Here’s a tip to help you determine the veracity of any story that pops up in the news cycle: If the mainstreams hold onto it like a tenacious pit bull, if it’s the first thing mentioned in every newscast and – most importantly – if there’s the potential to spin it to Trump’s disadvantage, it’s a safe bet that whatever narrative they’re running with is mostly a false construct.
 

When it comes to one of the media’s current obsessions – the disappearance/death of Jamal Khashoggi – Daniel Greenfield has the ugly terror truth. While it doesn’t exactly justify a grisly murder, it definitely casts a different light on things.
 
First, some actual facts, so far as they’ve been confirmed ~
 

Mr Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul on 2 October. He hoped to register divorce papers so he could marry his fiance, Hatice Cengiz.
 
He had gone into self-imposed exile in the US following the rise of crown prince Mohammad, of whom he was often critical in his columns. He also regularly lamented the direction his kingdom was taking.
 
CCTV footage released by Turkey shows the writer entering the building while his fiancee waited nearby, but there was none showing him leaving.
 
Turkey’s pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper published what it said were details from audio recordings which document Mr Khashoggi’s torture and death.
 
The newspaper alleged his killers cut off his fingers and later beheaded and dismembered him.

 
Here’s all the stuff about the journalist (from Greenfield) that the mainstreams don’t want you to know about ~

In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden.
 
“We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.” […]
 

Jamal Khashoggi was not a moderate. Some describe him as the leader of the Saudi Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamist network admires Hitler and seeks to impose Islamic law around the world. Nor was he a supporter of freedom of the press. In one of his Al Jazeera appearances, he complained that the Saudi government was allowing some journalists to report positively on Israel.
 
His final project, DAWN or Democracy for the Arab World Now was meant to aid Islamists. According to Azzam Al-Tamimi, an old Muslim Brotherhood ally aiding Jamal, “The Muslim Brothers and Islamists were the biggest victims of the foiled Arab spring.” Al-Tamimi has endorsed suicide bombings […]
 

Khashoggi went on making the case for the Islamic state of the Muslim Brotherhood. He went on making that case even as the Saudis decided that the Brotherhood had become too dangerous.
 
Like his old friend, Jamal Khashoggi went into exile in a friendly Islamist country. Osama bin Laden found refuge in Pakistan and Khashoggi ended up in Turkey. The Khashoggi family had originated from Turkey. And Turkey was swiftly becoming the leading Sunni Islamist power in the region. Living in Turkey put Khashoggi at the intersection of the Turkish-Qatari backers of the Brotherhood and the Western media.

It also put him more and more at odds with the Saudis who, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, are making serious strides toward moderation and reform.

 
Right now, the Saudis are a stabilizing force in the Middle East. The Security Studies Group makes the case for caution in dealing with them over the death of a Muslim Brotherhood apologist ~ The Strategic Role of Saudi Arabia; KSA (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) plays four critical roles in the American-led world order ~

• Resisting Iranian Domination of Oil Routes
• Influence Over a Key Faction of Islam
• Restraint of Refugee Flows into Europe
• Defense of Israel

On the hand, Turkey – increasingly – is not a reliable ally. Far from reforming, they’re reverting to fundamentalist Islam. Greenfield recounts the horrors of Turkey’s 2016 inhumane suppression of “dissidents” under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pointing out the glaring hypocrisy of western journalists ~

Erdogan went after professors, judges, law enforcement, the military and the last remnants of a free press. A Human Rights Watch report documented electric shocks, beatings with truncheons and rubber hoses, and rape by Erdogan’s Islamic thugs. Heads were banged against walls. Men were forced to kneel on burning hot asphalt. Medical reports showed skull fractures, damage to testicles and dehydration.
 
The media didn’t show any of the hysterical outrage at these crimes that it has over the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The media cares more about Khashoggi, a former media mouthpiece of the Saudi regime before it turned on his Muslim Brotherhood brothers, than about 300 Turkish reporters.

 
But suddenly they’re demanding retribution from the Saudis for this outrage.
 
No. What this calls for is perspective. Or, as Greenfield says, context ~

The Khashoggi case demands context.
 
Before the media and the politicians who listen to it drag the United States into a conflict with Saudi Arabia over a Muslim Brotherhood activist based on the word of an enemy country still holding Americans hostage, we deserve the context.
 
And we deserve the truth.
 
The media wants the Saudis to answer questions about Jamal Khashoggi. But maybe the media should be forced to answer why the Washington Post was working with a Muslim Brotherhood propagandist?

As always with the mainstreams, don’t hold your breath.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related:
Why the Saudis despised Jamal Khashoggi ~

In the eyes of the young crown prince, Khashoggi symbolized the three-prong threat to his rule: the Muslim Brothers, the Turkish-Qatari axis and disaffected princes. When Khashoggi moved to America, Salman added a fourth prong: the element of the American elite that sought to downgrade Saudi Arabia’s friendship in US foreign policy […]
 
Khashoggi found an influential perch at The Washington Post, from which he launched attacks on the crown prince. One of his recent columns, for example, calls for the end of the war in Yemen, which he portrays as an abject failure. He presents the Saudi government as an indiscriminate killer of fellow Muslims and blames the failure of peace talks on its obstinacy and incompetence.

 
The US-Saudi relationship must be preserved – our national interest demands it ~

The death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi – a critic of the Saudi government, who has not been heard from since he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago – was a tragedy. If the facts show the government of Saudi Arabia was responsible for his death it should be held accountable.
 
But the death of Khashoggi does not outweigh U.S. strategic concerns, which require that we maintain good relations with the Saudi government. We must react accordingly – not as a favor to the Saudis, but in our own national interest […]
 
If U.S. action results in the fall of the current leadership of the kingdom, we will see a return to power of the Saudi hardliners who supported terrorism and oppression. That is in nobody’s interest […]
 
Destroying our relationship with the Saudis would result in far more deaths and suffering in the region than keeping our relationship strong. And such a move would be a great gift to the mullahs who rule Iran and lead their people in chants of “Death to America” and boast of their plans to wipe Israel off the map.