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US Supreme Court Takes Case That Could End Internet Censorship, Expand First Amendment

By Carmine Sabia | Citizen Truth | October 17, 2018

After the recent purge of over 800 independent media outlets on Facebook, the Supreme Court is now hearing a case that could have ramifications for any future attempts at similar purges.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to take a case that could change free speech on the Internet forever.

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, the case that it has agreed to take, will decide if the private operator of a public access network is considered a state actor, CNBC reported.

The case could affect how companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and YouTube are governed. If the Court were to issue a far-reaching ruling it could subject such companies to First Amendment lawsuits and force them to allow a much broader scope of free speech from its users.

The Court decided to take the case on Friday and it is the first case that was taken after Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court.

DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Melendez claimed that they were fired from Manhattan Neighborhood Network for speaking critically of the network. And, though the case does not involve the Internet giants, it could create a ruling that expands the First Amendment beyond the government.

“We stand at a moment when the very issue at the heart of this case — the interplay between private entities, nontraditional media, and the First Amendment — has been playing out in the courts, in other branches of government, and in the media itself,” the attorneys from MNN wrote in their letter to the Court asking it to take the case.

The Court could either rule in MNN’s favor, rule against it in a narrow scope that does not affect other companies, or it could rule in a broad manner that would prevent the abilities of private networks and Internet companies to limit or censor speech on their platforms.

Censorship, Free Speech or Enforcing Company Policy

It comes at a time when Facebook has purged around 800 independent media pages in one day. The media outlets ranged the spectrum from far left to far right and many that either had no political affiliation or were not extreme in their politics. Facebook claimed that the pages were engaged in “inauthentic behavior” and as a private company it does not have to answer to anyone regarding how it enforces its terms of service.

ACLU attorney Vera Eidelman said Facebook, as a private company, can enforce their terms however it sees fit, but that could result in serious free speech consequences.

“Drawing the line between ‘real’ and ‘inauthentic’ views is a difficult enterprise that could put everything from important political parody to genuine but outlandish views on the chopping block,” Eidelman said. “It could also chill individuals who only feel safe speaking out anonymously or pseudonymously.”

The MNN case could change that and force Facebook, and other companies, to protect users First Amendment rights.

October 18, 2018 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The People ‘Stopping Election Interference’ Are the Ones Who Are Actually Rigging the Election

By Daisy Luther | Organic Prepper | October 15, 2018

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg made the media rounds to give a rather shady explanation of why Facebook suddenly closed hundreds of incredibly popular pages in what’s being called The Alternative Media Purge. Zuckerberg accused the closed pages, many of which had millions of fans, of spreading “political spam.”

Ironically, many of the pages that were shut down had absolutely nothing to do with politics or elections, unless you include the fact that they recommended skipping the entire circus. None of these pages were accused of being “the Russians,” who were the scapegoat of the last surprise presidential election results. A couple of the things that many of the pages did have in common, incidentally, were an anti-war outlook and a police watchdog mentality.

But as far as making the election more resistant to interference, the result of the Alternative Media Purge is the diametric opposite. People will now only get one side of the story.

The alternative media changed everything during the last presidential election.

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president, much of the world snickered. Who was this reality television star to take on part of the Clinton Empire? There was no way, people scoffed, that Trump could possibly win.

It’s a proven fact that Hillary Clinton was in cahoots with the mainstream media throughout her candidacy. And the reason it’s proven is that organizations like Wikileaks released the evidence of it in a series of emails with her campaign manager and people like Donna Brazile of CNN. Brazile finally publicly admitted that she’d done so and that it was her “job to make all our Democratic candidates look good.”

The alternative media jumped on this story, as well as many other questionable emails that were divulged by Wikileaks, while the mainstream pretended that none of this was happening. And the mainstream did very little to cover the Democratic National Convention, during which the nomination was stolen from Bernie Sanders, who – if we’re being honest – probably would have had a much better chance of beating Trump than the notoriously unlikable Clinton. Here’s my coverage of it at the time.

The alternative media, never a fan of the goings-on in Clintonland, from the Haiti scandal all the way back to the “suicide” of Vince Foster in Arkansas, jumped on these stories as well as stories about her debatable health.

The fact that we had a robust alternative media at the time meant that these stories were heard. At the same time, the mainstream media was busy painting Donald Trump as a neo-Nazi fascist who hated minorities and would nuke somebody the day he got into office.

Now, imagine there had been no alternative media during that election.

If we hadn’t have had an alternative media telling other stories – enough stories that people were able to get a fuller picture of who both of these candidates really were – things might have turned out entirely differently. And while that would be all right with any number of people who loathe Donald Trump, would it have been a “fair” election?

Let’s look back even further at the candidacy of Congressman Ron Paul back in 2012. Dr. Paul was an incredible candidate with a glowing political resume, but he didn’t get the time of day. There was a media blackout on his candidacy and finally, he was forced to withdraw from the race. Many of us were budding alternative journalists at that time learned a valuable lesson during that election – what we were doing was important. There needed to be an option instead of letting the mainstream media present the only options and information to people.

By the time the 2016 election rolled around, those disappointed in how Dr. Paul was treated were determined that it would not happen again. That a candidate with a background full of sordid scandals would not get through an election cycle unscathed, painted as a glowing Madonna who would save us all.

So… during the fierce battle between Clinton and Trump, both sides of the story were told and told loudly.

Alternative journalists engaged the power of social media to connect with people who wanted to know more and they did it to such a degree that everything changed. Clinton, originally the front-runner, was suddenly in the fight of her life against a candidate that most people had considered a joke.

And that’s when everyone started blaming the Russians.

In a shocking article, the Washington Post printed a long list of websites that they claimed were run by “the Russians.” Many of these sites were run by folks I know personally who are decidedly not Russians, but simply bloggers who wanted to share the truth as they identified it. (This article was removed from WaPo – I’m guessing due to threats about legal action by many of the site owners accused of working for Russia.)

Although investigation after investigation has been undertaken, there’s still no proof that Russia tampered with the election, nor that they colluded with Donald Trump.

Years later, the Washington Post sticks to their story with headlines like “Without the Russians, Trump Wouldn’t Have Won.” In the piece, they admitted that there isn’t any official proof and they cited Buzzfeed.

While the intelligence agencies are silent on the impact of Russia’s attack, outside experts who have examined the Kremlin campaign — which included stealing and sharing Democratic Party emails, spreading propaganda online and hacking state voter rolls — have concluded that it did affect an extremely close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Clint Watts, a former FBI agent, writes in his recent book, “Messing with the Enemy,” that “Russia absolutely influenced the U.S. presidential election,” especially in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Trump’s winning margin was less than 1 percent in each state.

We still don’t know the full extent of the Russian interference, but we know its propaganda reached 126 million people via Facebook alone. A BuzzFeed analysis found that fake news stories on Facebook generated more social engagement in the last three months of the campaign than did legitimate articles: The “20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.” Almost all of this “fake news” was either started or spread by Russian bots, including claims that the pope had endorsed Trump and that Hillary Clinton had sold weapons to the Islamic State. (source)

Buzzfeed ? Isn’t that where you go to take a quiz to find out what kind of potato you are?

That leads us to Facebook’s potential election interference

Last week, as I mentioned, hundreds of Facebook pages were shut down without warning. Many of these sites also lost their Twitter accounts on the same day. This is reminiscent of last month’s attack on Alex Jones.

Anyone who disagrees with the establishment is being abruptly silenced.

Zuckerberg and friends are saying that this is so that we can be sure we don’t have election interference in the midterms… but what they’re really doing is interfering in the elections themselves.

They’ve gloated about everything from “featuring Facebook pages that spread disinformation less prominently so that fewer people potentially see them” to [purging] “559 politically oriented pages and 251 accounts, all of American origin, for consistently breaking its rules against “spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

The pages which have been removed or shadowbanned have run the gamut of political philosophies, but the fact is, people like Mark Zuckerberg, the folks at Google, and Jack Dorsey of Twitter are deciding which information gets to be seen. They’re deciding whether something is “disinformation” or truth. They’re deciding if people who have spent years building a following get to still reach the people who opted to follow them.

Because Facebook reaches more than 2 billion people each day, this is a problem of epic proportions.

I believe that it is Facebook itself that is tampering with the election by manipulating what they want people to see. If the alternative media changed everything in the 2016 election due to the availability of more information, Facebook will change future elections due to their manipulation of the information users are allowed to see.

If you are conservative or antiwar or anti-overreaching-government or libertarian, you’re now persona non grata. Even if you aren’t in the minority, you’ll be made to feel like you are in the giant echo chamber of “approved media.” If you support a different candidate than Big Tech, prepare to be marginalized, silenced, and ignored. That holds true whether you opt for anyone other than their “choice.” They WILL control the outcome of the presidential election the next time around.

If you really want to see what election interference looks like, you’re getting a live demonstration right now.

October 18, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The US Meddles In Syria’s Constitutional Reform Process By Threatening Sanctions

By Andrew KORYBKO – Oriental Review – 18/10/2018

The US is threatening to further sanction Syria if Damascus doesn’t make progress in America’s preferred direction during the ongoing constitutional reform process.

The US special representative for Syria James Jeffrey conveyed this intention on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly after his country and a handful of others called upon Staffan de Mistura to report back to them by the end of this month about which of the 50 people he’s supposed to select to participate in Syria’s constitutional committee.

Prior agreements on the creation of this important political mechanism stipulate that the delegates will be chosen from members of the pro-government, domestic opposition, and external opposition factions, and while this is admittedly an ultra-sensitive process, the US and its allies feel that Syria has been dragging its heels on it for far too long and that’s why they want to crank up the pressure on Damascus by threatening more sanctions against it.

