Time Magazine has announced their "Man of the Year" award to a group known as the "guardians of the truth". Who are these guardians? Don't laugh too hard, but by that they mean journalists. To their credit, a small handful of journalists do indeed deserve such a title, but others featured, such as Khashoggi, do not.
In New Zealand, journalism is a profession less trusted than politicians (and presumably prostitutes too). The Trump Derangement Syndrome of our media has even achieved international coverage. It is of course, TDS that has driven Time to pick their own kind as the "Man of the Year" so that they can all get a pat of the back from each other while the Fourth Estate languishes in disrepute.
This brings us to the idolisation of murdered "journalist" Jamal Khashoggi, chopped up inside a Saudi embassy in Turkey, by his own government. I use the scare quotes because Khashoggi was a Saudi deep-state operative and Muslim Brotherhood supporter masquerading as a journalist.
Best-selling author Mark Steyn saw this bizarre celebration coming last month:
Khashoggi is being presented as a hero of journalism. He's probably going to be Time magazine's Man of the Year just because he is a dead so-called journalist.
Mark Steyn is well acquainted with the man who was Khashoggi's boss:
Prince Turki is one of the most sinister princes in a family of sinister princes. He ran the Saudi intelligence services for over two decades, and it was to him and Pakistan's ISI that the CIA outsourced its running of the Afghan mujahideen. That worked out well - ie, Osama bin Laden, with whom Prince Turki was in very close contact. His Highness mysteriously resigned from his job after twenty-three years just ten days before 9/11. Jamal Khashoggi was one of his loyalest chums and most assiduous propagandists - which is how he got to "cover" Afghanistan and pal around with bin Laden.
I had some run-ins with Turki a few years back. In fact, I liked one of his lines so much we put it on the front cover, right above the title, of my bestseller America Alone: "The arrogance of Mark Steyn knows no bounds - Prince Turki al Faisal"
That's what they call on Broadway a money quote. Prince Turki also said of me: "With his imperialist pen he would like to wipe my country off the map."
I wish my imperialist pen were that good. But then I'm a writer and my imperialist pen is all I have - unlike Jamal Khashoggi, who, as Turki's protégé, operated in entirely different spheres. And, in fact, not long after the above exchange, when I was sounded out about a meeting with the prince, the pitch came via … Mr Khashoggi. Nephew of Saudi Arabia's biggest arms dealer, cousin of the Princess of Wales' playboy boyfriend, Jamal Khashoggi was an extremely well-connected man … until he fell out with the House of Saud. But he was not chopped to pieces in Istanbul because he was a "journalist", and not even the desperate American press can be so parochial and solipsistic as to believe that.
The New Zealand government issued a half-hearted condemnation of Khashoggi's murder, but they don't plan to do anything about it. Our government's ties to the House of Saud run deeper than the 2016 "sheep deal" and their multi-million dollar halal certification scams. I've covered the rapid Islamisation of New Zealand earlier this year, and that's not going to slow down or stop any time soon. Thanks to Labour and the Greens, our reliance on Saudi oil will continue indefinitely, and that's not a relationship they want to damage.
All this makes the celebration of Khashoggi rather laughable, because those who are celebrating him have no intention of actually doing anything about his murder, other than to use his death as some cheap political stunt.