In the wake of the widespread outrage over the involvement of the Saudi Arabian government in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has gone into full damage control mode. He has allowed Khashoggi’s eldest son Salah, who had been barred from leaving the country and was forced into a photo op with bin Salman a few days ago, to leave the country. bin Salman is also trying to placate the Turkish president,the person most dangerous to him because of his ability to release all manner of damaging information. After not saying anything for three weeks, bin Salman has now said that Saudi Arabia and Turkey must work together.
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The speech today by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan turned out to be somewhat underwhelming. It had been expected that he would provide at least some of the evidence that Turkish investigators have accumulated on the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. But he did not do so, choosing instead to reject the Saudi account of the killing and pointing the finger at the ‘highest ranks’ of the Saudi government.
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Election day in the US is on November 6 this year. Although many places allow early voting and voting by mail, I like to do it in person. Writer and comedian Demi Adejuyigbe explains how to vote and why it is important to do so, despite all the well-known problems with democracy in the US. The greatest fear of the oligarchy is if large numbers of people vote, which is why voter suppression efforts are so commonplace in the US. The wealthy and powerful control pretty much everything and voting is really the only time when ordinary people get to exercise any power at all. For that reason alone, it is important to not squander that opportunity.

As if the Khashoggi case did not have enough weird, not to mention macabre and gruesome elements, each day seems to bring new ones. Today we learn of CCTV footage that reveals an elaborate attempt to use a body double to create a false narrative that Khashoggi actually left the consulate on his own.

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Australia has seen a huge turnover in its political leadership with five prime ministers in as many years, with most of the changes occurring not due to national elections but because of political backstabbing and intrigue within parties that have unseated party leaders. (In the parliamentary system, the prime minister is not directly elected but is the person who commands the majority of party members in parliament.)
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That the Saudi government and its powerful figure crown prince Mohammed bin Salman are brazenly lying about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi is now blindingly obvious. There is an unbridgeable gulf between their initial response that Khashoggi had left the consulate and they did not know where he was to their most recent grudging admission that he died after he got into a ‘fist fight’ with people inside the consulate. The body has still not been produced. What we are now seeing is careful maneuvering to decide what is the most they can concede that will enable their most ardent supporters, in this case Donald Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to continue their warm relationship with both the kingdom and bin Salman.
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Election day in the US is on Tuesday, November 6 and in addition to the slew of people running for political office in Ohio, there are also a large number of candidates for judicial offices and various ballot issues. One of the ballot issues is Issue 1 that is a constitutional amendment that calls for major reforms in sentencing for drug possession. Basically it distinguishes users of drugs from dealers of drugs, and treats the former as people with a health problem that should be treated medically, socially, and psychologically and not punitively. Drug addiction is better treated as a disease, not as a choice that people can be frightened away from with the threat of harsh prison sentences.
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This week we saw the same dreary scenario played out again. The big tax cuts for business and the wealthy were passed on the claim that this would result in both groups investing more in business, which would result in huge growth in employment and wages, thus increasing tax revenues that would offset the cost of the cuts and thus make it budget neutral
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October 10th was the World Day Against the Death Penalty. One of the most encouraging signs is how the use of the death penalty is declining around the world. According to Amnesty International, “142 countries have either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice and that in the past five years 33 countries have carried out at least one execution.” In 2017, just 23 countries out of the 193 member states of the UN executed someone.
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