For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia, for that matter). Any suggestion that I have is just more FAKE NEWS (of which there is plenty)!
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Here Are Five Lies About Iran That We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War
Here Are Five Lies About Iran That We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War
Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images
FORGET URANIUM ENRICHMENT: Has Iran mastered time travel?
Last month, the Trump White House put out a typically Orwellian statement, chock-filled with lies, distortions, and half-truths about Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal. One line in particular stood out from the rest: “There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”
strange wording in this new White House statement on Iran. “There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”
Huh? The Iranians were violating an agreement — before it even existed?
Is it any surprise that even the foreign minister of Iran took to Twitter to join the online ridiculing of the White House?
Seriously?
The Trump administration’s lies on the topic of Iran are now beyond parody. There is, however, nothing funny about them. U.S. government lies can have deadly consequences: Never forget that hundreds of thousandsof innocent Iraqi men, women, and children, not to mention more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel, are dead today because of the sheer volume of falsehoods told by the George W. Bush administration.
So it is incumbent upon journalists to do in 2019 what we collectively did not do in 2003: Check the facts, challenge the lies, debunk the myths.
Here’s my contribution: a refutation of five of the most dishonest and inaccurate claims from the hawks — claims that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of conflict only a few weeks ago.
Lie #1: Iran Is Building a Nuclear Weapon
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U.S. Elections Are Neither Free Nor Fair. States Need to Open Their Doors to More Observers.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitor a polling place in Washington, D.C., during the presidential election on Nov. 8, 2016.
Photo: Yuri Gripas/AFP/Getty Images
VOTER SUPPRESSION. DISENFRANCHISEMENT. Gerrymandering. Can Tuesday’s midterms in the United States really be considered free and fair elections?
Perhaps we should consult with the experts. Few Americans have heard of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE; even fewer are aware that OSCE observers have been keeping tabs on U.S. elections since 2002, at the invitation of the U.S. State Department.
On October 26, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Washington, D.C., issued an interim report on the 2018 midterms. It didn’t make for pleasant reading. “The right to vote is subject to many limitations,” warned the report, “with racial minorities disproportionately impacted.”
This isn’t the first time the OSCE has sounded the alarm. In the wake of the 2016 presidential race, OSCE observers praised the U.S. for holding a “highly competitive” election while also criticizing a campaign “characterized by harsh personal attacks, as well as intolerant rhetoric” and changes to election rules that “were often motivated by partisan interests, adding undue obstacles for voters.”
“Suffrage rights,” the 2016 observers concluded, were “not guaranteed for all citizens, leaving sections of the population without the right to vote.”
Is that what a free and fair election is supposed to look like? It should be a source of shame that the United States, once held up as a model to emerging democracies around the globe, now needs outside observers to remind it of its most basic democratic obligations.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Killing Journalists Is Wrong When the Saudis Do It — and When the United States Does It, Too
Tareq Ayoub’s daughter, Fatima, 4, and father, Naeem Ayoub, during a protest outside the Al Jazeera office in Amman on Nov. 24, 2005.
Photo: Majed Jaber/Reuters
WHAT LESSON SHOULD be learned from the brutal murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi and the ongoing geopolitical fallout from his death? That governments cannot be allowed to kill journalists with impunity, correct? Everyone from the secretary general of the United Nations to hawkish Republican senators have lined up to make this point and to express their concern and anger.
But is this a lesson that only applies to Middle Eastern dictatorships? Or to Western democracies, too? The United States, perhaps? The reason I ask is that we all now know the name of Arab journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but very few of us know the name of Arab journalist Tareq Ayoub.
The difference between them? An unelected crown prince in the Gulf is blamed for killing Khashoggi, while an elected president of the United States has been blamed for killing Ayoub.
We rightly demand justice in the case of Khashoggi, so why not in the case of Ayoub?