The elephant in the room is the issue of so-called “decentralization”, which appears to be the only pragmatic political solution for dealing with the Kurdish-controlled agriculturally and energy-rich northeastern third of the country that’s reported to host around 20 American bases but which President Assad has sworn will return to the central fold by one way or another.

This is becoming ever less realistic to achieve as Russia signaled that it won’t engage in the nuclear brinkmanship that would be needed for supporting Syria’s otherwise futile efforts to evict the US and make this happen, hence why a “compromise” is the only peaceful way for resolving this issue. The US also knows that its Russian, Chinese, and Iranian rivals lack the money needed for rebuilding the liberated areas of Syria, which is why it’s weaponizing reconstruction aid for political purposes.

Pressing home the point of what he wants to see achieved, Jeffrey also hinted at imposing a “no-fly zone” over the Kurdish-controlled northeast and replicating the state of affairs that prevailed in Iraqi Kurdistan from 1991-2003 during which time the US carried out occasional airstrikes to prevent the central government from reasserting its sovereignty in this region. Since the de-facto “partition” of Syria is already a fait accompli at this point, the next goal of the US and its allies is to compete with its rivals over the reconstruction of their respective “spheres of influence” in the country.

Despite it being comparatively easier for the geographically smaller, less populated, and more resource-rich northeast to recover a lot quicker than the rest of Syria, the US hopes that this can serve as a “demonstration effect” for the rest of the country and subsequently be manipulated through infowars and perception management tactics to somehow “delegitimize” the predictably slower efforts of Damascus and its allies in this regard.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Oct 12, 2018

October 18, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

How the FBI Silences Whistleblowers

By John Kiriakou – Consortium News – October 16, 2018

The idea of “whistleblowing” has been in the news a great deal.

Is the anonymous author of a recent New York Times op-ed eviscerating the president a whistleblower?

Is the victim of an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a whistleblower?

I’m fortunate to have access to the media to talk about torture after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s program. I think Ed Snowden, Tom Drake and others would say the same thing about the aftermath of their own whistleblowing.

Cost of Doing the Right Thing

The problem is that we are the exception to the rule. Most whistleblowers either suffer in anonymity or are personally, professionally, socially and financially ruined for speaking truth to power. Darin Jones is one of those people. He’s one of the people silenced in Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers. And he continues to suffer under Donald Trump.

Jones was an FBI supervisory contract specialist who in 2012 reported evidence of serious procurement improprieties to his superior. Jones maintained that Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) had been awarded a $40 million contract improperly because a former FBI official with responsibility for granting the contract then was hired as a consultant at CSC. Jones said, rightly, that this was a violation of the Procurement Integrity Act. He made seven other disclosures alleging financial improprieties in the FBI, and he was promptly fired for his troubles.

Remember, the United States has a Whistleblower Protection Act.  Any federal employee who brings to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety is protected under federal statute.

The FBI didn’t care, though. Jones was a troublemaker. He was talking about his fellow FBI agents. And he had to be silenced.

Immediately upon his firing, Jones appealed. He was not reinstated, however, because he had made his revelation to his supervisor and not to one of the nine people on the FBI leadership-approved list of who could hear a whistleblower complaint. Jones appealed again, beginning a more than four-year odyssey.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is the champion of whistleblowers on Capitol Hill, whether you like his politics or not. Jones contacted Grassley and asked for help. His dismissal was clearly retaliation for his revelations and was illegal, according to the whistleblower protection law. Grassley agreed and wrote three separate letters to then-FBI director James Comey and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. None were answered.

Grassley urged the Justice Department to reinstate Jones, saying that his dismissal was a violation of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2016, which strengthened the original whistleblower protection law. He added that when Yates appeared before his Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearings earlier in the year, she promised “to improve the process for adjudicating claims of retaliation, including expanding the list of persons to whom a protected disclosure may be made.”

She never did that. In fact, Yates ordered the director of the Justice Department’s “Professional Misconduct Review Unit” to write to Jones and to tell him, “The Deputy Attorney General’s review is complete and her decision is final. Your case is no longer pending. You should not expect to receive any future communications that you or any other organization or individuals may submit with regard to your whistleblower reprisal case.” In other words, the official policy of the Justice Department was to ignore the law and to give the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and the whistleblower himself the middle finger.

The FBI’s response was equally bad, albeit predictable. The FBI’s Office of the General Counsel wrote to Jones, “The FBI has advised you that it will not conduct further investigation into your allegations that the FBI removed you from employment because you reported a compliance concern and retaliated against you in violation of applicable whistleblower retaliation protection regulations. The FBI has met its legal obligations and considers this matter closed without any basis for further review or reopening. Please be advised that the FBI will not respond to any additional correspondence or emails related to or arising from the termination of your employment.”

That’s another middle finger.

Note also that the FBI refers to “whistleblower regulations.” It’s not a regulation. It’s a law. And the FBI, too, has to respect and follow the law even when they don’t want to.

End Victimization of Whistleblowers

The bottom line here, though, is that Darin Jones did the right thing.  He did the honorable thing. He did the ethical, legal, and moral thing. And he paid for it with his career.  Like other federal whistleblowers, he’s ruined financially. Friends and family members have walked away from him. He can’t find a job. I can tell you from firsthand experience that the psychological weight of the fallout from whistleblowing is sometimes too much to handle.

Jones’ friends and supporters are creating a GoFundMe campaign to help him through this horrible period.

We also need to keep up the heat on the FBI, the CIA, NSA, TSA, and every other governmental organization that victimizes whistleblowers.

We have to support Chuck Grassley and others on Capitol Hill who are trying to protect whistleblowers.

We have to force our own elected officials to do the same. After all, they work for us.

Our goal should be a simple one. Work hard to ensure that Darin Jones is the last federal whistleblower to be treated this way.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

October 17, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US Will Walk Out of Nuke Treaty Again if Iran Agrees to New Deal – Scholar

Sputnik – 17.10.2018

Six months after Donald Trump announced the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Washington is proposing to sign a new agreement with Tehran.

The US is ready to give “a whole lot” to sign a new treaty with Iran that would take into account all of Washington’s concerns, including Tehran’s missile program, the US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said.

It is not the first time that Washington has invited Iran to conclude a new treaty since it walked out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran.

Tehran insists that it won’t ink a new agreement with the US after Washington’s mistake of withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In his address to the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly in September, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Tehran would agree to negotiate with the US but only if Washington changed its attitude towards the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with Sputnik Persian, Iranian political observer Ali Reza Rezakhah and a Tehran University expert in US affairs, Mohammad Marandi, spoke about the terms on which Tehran would be ready to sign a new accord with Washington.

According to Dr. Rezakhah, signing a new a new agreement with the US made no sense as Washington’s departure from the JCPOA showed everyone that it can’t be trusted.

“Statements alone are not enough, because the US has repeatedly declared its intention of concluding a new treaty with Iran. Singing a new treaty with the United States makes no sense. This is logical too because one can conclude a new agreement only with someone who fulfills his obligations. This means that we need to be confident about what the United States is saying,” Reza Rezakhah said.

He added that there weren’t any guarantees that the US would fulfill its obligations under a new treaty.

“It unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA treaty, violating all its international obligations. Neither Iran nor any other country can agree to sign a treaty with the United States, since they (the United States) do not honor their obligations. When speaking at the UN General Assembly, President Hassan Rouhani stated that Iran is ready to negotiate, provided that the United States takes the first step by adhering to the JCPOA.”

Mohammad Marandi flatly ruled out any new agreement with the US.

“It will not happen. Iran will not sign a new agreement with the United States or re-negotiate with it. With the JCPOA in place, what new agreement can we talk about? If the Americans do not understand this, then they know the Iranians even worse than we could have imagined.”

According to him, by violating the JCPOA the US proved that it can’t live up to its commitments.

“Tomorrow we will conclude an agreement with the United States, and they will walk out of it again. This defies logic,” Dr. Marandi argued.

“Even if Iran agrees to negotiate (a new agreement), the United States will take this as a sign of its pressure having worked and will ramp it up even more,” Marandi continued.

Iran would agree to negotiate with the US only if Washington returns to the JCPOA and negotiates within its framework,” Mohammad Marandi concluded.

In May, President Donald Trump said he was withdrawing the US from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran and promised to impose the “highest level” of sanctions on the country’s energy petrochemical and financial sectors despite objections from Europe as well as Russia and China — the other parties to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Washington has also warned countries to stop buying Iranian oil starting from November 4 and threatened to use sanctions against those who do not.

The first wave of US sanctions on Iran took effect on August 6, targeting the country’s automotive sector, trade in gold, and other vital metals.

The remaining sanctions will come into effect on November 4, targeting Tehran’s energy sector, petroleum-based transactions, and transactions with Iran’s Central Bank.

October 17, 2018 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

American mercenary boasts of role in ‘targeted assassination program’ in Yemen

RT | October 17, 2018

A Hungarian-Israeli security contractor based in the US, Abraham Golan, has claimed he ran a targeted assassination program in Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition currently waging a proxy war against Iran-backed Houthis.

The US is supplying weapons, intelligence, and other support to the coalition, but Golan’s account, as told to BuzzFeed, reads like something out of a spy thriller.

Golan claims the United Arab Emirates (UAE), part of the coalition, hired his mercenary company, Spear Operations Group, to kill specific enemies, including Anssaf Ali Mayo, leader of the Yemeni political party Al-Islah, which the UAE considers a terrorist group. The Mayo assassination was ultimately unsuccessful – Mayo disappeared from Yemeni politics for a while, and the Spear crew even thought he was dead, but he is currently serving in the Yemeni government, alive and well.

The botched assassination of December 29, 2015 is seen by observers from both sides as the opening salvo in a “targeted campaign,” which former UN investigator Gregory Johnsen says eventually took out 25 to 30 members of Al-Islah and other clerics.

