Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi missed in Istanbul

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Remarkably dumb decision by MBS here - either this was a turbulent priest situation or else he got high on his own propaganda. Big powerful and bipartisan bloc of US Senators have just called for targeted sanctions, and a lot of other countries have put the Kingdom on note. Even if they survive this diplomatically, all of MBS's PR offensive over the past two years has gone to waste.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Frankly, I think we should nuke Mecca...but since we're not talking about a U.S citizen, maybe it isn't required yet.

Glad we're keeping a sense of perspective lol.

Basically the Sauds are relearning the lesson Europeans found out over the last few centuries: royals may be cute on stamps and the like, but massively increasing their executive role to lead a nation state is very much a gamble.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Frankly, I think we should nuke Mecca...but since we're not talking about a U.S citizen, maybe it isn't required yet.

Glad we're keeping a sense of perspective lol.

Basically the Sauds are relearning the lesson Europeans found out over the last few centuries: royals may be cute on stamps and the like, but massively increasing their executive role to lead a nation state is very much a gamble.

“nation” state

I don’t think there’s much in the way of Saudi nationalism. Bribes to tribal sheikhs and passive obedience to the royals as demanded by their puppet clerics don’t count imo. Nor does MBS’s cult of personality among the Young and the Restless of Saudi.

That's the thing; I think MBS fancies himself as some sort of powerful centralising monarch in the style of Henry Tudor, Emperor Meiji or Napoleon, the sort of people who swept aside old orders with regimes focused on their own persona as the authority. Unfortunately for him, I don't think he has the ability.