The Justice Department and Congress are facing new calls to investigate Donald Trump’s financial ties to Saudi Arabia. The latest controversy centers on a new golf tournament owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign Public Investment Fund, which is chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. LIV has paid millions to golf resorts owned by Donald Trump, who has publicly supported the new league…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
It just keeps getting darker and darker. For the professionally ignorant, things are only getting better. With one of history’s great events of sportswashing concluded – the 2022 Qatar World Cup – another state famed for its cosmetic distractions and moneyed seductions made a splash. Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, his sun setting and his prospects diminishing among Europe’s top clubs, was signed to play in Saudi Arabia.
He had been seething and fuming at Manchester United, increasingly cast into peripheral, bench warming roles. The inner truculent brat screamed and found a voice on the ever humbly named show Piers Morgan Uncensored. In a conversation between brats who felt they had been mistreated over the years, the impression given by Ronaldo was always going to be a love of the game over cash.
“Is it also that you want to keep playing at the highest level? That you want to play Champions League football, you want to keep breaking records?” asked Morgan. In the manner of a ghost writer mulling over the bleedingly obvious, Morgan persisted. “Again, it comes back to my gut feeling about you that, if it was just about the money, you’d be in Saudi Arabia earning this king’s ransom. But that’s not what motivates you, you want to keep at the top…”
Whether he was already being courted by the money goons in Riyadh is hard to say, but if that was the case, Ronaldo was keen to keep up appearances. He wanted goals, to score in the big leagues, to be in the service of the elite clubs. “Exactly, because I still believe that I can score many, many goals and help the teams. I believe I am still good and capable to help the national team and even Manchester United.”
The king’s ransom, however, is exactly what he came to accept, though he aggrandised his own appeal by claiming to be hot property on the international transfer market. “I had many offers in Europe, many in Brazil, Australia, the US, even in Portugal.” At around £172 million, it will be the largest amount forked out for a football player in history, beating that offered Lionel Messi for his final four years with FC Barcelona at £137.2 million per annum. And Ronaldo only needs to play till June 2025.
Ronaldo will be helping Al-Nassr FC, whose administrators and backers are already moist with delight. “History in the making,” their twitter account crowed. “This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves.”
There is something sickly about such hailing: it projects a fantasy brand of equality, a delusion underwritten by cash. And there’s lots of it. Ronaldo is there to add rich lashings of sugary cover to the Kingdom’s broader agenda, which has reached across sporting such fields as golf, boxing, tennis, and Formula One. “We will support the rest of our clubs for qualitative deals with international stars soon,” came the solemn promise of the Saudi Minister for Sports, Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal.
As for the player himself, he shows little clue about who he is doing this for. “It’s not the end of my career to come to South Africa,” he said at his first Saudi press conference, even with the message of “Saudi welcome to Arabia” in his backdrop. The faux pas did little to dampen the enthusiasm of fans and officials. “You don’t need to know the name of a country to make 200 million euros,” remarked one. Nor, it would seem, its role in perpetrating humanitarian disasters, murdering journalists and indulging in mass executions.
Like Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is luring the big stars like stain removing agents for bloodstained clothes. Messi may well be considered a footballing demigod among fans and his countrymen, but like Ronaldo, he is keen about the way money talks. In May 2022, the Argentinian master became tourism ambassador for Riyadh. “We are excited for you to explore the treasures of the Red Sea, the Jeddah Season and our ancient history,” exclaimed Minister for Tourism Ahmed Al Khateeb in twitter-land. “This is not his first visit to the Kingdom and it will not be the last!”
The broader Saudi agenda here is clear enough. Such signings are also intended to improve the country’s chances for hosting the 2030 World Cup. Last year, Riyadh revealed it would be proposing a joint bid for the games that might also include Egypt and Greece. “Definitely the three countries would invest heavily in infrastructure and would definitely be ready,” Al Khateeb insisted in an interview last November. “And I know by then Saudi Arabia would have state of the art stadiums and fanzones built.”
Ronaldo, his challenged geography aside, is clear about one thing: he doesn’t want to retire gracefully and live off his accumulated treasure. Football now is less relevant than Mammon’s calling. That is something the House of Saud knows all too well.
The post Sportswashed: Ronaldo Heads to Saudi Arabia first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s praise for Saudi Arabia – calling his new hosts an “amazing country” – on arrival at his new club Al-Nassr has prompted Amnesty International to call on the former Manchester United player to use his celebrity to highlight the kingdom’s “appalling” human rights record.
The 37-year-old arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday after signing a deal reportedly worth £177m a year until 2025, making him the highest-paid footballer in history.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Recall your attention to the response from the US establishment after Russia was found to be using Iranian drones in the war in Ukraine. The extent of the outrage was so intense that the issue was brought to the UN Security Council, and the spokesman for the State Department briefed the press on the American position conveyed during the proceeding. He said, “we expressed our grave concerns about Russia’s acquisition of these UAVs from Iran,” and “we now have abundant evidence that these UAVs are being used to strike Ukrainian civilians and critical civilian infrastructure.” He added, “we will not hesitate to use our sanctions and other appropriate tools on all involved in these transfers.”
American intelligence officials later told the New York Times that Iran had sent members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the Crimean Peninsula; they had been sent, the allegation goes, to train the Russian military how to use the drones they had acquired. Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official and retired CIA officer, commented on this, saying, “sending drones and trainers to Ukraine has enmeshed Iran deeply into the war on the Russian side and involved Tehran directly in operations that have killed and injured civilians,” and “even if they’re just trainers and tactical advisers in Ukraine, I think that’s substantial.”
The Biden Administration and members of the intelligence community have endorsed an important principle: a state is responsible for the crimes it enables others to commit. Applying this standard to those designated as enemies is quite common, but powerful states always reserve a different set of standards for themselves. Any morally serious person will endorse the precept of universality, and insist upon applying the same criteria to ourselves that we do to others.
If one were to establish the goal of reducing the amount of violence in the world, the simplest way to begin would be to eliminate one’s own contribution to it; the withdrawal of American involvement in criminal acts would mitigate much of the savagery. The Biden administration is responsible for directly facilitating crimes in Yemen that greatly exceed anything Iran is accused of. The Administration has the opportunity to enact the principles they’ve enunciated, and it doesn’t require sanctions or other coercive measures, they merely need to stop participating in the Yemeni war.
The consequences of the war are not controversial. The United Nations estimated that 377,000 people had died at the end of 2021, and that doesn’t account for the destruction that occurred the following year. Yemen is the scene of perhaps the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with almost three-quarters of the population, 23.4 million people, requiring humanitarian assistance. The Yemeni population is subjected to a blockade that can reasonably be classified as torture, the World Organization Against Torture has reported. The legal director for the organization said, “the tens of thousands of civilians who die due to malnutrition, waterborne diseases, and the lack of access to healthcare are no collateral damage of the conflict.”
The American contribution to the war is not opaque. While the Obama administration was in office, some officials warned that the support they were providing could make them criminally liable for the war crimes being committed. During his campaign for the presidency, Joe Biden said he intended to treat Saudi Arabia like “the pariah that they are,” and he made clear his intention to stop selling weapons to them; his determination in this matter didn’t survive his election. Arms sales continued, diplomatic cover for the continuation of the blockade is still provided, and Saudi Arabia still relies on American contractors to service its Air Force. The dependency on American contractors to maintain and service Saudi warplanes cannot be overstated: if the US canceled these contacts the Saudi planes would be restricted to their hangers.
On December 6, The Intercept reported that Bernie Sanders was advancing a war powers resolution aimed at halting American support for the war Saudi Arabia was leading in Yemen. The Biden administration was asked to avoid incriminating themselves as transparent hypocrites, and allow for their policy to approach the standard they condemn Iran for failing to reach. This task was too strenuous for the administration. They lobbied intensely against the resolution and Sanders was forced to withdraw it.
It should never be shocking when a president behaves in a manner contrary to how he presented himself during his campaign; or when an administration condemns enemies for their crimes while they are committing worse acts. Hypocrisy of this sort is a prominent feature of the American political establishment. But this is a particularly egregious example of this. The Biden administration is reserving the right to aid Saudi Arabia as they annihilate Yemeni society and slaughter its inhabitants, and they expect to be greeted with something other than contempt when they accuse their enemies of criminal conduct. This isn’t a privilege that should be afforded to them.
The post Yemen: End American Complicity first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A new UNICEF report finds that over 11,000 children have been killed or injured in the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen since 2015. A six-month ceasefire between warring parties expired in October. Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders withdrew a Senate resolution Tuesday that would have ended U.S. support for the war, following pressure from the White House. Sanders said he would bring the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Balqis Al Rashed (Saudi Arabia), Cities of Salt, 2017.
On 9 December, China’s President Xi Jinping met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to discuss deepening ties between the Gulf countries and China. At the top of the agenda was increased trade between China and the GCC, with the former pledging to ‘import crude oil in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC’ as well to increase imports of natural gas. In 1993, China became a net importer of oil, surpassing the United States as the largest importer of crude oil by 2017. Half of that oil comes from the Arabian Peninsula, and more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports go to China. Despite being a major importer of oil, China has reduced its carbon emissions.
A few days before he arrived in Riyadh, Xi published an article in al-Riyadh that announced greater strategic and commercial partnerships with the region, including ‘cooperation in high-tech sectors including 5G communications, new energy, space, and digital economy’. Saudi Arabia and China signed commercial deals worth $30 billion, including in areas that would strengthen the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Xi’s visit to Riyadh is only his second overseas trip since the COVID-19 pandemic; his first was to Central Asia for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in September, where the nine member states (which represent 40% of the world’s population) agreed to increase trade with each other using their local currencies.
Manal Al Dowayan, (Saudi Arabia) I Am a Petroleum Engineer, 2005–07.
At this first China-GCC summit, Xi urged the Gulf monarchs to ‘make full use of the Shanghai Petrol and Gas Exchange as a platform to conduct oil and gas sales using Chinese currency’. Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia suggested that it might accept Chinese yuan rather than US dollars for the oil it sells to China. While no formal announcement was made at the GCC summit nor in the joint statement issued by China and Saudi Arabia, indications abound that these two countries will move closer toward using the Chinese yuan to denominate their trade. However, they will do so slowly, as they both remain exposed to the US economy (China, for instance, holds just under $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds).
Talk of conducting China-Saudi trade in yuan has raised eyebrows in the United States, which for fifty years has relied on the Saudis to stabilise the dollar. In 1971, the US government withdrew the dollar from the gold standard and began to rely on central banks around the world to hold monetary reserves in US Treasury securities and other US financial assets. When oil prices skyrocketed in 1973, the US government decided to create a system of dollar seigniorage through Saudi oil profits. In 1974, US Treasury Secretary William Simon – fresh off the trading desk at the investment bank Salomon Brothers – arrived in Riyadh with instructions from US President Richard Nixon to have a serious conversation with the Saudi oil minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani.
Simon proposed that the US purchase large amounts of Saudi oil in dollars and that the Saudis use these dollars to buy US Treasury bonds and weaponry and invest in US banks as a way to recycle vast Saudi oil profits. And so the petrodollar was born, which anchored the new dollar-denominated world trade and investment system. If the Saudis even hinted towards withdrawing this arrangement, which would take at least a decade to implement, it would seriously challenge the monetary privilege afforded to the US. As Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, told The Wall Street Journal, ‘The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency. If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse’.
Ghada Al Rabea (Saudi Arabia), Al-Sahbajiea (‘Friendship’), 2016.
The petrodollar system received two serious sequential blows.
First, the 2007–08 financial crisis suggested that the Western banking system is not as stable as imagined. Many countries, including large developing nations, hurried to find other procedures for trade and investment. The establishment of BRICS by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is an illustration of this urgency to ‘discuss the parameters for a new financial system’. A series of experiments have been conducted by BRICS countries, such as the creation of a BRICS payment system.
Second, as part of its hybrid war, the US has used its dollar power to sanction over 30 countries. Many of these countries, from Iran to Venezuela, have sought alternatives to the US-dominated financial system to conduct normal commerce. When the US began to sanction Russia in 2014 and deepen its trade war against China in 2018, the two powers accelerated upon processes of dollar-free trade that other sanctioned states had already begun forming out of necessity. At that time, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin called for the de-dollarisation of the oil trade. Moscow began to hurriedly reduce its dollar holdings and maintain its assets in gold and other currencies. In 2015, 90% of bilateral trade between China and Russia was conducted in dollars, but by 2020 it fell below 50%. When Western countries froze Russian central bank reserves held in their banks, this was tantamount to ‘crossing the Rubicon’, as economist Adam Tooze wrote. ‘It brings conflict in the heart of the international monetary system. If the central bank reserves of a G20 member entrusted to the accounts of another G20 central bank are not sacrosanct, nothing in the financial world is. We are at financial war’.
Abdulhalim Radwi (Saudi Arabia), Creation, 1989.
BRICS and sanctioned countries have begun to build new institutions that could circumvent their reliance on the dollar. Thus far, banks and governments have relied upon the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) network, which is run through the US Federal Reserve’s Clearing House Interbank Payment Services and its Fedwire Funds Service. Countries under unilateral US sanctions – such as Iran and Russia – were cut off from the SWIFT system, which connects 11,000 financial institutions across the globe. After the 2014 US sanctions, Russia created the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), which is mainly designed for domestic users but has attracted central banks from Central Asia, China, India, and Iran. In 2015, China created the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), run by the People’s Bank of China, which is gradually being used by other central banks.
Alongside these developments by Russia and China are a range of other options, such as payment networks rooted in new advances in financial technology (fintech) and central bank digital currencies. Although Visa and Mastercard are the largest companies in the industry, they face new rivals in China’s UnionPay and Russia’s Mir, as well as China’s private retail mechanisms such as Alipay and WeChat Pay. About half of the countries in the world are experimenting with forms of central bank digital currencies, with the digital yuan (e-CNY) as one of the more prominent monetary platforms that has already begun to side-line the dollar in the Digital Silk Roads established alongside the BRI.