Golan claims responsibility for several of the high-profile assassinations in Yemen, though he refuses to share which ones. Not because of remorse – he’s a mercenary, after all – but because his business inhabits a legal gray area, and perhaps because he doesn’t want his professional secrets getting out. Golan is trying to sell his business model to the US military.

Experts have cast doubt on the idea that the US, which essentially armed and trained the UAE’s military from the ground up, didn’t know the UAE had hired Americans to conduct assassinations in a war in which the US is deeply involved. The CIA claimed ignorance of the matter, but one agency official – after categorically denying the government would allow such a thing – confirmed the story, himself shocked that American mercenaries had been allowed to operate “almost like a murder squad.”

The US does enjoy a privileged place within UAE military circles, having sold the Arab nation $27 billion in arms and defense services since 2009. While the US theoretically bars mercenaries from participating in combat, it hires them to do everything else in the military, and one man’s security detail is another man’s firefight.

Private contractors are supposed to be regulated by the State Department, which claims it has never permitted mercenaries to work for another government, and US law forbids any who would “conspire to kill, kidnap, [or] maim” a foreign citizen. But the publication cites multiple sources who claim Spear mercenaries were given military rank by the UAE, providing them legal cover for their actions (US citizens are allowed to serve in foreign militaries, with some exceptions).

BuzzFeed was admittedly unable to verify much of Golan’s biography, which allegedly includes a stint in the French Foreign Legion and friendships with notorious figures like former Mossad head Danny Yatom and Serbian militant Arkan. A CIA acquaintance calls him “prone to exaggeration.” The details of his story – “target cards” handed out with names, photographs, even phone numbers; a Jolly-Roger-esque company flag – are Hollywoodesque.

Golan supposedly offered the UAE his company’s services as targeted assassins, explicitly tasked to “disrupt and destruct” Al-Islah. On top of $1.5 million a month, they would receive kill bonuses and train UAE soldiers. He claims to have declined missions targeting individuals outside the party, but those claims are unverified, and his partner admits that some targets may have simply been enemies of the UAE’s ruling family.

However much truth there may be to Golan’s tale, it illuminates the consequences of War on Terror mission creep – an overabundance of highly-trained special forces, lax oversight regarding war crimes and international law, an increasingly privatized fighting force, and the notion that enemy combatants are anyone a government deems them to be mean Spear’s business model could strike US commanders’ fancy after all.

October 17, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Diplomatic Deadlock: Can U.S.-North Korea Talks Survive Maximum Pressure?

By Gregory Elich | Counterpunch | October 16, 2018

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s meeting with North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un on September 18-20 culminated in the signing of the Pyongyang Declaration, which marked a significant advance towards peace and heralded a welcome warming in relations. Since that time, however, contradictions within the Trump administration’s North Korea policy threaten to forestall further progress and test the patience of its South Korean ally.

Among the measures outlined in the Pyongyang Declaration, the two sides agreed to “expand the cessation of military hostility in regions of confrontation such as the DMZ,” with the goal of removing the danger of war “across the entire Korean Peninsula.” [1] North and South Korea quickly moved to begin to implement the plan, shutting down some border guard posts and initiating the removal of landmines from the Joint Security Area. Plans are also afoot to establish a no-fly zone over the DMZ, and communication procedures are being established to prevent armed clashes.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, the formal name for North Korea) committed to dismantling its missile launch platform and test site “under the observation of experts from relevant countries.” North Korea promised that it would “take additional measures, such as the permanent dismantlement of the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, as the United States takes corresponding measures in accordance with the spirit of the June 12 U.S.-DPRK Joint Statement.” [2]

For a majority of Koreans on both sides of the border and in the diaspora, the Pyongyang Declaration was an encouraging development on the path to peace and reconciliation. The mood in Washington, though, was far from celebratory.

Livid over South Korean plans to establish a no-fly zone and demilitarize the inter-Korean border, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo phoned South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha before the Moon-Kim summit and harangued her, accusing her of not knowing what she was doing. Korean media suggest that Pompeo used foul language in expressing his displeasure to Kang. Pompeo was particularly upset at not being briefed beforehand. A second call to Kang later in the day was more conciliatory, after Pompeo had learned that the South Korean government had informed U.S. officials, but no one within the Trump administration had bothered to notify him. [3]

Alarmed at the prospect of an improvement in relations between the two Koreas, as soon as the summit was over the U.S. Treasury Department emailed several South Korean banks and warned them not to engage in business with North Korea. It also conducted conference calls with Korean banks on two consecutive days to drive home its point. The Treasury Department said it was aware of inter-Korean discussions on plans for joint economic projects and asked the banks if they had any plans to proceed. It emphasized that U.S. and UN sanctions remain in force, and warned that the banks risked incurring secondary sanctions. [4]

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Hyung-wha fed American fears that its South Korean ally was not behaving in a sufficiently subservient manner when she told the National Assembly that a review of the sanctions that former president Lee Myung-bak had imposed on North Korea “is underway.” She noted that since the majority of the sanctions overlapped with those of the UN, this would not necessarily mean a “substantive” change was in the cards, and this was a matter “to be reviewed in comprehensive consideration of South-North relations.” [5]

As mild and conditional as Kang’s remarks were, Washington’s reaction was swift and insulting. “They won’t do that without our approval,” Trump said. “They do nothing without our approval.” Trump’s blunt language was revealing. In Washington’s mindset, the alliance with South Korea is a master-servant relationship. Although many Koreans were rightly offended at the language dismissing South Korean sovereignty, the government’s response was overly obsequious. Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon was quick to correct the impression left by Kang’s remarks, promising that “no detailed review has been made,” and asserted that his government’s position is that it is too early to discuss easing sanctions. [6]

At the same time, Moon sought to assuage worries in Washington that the threat of peace on the Korean Peninsula would not mean an end to the U.S.-South Korean military relationship. “I will further strengthen the Republic of Korea Navy so that it may go beyond the Korean Peninsula and contribute to peace in Northeast Asia and the entire world,” he announced at an international naval review at Jeju Island. [7] Moon’s meaning was clear: South Korea can be counted on to meet U.S. expectations that it play a more significant role in U.S. military operations outside of the Korean Peninsula.

The current impasse in U.S.-North Korea negotiations is due entirely to Washington’s expectation that North Korea complete nuclear disarmament in exchange for nothing more than vague promises of future improved relations. North Korea experienced the annihilation of all of its towns and cities by U.S. bombers during the Korean War and in the decades since then the U.S. has regularly conducted military exercises rehearsing a repeat attack. The fate of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya presented North Korea with the vivid object lesson that a small nation relying on conventional forces alone is virtually defenseless against the world’s foremost military power.

By the time it announced a freeze on nuclear weapons and ballistic missile testing, North Korea had nearly completed development of its nuclear weapons program, lacking only final testing of a reentry vehicle. By placing his nuclear weapons program on the table, Kim Jong-un is engaging in a sort of high-wire act in international relations without the benefit of a safety net. He is gambling that reciprocal measures by the United States will ensure his nation’s security, negating the need for a nuclear deterrent. In that context, the Washington establishment could not be more mistaken in its firm belief that North Korean disarmament is achievable through sanctions alone. North Korea has security concerns that must be taken into consideration.

We are often told that North Korea’s failure to provide the United States with a complete list of its nuclear materials and facilities is proof that it is “not serious” about nuclear disarmament. Unmentioned is that once North Korea produces such a list, U.S. military planners would be able to plot the bombing coordinates of each facility. From a North Korean perspective, this step is suitable for a later stage in negotiations, during which the United States is providing compensating security assurances. It is an unreasonable upfront demand.

The standard narrative in the U.S. media is that the mere act of talking with North Korea is an excessive concession and it is now up to the DPRK to unilaterally disarm. A report by CNN in the days leading up to the Singapore Summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un was a typical expression of that mindset. The report claimed that Kim Jong-un would “achieve the longstanding dream of his family dynasty – a face-to-face meeting with a sitting U.S. president.” [8] The not so subtle implication was that basking in the glorious presence of a U.S. leader is reward enough for anyone. This, CNN’s headline misinforms us, is Kim’s “ultimate aim.” That such wrong-headed concepts persist in the U.S. media and Washington think tanks is indicative of the narrow and willfully blind perspective that also infects the Trump administration.

After the Pyongyang summit, Moon Jae-in travelled to the United States to act as an intermediary in hopes of getting negotiations back on track. Combat in the Korean War came to a halt with the signing of an armistice agreement in 1953, and the original plan to follow that up with a peace treaty never materialized. The DPRK regards the long overdue signing of a peace treaty as one leg in a comprehensive security arrangement; perhaps not the most reliable component, in that a treaty would do nothing to deter the United States from launching an attack if it chose to do so. Nevertheless, the entire Washington establishment is adamantly opposed to a peace treaty, fearing that it might encourage the Korean people to demand the closure of U.S. bases and put at risk an important geostrategic position in the military encirclement of China. The fear is without basis, because nowhere is the presence of U.S. bases predicated on the wishes of the people in host nations. For that matter, Moon has offered repeated assurances that U.S. forces are in Korea to stay.

