Peace with Israel Tops the Agenda for Syria’s New Leaders

from Mint Press News

It is not just isolated voices advocating for normalization; the new Syrian government and its backers appear determined to establish ties with Israel, even as Israel continues its occupation of Syrian territory and the bombardment of what remains of its infrastructure. While apologists attempt to justify Damascus’s Israel-friendly comments, the writing on the wall has long been clear.

The new Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) backed Mayor of Damascus, Maher Marwan, stirred controversy last week when he called for normalization with Israel. Even though Damascus, the city he now governs, endures frequent Israeli airstrikes, Marwan defended his stance in an interview with NPR. “Our problem is not with Israel,” he stated, adding, “We don’t want to meddle in anything that will threaten Israel’s security.”

Following widespread public backlash, the HTS-led government in Damascus released a statement addressing Marwan’s remarks. The statement proclaimed that Marwan’s comments didn’t necessarily reflect the policies of the al-Jolani government, but it stopped short of explicitly denying his call for normalization with Israel.

The sentiments expressed by Marwan are consistent with those of Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Shara’a, known more commonly by his ISIS-associated moniker, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Al-Jolani once said that Syrian territory must not be used as a launching pad for conflict with Israel. He emphasized, “We do not want any conflict, whether with Israel or anyone else.”...

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‘The Platoons Are Empty’: Israeli Army Battles Low Morale, Soldier Defections

from Mint Press News

The Israeli Hebrew media outlet Ha-Makom has reported that Israeli soldiers are experiencing a significant lack of motivation, with some refusing to report for service. Many within the ranks reportedly see the ongoing war in Gaza as futile, while the army attempts to keep this crisis under wraps.

The October 23 report revealed a crisis within the army, as soldiers increasingly refuse to return to combat after engagements in the Gaza Strip. The piece, based on interviews with over 20 soldiers and their parents, highlighted concerns over incomplete missions, unclear objectives, and the heavy toll on the battlefield, with many questioning the purpose and outcomes of their efforts.

“The platoons are empty; everyone who is not dead or injured is mentally damaged. There are very few left who returned to fight, and they are not completely healthy either,” said the parent of a soldier serving in the Nahal Brigade. In the 11th deployment of this brigade, it was noted that out of a platoon of 30 soldiers, only six decided to return to the battlefield...

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The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News

from Mint Press News

One year after Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu is on a winning streak.” So reads the title of a recent Axios article describing the Israeli prime minister riding on an unbeatable wave of triumphs. These stunning military “successes,” its author Barak Ravid notes, include the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the pager attack against Lebanon.

The same author recently went viral for an article that claimed that Israeli attacks against Hezbollah are “not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach ‘de-escalation through escalation.'” Users on social media mocked Ravid for this bizarre, Orwellian reasoning. But what almost everybody missed is that Barak Ravid is an Israeli spy – or at least he was until recently. Ravid is a former analyst with Israeli spying agency Unit 8200, and as recently as last year, was still a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces group.

Unit 8200 is Israel’s largest and perhaps most controversial spying organization. It has been responsible for many high-profile espionage and terror operations, including the recent pager attack that injured thousands of Lebanese civilians. As this investigation will reveal, Ravid is far from the only Israeli ex-spook working at top U.S. media outlets, working hard to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions...

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Leaked Docs Reveal British Intelligence’s Secret Exploitation of Palestinian Refugees

by Kit Klarenberg from Mint Press News

Leaked files obtained by MintPress News detail the intensive interest taken in Palestinians both within and without the country by British intelligence operatives and Foreign Office-funded and directed cutouts over many years. Collectively, the material leaves little room for doubt that the British government has long sought to covertly surveil, infiltrate, and manipulate Palestinians for malign ends while exploiting their suffering to serve London’s geopolitical objectives.

Throughout the Syrian proxy conflict, British intelligence ran expansive psychological warfare programs, targeting the local population and Western citizens. The objective was to destabilize Bashar Assad’s government and convince domestic and foreign audiences, including overseas governments and international bodies, that the Western-backed Free Syrian Army was a moderate, legitimate alternative and flood media globally with pro-opposition propaganda. A corrupt constellation of private contractors staffed by British military veterans and “former” spies delivered these clandestine campaigns.

