SAUDI GOVERNMENT CHOPPING UP SCREAMING JOURNALIST INEXPLICABLY BECOMES NEWS STORY

The world has been stunned in recent days after a run-of-the-mill story about everyday normal Saudi brutality inexplicably became big news. 

This is baffling, as Saudis have been committing sick, violent acts against people for centuries, and in fact the Saudi government has been bombing the crap out of innocent Houthi rebels in the Yemenese Civil War, without attracting almost any coverage. Why? Because that's totally normal for these bloodthirsty camel jockeys.

I mean, the Turks aren't much better.

Now, after just one measly Saudi journalist got chopped up in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the World's news media has lit up, as if it what happened was anything out of the ordinary for the psychos who run Saudi Arabia.

By Middle Eastern standards, the details of the case are rather mundane. As reported by the New York Times:

"...a team of 15 Saudi agents, some with ties to Crown Prince Mohammed, was waiting for Mr. Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate the moment he arrived, at about 1:15 p.m. on Oct. 2. After he was shown into the office of the Saudi consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, the agents seized Mr. Khashoggi almost immediately and began to beat and torture him, eventually cutting off his fingers, the senior Turkish official said, describing the audio recordings.

Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist, had visited the Istanbul consulate to obtain documents that would allow him to marry his fiancée.

Whether Mr. Khashoggi was killed before his fingers were removed and his body dismembered could not be determined.

But the consul was present and objected, the official said. “Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” Mr. Otaibi told the agents, according to the Turkish official and a report in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak. Both cited audio recordings said to have been obtained by Turkish intelligence.

'If you want to live when you come back to Arabia, shut up,' one of the agents replied, according to both the official and the newspaper.

A top Saudi doctor of forensics had been brought along for the dissection and disposal of the body — an addition to the team that Turkish officials have called evidence of premeditation. And as the agents cut off Mr. Khashoggi’s head and dismembered his body, the doctor had some advice, according to the senior Turkish official.

Listen to music, he told them, as he donned headphones himself. That was what he did to ease the tension when doing such work, the doctor explained, according to the official describing the contents of the audio recordings."

Honestly, folks, nothing to see here. This kind of thing is normal in the Middle East and especially in Saudi Arabia which is ruled by a brutal supreme ruler and his family who can kill people for lulz. The only remarkable thing about this case is that it has become news.

The victim

Usually the media operates on a simple principle of: "Dog bites man - not news because it happens all the time, Man bites dog - news because it's unusual." So, the Saudi Royal Family ordering this brutal killing should be about as newsworthy as sand in the Sahara Desert.

There are two possible reasons for this unwarranted press attention. 

Either the recent PR campaign by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to convince gullible Westerners that Saudi Arabia is a "normal" country has been too successful, so that this recent crime is viewed in that context -- a bit like somebody getting chopped up at the Swiss embassy and stuffed inside a cuckoo clock -- or else the media are after "hush" money from the Saudis in the form of "investment" or "advertising: deals. 

Or it could be a bit of both.

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