The Great Divide, Farewell Charlie Kirk

"The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk is dead."

"No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie."

"He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us."

"Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family."

"Charlie, we love you!"

U.S. President Donald Trump

U.S. conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed Wednesday during a public appearance at a university in Utah. He was 31. CBC News

 

A professional sniper whose photograph has been published in news media -- covering the murder of American social influencer, 31-year-old conservative, and media personality, Charlie Kirk -- Trump supporting, outspoken critic of the left in all its present-day guises -- can run and he can hide, but he will be apprehended and the full force of the law will be brought to bear against him. With his arrest the background story that led to the public assassination will complete the stunning episode that bore witness once again to the madness that has overtaken the delusional left that condemns violence while indulging in it to a degree the right sector of society does not emulate.

 

Speaking at the Utah Valley University campus, he was seated, speaking into a microphone under a tent boasting red and blue signs reading "The American Comeback" and "Prove Me Wrong". As he completed a statement ending with the words "...gang violence", a sharp report sounded, out of place in a surrounding of tens of thousands attending the event, their voices a blur of commentary. Suddenly aware of that sound, of the speaker's head snapping back and blood suddenly gushing from his neck, the crowd surged in a panic to escape the sinister nightmare.

 

Founder of a right-wing media group that challenged the reportage and ideas spouted by the mainstream media with its left-interpretation of events, and known for his debate-featured videos where he listens to diatribes from progressives in an audience and follows up with a response of counterpoints, effectively demolishing the arguments of those who take up the challenge to call him out in his dedicated beliefs. His arguments addressing illegal immigration, transgenderism, feminism, affirmative action, abortion, soft-on-crime judiciaries, abortion, drag queen storytime for children, all made him a detested target of those his views attempted to reach.

 

A large banner in memory of Charlie Kirk is installed outside the Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix, Ariz., on Wednesday. (Jonathan Cooper/The Associated Press)

 

His critics charged him with false or misleading facts they claimed that he used in support of his narratives. He regularly spoke at U.S. college campuses, his tour named "You're Being Brainwashed", and Wednesday's speech was in line with those campus appearances. He seemed to relish the opportunity to respond to those who denied his perspectives on the social issues of the day, calmly and with emphatic stress on reality, turning false narratives inside out to reveal the core reflection of what really matters and how to achieve a human balance in every charged situation. His reasonableness and ease in defending without offending infuriated his detractors.

 

The state, not known for incubating violence, and with a low murder rate, saw few police in guarded attendance at such a large event attracting an estimated 30,000 crowd. Mr. Kirk's own personal security was present. The size of the crowd and the passionate emotions aroused in many of his audiences might augur danger as a potential to erupt into something far more significant than mere heckling given the deranged state of many people in an era of heightened emotional attachment to societal issues that drive hard responses of estrangement.

 

"Utah is one of the safest places on the planet. And so we just don't have these type of things" that could escalate to violence, according to Jason Chaffetz, Republican who was present at the event. That light police presence meant a handful of officers, and where it might have seemed logically proactive to have a number of officers tasked to surveillance of nearby rooftops to ensure no unwarranted sharpshooter presence to threaten the speaker, a more casual kind of security seems to have eventuated.

 

Donald Trump, then president in his first term, shakes hands with Charlie Kirk, who led Turning Point USA, at a summit in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 2019. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

 

In light of the fact that the event at the University had been the cause of divided opinions on campus, with an online petition circulating calling for university administrators to bar the provocative speaker from the event, with a thousand signatures attesting to the level of passion involved, it might have reflected responsible police reaction, in memory of a less successful assassination attempt on Mr. Trump's life echoing in this situation, to be more prepared. 

 

While the university issued a statement prior to the event citing First Amendment rights, affirming its "commitment to free speech, intellectual enquiry and constructive dialogue", someone or some group sufficiently involved in the current belief that deadly violence is justified in the face of  their perceived need to rid the world of those espousing social creeds and political standpoints and government actions at home and abroad that offend their sense of justice, should have spurred local authorities and police to ensure that more suitable security would be in place. Should have, could have, but did not.

 

 

 

"For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals."

"This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now ... Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives."

"My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it."

U.S. President Donald J. Trump  

 

"Politically Condoned Hate Crimes"

"In the light of the current environment where tensions have  heightened, we are taking action to ensure the safety of our diplomats."

"Out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to temporarily adjust staff presence in India."

Global Affairs Canada

"You are aware of the security threats being faced by our high commission and consulates in Canada."

"This has disrupted their normal functioning."

"Accordingly, our high commission and consulates are temporarily unable to process visa applications. We will be reviewing the situation on a regular basis."

"[Canada has a] growing reputation [as a place that shelters religious extremists, and that it's a country] that needs to worry about its international reputation."

Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson, Indian Ministry of External Affairs

Sikhs protest for the independence of Khalistan in front of the Indian consulate in Toronto in July  Getty Images

 

According to Canada's foreign affairs department some of its diplomats abroad in India had received threats on social media platforms. This is part of an unfolding backlash in the wake of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's claims in the House of Commons as it resumed after a long summer break Monday, charging the government of India's having sent agents to Canada to assassinate a Canadian-Sikh Khalistani leader in British Columbia.

