Tag: House of Saud

Another Step Back from the Slaughter in Yemen

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President Biden has reversed Trump’s designation of the Yemeni Houthis as terrorists.

This is significant in a number of ways:

  • It facilitates humanitarian aid in the war-ravaged nation.
  • It simplifies any US role in negotiations regarding a permanent resolution of the conflict.
  • It is a rebuke to the House of Saud.

 It’s pretty clear that Biden is less favorably inclined toward Riyadh than either Trump of Obama.  (It should be noted that Obama’s go to on intelligence while in office was John Brennan, who was for his entire career a fanatical supporter of the Saudi royal family)

To the degree that the US can disentangle its foreign policy from slavish devotion to the House of Saud, this is a good thing.

Well, It’s a Start

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The Biden administration has announced that it is reducing support for military operations by the House of Saud in Yemen.

The details are not in yet, but it appears that the scope of this reduction in support is limited.

It would be nice if US administrations didn’t spend their time coddling the incompetent boy prince of the the Riyadh regime:

Joe Biden has announced an end to US support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen, as part of a broad reshaping of American foreign policy.

In his first foreign policy speech as president, Biden signaled that the US would no longer be an unquestioning ally to the Gulf monarchies, announced a more than eightfold increase in the number of refugees the country would accept, and declared that the days of a US president “rolling over” for Vladimir Putin were over.

“America is back,” Biden declared in remarks delivered at the state department, capping a whiplash fortnight of dramatic foreign policy changes since his 20 January inauguration. “Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.”

Biden said the conflict in Yemen, which has killed more than 100,000 Yemenis and displaced 8 million, had “created a humanitarian and strategic catastrophe”.

“This war has to end,” Biden. “And to underscore our commitment, we’re ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.”

However, he said the US would continue to provide defensive support to Saudi Arabia against missile and drone attacks from Iranian-backed forces. US forces will also continue operations against al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula.

There is a whole lot of wiggle room for a whole lot of mischief by the petty Persian Gulf potentiates to continuing to prosecute their war against the people of Yemen.

The distancing of Washington from Riyadh is one of the most conspicuous reversals of Donald Trump’s agenda, but it also marks a break with the policies pursued by Barack Obama, who had backed the Saudi offensive in Yemen, although he later sought to impose constraints on its air war.

A bipartisan majority in Congress had previously voted to cut off support to the Saudi campaign, citing the civilian death toll and the murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. But Trump used his veto to block the move.

The US will also freeze arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and name a special envoy to Yemen, to put more pressure on the Saudis and Emiratis and the Houthi forces they are fighting, to make a lasting peace agreement.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

With Saudi money flooding the lobbying channels inside the Beltway, I expect pushback from the very serious people, and a walk-back from the White House.

OOPS!

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In a court filing, the FBI mistakenly revealed the name of the Saudi official who was (allegedly) providing support to the 911 hijackers.

A sharp-eyed reporter at Yahoo News (of all outlets) noticed that the name was not redacted on a now withdrawn court document.

It turns out to be one Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who reported directly to the US Ambassador,  Bandar, aka Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, aka “Bandar Bush” for his closeness to the Bush family.

Did I mention that he was also at one point head of Saudi intelligence?

How convenient:

The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a  mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers.

The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks.

The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

………

“This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,” said Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the 9/11 families whose father was killed in the attacks. “It demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”

………

After being contacted by Yahoo News on Monday, Justice Department officials notified the court and withdrew the FBI’s declaration from the public docket. “The document was incorrectly filed in this case,” the docket now reads.

………

Ironically, the declaration identifying the Saudi official in question was intended to support recent filings by Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell barring the public release of the Saudi official’s name and all related documents, concluding they are “state secrets” that, if disclosed, could cause “significant harm to the national security.”

Who says irony is dead?

………

A few lines from the bottom of page 7 is the unredacted statement, “(i.e., any and all records referring or relating to Jarrah);”.

Oops.

