President Donald Trump has revoked a policy set by his predecessor requiring US intelligence officials to publish the number of civilians killed in drone strikes outside of war zones.

The 2016 executive order was brought in by then-President Barack Obama, who was under pressure to be more transparent.

Since the 9/11 terror attack, drone strikes have been increasingly used against terror and military targets.

The Trump administration said the rule was "superfluous" and distracting.

The order applied to the CIA, which has carried out drone strikes in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia.

• Up close and personal with the biggest drone squadron ever
• How the US has stepped up its war in Somalia
• Top Pakistani militant 'killed by drone'

"This action eliminates superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission," an official said.

What was the rule?

It required the head of the CIA to release annual summaries of US drone strikes and assess how many died as a result.

Mr Trump's executive order does not overturn reporting requirements on civilian deaths set for the military by Congress.

There have been 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of the Trump presidency, compared with 1,878 in Mr Obama's eight years in office, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based think tank. 

What is the reaction?

Lawmakers and rights groups have criticised Mr Trump's decision, saying it could allow the CIA to conduct drone strikes without accountability.

"The Trump administration's action is an unnecessary and dangerous step backwards on transparency and accountability for the use of lethal force, and the civilian casualties they cause," Rita Siemion of Human Rights First told AFP news agency.

Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat who chairs Congress's intelligence committee, called the requirement issued by Obama "an important measure of transparency," and said "there is simply no justification" for cancelling it.

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.

President Trump presented his 2020 budget on Monday. It’s titled ‘A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First.’ And we know which taxpayers Donald Trump considers first, when you look at his last budget and tax cuts. This budget includes nearly a 5 percent increase over fiscal year 2019 in military spending, and a 9 percent cut in non-military spending. What’s that mean? Cuts in the Departments of Education, Health, and Human Services; the Interior and State.

The details of the military spending increases are not known yet, but we do have general ideas based on what’s been released.For example, the Overseas Contingency Operations account, OCO. Now, that sounds like some crazy technical term that everyone glosses over when you read it in the newspaper, but it’s worth paying attention to. Overseas Contingency Operations account, OCO. This account is not subject to mandatory congressional spending limits, and it’s set to more than double to $165 billion. Let’s do that again. It was $69 billion, and now it’s going to $165 billion. That’s an account that was meant to pay for war. The Iraq war, the Afghan war. So why is it going up by more than double?

$2.6 billion are included in this budget for developing new hypersonic weapons. Meanwhile, the Air Force plans to purchase more F-15s and F-35 fighter jets. The Navy plans to retire the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier in exchange for buying two new Gerald Ford aircraft carriers. Now, those things were budgeted at about $10 [billion] or $11 billion. They’re coming in at about $13 [billion] or $14 billion. Now, Trump didn’t come up with the purchase of these Ford-class aircraft carriers, but they’re continuing to have to pay for them. But it’s not just two. Over the next few years the plan is for close to a dozen of these aircraft carriers–again, at somewhere around $13 [billion] or $14 billion apiece.

Joining me to take a closer look at Trump’s defense budget is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. Larry is a retired U.S. Colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He’s now a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary. And thanks for joining us, Larry.

LARRY WILKERSON: Good to be with you, Paul.

PAUL JAY: So, over the next while we can talk about various parts of this budget, but let’s start with sort of the thing that leaps out, and this tremendous increase in the OCO. Now, if I understand the OCO, this was an account to fight wars with. It helped fund the Iraq war, helped fund the Afghan war. What do you make of this enormous increase?

LARRY WILKERSON: I see it as an attempt to avoid the appropriations process, just as you pointed out when you defined Overseas Contingency Operations funding. That’s what it was put in there for in the very beginning, in my administration. Yes, ostensibly, for war fighting. And it was for war fighting. But ultimately now it’s not just for war fighting. In fact, it probably isn’t for war fighting, primarily. It’s for getting money that isn’t under the guidelines and appropriation process. A slush fund, in other words. The more you get, the better you feel.

PAUL JAY: Is it also possible that this is because they expect to be doing a lot more war fighting? Trump and Bolton and his crew around him, Pompeo, they’re very focused on Iran. There’s been a lot of buildup to this. You and I have talked about this. Especially Trump in such trouble, Netanyahu in such trouble, MBS in Saudi Arabia in trouble. There’s a lot of factors that lead to the conclusion that they might start something more serious with Iran sooner than later. Is it possible some of this money is for that?