New Delhi's response was bemused and swift; absurd allegations. It had no involvement in the June 19 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a committed secessionist who worked tirelessly on agitating for a Sikh homeland in India's Punjab, called Khalistan. Mr. Nijjar was deeply involved in agitating the Canadian Sikh population toward voting in a 'separation' referendum. He was also president of a Surrey, British Columbia gurdwara.

As it happened, he was also a wanted felon, back in India. He had entered Canada, claiming refugee status failing on his application to divulge information that would have disqualified him from entry to Canada. Nonetheless, his application was refused. He then turned to an oft-used ruse, marrying a woman with Canadian citizenship, who then sponsored him as an immigrant. India had asked for his extradition, registering his status as a terrorist with Interpol.

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, walks past Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as they take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at Raj Ghat, Mahatma Gandhi's cremation site, during the G20 Summit in New Delhi on Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Associated Press)

 

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travelled to India last week to attend a G7 conference, he had a brief meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. Mr. Modi expostulated during that meeting India's frustration with Canada's tolerance and indifference to Canadian Khalistanis' threat to India. A threat that saw a terrorist calamity with a bomb placed aboard an Air India jet in 1985, killing 320 onboard as it blew up midair, an act of Khalistani terrorism.

Khalistan protests continue to take place in Canada, during which threats to the life and limb of Indian diplomats based in Canada are issued. Posters of champions of the Khalistan movement who have been involved in murder are revered and marched through demonstrations through the streets of Canada in Vancouver and Toronto. As are hateful posters of assassinated former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, where her visage is mutilated and covered with blood.

This is the atmosphere that Narendra Modi chastised Justin Trudeau for permitting. During their brief ten-minute meeting, where it was made clear that Canada's inattention and inaction in response to such blatant hate messages is unseemly for a collegial democracy, Justin Trudeau insisted it was he who had chastised Mr. Modi -- for having been responsible for the death of a Canadian citizen -- Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Relations between India and Canada could not possibly have sunk any lower. A deep-freeze, caused by Mr. Trudeau's injudicious charge of involvement in murder by the Indian government that will not any time soon result in a reestablishment of relations. A situation that will cost Canada greatly; the slander against a trusted ally, the sinking of trade between the two nations, an international community response that increasingly views Trudeau as a theatrical poseur and unreliable colleague.

Each country has now expelled senior diplomats from their missions over these stark tensions. India is furious that despite India sharing information relating to criminal acts on Canadian soil, Trudeau took no action. As for the charges of the Indian government involvement in an assassination in Canada, it is scornfully charged as being "politically driven", reflective of a huge Sikh-Canadian population toward whom Trudeau is playing the part of defender against an India that wants its sovereignty whole.

India has had a long grievance with Canada, accusing it of being a haven for Sikh separatists, taking no notice of the need to protect Indian missions and consulates from the group's violent protests. New Delhi issued a warning for its citizens living and studying in Canada -- addressing a huge student population at Canadian post-secondary institutions -- to exercise caution wherever anti-India activities take place, with "politically condoned hate crimes".

Protesters chant outside of the Consulate General of India office in response to the shooting death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver on Saturday, June 24, 2023. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press)

Eliminaing Russian Nuisances

"State organs of the government of the Russian Federation took the decision to liquidate Tornike Khangoshvili in Berlin."

"Khangashvili had given up the fight against the Russian Federation years before. He had not held a weapon in his hands since 2008."

"This was not an act of self-defence by Russia. This was and is nothing other than state terrorism."

Judge Olaf Arnoldi, Berlin court 

"This murder, ordered by a state, is a serious violation of German law and Germany's sovereignty."

"Acts like the murder in [Berlin's] Tiergarten park seriously burden relations between our countries."

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock

Russian President Putin | German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Photograph:( AFP )

 

Germany summoned the Russian ambassador to Germany, to inform him that two of the embassy's 101 diplomatic staff were to be expelled, following the trial and ruling by Justice Arnoldi when he sentenced Vadim Krasikov for the "especially serious" crime of murder of a former Chechen militant. The Russian agent dispatched to do the work of assassinating a man that President Vladimir Putin spoke of as a "bloody terrorist" was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2019 act of "state terrorism".

The verdict, in the opinion of the Russian Embassy was "not objective and politically motivated". In 2019, Russian President Putin accused the murdered man of involvement in crimes that included the 2004 bombing if the Moscow metro, when ten people were killed. Georgian citizen Tornike Khangoshvili died of three shots from a Block pistol in August of 2019 in evident retaliation for his role fighting for Chechen separatists against Moscow in the 2000s.

Russia had supplied their hit man with false papers to use when travelling toward his destined target. His assignment began when Krasikov flew to Paris equipped with a false passport and from there journeyed on to Berlin In  his possession was thousands of euros in cash to enable his swift departure once his assignment had been completed.

As Khangoshvili cycled through the famed Berlin park on a beautiful sunny August day, Krasikov lethally shot his target, then hid behind shrubbery where he removed his clothing and his cap, replaced them with an innocuous tourist-type outfit, trimmed his beard, and prepared to saunter out and make good his escape from the scene. Unfortunately for his well-laid plans, there were witnesses.

 

The murderer's plan of escape was rent asunder when armed police within minutes surrounded him and others retrieved the discarded clothing, the murder weapon and brought Khangoshvili's bicycle out of the river. The arrested man now claims he is not Krasikov, but a construction engineer from St.Petersburg with the name of Vadim Sokolov. The lawyer for the arrested, tried and sentenced man claims the case against his client was built on conjecture, not proof. 

