Out-Of-Yemen Bill Passes-- Trump Vows To Veto It-- One Step Closer To Proving Foreign Cash Financed Trump's Campaign

Tom Barrack, knee-deep in Trump's criminal shit

Today, the House voted overwhelmingly, 248-177, to approve a resolution authored by Ro Khanna that direct the removal of US armed forces from hostilities in Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress. All the Democrats voted YES, along with 18 Republicans. Justin Amash (R-MI) voted "present" and 177 other Republicans voted to continue aiding the Saudi genocide in Yemen. Central Valley Blue Dog Jim Costa, who has been heavily pressured by Blue America to stop voting with the Republicans on this-- as he had done twice before-- finally did vote against the war.

It was definitely time for a victory lap for Khanna. He issued a statement acknowledging the success of grassroots activism in the successful outcome on the floor, calling victory "historic. This is the culmination of several years of legislative efforts to end our involvement in the Saudi war in Yemen. I’m encouraged by the direction people are pushing our party to take on foreign policy, promoting restraint and human rights and with the sense they want Congress to play a much larger role."

Ted Lieu, who got this out-of-Yemen ball rolling before Khanna-- or Trump-- was elected said e-mailed his constituents to say that he has been "gravely concerned about the catastrophe unfolding in Yemen since 2015, and have worked to stop U.S. military involvement in this bloody civil war. The Saudi-led coalition was dropping bombs on civilians and we were helping fuel those planes. Millions of people were becoming aid-dependent in what was turning into, and now is, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The U.S., despite Democrats’ calls for answers and actions for change, continued to support the coalition’s efforts. Every step of the way, the Republican-controlled House obstructed debates on Yemen because it was uncomfortable to shame our partners and make tough choices about ending our support in order to protect civilians. After nearly four years of conflict, Congress finally took action on the House floor. I commend Congressman Ro Khanna for authoring this legislation. I’m proud that we’ve passed this bill, which I coauthored, to send a clear message to the Administration that we must end all U.S. military support in Yemen." The ball is now in Trump's court-- or Miss McConnell's. The Senate passed the bill 56-41 in December but-- thanks to Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy-- it was never voted on in the House. Noe that it passed the House, it has to pass the Senate again. It's unlikely McConnell will allow a vote and if he did it would be unlikely it would pass again. In any case, Trump already said he would veto it if it ever got to his desk.

I'm going too take a little jump now-- but just a little one, despite how it's going to sound at first. You probably remember-- back before most of America was accustomed to hear Trump lie all day and all night every single day-- that he was spouting some bullshit about self-funding his own presidential campaign and that in any case he wouldn't accept any money from SuperPACs. That's always been a very conscious lie and one of his few friends, uber-crooked real estate mogul Tom Barrack, set up the Rebuilding America Now SuperPAC in June 2016. Leading up to the election, Rebuilding America Now reported raising $22,610,717 and spending $22,763,915 (leaving them-- in magic math-- with $841,772 "left over").

This is a list of their 15 biggest contributors, many of whom have since been handsomely rewarded with public money doled out by Trump.

• Linda McMahon- $6,000,000

• Geoffrey Palmer- $5,000,000
• Bernard Marcus- $5,000,000
• Ronald Cameron- $2,000,000
• Stephen Feinberg- $1,475,000
• Peter Zieve- $1,000,000
• Walter Buckley- $500,000
• Beverly Elliott- $450,000
• Hamilton Company- $300,000
• Geo Corrections- $275,000
• Boyd Smith- $275,000
• Murray Energy- $200,000
• Llwyd Ecclestone- $200,000
• Frank Caladra- $150,000
• Anthony Scaramucci- $100,000

Those were the reported contributions. It is also widely suspected that Trump's campaign was soliciting highly illegal foreign contributions-- presumably from the Kremlin and the Saudis and Emiratis-- through the PAC, contributions that have no been accounted for. One of the big donors, Geoffrey Palmer-- another Trump-like real estate crook-- is suspected of laundering foreign money into the Trump campaign at the request of Paul Manafort. At least a million, and probably more, was put into the Barrack SuperPAC and made to disappear. It has now reappeared and Mueller is on the case in a big way. Money from the SuperPCA went into Trump's pockets and as kickbacks for his top aides, all completely illegal.

I'm fairly certain that Trump's White House sojourn will eventually result in Barrack going to prison for a long time. Tuesday-- so a day before Khanna's Yemen resolution was voted on-- Barrack was in Dubai, speaking at the Milken Institute MENA Summit. He said that America is in no moral position to criticise Saudi Arabia (over the crown prince's brutal and premeditated murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. "Whatever happened in Saudi Arabia," he told CNN, "the atrocities in America are equal, or worse. He referred to the murderous and primitive crown prince-- and Kushner-in-law amigo as "a young man and regime that is trying to push themselves into 2030," and that lecturing them about a moral code (i.e., torture and murder) "is a mistake."

Barrack went on to launch a lengthy defence of Saudi Arabia, accusing Western countries of failing to understand the kingdom.

“The problem that has happened with the Khashoggi incident,” he said, “is the same problem with the West misunderstanding the east that has existed since Sykes-Picot.”

“So, the West is confused, it doesn’t understand the rule of law in the kingdom, it doesn’t understand what succession in the kingdom is, it doesn’t understand how there can be a dilemma with a population that has 60 per cent of people under the age of 20.”

He later added that the West had always been confused about the Middle East.

“The corrupt hand of the West has been the primary instigator in the kingdom, and in the resource curse across the region forever.”