Kim suggested to Moon that if the United States were willing to adopt a corresponding measure, North Korea would shut down its Yongbyon nuclear facility. It was a significant proposal, which all too predictably met with a dismissive response from Washington. “Nothing can happen in the absence of denuclearization,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert declared. “Denuclearization has to come first.” [9]

Moon is keen on trying to change that narrative so that progress can resume. “It all comes down to whether the U.S. is ready to provide corresponding measures in a swift way,” he said in an interview on Fox News. “The U.S. promised to end hostile relations with North Korea to provide security guarantees and work toward new U.S.-North Korea relations – these actions need to be taken in parallel.” [10]

But when it came to specifics, Moon suggested essentially meaningless measures, such as a political declaration on the end of the Korean War rather than a peace treaty, the provision of humanitarian aid, and art performance exchanges. [11] “When we are talking about corresponding measures, it doesn’t necessarily mean relaxing economic sanctions,” Moon added. Worse yet, the White House issued a statement after the meeting, announcing that “the two leaders agreed on the importance of maintaining vigorous enforcement of existing sanctions.” [12]

The emptiness of Moon’s suggestions, coupled with the unfortunate call for maintaining strong sanctions on North Korea, could be interpreted as a tacit admission that nothing more can be expected from the Trump administration. Moon may be hoping that in the interests of peace, North Korea will settle for nearly worthless diplomatic trinkets. Or perhaps he is hoping that any concession from the United States, no matter how minor, would establish a starting point from which something more substantial could develop.

However, in discussions with Moon, Chairman Kim was quite clear about what he is looking for from the United States. Quite rationally, the corresponding measures he is seeking for nuclear disarmament are security guarantees and progress towards normalization of relations. [13]

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on September 29, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho announced that his government’s commitment to the Singapore Declaration signed by Trump and Kim “is unwavering.” However, denuclearization “should also be realized along with building a peace regime under the principle of simultaneous actions, step-by-step, starting with what we can do and giving priority to trust-building.” Ri noted that the U.S. reliance on “coercive methods” is “lethal to trust-building.” [14]

It appears to have eluded general attention that even if the Trump administration agrees to reciprocate, there is a decided imbalance in actions. North Korea would abandon its nuclear deterrent, the only solid assurance it currently has against attack. For its part, the United States would not relinquish anything. Agreeing to an objective statement of fact, that combat in the Korean War ended decades ago, imposes no obligations on the United States. Aside from that, corresponding measures from the U.S. side would entail reducing and eventually eliminating the amount of punishment it inflicts on the North Korean people. The United States loses nothing in dropping sanctions and no longer pressuring other nations to isolate the DPRK. Meanwhile, the U.S. military would remain firmly ensconced on the Korean Peninsula in close proximity to China, and efforts would continue to integrate the South Korean military in U.S. strategic planning.

The Trump administration has yet to concede a need to offer North Korea anything in exchange for disarmament. What it has provided instead is to pile more sanctions on the beleaguered North Korean people. “Maximum pressure” must continue, we are repeatedly told, to encourage North Korea to negotiate. Somehow the point seems to be missed that North Korea is negotiating. Moreover, it is not the DPRK that has been recalcitrant in recent years. Throughout the eight years of the Obama administration and Trump’s first year, North Korea regularly reached out to the United States and asked for negotiations, only to be rebuffed each time. If the rationale for maintaining sanctions is to encourage cooperation and dialogue, then the more appropriate target for sanctions would appear to be the United States. It was only Kim Jong-un’s major unilateral concessions this year, backed by Moon Jae-in’s openness to dialogue, that brought about a diplomatic opening.

The Trump administration is ratcheting up pressure on North Korea. The U.S. Department of Treasury regularly adds new sanctions on North Korea, and early this month a U.S. official visited Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand to emphasize the importance of the “DPRK pressure campaign” and “the need for full implementation” of UN sanctions. [15]

The Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign even extends to shutting down humanitarian projects. UN sanctions on the DPRK aim at imposing near-total economic isolation and dislocation, inevitably producing severe hardship for ordinary citizens. Humanitarian organizations provide the only external support to partially offset the deprivation imposed by sanctions.

Applications from several NGOs to visit North Korea have been repeatedly turned down by the U.S. State Department. “The denials are pretty much across the board,” revealed one source. “It really is unthinkable… and very, very disturbing.” Behind-the-scenes pressure from the U.S. government was a factor in the Global Fund deciding to shut down its healthcare programs in North Korea. A statement issued by Keith Luse, executive director of the National Committee on North Korea, observed, “It has become clear that the Trump administration regards the provision of humanitarian assistance to the North Korean people as a legitimate target for its maximum pressure campaign. Indeed, a line has been crossed.” [16]

South Korean Health Minister Park Neung-hoo told the National Assembly that the United States was preventing his nation from supplying medical aid to the DPRK. Although his ministry wished to provide medicine, “We are only at a preparatory stage due to various international restrictions.” Later in the session, concerned that his remarks may be construed as being critical of the U.S., he asked to have his remarks deleted from the record and pointed out that the U.S. “is blocking not just medical aid, but generally everything.” [17]

Opposition to Washington’s intransigence on sanctions is starting to stiffen. Chinese and Russian foreign ministers quarreled with Pompeo at the UN Security Council on September 27, as they advocated a gradual easing of sanctions while denuclearization proceeds. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov proposed that the UN permit exemptions on joint economic projects with the DPRK, to send a positive signal. “Negotiations are a two-way street,” he pointed out, adding that tightening sanctions while the situation is improving is illogical. [18] With veto authority in the UN Security Council, however, the U.S. is in a position to ignore Chinese and Russian pleas for reasonableness.

North Korean, Chinese, and Russian foreign ministry officials met in Moscow on October 9, to coordinate policy on denuclearization. The three sides issued a joint press release which stated that issues on the Korean Peninsula should be resolved in a peaceful and diplomatic manner. Denuclearization “should be of a step-by-step and synchronized character and accompanied by reciprocal steps of the involved states.” Along those lines, “the UN Security Council should start in due time revising the sanctions against North Korea,” the statement declared. [19]

In an apparent and welcome challenge to Washington’s maximum pressure campaign, South and North Korea agreed on October 15 to reconnect rail and road links between the two nations. Onsite rail surveys are scheduled to take place around the end of the month, and groundbreaking ceremonies are planned for about a month later. [20] The Trump administration wasted little time in making its displeasure known, and that same day a State Department spokesperson reiterated the position that “improvement in relations between North and South Korea cannot advance separately from resolving North Korea’s nuclear program.” Sanctions will remain in place until nuclear disarmament has been completed. “We expect all member states to fully implement UN sanctions.” [21]

Last August the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, acting in his role as head of the UN Command, blocked an inter-Korean joint rail inspection project. The State Department spokesperson’s message clearly indicated that Washington’s position had not shifted in the meantime, and the U.S. would not allow the two Koreas to carry out the agreement they had signed with each other.

Seeking to shore up what it perceived as wavering support for its policy of unremitting opposition to genuine diplomacy, and in the light of Moon’s visit to France to seek support for his more flexible approach, Washington announced that it would dispatch envoy Stephen Biegun to France, Belgium, and Russia to discuss relations with North Korea. [22]

The October 15 inter-Korean agreement may prove to be a test case for South Korea. Is it willing to behave as a sovereign nation and act in its interests, or will it cave in once again to Washington’s demands? The enormous economic power of the United States, however, gives it the ability to impose harsh discipline if a small nation such as South Korea fails to take orders.

Following Mike Pompeo’s recent trip to Pyongyang, diplomacy of a sort has returned to the agenda, and a summit between Kim and Trump is anticipated to occur by the end of the year. The essential sticking point remains unresolved, however. Washington perceives talks as a surrender mechanism, whereas the DPRK is looking for normal diplomatic give-and-take. There is no bridging the two concepts. The conventional view of diplomacy in Washington is that cooperation is a sign of weakness, and results can be produced through punishment alone. It is to be hoped that in time the Trump administration will come to recognize the futility of that approach and heed the advice of its international partners and seize the diplomatic opening offered by the two Koreas. The United States has nothing to lose from engaging in genuine diplomacy, and the peoples of Northeast Asia much to gain.

[1] “[Full Text] Pyongyang Declaration,” Korea Times, September 19, 2018.

[2] “[Full Text] Pyongyang Declaration,” Korea Times, September 19, 2018.

[3] Yoo Kang-moon and Kim Ji-eun, “S. Korean Foreign Minister Admits Pompeo Expressed Displeasure with Inter-Korean Military Agreement,” Hankyoreh, October 11, 2018.

“South Korea Says Pompeo Complained About Inter-Korean Military Pact,” Reuters, October 10, 2018.

Oh Young-jin, “Did Pompeo Curse Minister Kang?” Korea Times, October 11, 2018.

Kim Jin-myung, “Pompeo ‘Protested Against Seoul’s Agreements with N.Korea’,” Chosun Ilbo, October 11, 2018.

[4] “U.S. Calls on S. Korean Banks to Comply with Sanctions on N. Korea, Yonhap, October 12, 2018.

“US Urges S.Korean Banks to Obey Sanctions on N. Korea,” Menafn, October 13, 2018.

“US Treasury Asks S. Korean Banks to Follow UN Sanctions Just After Pyongyang Summit,” Hankyoreh, October 13, 2018.

“Unusual Warning,” Korea Herald, October 14, 2018.

[5] Lee Chi-dong, “Minister: S. Korea Mulls Lifting Sanctions on N. Korea,” Yonhap, October 10, 2018.

[6] “Unification Minister Says Seoul Not Considering Lifting  N. Korea Sanctions,” Yonhap, October 11, 2018.

[7] “Moon Says Two Koreas Will Reach Complete Disarmament,” Yonhap, October 11, 2018.

[8] Ben Westcott, “Why Meeting a US President is the Ultimate Aim of the Kim Family,” CNN, June 7, 2018.

[9] “U.S. Dismisses N. Korea’s Conditional Offer to Dismantle Nuclear Site,” Yonhap, September 21, 2018.

[10] Kim Bo-eun, “Korean War May be Declared Over This Year,” Korea Times, September 26, 2018.

[11] Kang Jin-kyu, “Moon Says U.S. Has ‘Nothing to Lose’ from Talks,” JoongAng Ilbo, September 26, 2018.