But while Sanborn’s 40-page declaration blacks out the Saudi official’s name in most instances, in one it failed to do so — a discrepancy first noted this week by a Yahoo News reporter.

………

A redacted copy of a three-and-a-half page October 2012 FBI “update” about the investigation stated that FBI agents had uncovered “evidence” that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by yet another individual whose name was blacked out, prompting lawyers for the families to refer to this person as “the third man” in what they argue is a Saudi-orchestrated conspiracy.

Describing the request by lawyers for the 9/11 families to depose that individual under oath, Sanborn’s declaration says in one instance that it involves “any and all records referring to or relating to Jarrah.”

The reference is to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 and 2000. His duties apparently included overseeing the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers within the United States.

Relatively little is known about Jarrah, but according to former embassy employees, he reported to the Saudi ambassador in the United States (at the time Prince Bandar), and that he was later reassigned to the Saudi missions in Malaysia and Morocco, where he is believed to have served as recently as last year.

Also, as to is his current whereabouts?

 ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Is that a bone saw I hear?

Jarrah “was responsible for the placement of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees known as guides and propagators posted to the United States, including Fahad Al Thumairy,” according to a separate declaration by Catherine Hunt, a former FBI agent based in Los Angeles who has been assisting the families in the case.

Hunt conducted her own investigation into the support provided to the hijackers in Southern California. “The FBI believed that al-Jarrah was ‘supporting’ and ‘maintaining’ al-Thumairy during the 9/11 investigation,” she said in her declaration.

I’m shocked.

Our Friends In Riyadh ……… Again

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One assumes that they would be repatriated to Saudi Arabia, dismembered with a bone saw, and burnt to ashes in an oven:

A suspected agent of the Saudi government attempted to kidnap a regime critic on American soil, according to the critic and multiple U.S. and foreign sources familiar with the episode. The young Saudi man says the FBI saved him from becoming the next Jamal Khashoggi.

Abdulrahman Almutairi is a 27-year-old comedian and former student at the University of San Diego with a big social-media presence. After Almutairi used social media to criticize the powerful Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post contributor Khashoggi, an unidentified Saudi man accompanied Almutairi’s father on a flight to collect Almutairi against his will and bring him back to Saudi Arabia, according to The Daily Beast’s sources.

“The Saudi government realized I was a threat,” Almutairi told The Daily Beast, revealing for the first time an ordeal that might have culminated in a whole new crisis: the kidnapping and rendition of a Saudi dissenter on American soil. Only timely intervention from the FBI broke up the plot, two sources say.

………

Then someone he describes only as a source in Saudi Arabia told him that his life was in danger—and that living in California did not mean he was safe. It prompted Almutairi to call the police during the week of Oct. 25, 2018.

What happened next he would only learn from an FBI official he said he spoke with: Without Almutairi’s knowledge, his father flew to Los Angeles, and he wasn’t alone. Accompanying his father was someone Almutairi does not know.

But they never arrived in San Diego. The FBI was waiting for them at LAX. According to two additional sources familiar with the incident, the FBI intercepted both the senior Almutairi and the unidentified Saudi man and sent them back on a subsequent flight. The FBI declined to comment for this story.

………

In July, Middle East Eye’s Dania Akkad first reported that in November 2018, a timeline consistent with Almutairi’s story, the FBI met with at least four Saudi dissidents in the U.S. to warn them of threats to their lives emanating from the kingdom. The dissidents were not named, but one of them, Akkad reported, “runs a popular YouTube channel critical of the Saudi government.” 

There is no such thing as a citizen of Saudi Arabia, there are only subjects of the Saudi king.

In some nations, the UK comes to mind, it is a distinction without a difference.

This is not the case for those living under the suzerainty of the House of Saud.

Our Friends in Riyadh

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The FBI believes the Saudi Arabian government “almost certainly” helps its citizens flee the country after they are accused of serious crimes, “undermining the US judicial process,” according to a newly declassified document obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The surreptitious action is done, in part, to spare the wealthy Persian Gulf kingdom embarrassment, the FBI said. Intelligence officials believe the flights from justice will continue without intervention by the American authorities.

