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Worldly

Saudi Arabia picked a fight with...Canada?

Worldly

Vox Media Podcast Network

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.41.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2018

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Zack, Jenn, and Alex explore the utterly bizarre diplomatic fight between Saudi Arabia and Canada — and why it has everything to do with the ruthless ambition of Saudi’s young new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. On Elsewhere, they discuss a big scoop Alex got on what the US is asking from North Korea in their nuclear arms negotiations — and what that tells us about how those negotiations are going (spoiler: not very well). Zack finally grants his Canadian fiancée’s wish to do a Canada episode, Jenn proposes a new location for a Trump hotel, and Alex reveals his unique nickname for the Saudi crown prince. References! Jenn’s piece on the Saudi Arabia-Canada fight (and a shorter, more up-to-date version here) The tweet from the Canadian foreign ministry that kicked things off Jenn specifically described one tweet with an image of a plane flying towards the Toronto skyline, and cited some Washington Post reporting. Here’s an article on the Saudi-owned media outlet al-Arabiya putting out a video calling Jordan Peterson a political prisoner. As we mentioned, there’s a Today, Explained episode that goes into much more depth on Jordan Peterson’s ideology! Zack also wrote a Peterson explainer. For more on the 2014 human rights violations that Alex mentioned, read this executive summary. Zack and Jenn talked about Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power. Here’s that story in more depth. Sarah Wildman wrote a great piece for Vox last year about Saudi princes being held at a Ritz-Carlton. As Alex mentioned, Saudi Arabia is currently bombing civilians in Yemen and has a diplomatic blockade against Qatar. And just this Thursday, the Saudi-led coalition bombed a school bus full of children in Yemen, killing at least 43 people, at least 29 of whom were children under the age of 15. Jenn quoted this essay from the Globe and Mail at the end of the first segment. We spent most of Elsewhere discussing Alex’s recent North Korea piece. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to worldly on the Vox Media Podcast Network, your host, Zach Beecham, here as always with Jennifer Williams and Alex Ward.

0:16.0

Hey!

0:17.0

Today we're going to talk about what sounds like the most implausible diplomatic fight

0:20.8

in geopolitical history. One between Saudi Arabia and Canada.

0:25.8

It all started last week when Saudi Arabia arrested several female human rights activists.

0:30.8

One of these women, Samar Badawi, had relatives living in Canada, relatives who had fled specifically

0:35.6

to evade Saudi persecution. The Canadian government was not happy about the arrests and

0:41.1

the foreign ministry of Canada sent out to tweet in which they urged the

0:45.8

Saudi authorities to immediately release the people who had been detained.

0:49.5

And then Saudi Arabia lost its damn minds and they basically declared diplomatic war on Canada.

0:57.0

I'm laughing because it's ridiculous, but it's not actually funny in some ways.

1:02.0

I can't believe this exists. It's really serious, right, the things that they did.

1:04.4

So Jen, walk us through the actual consequences here.

1:07.2

We were in the dumbest timeline.

1:08.9

So yeah, so Saudi Arabia sees this tweet and they immediately freak the fuck out and they send out a bunch of

1:17.3

tweets. They recall their ambassador back from Canada. They announced that the Canadian

1:22.1

ambassador in Saudi Arabia is persona non-grata, which is basically get the

1:25.6

fuck out of the country in diplomatic speak. And they give him 24 hours to literally get the

1:30.1

fuck out of the country. And they did a bunch of other stuff.

1:32.8

Yeah, I'd understand if they kind of stopped there, but they didn't.

1:35.2

They effectively froze trade with Canada, which at the end of the day actually isn't too bad

1:40.5

because Saudi Arabia is Canada's 17th largest trading partner and it effectively boils down to like Canada sending tanks and Canada importing oil.

...

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