Innovative Communications & Strategies (InCoStrat) was a particularly prolific participant in this effort. The firm was founded by Paul Tilley, Britain’s former Ministry of Defence head of communications for West Asia, and Emma Winberg, a longtime MI6 officer, who subsequently married now-deceased White Helmets founder James Lemesurier. The leaked documents reveal that in Syria, she was tasked with the “management and development” of a local “network of interlocutors, key leaders and local coordinators”:

[This network is] able to assist in the development of messages and influence through word of mouth, in difficult to reach areas. The knowledge gained through these interactions will generate the contextual understanding that provides the foundation for our communication campaigns, our ability to assess their effect and to provide detailed atmospheric reports that inform HMG of the developing situation in Syria.”...

 

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Revealed: Israel’s Hidden History Of Attacks On Iran

by Robert Inlakesh from Mint Press News

Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was framed in the West as a reckless attempt to spark a major regional war, but in reality,  Israel has been attacking Iran for decades.

As is routinely the case with Western-backed wars, the corporate media’s timeline begins at the moment that suits their narrative. We have seen this play out recently, with the attempt to rob the Gaza war of all contexts before October 7, 2023. Similarly, when it comes to Israel’s conflict with Iran, the two have been embroiled in what is referred to as a “shadow war,” the details of which are pretty shocking.

While the international media’s attention was riveted on Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel, drawing great focus to some 300 drones and missiles used in the attack, no major deal was made of Israel’s strike on April 1 against the consular segment of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria, that killed a dozen people, including seven Iranian officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In this unprecedented act of aggression against Iranian soil, breaking international diplomatic norms, the Israelis were shielded by the U.S. government at the United Nations Security Council, blocking any condemnation of this act.

Despite an admission from British Foreign Secretary David Cameron that had the UK embassy been attacked similarly, they too would retaliate, the double-standard argument that Iran shouldn’t respond continues to dominate the airways...

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NCRI Exposed: Israel Lobby-Linked Group Tied to Illegal Settlements and Campus Censorship

 from Mint Press News

Even as Israel pounds Gaza into rubble, carrying out what has been described as a genocide in the process, many of its supporters are attempting to change the subject, instead decrying a supposedly new wave of dangerous antisemitism across American universities.

Their evidence for this is a new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI). Entitled “The Corruption of the American Mind,” the study alleges that Middle Eastern funding of U.S. universities has helped unleash a torrent of anti-Jewish hatred. Yet, as we shall see, not only does the report contain numerous methodological issues, but the NCRI itself is deeply connected to the Israel lobby, as well as the U.S. national security state, and regularly publishes thinly sourced reports in service of Israeli interests and U.S. imperialism...

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From “Spook Air” to the “Lolita Express”: The Genesis and Evolution of the Jeffrey Epstein-Bill Clinton Relationship

by Whitney Webb MintPress News

On August 10th, and for several days after, speculation swirled after it was announced that Jeffrey Epstein had been found dead in his cell. His cause of death has officially been ruled suicide by hanging. 
 
Epstein, the billionaire pedophile and sex trafficker with a myriad of connections to the rich and powerful in the United States and several other countries, had told those close to him that he had feared for his life prior to his sudden “suicide,” the Washington Post reported, while his defense lawyers claimed that he had planned to cooperate with federal authorities. 

Following the controversial conclusion by the New York Medical Examiner that Epstein’s death was a suicide — a conclusion contested by Epstein’s attorneys as well as by independent forensic pathologists, given the apparent evidence pointing towards strangulation — corporate media coverage of the Epstein case has slowed to a trickle, save for sensationalist stories about his alleged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and new salacious details of his past. Gone from corporate media are any hints of the larger scandal, revolving around the admission that Epstein had “belonged to intelligence.”...

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Hidden in Plain Sight: The Shocking Origins of the Jeffrey Epstein Case

Epstein is only the latest incarnation of a much older, more extensive and sophisticated operation that offers a frightening window into how deeply tied the U.S. government is to the modern-day equivalents of organized crime.

by Whitney Webb, MintPress News

Despite his “sweetheart” deal and having seemingly evaded justice, billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested earlier this month on federal charges for sex trafficking minors. Epstein’s arrest has again brought increased media attention to many of his famous friends, the current president among them. 
 
