In Trump's America murder has a price

[DonViejo]

How much does it cost to get away with murder?

$110 billion if you’re Saudi Arabia and you want Trump to look the other way

LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV

OCTOBER 13, 2018 12:00PM (UTC)

Do you want to know what you should do if you want to get a handle on this week’s story about the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Get on Google maps and punch up Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. It’s a metropolis of six million residents located about 500 miles northeast of the holy city of Mecca, and about 300 miles west of the Persian Gulf. These days, it’s a modern city, with two of the tallest skyscrapers in Saudi Arabia, the 99-story Kingdom Tower, and the 1,000-foot Burj Rafah, which features 474 condominiums and a 350 room five-star hotel, the Kempinski.

The city is bisected by one of the country’s few major highways, Route 65. Go south about 30 miles, and Route 65 ends in the town of Al Kharj. South of there, all the way to the border with Yemen, there is nothing but sand. Oh, there are a couple of little settlements in the desert — Layla, and then Wadi ad-Dawasir. But to the east, all the way to Oman and the Persian Gulf, nothing but sand. Zoom in, and you’ll see that the sand drifts in long, wave-like dunes for miles and miles and miles. But there’s nothing else there. No water. No vegetation. No towns. Nothing.

Head north on Route 65 out of Riyadh, and a couple dozen towns are strung out along the road for about two hundred miles. Then the low hills and settlements and a few irrigated farms end, and there’s nothing but sand, a great swath of it, running east and south, mile after mile of shifting dunes and . . . nothing.

It’s the great, empty nothingness when you drive Route 65 out of Riyadh that tells you why Saudi Arabia thinks it can get away with killing Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its embassy in Turkey last week. Saudi Arabia is one of the most isolated, barren countries on the face of the earth. It has been inhospitable to outsiders for centuries. The Muslim world has to deal with them because Mecca and Medina, the holy places of Islam, are within its borders. The rest of the world has to deal with them because they’ve got oil. But beyond that, they don’t give a damn what we think, because they don’t have to.

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https://www.salon.com/2018/10/13/how-much-does-it-cost-to-get-away-with-murder/