A contrary view of the Khashoggi affair

There is an absolute ban on Veterans Today on Facebook (you cannot post anything – FB tells yous straight-out that this is ‘banned material’.

Yet there is no pornography, no putting down of women, gays or even transexuals.

Something the Deep State does not want you to see,perchance?

NEO – Khashoggi’s Message in a Bottle, Will We Get It?

Did the Saudi Crown Prince act alone in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi?

By  Jim W. Dean

Jamal Khashoggi

by Jim W. Dean, VT Editor  …with New Eastern Outlook, Moscow

[ Editor’s Note: This was the quickest that NEO has ever posted one of my articles, sent in late morning on Saturday and up early in the evening.

I had held back sending them something on the tragic Khashoggi story, as I wanted to absorb what others were publishing to look for things that got lost in the shuffle of a fast moving story. In our business, there is an art to stepping back and climbing a tree to get a better view of things.

 
Whose string was the Prince on, and what tales could he tell?

What hit me was that Saudi Arabia’s slaughter of Mr. Khashoggi was an attack on all of us in journalism. Like other deep state puppets the Saudi Crown Prince views us as enemies, where if we do not serve their interests we must be dealt with in a way to make an example to others.

But after more thought, I felt it unfair for journalists to hog all the spotlight for the growing danger under which we work.

Even our own government will harass and detain us, and our respective Intel agencies might do worse, as they have done so many times to others, and for so many years. Or they could just sub out a killing to the growing army of private contractor people, many from the Special Ops community.

That is when I zeroed in on the best legacy we could give Mr. Khashoggi, which is to launch our own jihad against all extrajudicial killing going on in the world, not just on journalists, but “critics”. And the main mountain to climb would be to challenge the secrecy and immunity behind which governments do their “wet work” during peace time.

Gordon and I have seen this transcend from a quiet, tightly controlled activity into an industry, where not just government actors on the payroll are involved like the Khashoggi dissection team. And not long ago we had a torture empire where current CIA chief Gina Haskel made her bones, where innocent victims were abused simply for having the misfortune of having the same name as a wanted person on a list.

She was defended during her confirmation hearings as those actions being necessary because the country was under attack, and yet that threat was not serious enough to require testimony under oath for the 9-11 commission, a big clue that US entities were being protected for that great crime, the slaughter of 3000 Americans who were abandoned to the cheap cover up that ensued.

Gordon and I are not aware of a single institution that has pushed to turn this situation around and to hold perpetrators, no matter how high their position, fully liable for extrajudicial murders and subject to the full penalty.

Such an effort would require the formation of counter teams to hunt down the growing number of perpetrators and suspects, and reward money for those willing to testify against their superiors, and witness protection programs.

If we do not have the stomach or courage to do this, then they will continue to abuse and kill us whenever they feel necessary, whether we are innocent Syrian air-strike victims or on the kill list. On the contrary, we need to have our own housekeeping list as it were, but one for their apprehension and prosecution if possible, or a final shoot out if not for those resisting arrest.

As it stands, they don’t think we have the stomach for it. And maybe they are right. But major things have changed in history many times due to the death of one person, and I feel Mr. Khashoggi might be one of those junctures. Let me know what you think in the comments, as there are forces already on the path to covering this atrocity over … JD ]

– First published … October 21, 2018 –

We may never know if Mr. Khashoggi had a premonition about his visit to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. He walked in to complete some routine paperwork to marry the anxious lady waiting outside for him, and has now become part of journalism history.

The watch that gave us a big story

But for his incredible foresight to wear his Apple watch recording device, synched up to his iPhone with his finance’ outside, we would not have the amazing evidence of his murder that Turkish officials have been dangling about with leaks to keep world’s attention on the story.

Because she waited for him until the embassy closed, I suspect the poor woman had not been listening to what had happened to him in real time or she most certainly would have alerted authorities. I cannot imagine her horror when she finally did play the recording.

For those who did this, and all those involved in the planning, being executed in the same manner that Mr. Khashoggi was sent into the hereafter is the only just punishment for them, with the exception that they will burn in the infernal regions.

But now I must transition from what I might wish for, into what we all must do to honor Mr. Khashoggi, and those I am sad to say will be following him if we cannot create a revolution against immunity for state-sponsored murders, whether it be one at a time or bombing a wedding or bus load of children. There should be zero immunity for such acts. This problem is way beyond the killing of journalists.

I don’t mean to overshadow the theme in his last Washington Post column where he warned us of the dark cloud of media repression that has descended upon the Arab world, and certainly not the only place. He made his case well, and I do not have to repeat it here, as you can read it in the link above.

It is hard not to be pessimistic about the chances of turning the situation around, as the Arab governments are only part of the problem; the other being who has gained ownership of most of the media in many of these countries, and the who their silent partners are.

In the US, when Rupert Murdoch wanted to penetrate the US media market, he used two main tools. First, he sought out a corruptible, powerful politician in Newt Gingrich, who once was teaching at a nondescript college in Georgia next to my Congressional district.

