Bin Salman to Biden: You Whitewashed Israeli Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, so why are you so upset about Khashoggi?

By Juan Cole, July 17, 2022

https://www.juancole.com/2022/07/whitewashed-israeli-khashoggi.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, pulled back the curtain for the Alarabiya news channel (Saudi-owned but based in Dubai) on what transpired at the meeting between President Joe Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman:

Al-Jubeir confirmed that Biden, as he had pledged, quickly brought up the murder in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which the US CIA assessed had been ordered by Bin Salman himself.

Alarabiya: “Adel al-Jubeir: the Saudi Crown Prince told Biden that America commits errors”

Bin Salman allegedly replied that measures had been taken to avoid a repeat of such an incident and those involved had been punished (this is not true). Al-Jubeir also pointed out that the CIA gets things wrong, as with the 2002 report that Dick Cheney made it write confirming weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Aside from throwing up the smokescreen of a show trial of low-level participants or alleged participants in Khashoggi’s murder, Bin Salman then went on the offensive.

He said that lots of countries, including the U.S., had been responsible for such errors. He pointed to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal that broke in 2004 when US military personnel set dogs on Iraqi detainees,tortured them, kept them in stress positions, and made them strip naked and masturbate, which I wrote about at the time for Tomdispatch.

Bin Salman went on to point out that the US had soft-pedaled the Israeli murder of Shireen Abu Akleh . This is true. A CNN investigation found that the hail of bullets that the Israeli sniper fired at her was closely spaced, which indicates intentionality rather than random fire. Moreover, she was wearing a helmet and bullet proof vest with PRESS written on it in big letters, and it is highly unlikely that a stray bullet just happened to slam into her skull right below the edge of her helmet. Given eye witness accounts and forensics, it is near certain that the Israelis assassinated Shireen because they did not like her gutsy reporting on Israeli war crimes in the militarily Occupied Palestinian West Bank. The order may have come from high up in the Israeli government. But Biden had no difficulty shaking hands with Naftali Bennet, the then prime minister, who once boasted that he had “killed a lot of Arabs.” Biden’s State Department, without conducting any in-depth investigation, concluded that Shireen was likely killed by an Israeli bullet but that the killing was “unintentional.” That is outrageous.

So Bin Salman’s point, even if it is self-serving and even if it comes from someone who has talked about his willingness to throw the Palestinians under the bus, is fair enough.

The US government didn’t care about the Israelis assassinating Shireen Abu Akleh, (and many other unlawful killings of Palestinian journalists and just ordinary Palestinian non-combatants) and it does not stop the US from forking over to Israel $4 billion a year in foreign aid, a tax on all Americans in support of Greater Israel expansionism. So why should Biden, Bin Salman wants to know, boycott Saudi Arabia over the killing of a single journalist?

Bin Salman’s smarmy reply underlines the way in which the US government’s lawlessness in misadventures like invading Iraq and its weird commitment to Israeli Apartheid practices against the Palestinians undermine its moral standing to argue for “a rules-based global order.” Almost no one in the US dares say this, but for the rest of the world it is a commonplace insight. [Emphasis added.]

But at least, now that Biden has fist-bumped both Naftali Bennett and Mohammed Bin Salman, the president has attained a sort of sordid consistency.

Rachel Corrie is Our Daughter; Your Daughter Too

By Ray McGovern, July 15, 2022

The truth is finally out – in extremely sad but digestible form. With a US-made bulldozer Israel deliberately crushed 23 year-old US citizen Rachel Corrie dead in Gaza on March 16, 2003. Jelly-spined US officials knew the details, but have covered up for Israel.

Rachel’s parents and sister have gone through Hell in trying to get justice done, in vain. Not until now has most of their story been told. Alice Speri of The Intercept has done so. Her detailed article appeared on July 13 ( See: https://theintercept.com/2022/07/13/israel-rachel-corrie-shireen-abu-akleh-killings/ )

In 2004, over a long brunch with Rachel’s parents, Cindy and Craig, I asked Craig about the green wristband he was wearing.  He took it off and let me read it. It said simply: “ Rachel Corrie, April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003”. I was moved; Craig asked me if I wanted to have it. He took it off his wrist; I put it on mine. I have worn it ever since.

The Intercept piece by Alice Speri is MUST reading.

James Clapper Gets a Mulligan at Carnegie

By Ray McGovern, July 13, 2022

The Carnegie Endowment has made a stab at rehabbing James Clapper, whose imagery analysis unit lied us into the war on Iraq. For Clapper’s second try, Carnegie used the title (now get this) “Getting the Intel Right With James Clapper, July 11, 2022”.

On Nov. 13, 2018, Clapper appeared at Carnegie hawking his memoir, “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence”, in which he openly admits to making the cardinal sin in the intelligence-analysis trade – cooking intelligence to the taste of policy makers. Hard truths, indeed.

