and while trump has said that saudi arabia faces severe punishment if it's proven they were behind this does anyone really believe that that is something that he's honestly committed to a much more revealing response came in the oval office after the news of khashoggi's disappearance broke just watch him render in real time the cost-benefit analysis that he was applying to the situation again this took place in turkey and to the best of our knowledge khashoggi is not a united states citizen is that right or is that right he's a permanent resident okay we don't like it john we don't like it and we don't like it even a little bit but as to whether or not we should stop 110 billion dollars from being spent in this country knowing they have four or five alternatives two very good alternatives that would not be acceptable to me he is openly demonstrating to the entire world and to saudi arabia specifically that arms deal much more important than butchered journalists look clearly giving saudi arabia green lights for two solid years has had consequences and a lot of people now have some big decisions to make the second annual davos in the desert begins nine days from now and already all of these companies have pulled out although as of right now treasury secretary steve mnuchin is still planning to attend which is ridiculous the desert is comfortably hot enough without that smoke show am i right am i right smoke show right he can get it that's a me face am i right am i right on that now now as for the wwe while they say they are monitoring the situation their gigantic crown jewel event is still scheduled for november meaning john cena could well be back there doing this which i guess in this context would mean you don't see these human rights abuses right here as for the president again look every u.s leader has chosen to make compromises when it comes to saudi arabia but trump may well be the first one who doesn't see it as a compromise because he and mbs are similar in some of the worst possible ways they both love money they're both a product of inherited wealth they both love self-promotion yet disdain the press and they even both share a design aesthetic that amounts to elvis tries to remember what versailles looks like but can't and trump's intense bromance with mbs is bad news because when you set no boundaries on an oppressive regime they are always going to ask themselves how much can we get away with here and as we saw this week the answer to that may well be pretty much anything

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 10,038,961

Rating: 4.5990644 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight saudi arabia, john oliver saudi arabia, Mohammed bin Salman

Id: ViDPIyiszoo

Length: 18min 10sec (1090 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Be1029384756]

I'm curious what John Cena will do. He's right in the middle of trying to cast himself as a renaissance man of sports and acting and writing and just overall "woke-ness".

I'm curious to see if he'll pull out of the best show in KSA or if he just tries to "plow through" and hope the stink doesn't linger.

[u/Quilled]

The US isn't alone. The UK had a big spat last year when it came out that Theresa May sold weapon to the Saudis. Then people started to try asking questions about it, the MPs or whoever was asked just walked away, microphones were cut, etc etc.

Hell, even Norway sells weapons to the Saudis.

[u/betterplanwithchan]

WWE getting the mainstream attention they crave.

[u/Be1029384756]

LWT should have included the fact that WWE deliberated neutered their production to exclude the women as controlled by the fanatical Saudi Arabian leaders. Meanwhile, the on-air scripts called for announcers to talk about how "progressive" the new KSA is.

[u/Zeph-Shoir]

The ending statement is really chilling. What I think John should have at least mentioned is that not only the US ignores everything Saudi Arabia does, but most of the world as well.

[u/[deleted]]

Anyone got a mirror for us fine Europeans?

[u/Forest_of_Mirrors]

The Washington Post buys ink by the barrel. With fellow journalists and Bezos' unlimited money, I hope they continue to keep pressure on.

[u/Mishka-the-Grishka]

I do hope that people remember to not judge all people of Saudi Arabia based on the actions of those in power.

We do want the country to be better but lack the power and influence to do it, something that happens when you live under this kind of government.

[u/[deleted]]

After this, I wonder if John Cena will try to pull something with the WWE higher ups to not have to go to Crown Jewel and save face publicly.