LARRY WILKERSON: Oh, there’s a remote possibility of that, I think. I said to a senator sitting in the Congress last week, “Remember, Senator, your baboon-like leadership at the CIA completely missed the fall of the Shah in 1979. You need to be real sure they’re not going to miss the collapse of the House of Saud in 2019-2020.” That’s how bad the situation is getting in Saudi Arabia.

I think it’s more a budget trick than it is a preparation for war. That said, your comments are of concern. The base budget would be more difficult to go into in a speedy way in the event that something happened really fast. But the whole thing, the whole purpose of OCO in the first place, when we put it together, was not to finance projected war. It was to finance ongoing war. That was the purpose the House approved it for.

Now, the House of Representatives, as you well know, is the budget House of our Congress. There’s no way the House of Representatives, as it is presently constituted, is going to go along with this. They’re not going to go along with that cut in domestic spending. They’re not going to go all with the 5 percent or a 4 percent or perhaps even a 3 percent increase in defense spending. Not only are those increases preposterous, and the House knows that, but there are other reasons for the administration putting so much forward, not the least of which is if I put 5 forward, maybe I’ll get 2. I’ve just been through a budget drill with a number of people who are very concerned about the fiscal status of this country right now. If you look at what this commission just predicted about the defense budget, and you look at what others have said about the defense budget and how it has to go up and go up and go up and go up, you will see that if we follow even the least of their recommendations we’re going to be a trillion dollars annually very shortly.

If we get that kind of increase in the defense budget, even with a 9 percent decrease in the other side of the budget, as it were, even with entitlements staying roughly the same, we are going to be without discretionary federal spending in less than a decade. In other words, annual payments, interest payments on our colossal debt, and the defense budget will consume every dollar of discretionary spending. Someone has got to stop this. Someone has got to get off this train. Someone has got to be rational. And I think I sense in the House there are some of those someones. And so this president is going to hit a buzz saw with any budget that does what you just said this one proposes to do.

PAUL JAY: Now, he’s got to know that. When they present a budget that’s going to be a 9 percent cut–it’s mostly, it seems, to social services. We don’t know the detail of that yet. But it’s a long–you know, they’ve been wanting to go after Social Security and Medicare for a long time. And who knows, Department of Education’s there. There is no way that a House, this House, passes this thing. Even the most conservative Democrats, center-right Democrats in the house, they can’t go along with this. So this is a negotiating document. This is a thing he’s going to fight with the Dems over. But he’s doing it in in late 2019 as we head into, you know, October, when they’re supposed to pass the 2020 budget, which–essentially the 2020 election is full on. So he somehow thinks this is good for him in the 2020 election?

LARRY WILKERSON: How many years has it been, Paul, since we passed the budget on fiscal year time? I can’t recall when we did. I’m sure we did at one point. Generally speaking, we were able to get the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, the military budget, passed by that time, or close to that time. But the rest of the budget usually struggles across the threshold, as it were, sometime in February or March. We’re horrible right now with budget passing.

The pressures that are going to be brought on Trump, though, with regard to any major increase in defense spending, regardless of people like Schumer, and Menendez, and even Pelosi, and maybe Hoyer, who are just as warmongering as any Republican, they are going to be great. Because I’ve been over there. I’ve seen these new people. I’ve talked with them. Good luck getting any kind of increase in defense through this House. And people can sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Service Members Committee, and all these other people–Armed Forces Committee–and they can yell and holler all they want. They are not going to get this kind of cut in social spending, in entitlements, or whatever it is that they’re proposing, and this kind of increase in the defense budget.

So, yes, it’s a negotiating ploy. They’ll hope that they can get 2 percent, maybe, and 3 percent, or whatever. But it’s going to be a really hard row to hoe. We just presented a number of members of the Senate Finance Committee with a prospect of cutting a trillion dollars out of the national security budget over the next 10 years. That’s about a hundred billion a year. And we think, and I think, as a military professional, I think that is a very sane proposal. When I’ve seen the specifics and everything, it’s a very sane proposal.

So there have got to be some people in the House, not necessarily just progressives and these new folks that just came in, there are going to be some people in the House who put their thinking caps on and realize that this money we’re giving to defense pollutes our national security establishment. It doesn’t help it. Look at what happened this year, and apparently what’s happened in previous years. They couldn’t even spend the money. There were some billions of dollars unspent this year. Even the military construction fund. This is crazy. We’re giving them too much money. It is corrupting them. It is polluting them.

