Higher Oil Prices Ahead? OPEC+ Impasse Deepens Amid Rare Spat Between Saudi Arabia and UAE
Oil prices could rise rapidly, endangering the global economic recovery, because of a rare public spat between Saudi Arabia and its Emirati allies, escalating tensions ahead of another meeting of the OPEC+ alliance on Monday.
The United Arab Emirates has bitterly opposed a proposed deal by the alliance of oil producing countries to raise production, causing a stalemate that could derail efforts to curb rising crude prices amid a fragile post-pandemic recovery.
“It’s the whole group versus one country, which is sad to me but this is the reality,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told Bloomberg television, suggesting the United Arab Emirates were isolated within the 23-member OPEC+ bloc.
In a separate interview with Al-Arabiya television aired late Sunday, Prince Abdulaziz called for “a bit of rationality and a bit of compromise” ahead of Monday’s meeting.
Since May, the group has raised oil output little by little, after slashing it more than a year ago when the coronavirus pandemic crushed demand.
The current proposal is to ratchet up output by 400,000 barrels per day each month from August to December, pumping an additional two million bpd of crude into the market by the end of the year.
But talks have floundered over a proposal to extend those measures until the end of 2022.
The UAE, which only supports a short-term increase, on Sunday demanded better terms for a deal extension into 2022.
“The UAE demands to have justice in the new agreement… and it is our sovereign right to demand reciprocity with the rest of the countries,” Emirati Energy Minister Suhail Mohamed Al-Mazrouei said in a television interview on Sunday.
“It is unreasonable to accept further injustice and sacrifice — we have been patient,” he told Sky News Arabia.
At the heart of Riyadh’s dispute with Abu Dhabi is the issue of “baseline” production levels, against which OPEC+ members determine cuts or increases.
Al-Mazrouei said his country’s current baseline, 3.17 million bpd, was too low and should be set at 3.8 million if the deal is extended.
That was rejected by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Abdulaziz.
“I’ve been attending OPEC+ meetings for 34 years and have never seen such a demand,” he told Al-Arabiya.
Their comments were unusually frank in a region where disputes are typically handled discreetly behind palace walls.
Prince Abdulaziz has refused to give in to Abu Dhabi, saying extending the deal until the end of 2022 was necessary for a stable energy market.
“We have to extend,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told Bloomberg.
“The extension puts lots people in their comfort zone,” he added.
‘Breakdown scenario’
A failure to reach a deal could drive crude prices sharply higher, threatening an already tenuous global recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
It also threatens to break up the OPEC+ alliance, which could trigger a price war that would create global economic havoc.
Last year, a similar disagreement over oil quotas between Saudi Arabia and Russia led to an aggressive price war that exacerbated the price collapse triggered by the pandemic.
But the UAE has stood firm, stalling OPEC+ talks last week.
“There is clearly a rush to make the most of this next and perhaps last oil boom,” Karen Young, from the Middle East Institute, told S&P Global Platts.
“I think for the Gulf producers, the competition now becomes more of a customer relationship game.”
Oil traders are watching anxiously as the group is set to reconvene on Monday at the cartel’s Vienna headquarters.
“The prospect of a no-deal outcome — as well as a UAE OPEC exit — has risen materially,” said analyst Helima Croft, of RBC Capital Markets.
“The White House may need to work the phones over the weekend to help bridge the gap and prevent a breakdown scenario on Monday that could send prices spiralling higher.”
The alliance has to navigate a complex market that has seen an uptick in demand which may yet turn out to be fragile, as well as a possible return of more Iranian exports in the medium term.
But rising prices have also prompted grumbles. Brent crude climbed above $76 a barrel last week, irking the United States as well as large crude consumers like India as they seek to relaunch their economies.
—AFP contributed to this report.
THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES UP SAUDIS ASS! GET THE BOOK HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUID.YOU CAN BET THE BUSH LIBRARY WAS FUNDED WITH DIRTY SAUDIS MONEY. OUR 'LEADERSHIP' ALWAYS KNOWS HOW TO SUCK OFF A BRIBE!!!
