Another portion of the president’s pro-Saudi talking points released earlier today contained some remarkable whoppers:

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism.

Trump may be gullible enough to believe this nonsense, but no one else should fall for it. Iran’s involvement in Yemen was minimal before the Saudi-led intervention began. It has increased somewhat as a result of that intervention, but it is difficult for “the Iranians” to “leave” a place that they barely have a presence in. The idea that Iran is “responsible” for a war that they didn’t start and have almost no role in is a bizarre stretch even by Trump’s standards. Iran’s small role in Yemen has always been used by the Saudi coalition to distract American and other Western policymakers from the purpose of the Saudi-Emirati war effort, which has been to attempt to batter and starve Yemen into submission and to carve out their own spheres of influences in the country. 

Nothing is forcing the Saudis and Emiratis to continue attacking Yemen, but they persist in their failed war because they don’t want to admit that they can’t win. If the Saudis would “gladly withdraw,” they could have done so at any point over the last three and a half years. They aren’t interested in providing humanitarian assistance, and we know this since they have spent the last three years impeding the delivery of aid and starving the population of basic necessities. Trump’s repetition of Saudi propaganda is embarrassing and appalling, and the conceit that Saudi Arabia is some sort of well-meaning, humanitarian government is one of the most insulting lies that this president could tell the public. Perhaps the most insulting lie of all is the idea that Trump’s abject subservience to Saudi interests has anything to do with putting America first.

 

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"Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism."???? Radical Islamic Terrorism is synonym with Wahhabism which itself is synonym with Sunni Islam which  itself is synonym with Saudi Arabia. What planet do these guy live on?.

Even at the height of recent American interventionism, one bit of realism prevailed: as bad as the government of Saudi Arabia is, whatever would replace it would likely be worse. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens and Riyadh has a proven track record of funding Wahhabism. Regime change in Iraq proceeded with far more tenuous connections to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, yet destabilizing, much less toppling, the House of Saud was almost universally regarded as a fool’s errand.

Such was the dilemma President Trump faced in weighing a response to the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a crime for which the Saudi regime itself bears culpability. That our options were limited, however, does not mean the president chose wisely. Trump on Tuesday pleaded with us to think of the defense contractors—“Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon”—before punishing the government of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in an exclamation point-laden statement that bizarrely juxtaposed “Standing with Saudi Arabia” with “America First.”

Trump has deservedly elicited widespread criticism for his treatment of the Khashoggi killing in a statement that appeared designed to preempt a U.S. intelligence assessment. He repeats the claim Khashoggi was part of the Muslim Brotherhood without really taking a position one way or the other and seemingly shrugs at the question of whether the crown prince had advance knowledge of the columnist’s torture and dismemberment. (“[M]aybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”)

But the apologia for the Saudi and United Arab Emirates war in Yemen, backed by our own government, should not escape reproach. Trump opens with some whataboutism and saber-rattling against Iran before lavishing praise on Saudi Arabia.

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trump is killing beautiful babies...

"The world is a very dangerous place!" Donald Trump said in a statement.

And that was especially true for Jamal Khashoggi who has been sacrificed by the Trump administration.

Brutally murdered by the Saudis because he was a critic of the country's leadership, the journalist was a US resident who was writing for the Washington Post, but was not an American. 

That's one justification being used by the Trump administration, which has chosen to ignore the likelihood, according to its own CIA, that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman probably ordered the murder.

"Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn't!" Mr Trump says.

What Mr Trump means is that there's no public smoking gun (or tape) directly connecting the Crown Prince to the crime, so even though intelligence agencies think he's responsible, there's enough room to exploit the remaining crevice of doubt. 

Mr Trump is a specialist at that, and although he hasn't heard the tape of the murder, he has been briefed on it and obviously thinks he is on solid ground.

 

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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-21/khashoggi-sacrificed-by-trump-adm...

 

The best cartoon of the year, Cathy does it again:

 

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trump is killing beautiful babies...

 

 

By Darius Shahtahmasebi. Darius is a New Zealand-based legal and political analyst, currently specializing in immigration, refugee and humanitarian law.