PAUL JAY: So these guys–you know, the John Boltons of this world–you know, they love this game theory. They play these things out. So they must be envisioning that this kind of a budget is going to, one, split the Democratic Party to some extent, because as you said, there’s a lot of the corporate Democrats that are as much in bed with the military industrial establishment as Republicans are. There’s going to be tremendous pressure on those Dems not to just shoot this whole thing down. And also I think it’s important that in the lead up to the 2020 election, if the military industrial establishment sees the goodies waiting for them with the reelection of Trump, and even if they can retake the House and the Senate–I don’t know if any of this is possible. But the the power of the military industrial complex to run a ground game, a media game, to fund campaigns, you know, before they got–they used to get pretty good budgets out of the Democrats, too. But this may create a scenario that to some extent splits the Dems, gets the military arms manufacturers completely on board for Trump, and all of the clout they have. I mean, is this–are they playing this as a game theory? Because they can’t possibly think, as you said, they’re going to pass this thing.

LARRY WILKERSON: There are just as many, I think, lobbyists on the other side–and I’m not praising them, either–who are going to fight them tooth and nail and in the streets, if necessary, in regard to social spending, or what I call spending on the other side of the state structure. The people. Americans. We used to call that a welfare state, but now that’s a perjorative, and I can’t call it a welfare state, because that immediately makes it suspect, just like socialism makes things suspect.

‘Welfare state’ simply means you’re taking care of your people, period. That’s what’s going to get in their face. And lots of these people in the House are going to get in their face. I was just up in Boston. And you know, Massachusetts is not necessarily the breeding ground for this kind of uprising, even with its reputation of the revolution beginning, and so forth. But Massachusetts is angry, and Connecticut’s angry, and Rhode Island’s angry. And I’ve been in Texas and Oklahoma, and they’re angry, too. And they’re angry that Trump promised to take care of the domestic situation, his most potent promise with these voters in terms of Make America Great Again, and he isn’t doing it. And he certainly isn’t doing it by increasing the defense budget well beyond what even the average American understands is probably necessary to keep this country secure. It’s going to be a very hard argument, Paul. So as a negotiating tactic it may look good. As a tactic in the real world, I don’t think it’s going to work.

PAUL JAY: Well, I don’t know if it works or not, but I can imagine the thinking of the people behind this budget, Trump and Bolton and such, of number one, they don’t give a damn about budget deficits, anyway. So the idea of a 9 percent cut to social services is just a sop to the people in the Republican Party that claim to care about budget deficits. But when they get into the negotiations it will be, you know, give us our military budget and it will only be an 8 percent cut. No. OK, give us our military budget and it’ll be a 7 percent cut. Oh, no. They’ll just keep negotiating the social services cuts down to some extent, because they don’t give a damn about the deficit, anyway.

And then the second thing is if he can throw a lot of this military spending into the economy in early 2020, I don’t know how quickly this can be done, maybe it has a bit of a stimulus effect. Because, you know, I listen to Bloomberg Business radio in the mornings. And every morning they are talking about everyone’s expecting a recession by the end of 2019 or early 2020.

LARRY WILKERSON: Very likely. Very likely. And I’ll just remind you of the studies that we did, and there are other studies, too, but we did studies in 1991 and ’92 when George H.W. Bush as president asked Colin Powell and the Defense Department to cut the military by 25 percent, and then we had to cut it by another 3 percent when Les Aspin came in with Bill Clinton. Those studies showed without any doubt how little economic impact military dollars had. They virtually die inside the federal reservation, or inside the Raytheon, Boeing, or whatever, complex. When you compare them–and we use these arguments with with mayors and governors, because we want to convince them that what we were doing would not hurt them badly–an economic dollar is a two to three multiplier. And by that I mean investment in trade, or new training, education for new jobs, that sort of thing. An education dollar, a pure education dollar, multiplies four or five times. An investment dollar–that is, sort of like a venture capital dollar–usually multiplies with a two to three multiplier. The defense dollar doesn’t multiply. So it’s a facetious argument that says a plus-up of the defense budget is an economic healthmaker in the broader economy. It simply isn’t.

We actually got letters from people all across the country, years after things had happened, telling us it was the best thing they ever did was to shut down that military base, or close that Navy wharf at Newport, or whatever it happened to be, because military dollars, defense dollars, by and large, do not multiply like other dollars in the economy.

