Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Erdoğan’s Schoolboy Response to the Israel-UAE Deal
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Turkey is protesting the UAE for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel—even though Ankara has had diplomatic relations with Israel for the past 71 years. If the UAE, as Ankara argues, has betrayed the “Palestinian cause” just by having diplomatic relations with Israel, then Turkey has been betraying the “Palestinian cause” since 1949.
Donald Trump's answer on how the Covid-19 pandemic will end is, um, not comforting
During a town hall on ABC Tuesday night, moderator George Stephanopoulos asked President Donald Trump why he said that he liked to "downplay" the threat posed by Covid-19 to the American public.
If Trump was referring to herd immunity
when it comes to the number of people getting the virus, well, then he
was talking about a massive loss of human life -- well in excess of the 400,000+ American deaths that one oft-cited model is projecting by January 1, 2021.
Fact check: Trump made at least 20 false or misleading claims at ABC town hall
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/16/politics/fact-check-trump-abc-town-hall/index.html
President Donald Trump got a rare grilling at an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
U.S. Officials Buried Intel, Could Face War Crimes Charges Over Obama-Trump Support for Yemen War
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has waged an unrelenting and brutal war against the civilian population of Yemen since the spring of 2015 with full-throated diplomatic and material support from the United States. Spanning the administrations of both Barack Obama and President Donald Trump, the U.S. role in that war is increasingly fraught with legal liability due to American knowledge of the extreme casualties that have resulted from airstrikes.
“The United Nations estimates that from March 2015 to November 2018 there were 17,640 combat-related civilian casualties in Yemen, including 10,852 caused by Coalition airstrikes,” a recent report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of State notes. “High-profile incidents include a March 2016 strike on a market that killed 97 civilians, an October 2016 attack on a funeral hall that killed 140, and an August 2018 strike on a school bus that killed 51, including 40 children.”
That same report implicated “U.S. defense firms” as the likely source of the weapons used “in each of these airstrikes” and noted that such arms sales would have legally been subject to an “arms transfer review process” that was effectively short-circuited by an executive branch emergency certification in May of last year.
The emergency certification was previously described as “phony” by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in a statement regarding the surprise ouster of former State Department inspector general Steve Linick earlier this year.
Yemen war: Trump vetoes bill to end US support for Saudi-led coalition
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47958014
US President Donald Trump has vetoed a bill passed by Congress to end support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
Mr Trump described the resolution as an "unnecessary" and "dangerous" attempt to weaken his constitutional powers.
It is only the second time Mr Trump has used his presidential veto since he took office in 2017.
Opposition in Congress to his policy on Yemen grew last year after Saudi agents killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The resolution passed the House of Representatives in April and the Senate in March, the first time both chambers had supported a War Powers resolution, which limits the president's ability to send troops into action.
UN: US, allies may be complicit in Yemen war crimes
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/459679-un-us-allies-may-be-complicit-in-yemen-war-crimes
The U.S., the U.K. and France are among the nations accused of being complicit in possible war crimes in Yemen over their supplying of arms to the region, based on a report released by the United Nations Tuesday.
The
report, based on interviews with more than 600 victims and witnesses,
accuses the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
of killing civilians in airstrikes and denying them food, Reuters reports.
America is likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen. It's time to hold the US to account
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/03/yemen-airstrikes-saudi-arabia-mbs-us
Saudi-led forces have deliberately targeted civilians since the war’s early days – and US officials have done little to stop it
Since Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, the United States gave its full support to a relentless air campaign where Saudi warplanes and bombs hit thousands of targets, including civilian sites and infrastructure, with impunity. From the beginning, US officials insisted that American weapons, training and intelligence assistance would help the Saudis avoid causing even more civilian casualties.
But this was a lie meant to obscure one of the least understood aspects of US support for Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen: it’s not that Saudi-led forces don’t know how to use American-made weapons or need help in choosing targets. They have deliberately targeted civilians and Yemen’s infrastructure since the war’s early days – and US officials have recognized this since at least 2016 and done little to stop it.
A team of United Nations investigators, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, presented a devastating report in Geneva in early September detailing how the US, along with Britain and France, are likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen because of continued weapons sales and intelligence support to the Saudis and their allies, especially the United Arab Emirates.
Families Of COVID-19 Victims Who Died In Nursing Homes Call For Investigation Into NYS Department Of Health’s Directive
CBS2 reached out to the state Department of Health on Tuesday evening and received the following response:
“We’ve said from the start that protecting our most vulnerable populations, including nursing home residents, is our top priority. The Department of Health has conducted more than 1,300 COVID-19 focus inspections — at least one onsite visit to every single nursing home and adult care facility in the state — since March 1. As the Department’s in-depth analysis of nursing home data found, COVID-19 fatalities in nursing homes were related to asymptomatic nursing home staff. We continue to support and protect those frontline nursing home workers with more than 14 million pieces of PPE.”
As the CDC itself has said, this virus had likely already reached community spread in NYS by the time the feds banned travel from Europe.
As Dr. Zucker said previously, if you want to blame someone, blame the virus.
The following are releases and video pertaining to Dr. Zucker’s July 6 briefing. Please click here and here.
The Department’s report was validated by independent reviewers as indicated here.
ICYMI: Independent Nursing Home, Hospital & Medical Representatives Support and Validate DOH Report Findings on Covid-19 Infections and Fatalities In Nursing Homes
https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2020/2020-07-07_icymi_report_findings.htm
Reisman: The March 25th order that allowed, that required nursing homes to take in COVID positive patients from hospitals – partially reversed in May – there was something of a criticism that was leveled against the Governor, against the Department of Health, for having this regulation in place. The Governor has called this kind of politically motivated criticism. But I am curious, has that played a factor at all in the fatalities in nursing homes?
Clyne: You know, we never thought that was the driving, or most of my members did not think that was the driving force up for COVID infections in nursing homes. As the report shows, over 80 percent of the nursing homes had already had infections, or that downstate nursing homes already had infections prior to that order. I don't think you can say that not a single person who was taken from a hospital contributed to the infection rate, but the driving force was asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic staff who are working in the facilities not knowing that they were infectious. The other thing that obviously contributed to it was the lack of protective equipment. No one could foresee that there was going to be this shortage of goggles, facemasks, gowns, gloves. That was just not something that we understood was going to happen.
Alan Dershowitz Files $300 Million Lawsuit Against CNN for Portraying Him as an ‘Intellectual Who Had Lost His Mind’
The defamation lawsuit against CNN comes at a time when Dershowitz is locked in a defamation lawsuit with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims Dershowitz’s former client Jeffrey Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz when she was a minor. Dershowitz has denied the allegations, saying Giuffre is a liar and that they have never even met.
Saudi Arabia and Israel: Who Needs Whom?
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Extreme instability and mistrust are heightening tensions in the Persian Gulf, especially between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. America’s appetite for military engagement has waned after nearly two decades of war and the region lacks any form of collective security framework, leaving a considerable security vacuum. The Gulf states’ overtures to Israel are part of an effort to salvage America’s security commitment to the area while shoring up a relationship that can mitigate Tehran’s rising influence.