Barrack then praised the strong leadership across the Arabian Gulf in the face of this perceived Western ineffectiveness, especially in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

“The leadership in the UAE is brilliant,” he said, adding: “The English manipulated the region for decades.”

The private equity investor also defended Saudi Arabia’s transformation, saying that “in a transition, bold action is required for bold places.”

Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Riyadh represented some of the “most organised leadership regimes” in the world, he added.

Time to bring our truck home from Fresno-- mission accomplished

Should An Ignorant Twerp Like Jared Kushner Be Allowed To Muck Around In U.S. Foreign Policy?

Hisham Melhem is a respected Lebanese-American journalist, Washington bureau chief for Al Arabiya, After his post on Friday, Mohammed Bin Salman; A Prince Who Should Not Become a King, he should forget ever going near a Saudi consulate anywhere, let alone Istanbul. "The praise heaped on Mohammed Bin Salman as the new awaited Saudi reformer the West has been longing for until the murder of Khashoggi," wrote Melhem, "says a lot about the naiveté of western analysts and journalists than about the crown prince, who fancied himself as a modernizer seeking to end some of Saudi Arabia’s backward and 'primitive practices' such as banning women from driving, but never pretended to be a political reformer. In recent decades, some American politicians, pundits and even scholars have pinned their hopes on Arab would-be reformers, mainly because they were young, their wives did not wear hijabs, spoke English and looked westernized 'like us.' Gamal Mubarak in Egypt, and  Bashar al-Assad in Syria come to mind."

Much has been written about Mohammed Bin Salman as a ‘reformer’, but most of the focus was on the ‘historic’ decision to allow women to drive, (a decision any new ruler was expected to take) to open up movie theatres, and to allow men and women for the first time to watch together sport competitions. The crown prince was praised because he wanted to diversify the ‘one crop economy’ and make it less dependent on hydrocarbon production, through greater foreign investment, an issue the Saudi elites have been discussing for years. At best these measures are necessary for any nation to survive let alone thrive in the modern world. But there was not a single serious decision to politically empower the population, or to open the public sphere even very slightly.

In fact the short reign of Mohammed Bin Salman has been more despotic that previous rulers. No former Saudi Monarch has amassed the executive powers, political, military and economic that the crown prince has concentrated in his hands except for the founder of the ruling dynasty King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. His brief tenure has been marked by periodic campaigns of repression. Long before the murder of Khashoggi, scores of writers, intellectuals and clerics were arrested for daring to object to the crown prince’s decisions. Many are still languishing in jails with no formal charges. Even some of the women activists who pushed hard for years to lift the ban on women driving, were incarcerated on trumped up charges of ‘treason’. Women are allowed to drive now-- but the crown prince would like them to think that this is because of his magnanimity, and not their struggle-- but they are still subject to the misogynistic and atavistic female guardianship system, which treat adult women regardless of their high education and accomplishment as legal minors.

In keeping with the playbook of despots all over the world seeking to consolidate their political power, Mohammed Bin Salman declared a campaign against corruption, as the most effective way to get rid of or intimidate his real and potential foes. He arbitrarily arrested hundreds of royals, former government officials and wealthy businessmen and incarcerated them at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Most were later released after singing confessions and giving up large portions of their ill-gotten gains. During the same year the crown prince purchased a yacht worth $550 million, and bought a $300 million château in France. When Norah O’Donnell of CBS’ 60 Minutes asked him about these outlandish purchases, the 32 year old prince simply answered “As far as my private expenses, I’m a rich person and not a poor person.” This putsch against royals and other once influential and wealthy Saudis is unprecedented. The Crown Prince’s victims will lie in wait for his next major stumble before they pounce on him. Indeed uneasy lies the head that wears the royal keffiyeh.

In ancient Rome, emperors, senators and notables used the concept and practice of panem et circenses-- bread and circuses-- to appease and distract the Plebeians from political involvement by providing cheap bread and entertainment in the form of gladiatorial combats in the numerous colosseums throughout the Empire. By making sure his plebeians are relatively doing well economically, and by entertaining them in movie theatres and providing them modern sports combats, Mohammed Bin Salman is hoping that his Saudi version of bread and circuses will serve as a distraction to his people so that he will continue to consolidate his power, while pretending to be a visionary modernizer.

...Nothing in the tumultuous short reign of Mohammed Bin Salman shows that he is capable of learning from his blunders. Before he reached the age of thirty three he had already cut a trail of blood and tears. The democracies of the world, particularly the United States should shun him and treat him as the pariah that he is. Mohammed Bin Salman is one crown prince who should not become a king.

The Trumps, of course, have no intention of either shunning MBS or treating him as a pariah. Kushner-in-law-- the Regime's Middle East point person-- has spent lots of time on the phone with him, texting him and e-mailing him, synchronizing their bullshit. According to a 4 man team, reporting for the NY Times yesterday, Kushner and Bin Salman, both in their 30s, are all palsy-walsy... and many inside and outside the Trump Regime feel Kushner is being played. John Kelly, recognizing that Kushner is a dope with an unjustifiably high opinion of his capacities tried to reimpose longstanding procedures stipulating that National Security Council staff members should participate in all calls with foreign leaders, which didn't stop Kushner-in-lawe from carrying on his private correspondence with the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.

The exchanges continued even after the Oct. 2 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was ambushed and dismembered by Saudi agents, according to two former senior American officials and the two people briefed by the Saudis.

As the killing set off a firestorm around the world and American intelligence agencies concluded that it was ordered by Prince Mohammed, Mr. Kushner became the prince’s most important defender inside the White House, people familiar with its internal deliberations say.

