Will Brett Kavanaugh Be Confirmed?

He will be.

Unless the FBI finds a smoking gun, which I seriously doubt (and Mark Judge's ex-girlfriend's story will not cut it), Kavanaugh will be voted in before the end of this week.

Well, let me go all in. He will be confirmed even if the FBI finds a smoking gun.

This is what Mitch McConnell said yesterday:

"The goal posts keep shifting," he said as he accused Democrats of attempting to derail the nomination. "But the goal hasn't moved an inch. 

"The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close."

They need him on the bench and they need him badly.

Brett Kavanaugh is a partisan hack who was nominated not because he will overturn Roe v. Wade, which he will, but because, as a Supreme Court Justice, he will give his imprimatur to more deregulation and more restrictions of workers' and consumers' rights and he will acquiesce to anything on the Republican agenda, including extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression.

If Roe v Wade was as important as the corporate media claim, Trump would have nominated Amy Coney Barrett or someone like her.

What the Republicans want is a pro-business hack who will push the Koch brothers' agenda with gleeful abandon.

This is so important that they would happily risk a major short term defeat to get it done.

And now that they've paid the piper and alienated millions of women they cannot afford not to have Kavanaugh confirmed.

What about Jeff Flake and his courageous stand you say.

Well, I can tell you that it wasn't done because of Anna Maria Archilla's elevator tirade.

The investigation was introduced to provide cover to Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins for this week's confirmation vote.

Now they will all vote yes (plus the Democrat Joe Manchin) and point to the new investigation that uncovered no new evidence to defend their decision.

If you don't believe me check out the reports that FBI is refusing to interview people who came forward about Kavanaugh lying under oath.

According to a Sunday New Yorker article, multiple people have tried to go to the FBI with pertinent information about Kavanaugh, only to be stymied by seemingly unorganized and uninterested agents. (...)

Another is an unnamed Yale classmate who wanted to corroborate Deborah Ramirez’s accusation that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a college party. “I thought it was going to be an investigation, but instead it seems it’s just an alibi for Republicans to vote for Kavanaugh,” the unnamed Yale classmate told the New Yorker. 

No kidding.

Moreover, throughout the process the so-called liberal media has been providing a helping hand to the Republicans and will continue to do the same.

Okay, you say, you are making very radical statements but where is your evidence?

I am glad you asked.

Let's start with my claim that Brett Kavanaugh is a partisan hack.

The History of Brett Kavanaugh's Partisan Hackery

Starr Pupil

At the young age of 33, Brett Kavanaugh was one of the main authors of the Starr Report that was used to impeach Bill Clinton for having oral sex with Monica Lewinsky.

That is fine.

But what is not fine is the fact that, in that capacity, he tried to link every nasty Clinton rumor to the final report, including the suicide of Vince Foster.

Recently opened National Archives records from the 1990s independent counsel probe reveal some of Kavanaugh's actions, including his aggressive pursuit of documents tied to Vince Foster, a top Clinton administration lawyer who committed suicide.

His work was driven by his hatred for Bill Clinton which was obvious in his memo to Ken Starr:

"The President has disgraced his Office, the legal system, and the American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her life into shambles -- callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle," Kavanaugh wrote in an August 15, 1998, memo to Starr and other lawyers. 

"He should be forced to account for all of that and to defend his actions. It may not be our job to impose sanctions on him, but it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear -- piece by painful piece," he wrote.

I'll leave it up to you to appreciate the irony.

Kavanaugh's next career move was to take on the representation of Elian Gonzalez in order to stop his Cuban father to gain the five-year-old's custody.  This was done at the urging of the then Florida governor Jeb Bush, who became his patron saint.

He then represented Jebster in his quest to set up a voucher program to support private religious schools in Florida.

Finally, he became a major figure in the GOP efforts to lobby the Supreme Court to stop the Florida recount paving the way to Bush presidency.

Because of this trajectory, when W nominated him to the United States Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia Circus, during his confirmation hearings, Dick Durbin called him the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics … whether it’s Elian Gonzalez or the Starr Report, you are there.”

When Kavanaugh's confirmation stalled for three years, W made him his staff secretary between 2003-2006. It doesn't sound like an important job but it was:

[Kavanaugh] wielded extraordinary influence as the adviser responsible for screening, reviewing and editing documents delivered to Bush, interviews and documents show.
“Ultimately, the umpire was Brett,” said Karl Rove, a Bush adviser and one of the people Kavanaugh worked with closely as staff secretary.

He was behind every controversial decision, including Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), torture of enemy combatants and warrantless wiretapping.

Documents and interviews show that while Kavanaugh was not a policymaker, he was directly involved in helping the White House manage a wide array of sensitive matters, including the war on terrorism, the treatment of enemy combatants and warrantless wiretapping. 

“It put Kavanaugh at the center of every political and policy decision at the Bush White House,” said Peter Irons, professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego and author of several books about the Supreme Court. “He is exactly the kind of person that the legal conservative movement wants on the court.”

His Appeals Court nomination was finally approved in 2006. His ideologically driven partisan approach was evident there as well.

An analysis found that Kavanaugh had the most or second-most conservative voting record on the D.C. Court, in every policy area, in period 2003 to 2018.

Koch brothers

This is why he is the Koch Brothers' wet dream.

In case you don't know who they are, this dynamic duo founded and funded the Tea Party and they are behind every conservative effort to bust unions and remove environmental regulations.

They are octogenarian billionaires who will leave behind a sinking planet without much oxygen to their coal-rich grandchildren.

In fact, Kavanaugh's record is so bad that the White House refused to release his emails and policy opinions even though it is the accepted practice to do so.

Picture of Judicial Temperament

In any event, even if Kavanaugh's history of far-right decision making and ideological hackery failed to convinced you, take a look at his partisan outburst during the Blasey Ford hearings.