Forces are aligning against Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, lead by elements within the CIA and strong players in the mainstream media. But what is really behind this deterioration in relationship, and what are its implications?

Following the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, western media and various entities, including the CIA, appear to have turned their back on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS). In response to the scandal, the Guardian released a video which its celebutante, Owen Jones, captioned “Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest threats on Earth. Time to stop propping up its repulsive regime.”

The Guardian was not alone in its condemnation. “It’s high time to end Saudi impunity,” wrote Hana Al-Khamri in Al-Jazeera. “It’s time for Saudi Arabia to tell the truth on Jamal Khashoggi,” the Washington Post’s Editorial Board argued. Politico called it “the tragedy of Jamal Khashoggi.”

Even shadowy think-tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Atlantic Council released articles criticising Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggi’s death.

A number of companies began backing away from Saudi money after the journalist’s death, including the world’s largest media companies such as the New York Times, the Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, Arianna Huffington, CNN, CNBC, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Google Cloud CEO, just to name a few.

The CIA concluded that MBS personally ordered Khashoggi’s death, and was reportedly quite open in its provision of this assessment. Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, also took time out of his schedule to express concern over Saudi Arabia’s confirmation of the killing.

At the time of the scandal, former CIA director John Brennan went on MSNBC to state that the Khashoggi’s death would be the downfall of MBS. Furthermore, the US Senate just voted in favour of ending American involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen (a somewhat symbolic victory, though this is a topic for another article), but nonetheless was a clear stab at MBS personally.

The only person who appeared to continue to uphold America’s unfaltering support for MBS, even after all the publicly made evidence against MBS, was the US president himself. So after years of bombarding Yemen, sponsoring terror groups across the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific and beyond, why is it only now that there has been mounting opposition to Saudi Arabia’s leadership? Let’s just bear in mind that western media had spent years investing in a heavy PR campaign to paint MBS as a “reformer.”

Former national security adviser under Barack Obama’s second term, Susan Rice, wrote an article in the New York Times, in which she called MBS a “partner we can’t depend on.” Rice concludes that MBS is “not and can no longer be viewed as a reliable partner of the United States and our allies.” But why is this? Is it because MBS is responsible for some of the most egregious human rights abuses inside his own kingdom as well as in Yemen? Is it because of MBS’ support for groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda? No, according to Rice, we “should not rupture our important relationship with the kingdom, but we must make it clear it cannot be business as usual so long as Prince Mohammad continues to wield unlimited power.”

One will observe that the latter segment of Rice’s article almost mirrors former CIA director Brennan’s word on MSNBC word for word who stated that:

“I think ultimately this is going to come out. And it’s very important for us to maintain the relations with Saudi Arabia. And if it’s Mohammed bin Salman who’s the cancer here, well, we need to be able to find ways to eliminate the cancer and to move forward with this relationship that is critical to regional stability and our national interests.”

In reality, this is probably the issue that western media and government advisors have taken up with MBS. Aside from the fact he allegedly held a huge hand in the brutal murder of one of their own establishment journalists (Saudi Arabia reportedly tortured and killed another journalist not long after Khashoggi, but western media was eerily silent on this incident) MBS is not opposed for his reckless disregard for human rights. With insight into Rice’s mindset, we actually learn that if the US were to punish MBS, he would be likely to “behave more irresponsibly to demonstrate his independence and exact retribution against his erstwhile Western partners.”

You see, the problem with MBS isn’t that he is a mass murdering war criminal, it is that he is too “independent” for the United States’ liking.

Last week, Saudi Arabia and the other major oil producers met in Vienna at the year’s final big OPEC meeting of the year. As Foreign Policy notes, Saudi Arabia remains the largest oil producer inside OPEC but has to contend with the US and Russia who are “pumping oil at record levels.” Together, the three countries are the world’s biggest oil producers, meaning any coordinated decision made between these three nations can be somewhat monumental.

