Preface: Given the new attempt to use documents (cough fake?) linking Iran and 9/11, this piece is timely indeed ...
Background here.
By Kristen Breitweiser, one of the four 9/11 widows – known as the “Jersey Girls” – instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks. Follow Kristen Breitweiser on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kdbreitweiser.
Two days after the most stunning purge in recent Saudi history, the so-called "anti-corruption probe" - which was really a countercoup - that led to the arrest of dozens of Saudi Arabian royals, ministers and businessmen allowing Mohammed to further cement control over the Kingdom, appeared to be widening on Monday when, as Reuters reports, Saudi banks begun freezing the accounts of those arrested.
Following an early shaky start, which saw the Hang Seng tumble as much as 1.6% driven by weakness in financials and real estate names following the latest warning by PBOC governor Zhou about "sudden, complex, hidden, contagious, hazardous" risks In markets and a decline in local real estate prices, and pressure global risk, US equity futures have recouped all losses and are back to unchanged on monday morning, as President Trump continues on his first official trip to Asia.
Overnight, following the recent Saudi turmoil, prices in the crude complex jumped to the highest levels in over two years, amid speculation that Saudi Arabia is more likely to back output curbs following this weekend’s crackdown by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. "It creates some hope that the current policy by the Saudis will be continued after March,” said ABN Amro senior energy economist Hans van Cleef. "We’re still in the longer-term upswing, the uptrend is still intact", and indeed Dec.
The shocking latest twist in what has been a chaotic weekend in Saudi Arabia is news that a helicopter transporting 8 high-ranking Saudi officials (including prince Mansour bin-Muqrin) has crashed in the south of the Kingdom, near the border with Yemen.
Sky News Arabia confirms an earlier report from Al-Watan news..."Newsletter: loss of a helicopter carrying a number of officials in the southern Asir, Saudi Arabia"