CLOSET MUSLIM OBOMB HAS ALWAYS BEEN UP SAUDI ASS. DIDN'T THE SAUDIS FUND THE PHONY SOCIOPATH LAWYER OBOMB'S SO CALLED PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY, WHICH IN FACT, WILL NEVER HAVE OBOMB'S PAPERS???
LYING LAWYER OBOMB ATTEMPTED TO STOP LEGAL ACTION AGAINST HIS SAUDI PAYMASTERS.
AND OF COURSE WE HAVE GLOBAL PARAISTE LAWYER HILLARY AND BILLARY. THE SAUDIS FUNDED CLINTON'S LIBRARY AND PILED IT HIGH IN THE FRADULENT CLINTON FOUNDATION FAMILY SLUSH FUND.
THESE PIG POLS CAN ALWAYS BE BOUGHT!
HAVE LOOTED THE COUNTRY AS MUCH AS THE BUSH CRIME FAMILY!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/bush-family-mourns-hw-bush-man-who-did.html
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended political family of George H. W. Bush.
One topic that Hillary is quick to criticize President Trump on is his relationship with Saudia Arabia. It’s ironic given the Clinton Foundation’s refusal to state that they will no longer accept financial donations from The Kingdom as others have.
But the Clinton Foundation, to which donations declined dramatically after Clinton’s 2016 defeat, has taken multi-million dollar contributions from Saudi Arabia in the past and isn’t ruling out continuing to accept them.
The Clinton Foundation accepted between $10 and $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with donations coming as late as 2014. A now-defunct group named “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” which was reportedly co-founded by a Saudi Prince and often worked as a PR front for the kingdom, also donated between $1 and $5 million.
20 years after 9/11, lawsuit against Saudis hits key moment
As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, victims’ relatives and their lawyers are hoping they can finally prove in court what they’ve long suspected: that the Saudi government was complicit
20 years after 9/11, lawsuit against Saudis hits key momentBy ERIC TUCKERAssociated PressThe Associated PressWASHINGTON
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches, victims’ relatives are pressing the courts to answer what they see as lingering questions about the Saudi government’s role in the attacks.
A lawsuit that accuses Saudi Arabia of being complicit took a major step forward this year with the questioning under oath of former Saudi officials, but those depositions remain under seal and the U.S. has withheld a trove of other documents as too sensitive for disclosure.
The information vacuum has exasperated families who for years have tried to make the case that the Saudi government facilitated the attacks. Past investigations have outlined ties between Saudi nationals and some of the airplane hijackers, but have not established the government was directly involved.
“The legal team and the FBI, investigative agencies, can know about the details of my dad’s death and thousands of other family members’ deaths, but the people who it’s most relevant to can’t know,” said Brett Eagleson, whose father, Bruce, was among the World Trade Center victims. “It’s adding salt to an open wound for all the 9/11 family members.”
Lawyers for the victims plan to ask a judge to lift a protective order so their clients can access secret government documents as well as testimony from key subjects interviewed over the last year. Though the plaintiffs’ lawyers are unable to discuss what they’ve learned from depositions, they insist the information they’ve gathered advances their premise of Saudi complicity.
“We’re in a situation where only now, through the documents we have gotten and what our investigators have discovered and the testimony we’ve taken, only now is this iceberg that’s been underwater” floating to the surface, said attorney James Kreindler.
The Saudi government has denied any connection to the attacks. But the question has long vexed investigators and is at the heart of a long-running lawsuit in Manhattan on behalf of thousands of victims. The issue gained traction not only because 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi — as was Osama bin Laden, the mastermind — but also because of suspicions they must have had help navigating Western society given their minimal experience in the U.S.
Public documents released in the last two decades, including by the 9/11 Commission, have detailed numerous Saudi entanglements but have not proven government complicity.
They show how the first hijackers to arrive in the U.S., Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, were met and assisted by a Saudi national in 2000. That man, Omar al-Bayoumi, who helped them find and lease an apartment in San Diego, had ties to the Saudi government, investigators have said. Just before Bayoumi met the hijackers, he met with Fahad al-Thumairy, at the time an accredited diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles who investigators say led an extremist faction at his mosque. Bayoumi and Thumairy left the U.S. weeks before the attacks.