However, it appears that one of these three nations will end up drawing the short end of the stick as the other two begin forming a closer alliance. As Foreign Policy explains:

“But Saudi Arabia has bigger game in mind at Vienna than just stabilizing oil prices. Recognizing that it can’t shape the global oil market by itself anymore but rather needs the cooperation of Russia, Saudi Arabia is hoping to formalize an ad hoc agreement between OPEC and Moscow that began in 2016, a time when dirt-cheap oil also posed a threat to oil-dependent regimes. That informal agreement expires at the end of the year, but the Saudis would like to make Russia’s participation with the cartel more permanent.”

Russian officials have been signalling their intention to formalise this agreement for quite some time now. Given the hysteria in western media about any and all things Russian, it is not too much of a stretch to suggest that this is the kind of news that is not sitting too well with the powers-that-be.

Earlier this year, Russia and Saudi Arabia announced that it would “institutionalize” the two-year-old bilateral agreement to coordinate oil production targets in order to maintain an edge on the global market.

While US president Trump has been supportive and incredibly defensive of MBS during this “crisis”, the truth is that the US only has itself to blame. It was not all too long ago that Trump announced that he had told Saudi King Salman that his kingdom would not last two weeks without US support.

Saudi Arabia is learning for themselves quite quickly that, ultimately, it may pay not to have all its eggs in one geopolitical superpower basket.

Saudi Arabia has been increasingly interested in Moscow since King Salman made a historic visit to Moscow in October 2017. While Trump has openly bragged about his record-breaking arms deals with the Saudis, the blunt truth is that the $110 billion arms agreements were reportedly only ever letters of interest or intent, but not actual contracts. As such, the US-Saudi arms deal is still yet to be locked in, all the while Saudi Arabia is negotiating with Russia for its S-400 air defence system. This is, as the Washington Post notes, despite repeated US requests to Saudi Arabia for it disavow its interest in Russia’s arms.

The economic threat that an “independent” Saudi Arabia under MBS’ leadership poses to Washington runs deeper than meets the eye and may indeed have a domino effect. According to CNN, Russia and Saudi Arabia “are engaged in an intense battle over who will be the top supplier to China, a major energy importer with an insatiable appetite for crude.”

The unveiling of China’s petro-yuan poses a major headache for Washington and its control over Saudi Arabia as well. According to Carl Weinberg, chief economist and managing director at High-Frequency Economics, China will “compel”Saudi Arabia to trade oil in Chinese yuan instead of US dollars. One must bear in mind that China has now surpassed the US as the “biggest oil importer on the planet,” these direct attacks on the US dollar will have huge implications for its current world reserve status.

If Saudi Arabia jumps on board China’s petro-yuan, the rest of OPEC will eventually follow, and the US might be left with no choice but to declare all of these countries in need of some vital freedom and democracy.

Therefore, ousting MBS and replacing him with a Crown Prince who doesn’t stray too far from the tree that is US imperialism may put a dent in pending relationships with Saudi Arabia and Washington’s adversaries, Russia and China.

Once we get over the certainty that the US media and the CIA are not against MBS for his long-list of human rights abuses, the question then becomes: why – why now, and in this manner, have they decided to put the spotlight on MBS and expose him exactly for what he is.

Clearly, the driving force behind this media outrage is a bit more complex than first meets the eye.

 

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https://www.rt.com/op-ed/446470-saudi-arabia-mbs-cia/

 

 

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wisdom of the little prince...

 

By Finian Cunningham
President Trump’s big announcement to pull US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan is now emerging less as a peace move, and more a rationalization of American military power in the Middle East.

In a surprise visit to US forces in Iraq this week, Trump said he had no intention of withdrawing the troops in that country, who have been there for nearly 15 years since GW Bush invaded back in 2003.

Hinting at private discussions with commanders in Iraq, Trump boasted that US forces would in the future launch attacks from there into Syria if and when needed. Presumably that rapid force deployment would apply to other countries in the region, including Afghanistan.