Mr. Kushner’s support for Prince Mohammed in the moment of crisis is a striking demonstration of a singular bond that has helped draw President Trump into an embrace of Saudi Arabia as one of his most important international allies.

But the ties between Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed did not happen on their own. The prince and his advisers, eager to enlist American support for his hawkish policies in the region and for his own consolidation of power, cultivated the relationship with Mr. Kushner for more than two years, according to documents, emails and text messages reviewed by the New York Times.

A delegation of Saudis close to the prince visited the United States as early as the month Mr. Trump was elected, the documents show, and brought back a report identifying Mr. Kushner as a crucial focal point in the courtship of the new administration. He brought to the job scant knowledge about the region, a transactional mind-set and an intense focus on reaching a deal with the Palestinians that met Israel’s demands, the delegation noted.

Even then, before the inauguration, the Saudis were trying to position themselves as essential allies who could help the Trump administration fulfill its campaign pledges. In addition to offering to help resolve the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, the Saudis offered hundreds of billions of dollars in deals to buy American weapons and invest in American infrastructure. Mr. Trump later announced versions of some of these items with great fanfare when he made his first foreign trip: to an Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The Saudis had extended that invitation during the delegation’s November 2016 visit.

“The inner circle is predominantly deal makers who lack familiarity with political customs and deep institutions, and they support Jared Kushner,” the Saudi delegation wrote of the incoming administration in a slide presentation obtained by the Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, which provided it to The Times. Several Americans who spoke with the delegation confirmed the slide presentation’s accounts of the discussions.

The courtship of Mr. Kushner appears to have worked.

Only a few months after Mr. Trump moved into the White House, Mr. Kushner was inquiring about the Saudi royal succession process and whether the United States could influence it, raising fears among senior officials that he sought to help Prince Mohammed, who was not yet the crown prince, vault ahead in the line for the throne, two former senior White House officials said. American diplomats and intelligence officials feared that the Trump administration might be seen as playing favorites in the delicate internal politics of the Saudi royal family, the officials said.

...“The relationship between Jared Kushner and Mohammed bin Salman constitutes the foundation of the Trump policy not just toward Saudi Arabia but toward the region,” said Martin Indyk, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Middle East envoy. The administration’s reliance on the Saudis in the peace process, its support for the kingdom’s feud with Qatar, an American ally, and its backing of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, he said, all grew out of “that bromance.”

Before the 2016 presidential race, Mr. Kushner’s most extensive exposure to the Middle East was through Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a Kushner family friend, and the Kushners had contributed heavily to Israeli nonprofits supporting Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank.

But the Arab rulers of the oil-rich Persian Gulf mainly figured in Mr. Kushner’s life as investors in American real estate, the Kushner family business.

So Tom Barrack, a Lebanese-American real estate investor with close ties to both Mr. Trump and the Gulf rulers, set out during the campaign to introduce Mr. Kushner to his associates as a useful ally.

“You will love him and he agrees with our agenda!” Mr. Barrack wrote in May 2016 in an email to the Emirati ambassador in Washington, Youssef Otaiba.

Mr. Otaiba soon positioned himself as an informal adviser on the region to Mr. Kushner.

“Thanks to you, I am in constant contact with Jared and that has been extremely helpful,” Mr. Otaiba wrote to Mr. Barrack in the first months after Mr. Trump took office.

...Top aides to Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed also met with Mr. Kushner on a trip to New York in November 2016, after the election... The delegation made special note of what it characterized as Mr. Kushner’s ignorance of Saudi Arabia.

“Kushner made clear his lack of familiarity with the history of Saudi-American relations and he asked about its support for terrorism,” the team noted in the slide presentation prepared for Riyadh. “After the discussion, he expressed his satisfaction with what was explained about the Saudi role in fighting terrorism” and what the Saudis said was their international leadership in fighting Islamist extremism.

Mr. Kushner, the Saudi report said, also questioned the delegation’s motives, asking whether the group had always been interested in working with Mr. Trump. As a candidate, Mr. Trump had promised to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the United States and had singled out Saudi Arabia as a dangerous influence.

“Kushner wondered about Saudi Arabia’s desire for partnership and whether it came from opportunity or worry, and he wondered as well if it was specific to this American administration or whether it was presented to Hillary Clinton (for example: women driving),” read another slide, next to a photograph of Mr. Kushner.

But Mr. Kushner was clear about his own priorities, the report said. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was among the most important issues to draw Kushner’s attention,” the delegation reported, and therefore the best way to win him over.

“The Palestinian issue first: there is still no clear plan for the American administration toward the Middle East,” the delegation wrote, “except that the central interest is finding a historic solution to support the stability of Israel and solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

To cultivate ties with the Trump team, the Saudis had prepared a long list of initiatives that they said would help Mr. Trump deliver for his supporters.

Seizing on Mr. Trump’s campaign vows for the “extreme vetting” of immigrants, the Saudi delegation proposed “establishing an intelligence and data” exchange “to help the American administration carry out its strategy of investigating those requesting residency (extreme vetting),” according to an Arabic version of a presentation for the Trump team.

And the delegation pledged “high-level coordination with the new American administration” to help with “defeating extremist thought.”

Several of the Saudi proposals were evidently welcomed.

One was a “joint center to fight the ideology of extremism and terrorism.” President Trump helped inaugurate a Saudi version of the center on his trip to Riyadh the following May.

