{"id":39389,"date":"2018-10-19T08:29:36","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T13:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39389"},"modified":"2018-10-19T08:29:36","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T13:29:36","slug":"be-skeptical-whenever-the-political-media-class-converges-on-a-single-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39389","title":{"rendered":"Be Skeptical Whenever The Political\/Media Class Converges On A Single Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"

Be Skeptical Whenever The Political\/Media Class Converges On A Single Narrative<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The Trump administration has ended its weeks-long silence on the disappearance of the Saudi Arabian Washington Post<\/em> journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Following a briefing from Secretary of State Pompeo who has just returned from a visit to Riyadh and Ankara, the president has said<\/a> that contrary to some hopeful speculation<\/a> that had emerged early on after his disappearance, Khashoggi does indeed appear to have been killed at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. If it is determined that the Saudis were responsible, Trump warned that there will be \u201cvery severe\u201d consequences. Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin has announced<\/a> that he will not be attending the\u00a0Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh next week.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been following this story with some interest, but I haven\u2019t been writing about it until now. This is one of those rare stories that has drawn the focus of both mainstream and alternative media, the latter because it\u2019s seen as an opportunity to criticize the west\u2019s extremely immoral involvement in the depraved activities of a murderous theocracy, and because it\u2019s an opportunity to attack the hypocrisy of the establishment in decrying the murder of a single man while ignoring Saudi Arabia\u2019s far more unconscionable behavior like its war crimes in Yemen and facilitation of bloodshed in Syria.\u00a0Killing one man is very, very far from the top of the list of the most horrific things Saudi Arabia has done; criticizing them for that is like criticizing Henry Kissinger for not tipping well at restaurants.<\/p>\n