In other words, in typical business-style transactional thinking, Trump sees the pullout from Syria and Afghanistan as a cost-cutting exercise for US imperialism. Regarding Syria, he has bragged about Turkey being assigned, purportedly, to “finish off” terror groups. That’s Trump subcontracting out US interests.

Critics and supporters of Trump are confounded. After his Syria and Afghanistan pullout call, domestic critics and NATO allies have accused him of walking from the alleged “fight against terrorism” and of ceding strategic ground to US adversaries Russia and Iran.

Meanwhile, Trump’s supporters have viewed his decision in more benign light, cheering the president for “sticking it to” the deep state and military establishment, assuming he’s delivering on electoral promises to end overseas wars.

However, neither view gets what is going on. Trump is not scaling back US military power; he is rationalizing it like a cost-benefit analysis, as perhaps only a real-estate-wheeler-dealer-turned president would appreciate. Trump is not snubbing US militarism or NATO allies, nor is he letting loose an inner peace spirit. He is as committed to projecting American military as ruthlessly and as recklessly as any other past occupant of the White House. The difference is Trump wants to do it on the cheap.

Here’s what he said to reporters on Air Force One before touching down in Iraq:

“The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world. It’s not fair when the burden is all on us, the United States… We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.” He added: “We’re no longer the suckers, folks.”

Laughably, Trump’s griping about US forces “spread all over the world” unwittingly demonstrates the insatiable, monstrous nature of American militarism. But Trump paints this vice as a virtue, which, he complains, Washington gets no thanks for from the 150-plus countries around the globe that its forces are present in.

As US troops greeted him in Iraq, the president made explicit how the new American militarism would henceforth operate.

“America shouldn’t be doing the fighting for every nation on earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. If they want us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price,” Trump said.

This reiterates a big bugbear for this president in which he views US allies and client regimes as “not pulling their weight” in terms of military deployment. Trump has been browbeating European NATO members to cough up more on military budgets, and he has berated the Saudis and other Gulf Arab regimes to pay more for American interventions.

Notably, however, Trump has never questioned the largesse that US taxpayers fork out every year to Israel in the form of nearly $4 billion in military aid. To be sure, that money is not a gift because much of it goes back to the Pentagon from sales of fighter jets and missile systems.

The long-held notion that the US has served as the “world’s policeman” is, of course, a travesty.

Since WWII, all presidents and the Washington establishment have constantly harped on, with self-righteousness, about America’s mythical role as guarantor of global security.

Dozens of illegal wars on almost every continent and millions of civilian deaths attest to the real, heinous conduct of American militarism as a weapon to secure US corporate capitalism.

But with US economic power in historic decline amid a national debt now over $22 trillion, Washington can no longer afford its imperialist conduct in the traditional mode of direct US military invasions and occupations.

Perhaps, it takes a cost-cutting, raw-toothed capitalist like Trump to best understand the historic predicament, even if only superficially.

This gives away the real calculation behind his troop pullout from Syria and Afghanistan. Iraq is going to serve as a new regional hub for force projection on a demand-and-supply basis. In addition, more of the dirty work can be contracted out to Washington’s clients like Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia, who will be buying even more US weaponry to prop the military-industrial complex.

This would explain why Trump made his hurried, unexpected visit to Iraq this week. Significantly, he said: “A lot of people are going to come around to my way of thinking”, regarding his decision on withdrawing forces from Syria and Afghanistan.

Since his troop pullout plan announced on December 19, there has been serious pushback from senior Pentagon figures, hawkish Republicans and Democrats, and the anti-Trump media. The atmosphere is almost seditious against the president. Trump flying off to Iraq on Christmas night was reportedly his first visit to troops in an overseas combat zone since becoming president two years ago.

What Trump seemed to be doing was reassuring the Pentagon and corporate America that he is not going all soft and dovish. Not at all. He is letting them know that he is aiming for a leaner, meaner US military power, which can save money on the number of foreign bases by using rapid reaction forces out of places like Iraq, as well as by subcontracting operations out to regional clients.

Thus, Trump is not coming clean out of any supposed principle when he cuts back US forces overseas. He is merely applying his knack for screwing down costs and doing things on the cheap as a capitalist tycoon overseeing US militarism.