The US laws had to be changed for a foreign entity to purchase a major media platform, or platforms in Murdoch’s case; and Newt Gingrich, as Speaker of the House, was just the political player he needed in the post-Reagan years, after he had enabled consolidation of US media which eventually killed off the independents.

Less known is what came with the Murdoch media empire, and that was the intelligence service of a small country in the Mideast who saw the long-term benefit of getting control of a big slice of US media for many reasons, one of them being the political power it gave to take care of friends and punish enemies, or even critics.

While Russia has taken the accusation heat for interfering in US elections, in comparison to what Israel has done here, Russia has not even gotten started. Before one can run for Congress in the US there is a virtual swearing in that takes place where candidates must pledge allegiance to always support anything Israel wants from the US.

Ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney once described this in detail to a group of Palestinians in Atlanta, one of whom briefed me after the meeting. None of it surprised me. The same

Although McKinney considered herself a long time supporter of Israel, that was not enough for them. They wanted it in writing. She would not do this, and their support vanished overnight. All the Hollywood celebrities who had pledged to support her went silent.

I share that story not to pile all the blame on Israel, but because it has been so successful. But the big problem is that Israel paved the way for intelligence organizations viewing “independent media” as a ludicrous concept, that such a powerful influencing medium needed to be in the right hands for national security reasons. That is the card always played when they do something they are not supposed to do.

It was five years ago when Veterans Today started writing about “fake news” and “fake media”. Our context was not about what it is now, fabricated stories, but carefully rolling out the theme of how deeply the Intel orgs have penetrated media. It is an industrial-scale business where everyone who can do it, does.

Mr. Khashoggi is dead only partly for what he had presented us on media repression. It was no surprise to us that when States or their security organizations lay a heavy hand on domestic media, it is one more small step toward punishing all critics who will not submit. Silencing and killing journalists has been in fashion for some time.

But the horror inflicted on poor Mr. Khashoggi is the exception. Intelligence agencies have huge options available to them to speed up a pesky journalist’s demise in a way that leaves no tracks back to who ordered the wet work to be done. There are non-public ways, like the routine trip to the hospital where a mistake was made resulting in a dead patient, or even the disguise of natural passing.

I have saved the worst news for last, and the biggest challenge for us all. Yes, it would be nice to launch an international press jihad against intimidating, imprisoning and killing journalists. Catherine Shakdam did a wonderful article for NEO on the breadth and depth of the revulsion to Khashoggi’s gruesome murder. It is a must read. But I feel Mr. Khashoggi would want us to raise our sights to go hunting bigger game.

There is a much more dangerous threat out there that hangs over far more than journalists, and this is the trend in what has been happening to those who disagree with State policy. It is open season on critics of any government policy that can be framed as a national security issue, where those revealing or opposing anti-democratic policies are murder targets themselves.

I am talking about the growth in extrajudicial killings by a growing list of state perpetrators, with the victims coming from all walks of life. Government actors on state payrolls are doing the work, but even more troubling, we see the growing army of private Special Operations people providing a hiring pool for Murder Incorporated, on a scale normal people would find hard to imagine.

This is why VT has rallied against the huge expansion of the Special Operations Command, as we saw it as using taxpayer money to train top-tier killers who were being quickly cycled back out to the private contractor market. The numbers were beyond what we had seen of bad apples among retired military wanting to live the good life doing one or two nasty jobs a year. It had become an expanding industrial scale market.

So far, we do not see a single international institution taking up the mantel against this scourge. It is what has supplied the regime-change hired killer manpower needed, from the illiterate unemployed jihadist in Russia, to highly trained Special Ops people.

VT discovered a large contingent, five figures, hidden in the budget of one of the big internet platforms. When we made quiet inquiries to our old sources as to what this number of people could possibly be used for, the answer came back quickly, “destabilization and regime change operations”.

Until we build a defensive mechanism to be able to punish state actors for extra-judicial killings, we will see the carnage continuing to grow. The Deep State loves the idea of its opponents being murdered, as the cost is small and the risk of prosecution is zero.

I don’t have an action plan other that to call for more public exposure on this threat, to get a big public discussion going on to build enough strength to start turning the tide back on immunity for privileged, well connected murderers, both in and out of uniform, and in and out of government.

Gordon Duff delved into this issue with his last NEO, pointing out that Khashoggi had not really become a target until he criticized Trump, who already had his own record for demonizing the media and journalists, with Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post being shown what could happen to those who criticize powerful people.

Bezos led the way in pumping some of his huge fortune into buying a media platform that could not be pressured economically. Was the Washington Post hiring of Mr. Khashoggi another turning of the screw for speaking truth to power? As Gordon Duff posed in his article, Khashoggi was murdered not for his criticism of the Saudi Crown Prince, but of Donald Trump.

Will that even be looked into? We shall have to wait and see. But we have the biggest opening to push back against the mass murderers among us who have long viewed themselves as untouchable. The worldwide revulsion to Khashoggi’s killing could be our last and only chance to save ourselves from these demons, so let us lock arms and move forward.