Many questions have since been asked about how much Epstein’s famous friends knew of his activities and exactly what Epstein was up to. The latter arguably received the most attention after it was reported that Alex Acosta — who arranged Epstein’s “sweetheart” deal in 2008 and who recently resigned as Donald Trump’s Labor Secretary following Epstein’s arrest — claimed that the mysterious billionaire had worked for “intelligence.” 

Other investigations have made it increasingly clear that Epstein was running a blackmail operation, as he had bugged the venues — whether at his New York mansion or Caribbean island getaway — with microphones and cameras to record the salacious interactions that transpired between his guests and the underage girls that Epstein exploited. Epstein appeared to have stored much of that blackmail in a safe on his private island...

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Another Whistleblower Bites the Dust as The Intercept Adds a Third Notch to Its Burn Belt

(food for thought...

looks like this has been the point of The Intercept since it's inception (pardon the pun))

by Whitney Webb, MintPress News

Early Thursday morning, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Daniel Everette Hale — a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force and National Security Agency (NSA) and later a defense contractor working for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — for providing a reporter with classified government information. The reporter in question, although unnamed in the indictment, is Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of and journalist for the online publication The Intercept.
 
The indictment against Hale makes him the third Intercept source to be charged with leaking classified information to the outlet in less than two years. Notably, both of the government whistleblowers that have already been prosecuted and convicted by the Trump administration – Reality Winner and Terry Albury – were Intercept sources who were outed as whistleblowers by reporters working for the online publication.

The publication, which has long been associated with the documents shared by whistleblower Edward Snowden, has yet to fire any of the reporters responsible for these breaches that have seen two whistleblowers already imprisoned and third, Daniel Hale, likely to be imprisoned.

Despite its increasingly dismal track record, the publication – largely funded by government-linked tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar – continues to invite and “welcome” whistleblowers from the public and private sector and implores them to “consider sharing your information securely with us.”...

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Candidate Pete Buttigieg: Israel’s Security Policy Offers “Important Lessons” for the US

by Whitney Webb, MintPress News

Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, whose candidacy is currently being heavily promoted by corporate media, was one of the many 2020 contenders for the Democratic Party who declined to attend the recent annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in apparent response to calls from prominent “progressive” organizations to boycott the event and a growing shift among Democratic voters in favor of Palestinian rights. 
 
However, despite his absence from the AIPAC conference, Buttigieg’s past public statements on the Israel/Palestine conflict echo those of pro-Israel stalwarts in the Democratic Party. Indeed, Buttigieg, in a trip to Israel last year that was funded by the pro-Israel lobby, praised Israel’s security response to protests by Palestinians on the Gaza-Israel border just four days after the slaughter of Gazan protesters by Israeli military snipers — repeating many of the same one-sided talking points about the conflict that define centrists in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Last May, Buttigieg traveled to Israel as part of a trip for U.S. mayors organized by Project Interchange, an affiliate of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), one of the oldest and most influential Israel lobby organizations in the United States. The AJC regularly conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and has even accused progressive American Jews of anti-Semitism for their critiques of Israeli government policy.

Soon after the Israel lobby-sponsored trip, which the Times of Israel referred to as a “learning experience trip,” Buttigieg appeared on AJC’s Passport podcast, hosted by Seffi Kogen. Buttigieg, during the 22-minute discussion, stated that Israel’s security policy is “on the one hand very intentional, very serious and very effective when it comes to security and on the other hand not allowing concerns about security to dominate your consciousness.” He then added that his trip to Israel showed him that Israel’s security policy offers “a very important lesson that hopefully, Americans can look to [when] we think about how to navigate a world that unfortunately has become smaller and more dangerous for all of us.”..


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Why Fareed Zakaria is Helping Trump Build Support for Terrorizing Venezuela

If you need more proof that RussiaGate was never about getting to the bottom of the question about collusion, just watch Fareed Zakaria help John Bolton, Eliot Abrams and Donald Trump build a consensus of the willing in support of using "freedom cell" terrorists to destabilize Venezuela in hopes of forcing a regime change on behalf of the US Chamber of Commerce.

