Tag: Middle East

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.

Well, This is a Relief

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The Pentagon is ordering the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) to return to port from the Persian Gulf.

This marks a major deescalation with regard to Iran, and I am wondering if Trump was even informed of this in advance by the military:

The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf.

Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling into a crisis in President Trump’s waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a strike as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Miller assessed that dispatching the Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of General Suleimani’s death in an American drone strike in Iraq, could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation that justifies their threats against American military targets. Some analysts said the return of the Nimitz to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.

“If the Nimitz is departing, that could be because the Pentagon believes that the threat could subside somewhat,” said Michael P. Mulroy, the Pentagon’s former top Middle East policy official.

I really hope that the balloon does not go up in the next 2 weeks.

It’s Always the Hot Work that Gets You

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It turns out that welding (hot work) to secure a door to prevent theft of the ammonium nitrate was what set off the massive blast at the port of Beirut.

This is no surprise.  Hot work has always been a leading cause of fires in industrial settings:

Multiple sources have reported that the disastrous explosion at Port of Beirut was sparked by hot work at a warehouse where officials had stored 2,750 tonnes of confiscated ammonium nitrate and a cache of fireworks. In a new report, senior officials provided Reuters with additional details: early this year they had learned that one of the warehouse’s doors was broken, raising the risk that a malicious actor could steal dangerous explosives. The port’s welding contractors set off the cache while trying to repair the door to protect the cache.

According to the report, the security investigation that set this chain in motion began in January after the broken door and a large hole in the warehouse’s wall were discovered. On June 4 – six months later – state security forces ordered the port to guard the warehouse and make appropriate repairs. On August 4 – two months after the order – the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse. Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache.

As an interesting aside, it appears that we still have no information as to who actually owned the ammonium nitrate which languished for years in a warehouse:

In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear — no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it.

There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week’s huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.

………

But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2,750-tonne consignment instead revealed an intricate tale of missing documentation, secrecy and a web of small, obscure companies that span the globe.

At this point, I’m pretty sure that there are 3 or 4 oligarchs crapping their pants over the possibility that they are tied to this disaster.

Holy Sh%$.

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There has been a huge explosion in the port of Beruit, apparently from a stock-pile over 2000 tons of ammonium nitrate left by a decrepit and bankrupt Russian freighter many years ago:

Two huge explosions have rocked Beirut, killing at least 78 people, injuring thousands more, and sending an enormous blast wave across the city that shattered windows, knocked down doors and shook buildings.

Lebanon’s prime minister, Hassan Diab, said the main blast at Beirut’s port was caused when an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate had been ignited. He said the chemical had been left unsecured for six years in a warehouse, and vowed to punish those responsible.

As the death toll climbed on the discovery of more bodies in the wreckage, at least 4,000 were reported injured. Hundreds of homes were left uninhabitable by the blast which also destroyed huge grain silos, a devastating blow to a country where bread was already scarce and which is dependent on imports by sea.

This is an explosion measured in kilotons, and as shown below, you can see a large hemispherical shockwave that looks like something out an old nuclear weapon tests from the 1950s.

It is stunning.

Another angle of the explosion

It Looks like Bibi Is Going to Jail

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As additional returns have come in in the COVID-19 quarantine delayed election results in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has lost seats in the Knesset, and now it appears that in a historical team up with the Arab Joint List, not only will he not get his seat, but they will be passing a law preventing an indicted politician from forming a government, so Bibi’s just become a sh%$ load more likely to end up in a cell:

An elated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu roared, “This is the biggest victory of my life!”—but that was Monday.

By Thursday, his voice hoarse, a tired Netanyahu growled, “We won’t let them steal the election!” In the words of Netanyahu’s centrist rival and Israel’s probable next prime minister, Benny Gantz, “Someone here celebrated too early.”

Then came a remarkable cascade of bad news for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, and its first to be indicted while in office.

