Continuing an unbelievable streak of non-stop improbable events in 2017, from the natural disasters to the disappearance of the main Las Vegas shooting witness, a journalist who must have struck a nerve with some powerful people was assassinated.

53 year old Daphne Caruana Galizia, a strong willed female journalist from the European country of Malta (off the coast of Italy), was assassinated in a rare car bombing attack, in a rented vehicle near her home. She had been receiving threats about 2 weeks prior, and her dog was nearly killed after being poisoned earlier this year.

This isn’t the first time she has faced this kind of danger.

In 1995, her front door was drenched with fuel and set on fire. She had to explain to her three young children that the fire was a result of candles being left outside for too long. Naturally she suspected she was targeted for her incisive journalism.

Perfectly encapsulating a certain archetype of activist, it appears she lived a long life pursuing and exposing the truth.

A bit more of her history was summarized by the Washington Post:

A reform-minded political columnist, Mrs. Caruana Galizia had written an editorial for the Sunday Times of Malta, her country’s largest newspaper, calling for the commander of Malta’s armed forces to resign because his children had been linked to drug trafficking.

Fearing for her family’s safety, she took her own children out of school and for several weeks stayed away from her home in Bidnija, a small town in the hills of one of Europe’s smallest countries.

Nothing more came of the story. But in 2006, shortly after she published an article critical of neo-Nazi groups in Malta, a stack of tires was arranged behind her house and set on fire. “My brother happened to be coming home at night and noticed the fire,” her son, Matthew Caruana Galizia, said in a phone interview. “If he hadn’t noticed, we probably would have been burned alive.”

Recently, she participated in the Panama Papers expose: independently of the Washington based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) who released the 11 million documents that are the Panama Papers.

An incisive mind like hers was quick to make use of the massive treasure trove of info, while some people suspected the Panama Papers was largely a controlled leak to smear the enemies of the West (considering the connections of the ICIJ and co).

Continuing from the Washington Post:

In blog posts based on documents from the Panama Papers, she tied Muscat’s government — including his wife, chief of staff and energy minister — to several shell companies. She alleged that officials had been receiving illicit payments funneled by the government of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet satellite state.

Officials denied the charges, and Mrs. Caruana Galizia soon faced a deluge of libel threats and suits. In addition, her bull terrier was poisoned and nearly killed earlier this year, Matthew Caruana Galizia said, and one of her younger sons, a Maltese diplomat, was recalled from his post in New Delhi without explanation. Before her death, Matthew said, his mother had planned to sue the government, arguing that the diplomatic ouster was intended as retaliation for her reporting.

What can be learned from the tragic death of this woman who knew too much?

Activists have long suspected that “terror attacks” might be used to take out enemies of the state, or enemies of powerful entities/individuals. In this case, it appears that over a number of years, this woman made so many powerful enemies with a mutual interest in her silence that it cost her life.

Activists who understand the real forces behind ISIS and similiar entities know that they aid the US’ war effort in Syria and other places. Therefore, why wouldn’t the forces who use ISIS to their advantage in Syria use the same mercenary tactics on individual threats to their hegemony elsewhere?

The elite need Europe and America to be plagued by terror attacks anyway, to advance the agenda of the police state to be frank. It would be killing two birds with one stone so to speak, to let a terror attack happen that happens to also take out an activist.

Any person who has read “the Art of War” could anticipate an event like the death of this woman.

May this writer rest in power.

(Image credit: Don’t Comply, Washington Post)