As part of their concern over ‘currency power’, many countries in the Global South are eager to develop non-dollar trade and investment systems. Brazil’s new minister of finance from 1 January 2023, Fernando Haddad, has championed the creation of a South American digital currency called the sur (meaning ‘south’ in Spanish) in order to create stability in interregional trade and to establish ‘monetary sovereignty’. The sur would build upon a mechanism already used by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay called the Local Currency Payment System or SML.
Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali (Saudi Arabia), Kul Yoghani Ala Laylah (‘Each to Their Own’), 2017.
A March 2022 report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) entitled ‘The Stealth Erosion of Dollar Dominance’ showed that ‘the share of reserves held in US dollars by central banks dropped by 12 percentage points since the turn of the century, from 71 percent in 1999 to 59 percent in 2021’. The data shows that central bank reserve managers are diversifying their portfolios with Chinese renminbi (which accounts for a quarter of the shift) and to non-traditional reserve currencies (such as Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and Singaporean dollars, Danish and Norwegian kroner, Swedish krona, Swiss francs, and the Korean won). ‘If dollar dominance comes to an end’, concludes the IMF, ‘then the greenback could be felled not by the dollar’s main rivals but by a broad group of alternative currencies’.
Global currency exchange exhibits aspects of a network-effect monopoly. Historically, a universal medium emerged to increase efficiency and reduce risk, rather than a system in which each country trades with others using different currencies. For years, gold was the standard.
Any singular universal mechanism is hard to displace without force of some kind. For now, the US dollar remains the major global currency, accounting for just under 60% of official foreign exchange reserves. Under the prevailing conditions of the capitalist system, China would have to allow for the full convertibility of the yuan, end capital controls, and liberalise its financial markets in order for its currency to replace the dollar as the global currency. These are unlikely options, which means that there will be no imminent dethroning of dollar hegemony, and talk of a ‘petroyuan’ is premature.
Ramses Younane (Egypt), Untitled, 1939.
In 2004, the Chinese government and the GCC initiated talks over a Free Trade Agreement. The agreement, which stalled in 2009 due to tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is now back on the table as the Gulf finds itself drawn into the BRI. In 1973, the Saudis told the US that they wanted ‘to find ways to usefully invest the proceeds [of oil sales] in their own industrial diversification, and other investments that contributed something to their national future’. No real diversification was possible under the conditions of the petrodollar regime. Now, with the end of carbon as a possibility, the Gulf Arabs are eager for diversification, as exemplified by Saudi Vision 2030, which has been integrated into the BRI. China has three advantages which aid this diversification that the US does not: a complete industrial system, a new type of productive force (immense-scale infrastructure project management and development), and a vast growing consumer market.
Western media has been near silent on the region’s humiliating loss of economic prestige and dominance during Xi’s trip to Riyadh. China can now simultaneously navigate complex relations with Iran, the GCC, Russia, and Arab League states. Furthermore, the West cannot ignore the SCO’s expansion into West Asia and North Africa. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Qatar are either affiliated or in discussions with the SCO, whose role is evolving.
Five months ago, US President Joe Biden visited Riyadh with far less pomp and ceremony – and certainly with less on the table to strengthen weakened relations between the US and Saudi Arabia. When asked about Xi’s trip to Riyadh, the US State Department’s spokesperson said, ‘We are not telling countries around the world to choose between the United States and the PRC’. That statement itself is perhaps a sign of weakness.
The post The Road to De-Dollarisation Will Run through Saudi Arabia first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The year 2022 witnessed more repressive arrest campaigns in Saudi Arabia that targeted citizens and activists on charges related to freedom of opinion and expression. Attacks on freedom of expression and opinion increased after the visit of US President Joe Biden to Saudi Arabia in July 2022, who promised during his election campaign to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its human rights violations. More than a dozen human rights organizations called on President Biden to set strict preconditions before his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, including the immediate release of political prisoners, lifting arbitrary travel bans on human rights defenders, and ending the illegal surveillance practice; ultimately the President decided to ignore his campaign promise and meet the crown prince without securing any of the human rights preconditions.
Following President Biden’s visit, Saudi authorities escalated their widespread use of anti-terrorism and cybercrime laws as a weapon to target, intimidate, and enact revenge on human rights defenders and dissenting voices, as reported by Freedom House in its annual index of freedoms. Saudi Arabia sits among the lowest levels in the Freedoms Index for the year 2022 and maintained the same ratio recorded in 2021, which is (7/100), and was divided into political rights (1/40) and civil liberties (6/60).
Male and female activists, some of them from other nationalities, were arrested between 2021 and 2022 and sentenced to prison, fines, and travel bans simply for expressing their opinions in tweets, published commentary, or retweets. The rapid response by Saudi authorities came through arrest, arbitrary detention, and disappearance. Saudi authorites also sentenced these activists in absence of minimum standards for fair trials, used charges such as disturbing public order, undermining the security and stability of society, and others that allowed the kingdom to suppress opinion and speech.
The following cases are of activists who were arrested or tried in 2022 under Saudi rights abuses. We demand their unconditional release.
On January 2021, Salma Chehab, a Saudi mother of two and a PhD student of Shiite minority who was studying at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, was arrested in the General Directorate Investigation after being summoned to interrogation, a few days before going back to the United Kingdom to continue her studies. She was held in prolonged solitary confinement for 285 days before being brought to trial.
After a series of trials that lacked all standards of legitimate justice, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced Salma Al-Shehab to 6 years in prison in mid-2022 solely for her peaceful activism on Twitter and retweets of posts by pro-women’s rights activists, including the former detained activist Loujain Al Hathloul. After appealing to the Specialized Criminal Court, on August 9, 2022, her sentence was increased to 34 years in prison in an unfair trial, followed by a 34-year travel ban from the date of her release.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed its deep concern about the verdict against Salma, and called on the Saudi government to put in place a strong legislative framework in line with international human rights law to support the right to freedom of expression and association, and the right to peaceful assembly for all.
On January 4, 2021, Noura, a Saudi mother of five, was also arrested for her peaceful activity on Twitter and possession of a forbidden book. On February 6, 2022, she was sentenced to prison for 13 years in the Specialized Criminal Court. The sentence was then intensified on August 9, 2022, by increasing the years of imprisonment to 45, followed by a 45-year travel ban.
Noura was subjected to enforced disappearance and was prevented from communication and visits with her family. She was subjected to medical neglect, as she suffers from diabetes and other chronic diseases. Noura was accused of using Twitter to incite participation in activities that seek to disturb public order, publishing false and malicious tweets, supporting those seeking to disturb public order and destabilizing the security of society and the stability of the state, following them on YouTube, and insulting symbols of the state and its officials, demanding the release of detainees, and possession of a forbidden book.
Saad Ibrahim Al Madhi, 72 years-old, holds American citizenship and was arrested on November 21, 2021, at King Khalid International Airport. on charges related to freedom of expression for tweets he published through his account on Twitter over the years. He was traveling from Florida, his place of residence for years, to Riyadh to visit family members. After an enforced disappearance that lasted at least four months, his family learned that he had been transferred to Al-Ha’ir prison in Riyadh, where he remains. On October 3, 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced him to 16 years and 3 months in prison, in addition to a 16-year travel ban, and convicted him of charges of supporting and financing terrorism and undermining state security.
On July 2020, Mahdia Al Marzouki, a Tunisian nurse who had been residing in Saudi Arabia since 2008, was arrested in connection with her activity on social media (Facebook and Twitter). On September 2022, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced her to 15 years in prison on charges of praising a terrorist organization through her Twitter account, and seeking to destabilize the social fabric of the country, for her retweeting. She was denied the right to a lawyer and her country’s consulate did not intervene to appoint a lawyer for her.
The campaign of repression launched by Saudi authorities against all those who exercise their rights to freedom of opinion and expression, whether expressed within its territory or abroad, is a flagrant violation of international standards, its international obligations in the field of human rights, and the Saudi criminal procedure system. This repression utilizes the repressive anti-terrorism and information-crime laws, both of which contain articles criminalizing rights such as freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
Domestically, Saudi Arabia’s laws include aspects of freedom of expression but within strict and predetermined restrictions. This leads to ambiguity in prosecuting individuals who express their opinions under unjustified pretexts. In addition, Article 39 of the country’s Basic Law of Governance states that all forms of expression must not “affect the state.” Thus, all forms of expression against the state can be considered a violation of this article and liable to prosecution. Saudi authorities also use measures such as solitary confinement as a form of retaliation against prisoners. This is a violation of the Nelson Mandela Rules which set out humane obligations towards prisoners.
Articles eighteen and nineteen of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly state that everyone possesses freedom of speech and conscience and allowed the expression of opinions without any repercussions. However, the cases above demonstrate that Saudi Arabia does not hold itself to universal rights in these articles.
We are therefore very concerned about this escalation of Saudi Arabia’s use of the counter-terrorism regime to criminalize and unjustifiably restrict the right to freedom of expression. We call on the international community, especially countries with enormous influential diplomatic relations, such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom, to use its influence with Saudi Arabia to urge it to:
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This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
Listen to a reading of this article:
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Bernie Sanders has withdrawn his bill to end US support for the Saudi war on Yemen following reports that the Biden administration was working to tank the resolution, with White House aids reportedly saying they’d recommend the president veto it.
Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp reports:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday night withdrew his request to vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution that would end US support for the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen, citing White House opposition to the bill.
Sanders said on the Senate floor that he was informed ahead of the scheduled vote of the administration’s opposition to the legislation, meaning President Biden would veto the resolution. The Intercept reported earlier in the day that The White House was pressuring senators to vote against the bill, and Democrats came out in opposition to Sanders’ resolution earlier on Tuesday, including Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA).
Sanders’ justification for not holding the vote was that the administration claimed it would work with Congress on ending the war in Yemen. He said the White House wanted to “work with us on crafting language that would be mutually acceptable” and insisted if that didn’t happen, he would resume his efforts to end the war through a resolution.
But even if the White House really wants to engage with Congress on the issue, or if Sanders chooses to reintroduce the resolution, the plan will take time, which Yemenis don’t have. There has been a cessation in violence in Yemen, with no Saudi airstrikes since March, but there has been a recent uptick in fighting on the ground.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>Sanders Withdraws Yemen War Powers Resolution Vote Over Biden Opposition
The White House was asking senators to vote against the resolution and threatened Biden would veto the bill
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #SaudiArabia #Biden #BernieSanders https://t.co/9dJ5DqSSE7 pic.twitter.com/YtcWcbcl0d— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) December 14, 2022
It’s probably also worth noting that this administration has been consistently lying about its intentions to end this war, with Biden campaigning on the promise to bring peace to Yemen and make a “pariah” of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, then turning around and keeping the war going while greeting the crown prince with a friendly fistbump ahead of a meeting where the two leaders coordinated their governments’ continued intimacy.
“Today, I withdrew from consideration by the U.S. Senate my War Powers Resolution after the Biden administration agreed to continue working with my office on ending the war in Yemen,” Sanders said on Twitter. “Let me be clear. If we do not reach agreement, I will, along with my colleagues, bring this resolution back for a vote in the near future and do everything possible to end this horrific conflict.”
“At which time the House, under GOP control, will block your efforts,” former congressman Justin Amash replied. “But you know that already. As does the Biden administration, which is why they don’t want you to pass this joint resolution now, when all the pressure is on the president, because his party currently controls.”
“What I’m acknowledging is that both Rs and Ds in government are addicted to war,” Amash added. “They’re playing a game. When Trump was president, everyone knew he wouldn’t sign a Yemen joint resolution, so it passed Congress. Biden has to pretend he’d sign it, so he needs Congress to block it.”
Indeed, it would appear that a determination was made that the war in Yemen was too important for its outcome to be left to the legislative branch. Experts have long acknowledged that the mass atrocities in that war-ravaged nation would be forced to end if the US and its allies stopped assisting the Saudi military in perpetrating them, and Biden could have done so on day one of his presidency, but, as Vox’s Alex Ward put it last year, “doing so would risk losing Riyadh as a key regional partner.” Saudi Arabia plays a key role in both US fossil fuel interests and in fighting Iran, and that’s clearly a geostrategic asset that Washington is unwilling to relinquish.
So now we’re looking at a best-case scenario where either (A) the worst mass atrocity on earth continues for a much longer time than it would have if Sanders’ bill had passed, or (B) we get a watered-down version of the resolution. And of course there’s the other scenario where neither of these things happen and the slaughter just continues into the foreseeable future completely unabated.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>The White House is whipping against Bernie Sanders Yemen war powers resolution, urging a no vote this evening, sources involved tell me https://t.co/SfftPmSK3c pic.twitter.com/AX73LUbHlf
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) December 13, 2022
In the lead-up to the vote The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw and Ryan Grimm reported on the shenanigans coming from the White House to undermine the resolution. An update to their article about the bill currently reads as follows:
The White House, according to sources involved in the fight over the resolution, is urging senators to vote against the resolution. The White House is arguing that a vote in favor is unnecessary because, despite the lapse of the ceasefire, significant hostilities have not yet resumed, and the vote will complicate diplomacy. They are also arguing that Biden has made significant progress in reducing violence and re-opening ports and airports, so his judgment should be respected and the resolution rejected. And finally, the White House has warned that some of the arguments being made could complicate the effort to back Ukraine in its war against Russia. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So efforts to end the war in Yemen needed to be sabotaged because they might complicate the US proxy war against Russia? That’s some, uhh, interesting logic.
It’s hard to think of a word to describe all this besides “evil”. If intervening to ensure the continued mass starvation of children and mass military slaughter of civilians is not evil, then nothing is evil. It’s actually hard to think of anything more evil.
class=”twitter-tweet” data-width=”550″>Biden Lied About Yemen
"We are being lied to about yet another US war by yet another US president."https://t.co/uLD2hCMaP2
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 29, 2021
This could be called a tri-partisan crime, with both Democrats, Republicans, and independent Sanders each playing a role in making sure the war in Yemen keeps going. Libertarian Scott Horton, one of the most forceful critics of the US role in the war, had harsh words for supposedly anti-interventionist Republicans for not doing more on this front.