Avigdor Lieberman, his onetime defense minister and now a fearsome nemesis, announced his support for a law proposed by Gantz, a former army chief of staff, which would bar an indicted legislator from being appointed to form the government.

Such a law would eliminate any route to immediate political survival for Netanyahu, whose trial in three separate cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust is scheduled to open in Jerusalem District Court on March 17.

In an almost never seen instance of Israeli multi-partisanship that Israeli media call “the anti-Bibi coalition,” this law enjoys the support of 62 members of the 120-member Knesset, from the majority-Arab Joint List through the left-wing Labor Party, and now, unto Lieberman, a hardline secular right-winger.

………

Alon Pinkas, Israel’s former consul general in New York and adviser to former prime minister Ehud Barak, noted in an interview with The Daily Beast, that, “For the third time in one year, Netanyahu pushed for an election with one goal in mind: getting a 61-seat majority to grant him an immunity from prosecution over three severe indictments he is facing. For the third time he failed.”

………

And Netanyahu was about to receive another blow.

Late Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, another former army chief of staff and the most hardline rightist in the Gantz centrist coalition, agreed to support a minority government led by Gantz, with the support of the Joint List, the Arab-majority party that leaped from 13 Knesset seats to 15 even as Netanyahu intensified his attack on Arab citizens, who form 21 percent of Israel’s population.

“Gantz is joining forces with terror supporters!” Netanyahu declared in a meeting of his coalition members. “Gantz’s move undermines the foundations of Israeli democracy and subverts the will of the voter. We’ll stand strong against it.”

………

As the situation unfolded Thursday night, Netanyahu asked his attorney general to “immediately” open a criminal investigation into alleged Lieberman electoral shenanigans a decade ago. Lieberman responded with a press release: seven laughing/crying emojis and not a single word.

By dawn on Friday, an increasingly cornered Netanyahu was accusing Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, who chairs Israel’s electoral commission, the body responsible for counting the votes, of criminal malfeasance. Netanyahu promised to petition the supreme court to investigate Hendel’s political affiliations.

The commission condemned any implication of impropriety, and Gantz posted that “counting all the votes, including those of citizens under quarantine due to fears of the coronavirus, is the basis of a democratic country, and one must respect the results and the voters’ choice—and no less the work of the Electoral Commission.”

………

How did this happen?

Relying on exit polls, Monday’s Netanyahu believed that counting his own party’s votes and those of his coalition partners, he had secured 60 out of the Israeli parliament’s 120 seats, and would find a way to squeak by on a narrow majority.

One route appeared to be poaching wavering opposition legislators. In a television interview on Tuesday, Netanyahu spokesman Yonatan Orich foresaw that “the establishment of a government is a matter of a few days.”

………

Meanwhile, votes were being counted. Over two and a half days, the Likud’s coalition slipped from an high of 60 seats to 59 to 58, where it hovered for a day before the pollsters’ disbelieving eyes.

Netanyahu is a cancer on Israeli body politic, and arguably the single greatest threat to the continued existence of the state of Israel.

That he is going on trial, and likely is going to jail, is an unalloyed good.

Turkey Launches Offensive to Protect al Qaeda

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Turkey has initiated major military operations (an invasion) of Idlib province in Syria.

Turkey has a number of justifications, including concerns about an additional influx of refugees, but any any realistic assessment would strongly suggest that this is about installing client mini-states along the Turkish border as a part of Erdogan’s desire for greater sway in the area, along with his desire to enforce Sunni hegemony in Syria.

It should be noted that the rebels are al Nusra/al Qaeda in the Levant/Jabhat Fatah al-Sham/ Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and as such are al Qaeda.

Turkey is looking for Nato support, because ……… Everything is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

In related news, Turkey is aggressively moving refugees to the the Greek border in an attempt to coerce the EU into supporting his adventure.

This will not end well.