In his angry tirade, he brought up conspiracy theories against Clintons, he insulted and belittled Democratic senators (he even accused one of blacking out for heavy drinking) and he lashed out at everyone who stood between him and the court chair he firmly believed he deserved.

And he issued a threat:

“You have replaced ‘advise and consent’ with ‘search and destroy,’” he chastised Democrats, warning moments later: “What goes around comes around.”

That's judicial temperament for you.

Not surprisingly, none of these facts made it into coherent pieces in the mainstream media.

There were a few bits here and there but to my knowledge, no one said, well, he is a thoroughly partisan hack and this is his history of hackery and look at the shameful playacting to defend his nomination.

Instead most media outlets praised (or made room for those who did) his judicial temperament and his oversized intellect.

Brett Kavanaugh The Brilliant Jurist and Carpool Dad

Ah yes.

From the beginning, we got interminable narratives about what a great guy he was.

And it wasn't just the usual suspects.

Lisa Blatt, a self-described ”liberal Democrat and feminist,” wrote a piece in Politico telling the Supreme Court to confirm Kavanaugh and even introduced him at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, giving him a boost of bipartisan credibility. 

Did I mention that he was a great guy:

“I don’t know Kavanaugh the judge. But Kavanaugh the carpool dad is one great guy,” read the headline for one Washington Post op-ed by Julie O’Brien, a woman who knows Kavanaugh through their daughters’ school. 

His impressive credentials were praised by moderate GOP senators like Murkowski and Collins.

Moreover,

Almost immediately after Kavanaugh’s nomination, nearly three dozen of his former law clerks (all of those, the clerks wrote, who are “not prohibited by their current or pending employment from signing”) sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in which they praised his intellectual rigor but also described him as “unfailingly warm and gracious with his colleagues no matter how strongly they disagree about a case.” 

There were more letters.

Eighty students who had Kavanaugh as a professor at Harvard Law School signed a letter saying he was an ”inspiring professor.”

And Yale University, where he went to undergraduate and law school, issued a glowing press release with five distinguished professors and faculty members congratulating him and extolling his intellectual talent. 

And do you know what happened after the Dr. Ford allegations surfaced?

The day after those allegations came out, 65 women who knew Kavanaugh in high school were still willing to issue a letter attesting to his character and his treatment of women. 

The guy went to an all boys high school. How do you get 65 women testify to your character 24 hours after you were accused of a horrible crime?

Do you even know 65 women from your own high school?

Think about it.

And think about how many "liberal" media outlets mentioned this fact?

Well, at least one of these women thought differently after signing the letter. She was Renate Schroeder Dolphin who was mentioned by Kavanaugh and his football teammates in their yearbook as someone they had sex with (making them Renate alumnus).

Nice, isn't it?

He truly is a great guy.

Media Cover

Speaking of corporate media, they did a wonderful job supporting Kavanaugh's nomination.

Besides introducing him as the brilliant jurist without really touching upon his Florida recount efforts or the three long years that took for him to be confirmed to the District of Columbia Appeals Court or his extremely conservative record, they also helped the confirmation process by sucking the oxygen out of such points.

New York Times came up with a third hand sourced story about Rod Rosenstein trying to overthrow Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment. Michael Schmidt's piece drew categorical denials but no one cared.

Fox News and Sean Hannity were happy to just run with it.

Let me make a prediction right here and right now: When Kavanaugh is confirmed, Trump will first fire Rosenstein or force him to resign. Then he will fire Mueller.

You read it here first.

And we'll have the "liberal" New York Times to thank for this.

Another interesting thing is how the media outlets regurgitated GOP talking points without raising any questions. For instance, when they report the above-mentioned McConnell quote about delays and delaying tactics they never remind us that the same cynical senator delayed Merrick Garland's confirmation hearing for over a year.

And his argument was based on the need to wait for the will of the people to be expressed in the upcoming elections which were more than a year away at the time. Now there are elections in a few weeks time and somehow the entire corporate media could not recall McConnell's previous claim.

The same media folks also maintain that the new situation is very different from the Anita Hill hearings 27 years ago because of the #MeToo movement.

It is not, because IOKIYAR trumps #MeToo any time.

Here is what a female Trumpkin said about Blasey Ford:

"As a woman, a mother, and a former victim of assault myself, how any of you feminazis out there are buying this is completely beyond me."

At a Trump rally, the Guardian reporter could not find a single person who believed Christine Blasey Ford:

Tammy DeWitt, a 52-year-old state employee from Shinnston, West Virginia, also thought Ford was lying. 

“It’s kind of obvious,” she said. “Thirty-some years later, right when he was getting the nomination, that she all the sudden remembers it.” She suggested “maybe she was paid by the Democrats”, and repeated: “They are crucifying that poor man.”

But that is mostly because of the corporate media coverage.

Sure Trumpkins get their talking points from Fox News where they are told about a doppelganger who assaulted Dr Ford. But that is because there is no consistent counter narrative from the likes of New York Times.

Case in point, when the mainstream media made a lot of noise about Roy Moore he lost to a Democrat in Alabama.

But usually, the corporate media is more interested in highlighting Democratic sins.

When Bill Clinton was accused by Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones GOP operatives turned his private life a 24/7 circus throughout his presidency and the liberal media outlets covered every single one of them.

The current president is accused of sexual assault by 19 women and his is on tape with his proud pussy grabbing anecdote. Yet, we never see them mentioned with the same regularity.

One last thing.

Corporate media mentions the evangelical fixation with Roe v. Wade all the time.

As I documented previously, abortion was a Catholic issue prior to 1979 and the evangelical Christians couldn't care less about it. It was Pat Buchanan and GOP strategists Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich who made the issue an important part of Nixon's Southern Strategy.

But everyone is now pretending that abortion has always been the most important factor in evangelical voting when it was just an execrable GOP manipulation with no basis in religion.

Islamist Terrorists Were Given Another Safe Passage By the US

My longtime readers will remember what I am referring to. 

