News and notes from around the interweb:
- Why airline passenger stories go viral
- TSA testing screening technology to scan you up to 25 feet away
- How a Saudi royal used the Ritz-Carlton to crush opposition
Ritz-Carlton Riyadh, Credit: Ritz-Carlton - Etihad rebranding to be less premium
- FAA relaxes bureaucratic restrictions on flight examiners to make it easier for them to give pilot exams and get more pilots in the air more quickly.
- IHG Rewards Club properties worth redeeming for if only the program had a way to redeem for premium rooms, offered suite upgrades to elites as a published benefit, and applied most benefit to redemption stays.
Love the new TSA passive screening idea, let’s hope it’s a solution that works and speeds up processing!
A Ritz Carlton is not an ideal place for physical torture. Saudi Arabia has places better suited for that. But in addition to serving as a location for some detentions and interrogations, the Ritz was used as a medical facility to avoid sending to hospital some well-known prisoners who had suffered from physical mistreatment at other detention facilities.
On November 7, 2017, US President Donald Trump endorsed this torture and extrajudicial detention (which his intelligence services had surely advised him of) in a tweet: “I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing. Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!”
While the US record on human rights has always been imperfect, it is shocking and contrary to American values that a US President openly praises brutality, torture and in fact the murder of those who did not survive their torture. That’s Trump’s idea of MAGA folks.
Did the US President’s approval of Saudi torture plus constant labeling as “the enemy of the people” US press who dare question his policies and point out his brazzen lies have any influence on the Saudi decision to murder and dismember journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Common sense says to some unknown extent it must have.
Trump’s ironic tweet about ‘milking a country for years’ should come back to haunt the most corrupt President in US history (money laundering, tax evasion, violation of private foundation regulations, and use of his position as President to promote his businesses while in office, not to mention violation of campaign finance laws and other findings that will be revealed by Mueller and US Attorneys in the Southern District of New York provided that the new Attorney General refrains from quashing these investigations and permits publication of their findings.)
This comment should offend no one with an open mind while Trump diehards will simply deny the facts and ignore any negative inferences.