How about, instead of peddling nuclear technology to this government of fcking monsters, we tell them to pound sand? From CNN:



One of the convicts was crucified, according to an interior ministry statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA). In Saudi Arabia, crucifixion means the body of someone executed is strung up and put on display as a deterrent to others. "The death penalty was implemented on a number of criminals for adopting extremist terrorist ideologies and forming terrorist cells to corrupt and disrupt security as well as that some of those executed were charged with killing security officials with explosives." The statement listed the names of the 37 Saudi nationals who were executed in various parts of the country.



Implement this, motherfckers.

The majority of those executed were Shia men, according to Amnesty International, which dismissed the legal proceedings that led to the convictions as "sham trials that violated international fair trial standards which relied on confessions extracted through torture."

How do we tolerate the silence of our leaders in the face of these atrocities, much less their insistence that we be complicit in that conduct with our money and whatever's left of our international prestige? Other presidents at least would have been able to feign embarrassment that their perception of the national interest required us to do business with titled sadists. This president* remains silent on our behalf of inexcusable butchery—whether committed one murder at a time, as in the case of Jamal Khashoggi, or committed 37 times at once.

Trump grabs the orb with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (2nd L) and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. < Getty Images

One of the people murdered was Mujtaba al-Sweikat, who was 17 years old, and who was picked up to be killed at the airport on his way to being a student at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. From the Detroit Free Press:

Sweikat was charged with armed disobedience against the king, as well as attacking, shooting and injuring security forces, civilians and passersby. He was also accused of destroying public property, causing chaos and disrupting the peace, by participating in a terrorist cell, to make and deliver Molotov cocktails. During his time in custody, Sweikat was severely beaten all over his body, including the soles of his feet, and convicted on the basis of a confession extracted through torture, according to Reprieve, an international human rights group that has offices in New York and London and operates with partners around the world. After his arrest, he was not allowed to contact anybody for three days, and his family were not allowed to visit him for three months, during which time he was kept in solitary confinement, according to Reprieve.

In June 2016, the Riyadh court sentenced Mujtaba and 13 other co-accused to death, rejecting the Bureau of Prosecution and Investigation’s submission for a mandatory death sentence, instead issuing its decision under the court’s discretionary powers. Despite his raising his torture and ill treatment at trial, and the United Nations' frequent communications on his behalf, the kingdom did not provide him with an effective way to complain, did not conduct an investigation in line with the Istanbul Protocol and did not commute his death sentence for running counter to the prohibition against execution for juveniles, Reprieve said. The government eventually responded to the UN Special Procedures in January 2018, denying all allegations made in the complaints and stating that the evidence provided by the United Nations was false.

This is a kangaroo justice system in which the kangaroos are apex predatory carnivores. That this country is running the ball for these people, and that its Senate cannot summon the gumption to defund our complicity in the Saudi regime's genocidal war in Yemen, is a stunning example of corruption by convenience. This, of course, also has another veneer of corruption layered on top of it that is unique to the administration* in power. Grab the orb again, boys. But, for the love of god, at least pretend to be embarrassed that you're in league with monsters.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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