Saudi officials “are unlikely to alter this practice in the near term unless the US Government directly addresses this issue with (Saudi Arabia) and ties US cooperation on (Saudi) priorities to ceasing this activity,” according to the FBI.

The details are contained in an intelligence bulletin dated Aug. 29. The FBI released the document Friday as part of a recent law pushed by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and signed by President Donald Trump last month that requires the FBI to publicly disclose what it knows about the Saudi government’s suspected role in helping its citizens avoid prosecution in the U.S.

The eight-page bulletin is heavily redacted and does not specify what the Saudi officials may have done, nor does it contain information about the size and scope of the practice.

But the document provides the first public acknowledgement by federal officials about the role Saudi operatives have likely played in the disappearance of numerous citizens who have gotten into legal trouble while in the U.S.

………

The revelation comes a year after an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive found multiple cases where Saudi students studying throughout the U.S. vanished while facing manslaughter, sex crimes and other felony charges, with the suspected assistance of their government. The cases occurred under several U.S. administrations.

The news organization revealed criminal cases involving at least seven Saudi nationals who disappeared from Oregon before they faced trial or completed their jail sentences on charges ranging from rape to manslaughter, including those who had surrendered their passports to authorities.

I’m generally not a fan of remand without bail, but it appears that if a subject of the House of Saud accused of a serious crime, they are by definition a flight risk.

The Saudis Should Have Hired Claude Rains to Make the Announcement

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Round up the usual suspects

Because the recent convictions in the Jamal Kashoggi murder is literally a round up the usual suspects moment.

This is the most an egregious scapegoating that I’ve seen in a very long time:

Saudi Arabia on Monday sentenced five people to death and three to jail over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but a U.N. investigator accused it of making a “mockery” of justice by allowing the masterminds of last year’s killing to go free.

A Saudi court rejected the findings of a U.N. inquiry by ruling that the killing was not premeditated, but carried out “at the spur of the moment”. Saudi Deputy Public Prosecutor and spokesman Shalaan al-Shalaan said the court dismissed charges against three of the 11 people tried, finding them not guilty.

………

The source said the five men condemned to death were essentially foot soldiers in the killing, while two senior security officials acquitted played a more significant role.

………

Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur for extrajudicial summary or arbitrary executions, said the trial verdict was a “mockery” of justice.

“The hit-men are guilty, sentenced to death. The masterminds not only walk free, they have barely been touched by the investigation and the trial,” she said on Twitter.

Yeah, but no one cares, because the Saudis have all that oil.

Tweet of the Day

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Yes, shooting people is barbaric. The civilized thing is to use a bone saw pic.twitter.com/R4uT3c31ux

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 6, 2019

Paul Krugman unloads a nearly toxic level snark on both Donald Trump and the House of Saud, in response the former’s obsequious Tweet about the Pensacola shooter, who was a Saudi.

The thing is, this was not some random Saudi tourist, it was a member of their military getting pilot training, so clearly someone in Riyadh seriously screwed the pooch with this guy.

Schadenfreude Alert!!!!

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It appears The House of Saud’s IPO for Aramco is going about as well as WeWork’s:

Some of the world’s top investment bankers gathered at a Riyadh palace on Saturday to deliver their final recommendations on a project that had consumed the government of Saudi Arabia for the past few years: the initial public offering of Saudi Aramco.

The financiers were there to meet Yasir al-Rumayyan, the state oil company’s chairman and the head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, along with cabinet ministers and the company’s leadership.

Their message would disappoint the hosts: international investors were unwilling to buy shares in Saudi Aramco anywhere near the $2tn valuation long sought by the kingdom’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. No amount of sweeteners — from promises of higher dividends to bonus shares for local retail investors — had managed to change that reality.

