Tailor Saleh Alnahdi is courting the conservative Saudi gentleman who still worried about being gunned down in the street with a line of bulletproof thobes and abaya, lined with Aramid ("a little more expensive than kevlar") and complying with the US National Institute of Justice Body Armor Compliance Certificate requirements. As @evacide quipped: "This is not what I was expecting from the dystopian cyberpunk present, but here we are." Read the rest
The shame just keeps on coming, America. Read the rest
NSO Group is a notorious Israeli cyber-arms dealer whose long trail of sleaze has been thoroughly documented by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab (which may or may not be related to an attempt to infiltrate Citizen Lab undertaken by a retired Israeli spy); NSO has been implicated in the murder and dismemberment of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (just one of the brutal dictatorships who've availed themselves of NSO tools), and there seems to be no cause too petty for their clients, which is why their malware has been used to target anti-soda activists in Mexico. Read the rest
The CIA and security services of one or more foreign governments have recently warned at least three friends and colleagues of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi that their pro-democracy work “has made them and their families the targets of potential retaliation from Saudi Arabia,” reports TIME. Read the rest
Last September, the French Directorate of Military Intelligence prepared a "highly classified" report on the Saudi war in Yemen to brief the "restricted council" of cabinet-level officials; the report has been obtained by the French media organization Disclose, which has published it jointly with The Intercept and four other French media organizations. Read the rest
U.S. Department Of Energy Secretary Rick Perry gave “six secret authorizations by companies to sell nuclear power technology and assistance to Saudi Arabia,” Reuters reports, based on a copy of a document seen by reporters on Wednesday. Read the rest
Absher is a kind of Saudi equivalent to China's Weibo, an all-in-one service that manages payments, interaction with government services, and, key to the Saudi system of sadistic, totalitarian medieval patriarchy, it lets men track the whereabouts of their wives, daughters, and employees, sending alerts to "guardians" when women use their passports. Read the rest
Senator Ron Wyden has publicly denounced both Apple and Google for hosting mobile apps that connect to Absher, a Saudi government service designed to allow Saudi men to track their spouses and employees' whereabouts at all times. Read the rest
In Saudi Arabia, women can only get a divorce after proving abuse in court, but men can simply file -- in secret -- for a divorce from their wives, and sometimes, they don't even tell their wives, continuing to live with them so they don't have to pay alimony, fraudulently using power of attorney to access their funds, etc. Read the rest
In a deeply researched longread, New York Times investigative reporters Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe document in fine detail the role played by the ubiquitous McKinsey and Company in legitimizing, coordinating, and supercharging the world's most notorious human-rights-abusing regimes, from Saudi Arabia to China to Russia. Read the rest
Canada's Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- a man who is willing to say the most progressive, laudable things imaginable, provided he doesn't have to do anything -- has steadfastly refused to cancel Canada's planned $15 billion sale of antipersonnel weapons to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, despite the incipient genocide in Yemen and the Kingdom's practice of dismembering critical journalists. Read the rest
This week's Saudi State-sactioned Murder Wheel of Misfortune has landed upon "acid bath."
A top Turkish official, presidential adviser Yasin Aktay, has said he believes Jamal Khashoggi's body was dissolved in acid after being cut up. The "only logical conclusion", he said, was that those who had killed the Saudi journalist in Istanbul had destroyed his body "to leave no trace behind".
Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi rulers, was killed inside the country's consulate on 2 October. No forensic evidence has been provided to prove his body was dissolved.
What will the story be next week? Tktktktkttiktick tick tick tick... tick.... "eaten by angry raccoons." Read the rest
Wolf Intelligence is a German state surveillanceware company founded by Manish Kumar, selling tools that independent researchers described as "very shitty and it’s just copy paste from open source projects," used by governments to spy on their citizens. Read the rest
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today said the United States will revoke entry visas for the Saudi men accused of torturing and assassinating Washington Post contributing journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Read the rest
