Crown Prince Of Hypocrisy / Opinion........ Free Riaf Badawi
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to shake up the hidebound kingdom. He has already announced that women will be permitted to drive, launched an anti-corruption campaign, allowed movie theaters to open next year, imposed budget austerity and revealed expansive ambitions to diversify the economy away from its dependence on oil. All this seems responsive to a restive younger generation. But the crown prince has occluded his vision with a taste for grandeur. He reportedly bought a luxury chateau for more than $300 million in Louveciennes, France, near Versailles, and he acquired a 440-foot yacht from a Russian tycoon in 2015 for about $550 million. Those prices are eye-watering, but the Saudi government says the crown prince did not provide $450.3 million for the most expensive art purchase in history, a Leonardo da Vinci painting recently sold at auction. Certainly, the anti-corruption campaign, in which 159 of the kingdom's richest businessmen, princes a...