The Turkish account of the murder of Khashoggi given by President Erdogan is true, in every detail. Audio and video evidence exists and has been widely shared with world intelligence agencies, including the US, UK, Russia and Germany, and others which have a relationship with Turkey or are seen as influential. That is why, despite their desperate desire to do so, no Western country has been able to maintain support for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. I have not seen the video from inside the consulate, but have been shown stills which may be from a video. The most important thing to say is that they are not from a fixed position camera and appear at first sight consistent with the idea they are taken by a device brought in by the victim. I was only shown them briefly. I have not heard the audio recording.
There are many things to learn from the gruesome murder other than the justified outrage at the event itself. It opens a window on the truly horrible world of the extremely powerful and wealthy.
The first thing to say is that the current Saudi explanation, that this was an intended interrogation and abduction gone wrong, though untrue, does have one thing going for it. It is their regular practice. The Saudis have for years been abducting dissidents abroad and returning them to the Kingdom to be secretly killed. The BBC World Service often contains little pockets of decent journalism not reflected in its main news outlets, and here from August 2017 is a little noticed piece on the abduction and “disappearance” of three other senior Saudis between 2015-17. Interestingly, while the piece was updated this month, it was not to include the obvious link to the Khashoggi case.
The key point is that European authorities turned a completely blind eye to the abductions in that BBC report, even when performed on European soil and involving physical force. The Saudi regime was really doing very little different in the Khashoggi case. In fact, inside Saudi Arabia, Khashoggi was a less senior and important figure than those other three abducted then killed, about whom nobody kicked up any fuss, even though the truth was readily available. Mohammed Bin Salman appears to have made two important miscalculations: he misread Erdogan and he underestimated the difference which Khashoggi’s position as a Washington Post journalist made to political pressure on Western governments.
Khashoggi should not himself be whitewashed. He had a long term professional association with the Saudi security services which put him on the side of prolific torturers and killers for decades. That does not in any sense justify his killing. But it is right to be deeply sceptical of the democratic credentials of Saudis who were in with the regime and have become vocal for freedom and democracy only after being marginalised by Mohammed Bin Salman’s ruthless consolidation of power (which built on a pre-existing trend).
The same scepticism is true many times over when related to CIA Director Gina Haspel, who personally supervised torture in the CIA torture and extraordinary rendition programme. Haspel was sent urgently to Ankara by Donald Trump to attempt to deflect Erdogan from any direct accusation of Mohammed Bin Salman in his speech yesterday. MBS’ embrace of de facto alliance with Israel, in pursuit of his fanatic hatred of Shia Muslims, is the cornerstone of Trump’s Middle East policy.
Haspel’s brief was very simple. She took with her intercept intelligence that purportedly shows massive senior level corruption in the Istanbul Kanal project, and suggested that Erdogan may not find it a good idea if intelligence agencies started to make public all the information they hold.
Whether Erdogan held back in his speech yesterday as a result of Haspel’s intervention I do not know. Erdogan may be keeping cards up his sleeve for his own purpose, particularly relating to intercepts of phone and Skype calls from the killers direct to MBS’ office. I have an account of Haspel’s brief from a reliable source, but have not been updated on who she then met, or what the Turks said to her. It does seem very probable, from Trump’s shift in position this morning to indicate MBS may be involved, that Haspel was convinced the Turks have further strong evidence and may well use it.
Meantime, the British government maintains throughout that, whatever else happens, British factories will continue to supply bombs to Saudi Arabia to massacre children on school buses and untold numbers of other civilians. Many Tory politicians remain personally in Saudi pockets, with former Defence Minister Michael Fallon revealed today as being amongst them.
It is of course extraordinary that Saudi war crimes in Yemen, its military suppression of democracy in Bahrain, its frequent executions of dissidents, human rights defenders, and Shia religious figures, even its arrests of feminists, have had little impact in the West. But the horrible murder of Khashoggi has caught the public imagination and forced western politicians to at least pretend to want to do something about the Saudis whose wealth they crave. I expect any sanctions will be smoke and mirrors.
Mohammed Bin Salman is no fool, and he realises that to punish members of his personal security detail who were just following his orders, would put him in the position of Caligula and the Praetorian Guard, and not tend to his long term safety. Possibly people will be reassigned, or there will be brief imprisonments till nobody is looking. If I were a dissident or Shia in Saudi Arabia who bore any kind of physical resemblance to any of the party of murderers, I would get out very quick.
With every sympathy for his horrible murder, Khashoggi and his history as a functionary of the brutal Saudi regime should not be whitewashed. Mohammed Bin Salman is directly responsible for his murder, and if there is finally international understanding that he is a dangerous psychopath, that is a good thing. You will forgive me for saying that I explained this back in March whilst the entire mainstream media, awash with Saudi PR cash, was praising him as a great reformer. For the Americans to deploy Gina Haspel gives us a welcome reminder that they are in absolutely no position to moralise. Whatever comes of this will not be “justice”. The truth the leads can reveal is much wider than the narrow question of the murder incident, as I hope this article sketches out. That the fallout derails to some extent the murder machine in Yemen is profoundly to be hoped.
I’m increasingly getting error messages when accessing stories like this (particularly this one!) on sites like yours, Moon of Alabama and Corbett Report…etc.
Is there something I should know? Batten down hatches? Conspiracy drivel? Or just clear cashe/cookies & get new VPN?