In February 2018, I reported that coalition forces allowed the evacuation of hundreds of ISIS fighters from Raqqa and they let them keep their weapons.

In fact, they did more than that: they provided buses and large trucks to transport over 4,000 ISIS fighters and families. They made no effort to track them down and kept the whole thing secret.

When the BBC found out about it, they first denied it, then downplayed the number and finally they blamed the locals.

Here is a clip showing the orderly exodus of ISIS thugs.

It turns out that this happened again and again. 

This time, it took place in Yemen where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been fighting against Saudi backed government for many years.

In February, Emirati troops and their Yemeni militia allies flashed victory signs to TV cameras as they declared the recapture of al-Said, a district of villages running through the mountainous province of Shabwa — an area al-Qaida had largely dominated for nearly three years.

It was painted as a crowning victory in a months-long offensive, Operation Swift Sword, that the Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, had proclaimed would “disrupt the terrorist organization’s network and degrade its ability to conduct future attacks.”

The Pentagon, which assisted with a small number of troops, echoed that promise, saying the mission would weaken the group’s ability to use Yemen as a base.

In fact, what really happened was that, just like in Raqqa, the coalition made a secret deal to let them go with their weapons and paid them for their troubles.

But weeks before those forces’ entry, a string of pickup trucks mounted with machine guns and loaded with masked al-Qaida militants drove out of al-Said unmolested, according to a tribal mediator involved in the deal for their withdrawal.

Under the terms of the deal, the coalition promised al-Qaida members it would pay them to leave, according to Awad al-Dahboul, the province’s security chief. His account was confirmed by the mediator and two Yemeni government officials. 

Al-Dahboul said about 200 al-Qaida members received payments. He did not learn the exact amounts, but said he knew that 100,000 Saudi rials ($26,000) were paid to one al-Qaida commander — in the presence of Emiratis.

Where were the Americans and their drones you might ask.

The U.S. has killed al-Qaida’s top leaders in a drone strike campaign that accelerated in recent years. But in this victory — as in the others touted by the coalition — the mediator said armed U.S. drones were absent, despite the large, obvious convoy.

According to the Associated Press, the same blueprint was used in many other situations, the first being when al Qaeda fighters pulled out of Mukalla, a major port and Yemen's fifth largest city.

In that case, they kept their weapons and the cash they looted.

The militants were guaranteed a safe route out and allowed to keep weapons and cash looted from the city — up to $100 million by some estimates — according to five sources, including military, security and government officials.

The Americans?

“Coalition fighter jets and U.S. drones were idle,” said a senior tribal leader who saw the convoy leaving. “I was wondering why they didn’t strike them.”

 Then came the deal for the province of Abyan.

Soon after, another accord was struck for AQAP to pull out of six towns in the province of Abyan, including its capital, Zinjibar, according to five tribal mediators involved in the negotiations.

Again, the central provision was that the coalition and U.S. drones cease all bombings as AQAP pulled out with its weapons, the mediators said.

The mediators even threw a dinner party for the departing AQAP fighters.

For nearly a week in May 2016, the militants departed in trucks. One of the mediators told the AP that he threw the last of the departing fighters a farewell dinner among his olive and lemon orchards when they stopped at his farm to pay their respects.

The black al-Qaida flag and the slogan in Arabic “al-Qaida passed here,” on the right wall, are sprayed on a damaged school that was turned into a religious court in the southern city of Taiz.

I know what you are thinking.

You say that my title suggests a direct American knowledge of a safe passage deal but all they did was to refrain from sending their planes and drones on specific dates.

What makes me think that they knew about it? Maybe they did it because they were asked to do it.

Well,

Another mediator, Tarek al-Fadhli, a former jihadi once trained by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, said he was in touch with officials at the U.S. Embassy and in the Saudi-led coalition, keeping them updated on the withdrawal. 

“When the last one left, we called the coalition to say they are gone,” he said.

Next time you hear of a terrorist incident in Turkey or in Europe, you will know who to thank for.

Campaign Finance Laws, John Edwards, Donald Trump, IOKIYAR

Every time I mention IOKIYAR (It's OK if you are Republican) someone tells me that there is no such thing.

Well, I have another case for you to consider.

Donald Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen just admitted in court that he was asked to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

The purpose was to prevent any electoral damage stemming from these stories.

Do you remember John Edwards?

The senator from North Carolina? John Kerry's running mate in 2004, presidential candidate in 2007 primaries?

He was the Democratic rising star, a great trial lawyer, with good looks and charismatic presence.

Do you remember what happened to him?

He had an affair with a campaign staffer called Rielle Hunter and paid her some hush money to cover up the affair.

He was indicted by the Justice Department for having violated the same campaign finance laws Donald Trump is accused of breaking.

At the time you could not believe the shitstorm this caused. Everybody was up in arms, Democrats and Republicans stepped on each other to vilify Edwards.

He was an immoral person, the cause of decline in national moral standards, the worst human being imaginable. People were outraged and enraged. You would think that he was the first politician to have an affair.

As a result, his political career was ruined and he could not show his face in public. No one would vote for him for the lowliest position.

Fast forward to today. Trump has done exactly the same thing. He had affairs and paid to cover them up. Just like Edwards, he lied about them, he changed positions many times as did the people around him.

The reaction? Nothing.

No senior Republican leader would comment on it.

A spokesperson for the House of Representatives speaker, Paul Ryan, issued an abrupt statement, saying: “We are aware of Mr Cohen’s guilty plea to these serious charges. We will need more information than is currently available at this point.”

Leslie Graham said there was no collusion with Russia and Mitch McConnell didn't even bother issuing a statement of tweeting.

The Guardian ran a hilarious piece highlighting the various hypothetical reactions if Trump had actually shot Michael Cohen in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Then they asked Tumpkins as they always do after such revelations. Unsurprisingly, they were unanimous and categorical. They couldn't care less if he paid off a porn star and broke the law.