During past decades when American capitalism was relatively robust, US politicians and media could indulge in the fantasy of their military forces going around the world in large-scale formations to selflessly “defend freedom and democracy.”

Today, US capitalism is broke. It simply can’t sustain its global military empire. Enter Donald Trump with his “business solutions.”

But in doing so, this president, with his cheap utilitarianism and transactional exploitative mindset, lets the cat out of the bag. As he says, the US cannot be the world’s policeman. Countries are henceforth going to have to pay for “our protection.”

Inadvertently, Trump is showing up US power for what it really is: a global thug running a protection racket.

It’s always been the case. Except now it’s in your face. Trump is no Smedley Butler, the former Marine general who in the 1930s condemned US militarism as a Mafia operation. This president is stupidly revealing the racket, while still thinking it is something virtuous.

 

 

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Trump Scores, Breaks Generals’ 50-Year War Record

His national security team had been trying to box him in like every other president. But he called their bluff.

By GARETH PORTER • December 28, 2018

The mainstream media has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as impulsive, blindsiding his own national security team. But detailed, published accounts of the policy process over the course of the year tell a very different story. They show that senior national security officials and self-interested institutions have been playing a complicated political game for months aimed at keeping Trump from wavering on our indefinite presence on the ground in Syria.

The entire episode thus represents a new variant of a familiar pattern dating back to Vietnam in which national security advisors put pressure on reluctant presidents to go along with existing or proposed military deployments in a war zone. The difference here is that Trump, by publicly choosing a different policy, has blown up their transparent schemes and offered the country a new course, one that does not involve a permanent war state.

The relationship between Trump and his national security team has been tense since the beginning of his administration. By mid-summer 2017, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph Dunford had become so alarmed at Trump’s negative responses to their briefings justifying global U.S. military deployments that they decided to do a formal briefing in “the tank,” used by the Joint Chiefs for meetings at the Pentagon.  

But when Mattis and Dunford sang the praises of the “rules-based, international democratic order” that has “kept the peace for 70 years,” Trump simply shook his head in disbelief.

By the end of that year, however, Mattis, Dunford, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believed they’d succeeded in getting Trump to use U.S. troops not only to defeat Islamic State but to “stabilize” the entire northeast sector of Syria and balance Russian and Iranian-sponsored forces. Yet they ignored warning signs of Trump’s continuing displeasure with their vision of a more or less permanent American military presence in Syria.  

In a March rally in Ohio ostensibly about health care reform, Trump suddenly blurted out, “We’re coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon—very soon we’re coming out.” 

Then in early April 2018, Trump’s impatience with his advisors on Syria boiled over into a major confrontation at a National Security Council meeting, where he ordered them unequivocally to accept a fundamentally different Syria deployment policy.  

Trump opened the meeting with his public stance that the United States must end its intervention in Syria and the Middle East more broadly. He argued repeatedly that the U.S. had gotten “nothing” for its efforts, according to an account published by the Associated Press based on interviews with administration officials who had been briefed on the meeting. When Dunford asked him to state exactly what he wanted, Trump answered that he favored an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and an end to the “stabilization” program in Syria.

Mattis responded that an immediate withdrawal from Syria was impossible to carry out responsibly, would risk the return of Islamic State, and would play into the hands of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, whose interests ran counter to those of the United States. 

Trump reportedly then relented and said they have could five or six months to destroy the Islamic State. But he also made it clear that he did not want them to come back to him in October and say that they had been unable to defeat ISIS and had to remain in Syria. When his advisors reiterated that they didn’t think America could withdraw responsibly, Trump told them to “just get it done.” 

Trump’s national security team had prepared carefully for the meeting in order to steer him away from an explicit timetable for withdrawal. They had brought papers that omitted any specific options for withdrawal timetables. Instead, as the detailed AP account shows, they framed the options as a binary choice—either an immediate pullout or an indefinite presence in order to ensure the complete and permanent defeat of Islamic State. The leave option was described as risking a return of ISIS and leaving a power vacuum for Russia and Iran to fill.