The 9/11 Commission, which assembled the most prominent accounting of the run-up to the attacks, laid out those connections but found Bayoumi to be an “unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement” with Islamic extremists. It said that while it was logical to regard Thumairy as a possible contact for the hijackers, investigators didn’t find evidence he actually assisted them. He has denied it.
More broadly, the commission in 2004 said it found no evidence the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials had funded al-Qaida, though it noted Saudi-linked charities could have diverted money to the group.
In 2016, the final chapter of a congressional report on the attacks was declassified. The document named people who knew the hijackers after they arrived in the U.S. and helped them get apartments, open bank accounts and connect with mosques. It said some hijackers had connections to, and received support from, people who may be connected to the Saudi government, and that information from FBI sources suggested at least two of them may have been intelligence officers.
But it didn’t reach a conclusion on complicity, saying while it was possible the interactions could reveal proof of Saudi government support for terrorism, there were also possibly more innocuous explanations for the associations.
The FBI conducted its own investigation, Operation Encore, with some agents drawing a tighter link.
One former agent, Stephen Moore, stated in a 2017 declaration that al-Qaida wouldn’t have sent Hazmi and Mihdhar to the U.S. “without a support structure in place.” The document said the FBI believed Bayoumi was a “clandestine agent” and that Thumairy knew the hijackers “were on a complex pre-planned mission.” He said he had concluded that “diplomatic and intelligence personnel of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia knowingly provided material support to the two 9/11 hijackers.”
Families of the 9/11 victims are hoping to prove similar allegations. They believe the entire story has not been revealed because of the U.S. government’s reluctance for a full accounting. Any new evidence they might surface could be politically explosive given Saudi Arabia’s role as a Middle East partner.
A spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return a message seeking comment. Lawyers for the Saudi government declined to comment.
Andrew Maloney, another of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, said that besides getting compensation for families, they hope Saudi Arabia will accept responsibility and commit to root out terrorism.
“If they did all three of those things, that would be a huge victory,” he said.
The suit gained steam with a judge’s 2018 ruling permitting plaintiffs’ lawyers to do a limited fact-finding investigation.
Bayoumi and Thumairy were questioned in recent weeks, as was Musaed al Jarrah, a former Saudi embassy official whose name Yahoo News said was inadvertently revealed in an FBI filing last year that suggested he was suspected of having directed support for the hijackers.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has given lawyers once-secret documents but under a protective order. Some information remains concealed entirely after the department invoked a “state secrets” privilege to block certain material seen as potentially jeopardizing national security.
“Sooner or later, this trial is going to become mainstream, and there’s going to be a tremendous amount of public pressure, and they can’t keep things secret forever,” Eagleson said.
Those terrorists who overstayed their visas include:
· Hani Hasan Hanjour from Saudi Arabia
· Nawaf al-Hamzi from Saudi Arabia
· Mohamed Atta from Egypt
· Satam al-Suqami from Saudi Arabia
· Waleed al-Shehri from Saudi Arabia
· Marwan al-Shehhi from the United Arab Emirates
· Ahmed al-Ghamdi from Saudi Arabia
Images of 9/11: A Visual Remembrance
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/11/images-911-visual-remembrance/
Judge orders testimony from Saudi officials in suit over involvement in 9/11 attacks
Chief Investigative Correspondent,
On the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a federal judge directed the Saudi Arabian government to make as many as 24 current and former officials available for depositions about their possible knowledge of events leading up to the airplane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 Americans. Those officials include Prince Bandar, the former ambassador to the United States, and his longtime chief of staff.
The order was immediately hailed by families of the 9/11 victims as a milestone in their years-long effort to prove that some Saudi officials were either complicit in the attacks or aware of the kingdom’s support for some of the hijackers in the months before they hijacked four American airliners and crashed three of them into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.
A fourth plane, whose presumed target was the U.S. Capitol, was commandeered by passengers and crashed in Shanksville, Pa., where President Trump and possibly Joe Biden are expected at memorial ceremonies Friday .
