Shakespeare in Riyadh: “Princes in the Tower”

originally published in 2017

By Claudio Resta

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of Salman [York]

Why, there thou hast it: two deep enemies,
Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep’s disturbers
Are they that I would have thee deal upon:
Tyrrel, I mean those bastards in the Tower.
(Shakespeare)

The global media mainstream system often acts as an incendiary for obvious cassette reasons.

So news that in itself is irrelevant but politically sensitive, because it victimizes a gender, social or ethnic group that is commonly believed, wrongly or reasonably, already a victim of persecution, the same news is propagated, enormously amplified, around the world in a game of rebounding agencies that indirectly end up also to maximize headline sales.

At other times (and this is the case I’m about to draw attention to now), the global media mainstream system acts inexplicably (apparently inexplicably) as a firefighter trying to extinguish the fire, failing to adequately important news and I would also say that is spectacular in itself. This is paradoxical because in a Society of the Spectacle like ours (Guy Debord) not exploiting the “spectacular” is also a waste of resources, or rather the most valuable resource on the economic level in communication. Just as if the cynical and colorful Circus presentationist would present the numbers of his artists in a shy way in a low voice and with understatement rather than loudly and with emphasis as it actually happens.

Not only that but here we have the case with a piece of extremely important news, and I would also say that after being announced in error, inexplicably it has had no echoes or repeats on the mainstream media for twenty days and passes so far. As if it were a mistake, a refusal. Not even so.

The news is that on November 4, 2017, informs us of the arrest in Saudi Arabia of (about) fifty dignitaries, government ministers, senior officers, eleven princes of the royal family including the famous Alwaleed Bin Al Talal, well-known investor global and philanthropic, Bakr Bin Laden, brother of the most famous Osama (only whose next kinship would have to raise some curiosity for so many reasons) and so many others.