Breaking News from the Gulf of Tonkin

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My bad, it’s not the Gulf of Tonkin, it’s the Persian Gulf, but given that it looks like we are dealing with yet another false report that could lead to war, the similarities are uncanny.
The rocket attack on the military base that eventually led to the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani was probably executed by Daesh, not an Iranian backed militia:

The white Kia pickup turned off the desert road and rumbled onto a dirt track, stopping near a marsh. Soon there was a flash and a ripping sound as the first of the rockets fired from the truck soared toward Iraq’s K-1 military base.

The rockets wounded six people and killed an American contractor, setting off a chain of events that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of war.

The United States blamed an Iraqi militia with close ties to Iran and bombed five of the group’s bases. Angry Iraqis then stormed the American Embassy. The United States then killed Iran’s top general. Iran then fired missiles at American forces and mistakenly shot down a passenger jet, killing 176 people.

But Iraqi military and intelligence officials have raised doubts about who fired the rockets that started the spiral of events, saying they believe it is unlikely that the militia the United States blamed for the attack, Khataib Hezbollah, carried it out.

………

American officials insist that they have solid evidence that Khataib Hezbollah carried out the attack, though they have not made it public.

Bullsh%$.

If they had evidence, we would have heard it.

They wanted to get their war on, facts be damned.

………

The rockets were launched from a Sunni Muslim part of Kirkuk Province notorious for attacks by the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group, which would have made the area hostile territory for a Shiite militia like Khataib Hezbollah.

Khataib Hezbollah has not had a presence in Kirkuk Province since 2014.

The Islamic State, however, had carried out three attacks relatively close to the base in the 10 days before the attack on K-1. Iraqi intelligence officials sent reports to the Americans in November and December warning that ISIS intended to target K-1, an Iraqi air base in Kirkuk Province that is also used by American forces.

And the abandoned Kia pickup was found was less than 1,000 feet from the site of an ISIS execution in September of five Shiite buffalo herders.

These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say.

The repercussions for this bit of insanity will be playing out for decades, and they will not be good for us.

How Dare They Criticize Their Betters

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It turns out that the Silicon Valley social media companies were actively enabling the slave trade in the Persian Gulf principalities:

Drive around the streets of Kuwait and you won’t see these women. They are behind closed doors, deprived of their basic rights, unable to leave and at risk of being sold to the highest bidder.

 But pick up a smartphone and you can scroll through thousands of their pictures, categorised by race, and available to buy for a few thousand dollars.

 An undercover investigation by BBC News Arabic has found that domestic workers are being illegally bought and sold online in a booming black market.

 Some of the trade has been carried out on Facebook-owned Instagram, where posts have been promoted via algorithm-boosted hashtags, and sales negotiated via private messages.

Other listings have been promoted in apps approved and provided by Google Play and Apple’s App Store, as well as the e-commerce platforms’ own websites.

“What they are doing is promoting an online slave market,” said Urmila Bhoola, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery.

“If Google, Apple, Facebook or any other companies are hosting apps like these, they have to be held accountable.”

The social media companies still insist that they are engaged in a moral endeavor.

They are not. They are snollygosters engaging in humbug in order to enrich themselves.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Killed Donald Trump Has WTF Moment

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Seriously, I can understand his desire to announce the alleged killing of ISIS founder al-Baghdadi, but to the degree I could listen to his announcement, about 15 minutes, his affect was completely deranged:

The Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed in a raid by US special forces on his Syrian safe house, Donald Trump has announced, ending a years-long hunt for one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists.

Trump said the “impeccable” two-hour operation was conducted on Saturday night in the province of Idlib, one of the few areas of the country still outside Syrian regime control, and that US officials had confirmed Baghdadi, 48, was among those killed.

………

The US president, facing impeachment proceedings and under bipartisan fire for withdrawing troops from the Syrian border, basked in the demise of the self-styled caliphate leader, whose final moments he described in vivid, indulgent detail.

“[Baghdadi] running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,” Trump said.

Cornered, Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest and killed himself and three of his children, Trump said. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward. The world is now a much safer place,” he said.

Seriously, it sounded even weirder when you heard it than when you read it.

