Prince Ahmed Returns to Riyadh + The Deaths of Whitey Bulger and the United Kingdom

UPDATE: Talks between Turkey and Saudi Arabia apparently have reached impasse. According to a dispatch from Reuters:

“Despite our well-intentioned efforts to reveal the truth, no concrete results have come out of those meetings,” the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said of the talks on Monday and Tuesday between Mojeb and Istanbul chief prosecutor Irfan Fidan.

Of course this could also be a cover for an amicable resolution. The Turks say, "We haven't arrived at the truth yet," the Saudis stay mum, and the whole Khashoggi affair eventually disappears from the collective consciousness.

****

Today the mainstream Khashoggi news remains: "In Intanbul, Saudi public prosecutor Saud Al Mojeb continues to barter with Turkish officials."

David Kirkpatrick and Ben Hubbard report that King Salman's last remaining full brother, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, returned to Riyadh yesterday. Ahmed had been living in London for the last six years. He recently made public comments critical of the war in Yemen, the king and crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Ahmed's return to Saudi Arabia is being interpreted as a move to shore up the kingdom, a ceremonial display to placate Western governments that the crown prince has some oversight.

Prince Ahmed is widely seen as a figure of special gravitas in the family because he is the king’s only surviving full brother. He and the king are the last of the so-called Sudairi 7: the seven sons of the modern kingdom’s founder, King Abdul Aziz, by his favorite wife, Hussa bint Ahmed al-Sudairi. The brothers formed a powerful bloc among the king’s dozens of progeny, passing the throne from brother to brother and divvying up key ministries among themselves. 

Whitey Bulger was found beaten to death yesterday at Hazelton federal penitentiary in West Virginia. As Robert McFadden says in his story "Whitey Bulger Is Dead in Prison at 89; Long-Hunted Boston Mob Boss":

[Bulger] had been moved from prison to prison in recent years and was incarcerated in Florida before being transferred to Hazelton, which has been rife with violence. 

One of the workers said that the inmates were thought to be “affiliated with the mob.” A law enforcement official who oversees organized crime cases said he was told by a federal law enforcement official that a mob figure was believed to be responsible for the killing.

A couple years back I saw a decent documentary Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger, about which I commented for my public library:

The takeaway from WHITEY is an obvious but important one: the United States Government is willing to collaborate with criminals and butchers to achieve strategic objectives. In this case, taking out the Boston area Cosa Nostra. We do it overseas -- working with the rich Gulf emirates who at the same time fund global jihad -- so why not at home? Whitey Bulger was mid-level tough Irish muscle before being made a king by the FBI. Our tax dollars hard at work.

In his latest blog post, "The Ignominious Death of the United Kingdom," Craig Murray predicts that the end of the United Kingdom is coming soon:

Astonishingly, this collection of untalented careerists that constitutes the “government of the United Kingdom” is managing currently to extend its lead in the UK wide opinion polls, while falling back again into third place in Scotland. I have sympathy for friends in England who do not wish Scotland to be independent, because the Tories have such a majority in England. But they have no right to force Scotland to live under a succession of Tory governments, which it has not voted for in over 60 years. Similarly, the Scots have no right to prevent the English from living under Theresa May – or even under Jacob Rees Mogg – if the English continue inexplicably to wish to do so. 

I have expressed for many years the hope that I will see Scottish Independence and a United Ireland before I die. I am happy to say I am now convinced that I will do so. That the end of the UK would be marked by such a squalid, incompetent and dysfunctional political leadership I could not have dared to hope. Thank God the UK will soon be over.

Where'd the Khashoggi News Go? + German Federal Elections by Next Fall

Today marks day three of a mainstream news cycle largely devoid of Khashoggi news. Saudi public prosecutor Saud Al Mojeb has been in Istanbul the last couple of days holding talks with Turkish officials. The lack of salacious Khashoggi morsels in Erdogan's loyal press leads one to be believe that headway is being made in negotiations between Turkey and al-Saud.

One Khashoggi bombshell from yesterday that the prestige press chose to ignore is a British tabloid story from the Daily Express alleging that UK intelligence knew, based on intercepts, that the Khashoggi hit was going to happen, tried to wave off the operation by contacting the Saudis directly, but then remained silent when that proved unsuccessful. Khashoggi was about to reveal, so the story goes, Saudi use of chemical weapons in Yemen; that's why he was brutally murdered.

Today there is plenty of mulling over Merkel's announcement to stand down as party leader of the Christian Democratic Union. The New York Times published a love letter in the form of an unsigned editorial, "In Merkel, Europe Loses a Leader." I think neoliberal passion burns hotter for Merkel than any other head of state, except for maybe Obama when he was in power.

The consensus opinion appears to be that Germany will hold new federal elections sooner than those scheduled for 2021. Katrin Bennhold and Melissa Eddy reporting from Berlin say,

The chancellor said she would step down as leader of her conservative party in December and would not seek re-election in 2021. That means Ms. Merkel may remain on the political scene for months to come. But few observers believe she could hang on until the end of her term, speculating that new elections could be held as early as next year.

Alex Gorka, writing for Strategic Culture, agrees:

With no support in her own party, her chances for retaining the position of chancellor are slim at best. In theory, she could remain chancellor until 2021 even after resigning, but in practice this would be a very slim hope. After all, it was she who advocated for the idea that the position of the party’s leader and chancellor be held by one person wearing two hats. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the CDU General Secretary and the chancellor’s preferred successor, believes that the Social Democrats (SPD) could quit the ruling coalition after its poor showing in the polls, thus triggering a general election. With the CDU polling at 26-27% nationally, Merkel’s era would come to an end.

Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Peter Altmaier, provides a nonsensical defense of the continuation of the GroKo, saying that, “The grand coalition will hold together because the SPD, CDU and CSU would otherwise lose a huge amount of voters’ trust.”

It's a safe bet that there will be federal elections in Germany by next fall.

The End of Merkel is Nigh

Yesterday Brazilians elected the fascist Jair Bolsonaro president. Possibly the more momentous election yesterday was in the German state of Hesse. There the two parties -- the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) -- that govern Germany nationally in coalition each saw their support drop by over ten percent. The big winners in terms of increased vote share were the Greens and Alternative for Germany (AfD), which enjoyed a jump of 8.7% and 9%, respectively.

Even though in terms of number of seats won CDU came out on top as the clear winner in Hesse, the erosion of support from the last election is the big story, so much so that today Angela Merkel announced that she will not seek reelection as party chairwoman.

Merkel wants to serve as chancellor until federal elections in 2021, but the pressure on the SPD to withdraw from the GroKo is going to be immense. If the SPD scuttles the GroKo, new elections will be called; if new federal elections are called, SPD's disappearing act will continue.

The Greens seem to be the chief beneficiary. In a story published after state elections in Bavaria earlier this month, Ella Joyner's laid out the electoral dynamic currently at play in Germany:

The answer lies in the performance of Germany’s ruling parties, today joined in a grand coalition. Following multiple cabinet showdowns this summer, each of which brought the gears of government to a halt, discontented voters from all the ruling parties — the CDU/CSU and the social-democratic SPD — seem to be drifting toward the Greens. Just over two-fifths of the Green’s new supporters have migrated from the SPD and a quarter have wandered over from the CDU/CSU, according to a poll published in Die Welt newspaper.

There was a good post-Bavaria write-up, "As Voters on Left and Right Rebel, Glimpse of a Post-Merkel Germany," by The New York Times' two main reporters in Germany, Katrin Bennhold and Melissa Eddy, that accurately forecast yesterday's result in Hesse and today's announcement by Merkel. Bennhold and Eddy wrote that in the elections in Bavaria,

“The sheer exhaustion exuded by Merkel and the grand coalition shows there is no energy left there,” said Martin Florack, a professor of political science at the Duisburg-Essen University. “People have the urge to see change.”

Change is what both the Alternative for Germany and the Greens in Bavaria promised, and both gained support in the vote.

But the Greens, running on a platform of open borders, liberal social values and the fight against climate change, gained more. The once-fringe environmental party has now emerged as one of the strongest forces in German politics. It doubled its vote in Bavaria, to nearly 17.5 percent in an election in which turnout surged to over 70 percent.

“You’re seeing an affluent, beautiful stretch of Germany diversifying, normalizing after nearly 60 years of the closest thing to a single party state in a democracy,” said Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund.

[snip] 

The question of how to win back disaffected voters from the far right has preoccupied Ms. Merkel’s conservative party ever since the latest wave of migrants began arriving in 2015, and the AfD started eating into its voter base. Some fear that by moving the party too far to the center, the chancellor has energized the far right.

Now that Bavaria’s conservatives have tried — and failed — to lure voters back by echoing the far right’s anti-immigrant slogans, some conservatives are urging a more positive message.

“With this result, we have seen that a shift to the right is false — plain and simple,” said Armin Laschet, one of Ms. Merkel’s deputies in the Christian Democratic party and the governor of the industrial state of North Rhine-Westphalia. “We need to focus on liberal voters, Christian voters, and stop talking about the threat from the right.”

Far-right ultra-nationalist electoral politics is a mirage that can baffle voters in a two-party system like the United States (when a demagogue captures a branch of the duopoly), as well as a multiparty democracy like Brazil.

The positive development in Germany is that it appears support for AfD has reached its ceiling. The new center will be some combination of Greens, Christian Democrats and the SPD moving in the direction of its youth wing.

The problem is with this last GroKo as tainted as it is, and with new federal elections likely to deliver a splintered landscape, it's hard to see how to form a government out of this.

Trump scrapping the INF treaty, not to mention the U.S. embrace of al-Saud, will push German voters in a pro-peace direction.

The U.S. Can't Bomb its Way Out of the Khashoggi Affair

There is no indication that the United States and Saudi Arabia have any intention to do anything other than wait out the Khashoggi affair.

Mattis this morning at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain embraced the status quo in the Middle East: the U.S.-Saudi marriage is "ironclad"; yes, the war in Yemen and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi are regrettable, but Iran is still the region's big bogeyman.

The loathsome Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir appeared at the same conference and rejected Turkey's calls for the extradition of suspects in Khashoggi's murder, calling the global reaction to butchering the dissident in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, "hysterical."

Continuing to stall seems to me a poor strategy. Serious movement on Syria is afoot. Putin, Erdogan, Merkel and Macron are meeting in Istanbul to discuss Idlib. Decisions are being made absent the "indispensable nation."

As Rouhani says, the U.S. is isolated. Besides the Gulf monarchies, Israel and a UK led by a foundering Conservative Party, the United States under Trump has no strong allies.

The U.S. can't bomb its way out of this one.

After Khashoggi, More Mainstream Reporting on al-Saud's Genocidal War on Yemen

One unquestionable benefit that has come from the Khashoggi affair is that the prestige press has suddenly started to publish more features on the genocidal war waged by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States against impoverished Yemen. Prior to Khashoggi there was the occasional blurb pulled from a wire service and the rare, like once every three months, feature. Now Yemen is au courant. It even made the morning blog post of the hipster Emerald City weekly:

This piece on Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen is absolutely heart-breaking: Read it. But maybe wait till the end of the day—I’m warning you that while journalism like this is absolutely necessary, some of these graphic images of emaciated, starving children could be enough to stop your day cold in its tracks—and maybe it should?

French President Emmanuel Macron really doesn’t want to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia: European countries are asking Macron to halt sales over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but he’s responded, “What’s the link between arms sales and Mr. Khashoggi’s murder? I understand the connection with what’s happening in Yemen, but there is no link with Mr. Khashoggi.” He understands, he doesn’t understand—either way he’s got an itch to sell. In 2017, our president Donald Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah, that deal also calls for $350 billion “of additional defense purchases over the next 10 years.”

The Macron story is even better than that because it shows how Macron is actually jousting with Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, nations that have taken tougher positions on the House of Saud.

Is Rojava a Sticking Point between Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the Khashoggi Affair?

Over the last 24-hours there has been a distinct lull in the mainstream press coverage of "All Khashoggi, All the Time." For instance, AP's "The Latest" list of Khashoggi developments has hardly any entries.

Ben Hubbard has a decent round-up, "Khashoggi Killing Overshadows Saudis’ Grand Economic Ambitions," vis-à-vis crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's Future Investment Initiative, a.k.a., "Davos in the Desert."

The Future Investment Initiative is an annual conference to promote "Saudi Vision 2030," the crown prince's scheme to neoliberalize the kingdom. The foundation of this neoliberal vision is taking Saudi Aramco public, an effort that has been delayed numerous times even prior to Khashoggi's assassination.

Pakistan's Imran Khan and Jordan's King Abdullah left the conference with billions in Saudi aid. And while overall attendance was down this year because of the Khashoggi media firestorm, Hubbard concludes his story on a note of "And This Too Shall Pass":

“Practically, is this going to delay M.B.S.’s ambitions? Yes. Is it going to wreck them? No,” said Denis Florin, a partner at Lavoisier Conseil, a consulting firm specializing in energy. “I do not see a major revolution in the business attitude toward the middle and long-term prospects of Saudi Arabia.”

The only news regarding Khashoggi is Erdogan's address in Ankara to AKP officials from the provinces. Reuters is reporting that Erdogan said the Saudis need to identify those responsible for Khashoggi's murder; that Turkey has not revealed all that it possesses. Erdogan's message to al-Saud is basically "Shit or get off the pot."

Negotiations are no doubt proceeding round the clock. Who knows what's on the table? I imagine the future status of Rojava is a topic of discussion. Trump is having the Saudis pick up the Kurdish tab for Syria.

It makes sense that Erdogan is using the Khashoggi affair to prune Rojava. When Erdogan makes his bold moves it's usually to go after internal enemies, i.e., Gülenists or the PKK.

Pipe Bombs and Poppycock

The pipe bombs destined for the mail boxes of prominent liberals have accomplished one thing for Trump: it has knocked Khashoggi news out of the pole position. According to AP,

The attacks overtook other news in an already-tense political season that could reshape Congress and serve as a referendum on the first two years of Trump’s presidency. The actions, which caused panicked building evacuations and reports of additional explosives that later proved unfounded, are bound to add to fears that overheated rhetoric could lead to deadly violence as the parties engage in bitter fights over immigration, the Supreme Court and the treatment of women.

The pipe bombs have allowed Trump to return to his comfort zone and rail against the fake news manufactured by the mainstream corporate media, which, well all is said and done, is the source of his rock-solid 40% approval rating.

There is a stable "American" minority whose identity is based on boorishness, whiteness and a cockeyed fantasy of "exceptionalism" -- the very same identity promoted by the corporate media that acts as Trump's foil.

Juxtaposed to the solid Trump minority is an anti-Trump majority, usually around 52-53%. The problem for the anti-Trump majority is that beyond "Never Trump" it does not have a stable identity.

The latest Khashoggi developments include crown prince Mohammed bin Salman's public declaration of disapproval of the assassination that he ordered and CIA director Haspel's study of Turkey's audio recordings of Khashoggi's murder.

The breaking news is that Saudi Arabia has changed its story once again. Now the Saudi public prosecutor is saying Khashoggi's death was premeditated and not the accidental result of a brawl.

It's part of the "rope-a-dope" strategy. Rest against the ropes while public outrage punches itself out. Replace one load of poppycock with another. At the end of the day the crown prince remains in power.

Haspel in Ankara to Threaten Erdogan

The place to start this morning is Craig Murray's blog post, "Khashoggi, Erdogan and the Truth." Murray cuts right to the chase. Turkey has already shared with the major intelligence agencies the audio and video proof of the Saudis butchering of Jamal Khashoggi. And CIA director Gina Haspel is in Ankara to threaten Erdogan in hopes of reining him in:

The Turkish account of the murder of Khashoggi given by President Erdogan is true, in every detail. Audio and video evidence exists and has been widely shared with world intelligence agencies, including the US, UK, Russia and Germany, and others which have a relationship with Turkey or are seen as influential. That is why, despite their desperate desire to do so, no Western country has been able to maintain support for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. I have not seen the video from inside the consulate, but have been shown stills which may be from a video. The most important thing to say is that they are not from a fixed position camera and appear at first sight consistent with the idea they are taken by a device brought in by the victim. I was only shown them briefly. I have not heard the audio recording.

[snip]

The same scepticism is true many times over when related to CIA Director Gina Haspel, who personally supervised torture in the CIA torture and extraordinary rendition programme. Haspel was sent urgently to Ankara by Donald Trump to attempt to deflect Erdogan from any direct accusation of Mohammed Bin Salman in his speech yesterday. MBS’ embrace of de facto alliance with Israel, in pursuit of his fanatic hatred of Shia Muslims, is the cornerstone of Trump’s Middle East policy.

Haspel’s brief was very simple. She took with her intercept intelligence that purportedly shows massive senior level corruption in the Istanbul Kanal project, and suggested that Erdogan may not find it a good idea if intelligence agencies started to make public all the information they hold.

Whether Erdogan held back in his speech yesterday as a result of Haspel’s intervention I do not know. Erdogan may be keeping cards up his sleeve for his own purpose, particularly relating to intercepts of phone and Skype calls from the killers direct to MBS’ office. I have an account of Haspel’s brief from a reliable source, but have not been updated on who she then met, or what the Turks said to her. It does seem very probable, from Trump’s shift in position this morning to indicate MBS may be involved, that Haspel was convinced the Turks have further strong evidence and may well use it.

Trump continues to bob and weave. Pompeo announced the first U.S. penalties to be meted out to Saudi Arabia for the Khashoggi assassination. Visas of 21 Saudis will be revoked. The names on the blacklist have not been published. So it is not even "name and shame."

Mohammed bin Salman opened his "Davos in the Desert" conference and received a standing ovation from the congregated capitalists. Parts of Khashoggi's carcass, reportedly discovered yesterday, have yet to surface, but the search continues.

Iran's president Rouhani has entered the fray by saying that al-Saud would not have butchered Khashoggi without a go-ahead from the U.S.

My sense is that while there will be more revelations in the coming days and weeks -- for one, unless Khashoggi's body has been chopped into fine particles and flushed down the toilet, parts of his corpse will eventually surface -- real action is going to have to come from legislatures because there is no evidence that government ministries are willing to upend the gravy train. The Socialist government of Spain has announced that arm sales to Saudi Arabia will continue, same with the UK and Canada. And you know that Trump is going to do the absolute minimum. The only reason Trump has been less than fulsome in his defense of Mohammed bin Salman is that there is a national election in the United States in two weeks. To the average American voter the Saudi royal family is about as bad as it gets.

There is an excellent chance that a blue wave will engulf Trump. All the fundamentals point to a Democratic capture of the House. This is a desired outcome because after Khashoggi I don't see how a Democratic House can maintain support for the U.S. partnership with KSA-UAE in the war on Yemen, nor aid in the initiating of a hot war with Iran after the "sainted" Obama struggled to craft the JCPOA as one of his legacy achievements.

The GOP will likely maintain control of the Senate. But the story will be Trump's failure to hold the House, particularly given how he is pulling out all the stops to win.

Erdogan's Lack of a Full Reveal is Revealing

The breaking news this morning is the discovery of Khashoggi's body parts.

Erdogan's statement, which promised to reveal all in full nakedness, proved to be more vamp than revelation. None of the audio was introduced. Erdogan instead described Saudi preparations for what could be nothing other than a premeditated murder:

“Why was the 15-man Saudi team in Istanbul on the day of the murder?” he asked. “On whose orders? We are seeking answers. Why was the consulate not opened to investigators immediately? When the murder was so clear, why were there so many different statements given by Saudis? Why has the body of someone, the killing of whom has been officially admitted, not been found? Who is the local collaborator who disposed of Khashoggi’s body? Saudi must answer all these questions.”

One new aspect of the case that the Turkish newspaper Sabah introduced today is the central role played by attaché of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Ahmad Abdullah al-Muzaini, as the main orchestrator of the murder.

Clearly the wily Erdogan is in no rush to reveal all. The longer the story stays "top of the fold" the more damage to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The discovery of Khashoggi's carcass guarantees headlines at least for a few more days.

Besides recounting the details of the Khashoggi impersonator, which was Monday's new detail, "Jamal Khashoggi Body Double Created False Trail in Turkey, Surveillance Images Suggest," David Kirkpatrick and Ben Hubbard reported the basics of what the Saudis offered Erdogan for his cooperation:

Mr. Erdogan, the person close to him said, recounted that a Saudi envoy, Prince Khaled bin Faisal, had offered a package of inducements for Turkey to drop the case — including financial aid and investments to help Turkey’s struggling economy, and an end to a Saudi embargo on Qatar, a Turkish ally. Mr. Erdogan has told associates that he angrily rejected the offer as “a political bribe,” this person said.

Erdogan's refusal to produce the smoking Saudi gun points us in the direction that the Khashoggi affair is headed. Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman will not be removed from the line of succession. Ben Hubbard and David Halbfinger mention the reason why in "Khashoggi Case Erodes Saudi Reputation, and Allies Worry": 

For Israel, accusations that the crown prince ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi have already had an effect, analysts said, effectively freezing the push to build an international coalition against Iran’s regional influence, the top priority for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This has been the priority for decades, and not just Israel's. Mohammed bin Salman is the Saudi partner who was going to see regime change through in Iran.

The Khashoggi storm will be weathered. It will likely necessitate a delay in the coming war on Iran. But that's still the plan. War on Iran.

Hopefully the delay will be long enough to allow for a real democratic uprising in Europe and the United States.

Erdogan to Reveal All

The latest Khashoggi bombshell is Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will reveal all Tuesday in his weekly address to parliament.

There is speculation that Erdogan's 48-hour countdown is a way for him to exact more concessions from the Saudis. I don't think so. Erdogan knows that at this point to be seen to trade on Khashoggi's murder would be to taint the remainder of his presidency.

The Germans are also keeping to the high road. Merkel's Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has announced that no armaments will be sold to Saudi Arabia as long as Khashoggi's assassination remains unresolved. Germany is seeking a joint EU position.

There are some choice passages from David Kirkpatrick's "Turkey’s President Vows to Detail Khashoggi Death ‘in Full Nakedness’":

The backlash over the Khashoggi killing “is the biggest event in the region since the Arab Spring,” said Michael Stephens, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank.

[snip] 

Now Mr. Erdogan, whose government is ranked among the biggest jailers of journalists, can enjoy a novel turn as a defender of the free press, by calling for justice for Mr. Khashoggi.

Erdogan no doubt sees himself meting out payback to the United States -- for the July 2016 Gülenist coup (Fethullah Gülen is protected by the United States); for tariffs on Turkish aluminum and steel; for the Kurdish proxy army that controls a large swath of northern Syria. So while it's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman caught in Erdogan's crosshairs, it is really the United States that is the target.

Take down the de facto head of al-Saud and you hamstring a significant part of Trump's foreign policy.

Saudi Botnets and Troll Farms

NBC published a story Wednesday about Twitter suspending a Saudi botnet that was shaping discussion on Jamal Khashoggi's assassination. The New York Times published a story yesterday -- "Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider" by Katie Benner, Mark Mazzetti, Ben Hubbard and Mike Isaac -- about Saudi Arabia's troll farm and Twitter botnet (the kingdom had a mole, an engineer, within Twitter itself) that is far more extensive than anything that has been reported regarding Mueller's indictment of individuals working at St. Petersburg's Internet Research Agency.

The real story regarding collusion with foreign power and that foreign power's interference with U.S. domestic elections has really always been about the Gulf monarchies and Israel.

Now that it appears that Mueller is going to wrap up his Russiagate efforts -- read Caitlin Johnstone's excellent "Politico Report Says Russiagaters Should Prepare To Kiss My Ass" -- one wonders what is going to happen with Mueller's case involving Elliott Broidy, George Nader, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Probably nothing.

It's Up to Erdogan

According to AP's "Saudis blame ‘fistfight’ for Jamal Khashoggi’s death":

The announcements came in a flurry of statements carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency early Saturday morning. 

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Public Prosecution showed that the suspects had traveled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country,” the statement read. “Discussions took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the consulate of the kingdom in Istanbul by the suspects (that) did not go as required and developed in a negative way, leading to a fistfight. . The brawl led to his death and their attempt to conceal and hide what happened.”

There’s been no indication Khashoggi had any immediate plans to return to the kingdom.

Ben Hubbard's "Saudi Arabia Says Jamal Khashoggi Was Killed in Consulate Fight" in The New York Times is different. Quoting an anonymous Saudi official, Hubbard's account places Khashoggi's rendition forefront in the narrative, in juxtaposition to the official Saudi statement that the 15-man hit team was in Istanbul because Khashoggi had expressed an interest to return to the kingdom:

For the first time on Saturday, a Saudi official familiar with the government’s handling of the situation put forward the kingdom’s narrative of the events that led to Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

The kingdom had a general order to return dissidents living abroad, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. When the consulate in Istanbul reported that Mr. Khashoggi would be coming on Oct. 2 to pick up a document needed for his coming marriage, General Assiri dispatched a 15-man team to confront him.

The team included Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, a security officer identified by The New York Times this week as a frequent member of the crown prince’s security detail during foreign trips, the official said. Mr. Mutrib had been chosen because he had worked with Mr. Khashoggi a decade ago in the Saudi Embassy in London and knew him personally.

But the order to return Mr. Khashoggi to the kingdom was misinterpreted as it made its way down the chain of command, the Saudi official said, and a confrontation ensued when Mr. Khashoggi saw the men. He tried to flee, the men stopped him, punches were thrown, Mr. Khashoggi screamed and one of the men put him in a chokehold, strangling him to death, the official said.

Eighteen Saudis have been arrested, including the entire 15-man hit team. Saud al-Qahtani, a propagandist for the crown prince, has been sacked, along with Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy director of Saudi intelligence. Mohammed bin Salman has been put in charge of a review of Saudi intelligence.

The whole thing -- the cover story, its announcement in the middle of the night at the beginning of weekend, the arrests and dismissals -- is a joke. Why not simply say that Khashoggi fainted in the men's room and hit his head on the marble sink? Or that he stumbled coming down the stairs and broke his neck? Both make about as much sense as the official cover story.

One thing is certain: If it is true that Turkey is in possession of audio recordings documenting Khashoggi's torture and murder -- which, according to Carlotta Gall in "In Khashoggi Disappearance, Turkey’s Slow Drip of Leaks Puts Pressure on Saudis," appears to be the case -- then Erdogan can promptly destroy the official Saudi version of Khashoggi's demise. Chopping someone's fingers off while he is still alive is not the same as a fistfight tragically ending in a deadly chokehold.

Trump is backing the official Saudi version of events. But it appears that wily Erdogan is not yet finished with the crown prince and the U.S. president. Carlotta Gall says that

The success of the campaign of leaks, and the gripping controversy around the case, may now be expanding the government’s ambitions, emboldening it to undermine Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, who is seen as unfriendly to Turkey’s interests.

“Initially, it seemed Turkey was seeking a bargain with or financial support from Saudi Arabia,” said Amanda Sloat, a former State Department official now at the Brookings Institution. “But it increasingly appears that Turkey is seeking to inflict maximum damage on M.B.S.”

It is not clear what Mr. Erdogan is demanding, but the policy of official leaks has been clearly to prevent a complete whitewash of the disappearance. Pro-government columnists have called for the Saudi crown prince to go.

Hilal Kaplan, one of the most outspoken columnists, known to be close to the president and strongly anti-American, even suggested in her column Friday that the United States could be blamed as an accessory in Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.

“If the U.S. administration continues this defensive line of language in favor of M.B.S. and reiterates mostly what they want to hear, one would fairly wonder if Trump and his Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner also had prior knowledge of this atrocity to come and did nothing.”

(This is the point Wayne Madsen made the other day.)

Maybe Erdogan is tired of all the wars raging around him. A war with Iran would be disastrous for Turkey. Taking down MbS is one way to prevent that war from starting.

Khashoggi Developments

Trump and the Saudis pivoted back to "limited hangout" mode yesterday with Trump acknowledging that Jamal Khashoggi is dead and that officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia likely played a role in that death. Reports are that the Saudis will designate a patsy, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the spokesmen for the war on Yemen and an ally of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, as responsible for the crime. The story will be that MbS approved the rendition of Khashoggi but that al-Assiri overstepped. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin finally cancelled his trip to "Davos in the Desert."

It's all still a rope-a-dope, an attempt to wait it out. Jared Kushner is pleading with his father-in-law not to abandon the crown prince. Trump's position now is to withhold judgement until the Saudis release the results of their investigation into Khashoggi's disappearance, which is supposed to happen in the next couple of days.

The Trump administration is belatedly coming to the realization that the fires will not abate. Apparently there is a split within the U.S. intelligence community. One side sees evidence of MbS's direct involvement in and responsibility for Khashoggi's murder; the other, only that MbS ordered Khashoggi's rendition. In other words, a part of the U.S. deep state wants MbS gone, while the other wants him to remain.

The Khashoggi story is huge because so much is at stake. The Saudis -- who got away with 9/11, and goading W. into invading Iraq, not to mention creating ISIS and shattering Yemen -- finally have been caught red-handed in the act, and right before the launch of a major offensive against Iran.

It's going to be very difficult for Trump to knit things all together to wage war on Iran. Planning was obviously based on the inevitability of the GOP losing the House in November, leaving the few months of the lame duck for Trump to maneuver the country into a fait accompli. Because of Khashoggi that is looking less like a certainty at the moment.

Trump and al-Saud Waiting for Khashoggi Affair to Go Away. It Won't.

The Khashoggi case appears to have settled into a waiting game. The Trump White House, after the "rogue killers" trial balloon deflated before it was airborne, is now waiting for the Saudis to complete their investigation.

Trump fancies himself a master of the news cycle. He cut his teeth on the New York City tabloid-dominated media market. He has treated the Khashoggi affair as he did the Kavanaugh nomination: at first non-committal, followed by fire-breathing partisanship.

Besides not having a majority of the U.S. Senate behind him on this one, Trump will be unable to wait out the Khashoggi affair because he's jousting with the wily Erdogan whose press organs are leaking salacious tidbits, which are then sucked up and regurgitated in the Western media, such as this first paragraph from "Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing, Turkish Official Says" by David Kirkpatrick and Carlotta Gall:

ISTANBUL — Saudi agents were waiting when Jamal Khashoggi walked into their country’s consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. Mr. Khashoggi was dead within minutes, beheaded, dismembered, his fingers severed, and within two hours the killers were gone, according to details from audio recordings described by a senior Turkish official on Wednesday.

The U.S. national security state is not going to kowtow to Trump's wish to "wait it out." There was a good deal of chagrin over Pompeo's servile visit to Riyadh. Pompeo is denying that the Turks played him the audio of Khashoggi's butchering. But the Trump White House refuses to release any of the intelligence it has on the Khashoggi case to Congress.

Moon of Alabama posted a good write-up yesterday. He gets a few things wrong. For one, Turkey does have access to the Saudi consul's residence. There is a possibility that Khashoggi's body parts are buried in the garden.

Another critical article from yesterday is David Sanger's "Khashoggi Disappearance May Disrupt Trump Administration’s Plans to Squeeze Iran." The entire second half of Trump's first term was to be based on ginning up a conflict with Iran. That can't happen now.

Khashoggi Roundup

I don't know whether the place to start or finish this morning is Thomas Friedman's "America’s Dilemma: Censuring M.B.S. and Not Halting Saudi Reforms." Friedman's piece is basically an apologia for his acting as a pitchman for the crown prince. Friedman thinks the days of cosmetic reform are over in Saudi Arabia, but he can't bring himself to Lindsey Graham's position and demand that Mohammed bin Salman be removed from the line of succession. At least Friedman lays 9/11 at al-Saud's doorstep; to a lesser extent, ISIS too.

A must-read piece is Wayne Madsen's "The Arabian Game of Thrones Heats Up," which places Jared Kushner smack dab in the middle of Mohammed bin Salman's despotic moves. Madsen's allegation is that Kushner used highly classified intelligence to guide MbS regarding who to round up, detain, torture and, in Khashoggi's case, murder.

This is potentially the holy grail of smoking guns that elites have been hankering for. Rather than burrowing down the Russophobia rabbit hole after Trump, the answer all along has been Saudi Arabia (and Israel).

There is no let up on the front page of The New York Times. In "The Jamal Khashoggi Case: Suspects Had Ties to Saudi Crown Prince," David Kirkpatrick and colleagues go bell?ngcat to document the connections of members of the 15-man Khashoggi hit team to the crown prince.

"Trump Jumps to the Defense of Saudi Arabia in Khashoggi Case" shows how Trump is now going all out in his defense of the crown prince. Trump is even comparing the outrage over the butchering of Khashoggi to the outrage over Christine Blasey Ford's teenage assault at the hands of U.S. supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. That takes some chutzpah. The difference is that there is no wellspring of empathy in the United States for Saudi royalty, particularly after 9/11.

Trump is on thin ice.

In the Butchering of Jamal Khashoggi the Shame of Western Elites is on Display

Apparently the cover story of a rogue operative lethally botching the interrogation of Jamal Khashoggi has died aborning.

Which is it? An intelligence agent going rogue or an interrogator making an error in the application of his craft? The Saudis and their Trump administration enablers can't even get their cover story straight.

According to "Saudis May Admit Khashoggi Was Killed in Interrogation by Mistake" by Gardiner Harris, David D. Kirkpatrick and Eileen Sullivan

Azzam Tamimi, an Islamist friend of Mr. Khashoggi, called the “rogue” theory “disastrous” for the credibility of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. 

“The Turks have leaked so much that it is inconceivable that they would settle for less than telling the world exactly what happened,” said Mr. Tamimi, who met Mr. Khashoggi for lunch in London the day before he disappeared.

Shaming does seem to be working:

Washington’s clubby diplomatic and lobbying worlds have been rived by the Khashoggi case. On Monday, the Glover Park Group, which had a $150,000-per-month contract to represent the Saudi government, and the BGR Group, with an $80,000-per-month contract, both ended the relationships, according to people familiar with the situations. Their actions followed a similar move by the Harbour Group last week.

Advisors close to Prince Mohammed said he was shocked by the universal condemnation after Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.

That has firmed up a growing belief in Western circles that the prince who fueled a war in Yemen to the point of humanitarian disaster, imposed an intemperate blockade against Qatar, arrested a clutch of Saudi elites for money and took two weeks to come up with a passable explanation for Mr. Khashoggi’s fate is not ready for the throne.

“Many in Washington have reached the conclusion that this is a guy we can’t do business with,” said Gerald M. Feierstein, the director for government relations, policy and programs at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, and a former United States ambassador to Yemen.

Al Jazeera is reporting more corporate cancellations at "Davos in the Desert." Google and banking giant HSBC are among the latest. A stampede is developing. Maybe I was too jaundiced to think that Western elites, fearful that the gravy train might tip over, would quickly fall in line with the absurd Saudi cover story.

Trump looks truly weak in all of this. Sending the cloddish Pompeo to fawn over King Salman crown price Mohammed bin Salman is not an optic you want to broadcast. Going into November, it's worse than the 1000-plus point correction in the Dow Jones.

No Let Up in Khashoggi News

UPDATE II: An essential read from this morning is Glenn Greenwald's "The Washington Post, as it Shames Others, Continues to Pay and Publish Undisclosed Saudi Lobbyists and Other Regime Propagandists":

But the Washington Post’s particular righteous fury as expressed in words, while understandable in one sense, is very difficult to reconcile with their actual actions, including their ongoing relationship with numerous individuals who either work directly for the Saudi regime, financially benefit from propaganda and lobbying work performed on their behalf, or have a history of taking the lead in doing P.R. work for Saudi tyrants under the guise of journalism. Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, who oversees all of this as he tries to shame others for maintaining relationships with the Saudis, failed to respond to any of the Intercept’s inquiries regarding these multiple ethical and behavioral contradictions.

The filthy hypocrisy that Greenwald spotlights in this piece leads one to believe that the cover story being trotted out by al-Saud, that a "tragically incompetent" Saudi intelligence operative botched the Khasshogi interrogation, will be accepted by the powerful, and business will attempt to return to normal. (In this regard, the strong ties between the power elite in the United States and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, read Anand Giridharadas' "Silicon Valley’s Saudi Arabia Problem.")

Will it work? Probably.

****

UPDATE: Trump has floated a counter-narrative. Rogue killers --

“The king firmly denied any knowledge of it,” Trump told reporters. “He didn’t really know, maybe - I don’t want to get into his mind but it sounded to me - maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows?”

In order for this story to take hold the Saudis would have to round up some patsies and provide them to the Turks for interrogation. There are a lot of moving pieces here, a lot to coordinate when the parties have such divergent agendas. It would take a miracle of leadership and coordination to pull it off, with the U.S., Saudis and Turks working closely together selflessly and seamlessly. This appears unlikely.

****

It's heartening to see the full coverage of the Khashoggi assassination in today's New York Times. There is a story by Jim Rutenberg about the mainstream corporate media embrace of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS); Ben Hubbard and David Kirkpatrick provide a much needed assessment of Jamal Khashoggi's professional career (Khashoggi, though not a royal, was close to the royal court, an Islamist and an old buddy of Osama bin Laden); and Peter Baker shines a spotlight on Trump's failure so far to criticize the House of Saud. More corporate behemoths are cancelling their participation in al-Saud's "Davos in the Desert."

But the big news from the weekend is that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is threatening retaliation if any nation sanctions it because of the Khashoggi assassination. Germany, France and the UK are demanding a detailed investigation. I don't see how the Saudis wriggle off the hook. The penalty could be nothing more than a cosmetic delay of weapons delivery that the Obama administration inflicted on the Sisi government.

Let's not discount the role of the midterm elections next month. The Saudis are not popular with U.S. voters. Never have been. A big tell for the MAGA faithful that it was going to be business as usual should have been when Trump traveled to Riyadh on his first overseas trip as president.

Trump will not be able to delay for the three weeks before the election. He will have to come forward with some act of punishment. The monarchical Saudis might  overreact and lash out. Things could spiral out of control just when Trump meant to launch his sanctions on Iranian crude oil.

In a Battle of Wits between Trump and Erdogan, Take Erdogan

Both AP and Reuters are reporting that Turkish officials are in possession of audio recordings from Jamal Khashoggi's Apple Watch that document his torture and death. The story comes from the pro-Erdogan Sabah newspaper. 

So much for the idea that there will be a swift rapprochement between Ankara and Riyadh. David Kirkpatrick thinks that the Turkish leaks are a strategy to force Trump to rein in Mohammed bin Salman. But so far the only evidence I've seen is of Turkey making concessions to the United States (see Carlotta Gall's "Turkey Frees Pastor Andrew Brunson, Easing Tensions With U.S.").

A silver lining here is the mainstream reporting done of late illuminating the myriad connections between the House of Saud and the corporate rulers of the capitalist world.

The great unwashed know what's up. Trump got traction in the 2016 primaries by attacking Saudi Arabia and promising to partner with Syria to roll back ISIS. Since 9/11 average citizens of the "indispensable nation" will lend an ear and often vote for any candidate who pledges to hold Saudi Arabia accountable.

One thing is absolutely clear. Jamal Khashoggi is dead, and the Saudi monarchy killed him.

What's unclear is how this plays out. If it's a battle of wits between Trump and Erdogan, I'll take the founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Khashoggi Bombshell

David D. Kirkpatrick has the latest Jamal Khashoggi bombshell, "In Jamal Khashoggi Mystery, Turkey Says It Has Audio and Video of His Killing":

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish authorities say they have explicit audio recordings as well as video footage showing that Saudi agents killed the dissident Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, according to two people the Turks have briefed on their findings.

Such material, if made public, could transform the unfolding standoff between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of Mr. Khashoggi, a legal resident of the United States and a Washington Post columnist well known among Western journalists and diplomats.

A former chief of a semiofficial Turkish news agency who is still close to the government, Kemal Ozturk, spoke publicly about a video earlier this week.

The Post, citing United States and Turkish government officials, reported late Thursday night that the Turks have briefed their counterparts in the American government about those materials.

How does Saudi Arabia and its U.S. patron get control of this narrative? I don't see it. Turkey would have to do all the heavy lifting, and in order for Erdogan to do that he is going to want Trump and Mohammed bin Salman to pay a heavy price.

And even if Erdogan takes the lead and collapses the murder-and-dismemberment narrative he has been constructing over the last ten days, no one is going to believe him. Governments, already buckling from a lack of credibility, will be under that much more strain.

Enter Congress. Trump now is facing a market correction and the public spectacle of his obeisance to a foreign power, and it is not Russia -- it's the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He doesn't have much time for things to settle down. A Blue Wave fills the horizon.