Anyone else here have these issues?
Just tried MoA, got Error 520, whatever this is.
Re error 520:
This is explained here: https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200171936-Error-520
It just means the site is down and their provider (Cloudflare) doesn’t know why.
Both working fine when I checked a few minutes ago.
I’m currently getting Error 520 on Moon of Alabama.
Lucky I waited to post this until after I checked MoA again, asnow it’s working for me, sort of.
I consider that MBS has been set up to fail, that since the original purge. As with Saddam, these people are manipulable. The US knew of this event and did nothing. How better a coup than to have that occur by local hand, then weaken that hand.
Remember the explosion in Riyadh a few months ago that some reported as an attempted coup and after which Mohammed bin Salman did not appear in public for weeks. If it was a CIA-sponsored attempted coup, there’s a good chance Khashoggi waz involved in it, which could explain how the Saudi treated him.
Recently I contributed to this site writing that President Trump and Prime Minister May would do absolutely nothing over the Khashoggi killing in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey that would cause the current lucrative business association with Saudi Arabia to founder.
Despite the further allegations said to be based upon hard evidence I have not observed anything since that has persuaded me otherwise. The US and UK governments have no regard for the ethics or rule of international law in this matter, as their primary concerns are the continued pursuit and maintenance of multi billion dollar contracts with this thoroughly reprehensible regime.
It is now understood that the crown prince has vowed to bring the perpetrators of this killing to justice and been photographed shaking hands with Mr Khashoggi’s son who has had his passport removed from his possession so is unable to leave the Kingdom. Such hypocrisy. The expression on the son’s face is palpable, he clearly looks as if he is not enjoying his audience with the de facto leader of his nation.
There’s little chance of the current regime in Saudi Arabia foundering anytime soon as US and UK governments doubtless would militarily leap to their aid as they did in both gulf wars. In the unlikelihood of internal strife within the Kingdom leading to regime change, both President Trump and Prime Minister May would more than likely be jockeying for position to secure even further business opportunities with scant regard for their erstwhile friends and business partners.
Fulford and Steele say MBS was killed in April and that the new MBS is a body double. Story is that funds to the new regime are frozen, hence people not bothering with Davos in the Desert because there is no money in it. Khashoggi incident set up in order to take down the false MBS.
All rumour to me, but it makes a great story. I originally though Khashoggi was not dead, but given he is part of the old school, it could very well be that they have taken him down too.
Leaving aside Erdogan’s hypocrisy in casting himself as the great defender of free expression and brave journalism.
The pious behaviour of our western leaders makes me laugh. The US can’t even promise not to execute publisher Assange, investigative journalism is all but dead in the UK /US among the MSM. And even this website has come under what appears to be state-led DDoS attacks when you started commenting on the sketchy Skripal business.
It needs saying that we would know little of what Craig reports if we had to rely on the USUKIsNATO MSM.
Earlier I read on RT that Trudeau is continuing with the contract to supply 742 light armoured vehicles to the Saudis.
Sale must go on: Trudeau sticks to $12bn arms deal with Saudis despite Khashoggi killing
24 Oct, 2018 09:49
https://www.rt.com/news/442101-canada-arms-saudi-sales/amp/
For Canada, read the US and the UK.
It should be understood that military orders for Saudi are not for weaponry that’s going to be used (except perhaps for aircraft). The Saudi troops are not willing to fight, so adding to their weaponry has no use. It is rather protection money, so that those countries will come to the support of Saudi if it’s threatened. With Canada it is not obvious, but then is the contract going to go through? The Saudis are very tricky with their contracts, and don’t pay up if their interests change.
Any word on the $3 bn arms deal with Russia?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-king-salman-visit-saudi-arabia-moscow-vladimir-putin-a7985161.html
@ Kempe October 24, 2018 at 19:17
Oddly enough the Saudis don’t use S300’s to attack Yemen, or even to kill ‘dissidents’.
Trudeau is a bad guy, IMO. If MBS is an old school plant, then Trudeau sticking by him makes sense.
The Saudi royals were on veteran Neocon Norman Podhoretz’s hit list of regimes to be taken out once Saddam was ousted: the list included Ghaddafi, Mubarak of Egypt and Assad. They haven’t got rid of Assad yet, but it hasn’t been for want of trying, so it’s not inconceivable that the current negative media vibes re the Sauid royals may be a prelude to an externally engineered destablisation of the Saudi regime. In his Commentary piece from before the Iraq War Podhoretz specifically mentioned the oil-fields of SA as a legitimate justification for invasion – “I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else.” Other Neocon luminaries have said very similar things, e.g. Robert Kagan and William Kristol – who gleefully predicted that the “demise of some ‘moderate’ Araba regimes may be just around the corner.” Needless to say there’s nothing moderate about the Saudis, but it may be that the permanent war party has decided that in the long term the Saudi royals are eminently dispensable. Let’s not forget that even Ghaddafi thought he had become best of pals with the West just before he got shafted (in a disgustingly literal sense).