Russian assassins have a long history of murder by grotesque means of one kind or another to rid the nation's powerful and popular leader of irritating critics, of embarrassing turncoats, of those possessing state-incriminating evidence of more than nuisance value. From the use of military-grade chemical weapons to radioactive poisons, they leave their trademark, clumsy clues used to identify the perpetrators, linking them directly to the state apparatus assigned to eliminate state opponents.

Zelimkhan Khangoshvili's body was carried during his funeral in Duisi village in the Pankisi Gorge valley. - AP Photo/Zurab Tsertsvadze - August 2019

Death of a Lebanese Photographer

"This is not just about our village. Because today it's Joe, tomorrow it's someone else."

"Are we going to have to protect our own houses and villages?"

"It seems like they had been observing him every day, what time he leaves and goes. The minute he got in his car they came down the stairs and shot him."

"Obviously they had been waiting for him in this area."

"He doesn’t have any enemies at all, so we think there was something he knew with his work."

"We want to send a message. We want a quick investigation and within 24 or 48 hours we want to have information."

Jean Bejjany, head, municipal council, Kahaleh, Lebanon

"The security and judicial agencies, as well as every official, must hasten to uncover the perpetrators and their backgrounds and impose the most severe penalties on them to avoid a return to the logic of self-defence and the complete dissolution of what remains of the state."

Michel Moawad, former Lebanese Member of Parliament

Left, CCTV still   Right, Joe Bejjany

Preparing to drive his two daughters to pre-school, in the majority Christian mountain town of Kahaleh, photographer Joe Bejjany was shot to death with a silencer-equipped weapon. The motive is elusive, but hinted at. The 36-year-old, a Lebanese telecoms employee, freelance photographer and popular resident of the town seemed on the surface an unlikely target for those in the dark underground of a decayed civilization in utter thrall to a theocratic-inspired terrorist militia now essentially ruling Lebanon.

But rumours abound as they will in a country once renowned as the premier vacation resort of the Middle East where Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims and Druze managed to work things out between them all, with a rotation of government positions and a wary, shared respect. Until Palestinians arrived, who fled into Lebanon when their leaders rejected the United Nations Partition Plan that would divide the area between Israel and the Palestinians led to a Muslim multi-army failed march on the nascent Jewish state.

The Islamic Republic of Iran saw an opportunity to mobilize Shi'ite Lebanese to advance their agenda in creating a Party of God militia answerable to the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Republican Guard Corps as a proxy army that could be used to bring Lebanon into the Iranian Shi'ite fold and threaten the existence of Israel. Hezbollah proved its mettle in the 1980s when it debuted its initial suicide truck bomb to kill hundreds of American troops at a U.S. army base in Lebanon, there on a UN peacekeeping mission.

Since then it has stored munitions, rockets, ammonium nitrate and other conflict-useful items, some of which it has used in its support role at Iran's behest, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his deadly uncivil conflict with Sunni Syrians, and much of it destined -- as newer more advanced rocketry comes along supplied by Iran -- for an inevitable clash with Israel. Ammonium nitrate, used in bomb-making was stored for years in huge amounts at Beirut's harbour. Until it was sparked and the volatile stockpile detonated at the port.

Five months ago 200 people were killed by the immense fiery blast, injuring hundreds more, and ravaged areas of the capital city, adding to the financial meltdown of the country. Surveillance cameras outside the apartment building where Bejjani lived show a professional squad and a planned hit. Backs to the camera, the team appeared unfazed leaving fingerprints at the scene, eschewing gloves. They searched the car of the man they had just killed to retrieve his cell phone, leaving with it, toward a getaway vehicle.

Men carry the coffin of Joe Bejjany, a 36-year-old telecoms employee and freelance photographer, during his funeral in the village of Kahaleh

Joe Bejjani's former job at Alfa telecom was one of logistics, with no access to security data. However, according to sources, he was one of the first to arrive at the port following the deadly explosion, hired by the Lebanese Army and the international committee set to investigate the blast at the port to take forensic photographs. That, according to growing public opinion, placed his life in danger. Former chief of the drug control division at the Lebanese Customs, Colonel Joseph Skaff died suspiciously in 2017.

The Colonel had called for the removal of the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate which had arrived at the Port of Beirut in 2013. He was ignored, just as the managers at the port were ignored when they too recommended the same, pointing out the potential danger in storing such readily-ignited chemicals in such a sensitively vulnerable area, threatening the well-being of dock workers and apartment dwellers living nearby. What they had predicted and were helpless to prevent occurred earlier this year.

Early in December, Customs Col.Mounir Abou Rjeily, retired, but formerly stationed at the Beirut port, was discovered dead in his Qartaba, Jbeil home, from blows to the head by a blunt object, according to state-run National News Agency. A high-ranking executive at Byblos Bank in June was also found dead in the parking lot of his home in Hazmieh, Baabda. He too died of a massive blow to the head. Needless to say, authorities promise a thorough investigation in each of these cases.

Kahaleh's municipal chief has stated that no one among Joe Bejjany's friends or family was aware of threats or any enemies that might plan to do him harm. That he had never made any mention of anything that might conceivably have linked him to the port explosion. His daughters, aged two and four, found their father's body in the car minutes after the assassination had occurred. Mounir Bejjany, Joe's godfather spoke of the murder as "an assassination".