[12] “Readout of President Donald J. Trump’s Meeting with President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea,” Whitehouse.gov, September 24, 2018.

[13] “Moon, Trump to Coordinate 2nd U.S.-N.K. Summit: White House,” Yonhap, September 25, 2018.

[14] “N. Korea Says ‘No Way’ It Will Denuclearize Without Trust in U.S.,” Yonhap, September 30, 2018.

[15] Hamish Macdonald, “U.S. Official to Discuss Continued Pressure on North Korea in Southeast Asia,” NK News, October 9, 2018.

Media Note, “Assistant Secretary Christopher A. Ford Travels to Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand,” U.S. Department of State, October 8, 2018.

[16] Keith Luse, “”Maximum Pressure Could End U.S. Humanitarian Assistance to North Koreans,” The National Committee on North Korea, October 11, 2018.

Chad O’Carroll, “U.S. NGOs Being Blocked from Humanitarian Work in N. Korea, Sources Say,” NK News, Ocvtober 12, 2018.

[17] Kim So-hyun, “US Blocking Medical Aid to North Korea: Health Minister,” Korea Herald, October 12, 2018.

[18] Jessica Donati, “U.S., Russia Clash at U.N. as Lavrov Calls for Easing of North Korea Sanctions,” Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2018.

“Moscow Urges Lifting of Unilateral Sanctions Against North Korea,” September 27, 2018.

“China and Russia Call for Easing of North Korea Sanctions,” Channel News Asia, September 27, 2018.

[19] “Russia, China, North Korea Call for Review of Sanctions Against Pyongyang,” TASS, October 10, 2018.

“Joint Press Release of DPRK-Russia-China Negotiations Made Public,” KCNA, October 11, 2018.

[20] Hyonhee Shin, “North, South Korea Agree to Reconnect Roads, Rail Amid U.S. Concern Over Easing Sanctions,” Reuters, October 15, 2018.

Jung Min-kyung, “Koreas Agree to Start Railway, Road Work by Dec.,” Korea Herald, October 15, 2018.

“Koreas to Break Ground for Railway, Road Connection Late Nov. or Early Dec.,” Yonhap, October 15, 2018.

[21] “U.S. Calls for Sanctions Implementation Following Inter-Korean Agreement,” Yonhap, October 16, 2018.

[22] Matthew Pennington, “US Envoy for North Korea to Hold Talks in Russia, France, Belgium,” Associated Press, October 15, 2018.

October 16, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

Why Liberal Jews in Israel and the US have made Lara Alqasem a Cause Celebre

By Jonathan Cook | The National | October 15, 2018

An American student of Palestinian descent detained in Israel’s airport for nearly a fortnight has become an unexpected cause celebre. Lara Alqasem was refused entry under legislation passed last year against boycott activists, and Israeli courts are now deciding whether allowing her to study human rights at an Israeli university threatens public order.

Usually those held at the border are swiftly deported, but Ms Alqasem appealed against the decision, becoming in the process an improbable “prisoner of conscience” for the boycott cause.

The Israeli government, led by strategic affairs minister Gilad Erdan, claims that the 22-year-old is a leader of the growing international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. Activists like Ms Alqasem, he argues, demonise Israel.

Two lower courts have already ruled against the student. Israel’s supreme court has postponed her deportation until Wednesday while it reconsiders the evidence. But refusing to go quietly, Ms Alqasem is attracting increasing international attention to her plight.

So far Israeli officials have shown only that Ms Alqasem once belonged to a small Palestinian solidarity group at a Florida university that backed boycotting a hummus company over its donations to the Israeli army.

Under pressure, Ms Alqasem has disavowed a boycott of Israel, citing as proof her decision to enroll in a masters programme in Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Given the blanket hostility in Israel to the boycott movement, Ms Alqasem has found a surprisingly wide array of allies in her legal struggle.

Members of the small Zionist-left Meretz party visited her and demanded she be allowed to attend the course, which began on Sunday.

Ami Ayalon, a retired head of the Shin Bet, the secret police that oversees security checks at Israel’s borders, warned that the agency was now “a problem for democracy” in repeatedly denying foreigners entry.

Vice-chancellors of eight Israeli universities sent a letter of protest to the government and 500 academics at Hebrew University submitted a petition decrying Ms Alqasem’s incarceration.

The solidarity has been unprecedented – and perplexing.

Israeli officials control entry not only to Israel but also to the occupied Palestinian territories. For decades, foreigners with Arab-sounding names – like Ms Alqasem – have been routinely harassed or turned back at the borders, with barely a peep from most on the Israeli left.

And over the same period, Israel has stripped many thousands of Palestinians from the occupied territories of the right to return to their homeland after living abroad. These abuses, too, have rarely troubled consciences in Israel.

So what makes Ms Alqasem’s case different? The answer confers little credit on liberal Israelis.

Israel’s universities are worried that the academic boycott has highlighted their long-term complicity in Israel’s occupation and is gradually eroding their international standing. Joint research projects with foreign universities are in jeopardy, as is their lucrative income from programmes they wish to expand for overseas students.

The universities want to co-opt Ms Alqasem as a poster girl for academic freedom in Israel.

They hope she will provide cover for their guilty secret: that they have stood by, or actively assisted, as Israel made a mockery of academic freedom for Palestinians under occupation. Research shows that Israel’s universities have strong ties to the nation’s military, which regularly attacks Palestinian places of learning and limits Palestinians’ freedom to study by enforcing strict movement restrictions.

Jewish liberals in Israel and the US, meanwhile, are concerned at the entrenchment of the Israeli far-right’s rule. In recent weeks, a wave of Israeli and American Jewish activists have been detained and questioned at the border over their politics.

Those liberals desperately need to draw a red line, halting the expansion of racial profiling into political forms of profiling that undermine their own status. If the courts uphold the fundamental rights of Ms Alqasem, their own rights will be more secure too.

That was why progressive Jewish leaders in the US added their own voices last week, signing a petition calling for Ms Alqasem to be allowed to study in Israel.

But the case has shone a light not only on the self-interested opportunism of Israeli liberals but also on the hypocrisy of leaders of progressive American Jewish communities.

Ms Alqasem was identified as a boycott activist via a McCarthyite website called Canary Mission, which has murky ties to the Israeli government.

Since it launched in 2014 under the slogan “If you’re racist, the world should know”, the site has built an online database profiling thousands of US academics and students, including Jewish ones, critical of Israel.

Its aim is to terrify US academia into silence on Israel. The site explicitly threatens to send letters to prospective employers accusing its targets – those who show solidarity with Palestinians – of being antisemitic.

Until recently, this blacklist had passed largely unremarked outside pro-Palestinian circles. But since its role in helping Israeli officials bar Jewish and non-Jewish activists became clear, interest in its provenance has grown.

This month the Forward, an American Jewish publication, unmasked several of Canary Mission’s major donors. They include the communal funds of Jewish federations representing liberal communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The trail leads back to a shadowy registered charity in Israel called Megamot Shalom, which aims to “protect the image of the state of Israel”.

Simone Zimmerman, an American Jewish peace activist who was detained at the border by Israeli officials in August, lamented that the American Jewish establishment’s secret support for Canary Mission “reeks of hypocrisy and betrayal”.

Supposedly liberal Jewish institutions in Israel and the US wish to be seen battling racism and aiding good causes, including the rights of a Palestinian-American student after she repudiated a boycott of Israel.

But covertly they support and finance projects intended to silence criticism of Israel and enforce the oppression of Palestinians they say they want to help.

Ms Alqasem has been turned into a pawn in the struggle between Jewish liberals and Israeli ultra-nationalists. Israel’s continuing violations of the wider rights of Palestinians – to enter and freely move around their homeland, and to receive an education – are simply not part of the discussion.

October 16, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pandering to Israel

Time to cut the tie that binds

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 16, 2018

The ability of Israel and its powerful Lobby to control many aspects of American government while also sustaining an essentially false narrative about the alleged virtues of the Jewish State is remarkable. Politicians and journalists learned long ago that it was better to cultivate Israel’s friends than it was to support actual American interests. They also discovered to speak the truth about the Jewish State often would prove to be a death sentence career-wise, witness the experiences of Cynthia McKinney, Paul Findlay, William Fulbright, Chuck Percy, James Traficant, Pete McCloskey and Rick Sanchez.

More recently, we have seen the ascent to real political power on the part of a number of politicians whose pandering to Israel has been notorious, indicating that the path to the White House goes through Tel Aviv and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) offices on H Street in the District of Columbia. Nikki Haley, who recently resigned as United Nations Ambassador, gained national attention when she became the first state governor to sign off on laws that would punish supporters of the non-violent BDS movement. Subsequently, as ambassador, she became noted for her impassioned defense of Israel, to include complaining that “nowhere has the U.N.’s failure been more consistent and more outrageous than in its bias against our close ally Israel.” She vowed that the “days of Israel bashing are over” and is now being groomed by the neocons as a possible presidential candidate for 2020. Whichever way it goes, she will be showered with money by Israel supporters as she finds her perch in the private sector, like others before her doing “work” that she does not understand while also making speeches about the importance of the Israeli relationship.

All of that said, one of the truly odd aspects of the Israeli/Jewish dominance is its ability to change the United States. Normally, a tiny client state attached to a great power would conform to its patron, but in the U.S.-Israel relationship the reverse has happened. When 9/11 occurred Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pleased, commenting that the attack would tie the United States more closely to Israel in its war against “terrorism,” which to him meant his Islamic neighbors in the Middle East. Since that time, the bilateral “special” relationship has conformed to what Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer observed in their groundbreaking book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” namely that the United States does things in the Middle East that cannot be attributed to national interest. Rather, Washington behaves in a certain way due to the power of Israel and its lobby. There is no other way to explain it.