“This is a game changer,” Brett Eagleson, whose father was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Towers and who serves as a spokesman for the families, said of the ruling by Federal Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn in New York. “This is the most significant ruling we’ve had to date in this lawsuit. And to have this on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, you couldn’t script this any better. The families are elated.”
The effect of the ruling may depend on the willingness of the Saudi government to make its citizens available for testimony — especially since it includes some high-ranking figures who no longer hold official positions and therefore cannot be compelled to testify. But any open defiance of the court ruling by the Saudis, or resistance from some of the figures named, could further exacerbate a relationship that has already been strained by the 2018 Saudi assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — an act the CIA has concluded was likely ordered by the country’s de factor ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The question is especially fraught for Bandar, a member of the Saudi royal family who for years maintained a close relationship with senior U.S. government officials (earning him the nickname “Bandar Bush” because of his ties to the Bush family) and whose daughter, Princess Reema bint Bandar, serves as the current Saudi ambassador in Washington. “If he chooses to thumb his nose at a U.S. court, you better believe there will be political fallout from that,” said Eagleson.
A lawyer for the Saudis did not respond to a request for comment Thursday night, and no evidence has surfaced in the case that establishes Bandar had personal knowledge of what the Saudi hijackers were up to. But during his tenure in Washington, from 1983 to 2005, he oversaw a sprawling embassy staff including some, especially those with responsibilities for Islamic affairs, who have been identified in recently surfaced FBI documents as suspects who may have helped provide support for the hijackers in the United States.
The question of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks by Saudi officials has been a subject of intense debate for years, dividing officials within the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community. The Saudis have consistently denied any connection to the 9/11 hijackers, telling the New York Times and ProPublica in January: “Saudi Arabia is and has always been a close and critical ally of the U.S. in the fight against terrorism.”
But lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims have been conducting a painstaking investigation that has developed a circumstantial case that two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, received financial and other support from individuals associated with the Saudi government after they arrived in the U.S. after attending an al-Qaida planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
As reported by Yahoo News last May, previously undisclosed FBI documents show that a foreign ministry official within the Saudi Embassy, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who had duties overseeing the activities of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, had repeated contacts with two figures at the heart of the case and was even suspected of directing them to assist the hijackers. One was Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi Islamic Affairs official and radical cleric who served as the imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles and met with the two hijackers there. The other was Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent who directly helped the hijackers, finding them an apartment, lending them money and setting them up with bank accounts, after they flew into Los Angeles airport on Jan. 15, 2000.
Al-Jarrah, who until last year served in the Saudi Embassy in Morocco, is among the current and former officials named in the order by Netburn, directing the Saudis to make available for testimony. Al-Thumairy and al-Bayoumi were also cited.
But significantly, the list includes other high-ranking royals who still serve in the government, including Saleh bin Abdulaziz, who served as Minister of Islamic Affairs at the time and, according to the judge’s ruling, extended al-Thuimairy’s time in the United States and promoted him.
In her discussion of Bandar, Judge Netburn noted that lawyers for the Saudi government had persuasively argued that no documents show that he directly oversaw the work of al-Jarrah and al-Thumairy in the United States. But, she added, court documents obtained during the course of discovery — much of which remain under seal — “indicates that Prince Bandar likely has firsthand knowledge … [of] the role that al-Thumairy was assigned by the Kingdom and the diplomatic cover” provided to him.
The judge also authorized the deposition of Ahmed al-Qattan, Bandar’s longtime chief of staff, noting that court documents show that he “likely has unique firsthand knowledge of al-Jarrah and al-Thumairy’s relevant pre-9/11 activity and any post-9/11 ratification of their conduct.”
Video: Helping Saudis Slip Away
The highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation right after 9/11.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/video-helping-saudis-slip-away-frontpagemagcom/
Wed Sep 16, 2020
Bill And Hillary Tour Underwhelms In Ticket Sales, Attendance
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/12/01/bill-hillary-tour-underwhelms-ticket-sales-attendance/
KAREN TOWNSENDPosted at 5:31 pm on December 1, 2018
Bill and Hillary Clinton have taken their show on the road. Ticket sales for “An Evening with the Clintons” are not what they once might have been, according to all reports. With stops deliberately booked in what are assumed to be Clinton-friendly cities, the aging power couple seems to be having trouble filling seats.