Another Saudi proposal outlined what the Trump administration later called “an Arab NATO.” In their presentation, the Saudis described it as an Islamic military coalition of tens of thousands of troops “ready when the president-elect wishes to deploy them.”

Other initiatives appeared timed to Mr. Trump’s first term in office, like proposals to spend $50 billion over four years on American defense contracts, to increase Saudi investment in the United States to $200 billion over four years, and to invest, with other Gulf states, up to $100 billion in American infrastructure.

...Israel had long argued to American diplomats that Saudi Arabia’s influence in the region made it essential to any peace deal, and the Israelis were developing high hopes for Prince Mohammed because of his hawkish views toward Iran and his general iconoclasm (he would later make several statements, like affirming the Israeli “right” to land, that were notably more sympathetic to the Israeli position than those of other Saudi leaders.)

Within weeks of Mr. Trump’s move into the White House, Mr. Kushner had embraced the delegation’s proposal for the president to visit Riyadh, convinced by then that the alliance with Saudi Arabia would be crucial in his plans for the region, according to a person who discussed it with Mr. Kushner and a second person familiar with his plans.

The secretary of state at the time, Rex W. Tillerson, opposed the idea. It would link the administration too closely to Riyadh, these people said, giving up flexibility and leverage. Mr. Trump initially saw little benefit either, according to a person involved in his deliberations.

But by the time of the inauguration Mr. Kushner was already arguing that under the influence of Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia could play a pivotal role in advancing a Middle East peace deal, according to three people familiar with his thinking. That would be the president’s legacy, Mr. Kushner argued, according to a person involved in the discussions.

It was around the time of the White House visit in March 2017 that senior officials in the State Department and the Pentagon began to worry about the one-on-one communications between Prince Mohammed-- who is known to favor the online messaging service WhatsApp-- and Mr. Kushner. “There was a risk the Saudis were playing him,” one former White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Two later face-to-face encounters with Mr. Kushner preceded key turning points in Prince Mohammed’s consolidation of power.

Shortly after Mr. Kushner visited Riyadh with the president in May 2017, Prince Mohammed orchestrated the ouster of his older cousin, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, removing him from control of the Saudi Interior Ministry and replacing him as crown prince. Prince Mohammed also announced a Saudi-led blockade of its neighbor and rival Qatar, the host of a major American air base.

And days after Mr. Kushner made an unannounced visit to Riyadh in the fall of 2017, the crown prince summarily detained about 200 wealthy Saudis, including several of his royal cousins, in a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh.

After each play for power, President Trump publicly praised Prince Mohammed.

One former White House official argued that Mr. Kushner’s personal ties to Prince Mohammed had sometimes been an asset. At one point, for example, the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen had blocked a critical port, cutting off humanitarian and medical supplies. The national security adviser at the time, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, suggested that Mr. Kushner call Prince Mohammed to address the issue, the official said, and General McMaster believed Mr. Kushner’s intercession had helped persuade the Saudis to loosen the restrictions.

White House officials also say that Mr. Kushner has formal conversations with many other leaders in the region. And previous administrations have also had close ties to the Saudi government.

Since the uproar over Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, the Trump administration has acknowledged only one conversation between Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed: an Oct. 10 telephone call joined by John R. Bolton, the national security adviser. The Americans “asked for more details and for the Saudi government to be transparent in the investigation process,” the White House said in a statement.

But American officials and a Saudi briefed on their conversations said that Mr. Kushner and Prince Mohammed have continued to chat informally. According to the Saudi, Mr. Kushner has offered the crown prince advice about how to weather the storm, urging him to resolve his conflicts around the region and avoid further embarrassments.

Few of the Saudi promises have amounted to much. The effectiveness of the counterterrorism center in Riyadh remains doubtful. After offering $50 billion in new weapons contracts, the Saudis have signed only letters of interest or intent without any firm deals. After proposing to marshal up to $100 billion in investments in American infrastructure, the Saudis have announced an investment of only $20 billion.

Inside the White House, Mr. Kushner has continued to argue that the president needs to stand by Prince Mohammed because he remains essential to the administration’s broader Middle East strategy, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Whether Prince Mohammed can fulfill that role, however, remains to be seen. His initial approaches to the Palestinians were rejected by their leaders, and their resistance stiffened after the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital without waiting for a negotiated agreement on the city’s status.

Now the prince’s father, King Salman, 82, who is still the official head of state, has appeared to resist Mr. Kushner’s Middle East peace plans as well.

“The Palestinian issue will remain our primary issue,” the king declared in a speech last month, “until the Palestinian people receive all of their legal rights.”

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"The Loser President" #3 in the series:

Tonight I give you two quotes from Donald Jackass Trump. They go together with tonight's meme perfectly.

Quote One: Saudi Arabia and I get along great. I get get along great with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend 40 million, 50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.

Quote Two: I love the Saudis. Many are in this building. Saudi Arabia, I like the Saudis. They're very nice. I make a lot of money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff. All kinds of toys from Trump. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions

Whether it's Moscow or Riyadh. In Trump, we have a president who, given the choice, will always choose himself and his bank accounts first, never America first and never the American people first. Can you imagine if he had owned airplane factories in Germany in World War II?

Trump is owned and therefore operated by the autocrats he envies and adores. He longs to set up a family dynasty along the lines of his new buddy Kim Jong-Un. When you are willing to put your interests and the interests of foreign autocrats ahead of your country and its ideals, you aren't just a mega ass-kisser. You might as well be labeled a traitor whether your actions fit the legal description or not. If you do this as a politician or judge, you should be impeached, convicted, and imprisoned. That is also an American ideal. Sadly, with so much corruption at all levels of Washington, it is only an ideal. Time to Make It Real Again.