I suspect the same. I assume most of you here are familiar with infamous Ralph Peters map of the ME, right? It shows Saudi Arabia–along with many other ME countries–carved up into smaller, more bite-sized pieces. Some say this idea goes all the way back to the Oded Yinon plan of 1982.
http://geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Ralph-Peters-Remapped-Middle-East.png
Why am I ashamed ?. The media world standby and are reluctant to tell the truth. Hey, this murder isn’t the first and won’t be the last. I’m ashamed because I haven’t done enough, I haven’t said enough , knowing just how corrupt our society is, I am ashamed. Why ?. I don’t see the same shame in government. They’re quite happy to justify sales of weapons to an obviously corrupt despotic regime. OUR government, some of you voted in, supports them. I AM ASHAMED WHEN THE SELF INTEREST OF POLITICIANS AND UNIONS ( excuse me but FUCK YOU MCluskey ) put commerce /jobs before humanity. I used to support Mclusky however it’s spelt. I understand why you as a union leader would want to support your workers. FUCK YOU ASSHOLE. You are supporting the sale of weapons killing people indiscriminately. Instead of having Industry concentrated on weapons of war, switch to weapons of CARE. Please,I care about our planet and all that live on it. If you don’t care about the future of our world, don’t share. By all means comment, disagree even but do not ignore a heart felt plea for truth, love and a world fit for caring people.
I agree with your sentiment, but Len McCluskey probably won’t be reading your comment.
You might try writing to him, but without the expletives. Who knows, he might listen.
The words spoken are heartfelt, but the harsh reality is that we either become unilateral Samaritans or we remain in the arms business. Awe have no ability to stop France, Germany, Russia, US, Canadas, China and several others taking our place.
The biggest problem is that arms firms run as plcs maximise profits through maximising human misery. Only state ownership of arms industries has a hope of maintaining appropriate arms sales. The past forty years, privatisation has been money witout ethics, the next 40 needs to be more ethical.
@ Rhys Jaggar October 24, 2018 at 22:51
‘..the next 40 needs to be more ethical.’
Don’t bet on it.
The blond property developer aka the US President is reported in the Times thus::
‘Trump points finger at crown prince involvement in Khashoggi killing
Mr Trump, when asked about the possible involvement of Mohammed bin Salman in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last night, said: “Well, the prince is running things over there more so at this stage. He’s running things and so if anybody were going to be, it would be him.”. ‘
Translation please of this mangled English.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/khashoggi-killing-saudi-arabia-in-crisis-over-journalist-s-death-99xtm629j
It’s called Covfefe Diplomacy.
According to this, and the Turkish media, MBS spoke with Erdogan today on the phone.
https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/saudi-crown-prince-jamal-khashoggi/index.html
I wonder what they both eventually decided on? Has MBS given Erdogan a sweet deal to look the other way, whilst patsies are rounded up and charged with Khashoggi’s brutal murder.
Afterall Erdogan is the main accuser here, with access to the evidence, silence him and the rest will probably fall in line so to speak.
Geez, imagine if the Russians did something like this, or something similar like being accused of murdering one of their ex-spies… the condemnation by western leaders, diplomat expulsions and sanctions would be coming fast… but I suppose those things only apply to official enemies and not our allies…no need to worry about lack of democracy and human rights no matter how odious the regime when big business connections are there.
In the wake of the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, HRW, has claimed that Saudi Arabia has beheaded over six hundred people since 2014.
Its also claimed that Putin hasn’t been too critical of the murder of Khashoggi, as relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia have been warming.
Putin also sent a high-level delegation, that included billionaire oligarchs to an investment conference, that is being boycotted by some of Riyadh’s key allies in the West.
Of course Putin, won’t be fazed at all at the death of a journalist, his tenures as Russian president has seen its fair share of them killed mysteriously.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jamal-khashoggi-russia-putin-saudi-arabia-murder-latest-turkey-consulate-istanbul-a8597646.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/saudi-arabia-criticised-over-executions-for-drug-offences
The moral outrage of those boycotting the Saudi investment conference could not be more sincere. We’re lucky to have such people.
And Nixon wasn’t a crook, and Kissinger deserved his Nobel Peace prize, sarcasms a wonderful thing. ?
Actually journalists were being killed under Yeltsin but under Putin there has been a remorseless decline so that Russia is one of the safest places in the world for journalists. This Putin killing journalists memes ranks as one of the dumbest.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/trump-right-on-putin/
Yeah, but Putin hurt Luke Harding’s feelings so badly, that poor little Luke felt as though he were going to die! It’s kind of the same thing as killing him, isn’t it?
Are you sure about that? The rabid Jew hating white supremacist Karlin over at Unz (where he’s actually a moderate compared to some of his cohorts) isn’t exactly the most reliable source.
Have you actually taken an honest look at Putin’s record? Putin is a thug. He’s not the Satanic bogeyman the western media makes him out to be, but there is no doubt at all that the man is an autocrat who uses mafia methods, up to and including murder, to keep dissidents and critics in line.
Putin doesn’t have particular interests in Saudi though. He’s not going to replace the West as major arms supplier.
The root of the problem is not MbS; it’s the KSA. MbS is just the a new head sprouted by the same old beast.
Readers of this Blog know how the KSA bankrolled the resurgence of radical Islam across the last several decades, building Madrassas around the world to spread their medieval interpretation of the Quran. The USA welcomed their help in turning Afghanistan into “Russia’s Vietnam”, and didn’t notice – until 9/11, at least – that we had empowered an ideology far more dangerous than Communism. “Blowback is a bitch”, eh?