It’s not exactly a whirlwind tour. The schedule is downright lethargic in the beginning. The first stop on November 27 was in Toronto, Canada with a stop the next night in Montreal. The next stop on the schedule is Houston on December 4. In light of the passing of former President George H.W. Bush, that date may be canceled or changed. But, that’s all there is to the tour until 2019. They start back up in April 2019 in New York City and continue through May, ending in Las Vegas on May 5. Does anyone else think it’s odd that a former U.S. president and a former Secretary of State began a self-promoting tour in Canada? Maybe it’s just me.
The venue in Toronto only sold 3,300 tickets. Whole sections of the arena were empty. I checked the website for ticket prices and for the Houston stop, the cheap seats go for $15.00 and the most expensive ticket price I could find was $1146.00. That’s a real bargain, especially compared to the book tour events (it’s not just a book tour, they are events) scheduled for former First Lady Michelle Obama. The high-end prices for the Michelle tour go for $10,000. That is what I found and it’s not a stop in Houston but in Dallas at the American Airlines Center. The Clinton venue in Houston is smaller.
Anyway, you won’t be surprised to read that a good bit of the Clinton question and answer conversation centers around her bitterness toward President Trump. He lives rent-free in her head.
And the former secretary of state was prepared to mock Trump’s interview with the Washington Post just hours after it published, shaking her head at Trump telling the paper “my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”
You “literally you can’t make this stuff up,” she said. “A dozen times a day your head is spinning.”< And near the end of the event, Hillary Clinton returned to Trump's gut, criticizing him for saying he does not "believe" a recently released dire government report on climate change. "It just riles me up," she said. "If you won't listen to people who actually spend time over decades studying problems, my goodness, your gut is not the answer to everything that is important in the world, I'm sorry."
The tour comes at a time when speculation is strong on whether or not Hillary will actually make another attempt at a presidential run. She joked about standing for Parliament in Canada when asked about any plans to run but you know she’s thinking about. I don’t think she ever stops thinking about it. She’s consumed with anger that Donald Trump won. While the next generation of Democrats is ready to move up, the Clintons (especially Hillary) refuse to leave the stage. It’s no wonder ticket sales are slow. Why would anyone pay money to listen to them when almost any day an interview or quote is available in print or on television? It’s not like either of them are saying anything new.
Also, there’s the re-emergence of Monica Lewinsky. She’s been telling her story after all these years. Don’t expect either Clinton to be asked about that whole scandal, though. It’s not happening. The former horndog-in-chief still gets a pass on the difficult questions.
But the kickoff comes at a tenuous time for the Clintons: Not only is their standing in the Democratic Party in question after neither was particularly prolific during the midterms, but the event comes amid a renewed focus on Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, a moment in history that has gained more attention recently because of a multi-part series on the affair on A&E and other retrospectives. The Lewinsky affair and other allegations against of sexual impropriety Bill Clinton are also being re-examined in the light of the #MeToo era.
One topic that Hillary is quick to criticize President Trump on is his relationship with Saudia Arabia. It’s ironic given the Clinton Foundation’s refusal to state that they will no longer accept financial donations from The Kingdom as others have.
“We have a president who is part of the cover-up as to what happened in that consulate or embassy when Mr. Khashoggi was murdered,” Clinton said. “And we have a president and those closest to him who have their own personal commercial interests.”
But the Clinton Foundation, to which donations declined dramatically after Clinton’s 2016 defeat, has taken multi-million dollar contributions from Saudi Arabia in the past and isn’t ruling out continuing to accept them.
The Clinton Foundation accepted between $10 and $25 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with donations coming as late as 2014. A now-defunct group named “Friends of Saudi Arabia,” which was reportedly co-founded by a Saudi Prince and often worked as a PR front for the kingdom, also donated between $1 and $5 million.