The emergence of Israeli practices as models to be adopted by U.S. agencies has occurred, to be sure, to include Israeli training of American policemen and soldiers in their “methods,” but the odd thing is that as Israel has lurched to the right and embraced political extremism under Netanyahu, the United States has done the same thing, curtailing civil liberties with the Patriot Acts, the Military Commissions Act, and various updates of the Authorization to Use Military Force. Indefinite detention without trial and assassination of citizens overseas is now acceptable in America and criticizing Israel could soon become a criminal offense in spite of the First Amendment. In short, the United States of America has become more like Israel rather than vice versa.

With one or two exceptions, there is no one in the United States government, elected or civil service, who has anything that is not wonderful to say about Israel in spite of the numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by Netanyahu nearly daily, the unfunded costs of the wars fought in part on behalf of Israel, and the thousands of dead American soldiers plus the hundreds of thousands of dead foreigners, nearly all Muslims. Indeed, Netanyahu is treated like a conquering hero, having received 23 standing ovations from Congress in 2015 when he was in the United States complaining about an agreement with Iran made by President Barack Obama. This inside the beltway approval of Israel contrasts sharply with the general view of the rest of the world, which sees both the U.S. and Israel negatively as the two nations most likely to start a new war.

There are several recent articles that demonstrate pretty clearly the danger in allowing Israel and its friends to have the power and access that they currently enjoy purely because government and the media make no effort to tell them “no” and rein them in. One comes from New Zealand where two women wrote a letter to the pop singer Lorde, urging her to cancel an appearance in Israel due to the treatment of the Palestinians. Lorde posted the letter on twitter, agreed and the trip was canceled.

The tale would have ended there but for the fact that Israel’s parliament the Knesset has passed a law now making it illegal to support a boycott of Israel ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD [my emphasis]. Enter the group called Shurat HaDin, which is an Israeli government supported lawfare instrument, that seeks to find and sue the perceived enemies of the Jewish state, punishing them through court costs and potentially bankruptcy.

The lawsuit argued that Lorde’s response on twitter after receiving the letter showed her decision was directly influenced by the New Zealand women’s plea. Three Israeli ticket holders filed the suit, claiming the cancellation had caused emotional distress. The Israeli court awarded damages of $12,000 dollars and their lawyer, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of Shurat HaDin, boasted that the verdict was “precedent-setting,” sending a message that “no one can boycott Israel without paying for it.” Israeli government agents in New Zealand are taking steps to obtain the money, even though it remains unclear whether the plaintiffs will be able to collect the cash. Darshan-Leitner explained that she will seek to enforce the judgment through “international treaties” and go after the women’s bank accounts, either in New Zealand or if they try to travel abroad. Even if she is unsuccessful, the lawsuits will have a chilling effect on any individual or group seeking to criticize Israel’s brutal behavior by endorsing what once were perfectly legal boycotts.

A second story is possibly even more bizarre. On October 10th, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that “Israel is everything we want the entire Middle East to look like going forward” while asserting that the bilateral relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv is “stronger than ever.” Pompeo was keynote speaker at an award ceremony hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America in Washington D.C. He also hailed Israel as “democratic and prosperous,” adding “it desires peace, it is a home to a free press and a thriving economy.”

Pompeo also mentioned Iran, condemning the latter’s “corrupt leaders [who] assault the human rights of their own people and finance terrorism in every corner of the Middle East”. He also announced to a cheering audience that he had that same day denied a $165 million transfer of aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) because of the PA’s “funding of terror.” Pompeo was referring to the PA’s refusal to comply with Washington’s demands that it end the so-called “martyr payments” to the families of those killed or imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.

Pompeo, together with National Security Advisor John Bolton, has been the driving force behind punishing the Iranians and Palestinians. Like others in Washington, he understands that success inside the beltway is best guaranteed by binding oneself as closely to Israel as possible. Pompeo certainly knows that Israel is not democratic, does not desire peace and is itself a major source of terrorism. Its government is corrupt, witness the current trial of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife as well as the charges pending against the prime minister himself. A number of Israeli leaders have wound up in jail in the past few years. To describe Israel as a model for the entire Middle East is absurd, but, then again, Pompeo was speaking in front of the Jewish Institute for National Security and presumably intended to suck up to his wealthy and politically powerful audience.

How does Israel maintain its control over American politicians? First of all, no politician who wants to get reelected can risk even the mildest criticism of the Jewish state. Anyone who does so will be pilloried in the media before finding him or herself confronted by an extremely well-funded opponent who will oust them from office. And anyone who even suggests that the Palestinians are human beings that are being severely punished by a powerful Israel had best watch his or her back. On October 8th Congressman Eliot Engel of New York spoke regarding liberal Democrat rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and three other liberals seeking congressional seats next month, all of whom have expressed sympathy for the Palestinians while also criticizing Israel’s heavy handed repression.

Engel told a New York synagogue gathering that had been organized and promoted by AIPAC that all Democrats “need to be educated” in support of Israel. “We are going to continue to work in Congress to make sure that we have overwhelming support for Israel on both sides of the aisle… I am certainly cognizant of the fact that people who are coming in as far as I’m concerned on the Democratic side, will be educated and need to be educated. But we have overwhelming support for Israel in the Congress. And… it will continue that way. We will maintain it that way.”

So, maintaining “overwhelming support” for Israel requires doing whatever is necessary, be it fair or foul, and many Jews and Jewish organizations worldwide, like Engel, are prepared to place alleged Israeli interests ahead of those of the countries where they actually reside. In America, Jewish groups and individuals have succeeded in buying politicians and using their money and control over much of the media to corrupt the entire political system to benefit Israel.

Israel should be judged by how it behaves, not by how well it buys favor among morally challenged politicians and media shills. Nor should it be seen favorably as it engages, threatens and destroys critics. When private citizens cannot write a letter to an entertainer without risk of being sued, deference to perpetual Israeli victimhood has gone way too far. When an intelligent man like Mike Pompeo finds it in his interest to say something transparently stupid in praise of Israel, something which he knows to be the reverse of the truth, the corruption of our elites becomes clear even to those who choose to remain blind to it. When a candidate for national office has to be “educated” by Jewish politicians to say the right things about Israel it smacks of Stalinism.

We Americans don’t need any more of this nonsense, which is inter alia destroying our liberties. It is largely driven by the guilt laden “holocaust hucksterism,” as Norman Finkelstein has termed it, that has been giving Israel a free pass for seventy years. It is time for a change in thinking about how we view our “good friend and ally” Israel, a country that is neither. It is time for government to do what is best for Americans, not for Israelis.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

October 16, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Angered By Saudi Plan to Purchase Russian S-400, Trump Admin Exploiting Khashoggi Disappearance to Force Saudis to “Buy American”

By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | October 15, 2018

ISTANBUL — The disappearance and alleged murder of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi continues to strain relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia. On Saturday, President Donald Trump warned the Saudis of “severe punishment” if the Saudi government was found to have been responsible for the journalist’s alleged murder.

The Saudi government has vocally denied any involvement even though Khashoggi disappeared within the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and responded to Trump’s threats by vowing an even “stronger” response if the Gulf monarchy is ultimately targeted by the United States. The exchange of threats caused Saudi stocks to sustain their biggest one-day loss since 2016 when trading opened and has brought the upcoming three-day Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Saudi Arabia much unwanted negative publicity.

However, there is considerable evidence pointing to the fact that the U.S.’ response to the Khashoggi affair is likely to be determined, not by any Saudi government responsibility for Khashoggi’s fate, but instead whether or not the Saudis choose to follow through with their promise to purchase the $15 billion U.S.-made THAAD missile system or its cheaper, Russia-made equivalent, the S-400. According to reports, the Saudis failed to meet the deadline for their planned THAAD purchase and had hinted in late September that they were planning to buy the S-400 from Russia instead.

While the U.S.’ response to the alleged murder of the Saudi journalist is being cast as a U.S. government effort to defend press freedom and finally hold the Saudi government to account for its long litany of human-rights abuses, there is every indication that the U.S. is not in fact seeking to punish the Saudis for their alleged role in Khashoggi’s apparent murder but instead to punish them for reneging on this $15 billion deal to U.S. weapons giant Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the THAAD system.

Khashoggi’s disappearance merely provided a convenient pretext for the U.S. to pressure the Saudis over abandoning the weapons deal by allowing the U.S. to frame its retaliation as a “human rights” issue. As a result, it seems likely that, if the Saudis move forward with the latter, the U.S. and the Trump administration  the Saudi government guilty of involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance while, if they move forward with the former, the media frenzy and controversy surrounding the Saudi national will likely fizzle out and, with it, Trump’s threats of “severe punishment.”

Ultimately, the response of the U.S. political class to the Khashoggi affair is just the latest example of a U.S. government policy being motivated by the military-industrial complex but masquerading as a policy motivated by concern for “human rights.”

Why the sudden concern over the Saudi government’s atrocious human rights record?

As the Khashoggi saga has drawn on since the Saudi journalist disappeared earlier this month, some observers have noted that the corporate media and the U.S. government’s sudden preoccupation with Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record, particularly in regards to journalists. Indeed, just last Wednesday, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced that 15 Saudi journalists and bloggers had been arrested over the past year and noted that “in most cases, their arrests have never been officially confirmed and no official has ever said where they are being held or what they are charged with.”

In addition, Saudi Arabia has helped kill tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians in the war it is leading against that country, with most of those civilian casualties resulting from the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign that routinely targets civilians. The Saudi-led coalition’s blockade of food and medicine into Yemen has also brought the country to the brink of famine, with nearly 18 million now at risk of starving to death — including over 5 million children, while thousands more are dying from preventable diseases in the country.