MbS’ choice to have Kashoggi iced & diced seems barbaric not just to us “Westerners”, but to most everybody on the planet. But in the KSA, that’s SOP. By focusing on the individual – the “Crown Prince” – Western media sources are white-washing the underlying problem, which is the bizarre persistence of the feudal Monarchy. This arrangement has been convenient, absolving Big Oil – and us, their Customers – of responsibility for maintaining “order” to guarantee the supply of fuel which makes possible our current standard of living.
But it’s not sustainable. They have – inevitably – gone too far, by spreading their archaic & vicious “faith”, funding Al Qaida & ISIS, attacking Yemen, manipulating the USA, et-f-c. And now, they – NOT just “he” – made the mistake of doing what they do (kill), to the wrong person (WaPo writer) where they shouldn’t have done it (Turkey), and Western Media aren’t so willing to ignore it.
I don’t want MbS to take the fall for this. I want the KSA gone, now.
Of course, there might be some interesting side-effects…
You’re right, but Mbs is a particular expression of Saudi policy, though. He’s very active, and may bring down KSA all by himself. The latest reports suggest he may be being sidelined.
It would cause the biggest earthquake the Middle East has ever seen. It’s about time those vile and inhuman headchopping monsters fell. Let’s hope not too many of them try to run to London.
@ Kernel October 24, 2018 at 17:29
‘..“Blowback is a bitch”..’
You haven’t really fallen for that ‘Official Narrative’, have you?
Why did Trump choose Gina Haspel, of all people, to be his CIA chief? She was chief of the CIA station in London in 2016, when the intel agencies started to conspire against Trump, and much of that conspiracy took place in the UK.
I doubt Trump wanted Haspel, or Bolton, or Pompeo, or any of his senior officials. I dont think he gets much say. As President, Clinton would have had power as she has a raft of powerful allies. Trump has very few. All Trump can do is annoy the Establishment by saying off-the-wall stuff and stirring up his grassroots support.
So who did choose Haspel, then? Former CIA officer John Kiriakou says he can name 20 former and present female CIA officers better qualified for the job than Haspel.
Gina Haspel was Mike Pompeo’s torture bitch.
I would put Secretary of State Pompeo in the frame, if I were you….
The questions this murder arises in connection with risks to journalists is ironic, in relation to the crackdown on journalists in Turkey, but is negligent in contrast with the lack of any real outcry over the murder in Malta of Daphne Caruana Galizia, whose investigative work focused on corruption, was killed when a car bomb blew her vehicle to pieces.
In an article in the Indy a politician said her death marked the “collapse of the rule of law” in Malta, the smallest in the European Union.
Tributes to Galizia poured in on Monday evening, as thousands of Maltese gathered in the streets for a candlelight vigil to the reporter.
Collapse of the rule of law seems to be more commonplace in too much of our public life. Fracking, expenses cheating, inviting Tommy Robinson to the House of Lords today, Friends of Israel, and arms dealing at the highest levels of government, all illustrate a fall from international standards of law and humanity
You are right. I was speaking to a youngster this morning. He is in the Lower Sixth form at his school and has an impressive grasp of current affairs. Unlike very many, he knows what is going on and has informed himself.
He hopes to go to university but is feeling hopeless about the state of this country and the political situation. He has the vote soon but said he would not vote for any of the main parties. Disillusioned and probably typical of many of his cohort. It’s a pity that we have given this inheritance.
That is highly atypical of the mood among my 6th-form students. Most of them are informed enough to know that a highly unlikely opportunity for change has been presented with Corbyn.
Corbyn promises them all sorts of goodies, except the thing they want most – membership of the EU. He is now losing support in that age group, and justifiably so, thanks to his prevaricating, fumbling and stuck in the 70\s attitudes.
No, Ian, I talk to them daily and the limit of their political dreams is not the EU and a return of neoliberal politics as usual. You’re confusing them with yourself.
Nearly all of the younger generation that I talk to are very frustrated and upset about brexit and do not identify the EU with your neoliberal views. On the contrarty to them it represents opportunites to work, study and move around freely – a great benefit to us all actually, and one far too readily dismissed by the old school. I don’t believe you, because there is no evidence for it. Labour had great success with building hope amongst the young, and are now squandering it because they take it for granted and their leadership is utterly out of touch with them and their ambitions. Corbyn has shown no understanding of how the world has transformed dramatically in the last ten years, making his political agenda inadequate for the kind of world this generation are facing. The evidence is there in the research. Labour desperately need people who can bring the ideas of these people into their thinking, which is stale and old fashioned.
No evidence for it? Just check the poll numbers for Labour and compare them with those for the pro-remain Lib Dems.
“Corbyn has shown no understanding of how the world has transformed dramatically in the last ten years, making his political agenda inadequate for the kind of world this generation are facing”
Sorry, you’ll need to elaborate on that. Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto resonated with young people more than any offered for a generation.
What do you consider a more suitable agenda and who is offering it?
Let’s see how Corbyn’s negotiations with the EU actually look. The customs union is necessary to protect Ireland, and us, if we are to have any trade, but free movement is the issue most people are most heated about. And that works both ways. Labour’s soft Brexit is hardly a Brexit at all, but paying for rail and other infrastructure directly, rather than via tendering to private interests, is his key pledge, so that the profit stays in house. Murdoch would have people think otherwise however
That’s really weak. Comparing the LibDems vote to labour is irrelevant, and doesn’t tell you anything about the shifting attitudes to Labour among the young. 2017 was a high for Labour, with young people investing hope in a changed Labour. Since then they have gone backwards, as young people get disillusioned with the old party chicanery evident at the top. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss – the union hacks and the old guard quietly subverting the wishes of their new young intake, while pretending to offer them what they want in the form of platitiudes and carefully crafted misleading slogans.