Such a binary strategy had worked in the past, according to administration sources. That would account for Trump’s long public silence on Syria during the early months of 2018 while then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson and Mattis were articulating detailed arguments for a long-term military commitment. 

Another reason the approach had been so successful, however, was that Trump had made such a big issue out of Barack Obama giving the Pentagon a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. As a result, he was hesitant to go public with a similar request for a Syria timetable. As CNN reported, a DoD official who had been briefed on the meeting “rejected that any sort of timeline was discussed.” Furthermore the official asserted that Mattis “was not asked to draw up withdrawal options….” Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Chiefs, also told reporters, “the president has actually been very good in not giving us a specific timeline.” 

Nevertheless, without referring to a timeline, the White House issued a short statement saying that the U.S. role in Syria was coming to a “rapid end.” 

Mattis and Dunford were consciously exploiting Trump’s defensiveness about a timeline to press ahead with their own strategy unless and until Trump publicly called them on it. That is what finally happened some weeks after Trump’s six month deadline had passed. The claims by Trump advisors that they were taken by surprise was indeed disingenuous. What happened last week was that Trump followed up on the clear policy he had laid down in April.

The Syria withdrawal affair is a dramatic illustration of the fundamental quandary of the Trump presidency in regard to ending the state of permanent war that previous administrations created. Although a solid majority of Americans want to rein in U.S. military deployments in the Middle East and Africa, Trump’s national security team is committed to doing the opposite.

Trump is now well aware that it is virtually impossible to carry out the foreign policy that he wants without advisors who are committed to the same objective. That means that he must find people who have remained outside the system during the permanent war years while being highly critical of its whole ideology and culture. If he can fill key positions with truly dissident figures, the last two years of his administration could decisively clip the wings of the bureaucrats and generals who have created the permanent war state we find ourselves in today.

Gareth Porter is an investigative reporter and regular contributor to The American Conservative. He is also the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

 

 

 

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Netflix has removed an episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj from its Saudi catalog, after the Kingdom’s government took offense to a segment criticizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In the episode, still available in the US, the Muslim American comedian blasts Saudi Arabia’s role in the war in Yemen and the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as MBS’ self-stoked image as a ‘reformer.’

 

As part of his efforts to break his country’s near-total dependence on oil exports, MBS’ government has invested heavily in American tech companies, including ridesharing app Uber and a raft of Silicon Valley startups like food delivery company Zume and ‘smart window’ firm View Inc.

Silicon Valley, Minhaj said in the episode, is “swimming in Saudi cash.”

Minhaj’s words would prove prophetic, as Netflix removed the offending episode. According to the Financial Times, the removal was not motivated by “Saudi cash,” but by legal threats. The streaming giant told the FT that it removed the episode after receiving a complaint from the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission.

The commission claimed that the episode violated a cybercrime law forbidding the “production, preparation, transmission, or storage of material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy.” Civil liberties activists have called the law a tool to suppress free speech in Saudi Arabia.

“We strongly support artistic freedom worldwide and only removed this episode in Saudi Arabia after we had received a valid legal request–and to comply with local law,” a Netflix spokesperson said.

Netflix’ explanation didn’t satisfy commentators on Twitter, who slammed the company for caving to Saudi pressure.

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The Australian Government is providing tens of millions of dollars to a Canberra defence company exporting a next-generation weapons system destined for Saudi Arabia, a country at the centre of a growing international furore over its complicity in war crimes in Yemen and the brazen murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Key points:

• Australian weapons system manufacturer EOS has received more than $36 million in goverment assistance
• According to documents seen by the ABC, EOS has struck a deal which will see its sophisticated weapons mounts supplied to Saudi Arabia
• Saudi Arabia is leading a coalition in war-torn Yemen which has been accused of indiscriminate airstrikes on civilians

The Government provided more than $36 million in financial assistance and Defence Minister Christopher Pyne has spent years lobbying the Saudi Government on behalf of Australian defence companies — support acknowledged by the company in question, Electro Optic Systems (EOS).

