BARBARIANS AT THE GATE—BUT THERE IS NO WALL AND THUS NO GATE

History does not repeat itself—but historic circumstances do.  

A 10,000 strong mob of poor people (mostly young men) from Honduras, Ecuador and Guatemala are marching through southern Mexico as I write this.  Their plan is to force their way across the US-Mexico border and enter the USA, where they will attempt to claim refugee status.  International law dictates these folks are or may be refugees at the Mexico crossing, but they lose that status once they cross the Mexico border.  In Mexico  THEY ARE NO LONGER FLEEING THE THREATENING CONDITIONS in their native lands which were (presumably) the incentives for their flight.  They are safe in Mexico, but do not want to settle there.  They want to cross into the USA.    They know well what will meet them at the US border—the Border Patrol will arrest them, then assign them a court date to reappear for a judicial hearing—THEN RELEASE THEM WITH A REQUEST TO REAPPEAR.  But they know the reality—that they can simply disappear and join the rest of the 20 million illegal immigrants already established in sanctuaries in this nation.  

Hordes of people attempting to move into more agreeable or economically favorable circumstances or fleeing one thing or another have been a part of world history since humans began migrating out of Africa  more than a million years ago. Most often the results are not positive for the country invaded. Strife, violence, disease transmission, economic disruptions and cultural collapse were often the results of these mass movements.  

History is rife with examples.  The feared “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt during reign of the Pharaohs in the late Bronze Age (1200BC-800BC) and were repulsed only with great effort.  The mysterious Dorians are often attributed to be  the 1100 BC invaders of south-eastern Europe that caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization—Europe’s first major civilization. That invasion ushered in the Dark Ages of Greek civilization.  

The Roman Republic and the Empire were invaded by Germanic and Gallic tribes repeatedly.  In the early Republic and Empire they were repulsed and defeated, but in the latter periods, a Roman population weakened by economic and cultural decline often succumbed to the invaders who were permitted to settle in Roman lands but were never acculturated.   In  376 AD Emperor Valens of the Eastern Roman Empire was one of the first to be soundly defeated by barbarian invaders.  The  Goths were a Germanic tribe living east of the Danube River in present day 
Bulgaria].  The Goths first begged to be given land on the west side of the the Danube in Thrace, claiming  that they were fleeing from a barbarian horde— the Huns.  But Valens refused them.  The Goths, angered at the reply, armed themselves and forced their way across the Danube River entering  Roman territory near Adrianople in what is now western (European) Turkey.  The invading Gothic hordes were too much for the weak, poorly led and vacillating leadership of the Roman forces (which had been quickly constituted from  other recently settled immigrants).  The Roman lines  collapsed in front of the Goths.  The invaders swarmed in and settled where they wanted.  They continued to be a thorn in the side of the Romans.  That first Gothic incursion was seen as evidence of Roman weakness and was soon followed by other invasions  of barbarians in rapid succession.  The invasions were a significant element in the circumstances which  eventually led to the fall of the Roman Empire and the ultimate collapse of western culture. These events ushered in the Dark Ages. 

Most recently, streams of Syrians, Lybians and others  fleeing the Bush-Obama-Clinton wars in the ME surged across the  Mediterranean. In a force a million strong.  These migrants passed through southern Europe—their  goal being wealthy, “progressive” Sweden, Denmark and Germany. There, like the Goths,  they were settled and permitted to stay— thanks to the idealistic  and progressive policies of leaders like German  PM Angela Merkel.   She and the German people as well as Europe as a whole  are suffering with economic =, cultural and social problems associated with those decisions  today.  

Get the picture?     

TRUMP US FOREIGN POLICY—SAUDI ARABIA—IRAN—ILLOGICAL

President Trump’s promise to keep “America First” seems to be strapped down to an embassy conference table for a visit with a bone saw.   Our President should be reminded of his promise to EXTRACT US FROM FOREIGN WARS!   Not to encourage them!  

 His waffling confused soft support of Saudi Arabia in this ugly crisis of the brutal Khashoggi torture and assassination has unintentionally revealed his long term plans for renewed sanctions and/or a military attack on Iran.  He has stated as much in his response to queries on what he will do about Saudi Arabia, answering  that he “needs Saudi Arabia” in his plans  to oppose Iran.  He has made a $100 billion dollar arms deal which will arm that nation  to the teeth with US weapons. For what purpose?   To kill more  starving unarmed Yemenis?   Perhaps Mr. Trump has inadertently let the cat out of the bag.    