That Nov. 2018 talk was not virtual; there was ample time for Q & A. I had read Clapper’s book; then-President of Carnegie, William Burns (now CIA director), indulged my questioning for as long as he could, then moved to rescue Clapper. (See: Clapper’s Credibility Collapses, https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/14/clappers-credibility-collapses/ )

In an unusually candid section of his book, Clapper gingerly places the blame for “the failure” to find (non-existent WMD) “where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” [Emphasis added.]

Clapper goes on to explain in his book:

“… we heard that Vice President Cheney was pushing the Pentagon for intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then the order came down to NIMA [the National Imagery and Mapping Agency] to find (emphasis in the book) the WMD sites. We set to work, analyzing imagery to eventually identify, with varying degrees of confidence, more than 950 sites where we assessed there might be WMDs or a WMD connection. We drew on all of NIMA’s skill sets … and it was all wrong.”

“To support his [Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003] speech, NIMA (which Clapper headed) had gone through the difficult process of declassifying satellite images of trucks arriving at WMD sites just ahead of the weapons inspectors to move materials before they could be found, and my team also produced computer-generated images of trucks fitted out as ‘mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.’ Those images, possibly more than any other substantiation he presented, carried the day with the international community and Americans alike.”

So, it was Clapper who was responsible for those computer-generated images.

That was all wrong too.

A Specialist on Russia?

Typically, Clapper also saluted when “the order came down” from President Obama in the fall of 2016 to find “intelligence” to support the narrative that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election. Evidence? Shemvidence! It turns out that such subversive behavior fit in well with Clapper’s familiarity with what Clapper had learned about Russian genetics as well as its “historical practices and techniques”.

During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28, 2017, the retired James Clapper talked about “everything else we knew the Russians were doing to interfere with the election” … “And just the historical practices of the Russians, who typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique. So, we were concerned.” [Emphasis added.]

I suppose one can give Clapper the benefit of the doubt and concede that he may truly believe what he says about the Russians. His lying about other important issues, however, shows a rather dismissive attitude toward the truth. In fact, he has a record of perjury.

During sworn congressional testimony in March 2013, he claimed that NSA does not “wittingly” collect data on millions of Americans. The revelations from Edward Snowden’s leaks almost immediately disproved that claim and revealed that NSA was illegally spying on millions of Americans as part of a mass surveillance program.

Will Carnegie’s confab help rehab the ubiquitous James Clapper, who is now a “security analyst” for CNN? It probably will help with those who know little else about him. Readers are invited to judge for themselves – to the point of watching his do-over at Carnegie; personally, I did not have the stomach for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqVftOVmNEE

Why This Matters

The results of an informal poll I did recently shows that 80 percent of Americans still believe that the Russians interfered in 2016 to elect Donald Trump. The Establishment media has had such success in the five-year campaign that Americans have been conditioned to believe just about anything about the Russians.

Fortunately, no evidence collected by the Jan. 6 Commission has so much as hinted at any Russian involvement. Even Mrs. Clinton has backed off that one, for the nonce. But see below for where she tried to lead Nancy Pelosi back in January.

Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote at the time, entitled Round Up the Usual Suspects; Don’t Forget Putin
by Ray McGovern Posted on January 21, 2021

Interviewed by Mrs. Clinton Monday [Jan 17], Speaker Nancy Pelosi eagerly rose to the bait when Clinton spoke of “her concerns that the outgoing commander-in-chief was compromised by the Kremlin”. Setting the stage, Clinton expressed the hope that “we’ll find out who he [Trump] is beholden to, “who pulls his strings”.

Clinton added ominously: “I would love to see his phone records to see whether he was talking to Putin the day that the insurgents invaded our Capitol”. She then asked Pelosi if the nation needs “a 9/11-type commission to investigate and report everything they can pull together.”

Pelosi agreed on the need for such a commission, and proceeded to burnish her own anti-Putin credentials:

“As I said to him [Trump] in that picture with my blue suit … pointing rudely at him, ‘With you Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin.’’ Pelosi conceded that she does not know ‘what Putin has on him politically, financially, or personally, but what happened last week was a gift to Putin.”

Putin’s Useful Idiots?

Pelosi added, “And these people, unbeknownst to them, they are Putin puppets. They were doing Putin’s business when they did that at the incitement of an insurrection by the president … so, yes, we should have a 9/11 commission and there is strong support in the Congress for that.”

What leaps out of this Clinton-Pelosi pas de deux is who is leading the dance. Clinton hints broadly (not, of course, for the first time) that Putin is pulling Trump’s strings. It is Clinton who voices suspicion that Trump and Putin were somehow coordinating on the phone on Jan. 6; and it is she who suggests that “a 9/11-type commission” might be needed.

Due largely to the captive “mainstream” media, ‘Russia Russia Russia’ has proved to be the gift that keeps giving for the Democrats. Are there limits to the degree of credence Americans will give to corporate media spinning all the sins attributed to Russian President Putin? Why the insinuation that he may be partly to blame for the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6?