So it’s a facetious argument. It won’t have an immediate impact. Not like, for example, the rising price of gas gas right now. I don’t see how an increased defense budget gives anybody a better chance of getting out of what you just described, and which I think is correct, that we’re headed for another crash. The housing market is inflated maximally again. The stock market is so inflated it’s pitiful. We’re at a point where the maldistribution of wealth in this country is like or exceeds that in 1929. The only reason that we didn’t have a tremendously worse crisis in 2007 and ’08 is because we printed more money than any state entity in the world has ever printed in history. And now we’re going to watch the impact of that come back to haunt us.

Did you see the supply of hundred dollar bills in the world, that graph the other day? Holy mackerel. We haven’t had a supply this copious in the world since 1929. We’re in trouble, fiscally. And Modern Monetary Theory and disregarding of deficits will not get us out of it. All it will do is deepen it and make it more profound. There are people in the House who are awakening to this, professional staffers, and so forth. And people in the Senate, too. They’re not sure what to do about it, particularly with this president and this regime. But I think ultimately they’re going to realize they have to do something about it. And one of the things they have to do is get a handle on the defense budget, the national security budget. Because that’s what we’re talking about.

You know, I’m not talking about just $760 [billion], $750 billion for defense. We’re talking about $1.2 [trillion] to $1.5 trillion now with these plus-ups to the national security establishment, which includes nuclear weapons in DOE, the Veterans Administration. Paul, there is a bill coming down the road for these 4.5 million veterans we’ve created over the last 17 years that is astronomical. Look at VA’s budget right now. It’s just climbing and climbing and climbing. The whole national security budget is twice what the defense budget is. We cannot sustain this.

PAUL JAY: Right. Well, put together the specific problems of Netanyahu, Mohammad bin Salman and Saudi Arabia, and Donald Trump and the United States, and even more importantly the systemic coming crisis you just described, the solution has always been war. And this budget, I think, is a reflection of that.

LARRY WILKERSON: You won’t get much argument from me on that. I hope we’re wrong. I hope we’re not looking to bail ourselves out of this crisis as FDR did in 1941. He had ample justification for doing it, I guess, with Pearl Harbor. But that is really what got us out of the Great Depression, is World War II.

PAUL JAY: All right. Thanks for joining us, Larry.

LARRY WILKERSON: Thanks for having me.

PAUL JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

 

Read more:

https://therealnews.com/stories/trump-budget-showers-pentagon-with-cash-preparing-for-war-wilkerson-jay

 

 

Paul Jay is the CEO and senior editor of The Real News Network. He has overseen the production of over 7,000 news stories and is the host of TRNN news analysis programming. Previously, he was executive producer of CBC Newsworld’s independent flagship debate show CounterSpin for its 10 years on air. He is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with over 20 films under his belt, including Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows; Return to Kandahar; and Never-Endum-Referendum. He was the founding chair of Hot Docs!, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival and now the largest such festival in North America.

 

 

 

 

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It’s not only the mafia that demands ransom money in exchange for its « protection ». « The rich countries that we protect » - warned President Donald Trump in a menacing speech at the Pentagon - « are all notified. They will have to pay for our protection ».

President Trump – reveals Bloomberg [1]- is going to present the plan « Cost Plus 50 » which includes the following criteria – the allied countries which shelter US forces on their territory will have to cover their total cost, and pay the USA a supplement of 50 % in exchange for the « privilege » of housing them and therefore enjoying their « protection ».

The plan also requires that the shelter countries pay the salaries of US military personnel and the costs of the management of the aircraft and warships that the United States keep in that country. Italy must therefore pay not only the salaries of approximately 12,000 US military employees based on their territory, but also the management costs for the F-16 fighters and other aircraft deployed by the USA at Aviano and Sigonella. To this must be added the costs of the Sixth Fleet based at Gaeta. According to this same requirement, we will also have to pay for the management of Camp Darby, the biggest US arsenal outside of the homeland, and for the upkeep of the US nuclear weapons stored at Aviano and Ghedi.

We do not know how much the United States intend to charge Italy and the other European countries which shelter their military forces, since we do not even know how much they are currently paying. These data are covered by Secret-Defense. According to a study by the Rand Corporation, the European members of NATO assume the average charge of 34 % of the cost of the US forces and bases present on their territories. But we do not know how much of the annual cost they currently pay to the USA. The only estimation - 2,5 billion dollars – was made 17 years ago.

The sum paid by Italy is therefore also secret. We only have information on certain posts - for example the tens of millions of Euros spent to adapt the airports of Aviano and Ghedi to the needs of the US F-35 fighters and the new B61-12 nuclear bombs that the USA will begin to deploy in Italy in 2020, plus approximately 100 million Euros for the work on the aeronaval base at Sigonella, which is also to be paid for by Italy. At Sigonella, only the Nas I, the administrative and leisure area, is exclusively financed by the USA, while Nas II, the operational departments - the most expensive - are financed by NATO, and therefore also by Italy.