The Trump policy on Iran is one we should be all concerned with.  Iran is an ancient culture and a nation with a long peaceful history.  Unlike almost all of their neighbrirs (Israel and Saudi Arabia included ) they have initiated no wars or attacks on other nations in recent history.  President Trump has somehow (?) been lured into a dangerous anti-Iran triumvirate—with tough guys Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman.  These two are loose cannons in the ME—both of whom would like to hold our flack jackets as we fight the Iranians.

With the midterm elections less than a month away..Mr. Trump’s waffling response to the Saudi Arabian journalist assassination will be cause for an enormous political black-eye if he does not act with certitude  to distance himself (and his challenged son-in-law) from the Saudi shadows.  The American people will not be able to go to the polls and vote GOP with a straight face if  the White House thinks that they get away with pulling a rug over the blood stains that point to  Khashoggi’s killers.  The Democrats will  skewer Trump with that untenable action.

A more logical approach to Saudi Arabia also points to a more sensible revision of our foreign policy toward Iran.  Accept Iran as it is——-a powerful regional nation.  It can be perhaps —not become an American ally—but it need not be a bete noir either   We need a more logical and useful approach and policy toward powerful, oil rich, and technically savvy Iran.  Even a North Koreans style sit down talk would be a positive development.  Now that would be a Trump triumph!

Yet Presient Trump labels them the worst supporters of “terrorism”.  Yet his illogical  foreign policy supports leaders who occupy lands illegally, shoot children, bomb civilians and break bones of those who live in the occupied lands, and others who bomb Yemen into chaos and cholera and stupidly lure journalists to their own embassy where they use a bone saw to cut off offending writer’s typing fingers BEFORE making the decapitation cut,  Ugh!

There is a limit to what the nation will accept as logical foreign policy.  Trump beware!  

KHASHOGGI ASSASSINATION AND DISMEMBERMENT AT HANDS OF SAUDI SQUAD

JARED KUSHNER’S BEST FRIEND—PRINCE BIN SALMAN—A DANGEROUS LOOSE CANNON AND PERHAPS MUCH WORSE

US governments of the past have  frequently called out the Syrians, the Iranians and the Russians for behavior that they argue goes beyond the norm of “civilized” nations.  But the USA too often looks the other way in the case of Saudi Arabia.  We should remember that this is the nation from which almost all of the 9-11 attackers came, from where they were financially  supported and even from whence they were given information on where to get “flying” lessons.  Yet somehow the Saudis escaped any and all condemnation for that horrific attack. The Bush administration  instead directed the nation’s ire and military might at innocent Iraq, where no American companies had investments and interests.  

As well as following long and unwisely held US custom and precedent regarding Saudi Arabia, President Trump has made a particular effort to cultivate the Saudis.  He apparently wants to keep that oil rich nation pumping oil on USA demand, as well as to persist in purchases of   $100s of billions of US dollars worth of US military hardware.  The former  keeps oil cheap so as to help  maintain Trump’s bragging rights about the US economy,  while the latter keeps some (too many) Americans gainfully employed in our massive arms industry.   

Saudi Arabia (SA) is one of the few absolute monarchies left in the world.  Though it mirrors in  manners and absolute power the ancient kingdoms of the Middle Ages—it was in fact only established by the Brits in the 1930s as a means of stabilizing and controlling the vast oil wealth under the shifting sands and demographics of that desert nation.   In this nation, ruled by an absolute monarch, the king (and now his son MBS) is head of state as well as the head of government.  The monarchy controls the lives ( and deaths) as well as the fortunes of all of its citizenry with absolute power. 

Our President made SA one of his first formal foreign state visits. There our President  bowed and scraped to the recently installed new absolute monarch—- King Salman.  The KIng, at four score years, is said to be in fragile health.  Real power has been assumed by his inexperienced, pampered and young son, Prince  Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS).  It is MBS who wields all of the awful and absolute power of that wealthy oil kingdom. 

The newly installed Prince has touted himself as a “reformer” who claims to have given Saudi women the right to attend public events and even drive an automobile. But he has sullied and shredded that putative reformist reputation by many deeds and misdeeds which reveal him to  act more like brutal absolute rulers of the distant past, perhaps in the mold of the infamous Emperor Caligula (Roman Emperor 37AD-41AD)   

Like that last male member of the Roman Empire’s Julian line, an inexperienced, headstrong young man with no one to warn him of excesses and with an empire to play with, as a kid with toy soldiers, can get himself and his nation into serious trouble.  In 2015 Mohammad Bin Salman unwisely intervened militarily in the civil war in Yemen, a nation which borders SA to the south. In that poverty stricken nation a Shiite minority (Houthi) overturned the Saudi-supported  and corrupt Sunni  Hadi-led government     The Saudis under MBS have conducted a vicious war against the insurgents mostly by way of by a US supported and indiscriminate bombing campaign—an air war.  The SA air campaign  has  killed an estimated 15,000  civilians, attacked critical  infrastructure, embargoed food and medical supplies, and generated circumstances which precipitated a severe cholera outbreak and mass famine in Yemen.  The international community and Human Rights Watch have condemned the air campaign in Yemen as a war crime.   