It could not happen to evern

It Seems That the House of Saud Thinks That It Was the Houthis

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Seriously, the only reason for the House of Saud to agree to a cease fire in Yemen is that they are worried about further attacks on their critical infrastructure coming from the Houthis:

Saudi Arabia is moving to enact a partial cease-fire in Yemen, say people familiar with the plans, as Riyadh and the Houthi militants the kingdom is fighting try to end a four-year war that has become a front line in the regional clash with Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s decision follows the Houthis’ surprise declaration of a unilateral cease-fire in Yemen last week, just days after they claimed responsibility for the Sept. 14 drone and cruise-missile strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil industry.

If the mutual cease-fire in these areas takes hold, the Saudis would look to broaden the truce to other parts of Yemen, the people familiar with the plans said. Enforcing the cease-fire will require Saudi Arabia to reach out to its Yemeni allies on the ground to ensure that they adhere to Riyadh’s dictates.

The new cease-fire faces steep odds, as similar arrangements have crumbled before. But the Houthis’ unexpected unilateral move for a cease-fire last week raised hopes in Riyadh and Washington that the Yemeni fighters might be willing to distance themselves from Tehran.

After the Sept. 14 attack on the Saudi oil facilities, Houthi leaders initially said they were responsible. Saudi, U.S. and European officials dismissed the claims as an attempt to obscure Iran’s role in the strike. Yemeni fighters, these officials say, have neither the weapons nor the skills to carry out such a sophisticated strike.

Which is why the Saudis are folding lime overdone pasta to the Houthis, because they, “Have neither the weapons nor the skills to carry out such a sophisticated strike.”

Sounds convincing to me.

Well, Now We Know Why Barr Reactivated the Death Penalty

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Needless to say, not only will the death penalty NOT be off the table, but I figure that the prosecution will be directed to try to fry him as quickly as possible.

For all the talk of Trump being a Russian stooge, he truly is the House of Saud’s rent boy, and if KSM is willing to rat out Riyadh, then the Donald Trump, and his stooge Bob Bill Barr will make sure that he never has that chance:

Alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has opened the door to helping victims of the terrorist attacks in their lawsuit against Saudi Arabia if the U.S. government spares him the death penalty at a Guantanamo Bay military commission, according to court documents.

Mohammed’s offer was disclosed in a Friday filing in the victims’ federal lawsuit in New York, which accuses the Saudi government of helping coordinate the 2001 suicide attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, after passengers resisted, a Pennsylvania field. Riyadh has denied complicity in the attacks.

Separately, President Trump signed legislation Monday that pays for medical claims from victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including first responders, for the rest of their lives.

In the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, plaintiffs’ lawyers had requested depositions from three of the five Guantanamo detainees accused in the Sept. 11 conspiracy. In the Friday filing, a status letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn, the lawyers wrote that earlier Friday, Mohammed’s counsel told them their client wouldn’t consent to a deposition “at the present time.”

Mohammed’s lawyer said, however, that “the primary driver” of the decision was the “capital nature of the prosecution” and that “[i]n the absence of a potential death sentence much broader cooperation would be possible,” according to the filing.

His lawyers just signed his death warrant.

They will never let him testify against Saudi Arabia.

Mixed Emotions

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I am heartened that some of the regime change mousketeers are finally turning their eyes toward the House of Saud, and seeing it, and particular its young scion Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as a threat to peace and stability.

On the other hand, I am terrifed that they are comparing him to Saddam Hussein, because this implies an eventual invasion, and invading Saudi Arabia, which would involve the “Infidel” in Medina and Mecca, would create a clusterf%$# that would make our little adventure in Iraq look like a game of Parcheesi.

We need to stop our incompetent meddling.

This Should Have Happened 4 Years Ago

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The Senate voted to block the sale of billions of dollars of munitions to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, in a sharp and bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration’s attempt to circumvent Congress to allow the exports by declaring an emergency over Iran.