When Edwards or Gary Hart has an affair pearl clutching ensues, evangelicals faint. When they lie that is the worst crime.

When Trump has affairs, no big deal. If he lies, who cares?

That's IOKIYAR.

On a related note I wish people stopped speculating about impeachment. It is simply impossible even if Democrats win the House back in November. The Senate trial requires two thirds majority. It is a pipedream that makes look like a martyr to the Trumpkins.

As I said many times, Trump made a mistake by attacking National Security Apparatus. Those folks don't take that sort of thing lying down. They will come up with irrefutable evidence of financial crimes, like money laundering for Russian mafia types.

The crimes will be so obvious and staggering that even Hannity will be unable to defend them. 

Until then, Democrats should work on getting people to vote in large numbers.

Did Tillerson Stop the Invasion of Qatar?

I don't know if you've heard the news.

According to a new expose by The Intercept, Rex Tillerson lost his job because he prevented the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ?) from invading Qatar.

Mohammed bin Salman

Qatari intelligence agents working inside Saudi Arabia discovered the plan in the early summer of 2017, according to the U.S. intelligence official. Tillerson acted after the Qatari government notified him and the U.S. embassy in Doha. Several months later, intelligence reporting by the U.S. and U.K. confirmed the existence of the plan. 

The plan, which was largely devised by the Saudi and UAE crown princes and was likely some weeks away from being implemented, involved Saudi ground troops crossing the land border into Qatar, and, with military support from the UAE, advancing roughly 70 miles toward Doha. Circumventing the U.S. air base, Saudi forces would then seize the capital.

As the former CEO of Exxon Mobil who had very close ties to the Qatari royal family, it is no surprise that Tillerson placed dozens of calls to both United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia governments right away to defuse the situation.

Rex Tillerson

He understood the stakes and the risks. There is a large American military base in the country and Qatar is the largest producer of natural gas in the world.

The piece suggests that Tillerson was successful because he enlisted the help of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and together they stopped the plot.

I don't think so.

Jim "Mad Dog" Mattis was fun for Trump initially until he sided with "the grown ups." And Rex "he is a fucking moron" Tillerson was doomed when he never denied the actual quote.

Trump did not pay any attention to them once they looked like they thought they were more intelligent than him.

Sure, I concur that there was a plan to invade Qatar. As I've written many times, Saudi Arabia was and is essentially bankrupt.

But I don't think it was Tillerson's efforts that stopped the invasion.

Allow me refresh your memory.

White House and Trump were in on it from the get go.

When the Saudis and Emiratis were about to launch the blockade of Qatar in June, then-US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Stuart Jones got a call in the middle of the night from UAE Ambassador Otaiba to inform him of the impending action. Jones’ reaction was “extremely harsh. ‘What are you guys doing? This is crazy,’” a former US ambassador to the region told Al-Monitor. “And … Yusuf [sic][Otaiba]'s response was, ‘Have you spoken to the White House?’”

You see how cool and confident that riposte is?

"Have you spoken to the White House?"

Al-Otaibi

The next day Trump was in the Rose Garden accusing Qatar of "funding terrorism at a very high level".

He did so just as Tillerson was intensely urging the Gulf countries to stop the embargo and ease the tensions.

As I reported at the time, that line about Qatar was scripted by the UAE Washington ambassador Yousef al-Otaibi who is a very close friend of Jared Kushner and was inserted by Kushner in Trump's speech.

It should also be said that Kushner was and is very close to MBS and MBZ, you know, the Crown Princes.

And for Kushner, this was a payback for Qatari investment company Al-Mirqab pulling out of a deal involving 666 Fifth Avenue (which itself might have been a payback by HBJ for losing his position after the previous Emir's forced abdication).

With both Trump and Kushner on the side of Saudi Arabia, nothing would have stopped MBS from invading his tiny neighbor.

Besides, given his financial woes, he had no other choice. The war in Yemen has been depleting the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund at an alarming rate. Qatar's SWF has $320 billion in it, not to mention the country's continuous natural gas revenues.

In fact, getting his hands on a substantial amount of money was so critical that, when he couldn't do the invasion, he had to round up his relatives in a posh hotel and extort $100 billion from them.

In short, it was too important for MBS to back down on the strength of Tillerson's opposition. Especially if Trump and Kushner were on board. And they were.

But Qataris are not stupid. As I explained before, they bought themselves three great insurance policies right away.

In fact, they later bought a fourth one that made them pretty invincible, much to the chagrin of MBS.

First, they enlisted Iran's help right off the bat and the Islamic Republic made it clear that they would not allow such an invasion.

By itself, it would not have been enough to stop MBS, especially if he assumed that Trump would come to his help against Iran. In fact, he might have seen as a bonus. But it still gave him pause.

The second policy was to enlarge Turkish military base in Qatar and sign a mutual defense agreement with Turkey. Again, this might have given MBS pause but if Trump was firmly on his side, his thinking would have been, well, how far would or could Turkey go to defend Qatar's sovereignty.

The best policy was the third one and it is also the one that stopped Trump from siding with the Saudis at the time.

As you can see in that post, Qatar's SWF purchased a 19.5 percent stake in Russian oil and gas giant Rosneft just after the US presidential elections. The deal was put together, during the campaign, by Carter Page, a Trump advisor, in August and was announced immediately after Trump was elected.

Critically, the deal had a secret clause which stipulated that Russia could buy that stake back any time. Essentially Qatar's Emir was lending $11.5 billion to Russia making it look like a commercial transaction.

A Saudi invasion would have made that stake permanent as MBS had no reason to honor it.

That's when Putin reached out to his poodle and whispered the magic words.

I know you don't believe me. But do you know what happened next?

Trump stopped saying that Qatar funded terrorists.

Just like that.

Then he hosted the Emir at the White House like nothing happened and praised him for combating terrorism financing.

[O]n Tuesday he praised Sheikh Tamim Al Thani for becoming a "big advocate" of combating terrorist financing. 