Implying corruption about the sitting president in business dealings is probably not the best idea. She and her husband have a legacy of corruption. She should just sit that conversation out.
Tulsi Gabbard: U.S. Government ‘Is Hiding the Truth’ on 9/11 Terror Attacks
1 Nov 2019698
4:22
Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, reacted to the difficulties Chris Ganci and Brett Eagleson, two relatives of victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were having in their quest to obtain more information about Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 9/11.
Gabbard accused the federal government of undermining efforts of achieving more transparency, which she said was being done at the behest of Saudi Arabia.
Partial transcript as follows:
CARLSON: This is one of those issues I don’t think is partisan. It doesn’t need to be. It shouldn’t be partisan in any sense.
GABBARD: Absolutely not.
CARLSON: It’s an American issue. Why would the U.S. government ever side with the Saudi Kingdom of all countries against our citizens?
GABBARD: This is the real question that’s at stake. This story that we’re hearing from the families of those who were killed on 9/11 pushes this issue to the forefront where, for so long, leaders in our government have said, well, Saudi Arabia is our great ally. They’re a partner in counterterrorism, turning a blind eye or completely walking away from the reality that Saudi Arabia time and again, has proven to be the opposite.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: They’re undermining our National Security interests. They are — as you said, they are the number one exporter of this Wahhabi extremist ideology.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: They’re a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists, like al Qaeda and ISIS around the world. They’re directly providing arms and assistance to al Qaeda, in places like Yemen, and in Syria.
And as we are seeing here, it is our government, our own government that is hiding the truth from Chris and Brett and the many other families of those who were killed on 9/11. For what? Where do the loyalties really lie?
CARLSON: So I was thinking in the commercial break that of the number of people I know personally, not abstractly, but have had lunch with in this city who are taking currently money from the Saudi Kingdom or their allies in the Emirates, the Gulf States, and I wonder if that maybe play some role, like a lot of people on their payroll here.
GABBARD: Yes. We talk about the foreign policy establishment in Washington.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: We talk about the political elite, the military-industrial complex. We hear things from some of those people, well, you know, hey, we sell a lot of weapons to Saudi Arabia. So you know, if we burn bridges with them, then who are we going to sell our weapons to? Where are we going to get that money from?
All of these excuses that have nothing to do with the interests of the American people, with our national security interests. And that’s — I’m proud and honored to be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with these 9/11 families in demanding this truth because, yes, it is about truth and justice and closure for all of them now as we approach 20 years since that attack on 9/11. It’s also about our National Security.
CARLSON: Yes.
GABBARD: Safety and security of the American people.
CARLSON: I’ll never forget right after 9/11, living here in the City of Washington, our airports were closed. All airports were closed in this country.
GABBARD: Yes.
CARLSON: And learning that chartered flights of Saudi citizens had been allowed with U.S. government approval to take off and run back to Saudi Arabia without being questioned by authorities here and thinking you know, if I tried to do that, I’d be in prison. Why are we giving preference to Saudi citizens over our own citizens?
GABBARD: Exactly. It makes no sense if you think about what would happen if we actually had leaders who were putting the interests of our country above all else. You follow the money trail. It goes back to the military-industrial complex.
You look at how many of the think tanks here in Washington who send so-called experts to go and testify before Congress who are funded by Saudi Arabia to spout their talking points.
You saw how the legislation that we passed in Congress. I was proud to vote for legislation that allowed families like Chris and Brett’s to sue Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia trotted out all of their lobbyists to say why that would be so dangerous, so dangerous for our interests, for them to be allowed to seek justice for their families.
This is about standing up for our country. This is about standing up for our principles and our freedoms and for the truth.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
Obama-Clinton Fundraiser Imaad Zuberi Cops a Plea
Clinton foundation contributor was conduit for Saudi sugardaddy Mohammed Al Rahbani.
October 31, 2019
Lloyd Billingsley
Since his election to the presidency in 2016, the Democrat-Deep State-Media axis has targeted Donald Trump for foreign entanglements they claim should remove him from office. Now comes news of foreign entanglements and foreign cash for the previous president.
