Canada is 'concerned' with Khashoggi's fate but will sell arms to Saudis anyway – Trudeau. RT.com. Oct. 13, 2018.
meanwhile...
Yemen on brink of world's worst famine in 100 years. Hannah Summers, Guardian. Oct. 15, 2018.
The Khashoggi Extortion Fiasco. Ghassan and Itbah Kadi, The Saker Blog. Oct. 15, 2018.
Why would the United States of America make such a fuss over the disappearance of a non-American citizen? Why would America turn a blind eye to the Saudi killing of thousands of Yemeni civilians and the starving of millions others and then make “threats” against Saudi Arabia after one single Saudi journalist disappeared and has presumably been murdered by Saudi authorities?
The hypocrisy of our political leaders and of our media is disgusting:
Nation Transfixed In Horror By Toy Bombs While Destroying Lives With Real Ones. Caitlin Johnstone. Oct. 25, 2018.
.... of course it is a good thing that nobody has been hurt by these devices. Obviously targeting anyone with packages containing explosive materials is terrible, even if those devices were not rigged with the intention of detonating and harming anyone, and it is a good thing that not a single one of them has done so. It is a good thing that none of America’s political elites were targeted by the sort of explosive device that America drops on people in other countries every single day. You know, the kind that actually explode.
Apparently some Acme comedy bombs mailed to a number of extremely rich people, which thankfully did not hurt anybody at all, are infinitely more newsworthy than the real bombs which maim and destroy children in Yemen on an industrial scale.
— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) October 24, 2018
It is good that Barack Obama was never sent anything resembling the 26,171 bombs that his administration dropped in the final year of his presidency, for example. ...
Further unmitigated hypocrisy:
Khashoggi versus 50,000 Slaughtered Yemeni Children. Peter Koenig, for the Saker blog. Oct. 26, 2018.
For three and half years, the Saudi’s have waged a horrendous war on Yemen. They have slaughtered tens of thousands of Yemenis – according to the UN Human Rights Commission more than 50,000 children died by Saudi air raids with UK supplied bombs, and US supplied war planes – through lack of sanitation and drinking water induced diseases, like cholera – and an even worse crime, through extreme famine, the worst famine in recent history – as per UNICEF / WHO – imposed by force, as the Saudi’s with the consent of the European allies closed down all ports of entry, including the moist important Red Sea Port of Hodeida.
The European, along with the US, have been more than complicit in this crime against humanity – in these horrendous war crimes. Imagine one day a Nuremberg-type Court against war crimes committed in the last 70 years, not one of the western leaders, still alive, would be spared. That’s what we – in the west – have become. A nest of war criminals – war criminals for sheer greed. They invented a neoliberal, everything goes market doctrine system, where no rules no ethics no morals count – just money, profit and more profit. Any method of maximizing profit – war and war industry – is good and accepted. And the west with its fiat money made of hot air, is imposing this nefarious, destructive system everywhere, by force and regime change if voluntary acceptance is not in the cards.
And we, the people, have become complicit in it, as we are living in luxury and comfort, and couldn’t care less what our leaders (sic-sic) are doing to the rest of the world...
Western Media Make One Death a Tragedy, Millions a Statistic. Finnian Cunningham, Strategic Culture Foundation. Oct. 31, 2018.
Last week, some 21 Yemeni workers at a vegetable packing plant near the Red Sea port of Hodeida were killed after US-backed Saudi warplanes launched air strikes. Again, hardly any condemnation was registered by Western governments and media pundits.
...
The tragedy of desensitized abstraction is not due to overwhelming numbers. It is primarily due to the willful omission – and worse, misinformation – by Western media on the barbarity of the Saudi regime and the crucially enabling support given to this regime by Western politics and economics.
The apparent disconnect is due to systematic Western media distortion. That’s not just a flaw. It is criminal complicity.
Be Skeptical Whenever The Political/Media Class Converges On A Single Narrative. Caitlin Johnstone. Oct. 19, 2018.
Killing one man is very, very far from the top of the list of the most horrific things Saudi Arabia has done; criticizing them for that is like criticizing Henry Kissinger for not tipping well at restaurants.
...
One thing’s for certain: there’s no way the empire would turn against such a vastly useful geopolitical asset just for making some shady journalist into a jigsaw puzzle.
So stay skeptical. Just because the talking heads are telling you that Jamal Khashoggi has been brutally murdered and it’s very important that you care doesn’t mean you have to believe them. If this is a propaganda narrative to advance a new oligarchic agenda, there’s no reason to go helping them advance it.
Hurricanes Give Americans Taste of Disaster Washington’s Wars Bring to Others. Paul Craig Roberts. Oct. 15, 2016.
Why is it that the liberal-progressive-left can get so upset about an alleged attempted rape 30 or 40 years ago but accept without protest Washington’s destruction of the lives, prospects, and infrastructure of millions of peoples in eight countries?
...
Are Americans aware that the latest national defense posture statement reaffirms the neoconservative priority that America prevail over the world? Do Americans understand that Washington considers Russia and China to be threats simply because they have independent foreign and economic polcies? Do Americans understand that American hegemony means that no country is permitted to be sovereign?
Americans Are Stuck In An Abusive Relationships With Power. Mike Krieger, via zerohedge. Oct. 9, 2018.