He also said the emir was a "great gentleman" and a "friend of mine".

There is one more wrinkle to the story and that is the fourth insurance policy bought after the fact by Qatar.

As I said, they are not stupid.

As soon as they realized that Kushner was siding with the MB playboys because their former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs HBJ (Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani) refused to pay for the albatross on Kushner's neck, they moved to correct that mistake.

666 Fifth Avenue loan payment is due in six months (February 2019) and Javanka do not have the money.

So it needs to go away and if it does, they know that Trump White House will make MBS and MBZ go away.

Good thinking, you say. Like foreign dignitaries making a point of staying at Trump's Washington Post Office Hotel.

Obviously by then, Qataris were fully cognizant that they could not openly invest in that doomed property. Too on the nose. Anbang did that and got burned. Their CEO is still in jail.

What Qataris did was to find a clean and nice third party in which they had a massive stake and move through them.

Enter the nice and clean Canadian real estate company Brookfield. Even the name sounds nice and innocuous.

Well, they have just leased the property for 99 years and agreed to invest $700 billion US dollars for upgrades.

They also bought the shares of Vornado Realty. And interestingly, they succeeded even though nobody thought Vornado would sell.

One more thing.

And, this is unheard of in the real estate annals, Brookfield agreed to pay the totality of 99 years lease upfront.

Not annually as it is required. Everything.

Which will allow Kushner to pay back its lenders in full in February 2019. And the Kushner family will get the building back in 99 years.

By now you might have guessed who is behind such a sweetheart deal.

The Qatar Investment Authority is the second-largest shareholder in Brookfield Properties, ranking only behind Brookfield’s former parent company. And the Qatar fund and Brookfield have teamed up on several real-estate deals in the United States and elsewhere in recent years, including Brookfield’s retail and apartment complex, Manhattan West, now under construction on the West Side. Brookfield and Qatar also control the Canary Wharf office complex in London.

This took place three days ago and other than the Canadian Globe and Mail not many mainstream news outlets covered it.

As I say it often, we live in interesting times.
_____________

UPDATE:

A friend told me that other mainstream news outlets covered the transaction.

Well, if you Google "Brookfield Kushner" this is what you get. None mentions Qatar's involvement.

Don't you think that's amazing?

Fake news and liberal media

The Globe and Mail piece is the only one you get if you add Qatar to the search.

A #MeToo Moment for the United Nations?

As we all know, the #MeToom movement swept all male bastions and went through power structures like a Category 5 hurricane.

Hollywood studios, high tech companies, Wall Street banks, large corporations all had to face the music.

There were two exceptions.

One was the conservative politicians, as exemplified by the indifference accorded to Donald Trump by his own party, his supporters and the corporate media.

If a Democratic president (and God forbid if it was Obama) had asked his personal lawyer to cover up his affair with a porn star with a $130,000 hush money or did this to hide another affair with a Playboy model all hell would have broken loose.

Tellingly, the linked expose was signed Ronan Farrow, the man who single handedly brought down industry titans like Harvey Weinstein or Les Moonves.

With Trump, nothing.

After his denials, his former lawyer's secret recordings showed he was in on it. Still nothing.

IOKIYAR.

The second exception was the United Nations.

There, we already knew that peacekeeping operations had turned into double victimization of women and girls. But recently, we found out that sexual abuse and harassment was also the norm at UN civilian agencies as well.

And the modus operandi was not very different in either cases.

Peacekeepers or Sex Ring Operators?

Since 2001, thousands of sexual misconduct allegations surfaced against UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central African Republic (CAR).

Yet not much has been done about it.

In early June, the New York-based Code Blue Campaign, dedicated to ending impunity for crimes of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers, released an internal UN memo that showed no action had been taken against the Congolese troops in CAR, despite multiple complaints about their behaviour.

In fact, the problem has gotten worse and sexual exploitation increased over the years. UN's own chart summarizes the incidents between 2010 and 2016.


Through it all, the UN managed to maintain the stories in check and to hide the true scope of the problem.

Of the 2000 cases of sexual misconduct reported to the UN over the past 12 years, 700 emanate from the DRC. Another report shows that 300 of these 2000 cases involve children. This geographic and demographic spread is however impugned by the fact that UN statistics on this issue (while steadily improving) are notoriously inaccurate. Record collection is impeded by under-reporting and chronically bad record-keeping by the UN.

I know what some people might be thinking. They might be attributing these incidents to developing country soldiers. Without touching on the implicit racism of this assumption, let me tell you that while in African situations this might be largely true (due to the composition of the troops), the misconduct known as SEA (Sexual Exploitation and Abuse) was quite prevalent in the Bosnia and Kosovo cases and there, the bulk of the UNPROFOR soldiers and commanders were from European countries.

With one Swedish, three French and one Indian Commanding Officer, this is what happened:

A Kosovo victims support group reported that of the local prostitutes, a third were under 14, and 80% were under 18. Amnesty said the victims were routinely raped "as a means of control and coercion" and kept in terrible conditions as slaves by their "owners"; sometimes kept in darkened rooms unable to go out

In any event, dwelling on the identity of the perpetrators is a futile exercise in racism. Sri Lankan soldiers might have ran a child sex in Haiti but they did it under UN command and they couldn't have done it if the top echelons had not turned a blind eye.

If anything, the UN largely ignored the problem and actively tried to cover it up.

In fact, when you look at the behavior of senior managers in other UN agencies you realize this is not a peacekeeping issue and the same nonchalance about sexual abuse exists in the organization's civilian institutions.

Sexual Abuse and Harassment in UN Agencies

In January 2018, the Guardian published an article about rampant sexual harassment, abuse and rape in UN agencies. It was an eye opener.

It showed that women who reported sexual misconduct usually lost their jobs while the perpetrators were promoted to higher positions.

Three women who reported sexual harassment or sexual assault, all from different offices, said they had since been forced out of their jobs or threatened with the termination of their contract in the past year. The alleged perpetrators, who include a senior UN official, remain in their posts.

