I find it strange that there isn't a larger chorus in the US demanding to cut ties with Saudi Arabia over their perpetual and unapologetic human rights abuses. I guess all that money they spend on PR in the West has paid off.

I agree. The US has way too many terrible allies we should never be supporting. After they hacksawed the journalist who was living in exile in America and working for the Washington Post (whose children are American citizens), that was the US' chance to cut ties and once it passed, I started to think they'll probably never cut ties...

Unfortunately US foreign policy is even less responsive to voter sentiment than domestic policy (and that's already quite a low bar).

I'd like to hope that the Biden administration would respond differently to the Khashoggi execution than the Trump administration did.

But I'm fairly sure that's false hope.

The same Biden admin who is not sanctioning an IDF unit that killed and tortured and elderly American citizen in the West Bank pre Oct. 7? No, they wouldn't do anything differently for sure.

Fist bump

Weren't they protests at Universities a few years ago against either UAE or SA in the US? I think they asked for universities to stop investing in Saudi Arabia, it lasted like a week, the Universities said "OK", and that was it?

Not only the US - the same chorus is missing in Europe

She's lucky they didn't execute her. I lived there and had peers pressure me to go to see the Friday executions in Riyadh but these are the type of people they are executing, not rapists and murderers. I can only hope I live long enough to see their oil money run out and watch what happens next. It turns my stomach how they can get these soccer players and golf leagues and all this other sportswashing.

I also lived there and was under the impression that a lot of people slated for execution for crimes against a specific person very often tended to get pardoned / execution stayed by the victim or their surviving family. There was a widespread belief rooted in Islam that pardoning someone sentenced to death was equivalent to saving their life, and this would help assure that the benevolent family members would be accepted into heaven.

I think it's harder to get your execution if your crime is against the state, because there's no one who would benefit in the afterlife from commuting your sentence. (I assume that anyone in power who could has plenty of other subjects to grant leniency to, and don't have any particular religious pressure to take advantage of any individual opportunity to do so.)

It's true, they execute people for their Tweets[1] and for saying anything sort of close to "the people should rule instead of the King"

[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/saudi-arabia-...

Unfortunately I think they are succeeding in diversifying their economy away from oil, and amongst businessmen these criminals are readily accepted.

Another terrible US ally that I have no idea why we continue to support. Please dump all of them and spend our efforts on needy Americans who don't agree with jailing a woman because she's uppity.