"Christopher Pyne MP has visited foreign capitals with me to provide assurance of Australia as a reliable defence partner and supplier to its allies," a statement from EOS chief executive Ben Greene last year noted.

"This effort and support is acknowledged."

 

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May I remember our Honourable Christopher Pyne that even the Saudi Royal family members wipe their arse with their bare hands according to the Sharia law of hygiene — and bomb Yemen's children according to their ruthless sociopathy...

 dirty hands...

The children of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi have received multimillion-dollar homes and are being paid thousands of dollars per month by the kingdom’s authorities, the Washington Post has reported.

Khashoggi – a contributor to the Post and a critic of the Saudi government – was killed and dismembered in October at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul by a team of 15 agents sent from Riyadh. His body has not been recovered.

The payments to his four children – two sons and two daughters – “are part of an effort by Saudi Arabia to reach a long-term arrangement with Khashoggi family members, aimed in part at ensuring that they continue to show restraint in their public statements”, the Post said.

 

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Mehdi Hasan reports on the latest outrage by the Saudi government:

Last week, we learned that Saudi prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for 18-year-old Murtaja, who is being tried in an anti-terror court. CNN reports that the prosecutors want to “impose the harshest form of the death penalty, which may include crucifixion or dismemberment after execution.”

Got that? The unelected government of a close ally of the United States is planning on brutally executing an 18-year-old member of a minority group, for crimes allegedly committed when he was 10 years old.

Let me repeat: Ten. Years. Old.

We shouldn’t forget the person who is primarily responsible for this outrage: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS.

Murtaja Qureiris is another victim of the Saudi government’s abuse of political protesters. He was wrongfully detained, and then tortured while in prison. In the end, many of these prisoners are executed for crimes they allegedly committed years before as children, and their convictions are usually secured with the false confessions obtained through torture. There were several other cases earlier this year of young Saudi men put to death for supposed “crimes” they committed as minors. They were among the three dozen political prisoners slaughtered in one day by the government’s executioners in April. The only “crime” that these men seem to have committed was that they participated in public political protests against the government to one degree or another. In Saudi Arabia, peaceful protest is disgracefully equated with terrorism and punished with death. Hasan continues:

“There should be no doubt that the Saudi Arabian authorities are ready to go to any length to crack down on dissent against their own citizens, including by resorting to the death penalty for men who were merely boys at the time of their arrest,” says Lynn Maalouf, Middle East research director at Amnesty International.

The Gulf kingdom is one of the world’s top executioners and, according to Maalouf, Saudi authorities have “a chilling track record of using the death penalty as a weapon to crush political dissent and punish anti-government protesters — including children — from the country’s persecuted Shi’a minority.”

All of this takes place with the approval and support of the crown prince that the Trump administration embraces and defends no matter what. Hasan explains that Saudi abuses go well beyond persecuting religious minorities:

It isn’t just Shiites, either. MBS has also targeted Sunni clerics who have failed to fall into line. There have been reports that the belligerent and thin-skinned crown prince plans on executing three high-profile Saudi religious scholars — Salman al-Odah, Awad al-Qarni, and Ali al-Omari — all of whom have been held on multiple charges of “terrorism.” 62-year-old Odah is famous in the Arab world for his relatively progressive views on Islam and homosexuality and his 2007 denunciation of Osama bin Laden. His actual “crime”? Tweeting a prayer for reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf rival, the Emirate of Qatar.

At the very least, the U.S. should have as little to do with this government as possible. It would be even better if the U.S. called out heinous Saudi abuses the same as it criticizes the abuses of any authoritarian regime. Instead of providing cover for an increasingly repressive despotic government, our government should be doing all it can to distance itself from Saudi Arabia while calling attention to the Saudi regime’s outrageous abuses and murders of prisoners. Failing that, the U.S. should use what influence it still has with Riyadh to intercede on behalf of these political prisoners who are obviously being railroaded because of their criticism of the government.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/our-despicable-saudi-ally/

 

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