In three back-to-back votes, Republicans joined Democrats to register their growing anger with the administration’s use of emergency power to cut lawmakers out of national security decisions, as well as the White House’s unflagging support for the Saudis despite congressional pressure to punish Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the killing in October of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A United Nations report released Wednesday made the most authoritative case to date that responsibility for the killing and its cover-up lies at the highest levels of the Saudi royal court.

No other foreign policy issue has created as large a rift between President Trump and Congress, and the vote to block the arms sales deepens the divide. It is the second time in just a few months that members of Mr. Trump’s party have publicly opposed his foreign policy, with both the House and Senate approving bipartisan legislation this spring to cut off military assistance to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen using the 1973 War Powers Act, only to see it vetoed.

………

The vote came the same day that Britain announced it would temporarily suspend approval of any new licenses to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, after an unexpected court ruling that ministers had acted unlawfully in allowing the sale of weapons when there was a clear possibility they might be used in violation of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

This war, and the criminal brutality, has been going on for far too long.

I Wonder How Much He Got from the House of Saud

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Rep. Ed Royce, a senior Republican who, at the time, chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee, gave a speech on the House floor in November 2017 imploring his fellow lawmakers to maintain support for the Saudi Arabian-led war in Yemen. Royce warned that foreign adversaries — namely, Iran — could gain a foothold in Yemen through the Houthi rebels.

“Part of the problem here is the leaders of the Houthi militia were indoctrinated in Qom, in Iran, as part of an Iranian attempt to construct a Hezbollah-like proxy in Yemen,” warned Royce, suggesting that the rebels in Yemen were merely Iranian cutouts, something experts dispute.

The inflammatory line had been scripted by a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia — like much of Royce’s impassioned speech. “During the 1990s, the leaders of the Houthi militia were indoctrinated in the Iranian city of Qom as part of an Iranian attempt to construct a Hezbollah-like proxy in Yemen,” says a set of lobbyist talking points obtained by The Intercept.

Royce had received talking points earlier that day from a lobbyist retained by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to federal disclosure forms, in order to undermine congressional opposition to the Yemen war.

………

The talking points provided to Royce are among the many hidden ways in which Saudi money has quietly influenced the debate.

“The fact that Rep. Royce is repeating word for word talking points from wealthy law firm Hogan Lovells, not his own unique thought and hearing what his constituents have to say, speaks to the very stifling our democracy suffers from,” said Heather Purcell, a spokesperson for Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who introduced the bill Royce was speaking against.

Our “Friends” in Riyadh, huh?

The sooner that the House of Saud falls from power the better.

Well, Now We Know Who the NSA Works For

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It turns out that the NSA knew about plans to murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi and did nothing, despite the fact that they are required to do so.

It appears that the House of Saud is their real employer:

In the six months since Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by a Saudi “Rapid Intervention Group” in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, press reports have described a variety of information swept up by U.S. intelligence that foretold or foreshadowed the heinous crime. The reporting has cast a rare light not only on our spy agencies’ activities and capabilities, but also on the complicated moral dilemmas that accompany mass surveillance. And it has intensified questions over whether the intelligence agencies that gathered this information carried out a legally required duty to warn the journalist that his life was in danger.

The press reports make for sobering reading. A week after Khashoggi was killed, the Washington Post described intercepted communications discussing a plan to lure the U.S.-based journalist back to Saudi Arabia—information that an unnamed U.S. official said “had been disseminated throughout the U.S. government and was contained in reports that are routinely available to people working on U.S. policy toward Saudi Arabia.” A December Wall Street Journal report described messages intercepted in August of 2017 suggesting that if the plot to lure Khashoggi to Saudi Arabia did not succeed, “we could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements,” and a February New York Times story described a conversation the NSA intercepted in September 2017 between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and a close aide of his in which the Crown Prince vowed, if efforts to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia or to repatriate him by force failed, to go after him “with a bullet.” A March New York Times report revealed that U.S. intelligence had collected information that showed the same “Rapid Intervention Group” that murdered Khashoggi had been involved in the kidnapping and forcible repatriation for detention and torture of several other Saudi dissidents over the previous three years. (At least three of these operations, involving members of the Saudi royal family, had been described by the BBC before Khashoggi’s murder.)