According to relatives, Joe had also photographed military events like parades as a freelancer while  he worked at a mobile service provider. The murder was carried out in a professional manner, validated by two security sources. Neighbours wept and threw rice as men in suits carried a white coffin to the church at the Tuesday funeral. Gaby Feghall, Joe's cousin, said Joe had received approval to leave for Canada, about a week earlier. He himself was planning to leave Lebanon to escape the never-ending crises.

Joe Bejjany was shot as he was preparing to take his children to school Monday morning. (Credit: Lyana Alameddine/OLJ)

 

Incompetently Out-Smarted by a 'Smart' Camera? Or Enlisting Extraterrestrials?

"No terrorists were present on the ground ... Martyr [Mohsen] Fakhrizadeh was driving when a weapon, using an advanced camera, zoomed in on him."

"[The machine gun was mounted on a Nissan pickup and] focused only on martyr Fakhrizadeh’s face in a way that his wife, despite being only 25 centimeters [10 inches] away, was not shot."

"[It was being] controlled online [via a satellite and used an] advanced camera and artificial intelligence [to make the target]."

"[Fakhrizadeh’s head of security took four bullets] as he threw himself [on the scientist, and there were] no terrorists at the scene."

Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, deputy commander, Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran 

"The perpetrators of this assassination, some of whom have been identified and even arrested by the security services, will not escape justice."

"Were the Zionists [Israel] able to do this alone and without the cooperation of, for example, the American [intelligence] service or another service? They certainly could not do that."

"[There were various pieces of evidence] about those who planned and carried out the assassination that prove the Zionists [Israelis] were involved. But whether the Zionists did so on their own and without the co-operation of, for example, the American [intelligence] service or another service? For sure, they could not have done so on their own."

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iranian Parliamentary adviser

Military personnel stand near the flag-draped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, November 30, 2020. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)

 

Little wonder Iranians despair, yet muster the courage to gather in protest, despite the peril, knowing that some among them will not be returning home alive. They despair over their living conditions, the increasing level of poverty under sanctions imposed on their country because of Tehran's policies. They are irate that their theocratic rulers are more invested in delivering oil to Venezuela than to Iranians in need. They are furious at the funding of Hezbollah, the cost to the Iranian Republic of posting the al Quds division of the IRGC in Syria and Iraq, while Iranians are desperate for the necessities of life.

The goal of the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is to continue the legacy direction of his predecessor the Islamic revolutionary Ayatollah Khomeini, to dominate the world of Islam as Shi'a superiors over the majority Sunni Muslim sect interpreted as a threat by Iran's Arab Muslim neighbours in the Middle East. The vicious threat of the Islamic Republic's nuclear aspirations has created a sectarian bloc in a rivalry between Sunni and Shi'a where Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, Mecca and Medina, is challenged by Persian Iran which feels entitled to that role.

Above all, Tehran appears incapable of comprehending that in visibly and audibly, publicly and constantly threatening the existence of the State of Israel, supporting and directing its proxy militias in Lebanon and Gaza ensures that Jerusalem and its ultra-competent intelligence agencies gain the experience and the willing cooperation of covert intelligence-gathering and accomplices in missions to control Tehran's ambitions and to contain them. Jews have long since been victims, they know now how, when and where to take action to contain those eager to eradicate them from the state of the living.

The scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital Tehran, Iran, November 27, 2020. (The semi-official Fars News Agency via AP)

Long identified as the scientific nuclear specialist who was the lynchpin of the Iranian nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, like others in his field of endeavour before him, was marked for extinction. In Iranian defence minister Amir Hatami's words, the scientist was one of his deputies, heading the ministry's Defense and Research and Innovation Organization whose focus was the field of "nuclear defense". He was as well a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an integral part of the Iranian government, and a recognized terrorist organization.

Immediately following Fakhrizadeh's unfortunate death, the defense ministry stated that their man had been killed in a shootout that took place between his bodyguards and several gunmen who had ambushed the motorcade just outside Tehran on its journey from a posh suburb. There were witnesses who credibly informed state media that a truck had exploded before a group of men with guns opened fire on the car in which Fakhrizadeh was being driven, that it appeared he exited the car in the belief it had struck something. In their rendition of the event, the man was outside the car when he was hit by gunfire.

 

The major suspect in the smoothly executed assassination was, of course, Israeli operatives working under orders from Mossad. Witnesses claimed that they saw the gunmen make their escape. Iranian authorities at first repeated the story of the truck, the bomb, the gunmen emerging to exchange fire with the eleven men guarding the nuclear scientist. And then, re-thinking the situation, that they were very well aware that their chief nuclear scientist would be in Israeli crosshairs, and surrounding him with protective guards, their best laid plans went awry by a superior intelligence.

A realization which gave life to an alternate explanation, hauling in the exiled opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) for the assassination. Revenge was vowed, ostensible members of the group arrested, and it can be fairly well assured that a trial such as is routine in asserting justice anywhere else in the world  will not be taking place. Iran, which vengefully practices a wholesale capital punishment program for issues of all kinds requiring the ultimate punishment, will simply extinguish a few more lives.