Murder Of Saudi Journalist Builds Opposition To Yemen War

Mid-Term Elections Could Reverse Trump Policies

The Arab Spring spread through Saudi Arabia and continued for years in the mostly Shia Muslim, eastern part of the country. When the current Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman came to power, he escalated the war in Yemen and cracked down on dissent at home.

Photo by Reese Erlich

by Reese Erlich

The murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has backfired on the Saudi royal family by focusing new attention on its vicious war on Yemen.

The last few weeks have seen startling new reports on civilian atrocities and growing support for a House of Representative resolution invoking the War Powers Act to stop the war. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose) now has 73 cosponsors for a resolution that would stop U.S. participation in the Yemen slaughter.

The Khashoggi murder has fundamentally shifted opinions on Capitol Hill about U.S.-Saudi relations, Rep. Khanna told me in a phone interview. He likened it to one partner in a marriage having an affair.

“The marriage may last but it will never be the same,” he said. “It’s opened people’s eyes.”

Murder expressly in the Orient

On October 2, the Saudi regime, headed by Mohammad bin Salman, murdered opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Saudi officials had a premeditated plan to kill Khashoggi, dress a Saudi operative in his clothes and then have him walk around the city to leave the impression he was still alive.

In reality, Khashoggi was brutally murdered and dismembered with a bone saw, according to Turkish government sources. While tens of thousands of Yemenis have died as a result of the Saudi invasion of Yemen, it took the death of one man to focus world attention on Saudi atrocities.

Partially in response to the Khashoggi scandal, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis called for all sides in the Yemen War to begin UN-sponsored peace talks within 30 days. But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded that the Houthi movement, which is fighting Saudi Arabia, begin the ceasefire first. Past United States calls for ceasefires and peace talks went nowhere because the Trump administration is determined not to disrupt relations with Saudi Arabia.

The Trump administration provides intelligence to the Saudi military fighting in Yemen and helps refuel its fighter jets. The United States currently has dozens of soldiers deployed in Yemen, ostensibly to combat terrorism. Earlier this year the New York Times revealed that about a dozen Green Beret commandos were stationed in Saudi Arabia along the Yemen border to train the Saudi military in interdicting Houthi missile attacks.

As I’ve reported previously, the Trump administration could end the war within days. US technicians fuel and maintain Saudi fighter planes manufactured by Boeing. Trump could order the technicians to stop work, as provided in the Boeing contract.

“If the United States stopped fueling the planes, the war would end,” noted Khanna.

Who’s fighting and why?

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) invaded Yemen in 2015 claiming to support the legitimate government of Yemen’s Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. In reality, Hadi was installed by the United States after an Arab Spring uprising and today acts as a Saudi puppet. He lives in Saudi Arabia, not Yemen.

The Houthis, a conservative political Islamic movement, control the northern part of Yemen. Iran supports but does not control the Houthis. The Houthis havekilled civilians by firing artillery indiscriminately into Yemeni cities and launching rockets into southern Saudi Arabia, according to Human Rights Watch.

But the Saudi/UAE coalition is responsible for far more death and destruction. In an online interview from the Yemeni capital Sanaa, radio reporter Ali Alshahari told me coalition planes have destroyed massive amounts of infrastructure and caused the deaths of tens of thousands. The two occupying powers have blocked access to the country’s ports, which stops even humanitarian aid such as food and medicine.

“The people here are suffering from malnutrition due to the imposed blockade,” Shahari said. “This is a catastrophe.”

The United States, UK and France provide the deadly munitions responsible for civilian deaths. Lockheed-Martin sold the guided missiles to Saudi Arabia that caused the deaths of 40 children and 11 adults in the infamous August attack on a school bus.

Most of the mainstream media say some 10,000 Yemenis have died in the war, but that figure comes from a two-year-old UN estimate. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a research institution funded in part by the US State Department, indicates that from 2016 to the present, some 56,000 Yemeni civilians and combatants have died. The total since the beginning of the war will likely be 70-80,000, according to a ACLED spokesperson.

A new report by the World Peace Foundation shows that the Royal Saudi Air Force intentionally attacks food storage facilities. Report author and Tufts Professor Martha Mundy explained, “There is strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanaa.”

Bump from Trump

Obama and now Trump have supported the Yemen occupation to defend US so-called national interests, part of the larger fight against Iran. The United States accuses Iran of seeking to militarily dominate the region from Lebanon, through Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen.

My-- how the kettle calls the pot black. The United States has dominated the Middle East in the post-World-War II era and seeks to maintain its power in an alliance with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. It has massive military bases in Bahrain and Qatar.

The US Navy keeps the sea lanes open for US and allied oil corporations. And, by sheer coincidence, oil and munitions companies make billions of dollars in profits.

Funny how “national interests” are of great interest to the rich but not to the nation.

The Saudis had predicted a quick victory in Yemen but are now bogged down in a never-ending war that costs at least $5-6 billion a month. Fallout from the Khashoggi murder has made the war even more problematic.

Neither Obama nor Trump ever formally declared war in Yemen, and the fighting there has nothing to do with combating terrorism. Even the Republican-dominated House in November 2017 voted by a whopping 366-30 margin to stop United States participation in the Yemen war. In March a similar measure failed in the Senate by a vote of only 55-44.

If the Democrats win the House, and particularly the Senate, they could put tremendous pressure on Trump to reverse his disastrous Mideast policies.

