Yemen
probably neglected
see mbs mofo, apco
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mbs asked mil aid houti?
an 9 26
Phone call between Trump and billionaire monarchs ends in embarrassment
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hmn no lnx grfx
https://astutenews.com/2018/06/mapping-erik-princes-private-mercenary-empire/
OPINION
Mapping Erik Prince’s Private Mercenary Empire
June 3, 2018
Erik Prince, the brain behind the infamous private military firm Blackwater, is now in China training security forces.
Prince is partially responsible for modernizing the private army for the post 9/11 world, outsourcing militaries to cheap, specialized labor pools and skirting traditional regulations meant to ensure accountability for armed forces.
His journey from hiring mercenaries to help bolster the U.S. occupation in Iraq to China is long, dizzying and includes stops around the world to train Colombian mercenaries to help make a private army for the U.A.E.and outfitting crop duster planes with missiles to be fired at Armenians.
He has become a global figure, roaming between conflicts zones to sell various governments his expertise on private armies.
To document his journey thus far, Al Bawaba has compiled a partial list of countries/regions in or for which he has done business.
United States
Prince’s trip around the world starts in the United States.
Born in an affluent Michigan family, his family maintained deep ties to the Republican establishment and several conservative, religious organizations like American Values. His sister, Betsy DeVos, married into one of the most influence political families in the Midwest, the DeVos’s, and began helping to run the Republican party machine in Michigan.
That marriage, which tied the Prince and DeVos family together, has given Erik unprecedented political access into the federal government. His list of close allies including Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist. His sister gives him a direct line of access to Trump himself.
Erik became a Navy SEAL and then established his own private military firm in 1997, Blackwater.
Once the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Blackwater received billions in contracts from the U.S. government to help supplement the official mission with private boots on the ground, relatively free from accountability or laws from any particular government.
Iraq
Blackwater’s activities in Iraq are infamous and account for Prince’s self-imposed exile from the United States.
Apart from harassing Iraqi civilians and running them off of roads with their armored personnel carriers, they also indiscriminately gunned down 14 innocent people in Baghdad in 2007, drawing an investigation and heavy criticism from media outlets around the world.
The incident stands as a cautionary tale for when mercenary groups such as Blackwater are able to operate without sufficient legal or logistical oversight. Facing a wave of scrutiny, Prince left Blackwater and the firm changed its name twice (to Xe and then Academi) to escape the heat.
Many thought they had seen the end of Erik Prince, but he resurfaced later at the helm of a different private military company.
U.A.E.
pasted image 1 nyt
A satellite image of the camp in the U.A.E. built to train Prince’s 800-member mercenary battalion ]
In 2011, Erik Prince was appointed by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to make a secret, private army. For this, he was paid $529 million.
In documents obtained by the New York Times, the mission of this privately commissioned battalion included “intelligence gathering, urban combat, the securing of nuclear and radioactive materials, humanitarian missions and special operations ‘to destroy enemy personnel and equipment,’ and crown-control.
Prince hired Colombians and nationals of other countries thousands of miles away to fill his ranks from two reasons. First, Prince was looking to pay them as little as possible. Second, they weren’t Muslims. Prince surmised that Muslims could not be trusted to kill other Muslims.
A few years later in 2015, Saudi Arabia began its military intervention in Yemen and recruited a host of other Arab nations to join its coalition. Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, business partner to Erik Prince, Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, signed up for the cause in order to destroy any creeping Iranian influence in the war-torn nation.
Yemen
Erik Prince and his U.A.E. private military firm helped recruit and train over 1,000 soldiers from Latin American countries. Then, their bodies started appearing on battlefields in Yemen.
A single missile reportedly killed 45 mercenaries from the U.A.E.
Prince’s initial battalion of 800 soldiers had blossomed into almost 2,000 specialized troops hired mostly from Latin America to do the U.A.E.’s business.
Although officials say Erik Prince’s formal business role with the U.A.E. had ended several years before the intervention into Yemen, his corporate blueprint to partially outsource the U.A.E.’s military is doubtlessly still in use.
The U.A.E. keeping and even expanding Prince’s blueprint for a private, outsourced army demonstrates just how influencial he and his mercenary business model has become.
Azerbaijan
pasted image 2
A militarily-modified crop duster, called the T-Bird (LASA Engineering)]
After his stint in the U.A.E., Prince began doing more business with Chinese executives at the Frontier Services Group (FSG), which he heads.
On this new enterprise, Prince said it “is not a patriotic endeavor,” rather, it is intended “to build a great business and make some money doing it.”
