Cartoon

Rocket Man

Written by SK Ashby

(Cartoonist - Nick Anderson)

In other news, Jared Kushner is reportedly briefing GOP senators on his immigrant reform plan, which will undoubtedly be dead on arrival. It will either be too weak or too extreme.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) is telling European governments to make sure their people are vaccinated as over 34,000 (um, holy shit?) cases of measles have now been identified in 2019.

Finally, no one warned Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi that MBS was coming for him, but it appears the CIA is now warning critics of Saudi Arabia when they have evidence of a threat.

The pro-democracy activist, İyad el-Baghdadi, is a vocal critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

El-Baghdadi was alerted to the threat on 25 April, when Norwegian authorities arrived at his doorstep, took him to a secure location, and warned him he was in possible danger from an unspecified threat emanating from the kingdom.

The activist was told the threat had been passed on to Norwegian authorities by a foreign intelligence agency, which the Guardian has confirmed was the CIA.

“The way I understood it was, the Saudis have a crosshairs on me, but there is no idea of what they are going to do,” El-Baghdadi said in a phone interview with the Guardian.

“They assured me that they are taking it very seriously. They came prepared,” he said, noting that authorities had arrived with two squads: one to whisk him away, and another to ensure they were not being followed.

Programming note... I will be offline tomorrow. I'm going to an early Mother's Day lunch with family and then attending a party tomorrow evening. I'll see you on Thursday.