These stories rely on a combination of leaks by anonymous sources and information compiled in the classified November 2018 CIA assessment of the Khashoggi murder, which was quoted or summarized by sources or by reporters who were shown sections of the report. The intelligence described in these reports has not been officially confirmed, and the articles generally include pushback from the White House and intelligence community suggesting the information was less conclusive than the articles imply, or that the information existed as raw intelligence that had only been reviewed and processed in the wake of the murder. Missing from any of the pushback, however, is any assertion that U.S. intelligence agencies do not engage in this kind of surveillance, or that they did not routinely deploy these tools against Mohammed bin Salman both before and after he was named Crown Prince in June of 2017.

………

We now know, thanks to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and litigation filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in the days after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, exactly what an NSA employee who finds herself in this situation is supposed to do. This is the first time these documents have been publicly released.

A July 2017 “Duty to Warn Standard Operating Procedures (SOP),” and a May 20, 2018 NSA and Central Security Service (CSS) Policy Instruction on the Duty to Warn, lay out a specific roadmap for what intelligence officers must do to comply with Intelligence Community Directive 191, which is the 2015 order that recognized and codified the responsibility to warn someone who is known to be in danger. A legal obligation first defined for health professionals who learn in the course of caring for a patient that the patient may pose a risk to himself or to others, the “Duty to Warn” as defined for NSA and CSS officers is described in the SOP this way:

Any NSA/CSS element that collects or acquires credible and specific information indicating an impending threat of intentional killing, serious bodily injury, or kidnapping directed at a person or group of people (hereafter referred to as “intended victim”) shall have a duty to warn the intended victim or those responsible for protecting the intended victim, as appropriate….The term “intended victim” includes both U.S. persons…and non-U.S. persons.

The directive is clear: Anyone who fields credible and specific threat information must act. The NSA guidelines then lay out the process by which threats are evaluated and warnings delivered, and describe at least five specific points in the process that must be documented—including the justifications for any decision to waive the duty to warn requirement and opt out of the obligation to issue a warning. The guidelines even reproduce the template an NSA employee must complete to forward the warning to either the FBI or CIA for delivery to the intended victim.
 

The Knight Institute and CPJ specifically sought documents like the ones required in these NSA procedures in their FOIA requests to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the State Department. In addition to the guidelines each of these agencies uses in determining whether and how to deliver warnings, we also requested records relating to any Duty to Warn decisions and actions the agencies may have taken in connection with threats to Khashoggi, and any records they may have concerning debates or discussions between agencies related to those threats.

Why on earth are our intelligence agencies are bowing down before the House of Saud, arguably the most corrupt and brutal despots on the face of the earth, is completely beyond me.

It needs to stop.

Yemen War Powers Resolution Passes House

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Trump has strongly opposed this, so a veto is likely, but the War Powers Act resolution requiring a US withdrawal from Yemen is the proverbial big f%$#ing deal:

The effort was a top priority for House Democrats after they took control in January amid a worsening humanitarian crisis on the ground in Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels have sought to overthrow the country’s government, prompting a Saudi bombing campaign that has lasted nearly four years.

It also reflects broad dissatisfaction on Capitol Hill with Trump’s foreign policy — in particular, his posture toward Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The situation in Yemen is appalling, and the actions, politics, and ideology of our erstwhile ally, the House of Saud, is even more appalling.

Our continued support for the maniacs in Riyadh serves no one but a handful of psychopathic royals.

Kremlinology is Difficult with People This Evil

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I am referring, of course, to the House of Saud, where it appears that what appears to be a superficial clipping of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s wings by his father:

The heir to the Saudi throne has not attended a series of high-profile ministerial and diplomatic meetings in Saudi Arabia over the last fortnight and is alleged to have been stripped of some of his financial and economic authority, the Guardian has been told.