A woman who was raped by a senior staff member had this experience:

She said that despite medical evidence and witness testimonies, an internal investigation by the UN found insufficient evidence to support her allegation. Along with her job, she says she has lost her visa and has spent months in hospital due to stress and trauma. She fears she will face persecution if she returns to her home country.

The system was stacked against the victim who were constantly told not to report such incidents.

One woman allegedly assaulted while working for the UN says she was told by her agency’s ombudsman that there was nothing more he could do to help her pursue a complaint, because he was being threatened by senior UN staff. Seven other alleged victims who spoke to the Guardian were told by an ombudsman or colleague that they should not try to pursue a complaint.

Another victim who was raped was not offered any medical assistance or counseling and the rapist suffered no consequences. In one case, "a man accused of sexual harassment was allowed to interview the woman who brought the complaint against him."

In fact, it is a systemic problem and the people who were supposed to investigate these crimes were explicitly instructed not to do their jobs.

Peter Gallo, a former OIOS investigator who left the UN in 2015, said he witnessed evidence being routinely ignored and facts skewed. “As an investigator I was told I should ‘never ask questions just to satisfy my curiosity,’” he said. “The only rule is not to publicly embarrass the organisation.”

So it is not surprising that,

An internal UNAids staff survey found that almost 10% of 427 respondents had experienced sexual harassment. Only two had reported it.

Malaya Harper, the general secretary of the World YWCA, says that while she was working at UNAids she was sexually harassed and assaulted by the deputy executive director of the agency Luiz Loures. She didn't reported because she knew nothing was going to be done about it.

Two women told the Observer they had warned the agency’s executive director, Michel Sidibé, about Loures’s alleged behaviour. One former employee, who left in 2015, said: “I had an exit interview with Michel when I left and the first words out of my mouth were, ‘your deputy director is a sexual predator and everybody knows it. I’m telling you because you really have to do something about it.’”

After multiple sexual misconduct allegations Loures announced that he was not going to seek the renewal of his contract at the end of last March and he was allowed to retire without any negative consequences.

And he was not alone:

The announcement of Loures’s departure follows news that Justin Forsyth has stepped down as deputy executive director of Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency, after accusations of inappropriate behaviour toward female staff while working for Save the Children.

There is also the case of Ruud Lubbers, the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who "was eased from his post 12 years ago, following multiple allegations of sexual offenses against female staff."

And Frank La Rue of UNESCO who also retired with full benefits while being investigated for sexual misconduct.

Feel free to Google Tero Varjoranta of IAEA (he was in charge of the Iran nuclear deal, known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and his protector Yukio Amano.

I can go on as these are only the most senior and most visible cases.

You may rightly ask the question whether the UN is doing something about this endemic problem.

Is Anything Being Done?

The short answer is "not really."

UN's position had always been to sweep the dirt under the rug, as illustrated by the egregious case of Luiz Loures:

An internal investigation report said Sidibé had attempted to settle the assault allegation informally, despite the matter being under official investigation by the World Health Organisation’s investigations team, Internal Oversight Services.

What was Antonio Guterres' reaction, the Secretary General who was elected over a group of highly qualified and deserving women candidates by claiming his feminist credentials?

Officially, this is what the UN said:

In a statement, the UN pledged to “look at strengthening our capacities to investigate reports and to support victims”. The organisation said Guterres has appointed a victims’ rights advocate and established a high-level taskforce on sexual harassment, to review policies and strengthen investigations. The UN will also carry out a survey to measure the extent of the issue, and introduce a helpline for people seeking advice.

Another task force, you may say but this is not any old task force, this one is special:

Its members will be drawn the Chief Executives Board, which includes 31 top UN officials, just 26% of whom are female. That task force will be chaired by Jan Beagle, who also held the title of Deputy Executive Director at UNAIDS throughout much of the Luiz Loures scandal and did nothing and said nothing. Ms. Beagle was promoted last year by Secretary-General Guterres to the most senior and visible management position in the UN system. The identities of the other members of the sexual harassment task force of "senior leaders" are the Secretary-General's carefully guarded secret.

A internal task force which largely consisted of men whose identity would be unknown and chaired by a colleague of Luiz Loures who did nothing to stop a sexual predator while she was a senior executive at UNAids.

That's the best the Secretary General of the United Nations could do to change the oppressive culture of sexual abuse and harassment.

Unless member states give UN agencies a wake up call about this problem, I doubt that the institution would move to clean house.

And given the largely conservative profile of member state politicians who love their male privileges don't expect any concerted effort in the regard.

As I said before, "women are the last group in the world about whom discriminatory practices and sexist speech are widely tolerated."

And unfortunately, it will continue to be the case with UN being a special case.

Why Is Donald Trump Afraid of Putin

After the Helsinki spectacle where Donald Trump almost gave Vladimir Putin a public foot massage, the usual suspects rose again with their "this is it, the straw that will break the Orange Camel" cries.

They hollered Trump's subdued performance was treasonous and it was proof that Putin had some compromising tape on him and he was Putin's poodle.

There were also, to my eye, homophobic depictions of their relationship.

What I don't understand is how long will this "I can't believe his base is not deserting him" discourse go on. After ever scandalous tweet they rush to quiz the Trumpkins and they all gleefully say that they love the Man.

Neither do I understand the liberal conviction that Putin has something on Trump, which is why the Orange Man is behaving in a strangely decile manner.

This time, I didn't bother with another "nothing will derail Donald Trump" post.

There is no point in repeating the axiomatic truth that there is virtually nothing Trump can do that will turn his evangelical, white privileged, racist and affluent base off.

You can show that he colluded with Russia to win the elections and his folks will say, good for him.

However, there is one thing Trump is afraid of and it is why he is extremely cautious in dealing with Putin. It has to do with my prediction about how his presidency will likely to end. And as one of my most popular posts, it is still on the right hand margin.

