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Major news here.
People from Saudi Arabia wanted to interrogate and kidnap the Washington Post & Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi when he arrived in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2nd. After much pressure, the Saudis are now preparing to admit that he was killed in an “interrogation gone wrong“.
Why is this significant? There’s several reasons (and a main one):
- Jamal Khashoggi was a progressive journalist, pushing for equal rights in Saudi Arabia & calling them out when they didn’t move forward. Very recently Saudi Arabia allowed women to drive for the first time ever, meaning they still have a long, long way to go before getting equal rights. Jamal was one of the people on the forefront of that.
- There is a big Saudi investment conference coming which included the biggest names in tech and business. As a result, many people have ferociously called out CEOs on twitter, social media for them to pull out. So far, many businesses have, but most (if not all) will pull out now that this recent news has gone out on the journalist’s murder.
- People really hate U.S. / Saudi relations. This centers around U.S. dependence on Saudi oil and OPEC, who Saudi is the leader of and once literally f*cked America with an 1973 – 1974 Oil Embargo that still affects everyone that was driving then till this day.
America teams up with Saudi Arabia on damn near everything till this day because of oil: 1990 Gulf War (which kicked off Osama Bin Laden’s path towards 9/11), Weapon-Arms deals, Oil Refineries in the states, and more. In all, people really hate America’s dependence with the Saudi’s, and want America to salvage the relationship.
Now the news of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the hands of Saudi’s is out, we’ll see what happens next. Many people in Wall Street are already on edge, and you could be too if oil prices rise as a result.
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