In any case, it is certain – warns a researcher from the Rand Corp – that with the « Cost Plus 50 » plan, the costs for the allies « will skyrocket ». There is talk of an increase of 600 %. This will be added to the usual military spending, which in Italy reaches approximately 70 million Euros per day, soon to climb to about 100 million Euros according to the engagements taken by consecutive Italian governments at NATO headquarters.

This is public money drawn from our pockets, subtracted from productive investments and social spending. But it is possible that Italy could pay less for the US forces and bases deployed on its territory. The « Cost Plus 50 » in fact plans for a « good behaviour bonus » in the favour of those « allies which closely align themselves with the United States, by doing what they are asked ».

We are sure that Italy will profit from a strong reduction because, from government to government, it has always followed close behind the United States, most recently, by sending troops and warplanes to Eastern Europe on the pretext of containing the « Russian menace » and by favouring the US plan to bury the INF Treaty in order to deploy in Europe, including Italy, sites for nuclear missiles pointed at Russia.

Since these are the targets of possible reprisals, we will need the « protection » of other US forces and bases. Which we will have to pay for, but still with the reduction bonus.

Manlio Dinucci

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

Source 
Il Manifesto (Italy)

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article205653.html

 

 

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The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: “Can you assure American viewers … that we’re in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?”

Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.

Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these “Buchananites toss around ‘neoconservative’—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is ‘Jewish conservative.’” Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a “key tenet of neoconservatism.” He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush “sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible.” (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/whose-war/

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276

 

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Women's Rights

Trial Casts Light on Hardline Approach in Saudi Arabia

Three Saudi women are currently on trial in Riyadh, charged with espionage and conspiracy. The truth is that the women merely advocated for women's rights. They have reportedly been tortured in a case that has cast light on the kingdom's new hardline approach.

 

By Susanne Koelbl

 

Eman al-Nafjan must have guessed they were coming for her. A few weeks before her arrest by Saudi authorities, the women's-rights activist changed her profile picture on WhatsApp. Instead of her face and soft, brown hair, it showed a reptile with its mouth open. Deep in the animal's throat was a frog, petrified by fear, at the moment of death.

It was a harbinger of doom. Nafjan, 38 years old and a well-organized mother of four children, had been committed to fighting for human rights in her country, especially women's rights for over a decade. At the time, her youngest daughter was just 2.

Sometime between May 15 and 18, Nafjan was arrested. Around the same time, Saudi secret police rounded up other female activists from their homes. For years, the women have been fighting together for the right to drive and the abolition of Saudi Arabia's so-called guardianship law, which gives men in the kingdom extensive control over their female relatives. Men can be notified via a government app when their wives or daughters want to cross the border.

A few days after her arrest, Nafjan's face appeared on the front page of one of Saudi Arabia's government-friendly newspapers. There were also two pictures of other women's rights advocates, including the country's most famous feminist, Loujain al-Hathloul, 29, and retired IT professor Aziza al-Yousef, 60. The word "traitor" was plastered above each of their heads in bright red.

The Saudi government accused the women of "coordinated activities to undermine the security, stability and natural unity of the kingdom." These are serious allegations. In Saudi Arabia, treason is sometimes punished more severely than murder, and in a trial that treats human-rights activists like terrorists, Nafjan and her fellow campaigners cannot expect leniency.

Sources from the Saudi royal court in Riyadh say the women may face up to 20 years in prison or be sentenced to death. Two weeks ago, public prosecutors announced that their investigations were complete -- nine months after the women had been arrested.

On March 7, the United Nations Human Rights Council called on Riyadh to release the women as well as other activists. The declaration was signed by 36 countries, including all 28 European Union member states.

On Wednesday, March 13, the trials of the first activists, including Yousef, al-Hathloul and Nafjan, began. Among other things, they are accused of maintaining suspicious contacts with foreign powers and offering financial support to "hostile elements" abroad. That's not good news.

Read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/women-s-rights-trial-casts-lig...

 

 

 

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With 43 people already executed in Saudi Arabia in the first few months of 2019, the kingdom is well on its way to setting a new record for the greatest number of executions in a year, according to reports.

Of the 43 executed so far, 21 were beheaded for drug offenses, while the remainder were put to death for crimes including treason, renouncing Islam, adultery, murder, burglary, rape, espionage and terrorism, according to the Gulf Times.