The move to restrict, if only temporarily, the responsibilities of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is understood to have been revealed to a group of senior ministers earlier last week by his father, King Salman.

The king is said to have asked Bin Salman to be at this cabinet meeting, but he failed to attend.

………

The relationship between the king and his son has been under scrutiny since the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which was alleged to have been ordered by Prince Mohammed and provoked international condemnation of the crown prince. This has been denied by the Saudi government.

………

But while most observers expect Prince Mohammed to accede to the throne, there are some signs that the king is seeking to rein in his controversial son at a time when Saudi Arabia is under the spotlight.

I don’t know what this all means.

I simply do not have a frame of reference:  The Saudi court is simply to venal and too unconcerned about their subjects’ well being for me to understand their approach to governance.

Being Evil

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I am referring, of course, to Google, which has refused to remove the Absher App, which the House of Saud wrote to, among other things, keep women from traveling freely.

I know that these ratf%$#s think that they are somehow making the world better place, but they aren’t.

They are just another bunch of pimps: (This applies to Apple, as well, they are mentioned in the story.)

Google has declined to remove from its app store a Saudi government app which lets men track women and control where they travel, on the grounds that it meets all their terms and conditions.

Google reviewed the app — called Absher — and concluded that it does not violate any agreements, and can therefore remain on the Google Play store.

The decision was communicated by Google to the office of Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who, with other members of Congress, wrote last week to demand they remove the service.

………

INSIDER last month reported how Absher — an all-purpose app which Saudis use to interact with the state — offers features which allow Saudi men to grant and rescind travel permission for women, and to set up SMS alerts for when women use their passports.

………

Rep. Speier and 13 colleagues in Congress wrote to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook on February 21, demanding that the app be removed.

………

Apple has also not responded to a request for comment from INSIDER.

Rep. Speier told INSIDER: “The responses received so far from Apple and Google are deeply unsatisfactory.”

“As of today, the Absher app remains available in both the Apple App store and the Google Play Store even though they can easily remove it.”

“Not only do they have the capability to take action, they have done so previously with the removal of the Living Hope Ministries app, which encouraged users to ‘convert’ LGBTQ individuals, based on its ability to cause harm.”

“Facilitating the detention of women seeking asylum and fleeing abuse and control unequivocally causes harm. I will be following up on this issue with my colleagues,” Rep. Speier said.

Seriously, Apple and Google are one step above slave traders.

Do You Know What Worries More than Iranian Nukes?

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The House of Saud getting nukes.

I am particularly concerned about Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, who has shown himself to be both reckless and incompetent, having access to nuclear technology, and it appears that the Trump administration is determined to transfer advanced nuclear technology to Riyadh:

Top Trump administration officials have pushed to build nuclear power plants throughout Saudi Arabia over the vigorous objections of White House lawyers who question the legality of the plan and the ethics of a venture that could enrich Trump allies, according to a new report by House Democrats released on Tuesday.

The report is the most detailed portrait to date of how senior White House figures — including Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser — worked with retired military officers to circumvent the normal policymaking process to promote an export plan that experts worried could spread nuclear weapons technology in the volatile Middle East. Administration lawyers warned that the nuclear exports plan — called the Middle East Marshall Plan — could violate laws meant to stop nuclear proliferation and raised concerns about Mr. Flynn’s conflicts of interest.

Mr. Flynn had worked on the issue for the company promoting the nuclear export plan and kept pushing it once inside the White House.

But even after Mr. Flynn was fired, the proposal appears to have lingered. The initial discussions took place during the chaotic early months of the Trump administration, according to the 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee, but House Democrats on Tuesday cited evidence that as recently as last week the White House was still considering some version of the proposal. Democrats said they had begun a full-scale inquiry.

It keeps being pushed because Jared Kushner is in hock up to his eyeballs and is solvent only by dint of Saudi money, and also this:

Claims presented by whistle-blowers and White House documents obtained by the House oversight committee show that the company backing the nuclear plan, IP3 International, was working so closely with allies in the Trump political world that the company sent draft memos that would be needed from the president for the nuclear export plan to Mr. Flynn just days after Mr. Trump took office.

