The Khashoggi affair: A global complot staged behind closed doors

For two weeks now practically all Western governments and media are at rooftops for the barbaric murder of Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul. Very few people outside the oil Kingdom and the circles of Middle East ‘experts’ knew about the man, before he was massacred by his compatriots. Western dignitaries and journalists pretend as if this is the first time the cruel Saudi Arabia regime committed unthinkable atrocities within and without the boundaries of the despotic kingdom. This time, though, one member of the complicity system, which kept Saudi Arabia immune from criticism, Turkey, for her own reasons, decided to break the silence. Let’s dig a bit to this affair. The oil shield The immense oil wealth and the absolute dependence of the West on the Saudi production of crude have functioned as a shield for the Riyadh despots. No genuine criticism appears in major western media and power corridors about the atrocities committed at times by the Kingdom regime. Even worse, it seems the West encourages the Saudi rulers to ruthlessly exterminate every critical voice, fearing it may obstruct the free flow of oil to world markets. Every cloud in the arid Arabian Peninsula or the Persian Gulf makes the price of oil jump and bite incomes and economic growth all over the globe. On top of that, the aggressive nature of the Saudi regime has been used by the West to promote its interest in the Middle East. The Saudis, including Bin Laden guided and armed by the Americans, defeated Russia in Afghanistan and now battle in Syria and destroy Yemen. True, the Saudis have facilitated the Western strategies in the Middle East even better than Israel. This last country is a functioning democracy and couldn’t actively support, for example, all the American raids in the Middle East and Iraq. Tel Aviv has its own agenda, in coordination with Saudi Arabia. The Turkish connection In this way, the Saudi rulers felt they could do whatever they like where and when they chose. This time, however, the Riyadh autocrats proved to have miscalculated the pros and cons. The Turkish Sultan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thought he had more to gain than to lose by exposing them to the world. This is how the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi became a global affair. Erdogan’s non existing concern for justice and press freedom is well known to everybody. He has silenced any critical voice in his country by torturing, killing and jailing tens of thousands of journalists, state employees, university professors, justices, armed forces personnel, including generals. The unholy intention of Erdogan to ‘sell’  what he knew about the murder to the Saudis was revealed last Tuesday. Before a heavily advertised speech at his AK Party Parliamentarian group, Erdogan had left it to be understood he would give details and probably audios and videos of the killing. Instead, he delivered nothing new. Seemingly, Riyadh conceded to pay the Turkish price. Trump’s indecision Yet, the details Turkey has already revealed about the Khashoggi atrocious killing and possibly dismembering couldn’t be overlooked, not even by the US President Donald Trump. Many days passed until the White House was ‘convinced’ the man was dead. Still, last Tuesday, Trump reminded his followers that the US has a $110 billion contract for armaments with Saudi Arabia, which generates 500,000 American jobs. Obviously, he felt or probably knew that his supporters don’t care about justice and  freedom of the press. So Trump told them brusquely the US shouldn’t press Saudi Arabia hard on the murder. But not all Americans are like him or his supporters. Arms deliveries keep flowing So, he keeps changing his stance towards Riyadh twice a day, making soft and then tougher remarks. Surely, he is being constantly informed about how many more voters seem to care about how and why Khashoggi was killed. Probably, increasing numbers of Americans seem to be enraged with what Riyadh says about the case and so Trump has to instantly and continuously adapt, to the incoming information from opinion polls. Last Wednesday he was forced to take a step forward and say the Saudis staged the “worst cover-up ever” in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Who is Khashoggi? As for Khashoggi himself, a victim of his Saudi Neanderthal compatriots, the western governments and media rushed to baptize him ‘a martyr journalist’. Obviously, this elevation makes the victim look totally innocent of whatever crime Riyadh could invent and reproach him with. So ‘journalism’ alleviates Jamal Khashoggi to a kind of sainthood, he doesn’t deserve. For one thing, only by Saudi standards the victim was a ‘Journalist’. In Saudi Arabia the only ‘journalism’ that exists is state propaganda. And until a year ago, before he left Riyadh for New York, Khashoggi was working for this Saudi misinformation machine. It must be also mentioned that his family is incalculably rich and runs a well known arms trade. Critical voices According to Asad Abukhalil, a Lebanese American Professor at Stanislaus University in California – a reliable source about Middle East developments – “Contrary to Western media narrative: the murder of Khashoggi was part of the conflict between princes within the royal family (since Jamal was attached to a few of them at odds with MbS – Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud or MbS, is the crown prince of Saudi Arabia ), and is not the result of conflict between the regime and an opposition ostensibly led by Jamal”. Obviously, this makes Khashoggi a part of deplorable goings on for many decades in the Sunni Kingdom. Not to forget, that, in one day, on 2 January 2016, Saudi Arabia decapitated 47 people, among them the prominent Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Their crime was they had participated in protests against the complete marginalization of the Shia majority Eastern Provinces of the affluent country. Hypocritical West In short, the Western interest about the entire Khashoggi affair is totally hypocritical. No government, mainstream media or power broker really cares about what is really happening in Saudi Arabia and how murderous and despotic the regime is. The US and Europe, though, couldn’t pretend they didn’t hear the cries of Erdogan. He is very probably in coordination with the West on that. They all needed a strong leverage against the despotic Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud or MbS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. This last one thought he could join the global power sharing system. To do that he has been trying to turn the kingdom into a personal fief. Some months ago he arrested half the government ministers and some powerful princes on charges of corruption, in a country where arbitrariness and corruption is the only way of doing things. His latest plan to turn Aramco – the oil producing and commercializing giant of the country – into a public company has gone sour. The world hasn’t being enlightened at all about this affair. Clearly, the issue was a global power and money game. Trading Sultan As for the Turkish Sultan himself he is now ready to ‘compromise’ with Riyadh. Clearly, the whole Khashoggi affair is another proof for the rigged way mainstream media, governments and big business cooperate, in arranging the global affairs behind closed doors and at the same time manipulate public opinion to their interests. Nobody tells us what is really at stake in the Khashoggi case. Obviously, it has to do with many people’s lives in the region or it even threatens the well being of the hard working hundreds of millions of people in the West who need and use energy.