If he is that well informed, I hazard to suggest he does not need University. Debt free apprenticeships at professional services firms are available or working in other ways may make him focus on what he can do, rather than what he cannot do….
“…inviting Tommy Robinson to the House of Lords today.”
Personally I don’t see anything wrong with Tommy Robinson spending an afternoon in the House of Lords. After all, Peter Mandelson has spent eight years there, and he’s a mortgage fraud too. Obviously the difference is that Robinson was charged, prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison for 13 months for his mortgage fraud, while Lord Peter was sent to the EU for four years to become a millionaire.
My android opera browser shows no other people’s comments. Is that possible?
Anyhow, once in a while you stumble upon an article and it feels like falling in love.. Best thing I’ve read for a long time. God bless and let’s hope you are safe. We need people like you in this ever so mad, mad world.
i tried opera but it is crappy. Adblock browser on android is excellent. It sure filters out all ads and I find it faultless.
Craig, I know you are a decent man, but the only decent sentence you have written here was the last one “That the fallout derails to some extent the murder machine in Yemen is profoundly to be hoped.”
If everything before it is true, and I do know that photographic evidence can be faked – even video, then it makes me think about other allegations made with regards to other British very Senior Political Figures, sometimes written in books and sometimes said in interviews on relatively small British Internet Radio Stations may be true too.
Are the elites – even our British elites – really that sick amongst themselves?
Morning Cloud????
Dear God,
What do we do?
Tony
Er, stop believing all the wild conspiracy theories online?
Ian,
I don’t, but if someone is going to write a book about it, and it gets published, and widely read and the allegations are not challenged it makes me think.
1. Why did the person who made these allegations, not get sued. Was it because his research was true, and that to publically sue him, would make the allegations far more widely pubicised?
2. Why did a practicising Barrister in The UK, make exactly the same allegations, on a relatively small internet radio station? Why did he take the risk, if he was not completely convinced the allegations he was making against the same person were true? In his case they did do him in, on a completely unrelated charge, that was probably nonsense. He spent a couple of years in jail. So far as I am aware, he is still alive, but he has not been heard of since. Even honest men, can’t take any more brutality, for simply speaking what they think is the truth. If it wasn’t the truth, why was he not simply ignored as a mad conspiracy theorist?
Tony
Tony, as i have no idea what allegations you are talking about, I cannot say what veracity they may or may not have. I was referring to the regrettable tendencey of many here who, rather proud of their ability to see throught the MSM agendas, are then rather predisposed to believe alternative explanations without regarding them with the same scepticism. Thus you will often find unsourced claims made with great fanfare and credulity which have been cobbled together from some websites and uncritically believed. This comment section is full of it, almost as a badge of pride. At least Craig is less prone to it, and more rigorous about what he writes. But that tendency is what I was referring to. i don’t know about your specific example, but i would excercise the same caution.
The article by Craig is _also_ a conspiracy theory.
– “I don’t”
You do. Or at least you claim to.
We are in already in a post-rational era and few people are swayed by reason and facts anymore.
It used to be the only people who bought into every conspiracy theory that came along were paranoid right-wingers. The left used to be grounded in the ideas of Marx and understood that capital is where power lies and the system exists to serve the its interests.
But decades of neoliberalism with its focus on the individual and decades of betrayal by elected politicians, and a left that gave up trying to achieve economic justice and learned to love capitalism, and now even people on the left think Soros or Rothschild (or whoever) pull a few levers and governments fall.
Few people seem to notice how radically the underlying assumptions that prop up western civilization have changed. Society is polarized, people are disenfranchised and alienated from themselves and each other. There is barely any democracy left. But because the trappings remain in place and elections still happen, the illusion remains intact. Even language has changed drastically. It’s all corporate PR speak like “best practices”, “moving forward” “reaching out” and lots of investment and computing metaphors. Bland, technocratic and inoffensive. There’s a lot more that’s changed but nobody reads this anyway so I won’t bother going any further.
Margaret Thatcher’s dream of a society without society has come true. And everybody seems to have forgotten about climate change and resource depletion. It’s the beginning of the end of industrial civilization. The future will not be like the past. Even if Corbyn is elected all he can really do is tinker around the edges of the system. The people in power are prepared to do anything to keep this dying system in place.
People are in serious denial and live in a fantasy world where a happy landing is guaranteed. Thanks Hollywood (and Internet). They don’t even notice how they themselves have abandoned rational thinking for tribal groupthink and pleasing “narratives”.
Anyway…
@ Ian October 24, 2018 at 18:32
Make you right there. Be like me, believe all the ‘Official Narratives’ and MSM Gospels.
We can trust our Government and MSM to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
As one of my heroes, G W Bush, once said: ‘..Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories…’
@Paul Barbara You deliberately completely misunderstand and misrepresent what I said. I didn’t claim any such thing. But save yourself the bother of trying to think.
‘Er, stop believing all the wild conspiracy theories online?’ is your comment I was responding to.
It isn’t really me who has to think to attack that statement, but you who put it up.
Thank you for clarifying the matter. Many acting according to their own interests and the public getting a blurred picture of what is really going on in the global corridors of power. Israel has been silent, I understand, and they have Saudi Arabia as their ally. Strange this silence coming from the ‘most’ democratic society in the Middle East.