Also, he was hiding in north east Syria, an area carved out for our al Qaeda allies(!) who were allegedly sworn enemies of IS, which indicates just how truly f%$#ed our priorities, tactics, and strategy is in Syria.

Cue Republicans claiming that the impeachment inquiry needs to end, because some bearded dude got whacked.

Burying the Lede

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In a story about the rapidly unfolding debacle in northern Syria, they weight until the 9th paragraph to note that the US is looking at evacuating the nuclear weapons stored at Incirlik Air Base in response to the instability and chaos in the region:

………

And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.

Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.

“I think this is a first — a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it literally firing artillery at US forces,” Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote last week.

For his part, Mr. Erdogan claims nuclear ambitions of his own: Only a month ago, speaking to supporters, he said he “cannot accept” rules that keep Turkey from possessing nuclear weapons of its own.

“There is no developed nation in the world that doesn’t have them,” he said. (In fact, most do not.)

This is unbelievably dangerous.

Also, given the nature of the potential nuclear exchanges these days, the forward deployment of nuclear weapons, particularly in a country run by a delusional megalomaniac, seems to be a profoundly unfortunate decision.

I Can’t Even………

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Trump is defending his abandonment of our Kurdish allies in northern Syria because they did not hit the beaches with us at Normandy.

This is amazingly stupid and ahistorical. (Turkey was neutral in the war, and Syria, Iran, and Iraq were under the control of the UK by the time that America entered the war)

I’m not surprised about the betrayal of the Kurds, this has been a bipartisan standard operating procedure for the United States since (at least) the early 1970s, but this justification is mind-bogglingly stupid.

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.

Worse than a Crime, It’s a Mistake

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This Business Will get out of Control. It Will get out of Control and we’ll be Lucky to Live Through It.

Just when you thought that the political opportunism of Benyamin Netanyahu could not get any more short sighted and destructive, he is promising to annex most of the West Bank as a campaign promise:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said Tuesday that he would move swiftly to annex nearly a third of the occupied West Bank if voters returned him to power in the election next week, seizing what he called a historic opportunity from a sympathetic White House to give Israel “secure, permanent borders.”

His plan to annex territory along the Jordan River would reshape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and would reduce any future Palestinian state to an enclave encircled by Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu’s rivals on the left and right largely greeted the announcement, made in the heat of a campaign in which he is battling for survival, as a transparent political ploy.

Mr. Netanyahu said he planned to annex all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and that he would move immediately after forming a new government to annex the Jordan Valley, a strategic and fertile strip of territory along the border with Jordan that runs from Beit Shean in northern Israel to the shores of the Dead Sea.

He said he wanted to capitalize on what he called the “unique, one-off opportunity” afforded him by the Trump administration, which has expressed openness to Israeli annexation of at least parts of the West Bank.

“We haven’t had such an opportunity since the Six Day War, and I doubt we’ll have another opportunity in the next 50 years,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. “Give me the power to guarantee Israel’s security. Give me the power to determine Israel’s borders.”

Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war. Most of the world considers it occupied territory and Israeli settlements or annexations there to be illegal.Mr. Netanyahu, who is in a dead heat or slightly behind in the polls against Benny Gantz, a centrist former army chief of staff, has tried mightily to shift the focus of the election from the corruption cases against him to his strong suit: national security.

………

This time, Mr. Netanyahu boasted that thanks to “my personal relationship with President Trump, I will be able to annex all the settlements in the heart of our homeland.”

Assuming that Netanyahu isn’t lying, and Netanyahu lies like the rest of us breath, the end game for this strategy seems to be the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

Not good.

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.

Captain Putnam Browne is Not a Fool

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Donald Trump sent the Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) to the Persian Gulf to pressure Iran, but it is remaining outside of the Persian Gulf in Indian Ocean.

When you consider the restricted waters of the the Gulf this is a common sense move.

If the Lincoln were in the Gulf, the Iranians would know exactly where they are, and any attack would have a reaction time of a few minutes.