Rep. Khanna emphasized that his War Powers Act measure has significance beyond the Yemen war. “The bill is a reassertion of Congress’s role in foreign policy,” he said. “It’s a reorientation of US policy away from interventionism.”

Pathology, Khashoggi, Capitalism & Climate Change

The sons and daughters of the uber-rich

by Gaius Publius

Capitalism is an economic system that encourages people to act from the most pathological individual motives and promises the best social outcome.

Noam Chomsky said that our current ideology is producing a nation, a world, of psychopaths. From an interview with Rob Kall:

R.K.: Okay, so you have written and I am going to quote you here,

“if you care about other people that’s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people you might try to organize or to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, you don’t care whether other people’s kids can go to school or afford food to eat or things like that. In the United States that’s called libertarian for some wild reason. I mean it’s actually highly authoritarian but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.”

Now, since we last spoke I have been doing a series of articles on psychopathy, psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists and it sure sounds like you’re describing them when you describe people who don’t care.

N.C.: Well there is a huge propaganda effort that we are all aware of to try to turn people into psychopaths who don’t care about anyone but themselves. That’s not new actually. They go back a hundred and fifty years, the early days of industrialization in the United States. Working people were bitterly condemning the industrial system that was being imposed, the way it was taking away their freedom, and one of the things they condemned is what they called the new spirit of the age– ‘Gain wealth forgetting all but self,’– Exactly what you’re describing. That’s a hundred and fifty years ago and ever since then there have been enormous efforts to drive these sociopathic attitudes into people’s heads. [emphasis added]

About this, Chris Hedges adds from his personal experience:

At the age of 10 I was sent as a scholarship student to a boarding school for the uber-rich in Massachusetts. I lived among the wealthiest Americans for the next eight years. I listened to their prejudices and saw their cloying sense of entitlement. They insisted they were privileged and wealthy because they were smarter and more talented. They had a sneering disdain for those ranked below them in material and social status, even the merely rich. Most of the uber-rich lacked the capacity for empathy and compassion. They formed elite cliques that hazed, bullied and taunted any nonconformist who defied or did not fit into their self-adulatory universe.

It was impossible to build a friendship with most of the sons of the uber-rich. Friendship for them was defined by “what’s in it for me?” They were surrounded from the moment they came out of the womb by people catering to their desires and needs. They were incapable of reaching out to others in distress—whatever petty whim or problem they had at the moment dominated their universe and took precedence over the suffering of others, even those within their own families. They knew only how to take. They could not give. They were deformed and deeply unhappy people in the grip of an unquenchable narcissism.

I would take statements like that last one literally. We're ruled by people "deformed and in the grip of an unquenchable narcissism." Note: This isn't just Trump he's talking about.

Corporations As Force-Extenders for the Pathology of the Rich

Hedges' observation certainly explains why executives at the Ford Motor Company would use a cost-benefit analysis to decide how much safety to put into the Ford Pinto, a car prone to explode from a simple rear-end collision. As one law student at Wake Forest University bloodlessly put it, "Should a risk/benefit analysis be used in situations where a defect in design or manufacturing could lead to death or seriously bodily harm, such as in the Ford Pinto situation?"

That cost-benefit analysis goes like this: Which is more expensive, to settle lawsuits resulting from death claims, or to upgrade the product so fewer people are killed? Human executives at Ford weighed the options and chose to settle the death claims instead.

See what I mean? Psychopaths.

Hedges generalizes the situation this way: "It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have seized total political power." He goes on to characterize rule by the super-rich as observed by such varied writers as Aristotle, Sheldon Wolin and C. Wright Mills. "Once the uber-rich take over, Aristotle writes, the only options are tyranny and revolution. They do not know how to nurture or build. They know only how to feed their bottomless greed."

Keep "tyranny or revolution" in mind; we'll come back to it.

In today's world the wealth-producing engine of the super-rich is corporate capitalism. As I wrote some years ago, big corporations loot the wealth of the world so their true owners, the CEO class, can loot their corporations and buy anything else on earth they want or need. When only the rich have money, the whole of the rest of the world is always for sale.

Now that the super-rich have bought the U.S. political system, the last piece, their last lock on power, is in place. Tyranny or rebellion: if the political system can't be recaptured in an orderly, electoral way, nothing but withdrawal of the "consent of the governed" can change course we're on.

The Ubiquity of Assassination

Which leaves us where? Not in a good place. For another example of rule by psychopaths, consider the Khashoggi murder, but from a different perspective:

Tech executives withdrew in scores from a high-profile Saudi investment summit amid the uproar over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — but top Silicon Valley companies show no signs they plan to unwind their lucrative business ties with the country.

The oil-rich kingdom, with its long history of human rights violations, is the single largest funding source for U.S. startups — and a financial pipeline for companies like Uber, Twitter and Tesla.

It's not just the Trumps of the world that live by death. Our liberal gods as well are steeped in blood (including the blood of cheered-on, murderous intent). The pathological desire to murder to gain wealth, to kill to retain power, is everywhere we look. To quote an old commercial, we're soaking in it.

The Pathology of the Climate "Debate"

Which brings us round at last to the climate catastrophe we're about to face, the single greatest world-historical issue in the world. As Dave Roberts pointed out here, climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation are not the same, either morally or in their results.

Mitigation is a collective and widespread effort by a society to lessen climate damage by collectively addressing the causes. Where will the money come from? The society as a whole.

Adaptation, on the other hand, is intensely local: What one town or state will need to adapt to climate disasters will be different, and differently expensive, than what another town or state will need. Where will the money come from? That too will be local.