Adopting hawkish international strategies from the outset, the new SA regime under MBS is claimed to have kidnapped the prime minister of Lebanon,  Saad al-Hariri, and while this man was incarcerated forced him to resign his post by way of a tv broadcast from SA.  Hariri claimed his reason was an assassination plot against him by Iran and Hezbollah ( two Saudi betes noires).   If that wasn’t enough chutzpah, when the German foreign minister suggested that the Kingdom had orchestrated the “resignation” of al-Hariri, MBS in angry response recalled the Saudi ambassador and cut back commercial ties with a number of prominent German companies in retaliation.  The US press called these actions only examples of the young Prince’s  (MBS’s) “assertiveness”.   

Soon after this fiasco,  MBS’s henchmen  abducted and imprisoned scores of his own nation’s elite, wealthy  aristocrats.  While keeping them imprisoned in a commandeered 5 star hotel, the regime led by MBS, forced them to pay billions of dollars in tribute before granting them freedom. 

Next, with no actual justification, the young Prince instigated an attack on an unassuming and innocent neighboring state: Qatar.  Qatar, is a peninsula nation about the size of the Greek island of Rhodes, jutting from its land border with SA into the Persian Gulf .  Bin Salman and  co-conspirators in the UAE and Egypt embargoed all air and sea connections with Qatar, effectively cutting all that nation’s ties with the outside world.  SA secretly planned to invade and take over its main city of Doha on spurious claims that that Qatar (site of one of the largest US air bases in the region) was supporting terrorism.   Rex Tillerson who as Secretary of State at that time.worked feverishly  to prevent the invasion.  His efforts —unappreciated by the Saudis and their allies—and falling afoul of President. Trump’s wishes—may have contributed to Tillerson losing support with President Trump (who supported SA) and in the process lost his job as head of State Department. 

When Canada’s foreign misinterpret called for the release of several women’s rights activists with ties to Canada and who were being held in Saudi jails—MBS in a outburst of temper, suspended diplomatic ties with Canada and imposed a halt on any new trade dealings.  Canada’s currency fell and its stock market reacted to the news negatively.  The press however, described these moves as “ just an example of the young Prince  “signal sending” his displeasure.

Most recently we are slapped in the face with another act of SA brutality outside the norms of civilized nations in the form of a grizzly torture and execution of a US resident and Washington Post journalist—Jamal Khashoggi. 

Jamal Khashoggi, a SA citizen and former editor, advisor to the former King and Saudi expat SA dissident and resident of the USA, where he was employed as a journalist for the Washington Post. Jamal Khashoggi frequently wrote articles for the Post and other journals that were critical of the Kingdom and of its young leader—MBS.   Khashoggi left the USA where he was residing and traveled to Turkey where he was planning to marry his fiancée, a Turkish citizen.  In order to prove his marital status to Turkish officials he made plans to visit the Saudi embassy to obtain official documents regarding his divorce.  While his fiancée waited outside, Jamal—with, it is reported, some trepidation— entered the Embassy.  But he never reappeared. 

Turkish officials using security cameras which monitored the embassy’s enteracne and exits  revealed last week that Khashoggi had entered the SA embassy but had never reappeared.  Upon review of existing security videos and Kashoggit’s apple iPhone (left with his fiancée) they were able to conclude that Khashoggi had been intercepted within the building by a 15 man assassination team which had arrived from Saudi Arabia that same day.  According to the Turks, who claim they have both video and voice evidence, Khassoggi was tortured, killed and his body was dismembered for disposal.  It was reported in the Turkish press that the fifteen man assassination squad included a member from SA who was familiar with forensic autopsy—-and presumably knew how to wield a bone saw!  All these fifteen individuals (but not Khashoggi) left the embassy shortly after Khashoggi’s demise and dismemberment and departed for SA—according to Turkish authorities.  

What should our response be?  

We can not ally ourselves—no matter how many F16 planes and bombs SA buys—with an international pariah—like MSB.  In light of its new King and young inexperienced leadership— and its belligerent and overly aggressive foreign policy,  we must reevaluate our—and the President’s—blanket approval of the Kingdom.  They must know when they go beyond what is accepted international norms.   