This guy is not painting a target on his back in order to promulgate John Bolton’s stiffy for regime change:

A U.S. aircraft carrier ordered by the White House to rapidly deploy to the Mideast over a perceived threat from Iran remains outside of the Persian Gulf, so far avoiding any confrontation with Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces amid efforts to deescalate tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Officers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln repeatedly told The Associated Press on Monday they could respond rapidly to any regional threat from their position, at the time some 320 kilometers (200 miles) off the eastern coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea.

However, after decades of American aircraft carriers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a third of all oil traded at sea passes, the U.S. Navy’s decision to keep the Lincoln away is striking.

“You don’t want to inadvertently escalate something,” Capt. Putnam Browne, the commanding officer of the Lincoln, told the AP.

Also, you know, the whole getting sunk thing.

This is Heartbreaking

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The spire falls at about 15s

There has been a at a massive fire at the Notre Dame de Paris :

A fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris was brought under control by firefighters in the early hours of Tuesday morning, though officials warned there were still residual fires to put out.
 Thousands of Parisians watched in horror from behind police cordons as a ferocious blaze devastated Notre Dame Cathedral on Monday night, destroying its spire and a large part of the roof.

 An investigation has been opened by the prosecutor’s office, but police said it began accidentally and may be linked to building work at the cathedral. The 850-year-old gothic masterpiece had been undergoing restoration work.

 The French president, Emmanuel Macron, attended the scene and later gave a speech in which he vowed that the cathedral would be rebuilt, as fire crews said the landmark’s rectangular bell towers and structure of the building had been saved.

I’m not sure how much has been lost, but given that the structure, the part that isn’t wood, is limestone and old mortar, which is very susceptible to fire damage.

I’m not sure what has been lost, but I’m pretty sure that when a final inventory is made there will be some very sad architects, artists, and historians.

In bizarrely related news, there has been a (relatively minor) fire at the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Unlike the Notre Dame fire, the source of this one is currently suspicious, having occurred during a 15 minute change-over of local security:

A fire broke out in al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, on Monday. The blaze didn’t cause significant damage, but it did endanger a part of the worship site that’s over 2,000 years old.

​The fire broke out in the guard room outside the al-Marwani Prayer Room Monday evening, according to a statement by the mosque’s Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Department. According to The New Arab, a guard reported a short gap in guard rotations between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. local time.

Weird.

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.

A Victory for Human Decency

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Thanks, Bernie

For the first time in longer than I can remember, The Senate has voted to stop US involvement in the war in Yemen:

The Senate on Wednesday again rebuked President Trump for his continued defense of Saudi Arabia after the killing of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, voting for a second time to end American military assistance for the kingdom’s war in Yemen and to curtail presidential war powers.

The 54-to-46 vote, condemning a nearly four-year conflict in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians and inflicted a devastating famine, sets the foundation for what could become Mr. Trump’s first presidential veto, with the House expected to overwhelmingly pass the measure, possibly this month. The vote also might be the opening salvo in a week where Senate Republicans have the opportunity to hit back at the president’s aggressive use of executive power. On Thursday, the chamber will vote on a resolution that would overturn Mr. Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for his border wall.

“The United States Congress is going to reassert its constitutional responsibility over issues of war that have been abdicated for presidents, Democrats and Republicans, for too many years,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.

………

Supporters of the Yemen resolution have faced a long and grueling road to get the legislation onto the president’s desk. The Senate — led by the resolution’s authors, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Lee — first passed the measure 56 to 41 in December, but Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker at the time, refused to take up the resolution.

………

The resolution is a rare use of the 1973 War Powers Act, which gave Congress the ability to compel the removal of military forces absent a formal declaration of war. Those powers, created after the Vietnam War, have almost never been used, as lawmakers have demurred from intervening in politically delicate matters of war, peace and support for the troops.

Bernie Sanders has been the a point man on this, and he has been relentless.

He gets sh%$ done.