A program of mitigation is collective and deeply moral; also deeply effective, to the extent that good choices are made, since the force of the tsunami itself, as it were, is lessened. A program of adaptation-only, however, is a program of abandonment, a program of "each to his own and look out below." 

Needless to say, we're on the path of adaptation only, of not really acting until disaster is at the door, and have been for decades. And when the moment occurs when the waters do rise, the super-rich will only protect themselves, the poor being left to fend as best they can. "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?" said the CEO of Home Depot about anyone not like him. You can see this attitude as well in the discussions they have amongst only themselves.

Rule by psychopaths takes us to this place. So long as we're frozen to inaction on our twin disasters, climate and wealth, this is what waits for us. We're ruled by these people until we choose not to be, or events overtake us all.

Exxon On the IPCC Report

But let's not close on that somber note. Let's close instead with a humorous quote, with Exxon's response to the latest IPCC report:

ExxonMobil CEO Depressed After Realizing Earth Could End Before They Finish Extracting All The Oil

..."Just think, one day soon, we’ll all be gone and that oil will still be there in the Earth, never to be removed, [said CEO Darren Woods]. It’s a travesty.” At press time, Woods announced ExxonMobil’s plans to quadruple its oil production in an effort to extract it all from the Earth while there was still time.

Ok, that was the Onion, but they're never really wrong, are they?

GP
 

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Given the outline of the situation in Trump's weak mind, the idea behind tonight's meme doesn't seem far-fetched at all. As the world laughs at King Salman and Bullshit Don, cooking up their childish lies and expecting us to buy them, can't we expect a calendar to be offered into evidence any day now? I can our gangster president see thinking, "Well, it worked for Brett" and hastily borrowing even the very same calendar and trying to pass it off as that of another asshole friend.

It was Donald "Donnie Bullshit" Trump who first floated the "Rogue Killers" excuse in explanation of the gruesome death of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. At the same time, he compared the idea of people accusing his Saudi friend, King Salman, to his new Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh, by whining "Now it's you're guilty until proven innocent." I wonder if gaining equal status as an obvious murderer was enough to make Kavanaugh grab a keg of beer and down it, not that he wanted an excuse.

After the "Rogue Killers" explanation, the next thing we heard about the case was from King Salman who cooked up a beyond incredulous lie that Khashoggi had died in a fist fight with the king's 15 man assassination team. I guess we're also supposed to believe that Khashoggi was some sort of one man Delta Force kind of guy. Funny, he didn't look like one. Besides, how does one engage in a fistfight with even one assassin when half your fingers have already met the bone saw? Of course, Trump's supporters and apologists will jump through any hoop imaginable to believe in and propagate these things. That's how far gone they have always been.

Meanwhile, Lawrence O'Donnell has the best words about this:

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

"For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia for that matter). Any suggestion that I have is just more FAKE NEWS (of which there is plenty)!"

Saudi Arabia, and I get along great with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much!"
- Bought and Sold "President" Trump

Don't ya love it when politicians contradict themselves? In the case of Señor Trumpanzee, the old adage that money doesn't talk, it swears is extra meaningful right now. It's swearing very loudly.

It was so predictable. A journalist, from a paper Trump hates, dies in an extra grisly manner, and the first thing Trump talks about is money, money for arms deals that are only theoretical, all while thinking of his own financial interests, past, present, and obviously, future. No one else's. Such are the priorities of a man with no morals whatsoever; a man who laughs at the very concept of morality.

It's so obvious that Trump is King Salman's favorite ride, perhaps only when Putin let's him borrow the whip though.

Dateline: Istanbul-- What The Khashoggi Case Tells Us About Terrorism

Can you name these 3 guys?

-by Reese Erlich

Istanbul-

In 2013, an Iranian national living in Texas was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, D.C. The State Department alleged that Iran’s Al Quds force masterminded the terrorist plot. Although the bombing never took place and Iran denied any connection with the conspiracy, 92 US senators signed a letter calling on President Barack Obama to “crush Iran's central bank” in retaliation.

On October 2 of this year, according to Turkish intelligence sources, Saudi authorities murdered dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside its consulate here in Istanbul, Turkey. Many Turks are convinced that the reported torture and murder of Jamal Khashoggi was an act of terror aimed at intimidating Saudis from organizing opposition to the regime. Yet on this occasion, no high level US official labelled it a terrorist plot. No Senator has called for crushing the Saudi central bank.

Hmmmm. Once again, US leaders label violence carried out by enemies as terrorism. The same violence carried out by allies is ignored or downplayed.

Death in Istanbul

Khashoggi, a permanent US resident writing a Washington Post: column, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never left. At first, Saudi leaders, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, denied any foul play. But they later floated a story about how Khashoggi may have been killed in an interrogation gone terribly awry, and Trump offered up unsubstantiated speculation that he was killed by a “rogue agent.”

But that version doesn’t hold up either. Before the murder, Saudi leaders sent a fifteen-man hit squad to Istanbul that included several of the crown prince’s top security officers and an autopsy expert carrying a bone saw. Turkish media reported that audio recordings show Khashoggi was horribly tortured, murdered, and then dismembered.

It’s likely the assassination was ordered by the highest level Saudi leaders, including the crown prince. Saudi royals have regularly used terror to intimidate enemies. In 2013, I reported on their repression of mostly Shia Saudis in the eastern region of Qatif.

