Many Questions, Few Answers

 “Instead of a feel-good ‘touting accomplishments’ campaign, Democrats should rip into the GOP with a warning that America’s future is at stake. Because it is.” John Nichols, The Nation May 16-23, 2022

Maybe we need to think of the world as might the late novelist John LeCarre, as an interconnected web of power, relationships, ideologies, and mutual interests, global and individual rivals jousting for advantage, influence, money, and the raw power to order things as they desire. I have many questions and few answers. Who is running the world? Who are the global movers and shakers so wealthy they can hire private security forces, fund their own intelligence-gathering apparatus, murder rivals with impunity, and control the media? The de facto head of the Saudi monarchy, Mohammad bin Salman, gave Jared Kushner $2 billion with few strings attached. Why? In payment or repayment for what? Where do the interests of MBS and Jared Kushner intersect? Where did Donald Trump go on his first official state visit? Saudi Arabia. Illuminated globes and sword dancing, remember?  

What did Putin and Trump talk about for ninety minutes in Helsinki in 2018? 

Why has MBS been able to evade responsibility for ordering the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Why is Julian Assange wasting away in jail, in one of the cruelest instances of state torture I’ve ever lived through. When was Assange, a journalist, last a free citizen?

After the election of 2016 and the unthinkable happened, how many contacts were made between Trump campaign officials and representatives of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Russia? How do those contacts relate to Putin’s decision to launch his Ukraine war this year, the price of oil, and the money laundering Saudi Arabia and the UAE are doing for Russian oligarchs. How is Putin funding his war? We need a bare white wall and a pad of Post-It Notes, like in the detective thrillers, to chart the web of relationships, channels, companies, governments and safe havens. It’s an interconnected world, particularly when money is involved. 

The Israeli Defense Forces have murdered a well-known correspondent for Al-Jazeera, Shireen Abu Akleh. She was shot in the neck by an IDF marksman. The US provides the usual amplification of Israeli government denials, and will insure there will be no consequences. That’s how this special relationship works. Total immunity. 

When Trump was president he was always boasting about how America had achieved energy independence, producing so much surplus oil and gas that we were exporting it. Where is that independence now, when the price of gasoline hovers around $6 a gallon? Do you think the price is being manipulated? Let me put the question a different way: do you trust Big Oil? 

With another spare white wall and additional Post-It Notes, we could chart all the individuals charged with crimes, convicted of crimes, or pardoned who played a role in Trump’s 2016 campaign and his four disastrous years in the White House. This would make for an interesting visual. Trump’s own family members would be heavily represented. 

I imagine the funeral of Donald Trump. Who will attend, speak, bow their heads, cry? Will millions of people wait in long lines to view the dead man, as millions did when Juan Peron died in Argentina? Will it be a sea of red hats or only a smattering? How many will rejoice that this privileged, incompetent, and demented scourge has finally departed this earth? I know where I will be, and with whom. 

This Week in the Kleptocracy

“In public relations, perception becomes the highest value, just as in capitalist societies, profit is the singular ethic.” Jason Hirthler

EAR TO THE GROUND:

“I don’t have any financial interests with Saudi Arabia, never have.” Donald Trump

“We don’t know what happened to Jamal Khashoggi. Just because he disappeared inside a Saudi consulate doesn’t mean the Saudis had anything to do with it. Could have been a lot of people, many different people, maybe Turks, maybe Greeks, maybe rogue elements we don’t know about. The fake news media is jumping to conclusions, as usual. The King of Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince, both fine men, very fine men, told me they had nothing to do with it, and I believe them, very strongly, very bigly.” Donald Trump

“I, Donald Trump, do solemnly swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, unless doing so interferes with my personal business interests.” Donald Trump  

RECENT HEADLINES:

Trump Humiliates Chinese Panda, Calls for Sanctions.

Trump Compares Crown Prince Salman to George Washington.

Trump Mocks Deaf-Mute Student at White House Ceremony.