“I blame Rand Paul,” Horton tweeted. “He’s supposed to be young Ron in the Senate, and with more willingness to rumble. He could have been championing this resolution all along. We know he knows about the war. He’s why we had to rely on Bernie Sanders and his friends to even try. Mike Lee too. There was not a single GOP co-sponsor in the Senate. Not one.”
It’s safe to say that in a nation which serves as the hub of an empire that’s held together with endless violence and the threat thereof, anyone who ascends to a certain level of power in any party is going to have to be a servant of mass military slaughter to some extent. That’s why efforts to save Yemen keep getting stonewalled, that’s why Biden’s promise to end that war turned out to be a lie, that’s why the US war machine keeps expanding, that’s why aggressions keep ramping up against Russia and China, and it just might end up being why the human species went the way of the dinosaur.
Here’s hoping that all changes soon.
______________________
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James Cleverley squares up to some states, but ducks egregious cases involving allies such as India, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia
The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said that the British government “wants dictators to fear us”, but to those watching closely it would seem that he has a highly selective approach to human rights abusers.
Just days ago, the Foreign Office was scrambling to withdraw comments by a minister, David Rutley, acknowledging that Saudi Arabian authorities had tortured a Jordanian father facing imminent execution, after a complaint by Saudi authorities.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is planning to bring a resolution aimed at ending U.S. support for the Saudi Arabia-led war in Yemen to a vote in the Senate as early as next week, saying it could have the votes to pass. Sanders told The Intercept this week that he will put a war powers resolution to a vote, which can be done without the backing of Senate leadership because of the nature of the…
Organisers say accusation Red Sea event is a ‘reputation laundering tool’ for Riyadh smacks of western hypocrisy
A glitzy international film festival in Saudi Arabia has laid out the red carpet for a host of famed actors and directors, promising a “zero-censorship” event that will feature LGBTQ+ themes despite being held in a country where homosexuality is criminalised.
Only five years since the hardline Gulf monarchy lifted a decades-old ban on cinemas, the Red Sea international film festival launched 10 days of screenings on Thursday. Guests include the Lebanese actor and director Nadine Labaki, as well as fellow directors Guy Ritchie and the Oscar winner Spike Lee.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The world’s biggest petroleum exporter, a country built with oil money, and a founding member of the most powerful oil cartel on Earth, is now styling itself as a pioneer of climate change solutions.
At the United Nations climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt last week, Saudi Arabia held a separate meeting for Middle East and North African countries to go over the details of two separate initiatives aimed at cutting emissions and fighting desertification. The plans include planting 50 billion trees around the region, expanding wind and solar power, and enhancing carbon capture and storage technologies.
What’s not included is any mention of cutting oil production. In fact, the state-run oil company Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter as well as the world’s most valuable company, said that it’s aiming to raise its production capacity by 2025, even as it plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible by 2050.
Saudi Arabia, in other words, wants to remain an oil power and somehow go green at the same time.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, de facto leader of the absolute monarchy, sees no contradiction in this, sources told Grist. Taking measures to combat climate change will ensure that Saudi Arabia both diversifies its economy and remains one of the world’s political power brokers, a position it gained as a direct result of its rich petroleum reserves. Selling more oil, Saudi officials have reasoned, can help facilitate this balancing act. And as fuel prices remain high following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, experts said that the Saudi government is doing what any oil-producing country would do: meeting demand.
“Saudi Arabia knows that its oil will be the last oil purchased and produced in the world,” said Ellen Wald, a historian and scholar of the energy industry, in an email. This, she explained, is because Aramco has by far the lowest cost of production on the planet, at around $2.80 per barrel, thanks to its vast reserves conveniently pooling near the desert’s surface. “So even if every car on the road is an EV [electric vehicle] and all the planes run on batteries, anyone still buying and using oil will be buying Saudi oil.”
The discovery of oil radically transformed Saudi Arabia over the course of the 20th century, turning a largely nomadic desert society into a country with sprawling cities and a highly educated workforce. After an American oil company struck liquid gold in Dhahran in 1938, tapping into what would become the largest source of petroleum in the world, the kingdom was rapidly outfitted with pipelines, refineries, and export terminals. Aramco, as the oil venture came to be called, was owned by Texaco and other American oil companies until the Saudi government bought them out in 1980. With its vast oil wealth fully under the control of the ruling family, the House of Saud, the country deepened its ties with the West and secured a powerful spot at the geopolitical table. It’s one they intend to hold onto.
When scientists began sounding the alarm about climate change in the early 2000s, Saudi Arabia took up a reactionary position at the United Nations, highlighting skeptical views on the science of global warming and attempting to block climate policy. The kingdom’s tone began to change, however, after the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty with the goal of limiting global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees celsius compared to pre-industrial levels.
“After Paris, there was no turning back – the world will decarbonize,” said Karim Elgendy, an urban sustainability and climate consultant at Chatham House, a London-based policy institute. Saudi Arabia “realized that being at the table is better than not being at the table. Shaping the outcome is better than being affected by the outcome.”
The following year, the kingdom launched “Vision 2030,” a policy framework meant to diversify the economy and reduce reliance on oil revenues, which have historically accounted for more than 60 percent of the country’s economy. One of its major goals was buffing up tourism. The government also loosened its restrictions on women, allowing them to drive without a male guardian and enter public spaces without headscarves. In 2020, the government announced that Saudi Arabia will go “net zero” within 40 years, a term that refers to balancing the amount of emissions released and the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere. It will be no easy feat.
Saudi Arabia’s rapid modernization saw the rise of towering skyscrapers, luxury malls, and a proliferation of private cars, along with a new way of life for its 35 million residents. As it developed, the country’s carbon footprint mushroomed until by 2017, Saudi Arabia was the fifth largest oil consumer in the world after the United States, China, India, and Japan. A sizable share of its emissions comes from energy consumption during the country’s punishingly hot summers, when temperatures frequently top 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Another significant portion comes from the operations of the state-run oil company Saudi Aramco, which experts estimate has generated more than 4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1965.
Despite this, the Saudi government has repeatedly dodged responsibility for contributing to climate change, claiming that it’s a developing nation like Jordan or Ghana. Officials have refused to join other global superpowers at the UN climate summit that are pledging funds for “loss and damage” financing to poorer countries hit hard by climate change.
Earlier this year, Aramco announced that it would be net-zero by 2050. This target is “a big deal because of the impact [it] could potentially have,” said O’Connor, the analyst at Carbon Tracker. “They emit as much as some medium sized countries.”
But O’Connor characterized Aramco’s net-zero plans as “heavy on rhetoric and light on substance.” Rather than cutting emissions in absolute terms, for instance, the company plans to measure its progress using carbon intensity, a ratio of the amount of carbon dioxide released for every unit of energy produced. That would allow Aramco to claim success if it increases oil production while keeping its emissions the same.
The company believes that it can do this by capturing and reusing the carbon dioxide emitted during oil production, rather than allowing it to enter the atmosphere. Successfully doing so relies on the nascent carbon capture and storage industry. Last week at the UN climate summit, Aramco announced plans for a new carbon capture and storage hub, which it said will be able to store 9 million tons of carbon a year by 2027.
That captured carbon would then be injected back into wells to extract even more petroleum. While Aramco has promoted this as a sustainable method of keeping carbon beneath the earth, O’Connor said that the additional oil reaped from the practice will eventually end up combusting in someone’s vehicle or power plant in another part of the world – causing a net increase in emissions. (Saudi Aramco declined a request for comment.)
The Saudi government has argued that other countries’ emissions, even if a result of Aramco’s oil, are not its problem. Officials have said that the government wants to take a “comprehensive” approach to tackling climate change, which includes using oil revenues to fund its green initiatives.
These programs include some conventional climate-friendly efforts such as new solar and wind-power farms and an update of existing building standards to promote energy efficiency. But they also include ostentatious developments such as NEOM, a “smart city” with blueprints resembling mockups of a science fiction video game, complete with classrooms taught by holograms, flying elevators, and an urban spaceport.
The brainchild of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, NEOM has been under construction in the country’s northwestern desert since 2019 and is scheduled to be completed by 2025. The city is expected to run on a combination of wind and solar power and be a hub for green hydrogen, a fuel created when electrolyzers powered by renewable energy extract hydrogen from water molecules. (The Saudi government has said it aims to become the world’s top exporter of green hydrogen in the next half century.) The project has been plagued by setbacks, including violent confrontations with members of the indigenous Howeitat tribe who are being forcibly displaced by the project’s construction.
NEOM is the latest in a string of “smart cities” that have proliferated across the Middle East in the past two decades, from Abu Dhabi’s failed Masdar City to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s new administrative capital in the middle of the desert. Gokce Gunel, an anthropology professor at Rice University who has written extensively about clean energy in the Arab Gulf states, said that projects like NEOM are primarily ways for ruling families in the region to maintain their standing.
“There’s a political function to these projects even if they don’t fulfill their promise,” Gunel said. She calls them “status quo utopias”. Enterprises like NEOM “claim to create utopias but they really want to preserve the present the way it is, to maintain the way oil has made the world.”
Elgendy, who is on contract with the Saudi government to work on the city and cannot discuss its details due to a nondisclosure agreement, sees it differently. To him, NEOM is another example of the Saudi government’s determination to stay relevant in a post-oil world, an indication of its desire to “stay at the geopolitical table.”
“Instead of dragging their feet and slowing down the process, they have tried to buy a little bit of time,” Elgendy said. The kingdom’s climate action proposals let them “steer the process in a way that allows them to use oil and gas revenues to diversify their economy and become something else, become a different Saudi Arabia.”
But in the long term, it could be hard to keep up a balancing act that depends on the rest of the world’s response to climate change. When the fallout from the war in Ukraine inevitably dies down, governments will have to make tough choices about how and when to shift their economies away from fossil fuels. If major emitters like the United States make progress quickly, Saudi Arabia’s endeavors could become more difficult to pull off, even as other countries continue to buy oil.
And someone will be buying oil. Petroleum-derived products are ubiquitous in modern society, from synthetic clothing fibers to shampoos and detergents to plastic airplane parts. But the petrochemical industry that produces these products accounts for only about 17 percent of global demand for oil. O’Connor said that no matter how much the world wants petrochemicals, as grids shift to renewable power and electric cars become more popular, Saudi Arabia will see its oil revenues shrink. She pointed to the most recent report from the International Energy Agency, which found that starting in the mid-2020s, fossil fuel demand will decrease each year by an average amount roughly equivalent to the lifetime output of a large oil field.
“It’s a very fair point that once the demand is there someone is going to fill it, but what we would say is that that demand is beginning to wane and it will wane severely,” O’Connor said. “There’s a seismic shift about to take place in energy demand towards more sustainable sources. Aramco and Saudi Arabia need to reckon with that.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Biden administration said in a U.S. federal court filing on Thursday that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case brought by the fiancée of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a stance that human rights advocates condemned as a betrayal of the president’s vow to hold the Saudi leader accountable.
Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in the new filing that the White House “has determined that Defendant bin Salman, as the sitting head of a foreign government, enjoys head-of-state immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts as a result of that office and is entitled to immunity from the court’s jurisdiction of this suit while he holds that office.”
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancée, tweeted in response to the Justice Department’s filing that “Jamal died again today.”
While the Biden administration’s intervention is non-binding, it will likely spell an end to the case, which sought “significant” monetary damages as well as “discovery from American law enforcement, intelligence, and administration officials to prove that the extrajudicial killing of Mr. Khashoggi was ordered from the top of the Saudi leadership hierarchy.”
Rights groups pointed out that while bin Salman, commonly known as MBS, has been the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia for years, his formal status as the country’s prime minister — a position traditionally held by the king — was enshrined less than two months ago in what observers called an apparent scheme to ensure his immunity from legal action.
“It’s impossible to read the Biden administration’s move today as anything more than a capitulation to Saudi pressure tactics, including slashing oil output to twist our arms to recognize MBS’ fake immunity ploy,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a group that Khashoggi founded.
“Rather than rewarding MBS with impunity for his merciless crimes, Biden should have stood up for American values and legal principles,” Whitson added. “Whether or not MBS succeeds in worming out of this lawsuit, we will extract in discovery against his co-defendants every last bit of evidence about his role in this murders. Try as he might, he will not succeed in burying his crime.”
A U.S. intelligence report released last year determined that MBS “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill” Khashoggi, but the Biden administration has yet to take any steps to punish the crown prince directly despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to make Saudi leaders “pay the price” for Khashoggi’s murder.
Lina al-Hathloul, head of monitoring and communications for the advocacy group ALQST and the sister of Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, warned that the Biden administration’s decision “will empower a regime that punishes its own citizens and U.S. citizens alike.”
“Granting immunity is not only morally deplorable, but will also put the world on notice that America does not back up its words with action,” al-Hathloul said.
In a letter accompanying the Justice Department’s Thursday filing, State Department legal adviser Richard Visek insisted that the administration’s position in the civil lawsuit against MBS and his co-conspirators has nothing to do with the “merits” of the legal challenge. Visek also reiterated the State Department’s “unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”
But the Biden administration was not required to express its view on whether MBS should be immune from legal action in U.S. courts. As DAWN noted in a press release, “Neither the Trump nor Biden administrations previously had agreed to Saudi government demands to suggest immunity for MBS in multiple lawsuits pending against him in the United States.”
“The Biden administration’s decision to suggest immunity for MBS in our lawsuit was an unnecessary, elective action that will serve only to undermine the most important action for accountability for Khashoggi’s heinous murder,” Whitson said. “It’s beyond ironic that President Biden has single-handedly assured MBS can escape accountability when it was President Biden who promised the American people he would do everything to hold him accountable. Not even the Trump administration did this.”
Khalid Aljabri, a U.S.-based doctor whose two siblings are currently political prisoners in Saudi Arabia, argued that “instead of siding with MBS and allowing him to manipulate the U.S. judicial system by title-washing his crimes, the Biden administration should have remained neutral and left it to the court to decide whether MBS deserves immunity or not.”