Should the Riyadh maintain its present rate, experts have projected that a whopping 172 executions will have taken place by the end of 2019 — the highest total recorded in Saudi Arabia since human rights groups first began tracking the data in the early 2000s.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201903261073566392-saudi-arabia-recor...

 

Breitbart told us sarcastically (I think) that:

 

The Big Bang Theory creator Chuck Lorre has once again used his end credits to bash President Donald Trump, this time calling him a “gangster-in-chief.”

Since becoming a hit producer, Lorre has ended the sitcom’s episodes with a “vanity card” touting his Chuck Lorre Productions film company and often uses the short segment to push his radical, far-left political ideals.

The vanity card for Thursday’s episode of Big Bang Theory was no exception to Lorre’s radicalized vanity cards, as he once again went after the president.

Lorre hyperbolically proposed that the president could bring about some catastrophic event:

I am writing this vanity card on December 15th. If all goes as planned, you are reading it on January 3rd. Since I have no idea what the Gangster-in-Chief might do between now and then, I thought I’d express my outrage now. My pre-outrage if you will. Let’s call it anticipatory disgust. Or being aghast in advance. The point is I’m trying to get ahead of my inevitable indignation. This way, regardless of what law is broken, or which murderous dictator gets a pass, I’ll have already vented. Of course, if he nukes Pyongyang or Toronto in order to distract from impeachment chatter, I reserve the right to be upset.

 

This is far from the first time Lorre has included his bizarre vitriol at the end of an episode. Last October Lorre closed out Big Bang with a plea to God to force American voters to turn against the “fascist” Trump.

 

-------------------------

Some of the oxygen-givers to the Donald are pumping gloriously at the Mueller report findings... including the NYP (see: gloating at the NYP about the MSM frenzy...). But this does not mean that Trump is not El Capo of the gangsters in Washington and the world... The US administration acts like a Mafia gang and the media sees nothing much pass the non existent Trump-Putin axis — while letting many balls go to the keeper BECAUSE A LOT OF THE MSM is also controlled by the Washington gangsters — some of whom resent Trump for leading the pack ...

 

 

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During his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike Pompeo said the following about Yemen and Saudi Arabia (around 4:10:15 here):

The challenges that you’ve cited, the death that you just cited in Yemen, is not because of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You have the wrong end of the stick on that. 

That answer caught the attention of several observers, some of whom referred to the coalition attack on the Save the Children hospital in Saada that took place yesterday and killed eight people, including five children.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/pompeos-pathetic-pro-sau...

 

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Political prisoners in Saudi Arabia are said to be suffering from malnutrition, cuts, bruises and burns, according to leaked medical reports that are understood to have been prepared for the country’s ruler, King Salman.

The reports seem to provide the first documented evidence from within the heart of the royal court that political prisoners are facing severe physical abuse, despite the government’s denials that men and women in custody are being tortured.

The Guardian has been told the medical reports will be given to King Salman along with recommendations that are said to include a potential pardon for all the prisoners, or at least early release for those with serious health problems.

These options are part of a substantial internal review said to have been ordered by the king, who approved the commissioning of examinations of up to 60 prisoners, many of them women, for a report to be circulated around the royal court, a source said.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/31/leaked-reports-reveal-abus...

 

 

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WASHINGTON — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved the plan for operatives to assassinate the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to a previously classified intelligence report released on Friday by the Biden administration.

Much of the evidence the C.I.A. used to draw that conclusion remains classified, including recordings of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that were obtained by Turkish intelligence. But the report does outline who carried out the killing, describe what Prince Mohammed knew about the operation and lay out how the C.I.A. concluded that he ordered it and bears responsibility for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

The release of the report also signaled that President Biden, unlike his predecessor, would not set aside the killing of Mr. Khashoggi and that his administration intended to attempt to isolate the crown prince, although it will avoid any measures that would threaten ties to the kingdom. Administration officials said their goal was a recalibration, not a rupture, of the relationship.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/us/politics/jamal-khashoggi-killing-cia-report.html

 

The Saudis have been a useful ally to the US — doing a lot of covert terrorism (Sunni, Daesh, Wahhabism extremism) in other countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Niger, Nigeria, Libya, etc. on behalf of the US empire. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has been forgiven in the name of "diplomacy", weapons sales and oil price manipulations... Recalibration of the relationship means that nothing much will change...

 

FREE ASSANGE TODAY, President Joe.

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