My view is that, nothing other than financial fraud, money laundering and associated crimes can bring Trump down. But those crimes, when revealed, will almost certainly force him to resign.

As I explained in that post in some detail, in mid-2000s, after six bankruptcies, Trump was toxic and no financial institution would lend him money. So, to develop residences, hotels and golf courses, he began working with Russian, Kazakh, Georgian and Azeri businessmen, like Felix Sater, Tevfik Arif, Alexander Shnaider, Tamir Sapir and the Mammadov family.

There is a long list of dubious development projects here and you can click on them to see the problem in each instance.

The people whose name I mentioned are all shady characters with extensive links to criminal groups and in my opinion it is very likely that they used the Trump Organization to launder hundreds of millions of dollars. They financed properties, Trump slapped his name on them, the units got sold, hotels and golf courses managed and fresh smelling money came out from the other end.

Financial fraud would be problematic for Trump for two reasons: One, unlike sex allegations, which are of "he-said-she-said" narratives, money laundering is easily proven and him helping some foreign criminals clean up their ill-gotten gains would give pause even the staunchest Trumpkin.

There are some hard-to-believe projects.

As the New Yorker's Adam Davidson put it:

Although we cannot say that Trump himself knowingly engaged in money laundering, we do know with certainty that much of his business in the past decade was in the industries most known for money laundering, in the locations most conducive to money laundering, and with people who bear the key hallmarks of money launderers.

Moreover, associated crimes like tax evasion could become a serious headache for him. And it would be difficult for Fox News to claim bothsideism as there is nothing like this on the Democratic side.

But perhaps more importantly, such a scandal would destroy the Trump brand and make it impossible for him to profit from the presidency and his business model (putting his name on other people's properties and getting a license fee) would vanish overnight.

Faced with such a situation, Trump would make a deal and simply resign.

As you might remember, I maintained throughout that this outcome was more or less inevitable because of Trump's stupid feud with intelligence agencies. They know where the bodies are buried and they will unearth them when it is appropriate.

It turns out your humble soapbox operator was on to something.

Credit

Recently, an editor at the New Yorker concurred with the general outline of this analysis.

According to several Russia experts "kompromat" does not necessarily refer to a compromising video clip that can be used for blackmailing.

You know the apocryphal pee-tape.

Instead, it should be thought of pieces of information being held by different players within the "sistema" or system, which is an informal structure of hierarchy where the players constantly shift position relative to others.

In this case "kompromat" is about Trump's past business dealings with these guys.

If there truly is damaging kompromat on Trump, it could well be in the hands of Trump’s business partners, or even in those of their rivals. Trump’s Georgian partners, for example, have been in direct conflict with other local business networks over a host of crucial deals involving major telecommunications projects in the country. His Azerbaijani partners were tightly linked to Iranians who were also senior officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

And the reason why Trump is being nice to Putin is this:

The scenario that, to my mind, makes the most sense of the given facts and requires the fewest fantastical leaps is that, a decade or so ago, Trump, naïve, covetous, and struggling for cash, may have laundered money for a business partner from the former Soviet Union or engaged in some other financial crime. This placed him, unawares, squarely within sistema, where he remained, conducting business with other members of a handful of overlapping Central Asian networks. Had he never sought the Presidency, he may never have had to come to terms with these decisions. But now he is much like everyone else in sistema. He fears there is kompromat out there—maybe a lot of it—but he doesn’t know precisely what it is, who has it, or what might set them off.

Hence the reluctance to release tax returns and insistence that his business dealings are off-limits to Mueller.

And of course his super nice guy routine with Putin.

Because he doesn't know how much Putin knows and he is worried.

And he will do anything to make sure that it is not a problem.

Turkish Elections: How Did Erdogan Win?

Turkey's pugnacious president Recep Tayyip Erdogan won the most important election of his political career.

Erdogan Campaigning

And he did so decisively.

He became president in the first round and he preserved his majority in Parliament, albeit through an electoral alliance.

He achieved all that at a time when the Turkish economy was looking into an abyss with foreign currency and corporate debt and inflation are all at an all-time high.

Anyone else in anywhere else would have seen his wings clipped. Not him.

Erdogan's GOP Strategy

He was facing an elactoral alliance composed of:

a) Republican People's Party (CHP) a secular social democratic party,
b) The Good Party (IP), an ultra-nationalist party led by a charismatic and pious conservative woman,
c) Felicity Party (SP) an Islamist party led by a life-long political Islamist and an early collaborator of Erdogan.

What is important to note is the fact that the alliance removed the need for each party to clear the 10 percent threshold to get their votes turned into seats. This was done in order to encourage hard core Islamists to vote for SP without worrying that they might be wasting their ballot.

The idea behind bringing together a staunchly secular party, a conservative, ultra-nationalistic party and an Islamist party was to convince disgruntled AKP voters to consider voting for this new formation.

And it resonated with many of them. Poll after poll showed that Erdogan would be forced to go to the second round and he would very likely lose his legislative majority.

Herein lies a twist.

As I posted a couple of week before the elections, one opinion poll found that both Turks and Kurds were more inclined to support IP and its leader Meral Aksener than CHP and its presidential candidate Muharrem Ince.

In fact, that poll indicated that Aksener would force Erdogan to a second round and could then win the presidency.

While an outlier, the poll made sense because a very large portion of the Turkish electorate has always had an intense dislike for the CHP.

Some associate it with a zealous prosecution of Islamist population (it was illegal to wear a hijab or niqab until AKP came to power and women could not wear a headscarf of any kind in schools and universities or government buildings).

Others hate the party for its long association with the army (the only two times it formed a government were after military coups). And its tacit role in the country's four coups.

Others see it as a rigid and shallow agents of Western influence with no specific outlook or platform.

I can go on.

The fact remains that a significant majority of the Turkish electorate would vote for anyone before they considered CHP.

Hence the Erdogan strategy.