“After breaking its pledge to punish MBS for Khashoggi’s assassination,” Aljabri continued, “the Biden administration has not only shielded MBS from accountability in U.S. courts, but has effectively issued him a license to kill more detractors and declared that he will never be held accountable.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Here’s a seldom commented-upon reality of this century and this moment: the United States remains the number-one arms-exporting nation on the planet. Between 2017 and 2021, it grabbed 39% of the total global weapons market and there’s nothing new about that. It has, in fact, been the top arms dealer in every year but one for the past three decades. And it’s a remarkably lucrative business, earning American weapons makers tens of billions of dollars annually.
It would be one thing if it were simply a matter of money raked in by the industrial half of the military-industrial complex. Unfortunately, in these years, U.S.-supplied weaponry has also fueled conflicts, enabled human-rights violations, helped destabilize not just individual countries but whole regions, and made it significantly easier for repressive regimes to commit war crimes.
At first glance, it appeared that Joe Biden, on entering the White House, might take a different approach to arms sales. On the campaign trail in 2020, he had, for instance, labeled Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state and implied that the unbridled flow of U.S. weaponry to that kingdom would be reduced, if not terminated. He also bluntly assured voters that this country wouldn’t “check its values at the door to sell arms.”
Initially, Biden paused arms deals to that country and even suspended one bomb sale. Unfortunately, within eight months of his taking office, sales to the Saudi regime had resumed. In addition, the Biden team has offered arms to a number of other repressive regimes from Egypt and Nigeria to the Philippines. Such sales contrast strikingly with the president’s mantra of supporting “democracies over autocracies,” as well as his reasonable impulse to supply weapons to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s brutal invasion.
The last president who attempted to bring runaway U.S. weapons trafficking under some sort of control was Jimmy Carter. In 1976, he campaigned for the presidency on a platform based, in part, on promoting human rights globally and curbing the arms trade. And for a period as president, he did indeed suspend sales to repressive regimes, while, in that Cold War era, engaging in direct talks with the Soviet Union on reducing global arms sales. He also spoke out eloquently about the need to rein in the trade in death and destruction.
However, Zbigniew Brzezinski, his hardline national security advisor, waged a campaign inside his administration against the president’s efforts, arguing that arms sales were too valuable as a tool of Cold War influence to be sacrificed at the altar of human rights. And once that longtime ally, the Shah of Iran, was overthrown in 1978 and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, all talk of controlling the arms trade went out the window.
What accounts for Joe Biden’s transformation from a president intent on controlling arms sales to a business-as-usual promoter of such weaponry globally? The root cause can be found in his administration’s adherence to a series of misguided notions about the value of arms sales. In a recent report I wrote for the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft on the U.S. approach to such exports, I lay out those notions fully, including lending a hand in stabilizing key regions, deterring Washington’s adversaries from engaging in aggression, building meaningful military-to-military relationships with current or potential partner nations, increasing this country’s political and diplomatic influence globally, and creating jobs here in the United States. In the Saudi case, Biden’s shift was tied to the dangerous notion that we needed to bolster the Kingdom’s supposedly crucial role in “containing Iran” — a policy that only increases the risk of war in the region — and the false promise that, in return, the Saudis would expand their oil output to help curb soaring gas prices here at home.
Such explanations are part of an all-encompassing belief in Washington that giving away or selling weaponry of every sort to foreign clients is a risk-free way of garnering yet more economic, political, and strategic influence globally. The positive spin advocates of the arms trade give to the government’s role as the world’s largest arms broker ignores the fact that, in too many cases, the risks — from fueling conflict and increasing domestic repression elsewhere to drawing the United States into unnecessary wars — far outweigh any possible benefits.
There are numerous examples, both historically and in the present moment, of how this country’s arms sales have done more harm than good, but for now let’s just highlight four of them — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Nigeria, and the Philippines.
Saudi Arabia has spearheaded a horrifying and disastrous seven-and-a-half-year-long intervention in Yemen that has killed thousands of people through indiscriminate air strikes on civilian targets ranging from hospitals, water treatment plants, and factories to marketplaces, weddings, and even a funeral. In all, that conflict has caused an estimated nearly 400,000 deaths, in large part due to a Saudi-run air-and-sea blockade that has impeded importing food, medical supplies, and fuel. The overwhelming presence of U.S.-supplied aircraft, bombs, missiles, and other weaponry in that military campaign has led many Yemenis to view it as an American war on their country, spurring resentment and potentially damaging future relations throughout the region.
Unlike in Ukraine, where the Biden administration has helped a country defend itself against a foreign invasion through the provision of arms and intelligence, in Yemen it could help stop the killing tomorrow simply by cutting off arms, spare parts, and help in the maintenance of weapons systems. Such pressure would push the Saudi regime to definitively end its destructive air strikes and its devastating blockade of that country, while potentially encouraging the launching of good-faith negotiations to end the war there.
When it comes to Egypt, the Biden administration has offered more than $6 billion in weaponry so far, including missiles, helicopters, and transport planes. All of that is going to the regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who is widely regarded as the most repressive leader in that country’s history. The el-Sisi government has gunned down demonstrators in the street, locked up thousands of political prisoners, and run a scorched earth counterinsurgency campaign in the northern Sinai desert that has killed innocent civilians and driven thousands of people from their homes.
Nor are such systematic human rights abuses counterbalanced by “strategic” benefits of any obvious sort. Quite the opposite. The el-Sisi regime has taken numerous positions contrary to Washington’s interests. These have included supporting the Assad regime in Syria, aiding rebel forces fighting the internationally recognized government in Libya, backing antidemocratic military leaders in Sudan, and building military ties with Russia through arms sales, military exercises, and a security agreement. Congressional representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) hammered home this point several years ago, saying, “In exchange for the favors that Egypt gets from the White House, they don’t actually do anything for us. This is not a situation where we are trading off human rights for something that advances the U.S. national interest. Egypt… contributes nothing to the goals of peace and security… [U.S. arms transfers] do absolutely nothing to benefit Egyptian security or ours.”
Last April, the United States offered attack helicopters worth $997 million to Nigeria, marking the latest stage in the warming of relations between the two countries that began early in the Trump years.
The Nigerian military, however, has committed torture on a massive scale while targeting thousands of civilians in an ongoing campaign against the terrorist group Boko Haram and its local offshoots. As Human Rights Watch has reported, there is a “reasonable basis to believe” that Nigerian security forces have committed crimes against humanity. Amnesty International reported that 10,000 civilians died between 2011 and 2020 from extreme neglect in prisons run by Nigeria’s military. And far from reducing terrorism, such conduct has further destabilized significant parts of the country, stoking opposition to the government and making it easier for terrorist groups to recruit and operate. Earlier this month the security situation in Nigeria had deteriorated so badly that the Biden administration ordered the family members of U.S. diplomats to leave Abuja, the capital, due to a “heightened risk of terrorist attack.”
U.S. arms transfers to the Philippines are of particular concern. The United States supplied or offered billions of dollars’ worth of small arms, attack helicopters, and other weapons systems to the regime of former president Rodrigo Duterte, a government notorious for murdering and imprisoning thousands of civilians, as well as key human rights and democracy activists, under the guise of fighting a “war on drugs.” The sales were made as part of Washington’s anti-China containment strategy, even though the Philippines offers little value on that front.
It remains to be seen whether the new president, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., an ally of Duterte who took office in May 2022, will pursue different policies. But as Center for International Policy analyst John Edward Mariano pointed out recently, Amnesty International and other impartial analysts “predict continued human rights abuses and democratic backsliding.” In response to the situation in the Philippines, congressional representative Susan Wild (D-PA) has introduced the “Philippine Human Rights Act,” which would cut off military aid to the regime until it has taken concrete steps to prevent future human-rights abuses.
While the humanitarian consequences of U.S. arms sales may be devastating, if you happen to be a major weapons maker like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, or General Dynamics, the economic benefits are enormous. Weapons systems built by those four companies alone have figured in more than half of the $100 billion-plus in major arms offers made since President Biden took office.
While those firms prefer to pose as passive beneficiaries of carefully considered government policies, they continue to work overtime to loosen restrictions on weapons exports and expand the number of countries eligible for such equipment and training. To that end, those four giant firms alone routinely donate millions of dollars to key members of Congress, while employing 300 lobbyists, many of them drawn from the ranks of the Pentagon, Congress, and the National Security Council. Once on board, those retired generals, admirals, and other officials use their government contacts and inside knowledge of the arm-sales process to influence government policies and practices.
A particularly egregious and visible example of this was Raytheon’s effort to pressure Congress and the Trump administration to approve a sale of precision-guided munitions to the Saudis. A former Raytheon lobbyist, Charles Faulkner, worked inside the State Department to keep the Saudi arms pipeline open despite that country’s bombing of civilian targets in Yemen, and then Raytheon’s former CEO, Thomas Kennedy, even went so far as to directly lobby Senate Foreign Relations chairman Senator Robert Menendez over Saudi arms sales. (He was rebuffed.) But the most spectacular lobbyist for the Saudis was, of course, President Trump, who justified continuing arms sales to Riyadh after the regime’s 2018 murder of U.S. resident, Saudi journalist, and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi this way:
“$110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and very happy to acquire all this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!”
In fact, neither Russia nor China would be able to replace the U.S. as Saudi Arabia’s primary arms supplier any time soon. The Kingdom is so reliant on American equipment that it might take a decade or more for it to rebuild its military around weapons supplied by another nation.
In reality, expansive as American arms sales to the Saudis are, that $110 billion figure was a typical case of Trumpian exaggeration. Actual sales during his term were less than one-third of that, and jobs tied to those sales in the U.S. were similarly far less than President Trump claimed. The figure he liked to throw around — 500,000 — was at least 12 times the actual one. Still, the damage done by the weaponry his administration rammed through Congress for the Saudis has been incalculable and can’t be measured by the dollar value of any particular sale.
The Raytheon lobbying campaign was extraordinary primarily because its details became public knowledge. But count on one thing: similar efforts by other military-industrial corporations surely take place behind closed doors on a regular basis. One precondition for reducing dangerous arms deals would have to be reducing the political power of the major weapons-producing companies.
In 2019, spurred by Saudi actions ranging from the war in Yemen to the Khashoggi murder, both houses of Congress voted down a specific deal for the first time — $1.5 billion in precision-guided bombs for Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern clients — only to have their actions vetoed by President Trump. Successful votes to end military support for Saudi Arabia under the War Powers Resolution met a similar fate.
The recent Saudi decision to side with Russia on reducing global oil output has reinvigorated such Congressional efforts. A new Yemen War Powers Resolution co-sponsored by Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has more than 100 backers in the House, while a parallel measure co-sponsored by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has been proposed in the Senate. Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has called for a hold on most arms transfers to the Saudi regime, while Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) are seeking a one-year suspension of Saudi sales as leverage to force that country to reverse its decision to warm relations with Russia and end its intervention in Yemen. Such efforts will face a far tougher road in a Republican-controlled Congress, so time is of the essence.
Success in reining in Washington’s arms sales will, at the very least, require a major campaign of public education. Too few Americans even know about their nation’s role as the world’s largest weapons trader, much less the devastating impact of the arms it transfers. But when asked, a majority of Americans are against arming repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and consider arms sales to be “a hazard to U.S. security.”
Still, until there is greater public understanding of the humanitarian and security consequences of what the government is doing in our name, coupled with concerted pressure on the Biden administration, the national security state, and the weapons makers, the arms trade is likely to continue full speed ahead. If so, those companies will remain in weapons heaven, while so many people on this planet will find themselves in a hell on earth.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Peter Malinauskas, the South Australian Premier, has been the latest convert to the LIV Golf circuit, showing little to no awareness about where the lion’s share of funding is coming from. When confronted with that, he paddles away the prospect of being compromised. With LIV Golf Adelaide, scheduled for April 21-23 next year, he has made an undeniable statement on priorities.
The press release from the premier’s office claimed that the rights to host the LIV Golf event had been “hotly contested” (governments across the world are gagging for it – queue up and wait your turn). It would take place over school holidays, thereby boosting the economy with the arrival of international and interstate visitors. They would fork out and help “pack out restaurants, bars, hotels, shops and other businesses, many of which suffered through the pandemic.”
The glitz of the programme, an “innovative new format featuring team and individual play”, was also something to point out, not to mention the celebrities who would be turning up: Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed. Dishonour boards in sports have rarely been so long.
South Australian voters can also be assured of state government money from the Major Events Fund co-mingling with Saudi cash. By implication, it means that Malinauskas has linked the treasury of his government with a regime that continues to attack freedom of expression, association and assembly, target dissidents and women human rights defenders, indulge the death penalty with relish, run sham trials and subject migrant workers to horrendous abuse.
Riyadh is also prosecuting a vicious war in Yemen which has led, according to the latest UNDP report, to the deaths of 377,000. Of those, 60% were attributed to hunger and preventable disease, much of it arising from the coalition’s blockade. The death toll amongst children has been astonishing, notably amongst children under the age of five.
All these ghastly blemishes have been touched up by one of the world’s most expensive public relations campaigns. The campaign has been particularly aggressive in sports, where the Public Investment Fund has played a big part. To that end, sportswashing is all the rage as investments are made towards buying sporting clubs and host tournaments in the hope of winning weak hearts and even weaker minds.
Norman revealed the news to members of The Grange Golf Club. It was wonderful for him, the place where he secured his first ever victory in professional golf in 1976. His comments, as one has come to expect from a man called the Great Shark, are stripped of any ethical or moral awareness. He is the well remunerated useful idiot, a dolt who fantasises about golf instead of mourning the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered on orders by his employer, the usurping crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Passion for sport is at the core of Australian culture, and LIV Golf is proud to bring its global league to a country deserving of the world’s top competition.”
Norman’s approach is that of a child oblivious to the hangman who passes by. “This is an opportunity to grow the game with generations of Australians while connecting them with star players like Cameron Smith who are building a new platform for golf around the globe. There is massive potential for Australia to play a bigger role in this great sport, and I couldn’t be more excited to showcase Adelaide for our league’s debut year.”