And the more palatable story for Tehran's stricken pride is that a satellite-controlled machine gun with 'artificial intelligence' had been utilized in the assassination. According to the deputy commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards, Rear-Admiral Fadavi, Fakhrizadeh was driving on a highway outside the capital of Iran with his 11-member Guard on November 27, when suddenly the machine gun 'zoomed in' on the nuclear scientist's face, firing 13 rounds. Scrupulously avoiding harming his wife, who sat  beside him.

How diabolical, a satellite-controlled machine gun paired with artificial intelligence and an advanced camera.  The death of Iran's top nuclear scientist achieved remotely with artificial intelligence and a machine gun equipped with a 'satellite-controlled smart system'. Those clever Israelis and their dastardly determination to outwit those who threaten and plot their extermination....

Iranian mourners attend burial ceremony of slain nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh at Imamzadeh Saleh Shrine in northern Tehran on 30 November (AFP/File photo)

 

Assassin Unknown?

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny  Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

"It's essentially an attempt to remove him as a threat. They consider this with a classic KGB mentality: 'no man, no problem'."  "By removing him [Navalny] personally, they aim to kill the brand and end the team. ...[But] it's a grave mistake by the Kremlin to think that without him the movement stops." "Look at Belarus. It is a YouTube revolution. Tikhanovskaya is the Belarusian Navalny."                                                                         Vladimir Milov, former Russian deputy energy minister 

"[Navalny's reply to the question, 'Why do you think  you're not being killed and what happens if you are?' was: 'it's a dangerous place and that's why I'm talking to you -- in the hope you can work on our common cause']. So this was something he already had in mind."                                                                                           "He's the only threat the ruling party is facing."                                                          Sergei Gurlev, professor, Sciences Po, Paris

"He really got under the skin of people who have big country houses and lavish mansions, but I wouldn't say he was such a threat to the regime that it had to bump him off."                                                                                                                     "If there isn't a convincing public investigation the opposition will point the finger at the authorities. If they weren't involved, it shouldn't be hard to get to the bottom of it and find some sort of scapegoat, and that could be absolutely anyone. There are a fair number of crazy people sitting in the woods with grenade launchers."             "But it's definitely not Putin and it's definitely not the government.  At least I hope so. That would really be beyond the pale."                                                     Unidentified go-between with senior Kremlin officials

"We don't know for sure whether it was personally ordered by Putin. But we understand that he created the conditions where this can happen and the people responsible won't be punished or suffer any repercussions."                            Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director, Navalny's foundation

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny on a stretcher  Alexey Malgavko/Reuters

Once the howls from the international community and their leaders became sufficiently intense, bolstered by person-to-person persuasive arguments by telephone between the two most influential EU heads of state, and a personal intervention by Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, Russia's Vladimir Putin agreed to engage in a pursuit for the identity of whoever it was that was responsible for the attempted murder of Alexei Navalny, the irritating gadfly who was so rudely attempting to unseat Mr. Putin and his party from power.

Sergei Skripal, daughter Yulia, targeted with Novichok, 2018. Getty/Michael Howard

According to a public statement that followed from Russia's parliamentary speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, a separate investigation would be led by him to determine whether the poisoning was "an attempt by foreign powers to harm the health of a Russian citizen with the aims of creating tensions within Russia and making yet more accusations against our country". Progress can be seen in that Mr. Putin and his Kremlin allies no longer deny that Mr. Navalny was poisoned. Regression to the same old is recognized in Mr. Volodin's outrage that an 'outside entity' such as a "foreign power" would dare to harm a Russian citizen, much less purpose to wreak unrest within the country.

And though German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined with French President Emmanuel Macron to offer medical services and asylum to the victim of a poisoning attack, and Ms. Merkel whose Germany is now hosting Mr. Navalny at the Charite hospital in Berlin, has no intention of estranging Russia from Germany, intent on maintaining open diplomatic ties and with the diplomacy firm political ties in the belief that open lines must be required as a requisite for persuasive relations with Russia.

Emergency oxygen respiratory bed Charite Hospital  Michele Tantussi/Getty

Alexei Navalny, 44-year-old passionately committed political activist is so detested by Russia's presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov that he refers to him singularly not by name -- a curse that will not pass his lips -- but as 'the patient', a truly pejorative curse spat out in disgust. But then, Mr. Navalny is not only a political activist, but a socially moral one, outraged by the corruption of Russian oligarchs amassing great fortunes at the expense of the ordinary Russian citizen in a collaborative arrangement between themselves and government.

As a result, he is detested not only by the Kremlin and Russia's president, but by powerful men whose intimate contacts where they count, and whose uncountable wealth is under attack by this painfully annoying upstart. Alexei Navalny's activism and direct appeal to ordinary Russians to expect more from their political leaders - than to build up arms, contest the West, interfere with other nations' civil wars and insurrections, and enrich themselves and their allies at the expense of the general public when they should be governing justly with fair outcomes, lifting the population into security -- has gained him the support of the public.

Litvinenko met with former KGB contacts, London, 2006 Getty Images

In the past five years six violent attacks have taken place against Russian dissidents. The international notoriety that Russia gained when the eyes of the world swivelled to Britain at the attempted murder by poisoning in Britain of former double agent Sergei Skripal with the nerve agent novichok, following on the earlier murder of Alexander Litvinenko with the use of polonium-210, left no doubt that Russian government hardball against those the Kremlin considers traitors is real and it is deadly.

