New York Times video detailing killing of Jamal Khashoggi
Nicholas Kristof: President Trump, a bull in a China shop
I’m increasingly concerned that the U.S. and China are heading for a collision. At a time when the global economy and world stock markets are fragile, this would be bad for everybody. I do think there is a reasonable chance that Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping will hammer out some kind of a tentative deal at their G20 meeting in two weeks, but I fear that may be only a temporary ceasefire and that the longer term trends are likely to lead to more friction. One basic problem is that Trump and Xi are a bit alike: Both are overconfident, impetuous authoritarian nationalists who disregard human rights. Hence the symmetry of two freight trains colliding, the topic of my column on the long run souring toward China and the dangers ahead. Here’s what you should watch out for.
.. I’m still gnashing my teeth at the “caravan hoax” pulled by President Trump to scare voters into supporting GOP candidates in the midterms, and I think too many news organizations were too credulous in covering the story without sufficient context and fact-checking. We in the media shouldn’t allow ourselves to become a channel for fear-mongering and demonization. And now it looks as if the U.S. may spend $200 million pointlessly keeping U.S. troops in the desert near the border, away from their families over Thanksgiving, as a forgotten prop for the midterms. Meanwhile, we can’t afford effective treatment for 90 percent of people with drug addictions, and we can’t afford to reduce lead exposures that damage the brains of more than half a million American kids each year. Grrrrrr.
Saudi Arabia has changed its story again on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, pinning it on some fall guys but protecting the crown prince. And the U.S. seems happy to buy into that cover-up. Indeed, NBC reports that the U.S. is considering deporting a Turkish dissident cleric (something Turkey very much wants) as a kind of bribe to get Turkey to keep quiet about the torture, murder and dismemberment of Jamal. What the Trump administration doesn’t seem to appreciate is that the crown prince is not a force for stability in the Middle East, but for instability (as we’ve seen in the mess he’s made with Yemen, Qatar and Lebanon). Check out this extraordinary video reconstruction of the murder of Jamal and subsequent cover-up.
Saudi Arabia’s latest account of Khashoggi’s death is shocking in its audacity
THE NEW account of Jamal Khashoggi’s death offered by Saudi Arabia on Thursday was shocking in its audacity. Having previously acknowledged that the journalist was the victim of premeditated murder, authorities in Riyadh reverted to an earlier, discredited tale: that Mr. Khashoggi was killed spontaneously inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul by a team sent to return him to Saudi Arabia.
.. By offering up this incredible account, the Saudi regime is baldly defying all those, including leading members of Congress, who called for full disclosure and accountability. Yet the Trump administration appears ready to accept its stonewalling.
.. Accepting the Saudi story means ignoring a number of well-established facts. An audio recording of Mr. Khashoggi’s last moments, which Turkish officials shared with CIA Director Gina Haspel, indicates he was attacked and strangled immediately after entering the consulate. The Saudi version claims he died only after a quarrel and a struggle that prompted the head of the “negotiation team” to decide to murder him by injecting him with drugs.
.. The Saudi account says the operation was ordered by the then-deputy chief of intelligence, Ahmed al-Assiri, and advised by Saud al-Qahtani, a court propagandist. Both are close to Mohammed bin Salman. The two aides, so Riyadh’s story goes, were not complicit in the decision to kill Mr. Khashoggi and were fooled by their team’s claim that the journalist had left the consulate alive.
.. That doesn’t explain a portion of the audio recording reported by the New York Times, in which Maher Mutreb, a close associate of the crown prince, instructs an official by phone to “tell your boss” that the mission was accomplished. As the Times reported, U.S. intelligence officials believe the “boss” is “almost certainly Prince Mohammed.”
.. Other contradictions and improbabilities abound. It’s known that a forensic expert who specializes in autopsies was on the Saudi team; the Turks said he arrived with a bone saw for dismembering Mr. Khashoggi’s body. Yet the Saudis would have the world believe that the specialist was recruited only to clean up any evidence of an abduction, and that officials in Riyadh didn’t know about him.
.. This all-too-transparent tissue of lies only underlines the need for a genuinely independent international investigation led by the United Nations
.. Instead, the Trump administration is abetting the Saudi coverup; the new sanctions do not even cover Mr. Assiri, the official who Riyadh says ordered the Khashoggi mission.
Trudeau says Canadian Officials Have Heard Recording in Khashoggi Killing
Prime minister says Ottawa is working with Turks on incident involving slain journalist
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the first leader to publicly say that his country’s intelligence officials had listened to an audio recording that Turkish officials say is evidence that the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by Saudi operatives.
.. “On October 24, a representative of the French intelligence has listened to the audio recording and detailed information including a transcript of said audio,” Fahrettin Altun, communications director of the Turkish presidency, told Agence France-Presse, according to Turkish officials. “If there is miscommunication between the French government’s various agencies, it is up to the French authorities, not Turkey, to take care of that problem.”.. Canada’s diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia has been strained since August, when Saudi Arabia downgraded ties between the two countries after Canada’s foreign ministry sent a tweet calling on the kingdom to immediately release human-rights activists who had been jailed. Saudi Arabia said it viewed the remarks, which were also translated into Arabic, as an unacceptable interference in its internal affairs. It expelled Canada’s ambassador to the kingdom and instructed thousands of Saudi students who were studying in Canada to leave the country.The diplomatic spat hasn’t affected a $10 billion deal, agreed to in 2014, to ship hundreds of armored vehicles from a Canadian subsidiary of General Dynamics Corp. to Saudi Arabia.