While murdering a journalist by “hit squad” in a diplomatic compound on foreign soil — as is alleged to have Khashoggi’s fate — would certainly set a dangerous precedent, Saudi Arabia leading the genocide against the Yemeni people is arguably a much worse precedent.  However, little concern over the Saudis’ role in this atrocity in Yemen has been raised by those pushing for action to be taken against Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi’s “inhumane” fate. So, why the sudden concern?

Despite it being a well-known fact that the Saudi government routinely imprisons journalists and activists and is leading a genocidal war against its southern neighbor, the Trump administration has now adopted a harsh tone towards the Saudis, with concerns over Khashoggi’s disappearance serving as the “official” excuse.

Indeed, Trump told CBS’ 60 Minutes during an interview broadcast on Sunday that “there’s something really terrible and disgusting about that if that were the case [that Saudi Arabia had been involved in Khashoggi’s murder], so we’re going to have to see. We’re going to get to the bottom of it and there will be severe punishment.”

Other powerful figures in the U.S. political establishment have called for dramatic action to be taken against the Saudi government, particularly the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). For instance, John Brennan, former CIA Director under Obama and current cable news pundit, lobbied in a recent Washington Post op-ed to dethrone MBS for his alleged role in Khashoggi’s fate.

Brennan also notably called upon the U.S. to impose “immediate sanctions on all Saudis involved; a freeze on U.S. military sales to Saudi Arabia; suspension of all routine intelligence cooperation with Saudi security services; and a U.S.-sponsored U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the murder.”

Another prominent figure in Washington pushing for action to be taken against the Saudis over Khashoggi’s disappearance is Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Graham recently stated that there would be “hell to pay” if the Saudi government was found to be responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance and alleged murder. Notably, the top contributor to Graham’s 2020 re-election campaign is U.S. weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

Given that human-rights concerns among the U.S. power establishment have only emerged after the disappearance of this one journalist and such concerns regarding the Saudis other grave human-rights abuses continue to go unvoiced by these same individuals, something else is likely driving Washington’s sudden concern over alleged Saudi state-sanctioned murder.

So what has protected the Saudi government from U.S. retribution over its repeated human-rights abuses in the past? Though Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth is an obvious answer, a recently leaked State Department memo revealed that U.S. weapon sales to the Gulf Kingdom were the main and only factor in the Trump administration ’s continued support for the Saudi-led coalition’s disastrous war in Yemen. Those lucrative weapon sales, according to the memo, led Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “rubber stamp” the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing campaign in Yemen despite the fact that the coalition has continued to bomb civilian buses, homes and infrastructure in recent months.

If the Saudis were to back away from a major, lucrative deal with U.S. weapon manufacturers, such an act would likely result in retribution from Washington, given that weapons sales to the Gulf Kingdom are currently the driving factor behind Washington’s “concern” with the Saudi government’s poor human-rights record.

This is exactly what happened and it took place just two days before Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The Saudis back out of a US deal and eye the rival’s wares

Last year, President Trump visited Saudi Arabia and praised its crown prince for finalizing a massive weapons deal with the United States at a value of over $110 billion. However, it emerged soon after that this “deal” was not contract-based but instead involved many “letters of interest or intent.” Over a year later, the Washington Post recently noted that many of the planned weapons deals have yet to be finalized.

One of those agreements was the planned $15 billion purchase of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD), which is manufactured by U.S. weapons giant Lockheed Martin. The deadline for the Saudis to finalize that deal passed on September 30, just two days before Khashoggi’s disappearance on October 2. However, a Saudi official told the Post that the Saudi government is still “highly interested” in the deal but “like any military purchase, there are negotiations happening which we hope will conclude in the quickest means possible.”

Yet, not only has Saudi Arabia apparently backed out of the $15 billion deal to buy Lockheed’s THAAD, it is also actively considering buying the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system instead and has also refused U.S. government requests to disavow its interest in the Russian-made system.

Indeed, on September 21, Saudi ambassador to Russia Raid bin Khalid Krimli stated:

Our cooperation with Russia continues and grows. And during King Salman’s historic visit [to Russia] we have signed 14 agreements that began to be implemented. There were four agreements in the military field; three of them began to be implemented. As for the fourth … there is discussion of the technical issues. Because the system itself is modern and complex.”

The fourth deal to which he alludes appears to be the S-400. The Saudi ambassador also stated the he hoped “nobody will impose any sanctions on us” for making the purchases with Russia — further suggesting that the system he was discussing was the S-400, given that the U.S. sanctioned China for purchasing the system soon before the Saudi ambassador’s comments.

Interestingly, soon after the Saudis’ failure to stick to the planned deal with Lockheed, Trump began to publicly criticize the Saudis for “not paying” their fair share. Speaking at a campaign rally in Mississippi on October 3 – one day after Khashoggi’s disappearance in Istanbul and three days after Saudi Arabia “missed” the Lockheed Martin deadline, Trump stated:

“I love the king [of Saudi Arabia], King Salman, but I said: ‘King, we’re protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military, you have to pay.”‘

More recently, this past Saturday, Trump told reporters that he did not want to risk the bottom line of the U.S.’ top weapons manufacturers in determining the Saudis’ “punishment:”

I tell you what I don’t want to do. Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, all these companies. I don’t want to hurt jobs. I don’t want to lose an order like that [emphasis added]. And you know there are other ways of punishing, to use a word that’s a pretty harsh word, but it’s true.”

However, if the Saudis do follow through with the purchase of the S-400, Lockheed Martin will lose $15 billion as a result. It will also endanger some of other potential contracts contained within the $110 billion weapons contract that Trump has often publicly promoted. With Trump not wanting to “lose an order like that,” some analysts like Scott Creighton of the Nomadic Everyman blog have asserted that the Khashoggi scandal is being used as a “shakedown” aimed at pressuring the Saudis into “buying American” and to force them to disavow a future purchase of the Russian-made S-400.

Would the U.S. use such tactics against a close ally like the Saudis over their potential purchase of the Russian-made S-400? It would certainly fit with the U.S.’ recent efforts to threaten countries around the world with sanctions for purchasing that very missile defense system. For instance, in June, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell threatened Turkey with sanctions if Turkey purchased the S-400. Those threats were followed by the September decision made by the Trump administration to sanction China for its purchase of the S-400 system.

Notably, it was right after China was sanctioned for purchasing the S-400 that the Saudi ambassador to Russia told Russian media that “I hope nobody will impose any sanctions on us” for purchasing the S-400.

However, U.S. sanctions against the Saudis may now be in the works after all, with Khashoggi’s disappearance as the pretext. Indeed, as previously mentioned, former CIA director John Brennan, among other powerful figures in Washington, is calling for sanctions against the Saudi government and Trump himself stated on Saturday that “severe punishment” could soon be in the Saudis’ future.

Yet another piece of this puzzle that cannot be ignored is the fact that Khashoggi himself has ties to the CIA, as well as to Lockheed Martin through his uncle Adnan Khashoggi, one of Saudi Arabia’s most powerful weapons dealers.

Khashoggi’s deep connections to CIA, Saudi Intelligence suggest his “disappearance” may be something more

Following his disappearance, Khashoggi has been praised by establishment and non-establishment figures alike, from Jake Tapper to Chris Hedges, for being a “dissident” and a “courageous journalist.” However, prior to his scandalous disappearance and alleged murder, Khashoggi did not receive such accolades and was a very controversial figure.

As Federico Pieraccini recently wrote at Strategic Culture :

[Khashoggi is a] representative of the shadowy world of collaboration that sometimes exists between journalism and the intelligence agencies, in this case involving the intelligence agencies of Saudi Arabia and the United States. It has been virtually confirmed by official circles within the Al Saud family that Khashoggi was an agent in the employ of Riyadh and the CIA during the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, Khashoggi doubled as a journalist and an asset for the Saudi and U.S. intelligence services and was also an early recruit of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was also the protégé of Turki Faisal Al-Saud, the head of Saudi intelligence for 24 years, who also served as the Saudi ambassador to Washington and to the United Kingdom. Khashoggi was “media advisor” to Faisal Al-Saud during his two ambassadorships. Notably, Khashoggi became a regime “critic” only after internal power struggles broke out between former Saudi King Abdullah and Turki Faisal al-Saud.

Supporters of King Abdullah accused Khashoggi at the time of having recruited and paid several journalists on behalf of the CIA while he was editor of the leading English-language magazine in Saudi Arabia, Arab News, a post he held from 1999 to 2003.

More recently, Khashoggi strongly supported the Muslim Brotherhood during the “Arab Spring” and backed the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton regime-change efforts that spread throughout the Middle East, including the regime-change effort targeting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

However, under King Salman, the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in Saudi Arabia came under threat and was suppressed. This led Khashoggi to leave and seek refuge in Turkey.

Perhaps most significantly, prior to his disappearance, Khashoggi was “working quietly with intellectuals, reformists and Islamists to launch a group called Democracy for the Arab World Now.” As Moon of Alabama notes, these projects that Khashoggi was involved in prior to his disappearance “reek of preparations for a CIA-controlled color revolution in Saudi Arabia.”

Not only does Khashoggi share ties to the CIA and the Saudi intelligence services (services that often collaborate), but his family is well-connected to global power structures, including Lockheed Martin.

Indeed, as previously mentioned, Khashoggi’s uncle is none other than Adnan Khashoggi, the notorious Saudi arms dealer who was an important player in the Iran-contra affair and was once Saudi Arabia’s richest man. Adnan Khashoggi was deeply connected to Lockheed Martin, as demonstrated by the fact that, between 1970 and 1975, he received $106 million in commissions from the U.S. weapons giant with his commission rate on Lockheed sales eventually rising to 15 percent. According to Lockheed’s former Vice President for International Marketing, Max Helzel, Adnan Khashoggi “became for all practical purposes a marketing arm of Lockheed. Adnan would provide not only an entry but strategy, constant advice and analysis.”