Russia is Convenient

It’s a matter of convenience. For the Democrats it has been super-convenient to blame Mrs. Clinton’s defeat in 2016 on Russia, although key aspects of that case (Russian “hacking” of the DNC, for example) have been debunked.

The Joy of Not Counting

From the Center for Action and Contemplation
July 10th, 2022

The Joy of Not Counting

For Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) is a shining example of someone who “practiced the better.” Instead of relying on judgment and criticism, Francis understood the power of simply living a better way:

Francis lived in the pivotal period when Western civilization began to move into rationality, functionality, consumerism, and perpetual war. [Emphasis added.] Francis was himself a soldier, and the son of a cloth merchant; he came from the culture he critiqued, and he challenged these emerging systems at the beginning of their now eight centuries of world dominance. Rather than fighting the systems directly and risk becoming their mirror image, Francis just did things differently. …

Francis was born as people started measuring time by clocks instead of church bells. When Christian leaders started counting, Francis stopped counting. He moved from the common economy of merit to the wondrous economy of grace, where God does not do any counting, but only gives unreservedly. …

As Europe began to centralize and organize everything at high levels of control [and] when Roman Catholicism under Pope Innocent III (1160–1216) reached heights of papal and worldly power, Francis answered, “There is another way that is much better!” When people began a style of production and consumption that would eventually ravage planet Earth, he decided to love Mother Earth and live simply and barefoot upon her. And Francis did it all with a “perfect joy” that comes from letting go of the ego.

Francis didn’t bother questioning Church doctrines and dogmas. He just tried to live the way that Jesus lived. In The Legend of Perugia, one of the earliest accounts about Francis, he reminds the first friars that they only know as much as they do. His emphasis on action, practice, and lifestyle was foundational and revolutionary for its time and is at the root of Franciscan alternative orthodoxy. Francis and Clare fell in love with the humanity and humility of Jesus. For them, Jesus was someone actually to imitate and not just to worship.

The early Franciscan friars and Poor Clares wanted to be gospel practitioners instead of merely “word police,” “inspectors,” or “museum curators” as Pope Francis calls some clergy. Both Francis and Clare offered their rules as a forma vitae, or form of life. They saw orthopraxy (correct practice) as a necessary parallel, and maybe even precedent, to verbal orthodoxy (correct teaching). History has shown that many Christians never get to the practical implications of their beliefs. “Why aren’t you doing what you say you believe?” the prophet invariably asks. As the popular paraphrase of a line from Francis’s Rule goes, “Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.”

Blinken, Borrell; Blindfolds of the Effete Elite

Ray interviewed on The Critical Hour
July 11, 2022, 13 minutes

The questions posed led me to comment candidly on the regrettable state of Western statesmen like EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yes, the same Blinken who, in one breath excoriates China and the “systemic challenge” it supposedly represents, and in the next makes a pathetically quixotic attempt to cajole his Chinese counterpart to abandon Beijing’s lockstep with Russia on Ukraine. (It’s a bipolar world again: the lily-white West pitted against pretty much everyone else – most of whom are people of color.)

Blinken

Since Blinken and President Joe Biden will spend two days in Israel later this week, I called to mind the key role Blinken played in greasing the skids for the attack on Iraq in March 2003, in large part to eliminate what Israel argued was an existential threat from armed-to-the-teeth-with-WMD Saddam Hussein.

The Israelis loudly rejoiced when Biden nominated Blinken to head the State Department, The Times of Israel noting:

Tony Blinken, US President-elect Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of state, is the stepson of a Holocaust survivor whose stories shaped his worldview and subsequently his policy decisions, including in the Middle East.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/where-blinken-stands-on-jewish-issues-from-immigration-to-israel/

I have a feeling this Middle East trip will yield as much success as Blinken and Biden were able to achieve during their recent trip to the Far East – that is, zero success.

Borrell

Josep Borrell, for his part, recently lamented that the West had failed to win a “battle of narratives” (sic) on Ukraine and – worse still – that countries of the “Global South” won’t join in punishing Russia because [get this!] they are more concerned about their own national interests. In Borrell’s dismissive words, they worry more about “the consequences of the war for themselves” than in going after the supposed culprit. Wow.

Among the other issues discussed was Lithuania’s restrictions on the passage of sanctioned material through Lithuania to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In response, the governor of Kaliningrad has just proposed a total ban on the movement of goods between Russia and the Baltic states.

I suggested that Russia had all kinds of levers to press in these circumstances and that its response to the Lithuanians is likely to be low key and proportionate. But who knows? I’ve guessed wrong before. And the Lithuanians are not above jabbing the bear in its other eye with a more lethal stick. And, just on general principle, it’s best to avoid provoking the kind of bear not likely to be deterred by bear-spray.