The Grange Golf Club’s President Nicolle Rantanen Reynolds was also all about the golf. As the moral vacuum tightened around her remarks, the familiar themes emerged: South Australian pride, “fantastic for our state”, and the fact that, “All golfers love to see great golf, and we will get to see the best in the world.”
The Shark’s charm, aided by a huge cash reserve from a murderous desert regime, has convinced the premier that he could not do without the event. Such is the nature of cash: it automatically creates its own irrefutable premise. “Securing the first Australian LIV Golf tournament is an exciting coup for South Australia.” The tournament was “exactly what our economy needs as we emerge from the pandemic, in particular our hospitality sector which has done it tough over the past couple of years.” In full promotions mode, the premier could merely iterate that, “LIV Golf will bring some of the world’s best golfers to SA for an event the likes of which our country has never seen before.”
When the large elephant in the room could no longer keep quiet, the Premier revealed a moral calculus common among leaders across the Western world. In dealing with Saudi Arabia, economic considerations should always come first. “I just encourage a moment of pause and caution, and a rational analysis of basic facts and what our nation’s relationship is with other countries around the world.”
What did such a rational analysis reveal? “The simple truth is this is an unparalleled opportunity for our state and our country in a way that is utterly appropriate and one that we’ve got an obligation to pursue.” When engaged in unprincipled conduct, the defence of duty and obligation is never far away.
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Cameron Norrie and other top men’s players appearing at the Diriyah Tennis Cup in Saudi Arabia have been urged by Amnesty International to use their platforms to speak up against its human rights abuses.
“Everyone playing in Diriyah will surely realise that this tennis tournament is yet another example of Saudi Arabia trying to sportswash its bloody human rights record,” said Amnesty International in a statement.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) published an opinion on its website it adopted during its ninety fourth session concerning Husain Bin Abdulla Bin Yusuf AlSadeq, a 47-year-old Saudi social activist who is currently arbitrarily detained in Saudi Arabia. AlSadeq, who is from Tarout Island in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was involved in religious associations, voluntary charitable committees, and the organization of religious and cultural events, activities, and lectures in AlQatif. He was summoned to the Tarout police station and was warrantlessly arrested on false allegations of insulting the King and Government during a conversation with the mayor of Tarout regarding the 2015 stampede at the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. This tragedy caused the death of more than 2,400 pilgrims. He was sentenced to 9 years in prison in 2018, which was reportedly increased to 13 years following an appeal in 2021.
Through its UN Complaint Program, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) receives information from Saudi individuals and employs their accounts as key evidence in submitted complaints to the United Nations Special Procedures Offices. As such, the documentation collected by ADHRB was the source of information upon which the WGAD based its Opinion on AlSadeq’s case.
The Working Group affirmed that AlSadeq’s detention had been arbitrary due to clear violations of due process and fair trial rights as well as its connection to the exercise of his right to freedom of thought, opinion, and expression, rendering his detention a discriminatory act. Due to the gravity of the violations, the Working Group has referred his case to the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, for appropriate action.
In its Opinion No. 62/2022, adopted on 2 September 2022, the Working Group identified the multiple categories under which AlSadeq’s deprivation of liberty fell, and which also revealed violations of international laws and standards. As such, the Working Group has requested the Government of Saudi Arabia to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation of AlSadeq without delay and to bring it into conformity with the relevant international norms. The Working Group set out the appropriate actions in this case as follows:
“Release Mr. AlSadeq immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations, in accordance with international law. In the current context of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the threat that it poses in places of detention, the Working Group calls upon the Government to take urgent action to ensure the immediate unconditional release of Mr. AlSadeq.”
ADHRB welcomes this Opinion by the WGAD and urges the Saudi authorities to provide AlSadeq with adequate reparations and compensation for his arbitrary detention and the violations he suffered, in addition to holding the perpetrators of those violations accountable.
The WGAD is one of the Special Procedures offices of the UN Human Rights Council. As part of its regular procedures, the Working Group sends allegation letters to governments concerning credible cases of arbitrary detention. The Working Group may also render Opinions on whether an individual or group’s detention is arbitrary and in violation of international law.
The WGAD reviews cases under five categories of arbitrary detention: when it is clearly impossible to invoke any legal basis justifying the deprivation of liberty (Category I); when the deprivation of liberty results from the exercise of the rights to equal protection of the law, freedom of thought, freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom of assembly, among others (Category II); when violations of the right to a fair trial are so severe that the detention is rendered arbitrary (Category III); prolonged administrative custody for refugees and asylum seekers (Category IV); and when the detention is discriminatory on the basis of birth, national, ethnic or social origin, language, religion, economic condition, political or other opinions, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or any other status (Category V).
In its Opinion No. 62/2022, the Working Group found that AlSadeq, currently held in Mabahith prison in Dammam carrying out his 13-year sentence, had suffered a range of human rights violations throughout his detention; AlSadeq was warrantlessly arrested, he was not granted access to legal counsel to prepare for his trial, he was interrogated in the absence of a lawyer, he was not allowed to present evidence in his own defense, he was not brought promptly before a judge (he was only tried two years after his arrest), and his confession extracted through torture was used against him in trial.
The Working Group determined that AlSadeq’s warrantless arrest on 1 October 2015 violates article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and articles 9 and 14 of the Covenant. It further determined that AlSadeq was not allowed to hire a lawyer for the first two years of his arrest. When he was finally allowed to appoint a lawyer, the latter could not request a session with his client and could only see him in court, hindering his ability to prepare for trial. AlSadeq was held in solitary confinement and incommunicado detention during a period of investigation of three months at Mabahith prison, where he allegedly confessed to the charges attributed to him under torture.
Since the Saudi government did not provide an adequate response to the raised allegations, instead relying on general statements which did not specifically address AlSadeq’s warrantless arrest and detention, the Working Group found that AlSadeq was not able to challenge the legality of his detention, a violation of articles 8 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Moreover, the Working Group concluded that the Government failed to establish a legal basis for AlSadeq’s arrest, rendering his detention arbitrary under Category I.
Additionally, the Working Group recalls that article 29 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that the only legitimate limitations to the exercise of one’s rights and freedoms must be for the purposes of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. The Working Group notes the failure of the Government to explain how the actions of AlSadeq required the imposition of any restrictions under the justifications listed in Article 29 (2) of the Universal Declaration. In fact, the Government has provided no account of any actions of AlSadeq which may have amounted to a criminal act. The Working Group thus found that AlSadeq’s deprivation of liberty falls under Category II.
The Working Group emphasized that no trial should have taken place against AlSadeq. Despite this, AlSadeq was tried and convicted, and received a lengthy imprisonment term of 13 years, and his due process rights were violated. AlSadeq was also denied legal assistance for the first two years of his detention, a right enshrined in articles 10 and 11(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and principles 17 and 18 of the Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment. This, along with the government’s repeated interrogation of AlSadeq without the presence of legal counsel and whilst in incommunicado detention, renders the violations of the fair trial rights suffered of such gravity that his detention constitutes a Category III deprivation of liberty.
Finally, the Working Group found that AlSadeq was arbitrarily detained under Category V. The Working Group notes that AlSadeq’s personal views and convictions are clearly at the center of the present case and that the authorities have displayed an attitude towards him that can only be characterized as discriminatory. Indeed, he has been the target of persecution and there is no explanation for this other than his exercise of the right to express such views and convictions.
In its concluding remarks, the Working Group noted they are disturbed at the allegations that the family of AlSadeq was not informed of his arrest and subsequently was allowed very limited contact with him, allegedly due to COVID-19 restrictions. Moreover, the Working Group highlights that in its 31-year history, they have found Saudi Arabia in violation of its
international human rights obligations in over 65 cases. The Working Group calls upon the Government to take urgent action to ensure the immediate unconditional release of AlSadeq.
ADHRB echoes the requests made by the Working Group for AlSadeq’s immediate release and for appropriate measures to be taken against those responsible for the violation of his rights, in addition to AlSadeq receiving proper reparations for his arbitrary detention.
The post WGAD declares Saudi activist arbitrary detained appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
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In light of the unprecedented jail sentences recently issued against peaceful activists and others in Saudi Arabia merely for exercising their freedom of expression, concerns are growing for those who remain in arbitrary detention without charge or are facing prolonged trials or retrial. The undersigned NGOs call on the international community to intensify efforts to press the Saudi Arabian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those who are unjustly and arbitrarily detained in the kingdom for peacefully exercising their fundamental freedoms.
One individual currently held in detention without charge is Abdullah Jelan, a graduate of West Chester University in the United States. Jelan was forcibly arrested by State Security forces on 12 May 2021 upon his return to Saudi Arabia from the United States. No arrest warrant or justification for his arrest was provided. Jelan had been vocal on Twitter, through an anonymous account, and advocated for fundamental freedoms in Saudi Arabia. During interrogation he was subjected to torture, including through use of an electric rod, and he has been denied any contact with his family and the outside world.
Jelan’s arrest occurred amid a crackdown against young activists and bloggers in May and June 2021 who had been peacefully expressing their opinions online. They include Abdulrahman al-Sheikhi, Asma al-Subeaei, Rina Abdulaziz, Yasmine al-Ghufaili, Najwa al-Humaid, and Lina al-Sharif, all of whom remain in prolonged detention more than a year after their arrests. Al-Sharif currently faces charges under the kingdom’s draconian Counter-Terrorism Law, but has not yet been brought to trial. Others have been held in extended detention for even longer, including human rights defender Mohammed al-Bejadi, who despite spending more than four years in detention since his arrest in May 2018, has still not been charged or brought to court.
Such practices are grave violations of international human rights standards, and the kingdom’s own laws. Under the Law of Criminal Procedure (LCP), the Public Prosecutor can extend detention up to a maximum of six months in total, after which the detainee must be either released or referred to court. However, Article 19 of the Counter-Terrorism Law effectively removes this upper limit on pre-trial custody for those suspected of terrorist crimes.
Meanwhile, other prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia who have been referred to court are continuing to face endlessly prolonged trials. This includes Islamic scholars Salman al-Odah and Hassan Farhan al-Maliki, both detained in September 2017, whose trials, in which the Public Prosecutor is calling for death sentences based on a range of vague charges, have continued to drag on for unknown reasons. Most recently, on 16 October, the Specialised Criminal Court (SCC) again postponed the hearing of al-Maliki, with no new date set. Dozens of other detainees in Saudi Arabia, including a number of minors, remain at risk of execution following grossly unfair trials that violated basic standards of due process, including three al-Huwaiti family members, Shadli, Ataullah and Ibrahim al-Huwaiti.
In a worrying new development, over the past two months the Saudi courts have handed down a number of unprecedentedly long prison sentences to individuals for exercising their right to free speech. These have included 34- and 45-year prison terms for women’s rights activists Salma al-Shehab and Nora al-Qahtani for peaceful activity on Twitter, and 50 year sentences for Abdulilah al-Huwaiti and Abdullah Dukhail al-Huwaiti for supporting their family’s objections to being forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for the NEOM project. More recently, on 10 October, 10 Egyptian Nubian men were sentenced to between 10 and 18 years in prison for organising a peaceful remembrance event.
Many of these sentences have been dramatically lengthened by the SCC on appeal, which disincentivizes individuals unjustly detained from appealing their wrongful convictions. In some other cases, the Saudi authorities have actually increased the sentences of those already serving prison terms or those who are expecting to be released. In mid-2022, the Court of Appeal increased the prison term of human rights activist Israa al-Ghomgham from eight to 13 years. And in late September 2022, the Supreme Court accepted a request filed by the Public Prosecution to retry human rights activist Mohammed al-Rabiah, meaning that his case will now be transferred back to the SCC, despite recently completing his prison term.
This wave of harsh sentences handed down in the Saudi courts in recent months signals an alarming deterioration of the human rights situation in the country, which followed the diplomatic rehabilitation of crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, including through the July visit of U.S. President Joe Biden to Saudi Arabia. Such high-level meetings, without firm preconditions being set, have only emboldened the kingdom’s leadership to commit further abuses, as many of us warned.
Others already serving lengthy prison terms in Saudi Arabia for the peaceful exercise of their rights include academic Saud al-Hashimi (30 years), humanitarian worker Abdulrahman al-Sadhan (20 years), and human rights defender Mohammed al-Oteibi (17 years). With the latest spate of ultra-long sentences, concern is growing that those yet to be sentenced, or facing retrial, may face similarly harsh and unjust punishments.
We therefore call on the international community to intensify efforts to press the Saudi Arabian authorities to release those currently detained in the kingdom for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental freedoms.
Signatories:
The post Fears grow for Saudi detainees awaiting trial or sentencing, following wave of 30-year-plus prison terms appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
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Democratic Congressmember Ro Khanna says Saudi Arabia should face consequences for its decision to cut oil output by 2 million barrels a day as part of the OPEC+ cartel, raising gas prices in the United States just before the midterm elections where cost-of-living issues are expected to be a major factor. He also discusses the Saudi-led war in Yemen, describing it as “one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world” that must be brought to an end. Khanna recently co-authored legislation calling on the United States to stop arms transfers to Saudi Arabia.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about the U.S.-Saudi relations. You recently co-authored legislation with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal calling on the U.S. to stop arms transfers to Saudi in response to the Kingdom’s decision to cut two million barrels a day of oil production at the OPEC+ meeting, thereby raising the price of gas to Russia’s advantage. In a piece for Politico that you co-authored with Senator Blumenthal, you wrote, “Simply put, America shouldn’t be providing such unlimited control of strategic defense systems to an apparent ally of our greatest enemy — nuclear bomb extortionist Vladimir Putin.” You also tweeted, “Their brutal war in Yemen and their fleecing of American consumers at the pump must have consequences.” Talk about what you are demanding and how much support you have for this at this point and what is happening in Yemen.