“Middleman helped Saudi give to Obama inaugural,” proclaims the headline on the October 29 report by Alan Suderman and Jim Mustian, billed as an Associated Press exclusive. As the authors explain, U.S. election law prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions to the inaugural celebrations of American presidents. As it turns out, the law was violated.
A “Saudi tycoon,” Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani, routed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Obama inaugural through an “intermediary,” Imaad Zuberi. He, in turn, is a “jet-setting fundraiser and venture capitalist,” who has “raised millions of dollars for Democrats and Republicans alike over the years.” Despite the appearance of bipartisanship, Zuberi is more narrowly tailored.
Imaad Zuberi “served as a top fundraiser for both Obama and Hillary Clinton during their presidential runs, including stints on both of their campaign finance committees.” One campaign, not identified, took donations “in the name of one of Zuberi’s dead relatives” and a political committee, also unidentified, “took donations from a person Zuberi invented.” As the DOJ charged, Zuberi pleaded guilty to “falsifying records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level U.S. government officials,” and it was hardly his first brush with the law.
“Elite Fundraiser for Obama and Clinton Linked to Justice Department Probe,” read the headline on Bill Allison’s August 28, 2015 exclusive in Foreign Policy. The calling card of the elite political fundraiser are photographs, “bumping fists with President Barack Obama in front of a Christmas tree at a White House reception. Sharing a belly laugh with Vice President Joe Biden at a formal luncheon,” and posing “cheek to cheek with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.”
Not only is Zuberi a major fundraiser for her campaign, notes Allison, “he also donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, which has already come under fire for accepting money from donors — many of them foreign — with interests before the U.S. government while she was secretary of state.” And as Allison learned, Hillary’s 2008 campaign benefitted from “straw donors” set up by Sant Singh Chatwal and Norman Hsu, both convicted of election law violations.
Zuberi also used straw donors in more recent illegal activity. As to the affiliation of those mysterious campaigns and committees, the AP writers provide a hint.
Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani has “talked about his support of Obama. He posted pictures on his website of himself and his wife standing with Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden and their spouses at a 2013 inaugural event.” Alas, “the website was taken down shortly after Zuberi’s plea was made public.”
As Paul Delacourt of the FBI’s Los Angeles office explains, “American influence is not for sale.” Mr. Zuberi “lured individuals who were seeking political influence in violation of U.S. law, and in the process, enriched himself by defrauding those with whom he interacted.” According to the DOJ, that “could send him to prison for a lengthy period of time.”
According to Suderman and Mustian, “Zuberi’s case raises questions about the degree to which political committees vet donors.” And as FEC boss Ellen Weintraub told the writers, “I’m deeply concerned about foreigners trying to intervene in our elections, and I don’t think we’re doing enough to try to stop it.” They might start by looking in the right place.
Unconventional candidate Donald Trump, a man of considerable means, financed his own campaign. Trump had no need to consort with the likes of Zuberi or his dead relatives and those he invents. And because Trump financed his own campaign, he owes nothing to anybody, foreign or domestic.
Adam “sack of” Schiff, as Judge Jeanine Pirro respectfully calls him, claimed he had evidence in plain sight that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. Two years and a Mueller investigation later, such evidence is nowhere in sight. Schiff’s current inquisition, perhaps more bogus than the Mueller probe, is best seen a diversion from John Durham’s criminal investigation of those who launched the Russia hoax. That is where DOJ and election officials should be looking.
Did Clinton Foundation donor Imaad Zerubi turn up on any of those 30,000 subpoenaed emails Hillary Clinton deleted? Did Zerubi see any classified material? Were there any texts from Zerubi and his foreign clients on the cell phones Hillary’s squad smashed up with hammers? Was Clinton grossly negligent, or just extremely careless? And so on. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton also enjoyed other foreign intervention, right out in the open.
Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, a former mayor of Mexico City, had worked with voter-registration and participation groups in California, Arizona, Florida, Chicago, and elsewhere. As Ebrard told Francisco Goldman of the New Yorker, in 2016 he “decided to get more involved” by working on get-out-the-vote campaigns on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
A powerful foreign national openly interferes in an American election, and nobody calls him on it. Now that Clinton Foundation lackey Imaad Zuberi has copped a plea, the FEC and DOJ should look into it.