On the morning of April 8, 2003, less than three weeks after U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq, Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayoub was on the rooftop of his network’s Baghdad bureau. The 35-year-old Palestinian from Jordan and his Iraqi cameraperson, Zoheir Nadhim, were reporting live on a pitched battle between U.S. and Iraqi forces for control of the capital. It was just three days after Ayoub had arrived in the country.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Does Saudi Arabia Own Donald Trump?
ON TUESDAY MORNING, President Donald Trump tweeted: “For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia, for that matter). Any suggestion that I have is just more FAKE NEWS (of which there is plenty)!”
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Is this yet another barefaced lie from the commander-in-chief?
In this video essay, I examine Trump’s long history of doing deals with Saudi royals and look back at how the former reality TV star even bragged about his financial ties to the kingdom during the election campaign. I also highlight the controversial payments made by the Saudi government to Trump-owned properties since the Republican businessman entered the White House.
With the president refusing to take a strong stance against the Saudi government’s alleged murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I ask: “Does Saudi Arabia own Donald Trump?”
The CBS Interview With Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman Was a Crime Against Journalism
“AT JUST 32, Mohammed bin Salman seems fearless and determined. He has quickly become the most dominant Arab leader in a generation.”
That’s how “60 Minutes” began its interview with, and profile of, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, Sunday evening, ahead of his visit to the White House on Tuesday.
Launched on CBS in 1968, “60 Minutes” has been described as “one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television” and has wonmore Emmy awards than any other primetime U.S. TV show. It claims to offer “hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news.”
Got that? Award-winning. “Esteemed.” “Hard-hitting.”
So why did the segment on MBS resemble more of an infomercial for the Saudi regime than a serious or hard-hitting interview? “His reforms inside Saudi Arabia have been revolutionary,” intoned correspondent Norah O’Donnell prior to the start of her exclusive sit-down with the crown prince in Riyadh. “He is emancipating women, introducing music and cinema, and cracking down on corruption.”
Move over Tom Friedman and David Ignatius — in O’Donnell, the Saudis seem to have found a new cheerleader within the U.S. press corps. Forget the Saudi bombardment and siege of Yemen, described by United Nations agencies as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” which received a mere two minutes of coverage over the course of a 30-minute segment. Forget the horrific Saudi record of beheadings and stonings, which received zero coverage from the “60 Minutes” team in Riyadh. Instead, we were treated to O’Donnell oohing and aahing over the crown prince’s youthfulness, workaholism, and — lest we forget — support for women drivers.
The interview itself consisted of one softball question after another. (Example: “What’s been the big challenge?” Another example: “What did you learn from your father?”)
So, in a spirit of constructive criticism, and in an attempt to try and push back against the U.S. media’s bizarre love affair with MBS ahead of his D.C. visit …
Here are 10 much tougher, more relevant questions that “60 Minutes“could and should have asked
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Donald Trump Wants to Make It Easier to Start a Nuclear War. This Should Petrify Us.
SHE DID TRY and warn us.
“Imagine, if you dare … imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis,” Hillary Clinton said in her speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2016, referring to her then-Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Yet four months later, in November 2016, almost 63 million of her fellow Americans voted to put the short-tempered, thin-skinned former reality TV star in charge of their country’s 6,800 nuclear warheads. Never forget: As president of the nuclear-armed United States, Trump — Trump! — has the power to destroy humanity many times over, while rendering the planet uninhabitable in the process.
If that wasn’t terrifying enough, last week, less than 72 hours after the State of the Union speech, in which Trump ramped up his war of words with North Korea, his administration announced that it wanted to make it much easier for the president to start a nuclear holocaust.
You might have missed that rather important piece of news. Last Friday, while cable news channels rolled on the Nunes memo, the Pentagon published the latest Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, which includes two pretty alarming new components.