Mr Nemtsov shot on a bridge in view of St Basil's Cathedral & the Kremlin AP

And of course, in 2015 opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was put out of contention as a potential threat to Vladimir Putin's plans to govern uninterrupted for the rest of his life when he was shot four times in the back ensuring he would never again contest Russia's presidential reign in perpetuity by a man who brooks no criticism. In this bold and shocking killing by an unidentified gunman, President Putin took personal control of the investigation to discover who might have been behind the dastardly plot to remove a formidable political opponent of the president. Still under investigation.

State efforts to silence Mr. Navalny grew in lock-step with his popularity, when over the course of the years he was jailed on thirteen occasions for protests directed against Mr. Putin, and finally sentenced to six years in prison on embezzlement charges (!) in 2013; whatever it would take. He was subjected to violent attacks; a chemical substance thrown at him, blinding him in one eye. He also  believes that when he took ill during one of his jail sentences an attempt had been made to poison him.

 Anna Politkovskaya shot dead in Moscow. Getty/Michael Howard

According to the Levada Center, an independent pollster, a June survey found that Mr. Navalny was viewed as Russia's second most "inspirational" leader following directly after the number-one candidate, Vladimir Putin. In Belarus over two weeks of mass protests followed the corrupt re-election of Alexander Lukashenko who has ruled the country for the past 26 years, backed by the Kremlin. There, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky built a YouTube following modelled on Navalny's modus operandi.

Germany has offered asylum to the combative, but now still-comatose Navalny whom the Kremlin continues to deny having had any intention to harm. For an example of the kind of courage that Navalny possess, one only need look to the example of the man whose campaign against corruption reflected Navalny's own. Sergei Tikhanovsky was arrested in Belarus, leading his wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya to run in the election for her husband, becoming the focal point of the protests.

"I can give you 120 percent that he will never do that [accept Berlin's officer of asylum]. He will stay in Russia and continue to do what he does. The biggest gift we could give to those people in the Kremlin is if we got up and ran", stated activist Vladimir Kara-Murza another Navalny colleague who had survived two attempts on his own life.

Alexei Navalny, pictured here at the centre of a 2018 rally, is expected to survive the poisoning but remains unconscious in a serious condition. Anti-Putin protesters in the far east of Russia now chant Navalny's name, demanding justice.  Credit:AP

The Dilemma of Balancing Moral Concern Versus Profit

"We are looking at ... suspending export permits, which is something we've done in the past."
"We're also looking at the contract to try and see what we can do because obviously, as we get clarity on what actually happened to Jamal Khashoggi, Canadians and people around the world will expect consequences."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"Only if all European countries agree [European Union position on arms sales to Saudi Arabia] would this make an impression on the government in Riyadh."
"It will have no positive consequences [even if Germany were to stop its weapons exports to Saudi Arabia] ... if at the same time other countries fill this gap."
German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier

"With countries like Saudi Arabia, countries like China, the way you make the most progress is by talking to them in private."
"If you talk about these things publicly you lose the access ... they say, 'We don't want to deal with you', and you put yourself in a position where you have no influence over what's happening."
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt

"Saudi partners are appreciative of our balanced position."
"We continue to cooperate with Saudi Arabia's investment fund and other partners."
"There's a lot of speculation and unverified information around [viz-a-viz Khashoggi's death and the poisoning of Sergei and Julia Skripal]."
Kirill Dmitriev, Chairman, Russian Direct Investment Fund

In this promotional image, taken by the Canadian Forces and hosted on the General Dynamics website, General Dynamics Land Systems Canada Lav 6 vehicles like the ones being sold to Saudi Arabia are shown carrying troops. (Combat Camera/General Dynamics)

Suddenly, everyone has a conscience, everyone is horrified that a Saudi dissident journalist, throwing caution to the winds, enters a Saudi diplomatic mission in Turkey to obtain the documentation he requires to marry and never emerges alive. A truly clumsy, botched operation where an astonishing 15-person Saudi crew of professionals and experts are tasked with dispatching him to a premature death and dispose of the evidence, and they couldn't get it right. Exquisite attention to detail; a body-double exiting the consulate, a coroner to dismember the corpse, the parts to be buried in scattered areas....

Turkey, with enough ghastly human-rights skeletons in its own closets, swiftly trumpeted to the world at large that it was in possession of the gruesome evidence that its fellow Sunni-Muslim competitor for influence in the world of Islam and beyond had set out to silence a nuisance but ended up with the world looking on askance. And little wonder, given the nasty details that seeped out into the media. A lot more compelling, evidently, than the proxy war between the Sunni Kingdom and Shia Iran's grubby war in Yemen where thousands are being killed, mostly civilians.

A Southern People's Resistance militant loyal to Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi mans an anti-aircraft machine gun the militia seized from the army in al-Habilin, in Yemen's southern province of Lahej, March 22, 2015. There are concerns among human rights groups that the Saudis could use Canadian-made armoured vehicles against Houthi fighters in Yemen. (Nabeel Quaiti/Reuters)

 

So now the best-laid plans of inept, thin-skinned rulers like Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman have gone to ruin. Davos in the Desert has been deserted by global financial movers and shakers always so eager to invest in the desert Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its endless source of fossil fuel extraction, and its wealth and hunger for weapons of war making it a favourite destination for international weapons dealers and manufacturers. And therein lies the crux of the problem; to sell or not to sell; to honour a signed contract, or cancel?