Muharrem Ince

He methodically ignored the nationalist conservative Aksener and IP and the Islamist Felicity Party. He solely focused on CHP and its candidate. Since he controls almost all the media outlets they followed suit.

You could see Ince on many talk shows on in the news bulletins, Aksener, not so much. Mind you, even then the balance between Erdogan - Ince media exposure was very much in favor of the former but Aksener was nowhere to be found.

In the May 1-25 period, the country’s two main news channels, NTV and CNN Turk, dedicated a combined 70 hours of coverage to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its election ally, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), according to a report by the two opposition-nominated members of Turkey’s media watchdog RTUK. The report was made available to Al-Monitor. The CHP and Ince got 22 hours, while the Good Party and its presidential candidate, Meral Aksener, got 17 minutes and the HDP received no coverage at all.

In other words, he transformed the elections from being between a coalition of conservative, nationalist, Islamist and secularist parties and Erdogan's AKP into a bipolar Us and Them race.

Us being the Sunni conservatives, Them being the Western-minded secularists.

Essentially, Erdogan was saying if it is between me and CHP, who you're gonna call?

And the electorate chanted "Ghostbusters" as they were expected to.

Erdogan's message contained the threat that if CHP came to power, despite Ince's reassurances, they would bring back all those anti-Islamist laws. They could force the removal of headscarves, reduce the number of religious schools and go back to Kemalist days of early republic.

And his base ate it up. After all, candidate Ince might be relatable with his mother and sister both wearing a headscarf, but he is not the leader of CHP.

Charismnatically challenged Kilicdaroglu

Since Ince committed himself to going back to the previous system of a ceremonial president with an executive prime minister, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of CHP could soon become prime minister in a new government.

He is an Alevi, which is an offshoot of Shia Islam and most Sunnis consider them heretic infidels.

That was Erdogan's message. I know Ince seems nice but you elect him, you will be governed by a secular Alevi. Me or them?

It is like the GOP telling their base if it is not them, then it is Nancy Pelosi, abortion at every clinic, socialist health care and probably another black president.

Who cares if Trump is a twice divorced, pussy-grabbing idiot. He is what stands between, conservative, evangelical and racist GOP voters and Pelosi at Co.

Erdogan has also used GOP's voter suppression techniques.

Many voting districts were redefined. They changed voting stations in the Kurdish region removing them from pro-Kurdish villages. This made voting for many rural Kurds very difficult.

There was also some evidence of ballot stuffing.

Officers resorted to firing their guns into the air to stop the threesome in the country’s southeastern province of Urfa from delivering four sacks stuffed with fake voting cards to the Bilge Primary School, which was being used as a polling station.

Ballot stuffing is not widespread in Turkey but this incident was not a one-off situation either. I assume ballot stuffing was part of Erdogan's Plan B or C or D, something that can be used, on a limited basis, to alter an undesirable outcome.

For instance, in the 2017 referendum, the Organisation  for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) alleged that up to 2.5 million votes might have been manipulated. Out of 55 million voters 2.5 million vote is not a big deal perhaps but if you won the referendum with 1.5 percent, it is a huge deal.

Which brings me to the other parties and especially the surprising MHP win.

Other Parties and the Mystery of MHP?

Kilicdaroglu, the beleaguered leader of CHP lost nine consecutive elections but has no intention to resign. In fact, he criticized Ince's performance and said that he did not get as many vote as he should have.

He is counting on the fact that, despite reducing the party's electoral support from 25.32 percent to 22.64 percent he was rewarded with more seats (146) than the previous election (131). Most of that was due to the fact that the number of MPs went up from 550 to 600.

In any event, Turkey's electoral laws and CHP's bylaws are such that it is almost impossible to remove a party leader through regular democratic means. To give you an idea, since 1923 the CHP has had only five leaders. Can you find another such example in the world?

Meral Aksener, the leader of the nationalistic and conservative Good Party (IP) passed the 10 percent threshold and will have 43 seats in the new assembly.

The case of her former party the proto-fascist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) is very interesting. Devlet Bahceli, the leader of MHP fought off Aksener's leadership bid tooth and nail and expelled her from the party. She went on to form IP and Bahceli entered into an electoral alliance with Erdogan and AKP.

Interestingly, between 1 May and 25 June only a single polling company placed MHP above the 10 percent threshold. Fourteen others predicted that it would never go over.

There is a good reason for that. The ceiling of MHP's support is around 5.5 to 6 million votes.  It once hit 7.5 million (for the June 2015 hung parliament) but contemporaneous opinion polls clearly showed that the additional votes came from disgruntled AKP supporters. And the next time around, in November 2015, the party's vote went back to 5.7 million.

But let's stipulate, for the sake of the argument that 7.5 million votes is the true potential support level for ultra-nationalistic parties in Turkey.

In 24 June 2018 elections MHP and IP, which share the same identical electoral base received 10,555,227 votes. That's almost double the regular MHP vote.

How could MHP get to preserve its share of the vote when half of its base went to support an offshoot party? Even the one opinion poll that gave MHP 10.5 percent found that IP was going to be stuck at 7.4 percent. Yet they received collectively 21 percent of the vote.

You could argue that since AKP's vote went from 49.5 to 42.5 percent, a significant percentage of AKP voters went to ultra-nationalistic parties.

The problem with that argument is that no opinion poll showed such a drastic move away from AKP to ultra-nationalist parties. And why should they?

With his Afrin excursion, his Syrian adventures in Al-Bab and Manbij and his genocidal tactics in Southeast Turkey Erdogan showed his bone fide as the most nationalistic leader in Turkey. Why would such voters desert him at this juncture?

In other words, there is no explanation for this 21 percent ultra-nationalistic vote either arithmetically or politically.

And curiously no one tried to explain this odd result.

Unless of course, these three guys caught with fake ballot bags were part of a larger effort to get MHP over the 10 percent threshold.

Where is OSCE when you need them.