REP. RO KHANNA: As you know, for almost six years in Congress, I along with Bernie Sanders have been working to try to bring the war in Yemen to a close. It is one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, similar to the barbarism of Putin in Ukraine. It has not gotten as much attention. We had a ceasefire. Now that ceasefire apparently may be falling apart. Fortunately, the United States, thanks to our passing of the War Powers Resolution and this president’s action, is no longer refueling the Saudi planes that were bombing Yemen. But we still provide a tremendous amount of defense assistance to Saudi Arabia. That increased dramatically in the Trump administration. We have more joint defense arrangements with Saudi than most of our allies. And the Saudi planes wouldn’t fly if it weren’t for U.S. technicians.
So both of the account that they have not done enough to lift the blockade, that they still are not abiding by all of the peace agreements to bring the war to an end, and on top of that they’re slapping Americans in the face by cutting oil supplies right when we have a crisis, Senator Blumenthal and I have said, “Let’s at least suspend the weapons sales for a year.” I believe after the midterm elections — right now the issue is politicized — but after the midterm election, even Republicans will join in this demand to hold the Saudis accountable.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about the number of former military officials as high up as generals that are working for Saudi Arabia right now as exposed in the major piece — I think it was in The Washington Post?
REP. RO KHANNA: I am. I have legislation, actually with a Republican, Mike Gallagher, who is a Marine from Wisconsin, saying that high-level government officials, whether they are members of Congress, senators, generals or executive branch officials, should not be allowed to go work for foreign countries after their public service, whether that is Saudi Arabia or whether that is another country. That seems to me an inherent conflict of interest and something that does not serve our national security.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we end, I wanted to talk about the midterm elections next week. We’re days away. Congressman Khanna, you have been on the campaign trail lending support to Senate candidates Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin. He would be the first Black senator to represent Wisconsin. And you have John Fetterman in Pennsylvania who is taking on the Trump ally Mehmet Oz. Let’s talk about that one first, Mehmet Oz. We have a clip of him in the debate with John Fetterman. It is pretty well known, that clip. Mehmet Oz, when asked about abortion, this is what he said.
MEHMET OZ: I want women, doctors, local political leaders letting the democracy that has always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: So this should be between a woman, her doctor and local elected officials. Congressmember Khanna, what were you saying on the campaign trail?
REP. RO KHANNA: What Dr. Oz said was not a gaff; that’s actually the Republican view. The Democrats view reproductive rights as human rights. We view this as a fundamental right for women. The Republicans view this as an issue that politicians should decide. It is a fundamental difference. I had a great rally with John Fetterman in Pittsburgh. There was a grit that he is displaying. He is coming back from a health adversity much like many people in Pennsylvania who have been knocked down and come back. I just saw a poll this morning in The New York Times that has him up five points. I think the momentum is still on his side, but we have to get the turnout out. The way Pennsylvania goes really could determine the control of the Senate.
AMY GOODMAN: What about Wisconsin with Mandela Barnes versus the grocery store magnate Ron Johnson, the current senator?
REP. RO KHANNA: Mandela is the American Dream. I was very proud to support him early on in the primary. He really is the son of working-class parents who has risen through sheer hard work. He believes in bringing manufacturing back to Wisconsin. He believes in standing up for the working and middle class. Ron Johnson has supported policies that have led to the private equity firms basically bankrupting — Hufcor — led to the offshoring of manufacturing jobs, the hollowing out of Wisconsin. It’s a clear economic choice.
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds. Congressmember Ro Khanna, we want to thank you for being with us, Democratic congressmember from California. Tune in on November 8th for our three-hour election night special. We will be broadcasting live starting at 9:00 P.M. Eastern; that is 6:00 p.m. Pacific. That does it for our show. Check out our job listings at Democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Thursday after a chaotic, months-long buyout process, leaving the richest man on the planet in control of one of the world’s most widely used social media and communication platforms.
Musk wasted no time imposing himself on the company, swiftly firing several top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal.
“The bird is freed,” Musk tweeted late Thursday.
A self-described free speech absolutist who has proven in practice to be anything but, Musk has yet to fully detail his vision for Twitter, but critics of the takeover fear that the billionaire’s suggestions thus far — including reversing the permanent bans of former President Donald Trump and potentially other figures such as the hate-spewing conspiracy monger Alex Jones — could further deluge the platform with disinformation ahead of key elections in the United States and Brazil.
As The New York Times observed, “Twitter said it would prohibit misleading claims about voting and the outcome of elections, but that was before Mr. Musk owned it.”
“Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter will make it an even more hate-filled cesspool, leading to irreparable real-world harm,” said the Stop the Deal Coalition, an alliance of groups that includes Accountable Tech, Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. The coalition has urged Congress to investigate Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. (The purchase is reportedly already facing an investigation by federal regulators.)
“Musk’s plans will leave the platform more vulnerable to security threats, rampant disinformation, and extremism just ahead of the midterm elections,” the coalition said. “Elon Musk has a thirst for chaos and utter disregard for anyone other than himself and should not own Twitter.”
The coalition noted that, to fund the Twitter purchase, Musk is “accepting financing from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar — two countries run by repressive regimes.” Saudi Arabia and Qatar are hardly bastions of free speech: Earlier this month, the Saudis sentenced 72-year-old U.S. citizen Saad Ibrahim Almadi to 16 years in prison over tweets criticizing the regime.
Almadi’s son told The Washington Post that the kingdom has tortured his father in prison.
“Elon Musk owning one of the world’s most powerful communication platforms is dangerous for us all,” the Stop the Deal Coalition continued. “As Musk runs Twitter to the ground, let this serve as a warning to other platforms that they will be held accountable for ignoring public safety and dismantling the guardrails designed to protect our information ecosystem.”
Elon Musk is an erratic billionaire who has promised to rollback critical safeguards, replatform users who have repeatedly incited violence, and provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation.
And he has just been given carte blanche control over this platform.
— Nicole Gill (@nicolelgill) October 28, 2022
In a statement posted to Twitter Thursday morning, Musk said the reason he purchased the company “is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
But Musk’s stated openness to free expression appears not to apply to his employees, Tesla customers, or journalists covering his companies.
“In November 2020, former Tesla employee Stephen Henkes said he was fired from his job at Tesla on August 3, 2020 after raising safety concerns internally then filing formal complaints with government offices, when the company failed to fix and communicate accurately with customers over what he said were unacceptable fire risks in the company’s solar installations,” CNBC reported Thursday.
“Musk and Tesla have also sought — not always successfully — to silence customers,” the outlet added. “For example, Tesla used to compel customers to sign agreements containing non-disclosure clauses as a prerequisite to have their vehicles repaired,” the outlet added. “In 2021, Tesla asked customers to agree not to post critically to social media about FSD Beta, an experimental driver assistance software package that some Tesla owners could test out using their own cars and unpaid time to do so.”
“Musk is the face of 21st-century tech-based, extreme capitalism.”
Musk, like other billionaire CEOs, is also a union-buster.
Last year, the National Labor Relations Board upheld a judge’s ruling that Tesla unlawfully fired an employee involved in union organizing. The labor board also affirmed the finding that Musk illegally threatened workers “with the loss of their stock options” if they decided to form a union.
David Nasaw, emeritus professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote in a column for the Times on Thursday that “Musk is the face of 21st-century tech-based, extreme capitalism, just as the robber barons, who built our railroads, and Andrew Carnegie, who supplied those railroads and the builders of modern American cities with steel, embodied the exuberant and expansive industrial capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.”
“Mr. Musk has exploited the opportunities emerging in a rapidly disintegrating regulatory state apparatus and acquired a small army of investors and a fleet of lobbyists, lawyers, and fanboys (known as Musketeers),” Nasaw continued. “He has sought to position himself as a tech genius who can break the rules, exploit and excise those who work for him, ridicule those who stand in his way, and do as he wishes with his wealth because it benefits humanity.”
“It is not unreasonable to expect that a Musk-owned and controlled Twitter will, in the name of free speech, allow disinformation and misinformation to be tweeted ad infinitum so long as it discredits his political opponents and celebrates and enriches himself and his allies,” Nasaw added. “Elon Musk is a product of his — and our — times. Rather than debate or deride his influence, we must recognize that he is not the self-made genius businessman he plays in the media. Instead, his success was prompted and paid for by taxpayer money and abetted by government officials who have allowed him and other billionaire businessmen to exercise more and more control over our economy and our politics.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This month, President Biden has openly threatened to reconsider the close ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia, but the financial industry appears certain he’s not ready to put his money — or theirs — where his mouth is.
Wall Street leaders are visiting Saudi Arabia this week for an investment conference sponsored by the Saudi government, just two weeks after the White House said it would be reexamining the long-standing U.S.-Saudi alliance.
Top bankers to attend the gathering in Riyadh included JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman. The trio, whose firms collectively manage about $4.8 trillion in assets, spoke on the same panel at the so-called Future Investment Initiative.
“They will work it through and I’m comfortable folks on both sides are working through [it] and these countries will remain allies going forward,” said Dimon, of the strained ties between the U.S. and Saudi governments.
The Biden administration lost its patience with the Saudi government earlier this month after Saudi officials sided with their Russian counterparts and cut oil production. The White House accused the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of failing to keep promises made to President Biden over the summer on hiking output to clear global oil markets of high prices, and of helping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by keeping crude oil prices elevated.
“The White House has indicated it might seek retribution for the Saudi decision, and some Democrats in Congress are making a push to scale back some military and economic ties to the kingdom,” The New York Times reported on October 25.
But attendance at the Future Investment Initiative suggests otherwise. The annual event is a symposium that was established in 2017 by Bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, as part of an effort to modernize and diversify the country’s oil-dependent economy. Foreign direct investment in Saudi Arabia has increased since the first Future Investment Initiative was held, but the money has mostly been “channeled into oil assets instead of backing ambitious new projects,” according to Bloomberg.
The four largest U.S. banks — JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo — have invested over $1 trillion in fossil fuels since 2016. JPMorgan is the most prominent of the four in terms of its exposure to oil and natural gas drilling. A think tank with close ties to the firm said earlier this year that banks’ climate promises shouldn’t be scrutinized by regulators because of “the aspirational nature of external commitments.”
Crude oil extraction isn’t the only reason financiers are headed to Saudi Arabia. The Gulf monarchy has outsized importance on global financial markets this year, according to analysts, because it’s flush with oil money as rising energy prices and interest rates shrink the supply of investment capital available to wealth managers.
The Public Investment Fund, the Saudi government’s sovereign wealth fund, manages some $620 billion. All U.S. banks but four have a smaller portfolio. Billions of dollars from the Saudi fund have gone to back risky high profile ventures in the U.S., such as Uber, which has never turned a profit, and WeWork, which tried but failed to take its stock public in 2019 in a spectacular collapse. The Saudi government is also using its oil revenue to construct a futuristic city called Neom, which “has received its fair share of skepticism around feasibility,” as CNBC noted.
Saudi companies have also played an increasingly large role in global financial markets. In 2020, state oil company Aramco publicly listed 1.5% of its shares on the Saudi stock market, raising $29 billion in the process in the world’s largest ever initial public offering (IPO). U.S. banks hired to help with the IPO included JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, who ended up with less prominent roles than they had sought after they rubbed Bin Salman the wrong way by valuing Aramco below $2 trillion.
This year there has been ample opportunity for banks to make money on IPO fees in Saudi Arabia, with 22 companies in the country going public this year, a record for Saudi Arabia. Just before the Future Investment Initiative, JPMorgan announced that it was hiring 20 new bankers at its Saudi-based operations.
But it wasn’t long ago that the bank, and others, downplayed ties to the repressive monarchy. Many bankers declined to attend the Future Investment Initiative for years following the gruesome killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Within weeks of the killing, U.S. intelligence assessments leaked to the media said that Bin Salman himself ordered Khashoggi to be dismembered.
The public relations calculus changed this year, however, with the supply of investment capital squeezed by rising interest rates. This year’s conference featured the first appearance by Dimon and other major bank executives since Saudi security forces killed Khashoggi.
President Biden also initially claimed to be horrified by the killing of Khashoggi and vowed to make Bin Salman a “pariah” during the 2020 presidential campaign, but has since softened his approach to the Saudi crown prince — at least until the announcement of oil production cuts earlier this month.
Still, the White House doesn’t seem too determined to follow through on its threat to reassess U.S.-Saudi relations, especially if recent history is any indication. The alliance has not been threatened by evidence tying the Saudi state to the 9/11 hijackers, and Biden never seriously considered halting U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, despite its numerous atrocities, including the use of mass starvation as a weapon of war. Without U.S. support, the Saudi air force would be unable to conduct operations, including those required to enforce its ongoing blockade of Yemen.
When asked about senior bankers’ trip to Saudi Arabia, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said: “American companies will make their own decisions about their presence and where to invest.”
U.S.-based companies, however, don’t unlikely to “make their own decisions” in a vacuum. Right now, they’re betting that the U.S. government will continue to enable the Saudi monarchy’s reactionary brutality in exchange for U.S. corporations’ access to oil and capital. It’s no surprise Wall Street is shrugging off President Biden’s threats as idle. foreign investment if they face currently shrugging
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
PressTV – Background
Tensions are heating up between the United States and Saudi Arabia after Riyadh-led OPEC and allied oil producing countries announced a big output cut, defying Washington’s pressure.
US Secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says the government is working closely with Congress to review alternatives regarding ties with Saudi Arabia. That’s a day after the 23 countries, together known as OPEC-Plus agreed to reduce the output by 2-million barrels per day from the coming November.
Oil producers insisted they want to boost the crude market already reeling from the global economic crisis. But the decision came amid soaring energy prices. Washington harshly reacted to the move by OPEC-Plus, calling it a “shortsighted decision”. It also vowed to reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices. The US has warned the oil cartel about the crippling consequences of its measure for the world economy.
Interview questions referred to the OPEC-plus decision to reduce outputs as an instrument to increase prices, create more energy shortages – all this ahead of a predicted cold winter – and thereby helping to plunge Europe into an economic fiasco.
And how come President Biden failed to convince Saudi Arabia to increase OPEC’s oil production to keep economies around the world alive? Instead, Washington may be accusing Riyadh of siding with Washington?