On the basis of the murder of one nuisance journalist whose own brand of Islam was fully as invested in violent jihad as the House of Saud. In Canada, SNC-Lavalin and Bombardier Inc. have become silent, unwilling to discuss their sales and investments in Saudi Arabia. The Canadian government is musing about cancelling a $15-billion contract to provide armoured military vehicles as contracted, vacillating because of a penalty clause worth in the billions.

In the EU, though there have been calls for deals to be placed in abeyance only Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated that arms exports to the country "can't take place in the situation we're currently in", expressly noting the death of Jamal Khashoggi. That Saudi Arabia has long funded mosques and madrasses teaching the Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam that resulted in al-Qaeda and Islamic State is (yawn) incidental to the issue.

As for sales figures to Saudi Arabia; Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland account singly for roughly two percent of arms imports between 2013 and 2017, given figures provided by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institution. France was responsible for four percent of sales, and Britain 23 percent. None, however, come close to approaching American weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, at 61 percent. And nor is the U.S. administration even remotely considering reining in those exports.

The theory is, and it's no mere theory after all, that if those sources dry up, there are others willing and eager to fill the gap. And if there is a gap, they will fill it. Russia has already been in discussions with the Saudis inclusive of S-400 air defence systems, as well as interest expressed in having Russian Kornet-EM anti-tank missiles produced in the Kingdom, along with AGS-30 automatic grenade launchers and advanced Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Byzantine Logic At the Very Best....

"[Saudi leaders, including the crown prince], assured me that they will conduct a complete, thorough investigation of all of the facts surrounding Mr. Khashoggi, and that they will do so in a timely fashion, and that this report itself will be transparent for everyone to see, to ask questions about, and to enquire with respect to its thoroughness."
"They're [long-standing U.S.-Saudi partnership] an important strategic ally of the United States, and we need to be mindful of that."
"I told President Trump this morning that we ought to give them a few more days to complete that [the ongoing investigation] so that we, too, have a complete understanding of the facts surrounding that, at which point we can make decisions about how, or if, the United States should respond to the incident surrounding Mr.[Jamal] Khashoggi."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Washington

The world's press is spending more time on the disappearance and likely murder of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, a man who had fallen out with the Kingdom's Saud family with which he was once close, and whose criticisms of the royal family have earned him Saudi scorn and anger, than space and time devoted to the Saudi military's ongoing bombing of Yemenites causing massive relocations, refugees and deaths, both presumably engineered by the modernizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Turkey, which wins the international prize for silencing, imprisoning and threatening more journalist and news media than any other repressive regime, is playing the honour card here, revealing a now-very-public but initially very covert conspiracy to murder a pestiferous critic of the rulers of a collegial Islamist nation. This, of course, is the same Turkey responsible for slaughtering countless Kurds critical of Turkish rule over ancestral Kurdish lands. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has overturned Turkey's Islam-style democracy but suddenly he is sanctimoniously outing an atrocity.

The truth of the matter is, there are few instances of Islamic countries whose governance equals the standards set by democratic, peaceful nations of the West. Chaos and disorder, conflict and punishment are standards of Islamic rule. Tyranny and compliance and violent response to what in the west is mildly termed conscientious objection and civil disobedience merit incarceration, torture and frequently, death. The Syrian civil war whose victims number a half-million when the regime responded to dissent with the use of chemical weapons, barrel bombs and child-torture is old news.

 

Patrick Poole @pspoole

I didn’t realize until yesterday that Jamal Khashoggi was the author of this notorious 1988 Arab News article of him tooling around Afghanistan with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda co-founder Abdullah Azzam. He’s just a democrat reformer journalist holding a RPG with jihadists.

 

The new news is that a man whose Islamist fundamentalist credentials include a friendly acquaintance with Osame bin Laden, support and admiration for Hamas, and the destruction of Israel, and though he complained in his last article for The Washington Post, published posthumously, that Arab journalists are badly in need of an unbiased press not controlled by the governments in the countries in which they are published, he forgets how the world has embraced Al Jazeera, Qatar's flagship news outlet, deemed by the West to be a reliable purveyor of news.

And then there is, of course, Saudi Arabia's Al Aribaya, which goes out of its way to publish utterly neutral news perspectives, leaning heavily on Associated Press-derived articles, an agency which has its own very un-neutral biases. But oops, nothing critical of the regime.  "The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices", he wrote, the ingrate. He was grateful to The Washington Post for providing that platform for his very particular Arab voice.

And though Jamal Khashoggi was very well aware of the vulnerable position his criticisms had placed him in, with the very thin-skinned Saudi rulers, he proceeded to make himself available to them in a country that disposes of journalists like used facial tissues, within a diplomatic mission whose presence was as good as being in Riyadh, as though he was courting death in the greater interests of becoming the story of the year himself, and succeeding handily....