Interestingly enough, Prince’s business with FSG took him to Azerbaijan, where he was paid by the government to help it deal with its Armenian problem. Armenians are concentrated into Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which seceded from Azerbaijan and formed a semi-recognized, de facto state.
Azerbaijan called on Erik Prince and FSG to help it keep watch on the Nagorno-Karabakh region, also called the Republic of Artsakh. In response. Prince wanted to show the government two crop duster planes meant for agricultural use but refitted for military purposes. The planes were meant to be outfitted with state-of-the-art surveillance technology and were supposedly able to fire missiles.
They never made it to Azerbaijan after an investigation shut the sale down.
This is because the deal may have broken several laws. The Washington Post found that “executives were concerned that the company might be skirting U.S. law — known as International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) — requiring Americans to obtain special permits before defense-related technology can be transferred to foreign countries.”
In response to this controversial arms trade, all but two Americans on the FSG executive board quit due to concerns that he was not serving U.S. interests. This has freed Prince to deal more closely with the Chinese.
Eastern Africa
FSG’s ‘focus region’ (Frontier Services Group)]
FSG’s public focus is on providing security and logistical help to eastern African countries such as South Sudan, Kenya, Somalia and the DRC.
“When you want logistics done in Africa, you call DHL,” said Sean McFate, a former military contractor in Africa and current expert on mercenaries at the Atlantic Council. “When you want muscle, you call Erik Prince.”
One of FSG’s ventures appears to help oust the extremist militant group, Al Shabaab, from southwest Somalia—an area it has largely controlled for years. “We have brought together strong international business leaders to team-up with talented Somali entrepreneurs to make development in South West Somalia a reality,” an FSG statement reads.
“The project will include an integrated solution of air-land-sea logistics capabilities and advanced security management.”
China
FSG’s headquarters is in Hong Kong, and though it publicly states that its focus is on eastern Africa, FSG is now reported to be doing domestic work on behalf of the Chinese government.
FSG is partially owned by CITIC, a Chinese-government own investment firm.CITIC is slowly taking more and more control of FSG and is reportedly already the dominant shareholder, meaning it has greater power than Prince to determine the company’s vision and business deals.
“The Chinese are gradually taking more control” of the company. CITIC is now playing a larger role as Frontier’s dominant shareholder, said Xin who heads the International Security Defense College that trains security personnel and is overseen by FSG.
“Prince’s share is decreasing. The Chinese are in charge, so it won’t matter.”
One of FSG’s most recent missions has been to train thousands of security personnel in China’s northwest Xinjiang province, where millions of ethnically Turkic Muslims called Uyghurs live.
Uyghurs are routinely targeted by the state due to continuous attempts by some to break away from China and form an independent state.
Thousands of Uyghurs are part of an extremist group called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), whose leaders are hiding in Pakistan and whose members have a heavy presence in Syria fighting against the Syrian regime.
Human Rights Watch accused the Chinese government of “deploying a predictive policing program,” using massive surveillance technology and a web of high-tech surveillance cameras and compulsory data collection.
They’ve also reportedly sent thousands of Uyghurs to Chinese ‘re-education’ camps.
The Mercenary Prince
This list only details a few of Erik Prince’s ventures, and does not include an attempt by Prince to send thousands of mercenaries into Afghanistan and reform the political structure of the entire country to essentially be a colony for the United States.
However, Prince has transformed battlefields everywhere and fundamentally altered the way governments construct security apparatuses.
Iran is heavily reliant on outsourced Afghani mercenaries to be cannon fodder in the war in Syria. Russia is supplementing its own intervention into Syria with mercenaries hired by the state-backed Wagner Group who also sends troops to Ukraine. To beat back the nascent extremist group Boko Haram, Nigeria hired private, Apartheid-era security forces from South Africa to do the job.
Thanks to Erik Prince, outsourcing military and intelligence labor is now the norm.
Currently Prince appears to be under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, thanks to meetings he had arranged with a close aide to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Kirill Dmitriev in the Seychelles Islands,a place its own government explains is “the kind of place where you can have a good time away from the media.” The meeting was allegedley to set up a backchannel between Trump and Russia in order to facilitate clandestine communications.
McFate told Al Bawaba that Prince’s use of mercenaries allows countries to enter into and escalate conflicts without having to report it to their citizens; his tactic gives governments “plausible deniability” to anything that the mercenaries do.
According to Dr. P.J. Brendese, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and expert on democratic accountability, private military firms “have greater independence to exercise their own prerogatives and ‘we the people’ don’t get a say. That’s the most dangerous thing, because they’re profiting–their motivation it not God and country; their motive is money.”