First, while Barack Obama’s 2010 NPR for the first time ruled out a nuclear attack against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, Trump’s NPR goes in the opposite direction and suggests that the U.S. could employ nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances” to defend the “vital interests” of the United States and its allies. The document states:
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Blowback: How a CIA-Backed Coup Let to the Rise of Iran’s Ayatollahs
WHY CAN’T IRAN have a secular, democratic government? It’s a question Americans often ask of their longstanding Middle East adversary — especially when they see images of anti-regime protesters taking to the streets of major Iranian cities and towns to demand greater freedom.
Unlike citizens of the Islamic Republic, however, citizens of the United States tend to have short memories. The historical reality is that Iran didhave a secular, democratic government, led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh between 1951 and 1953 — but Mossadegh was removed from power in a coup organized and funded by the CIA and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.
With a handful of exceptions — Madeleine Albright in 2000, Barack Obama in 2009 and 2015 — most mainstream U.S. politicians have little to say about any of this sordid history. In Washington, D.C., Iranian hostility toward the U.S. has long been treated as inexplicable and irrational, while the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup — which set off a chain of events that resulted in the rise of Iran’s ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolution of 1979 — has vanished into a memory hole.
It was left to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, of all people, to remind Americans of the catastrophic consequences of that coup in a televised debatewith Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries in February 2016:
Mossadegh back in 1953. Nobody knows who Mossadegh was. Democratically elected prime minister of Iran. He was overthrown by British and American interests because he threatened oil interests of the British. And as a result of that, the Shah of Iran came in, terrible dictator, and as a result of that, you had the Iranian Revolution coming in, and that’s where we are today. Unintended consequence.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
U.S. Generals Might Stop Trump From an Illegal Nuclear Strike–But Who Will Save Us From a Legal One?
HE HAS BECOME the latest in a long line of generals to be lionized by the anti-Trump #resistance. Speaking over the weekend, Gen. John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM, which is responsible for nuclear deterrence, revealed what he would do if he were ordered to carry out a nuclear strike.
“I provide advice to the president,” Hyten told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada. “He’ll tell me what to do, and if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen? I’m gonna say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’” Hyten continued: “Guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?’ And we’ll come up with options of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that’s the way it works. It’s not that complicated.”
At first glance, Hyten’s statement may sound comforting to those who stay awake at night, worrying about Trump’s small hands hovering over the nuclear button. Last week, for the first time for more than 40 years, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on the president’s authority to launch nuclear weapons. “We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile … that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said at the hearing.
Senior members of Trump’s inner circle seem to share those concerns. In October, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported that “one former official even speculated that [chief of staff John] Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. ‘Would they tackle him?’ the person said.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Reverse Midas Touch of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince is Turning the Middle East to Dust
KUDOS TO GERMANY’S spooks. Back in December 2015, the German foreign intelligence agency, BND, distributed a one-and-a-half-page memo to various media outlets titled: “Saudi Arabia — Sunni regional power torn between foreign policy paradigm change and domestic policy consolidation.” The document was pretty astonishing, both in its undiplomatic bluntness and remarkable prescience.
“The current cautious diplomatic stance of senior members of the Saudi royal family will be replaced by an impulsive intervention policy,” the memo warned, focusing on the role of Mohammed bin Salman, who had been appointed as deputy crown prince and defense minister at the age of 30 earlier that year.
Both MBS, as he has come to be known, and his elderly father King Salman, the BND analysts wrote, want Saudi Arabia to be seen as “the leader of the Arab world” with a foreign policy built on “a strong military component.” Yet the memo also pointed out that the consolidation of so much power in a single young prince’s hands “harbors a latent risk that in seeking to establish himself in the line of succession in his father’s lifetime, he may overreach,” adding: “Relations with friendly and above all allied countries in the region could be overstretched.”
And so it has come to pass. In fact, despite being repudiated at the time by a German government more concerned about diplomatic and commercial relations with Riyadh, the BND warning turned out to be eerily prophetic.
Consider recent events in the Gulf. Can you get more “impulsive” than rounding up 11 fellow princes, including one of the world’s richest menand the commander of the national guard, and holding them at the Ritz Carlton on charges of corruption?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
