It is hard to look at the news today without finding some reference to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as ‘MBS’. Of course it seems normal these days to think of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as ‘KSM’; or to know Osama bin Laden as ‘OBL’ . (When I contributed to this analysis on MH 370 in March 2014, I wanted to refer to Zaharie Ahmad Shah as ‘ZAS’, but my collaborator discouraged it — perhaps sensing the loaded connotation that such a three letter name initialization of a Muslim associated with terror intentionally carried.) It is clear that this ‘initialization’ is almost a form of labeling associated with fears about radical Islamic terrorism today.
Knowing that the case of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder seems to be connected 1.) to Saudi geopolitical struggles with Turkey, in 2.) the context of the Syrian Civil War, which is 3.) a proxy struggle that is propped up by diplomatic and military assistance from Russia and Iran; and that 4.) pro-Russian conspiracists who were connected to the most viral 9/11 conspiracies (which are anti-Saudi at core focusing on Osama bin Laden and Bush family connections to Saudi Arabia) as well as ‘Syrian false flag’ chemical weapons narratives (in the Syrian Civil War period) — are now using ‘MBS’ as a core of their 2001-like claims; I figured I should check it out.
“AT LAST the Beast of Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (AKA MBS) is getting unwanted American and worldwide attention for what he is really like, the young and ruthless power behind the throne of his stroke-ridden father, King Salman. Starting last year I began writing about MBS as a new and perhaps the most formidable candidate for Nostradamus’ Antichrist I’ve ever encountered since being on the trail for candidates since 1983… MBS is an evil beast but he’s your beast, Mr. and Mrs. America.” – John Hogue, Hogueprophecy.com
It seemed almost blindingly obvious to me that John Hogue referring to MBS as a codeword for Nostradamus’ ‘third antichrist’ ‘Mabus’ was a renewed instance of the same kind of strategy which had been used to make Osama bin Laden to look like such a ‘third antichrist’ following the 9/11 (2001) attacks. (Hogue had the top selling book of the 9/11 timeframe and the subject was Nostradamus — he’d predicted Osama Bin Laden as Nostradamus’ ‘third antichrist’ since June 2001.)
Having had some experience with Google Trends to do quantitative analyses of keywords; as well as Google Search itself to assist in quantifying the volume of a topic on a given site as well as qualitatively analyze results, I decided to see if I could find where ‘MBS’ comes from.
So, ‘MBS’ starts to spike as a keyword in a way that is not related to ‘mortgage backed securities’ or other unrelated businesses/organizations named ‘MBS’ in summer 2017 which is when the Prince came to power (June 2017). The biggest spike however is clearly in October 2018 which ties it closely to the Khashoggi murder. So that is obvious. I figured I’d look to see where the term first popped up.
Obviously not having the time or patience to assess every site, but to sort of try and debunk my own hypothesis that the MBS spike is related to some kind of Russian effort; I decided to check some sites associated with Russian conspiracy against general news sites as they relate to search results with ‘MBS’ in the title of the page (command site:sitename.com intitle:MBS ). I like intitle searches since if something is in the title of the page, you can have a good idea it has to do with the content on a page. If I was to search just on page for ‘MBS’, I would get a lot of indexed comments, stories in sidebars, etc. Overall, an intitle search can give you a good picture of quantitative / qualitative info in one (relatively easy and less variable) swoop.
Here’s the chronological order I got from oldest to newest:
- https://arabic.rt.com/world/876858-إيران-مستعدون-للحوار-الرياض-رغم-تصريحات-تحريضية/ 4/5/2017
- https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-saudi-qatar-spat-qatar-and-iran-are-winning-mbz-mbs-lose-face/5597840 7/6/2017
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/lebanon-hariri-riyadh-meet-king-salman-crown-prince-mbs-180228071002103.html 8/14/2017
- https://www.reuters.com/video/2017/11/16/mbs-the-saudi-prince-who-purged-his-roya?videoId=372989802 11/16/2017
- https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/saudi-arabia-as-crown-prince-mbs-heads-to-us-for-a-visit-heres-how-to-encourage-reform 3/16/2018
- https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/19/opinions/trump-kushner-mbs-meeting-opinion-bergen/index.html 3/19/2018
- https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/03/20/iran-crown-prince-amateurish-lies-mask-saudi-role/ 3/20/2018
- https://fr.sputniknews.com/international/201804031035790284-moyen-orient-israel-syrie-iran-yemen/ 4/3/2018
- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/jamal-khashoggi-saudi-mohammed-bin-salman.html 10/16/2018
- http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-reportedly-says-he-barely-knows-saudi-arabias-mbs 10/19/2018
- https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/10/19/can-the-khashoggi-case-really-spell-the-end-of-mbs/ 10/19/2018
- https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/10/mbs-approved-the-preposterous-new-kahshoggi-story/ 10/21/2018
- https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbs_this_morning/video/H51T9W96cfLQOfxjA9t9RMqOZTg2zWnA/corker-believes-saudi-crown-prince-directed-journalist-jamal-khashoggi-s-death/ 11/30/2018
- https://www.infowars.com/french-president-macron-confronts-saudi-prince-mbs/ 12/1/2018
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-46437631 12/9/2018
- https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/latest-sponsored-yemen-talks-wrap-sweden-59793778 12/13/2018
Based on this ‘intitle’ search (which is limited, as you can see Sputnik has a lot of MBS-critical content, but not a lot of intitle results), it seems to me that RT, Global Research, and Al Jazeera were influential in spreading the term ‘MBS’ in a negative sense well before other western outlets which may be reflective of some kind of an anti-Saudi, pro-Iranian/Syrian/Russian position as Jamal Khashoggi may have had. (While it is clear Turkey has jumped whole hog into MBS-mania, it seems at least in my brief look to have been a 2018 phenomenon.)
‘ Tehran has said it is prepared to hold talks with Riyadh to bolster peace in the region despite “illegitimate and provocative” remarks made by the Saudi crown prince, known as MBS.’ – [Translation] RT Arabic, April 5 2017
So to be clear, this is non-exhaustive, but it does seem to strongly support an initial suspicion that there is some kind of Russian-Iranian relationship with the negative promotion of ‘MBS’ as a viral term related to the Crown Prince in a way which psychologically associates him with terrorism.
I am not proposing the RT Arabic intitle link is the first article on the internet to discuss the idea — however it is clear that of the sites which I did check, RT was advocating against Mohammed bin Salman ‘known as MBS’ in a pro-Iranian context as a ‘topic’ even before he was named the Crown Prince in summer 2017. (Darned if MBS isn’t easier to write though!)
P.S. On the MH370 / Zaharie Ahmed Shah angle, I think we knocked it out of the park in 2014 and right in line with the conclusions of 777 experts (of which we were not)… I’d like to revisit the idea of Shah as having been stirred up by Russian propaganda sometime (perhaps via pro-Anwar Ibrahim politics) leading him to his suicidal mission in order to somehow strategically exacerbate Western:Chinese tensions in Asia…