Trump Claims Jamal Khashoggi On Vacation In Istanbul, Says Murder Allegation is Fake News Hoax.

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi looks more and more like an episode of the Blacklist gone awry. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, darling of corporate America and New York Times sage Tom Friedman, is, like Donald J. Trump, a rich fuck-up, thin-skinned, not very bright, who relies on brute force to have his way, and makes most everything he touches turn rancid. No wonder Trump admires him. By most accounts, Khashoggi didn’t earn the “dissident” label hung on him by the Western media; he was a relatively mild critic of the monarchy, but he obviously got under bin Salman’s skin, and paid the price for it. Trump and the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who reminds me of a self-satisfied mob bagman, claim the Saudis are innocent until more evidence is unearthed, like video or audio recordings said to be in the hands of Turkish authorities. Sober observers seem resigned that such evidence will not see the light of day, and that Prince Salman will escape this gruesome episode with no more than a black eye. The “special” murderous relationship between Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US will continue.

Journalist Mehdi Hasan believes hostility toward Iran is what unites and animates this trio. Although no Iranian has been accused let alone convicted for murdering Americans on American soil, Trump and many in the war establishment view Iran as the next great bogeyman that must be vanquished. Conveniently forgotten is the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. How is it the Kingdom got a pass for that? Oil, money, influence with the Bush family and in the corridors of Congress buys a lot of amnesia.

Trump’s fawning, servile and solicitous treatment of the Saudis makes for interesting speculation about the extent of his business ties with the Kingdom. As Ian Masters, host of Background Briefing, said the other day on his program, it’s not about country-to-country relations under Trump, it’s family-to-family -- or more accurately -- crime family-to-crime family. Unravel Trump’s financial dealings and it’s likely that his dependence on Saudi money -- and possibly Russian money -- is more significant than we realize. Trump is a walking, talking, breathing, snorting cesspool of corruption, a human ethical violation, who started cheating in the sandbox in kindergarten and has never done differently since.

Meanwhile, while all eyes are glued to the Khashoggi affair, Mitch McConnell and his band of thugs have set their sights on gutting Social Security and Medicare, a long held wet dream of the whacky right. The talking points are making the rounds, with amplification from Trump, and it’s the same BS story the GOP has hawked for 40 years. Budget deficits are caused by overly generous Social Security and Medicare benefits and must be slashed or America will collapse. Absent from the GOP’s logic are the billions of dollars handed to the wealthy and corporations in the form of tax cuts, subsidies, and other types of “relief.” Also missing is the bloated, wasteful, but sacrosanct Pentagon budget, which accounts for more than half of all Federal outlays. And no mention at all of the legal tax avoidance schemes practiced by major corporations like Apple, Amazon, Verizon, AT&T and so on. Ironic that corporate CEO’s and Trump himself, who talk so lovingly of America and our military machine, our freedoms, blah, blah, feel no obligation to support our country with their tax dollars. For Trump and others of his ilk, paying taxes is for suckers.  

The game is rigged in a 101 different ways and the wealthy elite win when they lose, at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk, as they sleep and when they wake.

We’re nearing the midterm elections, the TV ads are heavy, the mailers arrive in the mailbox daily (and go straight into the blue recycling bin), and I still have no idea what Democrats stand for, save for tepid opposition to the Trump crime family, and a fairy-tale belief that Russia stole the 2016 election for Trump and is planning to do it again. Little proof is offered amid the dire warnings. Progressive Democrats fight through a thicket of the old guard led by Pelosi and Schumer, who insist on keeping the Democratic Party on the same losing trajectory. Corporate campaign money is as addictive as heroin. Schumer is hopelessly addicted and until he, Pelosi, the Clintons, Obama, Feinstein and others are expelled from the party, the Democrats will continue to wander in the political wilderness.

By the way, in case you are wondering, I made up the quotes and headlines. Just having a little fun in these dismal times.