Protesting against governments for human rights violations, illegal acts, war and other non-socially redeeming behavior can take many forms. Washington, like many nations’ capitals, is no exception when it comes to shaming governments, including our own, for their outrageous, illegal and immoral behavior. Being creative with bringing a public protest has always been a challenge for any number of reasons.[Read More…]

The UN official who investigated the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi sharply criticized U.S. President Biden’s response to the killing, saying his administration’s failure to sanction Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a “dangerous” message to world leaders that they could kill dissidents and journalists with impunity. “I found it to be shocking,” Agnes Callamard, the UN special[Read More…]

It was a brutal way to go, and it had the paw prints of the highest authorities.  On October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian insider turned outsider, was murdered by a squad of 15 men from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  He was dismembered and quite literally cancelled in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. This state sanctioned killing[Read More…]

The hit squad that went about its deadly business with varying degrees of competence in Istanbul last year is set to be thinned.  Five members of the group tasked with strangling and carving up the Saudi journalist and out-of-favour Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate on October 2, 2018 are now facing the generous justice of their employers.  As this[Read More…]

Saudi Arabia is bracing itself for a potentially more strained relationship with the United States in the wake of Democrats gaining control of the House of Representatives in this week’s mid-term elections and mounting Turkish efforts to corner the kingdom in the Khashoggi crisis. To counter possible US pressure, the kingdom is exploring opportunities to diversify its arms suppliers and[Read More…]

It appears that the KSA has crossed all lines of decency, if there were ever any. In the eyes of many in the West, it crossed them not because it has been brutally killing tens of thousands of innocent people in Yemen, not even because it keeps sponsoring terrorists in Syria, (and in fact all over the world), often on behalf[Read More…]

The killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and potential Western sanctions against Saudi Arabia has sparked renewed debate about the value of the longstanding alliance between the United States and the kingdom. The debate is not limited to the US or the kingdom, both of which are assessing the reliability of the other even if that is a debate that is[Read More…]

While the body of the murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post has not been found, the government of Saudi Arabia has admitted that he is dead, killed during an interrogation gone wrong in their Consulate in Istanbul. But the Turkish President Erdogan insisted that it is a pre-meditated murder, which the Saudi Attorney General owned up to[Read More…]

  On October 2, Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, while there on personal business. He was mobbed in the embassy by over a dozen high-ranking security officials who flew in from Saudi Arabia specifically for this purpose, and Turkish intelligence maintains that he was tortured and dismembered. At the time of this writing,[Read More…]

It reads like a swaying narrative of retreat.  A man’s body is subjected to a gruesome anatomical fate, his parts separated by a specially appointed saw doctor – an expert in the rapid autopsy – overseen by a distinctly large number of individuals.  Surveillance cameras had improbably failed that day.  We are not sure where, along the line, the torturers[Read More…]

President Donald Trump’s comments regarding the murder of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, aptly reflect the true nature of the power brokers that he represents. Instead of the usual ‘Empire-speak’statements, hypocritically condemning Khashoggi’s murder, followed by a pep talk on the values of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of speech’, Trump is basically saying, as the leader of one rogue state, to another,[Read More…]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday provided details of the premeditated murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2 in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. While Erdogan had promised to expose the “naked truth” about the brutal killing, his less-than-full account indicates that his government is intent on exploiting the issue to further Turkish interests in the Middle[Read More…]

Seventeen days after the October 2 “disappearance” of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia officially stated that he was killed in its consulate in Turkey when he went there to collect papers permitting him to marry his Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. The marriage had been fixed for October 3. Cengiz had waited for hours in vain for Khashoggi to come out of[Read More…]

Editors’ note: The storm around Saudi Arabia’s murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a fast-developing situation. We thought that the following initial points would be helpful for our readers. On October 2, Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on personal business. While there, he was attacked and murdered by high-ranking agents of the Saudi government. The murder[Read More…]

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s gruesome murder raises fundamental questions that go far beyond Middle Eastern geopolitics. They go to the risks of support for autocratic regimes by democratic and authoritarian world powers, the rise of illiberal democracy in the West, increasing authoritarianism in Russia, and absolute power in China in which checks and balances are weakened or non-existent. Mr. Khashoggi’s[Read More…]

“Do this outside. You will put me into trouble.” Mohammad al-Otaibi, Saudi consul, to Saudi agents, Istanbul, October 2, 2018 It smells, but anything wedged between the putrefaction of Saudi foreign policy, the ambition of Turkish bellicosity, and the US muddling middleman is bound to.  Three powers tussling over image and appearance; all engaged in a wrestle over how best[Read More…]

Once again, the pathos of human history repeats itself. Another lot of ruthless strong men once more have their bloodied hands on the future and, as a result, like what has happened so many times before in all the wars and violence of the past, the more recent century in particular, a lot more good human beings and innocent non-human[Read More…]

A stalemate in efforts to determine what happened to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is threatening to escalate into a crisis that could usher in a new era in relations between the United States and some of its closest Arab allies as well as in the region’s energy politics. In response to US President Donald J. Trump’s threat of “severe punishment”[Read More…]

Mounting evidence that Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the gruesome October 2 murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Postcontributor Jamal Khashoggi has unleashed a political crisis of global proportions. Over the weekend, Turkish officials again charged that Saudi Arabia sent a 15-man death squad to the Saudi consulate, armed with a bone saw, to murder and dismember Khashoggi and[Read More…]

The fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, assuming that his disappearance was the work of Saudi security and military officials, threatens to upend the fundaments of fault lines in the Middle East. At stake is not only the fate of a widely respected journalist and the future of Turkish-Saudi relations. Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, whether he was kidnapped by Saudi[Read More…]