Erdogan’s speech was impressive, and likely true, though not going as far as he might. I was wondering though about his objectives.
One must be to defend Qatar, which Turkey is committed to. But that issue has already reached stalemate, so not so important.
Another might be to weaken Saudi to get them out of Syria. I don’t know whether that’s still an issue.
Yet another might be to stop the war in Yemen. That would be nice, but I don’t know that Turkey has any particular friends there.
Finally, I wonder whether Saudi has been propagandising Wahhabism in Turkey, as they do worldwide. Or it’s a product of the Syrian war, with jihadis over the border in Turkey spreading their point of view. Erdogan could be very sensitive to that, as undermining his electoral base. Weakening Saudi could seem a way out. Much like Putin’s total opposition to the Syrian jihadis, because he doesn’t want jihadism spreading to Russia. Much the most likely explanation.
I doubt the objective in life for MBS and associates is to be increasingly friendly with powers such as Turkey, the US, Britain, Germany, and I__ael.
With Turkey no, there’s no reason. With US, Britain, military expenditure is protection money, to keep the Saudi regime in place. Saudi native troops are not willing to fight to protect their frontiers. Houthis have penetrated quite far into Saudi with little resistance. US special forces have been sent to stiffen the resistance, and avoid total collapse, but that we don’t hear much about.
Aren’t the Saudis with the US, currently defending Kurdish areas that Erdogan wants to cleanse? There are reports MBS spoke on the phone to Erdogan today. Tonight MBS has been on TV condemning the “heinous” crime. Signs of a deal done perhaps?
Thanks laguerre, as I read it there is a fierce and long running struggle between wahabis and muslim brotherhood for the crown of true sunni leader. Qatar is with Turkey while UAE king MbZ is with Saudis. This struggle is a result of factional schism in the sunni world view. Sure they hate shia but this is about global dominance of the vast global sunni believers and is fierce.
With MbS slaughtering the muslim brotherhood inclined Khashoggi in Turkey the sultan Erdoghan is insulted and belittled, hence fury from the little turkish despot. The outrage in some parts of the world is due to revulsion at the cold blooded brutality of conventional saudi behavior plus a desperate desire of many elites to restart the gravy train that was milked dry by MbS after kidnapping all the other Saudi princes. Its a new world order and its repercussions.
Hmmm – I wouldn’t put anything past that slimeball Erdogan
@Craig – Any
gossipinformation about how Jeremy Heywood, cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, came to resign today? He hasn’t been “Derek Fatchetted”, but might he have been “Alex Allaned”?Well as you travel the internet here is a tuppence worth of the Turkish motivation
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/10/24/julian-sayarer/accidental-death-of-a-spoonmaker/
It includes this:
‘In Turkey, Khashoggi is known as Cemal Kaşıkçı, the original, Turkish version of his name; his Ottoman ancestors adopted an Arabic form of it when they left Anatolia to begin new lives in the Arabian peninsular.’
In Turkish, kaşık is a spoon, and Kaşıkçı means a spoon-man, i.e. someone who serves up soup with a spoon, or spoon-maker, as lrb suggests. That reference is not necessarily relevant, as the Turkish origins could be long ago, a century or two.
A century? Or 2?
That is not that long.
1918.
Grandfather was a Turk. Not enough to make Erdogan go crazy.
Hi Craig – could you describe what was in the photo you saw?
Bombscare in US almost look like a Democrat false-flag before the elections coming up…
@Jack
The ‘ almost’ seems redundant. Especially when these events combined with the march of migrants from Honduras, so unhappily liberated by Killary and Obomber.( At least it dethroned Caracas as ‘murder capital of the world’, a line in every MSM report in Venezuala until then)
How would you know? You are just believing what you want to believe.
Thank you. I think you are right.
Craig, I was hoping you’d throw some light on the sudden and quite exceptional willingness of our MSM to criticise Saudi Arabia over this issue. You must know that the following isn’t enough;
“Mohammed Bin Salman appears to have made two important miscalculations: he misread Erdogan and he underestimated the difference which Khashoggi’s position as a Washington Post journalist made to political pressure on Western governments.”
I think you’ve missed a trick here. I believe the reason this is in the news is to undermine Trump more than anything else. Trump’s initial response to the questions last week seemed to put him squarely on the side of a mad man who has his political opponents dismembered whilst they are still alive. That isn’t a good look.
As you admit yourself in the article, this sort of thing has happened before and with victims that were arguably more senior and important. If they were willing to turn a blind eye before in the cases you mention and others, then why not now? And if “the horrible murder of Khashoggi has caught the public imagination”, you must know that that is only true because their attention was drawn to it in the first place.
The only explanation, then, is Trump’s presence in the White House.
I dismiss completely any suggestion that there is sincerity in the displays of outrage we are seeing, that there are plans of regime change in the pipeline, that it had anything to do with 9/11, or that Western-Saudi relations will in any way be affected by this in any meaningful or lasting way.
All pure specualtion. Just because you want a simple answer which fits your existing beliefs doesn’t mean there is one, or that there are more complex reasons which don’t conform to your views, or anybody else’s. At least Craig sticks to the known facts.