How One of America’s Premier Data Monarchs is Funding a Global Information War and Shaping the Media Landscape

from MintPress News

A select group of national news “stakeholders” gathered at an undisclosed location for what was described as a “semi-secret” workshop somewhere in Canada on January 26. The meeting had been convened to determine how and to whom a “news industry bailout” of $645 million in Canadian government subsidies to private and supposedly independent media outlets would be disbursed. It was a striking event that signaled both the crisis of legitimacy faced by mainstream media and the desperate measures that are being proposed to answer it. 
 
Jesse Brown, a Canadian journalist who participated in the meeting, complained that the first thing he noticed about it “was that one major public ‘stakeholder’ wasn’t represented: the public.” Inside what amounted to a smoke filled room that was off limits to most Canadian citizens, Ben Scott — a former Obama administration official who also served in Hillary Clinton’s State Department — presided over the discussions. Today, as the director of policy and advocacy for the Omidyar Network, Scott works for one of the most quietly influential billionaires in helping to shape the media landscape and define the craft of journalism itself. 

His boss is Pierre Omidyar, the ebay founder best known for his sponsorship of The Intercept, a flashy progressive publication that possesses the classified documents exfiltrated by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Unlike rival Silicon Valley billionaires Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt, Omidyar has mostly managed to keep his influential role in media below the radar. And while he directs his fortune into many of the same politically strategic NGOs and media outlets that George Soros does in hotspots around the globe, he has never been subjected to the public scrutiny and often ugly attacks that dog Soros. And yet Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the UN and liberal interventionist guru, has explicitly praised Omidyar as someone who is following in the footsteps of Soros.

The almost total absence of critical coverage that Omidyar enjoys is partly the product of his aversion to publicity. Unlike Soros, who seems to yearn for the media limelight, Omidyar is an eccentric figure who owns a “safe house” in the wilds of the American West; he interacts with business partners in virtual-reality simulations he funds, and has been magnetized by New Age gurus. But the free pass Omidyar has received from the media is also a testament to how much money he has channeled into it – as well into the organizations that ostensibly exist to keep it honest. 

While backing media outlets around the world that produce news and commentary, Omidyar supports a global cartel of self-styled fact-checking groups that determine which outlets are legitimate and which are “fake.” He has also thrown his money behind murky initiatives like the non-profit backing New Knowledge, the data firm that waged one of the most devious disinformation campaigns in any recent American election campaign; and he is a key backer of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), the outfit that holds the Panama Papers and oversees the strategic dissemination of that leaked trove of financial files to hand-picked journalists.

At the base of this vast media empire is a nepotistic culture that has seen the beneficiaries of Omidyar’s funding come in for gushing praise from the same fact-checking organizations he supports, while the journalists nurtured by his donations reap high-profile awards from the Omidyar-sponsored Committee to Protect Journalists. Last November, Omidyar backed the release of a documentary hyping up the journalists that helped expose the Panama Papers, and he is also involved in a feature film starring Meryl Streep about the leaked documents and the heroic reporters covering them. The conflicts of interests created under the billionaire’s watch are many but, as with his own political activities, they have been scrutinized by only a handful of journalists. 

Behind the image he has cultivated of himself as a “progressive philanthropreneur,” Omidyar has wielded his media empire to advance the Washington consensus in strategic hotspots around the globe. His fortune helped found an outlet to propel a destabilizing coup in Ukraine; he’s helped establish a network of oppositional youth activists and bloggers in Zimbabwe; and in the Philippines he has invested in an oppositional news site that is honing corporate surveillance techniques like a “mood meter…to capture non-rational reactions.” Meanwhile, he has partnered closely with the leading arms of U.S. soft power, from the U.S. Agency for International Aid and Development (USAID) to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — acting as a conduit for information warfare-style projects in countries around the world...

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US Troop Count in Syria Jumps by 50 Percent Since Trump’s “Withdrawal” Announcement

by Whitney Webb, from MintPress News

Despite having touted his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as recently as Sunday, the U.S. military appears to be doing the complete opposite and is instead dramatically increasing the number of U.S. troops illegally stationed in northeastern Syria.
 
According to a report in Turkish media outlet Anadolu News, a convoy of an estimated 150 trucks and armored vehicles entered northeastern Syria from Iraq on Monday night, crossing the Simelka checkpoint into U.S.-occupied Syria. The convoy then arrived at a U.S. military logistics center in Syria’s Kharab Ishq and Sirrin on Tuesday. Al Masdar reported that footage of the convoy had also been posted on social media, showing generators, construction equipment, Humvees and large trucks..

