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Wheeling and dealing: Trouble brewing in the House of Saud

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:52 UTC
King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
© AFP / Saudi Royal Palace
Suddenly, the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadism is being hailed by the West as a model of progress - because Saudi women will finally be allowed to drive. Only next year. Only some women. And still subject to many restrictions.

What's certain is that the timing of the announcement - which comes after years of liberal American pressure - was calculated with precision, arriving only a few days before House of Saud capo King Salman drops in for a chat at Trump's White House. The soft power move was coordinated by the 32-year-old Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS, the Destroyer of Yemen; the king merely added his signature.

The diversionary tactic masks serious trouble in the court. A Gulf business source with intimate knowledge of the House of Saud, having held a number of personal meetings with members, told Asia Times that "the Fahd, Nayef, and Abdullah families, the descendants of King Abdulaziz al Saud and his wife Hassa bin Ahmed al-Sudairi, are forming an alliance against the ascendancy to the Kingship of the Crown Prince."
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Question

Mystery dump: State Department releases over 6 thousand of Hillary Clinton documents


RT
Sat, 30 Sep 2017 04:28 UTC
Clinton
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Without much fanfare, the State Department has released over 6,000 documents related to Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State, prompting speculation that it might contain explosive revelations.

The State Department's Reading Room website contains 301 pages, with 20 entries each, of emails released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) rulings.

Since there was no official announcement of the data dump, conservative pundits that noticed it quickly began speculating that the cache contained compromising information about Clinton's tenure at the State Department, during which she used a private email server located at one of her residences.

Comment: See also: Obama was responsible for the decision to exonerate Killary, not Comey

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Dollars

White House tells Cabinet no more private planes after Price scandal


RT
Sat, 30 Sep 2017 13:25 UTC
us dollars
© Daniel Becerril / Reuters
After Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned over his use of charter planes, the White House issued new ethics guidelines to Cabinet members, saying they owe it to taxpayers to use government funds appropriately.

On Friday, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Mick Mulvaney sent out a memo to Trump administration officials on the rules for using government funds for travel.

Mulvaney reminded department heads that they are "public servants" and that money spent comes from the taxpayer. He further outlined current guidelines that need to be followed.

"All travel on Government-owned, rented, leased, or chartered aircraft... shall require prior approval from the White House Chief of Staff," Mulvaney said, with exceptions outlined in Circular A-126.
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Snakes in Suits

DHS peek-a-boo: Russia didn't scan election systems, but 'may have' looked to break in


RT
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:15 UTC
US voter
© Chris Keane / Reuters
Even though hackers from the Russian government didn't directly scan election systems in 21 US states, that doesn't mean Moscow wasn't looking to break in, the Department of Homeland Security said after complaints about inaccurate reporting.

On Thursday, DHS Spokesman Scott McConnell declined to discuss the specific states the department was alluding to. He said that hackers searched for vulnerabilities to exploit in other government computer systems connected to an "unspecified" number of states, in an attempt to breach election systems, AP reported.

The other networks were usually connected to to the election systems, or shared similarities, McConnell said.
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Info

Moscow points out US airstrikes on civilians and other 'chronic mistakes' led to humanitarian disaster in Raqqa


RT
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:06 UTC
A view of a damaged site is seen in Raqqa
© Rodi Said / ReutersA view of a damaged site is seen in Raqqa.
Repeated targeting mistakes by the US-led coalition have caused deaths as well as widespread destruction to Syrian civilian infrastructure, while a lack of aid and evacuation corridors has led to a humanitarian disaster in Raqqa, a senior Russian diplomat has said.

"We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe in Raqqa (as we previously saw in Iraqi Mosul)," said Oleg Syromolotov, who supervises counterterrorism cooperation with other nations for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"It was caused by the lack of effective effort to deliver humanitarian aid and to create corridors for the evacuation of civilian population, not to mention the multiple 'chronic' mistakes of the US Air Force, including airstrikes hitting civilian sites," Syromolotov told RIA Novosti.
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X

US urges no travel to Cuba and cuts embassy staff by more than half


RT
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:00 UTC
An exterior view of the U.S. Embassy is seen in Havana, Cuba
© Alexandre Meneghini / ReutersAn exterior view of the U.S. Embassy is seen in Havana, Cuba.
The US State Department is expected to announce that it is pulling the majority of its staff out of its embassy in Havana, while warning Americans against travel to Cuba due to 'health attacks' on diplomats, according to officials.

"Until the Government of Cuba can ensure the safety of our diplomats in Cuba, our Embassy will be reduced to emergency personnel in order to minimize the number of diplomats at risk of exposure to harm," said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in statement on Friday.