Mr. Kushner, the President’s (ill-advised) advisor and son-in-law should be the first to be removed from his nepotistic office for lack of perception and for causing general embarrassment to the nation.  

Mr. Trump should make good on his threat of “severe punishment” if it proves true (there seems no other explanation) that an American resident journalist was brutally assassinated and his body dismembered in the capital of a NATO ally—only for being critical of Saudi Arabia and its leadership!.  

US CAN NOT IGNORE SAUDI TREACHERY AND DESCENT INTO BARBARITY WITHOUT GETTING SMEARED WITH THE SAME BRUSH 

Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi Arabian editor and publisher.  

GOOD RIDDANCE NIKKI HALEY AS UN AMBASSADOR

NIKKI HALEY LEAVES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION GOOD RIDDANCE

Nikki Haley had NO mandate from the PEOPLE.  Yet she had the effrontery to ignore the principles and policies that President Trump campaigned on and the People voted for:  getting out of Afghanistan, and Iraq; acknowledging that the Bush intervention in Iraq was a major disaster,  curtailing our disastrous and budget-busting military commitment in the many (seven by last count) civil wars around the world and in the Middle East, and concentrating our energies on making America First.  She was and remains a neo-con suppprter , and while at the UN used that body as a means of  inflating her own establishment credentials for her obvious and avid pursuit of a presidential run. God help us!

She was often too far out in front of the President—on policy, and too eager for media attention and publicity—- and certainly not a Trump team player.   The fact that she is out of the administration bodes well for those of us who would like to see the corrupt “Washington establishment types” and Hillary clones purged from the halls of government for good.

In a tweet yesterday Glen Greenwald noted that Haley was “probably the most pro-war imperialist” in the Trump Administration  (prior to Bolton).  According to Greenwald she: “ held every conventional” (and this author adds ‘failed’) “foreign policy view that has generated so much (worldwide) destruction” in the last two decades.

 Perhaps with Haley “the self-serving neo-con” gone from  her “cat bird media perch” in the UN the war drums with the Russians will be somewhat silenced and the innocent Syrians, Yemenis, Houthis, Afghanis,  and other targets of US drone and bomb attacks around the world might have a glimmer of hope for a breath of relief.

MICHAEL AND FLORENCE AND THE GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS

If there was any doubt in people’s minds that our only inhabitantable planet is suffering from “global warming” these last two hurricanes: Florence and Michael will have made those folks think again.

Before the thousands of dead fish could be washed off the shoulders of North Carolina highways  and while vivid stories of the  plague of frogs in North Carolina yards and homes are splashed across  local newspapers, a second “hundred year storm” only three weeks later (Cat 4 Michael) barrels into the Gulf Coast on the Florida panhandle.  These two massive “”once-in-a-hundred-year-storms” arriving on our shores in quick succession only weeks apart have put the lie to the idea that “global warming” is only a plot of the left and the “commies” to undermine the power and wealth a nation rich in fossil fuels—like the USA.

When will the President and the Congress wise up and act?  Human caused climate change  is not “fake news”.  The gases that cause our atmosphere to hold on to the energy it receives from the sun are at the highest level in history.  We generate those gases by burning fossil fuels.  The more of these gases in the atmosphere the greater heat energy the atmosphere holds and the more violent our storms, the more rain we get, the more snowfall that accumulates in winter and the higher river floodwater reaches.  It also causes the rise of sea level as glaciers melt and add water to the oceans.  These effects of climate change are real and are a major threat to the health and well-being of our citizenry and the economy of our nation. There is no ignoring it.  We do so at our peril.

 It was just a few days ago that the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met in Seoul, South Korea (Oct 7, 2018) to evaluate the 2018 global response to the Paris Agreement on climate change of 2016.  The original IPCC meeting of 2016 was attended by 175 countries including 55 industrialized nations which generate  more than half of the world’s  “greenhouse gas” emissions (such as carbon dioxide and methane) at that conclave the attendees agreed to make national efforts to keep global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius (@3.6 deg Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and stabilize those emissions by 2100.

The recent 2018  in Seoul, South Korea to evaluate those efforts Concluded with some dire predictions.  There were some holdouts—the USA one of the major contributors to the atmosphere’s burden of atmospheric  warming gases did not attend.  Australian continues to back its coal industry in defiance of the IPCC recommendations,  The  scientists  agreed  that our efforts so far have not been successful and that we have only to about 2030 to make significant changes in how we use fossil fuels before we reach a point of no return —“tipping pint” in the global climate.  We have only a mere 12 years to avoid catastrophic climate change...according to these most recent assessments.    The storms we have just now experienced affecting our southern states seems to underscore those predictions with a frightful emphasis.