Forget about Khashoggi, eh?

Image: ArabianBusiness: Saudi medical trainees' departure from Canada delayed.  

Forget about Khashoggi, eh?

The Saudis are our friends.

The University of Toronto is one of the institutions that host the bulk of the affected Saudi students.  It is also the place where the tale of the (Israeli? Saudi?) spyware purportedly found on Omar Abdulaziz's phone first surfaced and paved the way for a revelation that Jamal Khashoggi was like a father to him. (Much as several women have come forward to say that Khashoggi was like a husband to them.)

The Atlantic: Trump: “We may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

And if we never know, then one has no choice but to include the possibility that Khashoggi is alive and has adopted a new persona in order to blend back into the land he "mildly" dissed while posing as a journalist in America.

He may well be the Saudi equivalent of the CIA or the KGB and they don't want you thinking about them either.

Still, there are headlines like this one:
The Atlantic: Understanding the Jamal Khashoggi Case and Its Consequences

But when you read that Khashoggi is a dead "dissident", as if that were established fact, how much real "understanding" can the rest of this report possibly provide?

And, when a statement like this is made ...

• He dissented from his rulers only modestly, and in our conversation, he affirmed his allegiance to the king and acknowledged that the House of Saud should rule the kingdom in perpetuity.

... how unwelcome do you think he'd really be if he went home to his royal connections as an entirely different entity in order to take up where he left off?

What, you think the Saudi's don't send out undercover agents? You think they don't have a need to influence American (and Canadian) minds as much as the media declare Russia does?

For instance, a Google search raises no reports past August 2018 when the date reportedly set for the Saudi medical students to leave had actually been moved to September. Have you seen verification anywhere that they're gone? If so, please let me know.

Or even that the Saudis are so angry with Canada that they have officially refused to buy our war equipment?

Sept. 10/18: CBC: Canada's arms deal with Saudi Arabia is shrinking ... Critics want it killed completely.

Hmmmm... shrinking by how much? A little, a lot?  Some people rightly think that any amount of arms sales is too much, and certainly puts the fib to Canada's Chrystia Freeland's earlier professed hard line on the Saudis.

What a difference a month makes (sort of):
OpenCanada: Canada’s decision to uphold its arms deal with the kingdom, despite the war in Yemen and now the death of Jamal Khashoggi, is not completely unexpected. But it is far from the foreign policy approach Trudeau once promised.

Does no one wonder why all of the dramatic scenarios have no discernible denouement?

Even the apparent re-appearance of MBS does not explain his mysterious absence from the public scene, and the media conjecture that he was dead, after a reported shoot-out at the Okay Corral.

MSN: Saudi crown prince goes into hiding since last month's attack on royal palace 

• The official Saudi websites have not released any new photo of bin Salman for several past weeks. The long disappearance has raised speculation about the fate of the crown prince.

I feel like a dupe just writing down these questions. Makes me wonder what's really going on from which we are being systematically distracted?