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Chutzpah: Saudis launch 'boycott Amazon' campaign over WaPo's coverage of Khashoggi case


Sputnik
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 15:02 UTC
protest sign khashoggi murder
© Reuters/Dinauka Liyanawatte
A member of Sri Lankan web journalist association holds a placard during a protest condemning the murder of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi in front of the Saudi Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka October 25, 2018
The boycott comes a few days after the Washington Post published Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's op-ed in which he specifically urged Riyadh to answer key questions on the death of Saudi journalist and Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month.

Thousands of Twitter users in Saudi Arabia have pushed for the boycott of Amazon.com and its regional subsidiary to slam the Washington Post for covering the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi; the Washington Post is owned by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos.

The Boycott Amazon and Souq.com online campaign was launched by Saudi social media users over what they see as the newspaper's biased coverage of the death of Khashoggi, who worked as a contributor for the Washington Post.

Comment:

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Attention

Saudi Arabia accused of torturing and killing another dissident journalist while in custody

Charlie Moore
Daily Mail
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 14:53 UTC
Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser
© TurkialjasserJ / Twitter
Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser (pictured) is said to have been murdered in jail
Another dissident journalist has reportedly been tortured and killed in Saudi Arabia.

Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser is said to have been murdered in jail a month after Jamal Khashoggi was slaughtered in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate.

News site The New Khaleej reported Al-Jasser's death on Saturday quoting human rights sources. The report has not been confirmed.

Human rights groups say the Saudi government believed Al-Jasser secretly ran a Twitter account called Kashkool, which exposed human rights violations by officials and the royals.

Saudi spies in Twitter's regional HQ in Dubai unmasked him and he was arrested in March, according to reports.


Comment: See:

The spy ring was said to be run by Saud al-Qahtani, Crown Prince Mohammad's 'thuggish' aide who was demoted after being blamed for the Khashoggi crisis.

If true, the revelations that Saudi Arabia is still killing journalists even after the uproar caused by the Khashoggi scandal will dismay the West.

It comes after Turkish media claimed yesterday that Saudi consulate staff tried to dismantle CCTV equipment at their Istanbul compound to help cover up Khashoggi's murder.

Comment: The Saudis have been doing this (torturing and killing critics and competitors) for years. They're not likely to stop any time soon. And their closest allies aren't likely to take any serious steps to get them to stop, either.

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MIB

Sources say Kurdish militia made a swap with ISIS to get back 7 US troops - terrorists got supplies and oil wells


RT
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 14:46 UTC
YPG kruds syria
© Reuters / Rodi Said / File
Kurdish People's Protection Units fighters take up positions inside a damaged building in Hasaka city, Syria
Kurdish militia made a swap with Islamic state terrorists to get back seven US soldiers captured in September, Turkish media has said. The Kurds had to withdraw from some oil wells under the swap terms.

The American troops were detained during a confrontation between Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and Kurdish YPG/ PKK militias in the embattled Syrian Deir ez-Zor province in September this year, sources told Anadolu agency on condition of anonymity. The talks to retrieve the soldiers started in late September.

In exchange for the troops, extremists pressed the Kurds to withdraw from several oil wells and allow food and medical supplies to some locations. After YPG/ PKK militias left the oil wells, they got the American soldiers.

Comment: Whether the Kurds or IS control oil resources in eastern Syria, it's all the same to the US. Both are under its control. The Kurds are vassals and continued IS presences gives the US military its excuse to remain in Syria illegally.

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Biohazard

US to impose 'additional sanctions' on Russia over Skripal poisoning claim - for which there is still no evidence


RT
Tue, 06 Nov 2018 14:47 UTC
trump
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
Washington will move to impose additional sanctions against Russia, saying Moscow did not meet its demands by the deadline set by the US and accusing Moscow of a chemical attack against a former spy and his daughter in the UK.

"Today, the Department informed Congress we could not certify that the Russian Federation met the conditions required by the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991," spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Tuesday. "We intend to proceed in accordance with the terms of the CBW Act, which directs the implementation of additional sanctions."


Comment: Note that being unable (or unwilling) to certify Russia meeting of certain conditions is not the same as them actually not meeting said conditions.


Those sanctions may include downgrading diplomatic relations, banning the Russian national carrier Aeroflot from flying to the US, and cutting off nearly all imports and exports, already severely curtailed under a series of sanctions since 2014.

In August, the State Department sent Moscow a note claiming that Russia had violated the CBW Act by using "Novichok" nerve agent against Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.


Comment: Except that there's no evidence they actually did so. Welcome to American geopolitics...


Comment: The Salisbury event did not happen as advertised:

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Quenelle - Golden

'Forty years of American hostility': Iran posts video response to Trump's sanctions


RT
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 07:55 UTC
Iran FM Javad Zarif

"Taking a long, hard look at its own wrong choices and changing its approach from the failed one it has stubbornly followed for decades, instead of prescribing behavioral changes for Iran, will be far more effective in bringing about resolutions to conflicts…”
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif chastised the US for causing "catastrophes and crises" in the Middle East and vowed that Tehran's allies will stand with it against US sanctions, in a rare video response to US policies.