In The Court Of Public Opinion

"The intelligence pointing to a plan to detain Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia has fuelled speculation by officials and analysts in multiple countries that what transpired at the [Istanbul Saudi] consulate was a backup plan to capture Khashoggi that may have gone wrong."
Shane Harris, national security reporter, The Washington Post

"The voice recording from inside the embassy lays out what happened to Jamal after he entered. You can hear his voice and the voices of men speaking Arabic."
"You can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered."
Anonymous authority

"I've never been more disturbed than I am right now. If this man was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, that would cross every line of normality in the international community."
"There will be hell to pay [if the allegations of Saudi assassination were confirmed]."
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham 

"It symbolizes the departure of the United States as a restraining force against evil actors in the world."
"Saudi Arabia is a small nation that cannot defend itself without the support of the United States, and therefore no Saudi leader would have made such a brazen move without confidence that Washington, once the leader of the liberal world order, would do nothing."
Robert Kagan, The Washington Post

"I think that [denying the $100-billion Saudi arms sale] would be hurting us. We have jobs. We have a lot of things happening in this country."
"...Part of that is what we are doing with our defence systems and everybody is wanting them and frankly, I think that would be a very, very tough pill to swallow for our country."
U.S. President Donald Trump

"Trump's stance toward despots and authoritarians has generally been not to judge their conduct and suggest it's a mere distraction from his dealmaking."
"And that's also the case with Saudi Arabia, which Trump and his White House have treated warmly as a partner against Iran and on trade."
Aaron Blake, senior political reporter, The Washington Post

This image, taken from closed-circuit TV video obtained by the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, claims to show Khashoggi entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. (Hurriyet via AP)

There is nothing, nothing at all new about most countries willing to trade in weapons development, exporting highly technical arms to other countries that have the treasury to pay for these expensive and desirable pieces of war machinery, putting a blind eye to the recipients' record on human rights and their casual commission of covert atrocities. The Saudis were nothing if not clumsy in their execution of a plan to silence a Saudi journalist living in self-exiled protection in the U.S., as a sometime-contributor to The Washington Post.

As far as their intelligence itself goes, it seems strange that they would view it as a cautionary reality that instructions to remove an embarrassing irritation to the Saudis who happens also to have his revelations published in a powerful investigative news source, that even if they relied upon Donald Trump to express little interest, The Washington Post would make up for that with righteous rage that 'one of their own' was horrendously assassinated. Clumsiness is not monopolized by the arrogance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for vindictive strikes at 'traitors' Russia has few peers.

It is an odd phenomenon that leaders of world powers focus on events such as a single assassination as a national retributive step in ridding irritants while the same country can be responsible for creating a huge humanitarian crisis of refugees streaming out of Yemen not wishing to be added to the mounting death toll from Saudi bombers targeting civilian areas in their purported intention to hit the Houthi rebels that the Iranian Shiite regime supports. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have a background of terrorist activities mounted by the followers of their competing Islamic sects.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have until now kept relations cordial in the interest of stability.   CreditKayhan Ozer/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images

As a symbol at the very least of support for human rights negated by the ongoing sale of advanced warplanes to Saudi Arabia, the United States makes itself complicit at a remove in the deaths of thousands of civilian Yemenites. Just as it was remotely but acutely involved in the development of al-Qaeda resulting from their Salafist Wahhabist Sunni madrasses of which Osama bin Laden was a graduate and proponent, wholly responsible for the devastating carnage of 9/11. But trade is trade, and the sale of a hundred billion-worth of fighter jets is a good deal, even if NAFTA wasn't.

A man inspects the wreckage of a Saudi air strike on a crowded bus in Yemen.   Hani Mohammed / AP

But of course, it isn't just the U.S. administration's venal trade with Saudi Arabia; France, Germany, Britain and other human-rights-supporting nations in the West would do just about anything to be able to invest in and trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran, more than happy to overlook its role in the incendiary slaughter of Syrian Sunnis by Alawite Shiite Bashar al Assad's regime happily using internationally proscribed chemical weapons and barrel bombs to destroy the rebels in a civil war that Assad mounted on protesters he labels terrorists.

And then, there is of course, Canada, whose prime minister prides himself on representing a country whose values and respect for human rights (read: women's rights, transsexual rights in particular) is a beacon of light in a troubled world. Where his administration intended to restore relations with Iran, cut off by the previous Canadian administration in recognition of Iran's far reach in spreading jihad Shiite-style globally. Canada proudly demonstrated its credentials in demanding Saudi Arabia free imprisoned human-rights supporters from prison, earning the wrath of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

"Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women's rights activists in Saudi Arabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful human rights activists", reasonably enough wrote Canada's Saudi-dismissed Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Dennis Horak. Yet Canada, the champion of human rights notwithstanding refused to cancel its multi-billion sale of military 'heavy assault' vehicles to the Saudi regime. Their use in Yemen is no doubt yet another factor in the destruction carried out as a proxy war between the Sunni Kingdom and the Islamic Republic.

We trust that governments act in the best interests of their populations in a free and democratic society and uphold the values and traditions and customs that most people in such countries hold dear. Yet it is from among leading corporations that repercussions are being visited on Saudi Arabia for its demonstration of invulnerability to accountability. Prince Mohammed bin Salmon's Future Investment Initiative to begin in Riyadh in two weeks' time is being shunned by high-tech leaders from Richard Branson to Bob Bakish of Viacom, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber Technologies, Steve Case venture capitalist, Patrick Soon-Shiong owner of the L.A. Times and Joanna Popper HP executive; along with Android creator Andy Rubin.

In this promotional image, taken by the Canadian Forces and hosted on the General Dynamics website, General Dynamics Land Systems Canada Lav 6 vehicles like the ones being sold to Saudi Arabia are shown carrying troops. (Combat Camera/General Dynamics)