Vice blocked an article criticising Saudi Arabia. This is why we published it instead; The Guardian, August 18, 2023

Jemimah Steinfeld , The Guardian; Vice blocked an article criticising Saudi Arabia. This is why we published it instead

"If you want proof Saudi Arabia is trying to improve its reputation, visit the website of the Saudi Tourism Authority. There you will find the Q&A section has recently been updated to state that LGBTQ visitors to the country are welcome. This from a country that executed five men for same-sex relationships just four years ago. The hubris is astonishing. And yet to directly challenge those contradictions isn’t easy, something John Lubbock, Daisy Steinhardt and Max Colbert recently learned.

As reported by the Guardian on Tuesday, the journalists had co-written an article for Vice World News, which looked at how LGBTQ Saudis face threats from their families and state authorities. It was commissioned after Vice signed a partnership deal with the MBC Group, a media company controlled by the Saudi government. The article’s publication was first delayed and eventually spiked. The reason given? To protect staff at Vice’s offices in Riyadh."

Disney is refusing to cut LGBTQ scene in Doctor Strange 2, Saudi Arabia says; The Guardian, April 25, 2022

Sian Cain and agencies, The Guardian ; Disney is refusing to cut LGBTQ scene in Doctor Strange 2, Saudi Arabia says

"Saudi Arabia has asked Disney to cut “LGBTQ references” from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before it can be screened in the kingdom, an official said on Monday – but denied earlier reports that the film has been banned.

Disney has so far declined the requested edits to the Doctor Strange sequel, slated for release around the world next week. The cuts amount to “barely 12 seconds” in which a lesbian character, America Chavez, played by the actor Xochitl Gomez, refers to her “two moms”, according to Nawaf Alsabhan, Saudi Arabia’s general supervisor of cinema classification.

“It’s just her talking about her moms, because she has two moms,” Alsabhan said. “And being in the Middle East, it’s very tough to pass something like this.”

At least 238 writers and intellectuals were detained for their work last year, advocacy group says; The Washington Post, May 19, 2020

Siobhán O'Grady, The Washington Post; At least 238 writers and intellectuals were detained for their work last year, advocacy group says

"At least 238 writers, academics and intellectuals around the world were detained in connection to their work last year, according to a report released Tuesday by PEN America, a freedom of expression advocacy group.

The imprisonments and detentions occurred in 34 countries, although the majority took place in just three — China, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Those same countries are also among the top jailers of journalists worldwide, according to the 2019 Committee to Protect Journalists prison census.

The data published Tuesday as part of PEN America’s inaugural Freedom to Write Index accounts for poets, scholars, songwriters and translators, among other intellectuals the group described as unjustly detained last year around the world. It does not include journalists unless they also belong to one of the categories in question. Some detained individuals were excluded from the report at the request of family members who feared that public attention could worsen their situations."

Rahaf al-Qunun has been granted asylum in Australia, Thai official says; CNN, January 11, 2019

Kocha Olarn and Helen Regan, CNN; Rahaf al-Qunun has been granted asylum in Australia, Thai official says

"Her online campaign was so successful that Saudi charge d'affaires Abdalelah Mohammed A. al-Shuaibi told Thai officials through a translator: "We wish they had confiscated her phone instead of her passport."

Qunun later tweeted the video of that meeting and wrote that her "Twitter account has changed the game against what he wished for me.""

Think Riyadh’s Netflix ban was bad? Imagine if Hasan Minhaj was a Saudi citizen; The Guardian, January 4, 2019

Safa Al Ahmad, The Guardian; Think Riyadh’s Netflix ban was bad? Imagine if Hasan Minhaj was a Saudi citizen

"The government of Saudi Arabia makes it very clear that resistance to its regime is futile. It will not tolerate dissent; it is untouchable.

The kingdom has never claimed to be a democracy – or that it believed in free speech, the right to protest, or the right to collectively bargain for rights. There is no independent press."

Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world; The Washington Post, November 22, 2018

Kristine Phillips, The Washington Post; Confronted with the bloody behavior of autocrats, Trump, instead, blames the world

[Kip Currier: We must call out and hold accountable those leaders who engage in blurring the boundaries of objective truth, as in the example excerpted below, in which Donald Trump asserts that:

"Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place."

Such a statement is the amoral apotheosis made manifest of a Gospel of the Inherent Unaccountability of Actors and States:

If everyone is culpable, then no one is culpable.

All are equal in blame.

No one is accountable to anyone else.

No system shall stand in judgment above any other.

Such a nakedly irreproachable manifesto flies in the face of bedrock principles undergirding the rule of law and the U.S. Constitutional system of checks and balances. It is a credo for unchecked anarchy, the very antithesis of originalism. It is the recurrent rhetoric and obfuscatory modus operandum of the oppressor, the despot, the tyrant. The aspiring authoritarian conman.

Its Orwellian aims--to cloud conceptions of "right and wrong", to gum up and break down the imperfect but fine-tuned cogs of systems and rules that hold people responsible for their action and inaction, to "gaslight", confuse, overwhelm with disinformation, demoralize, divide, and manipulate--must be named, called out, and rejected by those who see such self-serving machinations for what they are, and the threats to democracy, the rule of law, and free thinking peoples that they represent.

Inspired by and building upon the prescient words of George Orwell's 1984, to speak truth to power:

Mr. Trump--and those of your ilk, who weaponize facts and wield misinformation to attempt to delegitimize truth and reason--War is NOT peace. Freedom is NOT slavery. Ignorance is NOT strength.]

"In fielding questions from reporters about the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump avoided blaming Mohammed bin Salman, despite the CIA’s findings that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the assassination.

“Who should be held accountable?” a reporter asked Trump Thursday. Sitting inside his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the president took a deep breath, seemingly mulling his response.

Then he said: “Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place.""

Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.; The Washington Post, November 22, 2018

Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post; Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.

"There is no mention in his statement of human rights, no mention of freedom of the press. There is no notion of the United States as an advocate for liberty or a foe of despotism. There is only the amoral pursuit of what Trump sees — not very clearly — as U.S. national interests."

Jamal Khashoggi chose to tell the truth. It’s part of the reason he’s beloved.; The Washington Post, October 7, 2018

David Ignatius, The Washington Post; Jamal Khashoggi chose to tell the truth. It’s part of the reason he’s beloved.

[Kip Currier: As I've mentioned to a few people lately--including my book editor, as I finish up a chapter on truth for my ethics textbook--this is a particularly challenging time to tackle the topics of truth, facts, news, and information assessment. The example of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi--"disappeared" and presumed killed--painfully demonstrates both the importance of and potentially deadly stakes for those committed to promoting freedom of expression and truth telling, in the furtherance of human rights, equality, and democratic values.]

"George Orwell titled a regular column he wrote for a British newspaper in the mid-1940s “As I Please.” Meaning that he would write exactly what he believed. My Saudi colleague Jamal Khashoggi has always had that same insistent passion for telling the truth about his country, no matter what.

Khashoggi’s fate is unknown as I write, but his colleagues at The Post and friends around the world fear that he was murdered after he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last Tuesday...

Khashogggi [sic] understood that he could keep his mouth shut and stay safe, because he had so many friends in the royal family. But it simply wasn’t in him.

Khashoggi wrote a column for the Post last year in which he described seeing some of his friends arrested and struggling with his conscience. “I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family. I have made a different choice now,” he wrote. He had made a decisive break with Mohammed bin Salman , choosing exile and honesty in his writings. His simple four-word explanation: “We Saudis deserve better.”"