Responding, I said that this was another big sham; that Biden never tried to convince OPEC to increase petrol output. To the contrary, the US wanted to destroy Europe, and what better way of doing so than to deprive them from the energy that would keep Europe’s economy turning?
By pretending the contrary, Washington just wanted to make sure that they are perceived as the “good guys”, wanting to help the world to get enough energy to sustain their economies.
Whatever happens these days, we have to put into the context of the Big Picture, and that’s like almost always the “Great Reset” or UN Agenda 2030 – their planned disastrous predicaments for Europe and the world.
In fact, OPEC-plus Petrol Output reduction (2 million barrels per day), if it happens, will be following instructions of the US. Washington is known for dancing on several weddings at the same time. They show this all the time.
Referring to WWII, as one of the most flagrant examples: The US was officially fighting against Hitler, while at the same time funding his war against the Soviet Union. With money directly from the FED and with Petrol delivered by the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.
Today, we are talking about a much bigger plan, as depicted in the Great Reset, aka. UN Agenda 2030, aiming at a One World Order, plunging the entire 193 UN member countries into an abyss of unheard proportions. – Associations of countries, like the Euro-block, as well as individual countries sovereignty have to be destroyed.
The plan is to actually devastate Europe with the help of two of the most corrupt and treacherous German politicians, the President of the EU Commission and the German Chancellor. They were put into their positions precisely for their treacherous character and lack of ethics.
It was clear from the beginning that US / NATO was behind the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, with the full knowledge and acquiescence of Madame Ursula von der Leyen, and very likely also of Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
After all, there is plenty of evidence, including Biden telling a journalist on 2 February 2022 that he has means to stop the flow of Russian gas to Germany and Europe.
See the full PressTV Interview here:
The post OPEC: Is Washington Behind the OPEC Decision to Cut Petrol Output? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee pledged late Monday to block all future U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia as backlash over OPEC’s decision to cut oil production and push up gas prices continues to grow on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who has veto power over foreign arms sales, said in a statement that OPEC’s plan to slash production by two million barrels a day in a bid to prop up oil prices amounts to a “decision to help underwrite Putin’s war.” Russia, an OPEC ally, stands to benefit from higher oil prices without having to reduce its own production.
“The United States must immediately freeze all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including any arms sales and security cooperation beyond what is absolutely necessary to defend U.S. personnel and interests,” Menendez said Monday. “As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine. Enough is enough.”
With his statement, Menendez — a war hawk — joined progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in demanding an end to U.S. military aid to the Saudis, the largest buyer of American weaponry.
On Sunday, Khanna and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced legislation that would “immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.” Last week, three House Democrats introduced a bill that would require the removal of U.S. troops and missile defense systems from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a leading member of the OPEC cartel.
Over the past several years, the U.S. has approved tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons sales to the Saudis as they’ve waged a catastrophic war on Yemen, sparking a massive humanitarian crisis. The U.S. has also cooperated with the Saudis militarily in other ways, including by refueling the oil kingdom’s warplanes, supplying fighter jet parts, and teaming up with the country’s murderous leadership to build high-tech bomb parts.
Recent congressional efforts to block arms sales to the Saudis — including major deals approved by the Biden administration — have fallen short, but the OPEC decision could mark a key turning point as top Democratic lawmakers demand a complete reevaluation of U.S.-Saudi relations.
Just over a year ago, Menendez notably opposed a Senate resolution that aimed to block a $650 million sale of missiles to the Saudis. The bipartisan resolution ultimately failed to clear the upper chamber.
In a statement last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) — the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat and a supporter of previous attempts to block arms sales to the Saudis — declared that “it’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without this alliance with these royal backstabbers.”
“From unanswered questions about 9/11, the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the exporting of extremism, to dubious jailing of peaceful dissidents and conspiring with Vladimir Putin to punish the U.S. with higher oil prices, the Saudi royal family has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation,” Durbin said.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Exclusive: Meetings while in Saudi Arabia undisclosed due to ‘administrative oversight’, says business department
The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, held undisclosed meetings with senior executives of Saudi Arabian firms when he was the business secretary, documents acquired by the Guardian show.
The meetings occurred in January, when Kwarteng visited the kingdom for a two-day trip under his previous ministerial role.
Rep. Ro Khanna announced Sunday that he is teaming up with Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on a bill to block all U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi-led OPEC’s newly announced decision to slash oil production, driving up gas prices across the globe.
In an op-ed for Politico, Khanna (D-Calif.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld argued that OPEC and Russia’s move to cut oil production by two million barrels per day starting in November will “worsen global inflation, undermine successful efforts in the U.S. to bring down the price of gas, and help fuel Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
“The Saudi decision was a pointed blow to the U.S., but the U.S. also has a way to respond: It can promptly pause the massive transfer of American warfare technology into the eager hands of the Saudis,” the trio wrote. “That is why we are proposing bicameral legislation in the Senate and House on Tuesday that will immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”
“For several years now, our colleagues have been considering similar proposals, but those measures haven’t passed,” they added. “Due to intense bipartisan blowback to Saudi’s collusion with Russia, we think this time is different. Based on our conversation with colleagues, our legislation is already garnering bipartisan support in both chambers.”
.@SenBlumenthal @JeffSonnenfeld and I are working on a bipartisan, bicameral basis to stop all armed sales and sales of military parts to the Saudis. Their brutal war in Yemen and their fleecing of American consumers at the pump must have consequences. https://t.co/rDenapcOym
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 10, 2022
According to one estimate, the U.S. agreed to sell roughly $64.1 billion worth of weapons — averaging over $10 billion a year — to Saudi Arabia between 2015 and 2020.
Arms sales to the Saudis, the largest purchaser of U.S. weaponry, have continued under the Biden administration despite its pledges to end the war on Yemen and render the oil kingdom a “pariah” over its assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
In the wake of OPEC’s announcement of a production cut aimed at propping up oil prices, calls for an end to U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia intensified, with Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leading the chorus.
“We must end OPEC’s illegal price-fixing cartel, eliminate military assistance to Saudi Arabia, and move aggressively to renewable energy,” Sanders wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.
The Biden administration and Democratic leaders have said they’re exploring a range of responses to OPEC’s decision, but it’s unclear whether an end to military assistance to the Saudis is actively being discussed at the highest levels.
In their op-ed on Sunday, Khanna, Blumenthal, and Sonnenfeld noted that some members of Congress are proposing “extending domestic antitrust laws to international commerce” while others are calling for the revival of “a GOP initiative to withdraw U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia.”
“A simpler, far more urgent move to fortify U.S. national security would be to pause all U.S. military supplies, sales, and other weapons aid to Saudi Arabia,” Khanna, Blumenthal, and Sonnenfeld argued. “This includes the controversial, new, and hastily planned Red Sands testing facilities in Saudi Arabia.”
“U.S. military collaboration with the Saudi regime is more extensive than many realize, but that also gives the U.S. significant economic and security leverage over Riyadh,” they added. “Today, Saudi Arabia is hugely dependent on U.S. defense assistance, purchasing the vast majority of its arms from the United States… Saudi can do little to respond to this proposed legislation other than come back to the table and negotiate with the U.S. in good faith.”
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After Saudi-led international oil cartel Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, announced on Wednesday that it will be conducting its largest slash to oil production since 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) expressed outrage and called for the U.S. to end military aid to Saudi Arabia altogether.
Sanders said that OPEC’s motivation is clear: to raise gas prices at a time when the oil and gas industry is already making record profits due to high gas prices and industry market manipulation.
“OPEC’s decision to cutback on production is a blatant attempt to increase gas prices at the pump that cannot stand,” Sanders wrote. “We must end OPEC’s illegal price-fixing cartel, eliminate military assistance to Saudi Arabia, and move aggressively to renewable energy.”
Other Democratic lawmakers have also called for an end to military assistance to Saudi Arabia, with a group of Democrats introducing legislation to mandate the withdrawal of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in response to the move. Progressives have previously advocated for ending military support to dangerous petrostate Saudi Arabia over the country’s devastating war on Yemen.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) echoed Sanders in agreeing that OPEC’s move is yet another reason for the U.S. to transition to renewable energy and lessen its dependence on fossil fuels. He announced that he is reintroducing legislation to initiate talks with OPEC and non-OPEC allies, known together as OPEC+, in order to “hold OPEC and its allies accountable for colluding to hike energy prices on working families.”
Climate advocates have expressed alarm that OPEC can exercise such unchecked power over the global economy, which is on the brink of a recession, while also maintaining fossil fuel’s controlling grip over the energy market.
“Right now we are witnessing how our near-total reliance on fossil fuels has allowed the world to be so easily manipulated by a handful of dangerous and greedy leaders,” Stop The Oil Profiteering spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola told Truthout. “OPEC has some of the worst human rights and environmental records in the world, and it comes as no surprise that they are using their power to fix prices and fleece consumers.”
Though reducing oil production is an ultimate goal of the climate movement, as long as OPEC’s move doesn’t come with a corresponding increase in renewable energies, it only serves to further entrench the fossil fuel industry by pumping its profits, advocates say. Over the past years, climate advocates have called for a managed decline of the oil industry — including reducing production while drastically boosting energy efficiency and renewable energies — rather than simply squeezing the supply of the energy market, as OPEC is doing.
“We cannot allow our energy to be controlled by a cartel of oil producing states,” DiPaola continued. “It is time for a swift and just transition to renewable energy that will provide the world with the energy freedom we need and deserve.”
Democrats reacted with frustration on Wednesday after OPEC announced it will soon be cutting production by 2 million barrels a day, which will likely cause oil prices to skyrocket. Oil barrel prices have been steadily declining over the past months, as the global economy teeters on a global recession, causing a corresponding decline in gas prices at the pump.
President Joe Biden’s approval rating — an important harbinger of how well Democrats will fare in this year’s midterm elections — has been trending strongly with gas prices over the course of his presidency, and this announcement may reverse the current trend of rising approval for the president.
The Biden administration has been considering a gas export ban as the midterms approach in hopes of helping to nudge gas prices even further down, a move that climate and environmental groups have called for in response to the OPEC announcement.
“It is no surprise that the international oil cartel is seeking to maintain high prices. Political leaders here at home must understand that the solution is not to increase drilling. Corporations are exporting record quantities of gasoline, and making record-setting profits as a result,” Food and Water Watch policy director Mitch Jones said in a statement on Wednesday. “It’s time to take real action to rein in this outrageous corporate profiteering. That should start with Congress passing a ban on gasoline exports.”
Oil trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute have voiced opposition to the move — likely because it could cut into their ability to price gouge, as lawmakers and climate advocates have accused oil companies of doing. Indeed, experts say that the practice of exporting oil has massively increased the U.S.’s reliance on foreign energy sources and gives fossil fuel companies the opportunity to use exports as a means to reduce domestic supply and increase prices for consumers.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Exclusive: court document details charges against Noura al-Qahtani, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison
A Saudi woman recently sentenced to 45 years in prison was convicted of using the internet and social media accounts to “spread lies through tweets”, among other alleged crimes, according to a newly obtained Saudi court document.
Noura al-Qahtani, whose case first emerged last week, is a mother of five daughters, including one with a disability, is nearly 50 years old and has health issues, according to the court records.
It has been a hobbyhorse of Greg Norman for years: a threatening, alternative golf tournament to draw the stars and undermine the musty establishment. Realising a most dubious project, the LIV Tournament has become blood money’s greatest symbol. Funded by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is a most noisy statement of sportswashing.
Some aspects of this are also a touch sinister. Last month, the Wall Street Journal revealed the details of a draft LIV contract that has been offered to players. Provisions of the contract include requirements for the players to don LIV apparel when playing both LIV and non-LIV events. Non-LIV logos, at least for the most part, need to be cleared with management. This also covers logos used on branded products that might be used at the events. The contract provisions stipulate one exception: players can wear “the brand of a third-party supplier of golf equipment on the side of their hat.”
The claws of management also go deeper than logo approvals. Tight rein is maintained over player interviews relating to an “event or league activity”. Participation in the tournament also comes with the proselytising proviso: recruited golfers will, in turn, recruit other golfers for the tournament. Players must agree to “where requested, assist the League Operator in seeking to persuade players to enter into multiyear player participation agreements with the League Operator.”
The first three LIV Invitational events have seen rich splashings of $25 million in individual and team prize money. No participant has earned less than $120,000. It has also been reported that a number of golfers with profiles – Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka – have signed contracts of the eight- and nine-figure sort. In one of the tournaments under the LIV umbrella, the eventual winner, Henrik Stenson, left $4 million richer.
The success of such operations is based less on intelligence and integrity than gain and bulging bank balances. If PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was hoping for something more than that, he was seriously misreading the mood. Hank Haney, Tiger Woods’ former coach, sees LIV Golf as “great for the players that left and for the players that stayed.” He has suggested that the tournament format co-exist with the PGA Tour. Norman, for his part, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, claiming that its actions in banning participants from participating in its competition are unlawful.
Woods has himself raised a number of suspicions for his opposition to LIV, having turned down a $700-800 million offer from the Saudis. Hardly a moralist, though very much a student of the game, he is being tasked by the PGA Tour establishment to come up with some countering format. As Alan Shipnuck, writing in Golf Digest asks, “what is the payoff for Woods to go all-in with the PGA Tour?” Best not ask.
This is the sort of amoral mindset that conveniently ignores how an ensemble of murderous skyscraper building oil-rich kleptocrats have globalised their footprint across a number of sports as part of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s “Vision 2030”.
This year, the London-based human rights organisation Grant Liberty released a report noting that the Kingdom had spent something in the order of $2.1 billion on a number of international sporting events and the acquisition of sporting assets, such as the Newcastle United football team. Regarding the latter, the exiled UK-based Abdullah al Ghamdi made a plea “to all football supporters and players at St James Park to put pressure on the Saudi Government to release all those victims of its relentless crackdown.”