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Anti-BDS Bill Advances in Senate

The worst part about this bill (aside from it's unconstitutional structure and the fact that it legislates 3.8 billion dollars a year to Israel for the next 10 years and beyond) is the chilling effect it will have on U.S. citizens who care about things like human rights. It is really an assault on folks who aren't psychopaths and an effort to make them keep their mouths shut when they see horrors playing out in places like Gaza and the West Bank.
 

The US Senate Just Quietly Advanced A Free Speech Busting Anti-BDS Bill

by Whitney Webb, MintPress News

In an evening vote that garnered essentially no national media coverage, the U.S. Senate voted last night to advance the “Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019” – sometimes called the “anti-BDS bill” for its component that would allow state and local governments to punish companies or individuals who support the non-violent Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement aimed at promoting Palestinian rights and ending Israeli apartheid and military occupation of the West Bank. The bill was, notably, numbered S.1 — the Senate’s first legislative act of its 2019-20 session.
 
Numerous rights groups, politicians and civil rights advocates have accused this measure of violating freedom of speech and setting a dangerous precedent for the private political activism of American citizens, all on behalf of a foreign country.

The bill was adopted by the Senate in a vote of 74 in favor to 19 against, with seven abstentions. The bill had previously been blocked by Senate Democrats by a 56-44 vote as part of their objection to acting on legislation during the government shutdown. However, many of those Democratic senators who had previously blocked the bill ultimately voted in support of the measure. In order to become law, the measure would still need to pass the Democrat-run House of Representatives. However, given the amount of support for the measure among Democrats and the power of the Israel lobby, the bill stands a considerable chance of passing the House.

Some commentators have paid particular attention to how Democratic senators considered to be 2020 hopefuls voted on the bill. Several confirmed and likely contenders for the upcoming Democratic nomination voted “No” – including Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). However, Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), whose private courting of the Israel lobby was the subject of a recent MintPress News report, abstained from voting. Another notable abstention was Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who had previously threatened to filibuster a key component of the bill last year, preventing its passage during the previous Congress...

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How a NeoCon-Backed “Fact Checker” Plans to Wage War on Independent Media

by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News

Soon after the social media “purge” of independent media sites and pages this past October, a top neoconservative insider — Jamie Fly — was caught stating that the mass deletion of anti-establishment and anti-war pages on Facebook and Twitter was “just the beginning” of a concerted effort by the U.S. government and powerful corporations to silence online dissent within the United States and beyond.
 
While a few, relatively uneventful months in the online news sphere have come and gone since Fly made this ominous warning, it appears that the neoconservatives and other standard bearers of the military-industrial complex and the U.S. oligarchy are now poised to let loose their latest digital offensive against independent media outlets that seek to expose wrongdoing in both the private and public sectors.

As MintPress News Editor-in-Chief Mnar Muhawesh recently wrote, MintPress was informed that it was under review by an organization called Newsguard Technologies, which described itself to MintPress as simply a “news rating agency” and asked Muhawesh to comment on a series of allegations, several of which were blatantly untrue. However, further examination of this organization reveals that it is funded by and deeply connected to the U.S. government, neo-conservatives, and powerful monied interests, all of whom have been working overtime since the 2016 election to silence dissent to American forever-wars and corporate-led oligarchy..

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Max Blumenthal is at it Again as he Promotes Glorious Kurds on RT

Max makes my skin crawl. Here he is on RT promoting lies about Turkey and the Kurds in support of the Greater Kurdistan project. Some leftist, huh? Of course, he's done it before hasn't he?

The Saudi Regime Change Operation Turns into Game of Thrones

by Scott Creighton

Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, the only remaining brother of the current king of Saudi Arabia and the uncle of Mohamed bin Salman (MbS), has been shipped from London, the epicenter of global neoliberalism (and it's birthplace), to Riyadh where he is supposedly going to try to make some kind of arrangement to bring MbS back under full Western control or to curb his powers or replace him outright. They are calling it "crisis control" and the estranged prince only agreed to go back once Western neoliberal powers promised him their help with his security detail.

"...  some analysts are calling a potential challenge to the authority of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman...