A week after Inauguration Day, the Democrats’ report said, a Flynn deputy for Middle East and North African affairs, Derek Harvey, met with the IP3’s co-founders at the White House, and asked National Security Council staff to include information about the nuclear power plan in a briefing to prepare Mr. Trump for a call with King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

………

Even after Mr. Flynn left the White House in February 2017 under scrutiny by the F.B.I. for his communications with Russia, officials on the National Security Council continued to push ahead, repeatedly ignoring advice from the council’s ethics counsel, the report said.

At a March 2017 meeting, Mr. Harvey tried to revive the IP3 plan “so that Jared Kushner can present it to the president for approval,” the Democratic report said, a reference to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser. Eventually Mr. Flynn’s successor, H. R. McMaster, said all work on the plan should cease because of potentially illegal conflicts.

………

Mr. Kushner’s efforts continue. He is scheduled to travel to the region next week, with a stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, to brief diplomats on the economic portions of the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan.

Here’s hoping that the House Oversight Committee is on this like white on rice.

And the Hunt for Jeff Bezos’ Penis Continues

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It turns out that American Media, LLC, the parent company of the National Enquirer, asked for an opinion from the Justice Department on whether it had to register as a foreign agent for the House of Saud, which,, even for the National Enquirer, is rather a mind f%$#:

The dust-up between Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and National Enquirer parent American Media LLC has raised questions about the media company’s connections to Saudi Arabia.

American Media has had plenty of contacts with Saudi Arabia in recent years, including seeking financial backing from Saudi investors to fund acquisitions and producing a magazine celebrating the country’s new crown prince.

It also sought advice last year from the U.S. Justice Department over whether the publisher should register as a foreign agent, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

The issue of the ties came up last week when Mr. Bezos took to the internet to push back against what he said was an extortion attempt by the National Enquirer against him over an extramarital affair that the tabloid reported on last month featuring photos and texts. He said he launched his own probe into how the publication obtained his texts as well as its motives and wrote that the “Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.”

Gee, you think?

This is what happens when people start turning over rocks, and it is nice that the worm has turned on the National Enquirer.

Not at all Surprised

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It turns out that the Orwellian-named Center for American Progress is in the pockets of the United Arab Emerates, and have gone hammer an tong after employees who are concerned about this:

The Center for American Progress fired two staffers suspected of being involved in leaking an email exchange that staffers thought reflected improper influence by the United Arab Emirates within the think tank, according to three sources with knowledge of the shake-up. Both staffers were investigated for leaking the contents of an internal email exchange to The Intercept, but neither of the former employees was The Intercept’s source.

………

A CAP spokesperson acknowledged two employees were fired as a result of the leak investigation, but said that the leak was not the reason they were fired: “We are not going to discuss internal personnel matters, but no one was fired at CAP for leaking or whistleblowing.” Internally, however, multiple members of CAP leadership have used the leak as the leading rationale for the firings in multiple settings, sources said. Gude did not return requests for comment.

At issue was an internal debate over how to frame CAP’s response to the murder of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was dismembered by Saudi Arabian officials inside the nation’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

The initial draft of the CAP’s statement condemned the killing and Saudi Arabia’s role in it, calling for specific consequences. Brian Katulis, a Gulf expert at CAP, objected to the specific consequences proposed in an email exchange with other national security staffers, according to sources who described the contents of the thread to The Intercept. At an impasse, the specifics were dropped, replaced merely with a call to “take additional steps to reassess” the U.S.-Saudi relationship, and the statement was released to the public on October 12.

I’m not surprised.

It’s a vipers nest of Clintonite grifters like Neera Tanden, Tom Daschle, John Podesta, and Larry Summers, so it’s no surprise that they are bought and paid for by the Saudi’s Persian Gulf war criminal (Yemen) buddies.