This sportswashing project gathers pace even as the theocrats pursue internal repressive policies against their citizenry, despite the reformist pretensions of the Crown Prince. The House of Saud has also shown itself to be a keen pursuer of dissenting citizens in other jurisdictions, evidenced by the savage carving up of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The link between this gruesome assassination and the Crown Prince was confirmed by US intelligence officials in an unclassified report released in February last year. The report found that bin Salman was in “control of decision making in the Kingdom” and supported “violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi”.
In terms of foreign policy, Riyadh continues its sponsorship of humanitarian misery in its vicious war in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis. The Yemen conflict, one that has seen the displacement of a million people, the threat of famine, medicine shortages and cholera outbreaks, has been just about forgotten by those in Washington, Canberra and various European capitals, transfixed by all things Russian. With the war in Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been anointed the omnipresent bogeyman and oppressor, while the thuggish antics of the petulant bin Salman slip gently under radar and consciousness.
Sports figures the world over should be soul wary about a regime that uses cash to conceal the bodies of protesters thrown into prison, activists tormented and disappeared, and murdered journalists. But Riyadh have their number, cunningly seductive, and aware of perennial weakness. With its vast sovereign wealth fund, the Kingdom is willing to splash out, and sports figures are willing to be bought. They know the harlot’s score.
The post The Harlot’s Score: Blood Money and the LIV Golf Tournament first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Peace activists on Friday challenged what they called Saudi Arabia’s “sportswashing” of war crimes in Yemen and domestic human rights abuses by protesting outside — and over — a Massachusetts golf tournament funded by the repressive kingdom.
Members of Massachusetts Peace Action and supporters rallied at the Bolton Fair Grounds in Lancaster, site of the shuttle bus to the LIV Golf tournament at The International golf club in Bolton. The professional golf tour is financed by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Demonstrators held signs with messages including “Saudi Money is Blood Money” and “Saudi Arabia Kills Journalists and Kids in Yemen” while an airplane circled over the event trailing a banner reading “Bolton Rejects Saudi Blood Money.”
“The Saudi bombing and blockade of Yemen has brought devastation to the people of that country,” Paul Shannon, who chairs Massachusetts Peace Action’s Middle East Working Group, said in a statement.
Hey, the Bone Saw Tour is in town!https://t.co/ILeTrdjeHl
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 3, 2022
“That destruction has been enabled by our country’s support for the Saudi invasion and by bombs, planes, and missiles sold to the Saudis by U.S. military contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, and Raytheon,” he added.
Protester Alice Rennie of Bolton told WCVB: “I’m outraged that it’s my town that’s hosting a golf tournament that’s funded by the terrorists and murderous regime in Saudi Arabia.”
Another demonstrator, Paul Garver, asserted that “golf should not be used to promote a government like Saudi Arabia that is doing these things in the world to people.”
“We do not condone collaboration with a murderous dictator like the crown prince,” he added.
Protesters Exposed Saudi #Sportswashing at LIV Golf Tournament today in Bolton, MA#Saudi Money is Blood Money
Saudi Arabia Kills Journalists and Kids in #Yemen#YemenCantWait pic.twitter.com/utiT5YUe7m— RaytheonAntiwarCampaign (@RaytheonAntiwar) September 2, 2022
In addition to peace activists, relatives of people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States — which were possibly backed by some Saudi officials — have called out LIV golfers, as well as former President Donald Trump for hosting a LIV event at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
While campaigning in 2016, Trump blamed Saudi Arabia for 9/11. However, once elected, he behaved like every U.S. president by maintaining friendly relations with the oil-rich kingdom’s rulers and selling them hundreds of millions of dollars in arms for use in the U.S.-backed coalition war in Yemen, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people while displacing, starving, and sickening millions more.
At Friday’s protest, Massachusetts Peace Action also handed out pamphlets thanking the professional golfers who have eschewed the tournament “so as not to be associated with an event created with millions of dollars from one of the most repressive regimes on the face of the Earth.”
How Saudia Arabia is using LIV Golf to Sportswash its global image@MorganPCampbell and Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) discuss the motivations of Saudi Arabia in creating and funding the LIV Golf tour
WATCH: https://t.co/hcgUdwB0LR pic.twitter.com/cK1ZY6jIav
— CBC Sports (@cbcsports) September 3, 2022
One of those players, Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy, has been an outspoken critic of LIV Golf. Speaking to reporters in June, McIlroy accused younger players who join the tournament of “taking the easy way out.”
Citing “morality,” McIlroy joined Tiger Woods in turning down what is believed to have been $2.5 million payments to play in a 2019 tour in Saudi Arabia.
“You could say that about so many countries, not just Saudi Arabia,” said McIlroy, then the world’s second-ranked golfer, “but a lot of countries that we play in that there’s a reason not to go, but for me, I just don’t want to go.”
In June, the PGA Tour suspended 17 golfers who are competing in the LIV series for “choosing to compete… without the proper conflicting event and media rights release.”
The suspended players include six-time PGA major winner Phil Mickelson, who reportedly signed a $200 million contract with LIV, despite having recently made some strong comments about the Saudis.
“They’re scary motherfuckers to get involved with,” he told biographer Alan Shipnuck in February. “We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights.”
“They execute people over there for being gay,” Mickelson added. “Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates.”
LIV Golf last week joined 11 of its players, including Mickelson, in an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour challenging their suspensions.
Step right this way!
Roll up, roll up for the Mystery Tour
Roll up, roll up for the Mystery Tour— The Beatles, “Magical Mystery Tour,” 1967
Recently, the Wicked Witch of Ice Cream, octogenarian Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, took an officially unscheduled trip to Taiwan that caused quite a stir. Beyond the official Chinese Government’s objections, Pelosi’s weird visitation also included the non-endorsements of both the U.S. State Department and the Biden administration. So, what was The Nancy doing in Taipei, besides possibly checking in upon some “family” investments on the American taxpayer’s dime? Several angles suggest themselves concerning this transparently symbolic, and officially unsanctioned, Pelosi excursion to Taiwan.
Firstly, one could say that Pelosi tip-toed through the Taipei-lips — except, of course, for that extravagant military escort that absolutely contradicted the notion that this was not an “official” state visit. One wonders if these opposite optical effects of Pelosi’s Taiwan touchdown were more a case of strategic confusion than so-called “Strategic Ambiguity”? In any case, the Chinese had bluffed (a bluff amplified by western corporate media, itching for an incident) that they might interdict the Speaker’s armada, yet wisely let it pass unmolested. I am not a China expert, but suspect that the Chinese view Pelosi’s Taipei trip-sy as a case of “Grandma being off her rocker,” as much as anything else Indeed, the video of Pelosi gingerly navigating the steep steps of the Air Force Jumbo Jet while clutching almost desperately the stair rails may have caused a chuckle or two in Beijing, or even — who knows? — concern that she would lose her grip; after all, hadn’t the elderly Biden just famously fallen off his bike (or was that Biden’s stunt double, instead?)? Whatever mysterious, or even intentionally incoherent, message the United States was “unofficially” sending to Beijing, “We the People” certainly did not send our most nimble actress in this case. It really seems like elder abuse is becoming a standard feature of the American political scene these increasingly senescent days…
Now, to digress just a bit: it seems that any parody sketch of The Nancy’s Taiwandering “mystery trip” should feature Pelosi formally inviting Taiwan into both the NATO alliance and the European Union. During this astonishing World-hysterical announcement, Pelosi would start gyrating her arms in the bizarre fashion she displayed at the last State of the Union address (I believe Madame Speaker was acting as High Priestess of “burn pits” at this moment, or: the weird drugs were just beginning to kick in…). Unfortunately, this skit would not reach the status of high comedy unless we could also summon the image of comedian president Zelensky parachuting down to straddle Pelosi’s padded shoulders, firing wildly from his fingertips in all directions while imploringly scolding all and sundry for “More Money and More Weapons!” Ukraine, of course, is a Western welfare/warfare basket case; that Zelensky: “He’s a real live action figure hero, folks!”
Nevertheless, however Pelosi’s lost trip to Taiwan can be parodied, it could just be the case that it simply signifies a NATOOTANi shift away from Ukraine to Taiwan. Naturally, this makes no geo-strategic sense whatsoever, but neither does the AmericaNATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. While still compulsively spinning an ever-thinning (and always delusional) narrative of ultimate Ukrainian victory, the Blue-and-Yellow Press of the West appears to be catching on, by dribs and drabs, to the fact that Ukraine and the Zelensky regime are a lost cause.
Indeed, the recent NATO conference in Madrid re-shuffled the deck of the TransAtlantican organization’s priorities. One would have assumed, in 2022, that Ukraine would have topped that list, but “No!”, or at least “nyet!” Instead, apparently, Ukraine has fallen from high greasy grace, and it is the “rise of China” that rules the NATO-centric roost. NATO’s playing the “China Card” these days, so they not-necessarily-so-ambiguously tip-toed out old grandma Pelosi to Taiwan to symbolize this shift of geopolitical grift. How this grifty shift, which was originally trotted out under Barack O’Bushma’s regime as the “pivot to Asia” one decade ago like a Show Horse, will work out for Paul Pelosi Jr’s significant investment in newly designated Enemy #1, or China, remains to be seen. Paul Jr’s probably not a particularly brave or inspiring figure; after all, where was the accompanying son when his Mom was clinging for dear life to an Air Force jet stairwell rail? Perhaps this explains why Paul Jr was left off the “official” Pelosi entourage list?
Pelosi’s frivolous foray to Taipei also underscores the utter vanity and inefficacy of recent American diplomatic efforts. While Biden’s agenda flops like a fish out of water at Home, his foreign policy flounders and blunders Abroad. Seriously: What’s wrong with these people? Too much Paxlovid in the brain’s blood? Well, maybe another booster of “Partial Immunity Shot” will cut through that “long haul brain fog?”
Officially, Pelosi’s tip-toe to Taipei did not accomplish much beyond irritating the Chinese Communist Party. Benjamin Franklin, perhaps, had a roll-in-the-grave over this colossal waste of “Time and Money”; George Washington, whatever his many faults, who so presciently warned a nascent United States against “foreign entanglements,” likewise.
Foreign mis-entangling has been amply demonstrated by top U.S. officials traveling to “foreign” places this Summer (like the tone-deaf tourists most of them are), not least by Pelosi’s “mystery trip” to Taiwan (“Step right up!” — and she could only most gingerly, clingingly: “Where’s Paul?”). “Falling” Joe Biden’s recent travel to Jeddah (not Riyadh), Saudi Arabia, for example, revealed a domestically hamstrung President “fist-bumping” a figure that he had consistently labeled a “pariah”; which is to say, the Saudi Crown Prince, MbS, aka “More Bone Saw.” Biden ostensibly went to “KSA” for more oil production from “The Kingdom.” In the event, Biden the Ineffectual, secured no such assurance. Biden was more mocked than anything else in Jeddah, or, put in another way: Mr Biden never got remotely close to the mystery orb that Trump had touched. It almost goes without saying that going to Saudi Arabia to beg for more oil totally contradicts the whole Biden — or is that the WEF? — “Green Agenda” thing, but, “Hey, who’s counting?” Biden’s like the second coming of MAGA, or: “Make America Gaffe Again,” Biden.
In brief, Saudi Arabia, recipient of untold billions in U$ military aid and other assistance over the decades, straight-up snubbed the President of the United States. Even that awkward PR “fist-bump” merely served to uncomfortably recall the emphatic “elbow-bump” (and “pre-Covid”, no less!) between Russia’s Putin and Saudi’s Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires in 2018, which also featured another noticeably snubbed American president, or J Biden’s immediate predecessor, Donald J Trump, wandering aimlessly around in the background…
A more telling contrast with Biden’s inconclusive — or even “failed” — Saudi trip can be easily seen in this Summer’s summit in Tehran, Iran, where Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan met amiably with Iranian leaders, their hosts. I’m not sure what deals were struck in Tehran, but one wonders if a rehabilitated neo-con hack like David Frum might be inspired to brand Russia-Turkey-Iran a new “Axis of Evil”? Of course, Frum would have to include China, too, and, as if on cue, China’s Xi Jinping is slated to visit Riyadh any day now. Clearly, the Chinese leader’s trip to Saudi Arabia, if it happens, will be diplomatic dynamite. Can anyone say –Ka-blam! — “Thucydides Trap”?
Beyond mere appearances, or the decorativeness of World leaders, like “MAGA”-Joe Biden’s recent “mystery trip” to the KSA, the Big Issue at play is Saudi Arabia’s willingness to trade oil with China in yuan, and not USD. This is an actual “game changer,” and potentially a World War maker. This developing arrangement would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, as Saudi Arabia is the lynchpin of the Petro-Dollar system, which in turn anchors American global hegemony: indeed, the entire TransAtlantican financial extractive wealth system of the last half century, built upon the exploitations of the previous 4 Centuries…
Given the obviously messy fore-or-back ground, like a melting down Ice Cream Cone: What, oh what, is a slip-sliding Leviathan to do? Just to speculate a bit, but something tells me, like a back-pocket thought, that an American invasion of Saudi Arabia is a better bet than China attacking Taiwan anytime soon. Sounds outlandish, but when the USD is threatened, the Death Star (Pentagon) tends to swing into “Action!” Just ask Iraq or Libya (or Smedley Butler). “Falling” Joe Biden did manage to re-commit the United States to the Middle East, that fossil fuel rich part of Eurasia, while in Jeddah, whatever an American “re-commitment” might mean. Given the recent American track record in the Middle East…well: One imagines that anything is possible.
In any event, Xi’s trip to Riyadh (if it even happens…), and the American reaction to it, will be well worth watching. Certainly, his visit would have vastly greater significance than Pelosi’s silly sally to Taipei, which was far more farce than show of force. Symbolically, clinging to an American Air Force jet stairwell rail, was “Mama Bear” Pelosi a white-knuckling image of the Collective West’s ever-losing grasp on the “Great Game” of global hegemony: a pictorial video symbolic of an Occidental hegemon finally “losing its grip” after so many centuries at the helm? Is Uncle Sam finally losing his World-dominating bona fides, his USD, just in time for the new paradigm?
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