Americans are brought up to believe all sorts of myths about the country we call home. We’re told our economy is a free market meritocracy governed by the rule of law. We’re told our civil liberties, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, are inviolable and protected by the most powerful military in the world. A fighting force entrusted with the admirable and monumental task of defending freedoms at home, and democracy and human rights abroad. We’re told we exist in a system of self-government, in which our votes matter and our voices heard. In practice, none of this is true.
The fact of the matter is American citizens in 2018 are just a nuisance for the real power players. Useful as consumers, but increasingly problematic as larger numbers start to ask questions about how things really work. For far too long, we’ve been ignorant and willing accomplices in our own bondage. This allowed the concentrated and unaccountable power that really calls the shots to go for broke in recent decades, with unsurprisingly tragic results.
Only recently have things started to shift.Increased levels of barbarism abroad and corruption at home during the 21st century — under both Republican and Democratic administrations — have shaken many Americans from a long stupor. Irrespective of where you sit on the political spectrum, most people know something’s not right. People don’t agree on the details of what’s wrong, and there’s certainly no consensus on solutions, but increasing numbers of us know something’s very broken....
Lessons from Bolsonaro's Victory. Glenn Greenwald, via youtube. Oct. 29, 2018.
Living in a Crumbling World. PDF. Oleg Barabanov et al, Valdai Discussion Club. Oct. 2018.
Trump and the disease of middle-class leftism. Gerald O'Colmain. Oct. 19, 2018.
Neocolonialism bombs and invades developing countries in the name of human rights. Need I point out to the good reader, once again, that in 2011 France’s ‘left-wing’ leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon DEFENDED NATO’s carpet bombing of Libya while the ‘far-right’ candidate Marine Le Pen opposed it. Donald Trump was not among the cheerleaders of the war. Before his election, Donald Trump repeatedly opposed US military intervention in Syria. He admitted the US was arming terrorists and spreading chaos and destruction throughout the region. Trump’s position on foreign policy was clearly far to the left of belligerent neoconservative/liberal establishment. It is the reason why astute observers welcomed Trump’s election while idiots raved about the ‘rise of fascism’.
Today, middle-class progressives are perfectly happy to see any African country bombed into the stone age if word and image can depict its leader as a ‘brutal dictator’ who is ‘killing his own people’. The ‘left-wing’ of middle-class leftism has a tried and tested technique of hiding under the table during outrageous imperialist bombing campaigns, then defending their actions when the country is destroyed. For example, Le Monde Diplomatique published almost nothing during the 6-month bombing of Libya in 2011; not one article about the war propaganda and lies used to justify the destruction of Africa’s richest nation. A year later, Le Monde Diplomatique actually defended the bombing, claiming that democracy had come to Libya!
Who profits from the end of the mid-range nuclear treaty? Pepe Escobar, Asia Times. Oct. 25, 2018.
Paper Cuts: The American President and the Prince of War. Bonnie Goldstein, Pogo. Oct. 29, 2018.
Relentless war privateer Erik Prince won’t stop until he persuades President Trump to let him take charge of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.
MW: Endless war; wonder why? Could be because:
Incredulous that after years of American presence and advice Afghanistan “still doesn’t have a mining law” Prince sees opportunity to make the occupation cost-effective with a “trade-centric approach” by extracting $1 trillion worth of “rare earth” minerals as assets. President George W. Bush saw the same potential when the war was launched but the buried treasure was not so easily unearthed. Prince proposes to “focus spending on initiatives that further the central strategy” by “placing combat power to cover Afghanistan’s economic arteries.”
Despite ethical and legislative obstacles—and the likelihood that NATO allies would pull out should the U.S. effort switch to using mercenaries—that preclude hiring Prince to take over our war in Afghanistan, Prince went to great lengths to convince the Trump administration about the merits of his plan. Another, more detailed, Prince PowerPoint pitch—later obtained by BuzzFeedNews—focused on the bottom line value of Afghanistan’s un-mined “rare earth elements.”
Empire Loyalists Grieve Resignation Of Moderate Psychopath Nikki Haley. Caitlin Johnstone. Oct. 10, 2018.
Describing Nikki Haley as a “moderate Republican” is like describing Jeffrey Dahmer as “a moderate meat eater”. Besides John Bolton there is nobody within the depraved Trump administration who’s been a more reliable advocate for war, oppression and American/Israeli supremacism, no more virulent a proponent of the empire’s photogenic version of fascism than she. Whether it’s been blocking any condemnation of or UN investigation into the slaughter of unarmed Palestinian protesters via sniper fire, calling for a coalition against Syria and its allies to prevent them from fighting western-backed terrorist factions, outright lying about Iran to advance this administration’s regime change agenda in that nation, her attempts to blame Iran for Saudi Arabia’s butchery of Yemeni civilians with the help of the US and UK, her calls for sanctions against Russia even beyond those this administration has been willing to implement, her warmongering against North Korea, and many, many examples from a list far too long to get into here, Haley has made death and destruction her life’s mission every day of her gore-spattered tenure.
...
Haley will be departing with a disgusting 75 percent approval rating with Republicans and 55 percent approval with Democrats, because God is dead and everything is stupid.
Trump is America's National Pinata. Ilargi, Automatic Earth. Oct. 29, 2018.
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