Congress overrides Obama veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By Tom Carter
On Wednesday, the US Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of legislation that would permit victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their families to sue Saudi Arabia. Declassified documents released this year confirm the involvement of Saudi intelligence agents in the funding, organization, and planning of the attacks—facts which were covered up for years by the Bush and Obama administrations.
The vote, 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of Representatives, represents the first and only congressional override of Obama’s presidency. Under the US Constitution, the president’s veto can be overturned only by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The Obama administration and the military and intelligence agencies, backed by sections of the media, including the New York Times, have vigorously denounced the legislation. Obama personally, together with Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all publicly opposed the bill.
In a letter to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama warned that the bill would “threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect the United States, including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials, overseas.”
In a lead editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times similarly warned that “if the bill becomes law, other countries could adopt similar legislation defining their own exemptions to sovereign immunity. Because no country is more engaged in the world than the United States—with military bases, drone operations, intelligence missions and training programs—the Obama administration fears that Americans could be subject to legal actions abroad.”
In other words, the bill would set a precedent for families of victims of American aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of victims of “targeted killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits against US war criminal in their own countries’ courts.
Obama denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday. “It's an example of why sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I wish Congress here had done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived as voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's a hard vote for people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do ... And it was, you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously wrote, “When first we practice to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies surrounding the September 11 attacks continue to unravel, one senses that the American ruling class and its representatives do not see a clear way out of the dilemma.
Openly torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an admission of guilt. Indeed, the Obama administration, the military and intelligence agencies, and theNew York Times are publicly working to cover up a crime perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is an ally of the United States. The mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill constitutes an admission that the US government is hiding something with respect to the September 11 attacks.
The alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling class, is also fraught with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families of September 11 victims will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi monarchy, an ally of both Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11 attacks. This, in turn, will highlight long and sordid history of American support for Islamic fundamentalism in the
Middle East, which continues to the present day in Syria and Libya.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, a full public accounting of the roles of Saudi intelligence agents in the September 11 attacks will once again raise questions about the role of the American state in the attacks. Why did US intelligence
agencies ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the attacks, based on Saudi Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why did the US government deliberately cover up the Saudi connection after the fact, instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state sponsor of terrorism” and that Iraq was developing “weapons of mass destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The New York Times, for its part, simply lied about the evidence of Saudi complicity. “The legislation is motivated by a belief among the 9/11 families that Saudi Arabia played a role in the attacks, because 15 of the 19 hijackers, who were members of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors wrote. “But the independent American commission that investigated the attacks found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed the terrorists.”
In fact, at least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar al-Bayoumi, who was identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Saudi intelligence agent with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the hijackers were paid for work in fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with the Saudi Defense Ministry, with which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The night before the attacks, three of the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official.
These and other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page suppressed chapter of the 2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. After 14 years of stalling, the document was finally released to the public this summer.
Yet the New York Times continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier and sponsor of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as “a partner in combating terrorism.”
The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed Wednesday, is a direct reaction to these revelations of Saudi complicity in the September 11 attacks, under pressure from organizations of survivors and families of victims. The law amends the federal judicial code to allow US courts “to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of. .. an act of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although the bill nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has threatened massive retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of the country before they can be seized in American legal proceedings. This reaction alone confirms the monarchy’s guilt.
During Wednesday’s session, many of the statements on the floor of the Senate were nervous and apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of the bill, Republican Senator Bob Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns about the sovereign immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries as a result of this vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had unintended consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The anxious comments of legislators and the crisscrossing denunciations within the ruling elite reflect the significance of this controversy for the entire American political establishment. For 15 years, the American population has been relentlessly told that the events of September 11, 2001 “changed everything,” warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the militarization of the police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian levels of spying, death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions of dollars of expenditures.
The collapse of the official version of that day’s events shows that American politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