By Ty Joplin
Source: Al Bawaba
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-drive-to-build-private-air-force
see 2020 update below
==
ECHO PAPA EXPOSED
Inside Erik Prince’s Treacherous Drive to Build a Private Air Force
Jeremy Scahill, Matthew ColeJeremy Scahill, Matthew Cole
April 11 2016,
https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/how-a-behind-the-scenes-bare-knuckle-brawl-shaped-us-foreign-policy-under-trump/
It was a bare-knuckle brawl of the first order. It took place in Washington, D.C., and it resulted in a KO. The winners? Lobbyists and the defense industry. The losers? Us. And odds on, you didn’t even know that it happened. Few Americans did, which is why it’s worth telling the story of howSaudi, Emirati, and Qatari money flooded the nation’s capital and, in the process, American policy went down for the count.
The fight began three years ago this month. Sure, the pugilists hadn’t really liked each other that much before then, but what happened in 2017 was the foreign-policy equivalent of a sucker punch.On the morning of June 5th, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain announced that they were severing diplomatic ties with Qatar, the small but wealthy emirate in the Persian Gulf, and establishing a land, air, and sea blockade of their regional rival, purportedly because of its ties to terrorism.
The move stunned the Qataris, who responded in ways that would later become familiar during the Covid-19 pandemic — by emptying supermarket shelves and hoarding essentials they worried would quickly run out. Their initial fears were not unwarranted, as their neighbors,Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were even reported to be planning to launch a military invasion of Qatar in the weeks to come (one that would be thwarted only by the strong objections of Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson).
To make sense of this now three-year-old conflict, which turned aspects of American policy in the Middle East ranging from the war in Yemen to the more than 10,000 American military personnel stationed in Qatar into political footballs, means refocusing on Washington and the extraordinary influence operations the Saudis, Emiratis, and Qataris ran there. That, in turn, means analyzing Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) documents filed by firms representing all three countries since the spat began. Do that and you’ll come across a no-punches-barred bout of lobbying in the U.S. capital that would have made Rocky envious.
The Saudis Come Out Swinging
The stage had been set for the blockade of Qatar seven months before it began when Donald Trump was elected president. Just as his victory shocked the American public, so it caught many foreign governments off guard. In response, they quickly sought out the services of anyone with ties to the incoming administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. The Saudis and Emiratis were no exception. In 2016, both countries had reported spending a little more than $10 million on FARA registered lobbying firms. By the end of 2017, UAE spending had nearly doubled to $19.5 million, while the Saudi’s had soared to $27.3 million.
In the months following Donald Trump’s November triumph, the Saudis, for instance, added several firms with ties to him or the Republicans to an already sizeable list of companies registered under FARA as representing their interests. For example, they brought on the CGCN Group whose president and chief policy officer, Michael Catanzaro, was on Trump’s transition team and then served in his administration. To court the Republican Congress, they hired the McKeon Group, run by former Republican Representative Buck McKeon, who had previously served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
And that was just registered foreign agents. A number of actors who had not registered under FARA were actively pushing the Saudi and Emirati agendas, chief among them Elliott Broidy and George Nader. Broidy, a top fundraiser for Trump’s campaign, and Nader, his business partner, already had a wide range ofinterestsin both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. To help secure them, the two men embarked on a campaign to turn the new president and the Republican establishment against Qatar. One result was a Broidy-inspired, UAE-funded anti-Qatarconferencehosted in May 2017 by a prominent Washington think tank, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. It conveniently offered Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) a platform todiscusshis plans to introduce a bill, HR 2712, that would label Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism. It was to beintroducedin the House of Representatives just two days after the conference ended.
Qatar, mind you, had been a U.S. ally in the Middle East and was the home of Al Udeid Air Base, where more than 10,000 American soldiers are still stationed. So that bill represented a striking development in American-Qatari relations and was a clearly traceable result of Saudi and UAE lobbying efforts.
The unregistered influence of players like Broidy and Nader was evidently backed by other FARA-registered Saudi and UAE foreign agents actively pushing the bill. For example, Qorvis Communications, a long-time public relations mouthpiece for the Saudis, circulated a document titled “Qatar’s History of Funding Terrorism and Extremism,” claiming that country was funding Al-Nusra, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other groups. (Not surprisingly, it included a supportive quote from David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
While that anti-Qatar crusade was ramping up in Washington, the president himself was being wooed by the Saudi royals in Riyadh on his first official trip abroad. They gave him the literal royal treatment and their efforts appeared to pay off when, just a day after the blockade began, Trump tweeted, “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”
A week after the imposition of the blockade, the Emirati ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for Al Udeid Air Base to be moved to the UAE, a development the Qataris feared could open the door for an eventual invasion of their country.
However, this Saudi and Emirati onslaught did not go unanswered.
Qatar Strikes Back
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, was caught flat-footed by the influence operations of the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates. The year before Donald Trump became president, the Qataris had spent just $2.7 million on lobbying and public relations firms, less than a third of what the Saudis and UAE paid out, according to FARA records.But they now moved swiftly to shore up their country’s image as a crucial American ally. They went on an instant hiring spree, scooping up lobbying and public-relations firms with close ties to Trump and congressional Republicans.Just two days after the blockade began, for instance, they inked adealwith the law firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, paying $2.5 million for just its first 90 days of work.
They also quickly obtained the services of Stonington Strategies. Headed by Nick Muzin, who had worked on Trump’s election campaign, the firm promptly set out to court 250 Trump “influencers,”as Julie Bykowicz of theWall Street Journalreported.Among others, Stonington’s campaign sought to woo prominent Fox News personalities Trump paid special attention to like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He was paid $50,000 to travel to Qatar just months later.
In September 2017, the Qataris also hired Bluefront Strategies to craft a comprehensive multimedia operation, which was to include commercials on all the major news networks, as well as digital and printed ads in an array of prominent publications, and a “Lift the Blockade” campaign on social media. Meanwhile, ads on Google and YouTube were to highlight the illegality of the blockade and the country’s contributions to fighting terrorism. Bluefront Strategies was to influence public opinion before the next session of the U.N. General Assembly that month. Qatar and its proxies then used the campaign “to target key decision-makers attending the General Assembly, including Trump” to gain support on that most global of stages.
Its agents weren’t just playing defense, either. They actively attacked the Saudi lobby. For example, Barry Bennett of Avenue Strategies, a PR firm they hired, sent a letter to the assistant attorney general for national security accusing Saudi Arabia and the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC) of FARA violations in their funding of an expensive media campaign meant to connect Qatar’s leaders with violent extremism and acts of terror.
Such counterpunches proved remarkably successful. SAPRAC eventually felt obliged to register with FARA. Meanwhile, Huckabee tweeted, “Just back from a few days in surprisingly beautiful, modern, and hospitable Doha, Qatar.”Finally, at that U.N. meeting, President Trump actuallysat:{down with Emir al-Thani of Qatar and}
:{, “We’ve been friends a long time… I have a very strong feeling [the Qatar diplomatic crisis] will be solved quickly.” They both then emphasized the “tremendous” and “strong” relationship between their countries.}:
The Qataris next mounted a concerted defense against HR 2712. Lobbying firms they hired, particularly Avenue Strategies and Husch Blackwell, launched a multifaceted campaign to prevent that legislation from passing. Elliott Broidy even claimed in a lawsuit that the Qatari government and several of its lobbyists had hacked his email account and distributed private emails of his to members of Congress in an attempt to discredit his work for the Saudis.
In November 2017, Barry Bennett from Avenue Strategies went on the attack, using a powerful weapon in Washington politics: Israel. He distributed aletter to members of Congress written by a former high-ranking official in the Israeli national security establishment explicitly stating that Qatar had not provided military support to Hamas, as HR 2712 claimed it had.
Three months later, Husch Blackwell all but threatened Congress and the Trump administration with the cancellation of a $6.2 billion Boeing contract to sell F-15 fighters to the Qatari military(and the potential loss of thousands of associated jobs) if the bill passed and sanctions were imposed on that country. All of this was linked to a concerted effort by Qatari agents tocontact“nearly two dozen House offices, including then House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy,” to prevent the bill’s passage, according to areportby the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy where we work. Ultimately, HR 2712 died a slow death in Congress and never became law.
The Saudi Bloc’s Battle for the War inYemen
Just as Qatar started to turn the tide in the fight for influence in Washington, the Saudis and their allies faced another problem: Congress began moving to sever support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.On February 28, 2018, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a jointresolutionto withdraw U.S. support for that war. According to FARAfilings,Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, representing the Saudi ministry of foreign affairs,contacted several members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, particularly Democrats, presumably to persuade them to vote against the measure.
That March, the firm sent out dozens of emails to members of Congress inviting them to a gala dinner with the key Saudi royal, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself. According to the invitation from the CGCN Group, another FARA-registered firm representing the Saudis, the “KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia]-USA Partnership Gala Dinner” was to emphasize the “enduring defense and counter-terrorism cooperation” and “historic alliance” between the two countries. It would end up taking place just two days after the Senate voted to table Sanders’s bill.
Emirati lobbyists similarly reached out to Congress to maintain support for their role in that war. Hagir Elawad & Associates, for example, distributed an op-ed written by the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs justifying the war, as well as a letter written by that country’s ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, to 50 congressional contacts defending the Saudi-led coalition’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties and arguing that “the United States has a clear stake in the coalition’s success in Yemen.”
When that conflict began, Qatar was still a member of the coalition, but the imposition of the blockade led it to withdraw its forces from Yemen. Qatari officials then used the country’s media empire, centered on the broadcaster Al Jazeera, to highlight the disastrous aspects of the ongoing war. In doing so, they provided the Saudis and Emiratis with yet another reason to focus their own influence machines on both Qatar’s and Al Jazeera’s destruction. (That network’s closure was, in fact, one of the original 13 demands the Saudis and Emiratis had made for lifting the blockade.)
From the moment it was founded in 1996, Al Jazeerahad been an instrument of Qatari soft power, so it was hardly surprising that the UAE had long pressured members of Congress to force the network to register under FARA as a foreign agent. And Emirati lobbying efforts were not in vain. In early March 2018, 19 members of Congress signed and sent aletterto then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions urging the Justice Department to demand that Al Jazeera be registered under FARA.Anothersuch letter sent to the Justice Department in June 2019 by six senators and two representatives asked “why Al Jazeera and its employees have not been required to register.” According to FARAfilings, all but one of those representatives had either received campaign contributions from or been contacted by a Saudi or Emirati lobbying firm. Al Jazeera, however, has yet to register.
The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi
Despite the efforts of Saudi and Emirati lobbyists in the early months of 2018, the emir of Qatar still managed to land an invitation to the Oval Office. At their meeting that April 10th, President Trump again described al-Thani as a “friend” and a “great gentleman” as well. The emir, in turn, thanked the president for “supporting us during this blockade.”
If Trump’s cozying up to him was a setback for the Saudis, the murder of critic and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi nearly did in the Saudi lobbying juggernaut as well. The CIA later confirmed that the crown prince himself had ordered that Saudi citizen’s assassination at the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
As a result, some lobbying firmscut ties with the kingdom and its influence on Capitol Hill waned, as did positive public opinion about Saudi Arabia. In December 2018, the Senate passed the Sanders bill to end support for the war in Yemen. Both houses of Congress also passed a War Powers resolution to end involvement in that conflict, a historic congressional move in this century, even if later vetoed by President Trump (as were a series of attempts to block his treasured arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).
Given the president’s unyielding support for the Saudis and Emiratis as especially lucrative customers for this country’s defense industry, the Qataris have clearly decided to crib the Saudi playbook. In May, that country purchased 24 Apache helicopters for $3 billion and, a few months later, agreed to pay for and manage a $1.8 billion expansion of Al Udeid Air Base to ensure the American military’s continued presence for the foreseeable future. In doing so, Qatar was visibly at work coopting two of the most powerful lobbies in Washington: the military and the weapons makers.
And the Winners Are…
Though Qatar faced a near-existential threat to its survival when the blockade began, three years later it’s not only surviving, but thriving thanks significantly to its influence operations in Washington. They have helped immeasurably to deepen economic, diplomatic, and military relations between the two countries.
Meanwhile, the emir’s rivals in Riyadh not only failed to make their blockade a success, but saw their influence wane appreciably in the U.S. as they stumbled from one public relations fiasco to the next. Even their staunchest defender, Donald Trump, recently threatened to sever U.S. military support for the Kingdom if the Saudi royals didn’t end their oil war with Russia (which they promptly did).
In truth, however, the real loser in this struggle for influence hasn’t been Saudi Arabia or the Emiratis, it’s been America. After all, the efforts of both sides to deepen their ties with the military-industrial complex (reinforcing the hyper-militarization of U.S. foreign policy) and increase their sway in Congress have ensured that the real interests of this country played second fiddle to those of Middle Eastern despots. Certainly, their acts helped ensure near historic levels of arms sales to the region, while prolonging the wars in Yemen andSyria, and so contributing to death and devastation on an almost unimaginable scale.
None of this had anything to do with the real interests of Americans, unless you mean the arms industry and K Street lobbyists who have been the only clear American winners in this never-ending PR war in Washington. In the process, those three Persian Gulf states have delivered a genuine knockout blow to the very idea that U.S. foreign policy should be driven by national — not special — interests.
Morgan Palumbo is a researcher with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the:{Center for International Policy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:.
Jessica Draper is a researcher with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative and Arms and Security Project at the:{Center for International Policy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:.
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a look at Paul Ryan’s illustrious career as a cash grab for billionaires
Peter Certo / TruthdigDecember 24, 2018
Paul Ryan was never a serious thinker and he didn’t care about debt. He was a frat bro from a wealthy family who read a lot of Ayn Rand.
no lnx
A look at Paul Ryan’s illustrious career as a cash grab for billionaires
Written by Peter Certo / Truthdig December 24, 2018
Each New Year’s, my wife and I indulge one of our favorite traditions: the household purge. We scour our closets for stuff that’s just taking up space, quietly draining our home’s energy, and move it along. I can’t recommend it enough.
This year, America’s doing the same thing — and putting House Speaker Paul Ryan out on the curb.
For years, the ten-term Wisconsin Republican — who’s retiring as Democrats prepare to take over the House — enjoyed an improbable reputation as a “deficit hawk” and “deep thinker” about fiscal issues.
Year after year, as House budget chairman, Ryan would roll out his latest “blueprint.” He’d literally roll up his sleeves for the cameras and detail his latest plans to slash rich people’s taxes and scale back public services for everyone else.
For a while, mainstream liberals greeted Ryan as a serious interlocutor.
They treated his plans to privatize Medicare, eviscerate Social Security, and shred the safety net as valid viewpoints in the Adult Conversation they wanted politics to be. Even if you didn’t agree with him, they said, you had to admit Ryan “had a plan” to “deal with the debt.”
That scam propelled Ryan to the House speakership in 2015. Then the long con really took off.
For five straight years before Ryan took over, deficits had declined. By the time he gave his self-satisfied farewell, they’d increased by $343 billion — a product of Ryan’s tax breaks for corporations and millionaires, which will cost $2 trillion over the next decade.
Thanks to the very deficit he created, Ryan then left office warning that Congress needed to cut — you guessed it — Medicare and Social Security. (No doubt he’s still stinging from his 2017 failure to throw 24 million Americans off their health care — a feat of pure sociopathy he actually said he’d been dreaming about since he “was drinking out of kegs.”)
Ryan was never a serious thinker and he didn’t care about debt. He was a frat bro from a wealthy family who read a lot of Ayn Rand, a writer who called it “a disease” to do anything good for “the primordial savages” who made up “the collective” — i.e., the public.
A bad model for public servants, if you ask me.
True to his training, Ryan presided over a massive cash grab by America’s billionaires and left the rest of us “savages” to pick at the scraps. No wonder Ryan never mounted that “principled conservative” challenge to Donald Trump in 2016 — on this they agreed entirely.
Ryan’s crimes go beyond what fits in spreadsheets. After signing off on over $700 billion for the Pentagon — no austerity for that agency, which has never passed an audit — Ryan concluded his speakership with an act of pure villainy. He tucked a provision into this year’s Farm Bill that prevented even a debate on ending U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen.
The UN calls that war the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet. It’s caused over 85,000 children to starve to death. Almost miraculously, after years of inaction, the U.S. Senate just concluded a remarkable bipartisan vote to get the U.S. out of it.
In stymieing that effort with low procedural tricks, Ryan “used the Farm Bill to starve children,” as The American Conservative put it.
The silver lining is that Ryan’s villainy — like Trump’s — spurred the growth of powerful movements to expand health care, rebalance the economy, and get the U.S. out of immoral wars. Lawmakers from those movements — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and others — and a new House majority can now get to work burying Ryan’s legacy forever.
No one who isn’t a billionaire — or a bombmaker — will miss him.
==
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/united-nations-report-finds-the-us-and-allies-may-be-complicit-in-saudi-war-crimes/
no lnx
Damning United Nations report finds the US and allies may be complicit in Saudi war crimes
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams September 3, 2019
A comprehensive and damning United Nations report released Tuesday said the U.S., France, and Britain may be guilty of complicity in war crimes for providing the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in its war on Yemen with logistical support and weapons.
“Five years into the conflict, violations against Yemeni civilians continue unabated, with total disregard for the plight of the people and a lack of international action to hold parties to the conflict accountable,”saidKamel Jendoubi, chairperson of the Group of Experts on Yemen, which was created by the U.N. Human Rights Council.
The 274-page report (pdf) said the U.S., France, and Britain may have failed to live up to their obligations under international law by continuing to provide weaponry, training intelligence, and logistical support for a Saudi-led coalition that is guilty of bombing hospitals, homes, a school bus, and other civilian targets during its years-long assault on Yemen.
“The legality of arms transfers by France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other states remains questionable,” the report states, “and is the subject of various domestic court proceedings.”
In a statement, Jendoubi condemned the nations involved in the Saudi-led war on Yemen for refusing to investigate and punish human rights violations.
“This endemic impunity—for violations and abuses by all parties to the conflict—cannot be tolerated anymore,” said Jendoubi. “Impartial and independent inquiries must be empowered to hold accountable those who disrespect the rights of the Yemeni people. The international community must stop turning a blind eye to these violations and the intolerable humanitarian situation.”
The report, which is the product of a two-year investigation, comes days after the Saudi-led coalition killed more than 100 people in airstrikes on a Yemeni detention center. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the attack may have amounted to a war crime.
Following the attack, a bipartisan group of lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren launched a new effort to end U.S. complicity in the Saudi-led assault on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The Washington Post reported late Monday that the lawmakers are working to bar the U.S. government from providing logistical support for the Saudi-led coalition’s air raids.
The group called on the Senate to not remove an amendment to the annual defense policy legislation that would prohibit the U.S. from cooperating with Saudi airstrikes.
In a letter to top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, which are set to hash out differences between the two chambers’ defense policy bills, the group of lawmakers said “inclusion of this amendment would ensure that our men and women in uniform are not involved in a war which has never been authorized by Congress, and continues to undermine rather than advance U.S. national security interests.”
The letter, first obtained by the Post, was signed by Sens. Warren (D-Mass.), Sanders (I-Vt.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and dozens of others.
As Common Dreams reported in April, President Donald Trump vetoed a stand-alone War Powers resolution that would have ended U.S. military support for the Saudi-led assault on Yemen.
Sanders said in a statement to the Post on Monday that Congress has a responsibility to continue asserting its constitutional authority to bring U.S. complicity in the war on Yemen to an end.
“Now,” said Sanders, “we must use Congress’s power of the purse to block every nickel of taxpayer money from going to assist the Saudi dictatorship as it bombs and starves civilians in Yemen.”
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Saudi-led coalition naval forces have carried out at least five deadly attacks on Yemeni fishing boats since 2018, killing at least 47 Yemeni fishermen, including 7 children, in apparent war crimes.
Fishermen waved white cloths, raised their hands, or otherwise showed they posed no threat. In three attacks, coalition forces did not attempt to rescue survivors adrift at sea, and many drowned.
“Before the war, fishing was good,” said the wife of a fisherman. “But we heard that eight men from the neighborhood next to us were killed … so [my husband] stopped going.”
https://e-activist.com/ea-action/enclick?ea.url.id=3986285&ea.campaigner.email=LR5X34BBe%2FXBM8blHkDEMcQaztlvuLM%2B&ea.campaigner.id=wNHmqGi8fWmZkArzVWMSmA==&ea_broadcast_target_id=0
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https://theintercept.com/2019/04/15/saudi-weapons-yemen-us-france/
mint
Despite Human Rights Abuses in Yemen, Saudi Soldiers Receive UK Military Training
The British state has been under criticism for not halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia following multiple reports of human rights abuses and one of the worst human tragedies involving civilian deaths due to hunger in Yemen.
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destroying yemen book
60's rich yemen families married into leftover uk empire UAE, now sees yemen as extension?
2nd hour
https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-november-19-2018/
owned by royal family, several IPO fail b/c oil running out; they want south yemen fields; want to be next dubai, wealth from sand, go into finance.
marxist resist imperial corruption?
audio
https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2018-11-16/destroying-yemen-what-chaos-arabia-tells-us-about-world
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520296145/destroying-yemen
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...The Coalition has implemented additional vetting criteria for time-sen sitive targets. These
criteria place extra responsibilities on Coalition pilots before conducting a mission.
The Coalition adheres to a no?strike list that includes over 33,000 targets, as referenced
above. This list includes 10cations provided by UN. and other humanitarian organizations
on the grotrnd in Yemen, in addition to locations collected by the Coalition. Furthermore, the
Coalition is constantly updating this list-and adding locations to it.
Currently, the Coalition seeks to align its targeting practices and personnel training with
NATO standards, and only personnel that meet these rigorous standards are involved in
target selection.
Informational Materials Distributed by Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP (#5870) on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia. Additional Information is on file with the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.
Received by Registration Unit 05/16/2017 6:24:25 PMhttps://www.alternet.org/gop-rejects-call-curb-us-funding-slaughter-yemeni-kids
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday denounced as "mind blowing" the decision to "continue to willingly participate in the slaughter of Yemeni kids" after Republicans objected to his amendment to the Defense Appropriation bill that would have put key restrictions on U.S. financial and other support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign.
The Republicans objected.
It’s just unthinkable to me that we continue to willingly participate in the slaughter of Yemeni kids when there is zero benefit to U.S. security. Mind blowing really.https://t.co/p6qbrfRGoe
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) August 22, 2018
The amendment "would cut off United States' support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition's war in Yemen until the Secretary of Defense certified that the coalition's air campaign is not violating international law and U.S. policy related to the protection of civilians," a press statemnt from Murphy's office states.
Win Without War had called the amendment "our big chance to slam on the brakes and stop our role in enabling the suffering in Yemen." Yet Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, objected to Murphy's amendment, despite saying that "what's going on in Yemen is atrocious."
Speaking on the Senate floor next to a photo of a Yemeni community center bombed when a funeral was underway, Murphy gave a damning assessment of the catastrophe the U.S. has helped fuel. "The United States is a key player in this bombing campaign," he noted.
"It shouldn’t be on our conscience as a nation to be part of this humanitarian catastrophe." Sen. @ChrisMurphyCT is 100% right: U.S. involvement in Saudi-led war in #Yemen is profoundly immoral and unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/GXqboofQJ3
— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) August 22, 2018
In his floor speech, Murphy said that "the targeting of civilians inside Yemen is getting worse, not better," and referenced an event he said should underscore the urgency of his amendment—the coalition's bombing earlier this month of a school bus in Yemen that killed 40 children.
"The Saudis' initial reaction was that it was a legitimate military target," Murphy said. "There's no way a school bus is a legitimate military target. That school bus was carrying dozens of children—dozens of children that are now dead because of a 500-pound bomb made in the United States and sold to the coalition."
The amendment doesn't even put a full stop on U.S. support but merely requires "the administration to certify that civilians aren't intentionally getting targeted in contravention of U.S. law before we continue to support this funding," Murphy said.
"At some point we need to believe our eyes rather than the reports we get from the administration that the targeting is getting better," he said, yet the "problem is [that the coalition's] targets are [a] school bus, funerals, water treatment facilities." He said U.S. support, which includes military support and intelligence, makes it so that the coalition "can more effectively hit their civilian targets with the bombs that we are selling."
"The fact of the matter is the majority of the civilian casualties are caused by the side that we are supporting," Murphy said.
"The campaign is not expediting a political end," he argued. "It is prolonging the misery and giving more opportunity for our mortal enemies there, the terrorist groups to get stronger and stronger."
"We are radicalizing a generation of Yemeni children against us and that will have implications for U.S. National security for years to come," he warned.
Watch Murphy's full speech below:
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AP Investigation: Behind the Scenes in Yemen, U.S.-Backed Saudi Coalition Is Working with al-Qaeda
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MSNBC Has Done 455 Stormy Daniels Segments in the Last Year — But None on US War in Yemen
By Adam Johnson, FAIR
Why is the supposed network of the anti-Trump #resistance totally ignoring the president’s most devastating war? READ MORE»
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https://www.amazon.com/Destroying-Yemen-Chaos-Arabia-Tells/dp/0520296141
UC press
history, not civil war but clash of empires
Brit
marxist south, effective army feared by saudis
bush41
clerics thwart oil/empire efforts
blackwater
UAE gold mines
haddi temp pres 2011 arab spring, integrated into globaliz IMF, got rid of subsidies, austerity, pvtization
https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-30-2018/
U.S.-Saudi arms deal comes as the Senate rejected a bipartisan resolution to end the U.S. military involvement in Yemen within 30 days, unless Congress formally authorizes the military action. The vote was 44 to 55, with 10 Democrats joining the Republican majority to block the legislation and Arizona Senator John McCain not casting a vote.
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https://www.democracynow.org/2018/1/23/headlines/germany_halts_weapons_sales_to_saudi_arabia_over_war_in_yemen
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https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/16/stop_the_unconstitutional_war_in_yemen
ro khanna
The father of NavySEALRyan Owens, who was killed during a botched U.S. military raid in Yemen in January, says he refused to meet with President Trump and is calling for an investigation into his son’s death. Bill Owens told the Miami Herald, "My conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him." The raid on the Yemeni village left 25 civilians dead, including nine children under the age of 13.
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/1/trump_honors_widow_of_navy_seal