Adnan Khashoggi also had close ties to the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan White Houses, with the latter likely explaining why he was acquitted for his role in the Iran-contra scandal. Also notable is the fact that Adnan Khashoggi sold his famed yacht to none other than Donald Trump for $30 million. Trump later called Adnan Khashoggi “a great broker and a lousy businessman.”

Given Jamal Khashoggi’s past and present connections to the CIA and his family’s connections to Lockheed Martin and powerful players in the U.S. political establishment, the possibility emerges that Khashoggi’s disappearance may have in fact been a set-up in order to place pressure on the Saudi government following its decision to renege on its plan to purchase Lockheed’s THAAD system. This theory is also somewhat supported by the fact that the U.S. intelligence community had known in advance of an alleged Saudi plot to capture Khashoggi but ignored its duty (via ICD 191) to warn Khashoggi of the apparent threat against him. Furthermore, the claims that Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul have — so far — been entirely based on claims from U.S. and Turkish intelligence and no evidence to support the now prevailing narrative of murder has been made public.

If a “set-up” were the case, Khashoggi’s CIA links and his apparent efforts at pushing a CIA-controlled “color revolution” in Saudi Arabia suggest that his disappearance could also have been intended for use as a pretext, not necessarily to punish the Saudis over the S-400, but to remove MBS from his position as crown prince and replace him with former crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who was ousted by MBS last year and also holds close ties to the CIA. Such a possibility cannot be ignored.

However, the Trump administration’s willingness to cooperate with the faux outrage regarding Khashoggi is much more likely to be motivated by the weapons-deal drama given the administration’s close ties to MBS.

Of course, it is equally likely that this was not a set-up given that MBS is undeniably authoritarian and relentlessly pursues his critics and perhaps thought that his close relationship with Trump would allow him to act with impunity in targeting Khashoggi. However, MBS’ pursuits of his critics in the past were more readily accepted by the West — like the so-called “corruption crackdown” last December. Either way, the Saudi government’s role in the alleged murder of Khashoggi is being capitalized on by the CIA and other elements of the U.S. political scene and military-industrial complex for its own purposes, as these groups normally turn a blind eye to Saudi government atrocities.

Tracking the political typhoon

Though the U.S. tactic to strong-arm Saudi Arabia seems clear, it is a situation that could dangerously escalate as both MBS and Trump have proven over the course of their short tenure that they are stubborn and unpredictable.

Furthermore, the timing of this situation is also troubling. In early November, the Trump administration’s efforts to punish countries importing Iranian crude oil will take effect and Trump is set to lean heavily on the Saudis to prevent a dramatic oil price increase due to the supply shock the removal of Iranian oil from the market will cause. Notably, the Saudis are working closely with Russia to keep oil prices from spiking.

Is the U.S. willing to risk the dramatic jump in oil prices, which themselves could have major domestic economic consequences, in order to keep the Saudis from buying the S-400? It’s hard to say but the coming battle of wills between Trump and MBS could well have truly global consequences.

Acknowledgment: The author of this article would like to thank Scott Creighton of the Nomadic Everyman blog for his assistance in researching aspects of this investigation.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

October 15, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Khashoggi Was No Critic of Saudi Regime

By As`ad AbuKhalil | Consortium News | October 15, 2018

The disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last week has generated huge international publicity, but unsurprisingly, little in Saudi-controlled, Arab media. The Washington Post, for whom Khashoggi wrote, and other Western media, have kept the story alive, increasing the pressure on Riyadh to explain its role in the affair.

It’s been odd to read about Khashoggi in Western media. David Hirst in The Guardian claimed Khashoggi merely cared about absolutes such as “truth, democracy, and freedom”. Human Rights Watch’s director described him as representing “outspoken and critical journalism.”

But did he pursue those absolutes while working for Saudi princes?

Khashoggi was a loyal member of the Saudi propaganda apparatus. There is no journalism allowed in the kingdom: there have been courageous Saudi women and men who attempted to crack the wall of rigid political conformity and were persecuted and punished for their views. Khashoggi was not among them.

Some writers suffered while Khashoggi was their boss at Al-Watan newspaper. Khashoggi—contrary to what is being written—was never punished by the regime, except lightly two years ago, when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) banned him from tweeting and writing for Al-Hayat, the London-based, pan-Arab newspaper owned by Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan.

By historical contrast, Nasir As-Sa`id was a courageous secular Arab Nationalist writer who fled the kingdom in 1956 and settled in Cairo, and then Beirut. He authored a massive (though tabloid-like) volume about the history of the House of Saud. He was unrelenting in his attacks against the Saudi royal family.

For this, the Saudi regime paid a corrupt PLO leader in Beirut (Abu Az-Za`im, tied to Jordanian intelligence) to get rid of As-Sa`id. He kidnapped As-Sa`id from a crowded Beirut street in 1979 and delivered him to the Saudi embassy there. He was presumably tortured and killed (some say his body was tossed from a plane over the “empty quarter” desert in Saudi Arabia). Such is the track record of the regime.

Finding the Right Prince

Khashoggi was an ambitious young reporter who knew that to rise in Saudi journalism you don’t need professionalism, courage, or ethics. In Saudi Arabia, you need to attach yourself to the right prince. Early on, Khashoggi became close to two of them: Prince Turki Al-Faysal (who headed Saudi intelligence) and his brother, Prince Khalid Al-Faysal, who owned Al-Watan (The Motherland) where Khashoggi had his first (Arabic) editing job.

Khashoggi distinguished himself with an eagerness to please and an uncanny ability to adjust his views to those of the prevailing government. In the era of anti-Communism and the promotion of fanatical jihad in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Khashoggi was a true believer. He fought with Osama bin Laden and promoted the cause of the Mujahideen.

The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius and others want to embellish this by implying that he was an “embedded” reporter—as if bin Laden’s army would invite independent journalists to report on their war efforts. The entire project of covering the Afghan Mujahideen and promoting them in the Saudi press was the work of the chief of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki, Khashoggi’s principal patron-prince.

Western media coverage of Khashoggi’s career (by people who don’t know Arabic) presents a picture far from reality. They portray a courageous investigative journalist upsetting the Saudi regime. Nothing is further from the truth: there is no journalism in Saudi Arabia; there is only crude and naked propaganda.

Editors are trusted individuals who have demonstrated long-time loyalty. Khashoggi admitted to an Arab reporter last year in an interview from Istanbul that in Saudi Arabia he had been both editor and censor. Editors of Saudi regime papers (mouthpieces of princes and kings) enforce government rules and eliminate objectionable material.

Khashoggi never spoke out for Saudis in distress. He ran into trouble in two stints as Al-Watan editor because of articles he published by other writers, not by himself, that were mildly critical of the conservative religious establishment—which he at times supported. He was relocated to another government media job— to shield him from the religious authorities.

Khashoggi was the go-to man for Western journalists covering the kingdom, appointed to do so by the regime. He may have been pleasant in conversation with reporters but he never questioned the royal legitimacy. And that goes for his brief one-year stint in Washington writing for the Post.

A Reactionary

Khashoggi was a reactionary: he supported all monarchies and sultanates in the region and contended they were “reformable.” To him, only the secular republics, in tense relations with the Saudis, such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, defied reform and needed to be overthrown. He favored Islamization of Arab politics along Muslim Brotherhood lines.

Khashoggi’s vision was an “Arab uprising” led by the Saudi regime. In his Arabic writings he backed MbS’s “reforms” and even his “war on corruption,” derided in the region and beyond. He thought that MbS’s arrests of the princes in the Ritz were legitimate (though he mildly criticized them in a Post column) even as his last sponsoring prince, Al-Walid bin Talal, was locked up in the luxury hotel. Khashoggi even wanted to be an advisor to MbS, who did not trust him and turned him down.

Writing in the Post (with an Arabic version) Khashoggi came across as a liberal Democrat favoring democracy and reform. But he didn’t challenge Saudi regime legitimacy or Western Mideast policy. Mainstream journalists were enamored with him. They saw him as an agreeable Arab who didn’t criticize their coverage of the region, but praised it, considering the mainstream U.S. press the epitome of professional journalism. Khashoggi was essentially a token Arab writing for a paper with a regrettable record of misrepresenting Arabs.

In Arabic, his Islamist sympathies with Turkey and the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) were unmistakable. Forgotten or little known in the West is that during the Cold War the Saudis sponsored, funded, and nurtured the Muslim Brotherhood as a weapon against the progressive, secular camp led by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. Ikhwan controlled the Saudi educational system raising Saudi students to admire the Brotherhood. But Sep. 11 changed the Saudi calculus: the rulers wanted a scapegoat for their role in sponsoring Islamist fanaticism and the Ikhwan was the perfect target. That made Khashoggi suspect too.

Hints Against Him

Recent articles in the Saudi press hinted that the regime might move against him. He had lost his patrons but the notion that Khashoggi was about to launch an Arab opposition party was not credible. The real crime was that Khashoggi was backed alone by Ikhwan supporters, namely the Qatari regime and the Turkish government.

A writer in Okaz, a daily in Jeddah, accused him of meeting with the Emir of Qatar at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York and of having ties to “regional and international intelligence services.” If true it may have sealed his fate. Qatar is now the number one enemy of the Saudi regime—arguably worse than Iran.

Khashoggi was treated as a defector and one isn’t allowed to defect from the Saudi Establishment. The last senior defections were back in 1962, when Prince Talal and Prince Badr joined Nasser’s Arab nationalist movement in Egypt.

Khashoggi had to be punished in a way that would send shivers down the spine of other would-be defectors.

As’ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (1998), Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New “War on Terrorism” (2002), and The Battle for Saudi Arabia (2004). He also runs the popular blog The Angry Arab News Service.

October 15, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment