domingo, 28 de outubro de 2018

Erdogan has his revenge on MBS BRASIL, ELE não me representa. Resistência!

"A vida é uma luta permanente. Os únicos derrotados são os que cruzam os braços."
Vamos nos encontrar?
O candidato da exclusão, do ódio, da desigualdade, do racismo, da ignorância, da violência, do preconceito, do egoísmo, do obscurantismo, foi eleito.
Como somos cidadãos responsáveis e respeitáveis, acatamos a opinião da maioria, o direito de voto é precioso demais. Respeitamos e prezamos a democracia, por isso, não vamos deixar o presidente eleito cercear nossa liberdade nem violar nossos direitos humanos fundamentais de ir, vir, pensar, falar e viver como nos aprás.
A luta pela democracia continua hoje, de cabeça erguida, de mãos dadas com os amigos e desconhecidos que encontramos pelo caminho do combate pacífico pela virada.
Estaremos atentos.
Hitler foi eleito em 1933 e em dois anos já estava pisoteando a Constituição da Alemanha. Não deixaremos Bozonaro fazer isso com a nossa.
Não nos calaremos.

Resistiremos.
"Ame-o ou Deixe-o", nunca mais! 
O Brasil é nosso.
O Brasil é de todos os brasileiros.
O Brasil jamais será uma arma dele contra nós.
O Brasil jamais será uma arma dele contra nossas diferenças, que tanto nos reforçam.
O Brasil jamais será uma arma dele contra a tolerância e a solidariedade que nos engrandecem e que nos unem hoje como na Inconfidência.
O Brasil jamais será uma arma dele contra a nossa pátria.

Compared with the United States and Saudi Arabia, against the odds, Turkey appears to have gained the most out of the crisis over the assassination of Saudi Commentator Jamal Khashoggi. The fact that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had the most to lose is obvious, and the Trump Administration at best looks like it is caught between the Scylla of trusting an ally too much and the Charybdis of being an accessory by failing to heed bi-partisan pressure for accountability and mete out repercussions for the act.
Whereas Turkey has skillfully managed the incident to its advantage, partly by putting pressure on Saudi Arabia and partly by using the crisis as a means to recast its relations with the US and the West. It is not in Turkey's interest to have an ugly open diplomatic battle with Saudi Arabia, but Turkey does compete with it for influence in the Arab world. In addition, Turkey's President Recept Tayyip Erdogan resents the foreign policy acts of Saudi Arabia as directed by the kingdom's de-facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS). While Turkey probably won't cross the ultimate red line of lambasting MBS directly, by adeptly leaking damning details of the investigation to the international press it has put considerable pressure on Saudi Arabia and even appears to have knocked it down a few pegs in the international order.
In his first major speech on the topic this week, Erdogan described Khashoggi as "the victim of a vicious murder" and called for an independent international investigation into the incident. But while he used words of respect for King Salman, he did not refer directly to MBS by name. He called for the suspects to be tried in Turkey, as opposed to being protected by diplomatic immunity. He went on to ask a series of questions, such as where the body is and who the local collaborator is that Saudi Arabia says the body was handed over to. Moreover, he demanded to know who had ordered the operation indicating, Ankara is likely to keep the pressure on Ryad.
Less expected, however, had been how adroitly Turkey - which has demonstrated a lack of skilled diplomacy in recent years - is showing the utility of crises by manoeuvring to put its relationship with the West, primarily with the US, back on an even Keel. The release of the arrested American pastor Andrew Brunson was not the only indication of this diplomatic pivot, but certainly the most visible one. Turkey had arrested him on "terror" charges and refused to release him, even though it had unsuccessfully negotiated with the US in recent months over terms of releasing him in exchange for Washington agreeing to drop its sanctions-busting investigation into Turkey's state-owned Halkbank.
Turkish relations with the West have deteriorated in recent years as Erdogan has grown more authoritarian domestically and more contrarian in dealing with fellow NATO allies. The Turkish president has long been frustrated by the EU's insistence on deeper democratic and rule of law reforms, and more recently angered by the US' unwillingness to hand over Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish Muslim leader Ankara believes to be behind the July 2016 failed coup attempt, to Turkish authorities and its support for Kurdish forces in Syria. Particularly after the unsuccessful coup attempt, Erdogan has moved closer to Russia, despite a Russian warplane being shot down by a Turkish fighter jet in 2015, and the Russian ambassador to Turkey being assassinated by a Turkish citizen a year later.
Other ways Turkey has been acting more in the interests of the West include how it is cooperating with the US in northern Syria in the town of Manbij, where it is coordinating patrols with the US in an effort to keep the Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) out of the town - despite recent threats not to do so. In addition, Erdogan had a  make-up meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. And most significantly Turkey pulled off a fairly miraculous forestalling of what appeared to be an impending Syrian-Russian-Iranian attack on Idlib that could have displaced and/or injured several million refugees living in the last major stronghold of the Syrian opposition. The most recent move has involved helping the West seek justice over the Khashoggi killing, with the Brunson release occurring in the first week of these efforts.
These unexpected pro-Western gambits certainly amount to something, at least an apparent about-face for Erdogan. Only recently he was railing against the US for its sanctions over Brunson, and the economic fallout for Turkey that has been so damaging. However, they prompt the question: does this represent a new pattern of cooperating with the US and the West, or is this merely a temporary means of giving Turkey its day in the sun ahead of a coming return to recent form of antagonizing the West whenever Erdogan finds it convenient?
Certainly, the US and its allies hope it is the former. For it was not long ago when Turkey had emerged as a regional superpower, the only democratic and capitalist Middle Eastern country and a willing bridge between the Muslim and Western world. This was early in Erdogan's run as Turkey's long-standing leader, first as prime minister and later as president. Turkey, during this period late in the Bush Administration and early in the Obama administration, was a net benefit to the global community, providing sturdy leadership and engaging in creative diplomacy such as helping bring a more lasting peace to Cyprus.
But as a US diplomat once memorably stated it, "dealing with Turkey is like peeling an onion" - meaning dealing with Turkish diplomats have always been difficult, as even if one matter got sorted out there would always be another one about which it would be difficult to find a communal way forward on. For years this was only the case in diplomatic discussions, such as in Brussels, but in the end Turkey could be counted on in strategic terms as a key member of NATO in a crucial region of the world. However, as President Erdogan began evincing autocratic tendencies, western relations with Turkey have grown more strained up through the recent era of Turkey repositioning itself as more an ally of Russia than its formal NATO allies.
Relations with Turkey have never been easy, but in the past even if Turkish officials proved difficult in diplomatic discussions, they often acted pragmatically in practice by, for instance, joining EU foreign and security operations on the ground with Turkish personnel and funding. In the age-old EU-NATO disputes involving Greece being in the EU and Turkey being in NATO, Turkey was often the more pragmatic of the two. But it may prove too much for the West to begin trusting its formal Turkish ally again, primarily because it is difficult to imagine President Erdogan resisting the next temptation to thunder against anyone at home or abroad who does something to annoy him.

Like the United States and Saoudi Arabia, the third member of the Middle East’s axis of evil, Israel, gets away with murder, both figuratively and literally, too.
But because Israel is a state protected by international Zionism, despite years of extreme-rightwing rule, its atrocities are confined, for the most part, to its own sliver of the world.
Nevertheless, its effect on world affairs is extensive and profound.
Israel and Saudi Arabia used to be mortal enemies.  Though hardly close friends now, they have become de facto allies.
To make their mark on the world, they are both utterly dependent on the United States.  The United States depends on Saudi Arabia for its oil, for the financial clout its oil makes possible, and for keeping the global oil market on track in ways that accord with America’s global interests. Israel has nothing comparable to offer the United States – it is no longer even useful as an off-shore military base — but the political clout of the Israel lobby, both Jewish and Evangelical Christian, more than makes up for the deficit.
I believe that these lobbies, the Zionist one especially, are paper tigers and that this will become apparent to everyone if and when they are boldly defied.  But the American political class thinks differently, and that is all that matters.
In any case, their relations with the United States are not what is holding them together.  Their animosity towards Iran is the reason for that.
The United States has it in for Iran in large part because its foreign policy establishment l holds a grudge for the humiliation America suffered during the hostage crisis four decades ago.
To be sure, the United States is, for the most part, just what as Gore Vidal famously said it was, the United States of Amnesia.  The bromance now flourishing between two of our most loathsome domestic political figures, Trump and Ted Cruz, attests to that.
But, like everything else in the Middle East, the situation is complicated.  At the same time, that, on most matters, the past might as well never have happened, the hegemon’s memory is long when its global dominance is challenged.
Therefore, whenever it is convenient to vilify Iran, American politicians generally will do precisely that. Even thoughtful ones, like Barack Obama, after trying meekly to chart a new course in American-Iranian relations, beat a hasty retreat at the first signs of trouble.
The Saudis have it in for Iran – and Turkey too, to a lesser extent – because, despite the retrograde nature of their regime, they want to become the regional hegemon for the entire Middle East, not just the Arabian Peninsula.
But great power politics is not the whole story.  Saudi Arabia and Iran are rival theocracies; their animosities therefore transcend the bounds of Reason, passing over, as religious conflicts often do, into a realm where irrational fervor sometimes overwhelms calculations of economic and national interest.
Israel’s problem with Iran is different.  It has no hegemonic aspirations; it is happy for the United States to monopolize that. And although secularism is in retreat in Israel, the country is still far from becoming a theocracy.
It is relevant too that in Jewish lore, Persia (Iran) has always been held in high regard.  The thinking of the European Jews who colonized Palestine was, of course, affected by  Orientalist attitudes, but, like other Europeans, European Jews generally held Persians in higher regard than the Arabic speaking peoples under Ottoman – and later British and French – rule.
In short, Israel and Iran are neither natural nor historical enemies.
But to flourish and perhaps even to survive, Israel needs enemies; it always has and as long as it purports to be a Jewish state, it always will.  With anti-Semitism on the wane, despite what Zionists would like the world to think, it therefore needs to concoct credible “existential threats.”  Iran is its best, perhaps its only, chance for that.
Paradoxally, Jews fared better under Islam than they did in Christendom, and modern anti-Semitism owes a great deal to Christian anti-Judaism.  Muslim anti-Judaism, such as it is, has had almost nothing to do with the rise of modern anti-Semitism or with its nature.
Apologists for Israel nowadays struggle to conflate occasional expressions of anti-Zionist outrage in suburban quarters of European cities with the anti-Semitism that led to the Final Solution.  There are a lot of susceptible people in the world these days begging to be fooled, but, in the end, theirs is a fool’s errand.
It should go without saying that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are historically and conceptually distinct.
The original Zionist idea was that anti-Semitism would always be with us and that, if only for the sake of self-defense, the Jewish people need a state of their own.   The idea that this state had to be in Palestine came later, as did the idea that support for a Jewish state in Palestine is an expression of Jewish Identity.
Indeed, it was once a widely accepted tenet of the Jewish religion that, until the Messiah comes, Palestine was to be a holy land, not a homeland.  This is still the view of many extreme orthodox Jews today.
It was a holy land too for Old Testament besotted Anglo-Protestants and Lutherans in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.
Today, Zionism is mainly a form of Jewish identity politics, with a stolen nation serving as a substitute for God.
But nations are not part of the furniture of the world; they are socially and politically constructed. This is especially true of the Jewish nation, formed from peoples who share a common religion, but not a common language or culture, except liturgical Hebrew, a shared history or a shared stolen land. Jewish nationalism is a slender reed upon which to base Zionist theory and practice.
Palestinians under occupation and in exile used to serve the purpose of being "threats to the ethnocratic character of the Jewish state". But, by now, they are too politically divided, too abandoned by the world, and too militarily feeble to fool anybody who is not begging to be fooled.
And, of course, the Saudis and the Arab regimes they control are of no use either; they have become Israel’s friend – not officially, but in ways too obvious to hide.
Jordan is and always has been useless, and after the Bush-Cheney war of choice in Iraq, Iraq now is too. Then came the utter and complete mess that the Obama administration, led on by the always inept Hillary Clinton and the liberal imperialists she and Obama empowered, made of Libya and Egypt, and, worst of all, Syria.
And so, Iran is all that is left.
Netanyahu is obsessed with Iran, and therefore so is Trump.  He may aspire to be the Absolute Leader of the Universe but, in fact, he dares not displease Sheldon Adelson and the Israel lobby leads him around by the nose. Adelson, by the way, is living proof that classical anti-Semitism is finished in the United States.  The man is a quasi or bona fide fascist and nobody seems to care.
Netanyahu has the bomb and he has the Israel lobby, but he doesn’t have anything like the Saudis’ money; and, in capitalist America, money talks.
But after the Khashoggi murder it may not talk loud enough.
Therefore, if Netanyahu is to succeed in getting the USA to go to war with Iran, he may have to do the heavy lifting himself.  Is he up to the task?  Don’t count on it.
Let’s hope instead that Israel’s inherent weakness and Netanyahu’s own ineptitude does him in along with his even more odious axis of evil partners, and ultimately the axis itself.


The Israeli conservative newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported that "Saudi Arabia and Israel held secret meetings which led to an estimated $250-million deal, including the transfer of Israeli espionage technologies to the kingdom, Israeli media reported on Sunday, citing an exclusive report by the United Arab Emirate news website Al-Khaleej.
Some of the spy systems, which are the most sophisticated systems Israel has ever sold to any Arab country, have already been transferred to Saudi Arabia and put into use after a Saudi technical team received training in operating them, the report Added.
The exclusive report also revealed that the two countries exchanged strategic military information in the meetings, which were conducted in Washington and London through a European mediator.
Such cooperation would not be the first of its kind between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In September, Al-Khaleej reported that Saudi Arabia had purchased Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system to defend itself from Houthi missile attacks.
The deal, which was reportedly mediated by the United States included further plans to reach an agreement on broad military cooperation between the two countries.
While Israel has no official ties with Saudi Arabia, the relationship with the Sunni kingdom and other Gulf states has grown stronger in recent years, due in large part to the shared threat of Iran’s expansion across the region.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot met with his counterparts from several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia’s Chief of Staff Gen. Fayyad bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili, in mid-October while in Washington for the Countering Violent Extremist Organizations Conference for military commanders.
While this seemed to be the first publicized meeting between Eisenkot and Al-Ruwaili, it was the second consecutive year the two attended the military commanders’ conference.
Last November, following Eisenkot’s first participation in the conference, he offered to share Israeli intelligence about Iran with Riyadh, telling the Saudi newspaper Elaph in an unprecedented interview that what he heard from the Saudis about Iranian expansion was “identical” to Israeli concerns."

PALESTINA

#StopTheWar is a hashtag coming from many activists in #Gaza who urge the international community to hinder Israel’s attempts to launch another large-scale aggression against the occupied, blockaded, unlivable, and exhausted Gaza Strip. #GazaUnderAttack.
The people of Gaza have been subjected to decades of expulsion, occupation, siege and massacre. They have now seized control of their Fate. They are risking life and limb as they protest nonviolently to reclaim their basic rights. It takes just one minute to send a video showing your support for Gaza in its moment of truth. Do it now! Send your videos to METOOGAZA.COM.
Renowned scientists urge cientific Community to consider the facts before engaging in activities with Israeli colonial-based Ariel University, and not engage any attemps to use science to normalise Israel(s occupation of the Palestinian territory.
INTERACTIVE: Palestinian Remix


OCHA  


BRASIL
The Intercept Brasil
Um professor encara o fascismo no dia 31 de outubro (4')

domingo, 21 de outubro de 2018

Saoudi Arabia and Israel war crimes are far worse than one murder BrasilHADDADSIM! #ELENÃO




UnB: Ele Não, Não, Não! Em defesa da liberdade de expressão.  
A virada já começou e depende de nós. 
Vá pra rua bater de porta em porta e conversar com as pessoas sobre sua escolha amanhã.
Eu estou fazendo isso mundo afora com todo brasileiro que encontro pelo caminho e por telefone, skype e rede social.  
Ainda tem tempo de virar o voto dos indecisos e dos que pensam em votar no fascista sem pensar nas consequências drásticas do voto anti-petista.

Ainda está indeciso? Vire para a democracia! Assim poderá votar de novo daqui a quatro anos, com certeza, terá liberdade de expressão para reclamar, enfim, desfrutará plenamente de seus direitos de cidadão.  
A fala do Bolsonaro transmitida na avenida Paulista no domingo passado não foi apenas a "manchete do dia". Foi o fato mais grave dessas eleições. O candidato fascista à presidência da nossa República dizer que pretende prender ou exilar opositores é um atentado à democracia. Silenciar agora é omitir-se diante da História. É condenar a nós mesmos, nossos filhos e netos ao obscurantismo.  Vide as batidas nas universidades.
Este indivíduo é o Jair Bolsonaro
DEMOCRACIA SIM!  
Wagner Moura, para você que discorda
Um professor anônimo abre o coração

Brasil de Fato (@Brasil_de_Fato) | Twitter

Caetano Veloso entrevista Roger Waters
Carlos Latuff on RT Going Underground

Saudi Arabia has murdered one journalist and it's rightfully a world outrage. I understand that.

But what about journalists who are attacked every day by Israel, some of them killed, covering the aggressions on occupied Palestinians?

Is Israel above all laws


The plot to murder Jamal Khashoggi, as proved by Turkish audio and video evidence, is a grisly mixture of savagery and stupidity: Jack the Ripper meets Inspector Clouseau. Neither element is surprising because violent overreaction to minor threats is a traditional feature of dictatorial rule. As is the case with Saudi Arabia today.
It is the purpose of such alleged assassinations and kidnappings to not only silence dissident voices however obscure, but to also intimidate all opponents at home and abroad by showing that even a hint of criticism will be suppressed with maximum force. But it is in the nature of dictators that their judgement is unbalanced because they never hear opinions contrary to their own. Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 with disastrous results. Saudi Arabia started its war in Yemen in 2015, with similarly catastrophic results, and now appears to think that it can get away with brazenly assassinating Khashoggi as the country firmly denied any involvement in the disappearance and said he left the consulate safely that afternoon, before the Truth emerged.
It is important to watch how long the torrent of criticism of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia will last. President Trump has been muted in his comments, emphasising the need to keep on terms with the Saudis because of the $110bn contract to sell them arms. Some of those most accustomed to kowtowing to Gulf monarchs and rogue states in general, such Israel, like Tony Blair, are comically reluctant to criticise Saudi Arabia despite the compelling evidence of the murder produced by Turkey. The best Blair did was to say that the issue should be investigated and explained by Saudi Arabia “because otherwise it runs completely contrary to the process of modernisation”. Even for Blair this was surely a new low, and it could also be a dispiriting straw in the wind, suggesting that political elites in the US and UK were not shocked at all.
This is an important point because the murder was by no means the worst act carried out by Saudi Arabia since 2015, though it is much the best publicised. Anybody doubting this should read a report just published which shows that bombing and other military activities by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is deliberately targeting food supplies and distribution in a bid to win the war by starving millions of civilians on the other side.
There is nothing collateral or accidental about the attacks according to the report. Civilian food supplies are the intended target with the horrendous results spelled out by the UN at the end of September: some 22.2 million Yemenis or three quarters of the population are in need of assistance, 8.4 million of whom are not getting enough food to eat, a number which may increase by 10 million by the end of the year. “It is bleak,” UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council. “We are losing the fight against famine.”
But there are those in Saudi Arabia, UAE and their allies in Washington, London and Paris who evidently do not feel any regret and are intent on creating conditions for a man-made famine as the best way of winning the war against the Houthis who still hold the capital Sana’a and the most highly populated parts of the country. This is the conclusion of the highly detailed report called “The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War” written by Professor Martha Mundy for the World Peace Foundation affiliated to the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts.
The report concludes that “if one places the damage to the resources of food producers (farmers, herders, and fishers) alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas and the wider economic war, there is strong evidence that the coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanaʿaʾ.” It adds that the bombing campaign aimed directly at food supplies appears to have begun in 2016 and is continuing and becoming more effective.
Some aspects of the food war are easy to chronicle: on Yemen’s Red Sea coast no less than 220 fishing boats have been destroyed and the fish catch is down by 50 per cent according to the report. It cites one particular incident on 16 September when 18 fisherman from the district of Al Khawkhah were seized, interrogated and released by a coalition naval vessel which then fired a rocket at “the departing boat carrying the fishermen, killing all but one of them”. The report of this incident has been denied by the coalition.
The Saudi-led coalition began its intervention in the Yemeni civil war in March 2015 on the side of the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and against the “Houthi rebels” whom the coalition claims are backed by Iran. As Saudi defence minister at the time, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was the driving force behind the intervention code named “Decisive Storm”. The coalition air campaign is aided by US aerial refuelling and logistic support while UK military personnel are stationed in command and control centres.
At first, the targets were largely military, but this changed when the coalition failed to win the quick military success its members had expected. Professor Mundy says that “from August 2015 there appears a shift from military and governmental to civilian and economic targets, including water and transport infrastructure, food production and distribution, roads and transport, schools, cultural monuments, clinics and hospitals, and houses, fields and flocks.”
Copiously illustrated with maps and charts, the report shows the impact of bombing and other military activities on the production and availability of food to the civilian population. Lack of electricity to pump water and fuel for farm vehicles have all been exacerbated by the airstrikes. Mundy says that “livestock production has been devastated as families in need sold animals and also found it increasingly difficult to access markets”.
When the farmers do reach a market, their troubles are not over. Coalition air strikes have become more lethal with the beginning of the siege of the Red Sea port of Hodeida by Saudi and Emirati-led forces in June. Some 70 per cent of Yemen’s imports enter the country through Hodeida, which has a population of 600,000. On 2 August the main fish market in the city was attacked along with the entrance to the public hospital where many people were gathered. In July, King Salman of Saudi Arabia issued a general pardon to all Saudi soldiers fighting in Yemen.
The lack of international protests over the war in Yemen, and the involvement of the US and UK as allies of Saudi Arabia and UAE, helps explain one of the mysteries of the Khashoggi disappearance. If the Saudis murdered Khashoggi, why did they expect to carry out the assassination without producing an international uproar? The explanation probably is that Saudi leaders imagined that, having got away with worse atrocities in Yemen, that any outcry over the death of a single man in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was something they could handle.
The Saudi crown prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman bin Abduld Aziz al Saud - MBS, as he likes to be affectionately called, has cultivated an international reputation as a progressive reformer, claiming in particular to improve the lot of Saudi women. His March PR visit to the U.S. included a warm and fuzzy interview with Oprah, visits to Harvard and MIT, meetings with Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, and of course his friend Jared Kushner. His purpose was two-fold: to improve the global image of Saudi Arabia, and to call for common action against Saudi Arabia’s arch-enemy Iran.
What is this 33 man’s record? In March 2011 during the Arab Spring, when the prince was already a senior advisor to his father the king, Saudi Arabia headed an intervention of Gulf states in Bahrain, to quell protests against the absolute monarch. (The great majority of Bahrainis are Shiites, while the king of Bahrain is Sunni. Riyadh views any advancement of Shiite rights and power in the region, both as an expression of heresy—against Sunni Islam—and as an expansion of Iranian Shiite influence.) In June 2017 (after MBS had been made crown prince) Riyadh led an ongoing blockade of Qatar, mainly to punish it for its relatively cordial relations with Iran. That November Riyadh detained the Lebanese prime minister during a visit and forced his resignation (later retracted); this was an effort to punish him for his acceptance of the Hizbollah party in the Lebanese cabinet.
Since 2015 the Saudis have been bombing Yemen in an effort to dislodge the (Shiite) Houthi regime in Sanaa, claiming it’s a tool of Iran. Over 10,000 civilians have been killed and over three million people displaced; the Saudi school bus bombing in August killed 51, mostly children, and attracted brief international horror.
MBS has consolidated his power by the brutal handling of his many rivals within the extravagantly polygamous royal family. (His grandfather Abdullah had at least 35 children by 30 wives.) He is driven by hostility to Iran and all its allies including the Syrian government, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen (and perhaps the 15 to 20% of the Saudi population who are Shiites, mostly in the oil-rich Eastern Province that faces Iran across the Persian Gulf). He has warmed up to Israel, berating the Palestinians for not making peace, and cooperating with the Israelis to isolate Iran. Anyone paying attention knows he’s a brutal thug.
Trump has made it clear to the Saudi royals that he doesn’t care about their human rights record. The strict application of Sharia law, which he condemns everywhere else—the stonings for adultery, the gay men tossed off buildings, the crucifixions—is not an issue. All that’s the Saudis’ business, a matter of national sovereignty. And the Pentagon has made it clear that it will back the Saudi military effort in Yemen despite many reports of Saudi atrocities. MBS may feel he can act with impunity in the world and the U.S. president will have his back. He also may have miscalculated.
The Turkish police have concluded that U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Turkish consulate in Istanbul last week, by a hit squad of 15 Saudis including a forensic doctor flown in to kill him during his consulate visit. (He was apparently there to complete paperwork related to his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.) He was filmed entering the building but never exited as his anxious fiance waited. The police speculate that his body was dismembered and its parts removed by the hit squad that returned to Saudi Arabia on the same day.
Khashoggi, well known as a journalist in Saudi Arabia where he was once close to the royal family, had written mildly critical op-ed columns about it for the Washington Post. These may have offended the famously thin-skinned prince. They may have occasioned a royal court order for the execution of Khashoggi in the consulate, which is technically Saudi sovereign territory.
One must wonder what was going through the head of MBS when he ordered the deed. Did he suppose the truth wouldn’t out? Did he expect Turkish indulgence, and Trump’s acceptance? Did he think the extinction of a moderate critic was worth the risk to his and his country’s reputation? (Perhaps he was recalling the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s brother Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia last year, which had no enduring consequences; Malaysia closed its Pyongyang embassy for awhile but it has now reopened. And Trump is now friends with Jong-un.)
The fact that the Turkish police have a week after Khashoggi’s disappearance announced their assumption of foul play will surely affect Saudi-Turkish relations. The two countries have more or less coordinated their actions in Syria but are at odds on Iran, with which Ankara enjoys cordial relations, and on Qatar which has become a Turkish ally in the wake of the Saudi-led blockade. Turkish public opinion will seethe in indignation at a cold-blooded state-ordered murder in Istanbul.
Now the U.S. press reports that U.S. intelligence had intercepted Saudi officials discussing the kidnapping of Khashoggi. This makes MBS look even worse. You sense he won’t be invited back on Oprah. But he might well be welcomed back in Washington. Trump could proclaim the murder story another “hoax” and say he trusts the prince’s word that there was no collusion. So far he merely said he was unhappy with what happened.
Trump says whatever comes into his mind, whenever he wants. He has mocked the Saudi monarchy as being reliant upon his military support to remain in power. He told a wild pep rally Oct. 2 (the very day Khashoggi was apparently killed): “King: we’re protecting you. You might not be there two weeks without us,. You have to pay for your military.” Rapturous applause!
Similarly, Trump said Christine Blase Ford’s testimony on Kavanaugh was “very credible. “I thought her testimony was very compelling and she looks like a very fine woman to me, very fine woman,” Trump said last week.  “Certainly [Ford] was a very credible witness. She was very good in many respects.” But then he trashed her as a liar. He’s nothing if not mercurial, unpredictable.
Trump flatters himself with having excellent relations with almost all world leaders, from Kim Jong-un (whom he “fell in love with) to Angela Merkel (whom in fact despises him). But he can go from hot to cold at any time. He heaps praise on Xi Jinping and then lobs high tariffs on Chinese goods. He gives Turkey’s Erdogan “high marks” for “doing things the right way” then applies sanctions due to the detainment of a U.S. pastor in Turkey accused of complicity in a coup plot. He could turn on MBS anytime.
The basis of the Saudi-U.S. relationship has been from 1945, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt returning from the Yalta summit visited with Abdul Azziz bin Saud aboard a heavy cruiser in the Suez Canal: cheap oil in return for arms and political support. It was understood at the outset that the U.S. would remain what it was, and that the Saudi kingdom would remain an absolute monarchy guided by religious clerics empowered to administer strict Sharia law.
Decades of U.S. rhetoric about freedom and democracy have always rung hollow as the U.S. has chosen as its key allies not only the NATO and Japanese bourgeois democracies but the dictatorships of Park Chung-hee, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Thai juntas, Pakistani juntas, Latin American juntas, the Greek junta, Francisco Franco, Iran’s Shah, Haile Selassi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Augusto Pinochet, Fulgencio Batista, Papa Doc in Haiti… “The Free World” as taught in U.S. schools comprised the non-communist world. Still, the U.S. government, through the State Department, habitually expresses at least the minimal degree of “concern” about “human rights abuses” here and there. Saudi Arabia is always deplored in the annual assessments, but usually credited with making incremental advances. In any case the U.S. mass media pays little attention, until a school bus is bombed in Yemen, and then the matter’s dropped.
Now however Saudi Arabia is in our face, in the form of news reports on the apparent embassy murder. On Oct. 8, six days after the reported disappearance, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo publicly urged the Saudis to investigate The most haughty and unpleasant Heather Nauert, spokesperson for the State Department, tells journalists that in the interval there was high-level discussion with Saudis but she has nothing to report about it.
So here’s the thing. Trump, who is clueless, will sit down with Pompeo and Bolton. They will say that this looks bad, and the young prince is out of control. He needs to be reminded of what you told the Saudi king the other day: you might not be there two weeks without us. When you kill and dismember a U.S. resident Washington Post journalist with kids that have U.S. nationality you embarrass your friends, the president and his son-in-law, who could be shamed by that politically influential paper for not denouncing the murder of its contributor. You jeopardize your access to U.S. weaponry and refueling services in your ongoing Yemen war. You have to own up to this and apologize.
Somehow I don’t think that will happen. No red line in the sand has been crossed. Trump and the prince certainly chatted on the phone and MBS.Trump can accept that and move on. But given the triangular tension in the region (Turks, Iranians, and Arabs, all intervening in Syria and involved in Iraq) plus the complex relationships of Israel to both Turkey and the Saudis, any U.S. move in response to this incident could produce a new crisis.
Let's hope that those in Congress militating against the Saudi war on Yemen and U.S. involvement in it will seize on this incident to curtail arms sales to the Saudis, and impose sanctions on Saudis considered responsible.
Binyamin Netanyahu is doing everything he can to save his buddy MBS who is helping him against the Palestinians.
Meet Jamal Khashoggi in the Upfront