In "Trump Calls Relations With Saudi Arabia ‘Excellent,’ While Congress Is Incensed" Edward Wong, Eric Schmitt and Eileen Sullivan assess the growing restlessness on Capitol Hill:

The pressure from Congress could force the White House and the State Department to change important aspects of foreign policy — including, possibly, withdrawing support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen’s civil war. In June, a key vote on arms sales to the Saudis narrowly passed, and future munitions sales have been held up.

On Wednesday, the leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a bipartisan letter to Mr. Trump demanding an investigation of whether “the highest ranking officials in the government of Saudi Arabia” were responsible for human rights abuses in Mr. Khashoggi’s case.

The letter invoked a statute that Congress enacted in December 2016 that says the executive branch, upon receipt of such a letter, has 120 days to decide whether to sanction foreign officials.

It is not clear, however, whether the Trump administration will consider itself bound to comply if the president does not want to tangle with the Saudis. When President Barack Obama signed the legislation creating that law, he issued a signing statement challenging it as an unconstitutional intrusion on executive power.

The Trump administration was widely criticized for its relative silence on Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance until Monday, six days after he entered the Saudi Consulate. Critics said the slow reaction could embolden leaders of Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian nations to carry out human rights abuses.

[snip] 

Congress has have grown increasingly angry over the conduct of the bombing campaign, which is part of a proxy war in Yemen between Saudi Arabia and Iran. An Aug. 9 airstrike that hit a school bus, killing more than 40 children, was particularly shocking — even for a war in which children have been the primary victims, suffering through one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The war in Yemen had killed more than 10,000 people before the United Nations stopped updating the death toll two years ago.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, has held up a proposed sale by Raytheon of 60,000 laser-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia, a deal worth about $1 billion. (Mr. Menendez is also holding up a similar deal to sell the same weapons to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi’s main partner in the war.

The case of Mr. Khashoggi “only strengthens the need for the administration to answer his questions on the need to approve the proposed sales,” said Juan Pachon, a spokesman for Mr. Menendez. The senator met Mr. Khashoggi on a congressional delegation trip to Saudi Arabia in 2014.

The Trump administration certified last month that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were doing enough to minimize the deadly consequences of their aerial campaign in Yemen.

Ahead of the certification, however, international aid groups in Yemen compiled a list of 37 instances between June and September of civilians killed or injured in coalition strikes, and provided it to American officials, according to two officials briefed on the casualty figures.

"The Fate of Jamal Khashoggi . . . Must be Taken as a Serious Warning"

It's hard to see how the Saudis wriggle off the hook for the assassination/disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, dissident journalist and critic of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

A counter-narrative is being prepared that would have Khashoggi whisked out of Turkey to rot in Saudi detention instead of being murdered and dismembered in Istanbul. But either one is bad for the House of Saud. Al-Saud is facing another Democrat-backed war powers resolution in the House over U.S. involvement in the genocide in Yemen.

Khashoggi is no doubt dead. If he were abducted and jailed in Saudi Arabia why wouldn't the crown prince crow about it? Khashoggi's murder is a brutal, foolish act of an impetuous, narcissistic buffoon. Mohammed bin Salman is signaling to the international community the arrival of a new dark age.

The silver lining here is that stories like "Khashoggi’s Disappearance Puts Kushner’s Bet on Saudi Crown Prince at Risk," by Mark Landler, Edward Wong and Eric Schmitt, which limn the connections between the corporate super-elite and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are being published:

Policymakers across Washington expressed concern that the Saudi government’s lack of transparency and refusal to provide any information about Mr. Khashoggi’s whereabouts reflected a darker consequence of the kingdom’s relationship with the Trump White House.

“It does seem like the Saudis are less concerned about U.S. views than ever before, both because they assume Trump won’t care and because they think they don’t need U.S. approval,” said Gerald M. Feierstein, a former ambassador to Yemen who was the State Department’s second-ranking diplomat for Middle East policy from 2013 to 2016.

Saudi Arabia’s muscle will be on display next week, when American technology and financial titans gather at the investor conference in Riyadh that the crown prince will attend. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will represent the Trump administration at the meeting, which participants have called “Davos in the Desert” and is held at the same Ritz-Carlton hotel where Prince Mohammed jailed dozens of wealthy Saudis in what he said was an anticorruption campaign.

Among the prominent figures scheduled to take part are Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group; and Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber.

Two other scheduled attendees have ties to Mr. Trump: Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a financier who is a friend of the president’s; and Dina H. Powell, a Goldman Sachs executive and former deputy national security adviser who worked closely with Mr. Kushner on Saudi Arabia and is a leading candidate to replace Nikki R. Haley as ambassador to the United Nations.

The Treasury Department said Mr. Mnuchin was still planning to attend. A person working with American business executives said that if proof emerged that Saudi Arabia ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, at least some would cancel.

The New York Times, one of several major news organizations that were media sponsors of the conference, has decided to withdraw from the event, Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the paper, said Wednesday night.

This is how the world works. It's savage and pitiless. Darkness, not enlightenment,  is dispensed from on high. As Bill Van Auken of World Socialist Web Site writes this morning in "Murder in Istanbul":

The Khashoggi affair has far broader international significance. It is emblematic of a sinister shift in world politics, in which such heinous crimes are becoming more and more common and accepted. It recalls the conditions that existed in the darkest days of the 1930s, when fascist and Stalinist death squads hunted down and murdered socialists and other opponents of Hitler and Stalin throughout Europe.

Journalists have suffered the consequence of this change in global politics, with the Committee to Protect Journalists reporting 48 killed this year—a 50 percent increase over all of 2017—as well as another 60 “disappeared” around the planet.

Targeted assassinations, developed by the Israelis as a central instrument of state policy, were adapted by Washington in its so-called “global war on terror” on an industrial scale. The killings, torture and “extraordinary renditions” begun under the Bush administration—for which no one was ever punished, not to mention a “black site” torturer being elevated to director of the CIA—were institutionalized under Obama with the White House organizing its so-called “terror Tuesdays” in which targets for assassination were selected from files and photographs presented to the president and his aides.

US wars of aggression that have claimed the lives of millions, the routine assassination of supposed “terrorists,” and the wholesale repudiation of international law as an unacceptable fetter on American interests, have created a fetid global political environment in which crimes like that committed against Khashoggi are not only possible, but inevitable.

In the face of growing social tensions and sharpening class struggle rooted in the crisis of the global capitalist system, there has been a sharp turn to the right and toward authoritarianism in bourgeois politics, from the rise of Trump in the US, to the increasing strength of far-right forces in Europe, to the near election of a fascistic former army captain in Brazil. Under these conditions, the methods of assassination and disappearances as a means of dealing with opponents of the existing governments and social order will become ever more prevalent.

The fate of Jamal Khashoggi, whose high-level connections apparently failed to protect him, must be taken as a serious warning. Those who place themselves in the hands of the state in virtually any country have no reliable expectation that they will emerge intact.