Ehhhh duh! It happens to be a “known fact” that Trump is president. And duuuuuuh! It happens to be a known fact that murders like this have happened before and that they happen quite regularly all over the place… in Uzbekistan they apparently boil dissidents alive. And further to that duuuuuuuh! There isn’t an example of the western media rounding on Saudia Arabia like this in post-war history which duuuuuuuuuh! definitely makes it exceptional.
If you’re going to act like a retard, I’ll gladly treat you like one.
“At least Craig sticks to the known facts.”
Which we can’t really verify.
excellent commentary craig… bang on! thans… james
What this story tells more than anything is the extreme variation in the valuation of individual lives by the Powers That Be.
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis are worthless, but one dodgy journalist linked into the Security Services and the world changes?
It is like saying the UK would go to war to avenge Mark Urban!
But the horrible murder of Khashoggi has caught the public imagination and forced western politicians to at least pretend to want to do something about the Saudis whose wealth they crave. I expect any sanctions will be smoke and mirrors.
Has it? Caught the public imagination? I doubt it. This looks like the kind of story that the MSM would like us to care about, but only wonks and former Ambassadors (that’s you Craig!) actually do care about. Guy was a wrong un and no mistake. Nobody merits dismemberment, of course, and I’m unclear as to the motivations behind his killing, but I fear that his death is being used to foist some pretty blatant misinformation. Which is, now, the sole purpose of the MSM.
Whether MBS is a reformer or not – it’s too early to say, to quote some clever dude – he has made some dangerous enemies. I mean, he locked up and had tortured some of the worst, most dangerous Saudi criminals, ahem I meant Saudi Royalty, in what can only be described as an internal civil war. The people who locked up are, it is seriously alleged, involved in paedophiia and child-trafficking; good enemies to have, one should think. This of itself doesn’t exonerate MBS, but Ghandi doesn’t win a civil war in Saudi Arabia, a nation state that has been ponorologized, succumbed to great evil, just like the Soviet Union. This is why Trump has backed MBS in the first place. Those who consider Trump stupid are themselves utter morons, because he’s clearly a savvy, strategic guy, with a top percentile IQ. Of course, the same is often said of John Bolton, and Bolton is a whack job, who is almost always wrong. Perhaps Trump is wrong about MBS too, but wrong is different from stupid.
Apropos of nothing, I don’t know who calls John Bolton savvy and clever, it seems to be an MSM thing, and so becomes sort of a fact, due to constant repetition. To me, Bolton appears to be a kook, and a genuinely unintelligent man, the kind who bought his Ivy League college degree, but never learned a thing. Bit I digress.
You were going along swimmingly until you hit this iceberg;
“Those who consider Trump stupid are themselves utter morons, because he’s clearly a savvy, strategic guy, with a top percentile IQ.”
And with that you disprove your claim that wrong is different from stupid. It definitely isn’t always different.
Ah well, reasonable people can disagree on Trump’s IQ. However, I think we can agree he’s stomping all over his political opponents in the US, and those opponents really don’t know what hit them. It’s not always elegant, and indeed sometimes rather brutal to watch, but it shows a bit of nous, if nothing else.
Mind, the Dems are a corrupt gerontocracy, most of whom have utterly lost their minds. So maybe it’s just all a bit too easy for him at the moment. This is a guy who made a fortune in real estate, after all.
trump was carried throughout his life by his father, who gave him half a billion dollars.
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/10/donald-trump-inherited-wealth/
@ Hieroglyph October 24, 2018 at 23:36
‘..Those who consider Trump stupid are themselves utter morons, because he’s clearly a savvy, strategic guy, with a top percentile IQ…’
Gee, glad you noticed that. Next perhaps you’ll tell us he should have been President of MENSA.
Like G W Bush, he often seems unable to string a sentence together, and I suspect like Ford he would struggle to walk a straight line and chew gum at the same time.
This regime looks like its doon the pan, just like the GB Tories.
Thank you so much. You have found the right middle ground of analysis on this. The best thing I have read on the Khashoggi murder and its broader context. One conclusion you did not spell out which I would add – this sequence of events can only accelerate the ongoing Putin- Erdogan rapprochement which is based on the current convergence of national interests between Russia and Turkey. Tony Kevin.
Many of you must open the Guardian each day and be rather baffled by another half dozen articles from hacks expressing their grief and outrage over the death of a man they had never heard of and whose stuff they had never read:
“Curse him! Oh curse bin Salman! He has taken a bone saw to my beloved friend and colleague Khashmal Jashoggi! He must be made to pay, I tell you! Make him pay!”
If you substitute the words “my beloved friend and colleague Khashmal Jashoggi” with the words ” our trillion dollar Aramco flotation and billion dollar Lockheed Martin deal”, then you will no longer be puzzled:
“Curse him! Oh curse bin Salman! He has taken a bone saw to our trillion dollar Aramco flotation and billion dollar Lockheed Martin deal! He must be made to pay, I tell you! Make him pay!”
Stonky, I don’t know one person in here that has a good word to say about The Guardian. And, frankly, the idea that the importance of oil in all this is lost on anyone here is diabolically stupid.
I don’t get your sneering tone. The general levels of political intelligence and understanding demonstrated by people who comment on this forum puts it well above average, I’d say.
Maybe you can provide a link to a better place? If you can, it begs an obvious question…
But is it Philip Green or Richard Branson? Other nominees include Mike Ashley, Alan Sugar, and James Dyson. I will rule Sugar and Dyson out because as far as I know, and unlike the first three, none of them is currently an executive at a business entity described as a “group”. I am also tempted to rule Branson out, because I thought he was anti-racist, although I may have been misinformed so let’s not be so hasty. Green is a known racist scumbag. I’m still plumping for Green, followed by Ashley, with Branson far behind in third place.