In the three-minute long video posted to YouTube on Tuesday, Zarif calls sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration on Monday "unlawful" and "fundamentally flawed."

The video was released less than a day after the formerly lifted sanctions were reinstated, targeting the country's banking, energy and transport sectors, and just hours after Iranian banks were suspended from accessing the global SWIFT financial messaging system.


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Handcuffs

Texas House member wins re-election from a jail cell

Jody Barr
KXAN
Tue, 06 Nov 2018 23:36 UTC
Ron Reynolds

Ron Reynolds
A re-election celebration is underway in Pod 2 of the Montgomery County Jail after inmate number 232573 claimed victory in Texas House District 27. That inmate is known as Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, to the people on the outside.

Reynolds was booked into the county jail on Sept. 7. He's serving a year-long sentence after a 2015 conviction on five misdemeanor counts of using a middleman to chase ambulances in order to solicit clients for Reynolds' law firm.

Comment: Un-freaking believable. Only in America.

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Family

UN begins investigation into extreme poverty in UK following the 'austerity experiment'

Eliza Mackintosh
CNN
Mon, 05 Nov 2018 12:43 UTC
Philip Alston

A 2010 photo of Philip Alston, then-UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, taken at a news conference at the UN offices in Ecuador.
Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, starts a two-week fact-finding mission Monday, visiting some of the country's poorest towns and cities to examine the effects of austerity measures on rising levels of hardship.

Alston, known for his no-holds-barred critiques, will gather evidence on the impact that changes to welfare benefits and local government funding as well as the rising costs of living have had on British families."

The Government has made significant changes to social protection in the past decade, and I will be looking closely at the impact that has had on people living in poverty and their realization of basic rights," Alston said in a statement."I have received hundreds of submissions that make clear many people are really struggling to make ends meet."

Comment: Let's hope Alston's findings are a little more insightful than his trip to the US.

See also: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Bullseye

Midterms would be a walkover if Dems had not wasted 2 years on 'Russiagate'

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Sun, 04 Nov 2018 11:25 UTC
trump wrestling
I haven't been writing about the US midterms much, because I don't care about that nonsense anymore. The whole thing's a fake pro wrestling performance staged every couple of years to give a heavily armed populace the illusory sense that they have some degree of control over the things their government does.

By this I do not mean that the votes aren't real or that the outcomes are predetermined, I simply mean that both mainstream parties are controlled by plutocrats who benefit from the status quo and are only interested in their own power and profit.

No matter who wins on Tuesday, the wars are guaranteed to continue, the oligarchs are guaranteed to keep siphoning more and more money out of the pockets of ordinary Americans, opaque and unaccountable intelligence agencies are guaranteed to continue expanding intrusive surveillance practices and narrative control psyops in collaboration with powerful Silicon Valley corporations, and we're guaranteed to keep hurtling toward climate catastrophe on the back of an economic system which requires infinite growth on a finite planet.

The only thing that might change a tiny bit is America maybe temporarily having a government which pretends to care about oppressed minorities sometimes.
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Bad Guys

Australian mercenaries on Saudi payroll could face ICC charges for war crimes in Yemen


RT
Tue, 06 Nov 2018 18:21 UTC
yemen
© Reuters / Khaled Abdullah
File photo
Australian mercenaries on the UAE payroll could face accusations of war crimes in the International Criminal Court for their role in the war in Yemen. The Australian government appears to be unconcerned, FOIA emails reveal.

Last November, French law firm ANCILE Avocats and the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR) filed a complaint with the ICC accusing the UAE of war crimes in Yemen. It also said the Gulf state was using foreign mercenaries from countries including Australia and Chile to fight.

The Australian reports that it was only in July that an advisor to Australia's then-Foreign Minister Julie Bishop began to ask questions about the role Australian citizens are playing in the Yemen war, as revealed in emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request.

"Has anyone heard about this ­previously?" the advisor asked in an email with a link to a blog post about the mercenaries. Staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade responded, saying there may have been a "vague accusation" made in the past.

Comment: See: The Western establishment, including the Brits, have an active role in facilitating the Saudi-led genocide in Yemen:

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V

Duterte offers cash reward & holiday for killers of crooked cops


RT
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 11:04 UTC
duterte
© REUTERS/Dondi Tawatao/File Photo
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has offered a cash bounty to cops who kill superior officers, dubbed 'ninjas', whom they suspect of involvement in the illegal drug trade.

"Last night a police colonel was killed. A ninja," Duterte said Tuesday at a summit on illegal drugs, as cited by ABS-CBN News. "I am going to reward any policeman who will kill a superior because the superior is into drugs. I will give you a prize and a trip to Hong Kong."

Supt. Santiago Rapiz was killed during a shootout in a drug raid in Dipolog City on the Philippines island of Mindanao on Monday night.

Rapiz allegedly fought back when officers attempted to arrest him. He was previously accused of involvement with suspected drug lord Melvin 'Dragon' Odicta, who was himself killed in August 2016, reports The Philippines Inquirer. Rapiz was reportedly on Duterte's alleged 'narco hit list'.
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