"I think the gesture means there is a change coming some time soon,"..

... agreed to return to Riyadh only after receiving security assurances from the UK and United States." al Jazeera

 Much is being made about this in places like the Middle East Eye which have been calling for KOS regime change since the beginning of 2018 (a place intimately connected to Jamal Khashoggi by the way) but in reality, MbS met Prince Ahmad on the tarmac and allowed him to meet with other heads of state without issue. Seems like MoB is fully confident in his job security at this point.

" Michael Stephens, an expert on the Gulf and a fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), a defence and security think tank, urged people to be cautious about Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz’s visit to Riyadh.

“Saudi court politics is always full of intrigue, but people should stop over-reading into things. [King] Salman has invested too much into MBS to watch him fall. Secondly, MBS still has the monopoly on security decisions, a threat emerging from a recalled prince is small indeed,” he said." The Independent

You see, the problem with regime changing Saudi Arabia is though there are literally thousands of Saud royal family members to choose from and to bribe, only a few in one of the 7 major tribes are actually in control of the government over there... and MbS along with the king, have made sure to put him in control of most of it.

Which is kind of what you would expect of a future king.

Which is kind of what you would expect the current king to do... make sure his son, MbS, is secure and ready to take control when he abdicates the crown.

King Salman suffers from Alzheimer's disease and though he is extremely wealthy, some things are beyond even his control.

So a father is in a position to ensure his son rises to power and nothing foreign leaders demand or his estranged London-based brother can say or do will change that decision.

Its all very Game of Thrones stuff when you think about it.

American Woman Turns to Hunger Strike to Break Media Blackout on Yemen

by Whitney Webb, Mint Press News

“How unfair it is for me to have food when millions of people, including pregnant women and children, don’t have any food because of corrupt people in my complicit media hiding what’s happening.” — Hunger striker Pamela Bennett

In Yemen, 18 million civilians are now at the brink of starvation, including 5 million children. The situation in the country, widely considered to be the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, is entirely man-made – the sordid result of the Saudi Arabia/UAE coalition’s war to control the Middle East’s poorest nation, a war that deliberately targets civilian infrastructure and the civilian food and water supply. Despite the fact that these are clear war crimes, and despite the mass suffering it has inflicted on Yemen’s innocents, this effort continues to receive U.S. and U.K. support. 
 
In the face of the enormity of this completely preventable crisis, some international activists have taken matters into their own hands, giving it their all in order to bring much-needed attention to the plight of the Yemeni people by sacrificing their own quality of life in a stunning and inspiring show of solidarity.

Pamela Bennett, an American woman living in San Francisco, has been on a hunger strike since October 8 in an effort to show solidarity with Yemenis facing famine and to raise awareness in the United States in particular about upcoming congressional efforts to reduce or end the U.S.’ role in the genocide currently occurring in Yemen. Bennett is not alone in her efforts, as a contact from her Facebook page, “Yemen Rising,” is also currently in the seventh day of his hunger strike. Bennett, however, is on her 23rd day...

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The Real Reason the Knives are Out for MBS

by Whitney Webb from Mint Press News

Amid a chorus of condemnation directed against his leadership following the slaying of controversial journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – popularly known by the moniker MBS – condemned Khashoggi’s murder in no uncertain terms on Wednesday, calling the deed a “heinous crime that cannot be justified” and promising “justice” for those who killed him. 

MBS’ statement came after dozens of media reports, the majority of which had cited anonymous sources from within the Turkish and U.S. governments, revealed the grisly details of the journalist’s final moments and the subsequent attempt by his killers to cover their tracks.
 
Yet, while MBS may expect the international calls for his ouster to lessen following his recent admission and apparent behind the scenes deal-making, he is likely mistaken. Indeed, much of the outrage directed at MBS for his alleged role in Khashoggi’s death has little to do with the murder itself, which is being used as a pretext to justify replacing MBS with a more “reliable” tyrant to serve as Saudi crown prince.

This is because the real reason the knives have come out for MBS is not a single extrajudicial killing – a practice the Saudis have long used with impunity – but instead the fact that, in the six weeks prior to Khashoggi’s sordid fate, MBS not only managed to anger the entire U.S. military-industrial complex, he also enraged the world’s most powerful financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup...

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