But both Democratic and Republican Presidents largely ignore such brutal repression. They built a close alliance based on what are deemed to be US national interests-- in reality, vast profits for US oil companies and weapons manufacturers, and support for US geopolitical policy in the region.

Saudis back terrorism

The Saudi leadership supported terrorist groups fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, for example, and funded Chechen terrorist attacks in Russia in the 2000s. I’ve reported on how Saudi Arabia provided money and arms to the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, something Hillary Clinton also admitted, as revealed in a leaked memo.

While ignoring Saudi support for terrorism, the Trump Administration is happy to peg Iran as the world’s “most prominent state sponsor of terrorism.”

“We will defeat radical Islamist terrorists such as ISIS and al-Qaeda, expand our agile counterterrorism toolkit to prevent future terrorist threats, deter emerging threats, roll back Iran’s global terrorist network, and ensure our country’s continued safety,” Trump has said.

The Trump Administration falsely links Shiite Iran with Sunni-based terrorist groups. In fact, Iran fought ISIS in both Iraq and Syria, and is no more linked to ISIS than Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Iran has been just as much a victim of terrorism as a perpetrator.

Iran as victim of terrorism

Last month, twenty-nine Iranian soldiers and civilians were killed in the southwestern city of Ahvaz when men dressed in Revolutionary Guard uniforms opened fire on crowded parade ground bleachers. The Iranian government blamed ISIS for the attack and fired missiles into an ISIS controlled area of Iraq.

In 2017 ISIS attacked the Iranian parliament and the Imam Khomeini shrine in Tehran, killing twelve and wounding forty. Once again, ISIS was held responsible.

Undoubtedly, Iran has used terrorist tactics to advance its religious and geopolitical goals. Just this month, Belgian and French police arrested an Iranian diplomat and civilian couple for plotting to bomb a Mujahideen-e-Khalq event in Paris. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq is a right-wing cult opposed to Tehran. The invited guests at the event included Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Iranian authorities strongly deny any Iranian involvement in the bomb plot. A trial has not yet been scheduled.

Iran does support groups that have used terrorist tactics, including the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Many in the Middle East, however, view these groups as national liberation organizations fighting Israel. They see them as distinct from Al Qaeda and ISIS, which intentionally kill civilians as part of their strategy to ethnically cleanse the region and establish a dictatorial Islamic caliphate.

I don’t think anyone’s hands are clean when it comes to supporting terrorism. But on balance, Saudi Arabia has done more to promote terrorism than Iran. And don't even get me started on US support for mujahideen in Afghanistan, contras in Nicaragua or terrorist groups in today's Syria. But for that, you'll have to await a future column.

Photo: (C) Reese Erlich

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

We all now how much Trump loves autocrats around the world. He loves his dream that he could be "President For Life." He loves the fact that those murderous dictators he envies can just do away with their perceived enemies. So, it can be no surprise whatsoever that we now have Trump and his Saudi King pal, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saudi, going off and cooking up an absurd excuse about how Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi died. If you could listen to their phone calls, you just know it would sound exactly like two nine-year-old boys trying to explain how a window got broken:

You see, there was this ball and, a, Donnie and I were playing with the dog and the ball, and, well, er, a, somehow the dog tossed the ball through the window and...

Yep. It's "The Dog Ate My Homework" excuse, variation 5000. It's all a big accident. Blame the dog. "Clumsy dog! Bad dog!" Ya gotta understand, blah, blah.

Trump is the excuse master and apologist for criminals he likes. Has been all of his life, especially when he is, or wants to b, in business with them to enrich himself. There are buildings and hotels and gold courses to be built, like

I just spoke with the king of Saudi Arabia who denies any knowledge of what took place with regard to, as he said, his Saudi Arabian citizen... It sounded to me that maybe these could have been rogue killers.

Or, how about a planned Trump Tower in Moscow? What's a tiny thing like hacking our elections, compare to the money and ego gratification? You wouldn't want to let that slow the growth of the Trump family bank accounts, reveal how totally corrupt and owned a president is, or turn up any incidents of money laundering, would you? Here's Trumpanzee during the 2016 campaign:

Russian, Russia, Russia, but I don't, maybe it was, but I, It could Russia but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It could also be someone sitting on their bed that ways 400 pounds.

Would those be 400 pound rogue killers, Mr. President? 15 400 pound professional killers flying to Turkey, including an autopsy specialist and a guy with a bone saw? That's quite an accident! I can see a whole line of republican jokes coming about how many arabs does it take to dismember a member of the press, aka "enemies of the state" as FOX "News" would say.

Hey, maybe the journalist got attacked by a magic carpet that rolled him up and flew out a back window of the consulate. I hear that can happen, you know. They have those carpets over there. Magic Carpets! They're hard to control, though.

I'd love to get one for the oval office. That would be a tremendous thing.

OK. I made that last one up, but, admit it, it makes as much sense as "rogue killers" and "It was an accident" does. Makes just as much sense as that friend of the Crown Prince walking into the consulate with his trusty bone saw. I know I always carry one around, don't you? Maybe Trumpanzee can look deep into King Salman's eyes and see his soul like Dubya did with Putin.

Trump hates journalists so this whole thing is a plus to him. He probably even congratulated the Saudi King and, given his past approaches to high crimes, might have given King Salman the "Rogue Killers" idea. That just fits. Period. The fact that the victim worked for the Washington Post is just a plus in Trump's flabby white-ringed eyes. It's all "I don't really care, do you?" Well, yeah I do.

This is getting real interesting. There's even the relationship between the King's son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Crown Prince already brags that Kushner lives in his pocket, and who could doubt him?

Context is everything.