The embassy in Havana will lose roughly 60 percent of its US staff and will stop processing visas indefinitely, American officials told AP on Friday.

"US embassy personnel are most at risk but . . . the American public traveling in Cuba might also be at risk as well," a senior State Department official told reporters Friday morning.
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Info

Tillerson: US has direct channels of communication with Pyongyang, not 'blackout' situation


RT
Sat, 30 Sep 2017 12:56 UTC
Rex Tillerson
© Amr Alfiky / Reuters
Washington has direct channels to communicate with Pyongyang, there's no "blackout" situation according to the US State Secretary Rex Tillerson.

The US is "probing" North Korea to see if it is interested in dialogue, Tillerson told reporters during his visit to China on Saturday.

"We are probing, so stay tuned," Reuters cited Tillerson as saying. "We ask: Would you like to talk? We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We're not in a dark situation."
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Propaganda

Americans blame Facebook for fake news - New "Democratic party operative" poll

Alex Roarty
The Seattle Times
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 22:04 UTC
Voters in the poll, by a big majority, want Facebook to keep foreign powers from running ads during a U.S. election, and think "Facebook should hold itself to the same standard as other media companies to only publish accurate stories about candidates during election season."
Facebook
© AP Photo/Noah Berger, FileIn this April 18, 2017, file photo, conference workers speak in front of a demo booth at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, in San Jose, California
The public has a tough message for Facebook: The social-media giant needs to stop fake news - especially when it's funded by Russia.

According to a new poll commissioned by the Factual Democracy Project, a group trying to fight the spread of intentionally fabricated news stories on social media, 73 percent of voters say Facebook should not allow foreign powers to run ads targeting Americans during an election.

It's not just Russian-linked fake news the public is concerned about either: 78 percent of people said they want Facebook to prevent inaccurate stories from being widely shared on its platform.

Comment: Here is the latest blame game of presidential loser Hillary Clinton: Killary's postmortem blame cycle now targeting married women, producing autopsy comedy gold

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Blue Planet

SOTT Focus: How Globalism Works Like the Mafia

Chris Kanthan
Sott.net
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:05 UTC
Globalism
Globalism is just like mafia, but with lot more complexity and respectability. If you have watched mob films such as The Godfather, you can understand how the world works. For example, in Godfather II, a bunch of mobsters get together in Havana, Cuba, to celebrate Hyman Roth's birthday. As the birthday cake is symbolically cut into pieces and distributed, Roth tells the group how Cuba will be split up among the guests. Extrapolate this scene to the world, you can visualize how the world works.

Corporations to Central Banks

The power structure of global elites is like nested Russian dolls made up of corporations. How many people realize that KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are owned by the same corporation? Or that HBO, CNN, TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network all report to the same boss? Or that whether you drink Budweiser, Corona, Stella, Busch or Michelob (and dozens of others), you end up paying one giant corporation?

Who controls these corporations? It's not the CEO, as most people believe. The real control lies in the hands of the largest shareholders and/or the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors of all giant corporations are linked to each other by one or two degrees of separation. Some elites even sit on multiple boards at the same time. For example, Rochelle Lazarus sits on the boards of Merck, GE and Blackstone; Jon Huntsman sits on the boards of Hilton, Ford, Caterpillar and Chevron; and Timothy P. Flynn is a director at JP Morgan Chase, Wal-Mart, Alcoa and United Healthcare. Think for a moment how all these corporations would seem totally unrelated to a regular person.
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Snakes in Suits

Top 'Israel-first' megadonors to Trump are pushing him to reject Iran deal

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
Sheldon Adelson
© Flash90Casino mogul and GOP financier Sheldon Adelson.
You'd think that in Year 15 of the Iraq debacle, neoconservative would be a dirty word in America; but neoconservatives are having a field day! Phil Giraldi's article blaming American Jews for stoking the "war engine," followed by Valerie Plame's retweet of the article, has given neocons (adherents of a hawkish ideology that came out of the Jewish community) an opportunity to grandstand about the supposed anti-semitism of the antiwar community.

Bret Stephens in the New York Times and Jamie Kirchick are using the occasion to paint all critics of the Israel lobby as anti-Semites. So is Israel lobbyist Omri Ceren.

The righteous outbursts could not be coming at a worse time. Donald Trump seems to be leaning toward decertifying the Iran deal, and the Israel lobby is hard at work to make that happen. Trump is "clearly listening to the hawks on Iran, not the realists," says Scott McConnell, in the National Interest, and he sees a financial angle in the policy-making. The president
"is I think somewhat more dependent than anyone anticipated on neoconservative donors, because of his and administration's looming legal bills. In that sense, the liberal push to prosecute Trump for 'Russia' might have some very illiberal consequences."
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