"Se você acha que uma vitória de Haddad e do PT representa um sério risco à democracia, então sinto informar que você não entendeu nada do que aconteceu na história recente do Brasil. O partido se manteve no poder por 14 anos, tendo sido eleito por quatro vezes. Goste-se ou não dos seus governos, é inegável que ele respeitou a separação de poderes, não ameaçou a liberdade de imprensa e aceitou o resultado de um processo de impeachment que considerava um golpe.

Diante das manifestações de rua que pediam a sua saída, a presidenta afirmou que elas faziam “parte da democracia”. Dilma foi deposta e desceu a rampa do Planalto sem partir para o enfrentamento. Em nenhum momento, ela ou o PT ameaçaram fechar o Congresso ou colocar as Forças Armadas nas ruas para combater oponentes e barrar o processo que consideravam ilegal. Michel Temer assumiu o poder, e o PT foi para a oposição. Jamais se chegou perto das aberrações institucionais e antidemocráticas capitaneadas por Maduro na Venezuela. Apenas as reginas duartes temiam e temem essa possibilidade.
E Bolsonaro? O governo formado por militares aceitaria tranquilamente essas pressões sem recorrer às Forças Armadas? A se levar em conta os discursos proferidos pelo seu líder nos últimos anos, me parece bastante claro que não. Do ponto de vista do risco à democracia, Bolsonaro está muito mais próximo de Maduro do que de Haddad. Não é preciso ser um analista sofisticado para enxergar isso. Os discursos de Bolsonaro durante sua vida pública atestam o seu desprezo pela democracia. O capitão já afirmou textualmente que se fosse presidente daria um auto golpe assim que fosse eleito, fecharia o Congresso no dia seguinte à posse e fuzilaria o então presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Declarou ainda ser a favor da tortura e que só uma guerra civil resolveria os problemas do país. Os discursos de Bolsonaro são a própria “venezuelização” do Brasil.
General Mourão, seu vice, vem fazendo declarações ostensivamente antidemocráticas semana após semana. O seu provável futuro ministro dos Transportes, o general Oswaldo Ferreira, afirmou essa semana: “No meu tempo (ditadura militar), não tinha Ministério Público e Ibama para encher o saco” — este homem é considerado uma das cabeças pensantes da candidatura Bolsonaro nas áreas de infraestrutura e meio ambiente. É isso. Eles acham a democracia um saco.
A campanha bolsonarista passou a eleição inteira questionando a lisura da votação e espalhou deliberadamente mentiras sobre as urnas eletrônicas — as mesmas que elegeram ele e seus filhos por várias vezes seguidas e que levaram o PSL a ter a segunda maior bancada da Câmara neste pleito. O candidato da extrema-direita trabalha abertamente com o golpismo. Ninguém no futuro poderá dizer que foi pego de surpresa, já que a tragédia vem sendo anunciada por eles próprios. Assim como Regina Duarte, quem não está com medo é porque não entendeu." João Filho.

PALESTINA
Dena Trakruri: The Palestinian kids fighting Israel's occupation 
Part I-22'
Part II-21'
#StopTheWar is a hashtag coming from many activists in #Gaza who urge the international community to hinder Israel’s attempts to launch another large-scale aggression against the occupied, blockaded, unlivable, and exhausted Gaza Strip. #GazaUnderAttack.
The people of Gaza have been subjected to decades of expulsion, occupation, siege and massacre. They have now seized control of their Fate. They are risking life and limb as they protest nonviolently to reclaim their basic rights. It takes just one minute to send a video showing your support for Gaza in its moment of truth. Do it now! Send your videos to METOOGAZA.COM.
Renowned scientists urge cientific Community to consider the facts before engaging in activities with Israeli colonial-based Ariel University, and not engage any attemps to use science to normalise Israel(s occupation of the Palestinian territory.