As far as I know the name hasn’t yet been published in Scotland, the US, or elsewhere.
From a long screed in the Heil
‘The businessman in question has hired a team of at least seven lawyers and spent close to £500,000 in legal fees in the Court.
He is represented by Schillings, the legal firm which has worked with Cristiano Ronaldo, Lance Armstrong and Ryan Giggs. Each of these stars also has a history of using NDAs to mute claims of wrongdoing. ‘
Schillings have been used to try to shut Craig down.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/07/iraq_mercenary/
Also from the Heil, 25 June 2018:
“Sir Philip Green accused of ‘racially abusing an employee’
A new book claims the retail king, 66, told Leslie Warman, a director at Amber Day: ‘If you don’t shut your f****** mouth, I’ll get my friends from south of the river to come for you and your family.’
According to the new book, Damaged Goods, previewed in The Sunday Times, he told her: ‘You’re absolutely f****** useless. I should throw you out of the window but you’re so fat you’d probably bounce back in again.’
The former head of menswear at BHS, Brain Hill, said staff – ‘particularly’ young women – reduced to tears.
He added: ‘Philip would often have a meeting before he flew off in his jet to Monaco and he would just pick one person and batter them. The horrible thing is sometimes you would sit there and think, “Thank God it’s not me”.’
Burton’s brand director, Wesley Taylor, also claimed he was racially abused by Green, which Green denied.”
And this is how Green has been accused of treating directors.
My understanding is that at least two of the women alleged to have been harassed or abused by the “prominent businessman and senior group executive” in the latest story – let’s call him Mr X – supported his application for a gagging order. Not that they didn’t object to it, but they supported it. And what was it with Jess Phillips, strongly hinting that she was going to name Mr X in the Commons, then getting called by John Bercow and not naming anybody? She had asked victims to tell her the name and give her permission to mention it using parliamentary privilege. Who got sat on? Phillips herself, the victims, or both? People seem scared of Mr X.
Try find a photograph taken of Branson, from the 80’s to late 90’s where he isn’t holding a women aloft in his arms.
“I don’t get your sneering tone. The general levels of political intelligence and understanding demonstrated by people who comment on this forum puts it well above average, I’d say…”
Calm down Hatuey. I wasn’t having a go at this blog (which I contribute to) or its readership. I was simply assuming that (like me, although with decreasing frequency) readers here occasionally browse the Guardian for a bit of ‘news’, and (like me) they are getting increasingly sick and tired of reading another half a dozen daily diatribes of outrage and grief penned by another half a dozen hacks who had never heard of Kashmal Jashoggi two weeks ago.
Incidentally, just to put a handy little quantifier on the Guardian’s frame of reference, they published six articles mentioning the killing of the 40 schoolchildren in a bus. At the end of last week when I checked, they had already published more than 50 articles on the Jashoggi affair. They must be close to or past 100 by now.
Apologies. Accusing someone of reading The Guardian in my walk of life is up there with accusing them of buying ‘New Kids on the Block’ albums…
No problem Hatuey. I’m only too familiar with Guardio and Guardiana Gobshite, and I’m not likely to accuse anyone on this blog of being one or the other…
Saudi Arabia is now ,always was ,and always will be about oil.
The worldwide publicity regarding the gruesome death of Jamal Khashoggi was too coordinated by the Western MSM, to be a coincidence. The incident itself is not of great consequence. The use of the incident is the piece that requires analysis
The obvious target of all this demonisation is the Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Sultan. This murder has put enormous pressure on him domestically, by the very large Saudi extended family, and to a lesser extent by International Govt.
The aim of this pressure is either to threaten MBS, or to fuel an internal Palace coup against his leadership.
MBS has not been as co-operative as he should ,with his protectors the USA.
It is noticed that 5 years approx. past the oil price reached a peak of $147/bbl. Oil producing countries were rolling in money, the main ones being Russia. Iran and Venezuela. All of these recalcitrant Nations being in the x-hairs of the USA.
The price of oil subsequently dropped TO $23/BBL .these low prices seriously affected the economies of Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
.It also affected Saudi and its domestic budget. There were talks of selling off 50% of Aramco to raise cash.
The oil price has crept back up and has recently been in the $85/bbl region. The money is flowing again at this level.
The USA requires a low oil price as part of its Foreign Policy objectives to undermine ,Russia. Iran and Venezuela.
It would appear that MBS was not playing ball and by cutting Saudi production was manipulating the price upwards, he was given a message by the exposure and publicity of the Khashoggi assassination. Either cooperate or be removed/ terminated.
Erdogan gained kudos and was a willing participant in this scheme. His material gains are not yet obvious, but no doubt there were some from the USA and by way of blackmail of MBS.
It was only 5% of Aramco that was being considered for public listing – not 50%.
The LSE rules for the minimum prportion of Stock, which enables good governance and nonexec directors, was going to be changed.
That would have compromised the FTSE – as even 5% would make it a major stock into which peoples savings and pensione would have to end up.
‘Saudi Arabia is now ,always was ,and always will be about oil.’
I’ve never understood how important everyone considers them, especially in light of the fact they only hold about 12% of the world’s oil reserves.