The only answer to this threat—and that of a global relapse into fascism and world war—lies in the building of a mass revolutionary socialist movement to unite the international working class in the struggle against social inequality, dictatorship and war.

Graham Phillips Crashes Eliot Higgins Press Conference

I saw this on Niqnaq. Looked like a nice day in London on Tuesday. Graham Phillips is known for his reporting on Ukraine. He runs a website too, The Truth Speaker.

Bellingcat, a "WikiLeaks" for the National Security State

Bellingcat has named a second Russian military intelligence agent, a Dr. Alexander Yevgenyevich Mishkin, supposedly responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals. As the NYT dutifully reports,

Bellingcat said it would reveal a fuller report about Dr. Mishkin on Tuesday, when it is scheduled to present its findings to the House of Commons together with a British member of Parliament. The British authorities have so far been unwilling to confirm the suspects’ true identities.

Bellingcat is merely an extension of the state. In a post-WikiLeaks, post-Snowden world, intelligence agencies need a crusading online persona, sort of a Julian Assange for the Establishment, and that is Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins.

Bellingcat exists solely to bolster dominant, state-manufactured narratives.

Russophobia is everywhere these days. A recent Marvel comic book, set in the present, has the villains in Soviet track suits. It is as if the Soviet Union never disappeared. The track-suited Soviet thug is a staple in comic books. He has replaced the overcoated, fedora-wearing hoodlum from the Dick Tracey comic strip as the default, omniscient criminal.

U.S. Sanctions on Iranian Oil Stillborn

Some good news this morning: India has signaled that it will continue to purchase Iranian crude oil after the U.S. imposes sanctions on November 4. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Monday that India was exploring an alternate payment system, one that would bypass dollars and use rupees instead.

Trump's outlaw push to reimpose sanctions that were in place prior to the JCPOA looks to be stillborn. The reason that Obama ending up signing the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran wasn't due to any pacific tendencies on the part of his administration; it's because the UN-endorsed sanctions were falling apart.

Trump's bullying can't magically reanimate sanctions that were sieve-like to begin with.

The bad news, having finished Going to Tehran yesterday, is that the U.S. has always been gunning for regime change. Sanctions were merely a means to that end. If Trump's crude oil sanctions are a flop, I have little doubt he'll move quickly to a military option.

Regardless of the results of the midterms, Trump's devil's workshop will be busy through the lame duck session.

The Lounge by AT&T: A Clear Sign of End Times

Recently something called "The Lounge by AT&T" opened up in my neighborhood. It is an attempt to marry boutique urban chic, in the form of an espresso bar, with an outlet of a corporate behemoth, AT&T. (I have noticed watching football on Sundays that Capital One is advertising  a similar experiment, Capitol One Cafes.)

The Lounge by AT&T is on the ground floor of a brand new residential high-rise, the Vertex Off Broadway, which was built on land recently occupied by a semi-dilapidated Lorraine Motelesque apartment building (a structure I have been told was built for tourists attending the 1962 World's Fair).

In the dim autumnal light of my AM work-bound walk, The Lounge by AT&T looks like any department store window display. Everything spotless and airtight. All that is missing are the manikins. "No one in tres chic Seattle will ever be caught dead in that place," I thought. 

But then last night, on my way back from the doomed anti-Kavanaugh rally downtown, I passed The Lounge by AT&T again, and it was chock full. At nearly every table a young couple sat with laptops and textbooks, cramming for midterms perhaps. Shoppers happily inspected the various flat screens and other digital devices on offer. 

This morning I passed The Lounge by AT&T once again. Just on the other side of street, due west, is a blue-tarp-shopping-cart-and-refrigerator-box shanty that sits beneath an evergreen on the road verge. Two people live there. One was wrapped tight in a blanket against the morning chill.

I feel the need to recite another prayer: "O Great Satan. May your mammon-engorged children tear down your plastic citadels and drown themselves in the sea to be reborn again far away and long ago."

Total War

Yesterday after work I briefly attended an anti-Kavanaugh rally. The rally organizers had failed to secure a PA. Amplified sound was provided by a bullhorn. I couldn't hear anything the speakers were saying. So I scurried home to watch Thursday Night Football. 

It seemed to me that the crowd was a healthy size, similar to a rally I attended opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline. The mood was morose, even more morose than the campaigners who were trying to halt burrowing under the Missouri River for Bakken Shale crude oil.

The die appears to be cast. Collins and the odious, grandstanding Flake are poised to confirm Kavanaugh. Murkowski has been off the radar. Manchin is dancing on the fence. Let's hope for a robust display of civil disobedience today and tomorrow. "Scores" of arrests were reported yesterday. According to Elizabeth Williamson's "Singing, Chanting and Rage on Capitol Hill as Kavanaugh Vote Nears":

Chanting “Whose court? Our court!” and “We believe survivors,” they marched to the Supreme Court in a demonstration that began with emotional testimonials by sexual assault survivors on the steps of the court and culminated in a sit-down protest in a nearby Senate office building that generated scores of arrests.

[snip]

Warning “November is coming,” a reference to the midterm elections on Nov. 6, they directed pleas, and warnings of political consequences, at three wavering Republicans: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, at whose behest the F.B.I. investigation was initiated last week. 

Early on Thursday the police closed off the hallway outside Ms. Collins’s office, preventing journalists from interviewing her, and protesters from buttonholing her. On the court steps, three women from Maine told their stories, imploring her to believe the survivors of sexual assault.

A group of more than 100 Alaskans planned to visit Ms. Murkowski’s office on Friday, some with their children in tow. Several Arizona residents were among those who spoke on the Supreme Court steps, seeking to keep the pressure on Mr. Flake.

In the Capitol, Democrats denounced the F.B.I. interviews as incomplete and insufficient, while nearly all Republicans said they were thorough but unnecessary, given what they said was extensive vetting of Judge Kavanaugh.

This chasm was reflected in street confrontations around the Capitol, as demonstrators faced off with supporters of President Trump and his nominee, some of them men wearing bright pink polo shirts and “Make America Great Again” caps.

One man carried a homemade sign that read “#MeToo Fraud,” before a protester tore it in half. He called out “God bless Trump; God bless Kavanaugh,” as rape survivors told their stories and two women, Michela Vawter, of Burlington, Vt., and Kiki Hackett, of Phoenix, quietly asked him to stop.

"November is coming" rings hollow to me. The polling is a wash, though I think ramming Kavanaugh through will juice Dem turnout somewhat next month. The fundamentals regarding the midterms were against the GOP to begin with. MAGA magic can't strike twice because the voting environment has been drastically altered in two year's time. In the fall of 2016 Trump depended on neoliberal complacency to squeak into the White House.

Today the United States has declared total war -- on China, Russia, its own people. Kavanaugh is a continuation of that. The Supreme Court will sow discord for a generation.