Saudi prince MBS ordered operation to lure and detain Jamal Khashoggi, U.S. intelligence intercepts reveal

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered an operation to lure Washington Post contributing journalist Jamal Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia where he was to be detained, U.S. intercepts show. The whole torture, dismemberment, and death inside the Saudi embassy thing that apparently happened was a rendition gone bad, according to this report.

Ticketmaster gets $500 million from Mohammad bin Salman

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund bought a $500 million stake in Ticketmaster, the much revilved ticket service with a long history of being terrible to venues, performer, and fans. On his Pluralistic blog, Cory Doctorow says the Saudi fund is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman…

That is, the Mister Bone Saw widely believed to have personally ordered the kidnapping, torture and dismemberment of journalist and regime critic Jamal Khashoggi.

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What it's like inside the CIA during Donald Trump's "Deep State" purge

One of the strangest contradictory sensations of the Trump era is the man's relationship towards and with the various U.S. intelligence agencies. In many cases, Trump's broad criticisms about the unaccountable and seemingly limitless scope of intelligence gathering are valid. Or would be, anyway, if the man actually cared about those issues for any reason beyond his larger tantrum over the way those agencies have undermined his ego. — Read the rest

You can read the forensics report that suggests Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud hacked Jeff Bezos's phone

Motherboard has obtained and published a copy of the forensics report that suggests that Jeff Bezos's phone was hacked by Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, possibly in a scheme to obtain kompromat that could be used as leverage to prevent the Washington Post of reporting on the death of Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered and mutilated by agents of the prince.

From Enron to Saudi Arabia, from Rikers Island to ICE's gulag, how McKinsey serves as "Capitalism's Consigliere"

On this week's Intercepted podcast (MP3) (previously), host Jeremy Scahill (previously) takes a long, deep look at the history of McKinsey and Company, whose consultants are the architects of ICE's gulags, a failed, high-cost initiative to curb violence at Rikers Island that used falsified data to secure ongoing funding — a company whose internal documents compare management consultants to "the Marine Corps, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Jesuits" and whose government contracts bill out freshly hired, inexperienced junior consultants at $3m/year.

Uber CEO on Saudi murder of journalist: "We've made mistakes too"

Uber is significantly backed by Saudi investments and the country's sovereign wealth fund controls a seat on its board. — Read the rest