Yup, when we see tomato juice and we call it blood, it is called a speculation. Until the liquid is tested, it could be blood, but that setting is quickly diminished when we test the liquid, and in this the setting of speculation is also important, when we say ‘it looks like blood’ it is one thing, yet when we say ‘I can clearly see that this is blood’ it becomes something else, yet the person could still hide behind a second statement by saying ‘I really thought it was blood’ and all is OK (from that point of view), but for others it is less clear. So that is the setting I had when I saw the article in Al Jazeera yesterday and I wrote about it in ‘To decide in anger’, I wrote about it yesterday at (https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/03/to-decide-in-anger/). So this morning I walked past my favourite bookshop and learned the they had the book Blood and Oil and the sales lady took me straight to it (bless her happy youthful heart), so roughly 73 seconds later, I was the owner of the book. A book I honestly would not have bought if I had not read the Al Jazeera article, so they can add the statistics to that part too.
In this I learned early on that was in a style that I liked. It is also a dangerous style to use when it is anything else but fiction, and that is how we need to see it, it is for the larger extent a work of fiction. In this chapter 18 (In cold blood) which is about Jamal Khashoggi is as I personally see it as massively fictive.
To explain this I need to take you on a small journey. In the UN report (by UN Essay writer Agnes Calamard) we see at [208] “It also seems improbable that this plan to murder was hatched by the team on its own, or as has been apparently argued at trial, by the team leader alone, once on site”, the application of ‘seems improbable’ is clearly speculative, it makes ‘plan to murder’ fail as speculative as well. Consider that in Common law there is Murder, which requires the evidence of intent and there is manslaughter, which has a lower stage of evidence. In addition any of these actions are void of any evidence towards the Crown prince, no matter what is stated, the evidence has never ever been produced.
So when we see in the book on page 303 “the bloodcurdling detail of the brutality of the killers, dismembering Khashoggi’s body like butchers”, it is merely one of 4 issues I found in the chapter. There was never any evidence of any action, because there was never any evidence and this is what these fictional writers are setting their optional success to, it helps the they are well known writers of the Wall Street Journal.
This is merely one of the parts of the journey. The other part is one the is a little more scientific. Consider that you add 50 quotes that have a high probability of truth, it is unproven, but those who know will of course highlight any the they know to be true. So as 20-30 out of the 50 are proven to be true, it will taint the other 20 with the ring of truthfulness. It you give 50 quotes the are highly likely, every hit will optionally be given the ring ‘that might be true too’, this is beside the point that the chance to get one right becomes increasingly likely. It is there the the book (which is nicely written) goes from partial fiction to non-fiction. It is not new and it actually comes from Robert Ludlum (that is where I got the tactic from). He wrote about it in his book ‘The Chancellor Manuscript’ there the writer Peter Chancellor gets his fingers on details, facts he cannot prove and as an academic work it would be laughed at, but he sets it out as fiction and as people look at the book ‘Reichstag!’, people would look at it and wonder if it could be true. It is the the stage where a group called Inver Brass pushed Peter Chancellor and it was merely the beginning. This is exactly the stage the Blood and Oil find itself in and with the stage of what could be true, we can now see a larger stage. In this I looked at it differently because of all the materials I had looked at in the last few months. I do not regret buying the book, because as a fictional work, it reads nicely and plenty of us are curious about the Saudi Royal family, the pictures are a nice addition to the book. And if I can find 4 debatable offered facts in one chapter, I can find a lot more in the book, that is if we treat it as non-fiction. The setting goes on, when we see certain quotes we would consider that the leak would be the personal assistant to Mohammed Bin Salman, consider just how unlikely that is. Would ANY personal assistant be that open about the optional next regent of Saudi Arabia? It would be the highest position that any non-Royal could ever hold (I am assuming the any person assistant of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is not a member of the royal family).
It is perhaps too funny, but I am just now realising the I am listening to the Mikado whilst writing this. A topsy turvy play on the gentleman of Japan. I feel that the setting is correct, and the stage where we cannot distinguish between fact and fiction is overwhelmingly appealing, but for me Blood and Oil is because of what I do know a work of fiction, the rest hat I cannot proof to be either is happily accepted in the fictive state, it makes the book easier to read.
Even as the back of the book makes reference to ‘investigative journalism’, it is nice to see that the work from people of the Wall Street Journal can be easily seen as fictive, I wonder what other fictive works the paper optionally offers (a ha ha ha moment from my side).
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 