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Al-Monitor,  
June 11, 2023
“[The Public Investment Fund’s golf strategy is about both image and economics.] It’s both diversification and soft power projection. . . . It is now a more aggressive approach to simultaneously find lucrative, high-margin returns in the intermediate run simultaneous with elevating the image of the Saudi royal family, state emblems and nation in a global era defined by multipolarity.”
Al-Monitor,  
June 11, 2023
“[Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund] is not just a cash cow and rainy day fund for the Saudi government. . . . It is an investment arm that directly channels the kingdom’s immense oil wealth into strategic spaces that simultaneously generate profit while elevating Saudi Arabia as a stakeholder in global markets, ideas, technology and expansion.”
The Hill,  
June 11, 2023
“[Biden’s fistbump with Saudi Arabia’s MBS last July] was just really this visceral visual welcoming of a full international rehabilitation of, quite frankly, one of the most brutal dictators in the world. . . . I think it’s very evident that the administration needs to abandon its behind closed doors approach to addressing human rights. There need to be clear public costs to MBS’S repression.”
New York Times,  
June 11, 2023
“It just tells you how money talks because this guy sits on top of this oil well and all this money, so he can basically buy his way out of everything,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, the Saudi director for the Freedom Initiative, a rights group in Washington and a vocal opponent of the monarchy.
NPR,  
June 10, 2023
I mean, we have asked Blinken, for example, to meet with civil society leaders, Saudi civil society leaders outside who can speak about human rights and democratic values, but they never did. And then they went over there and met with just, like, people who work for MBS and talk about Vision 2030.
NPR,  
June 10, 2023
“I feel so disappointed, to be honest…we have asked Blinken, for example, to meet with civil society leaders, Saudi civil society leaders outside who can speak about human rights and democratic values, but they never did. And then they went over there and met with just, like, people who work for MBS and talk about Vision 2030.”
Reuters,  
June 8, 2023
“Ultimately . . . five, 10, 15 years from now we will see the negative national and international security implications of appeasement of authoritarian allies like Saudi.”
Reuters,  
June 8, 2023
“To me, the biggest takeaway is the PGA would have never done this if Biden hadn’t have gone to Jeddah and rehabilitated MbS. . . . Biden made it OK for the whole world, especially the business community, to not worry about re-engaging with MbS.”
The Guardian,  
June 8, 2023
“Abdullah Alaoudh, Saudi director at the Freedom Initiative, a US-based nonprofit, said: ‘Col Rabih’s defection marks a unique and rare event in Saudi Arabia within the police and security forces. The Saudi government has a long history of transnational repression, of harassing, stalking, silencing, intimidating and even assassinating dissidents abroad – Alenezi is just a recent example.'”
Wall Street Journal,  
June 6, 2023
“Any influence the U.S. had is rapidly waning as MBS continues his crackdown on dissent with impunity,” she said. “I hope this trip is a chance to turn the tide and put the U.S. back on the side of human-rights defenders.”
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