August in Tripoli

Narratives establish verisimilitude by including a wealth of believable details, and the plucky freedom-fighting rebels may well be on the verge of capturing the Libyan capitol, and they may well represent the authentic aspirations of the Libyan people. And it may be jealousy[1] on my part to note that this just looks like a guy in a hotel wearing a kevlar jacket talking into a camera, and for all we know he may be in Terre Haute or Akron.

Let me be clear, I don't actually question that reporter Matthew Chance really is in Tripoli. Nevertheless, the abstract, stage prop quality of this report seems emblematic of much of the reportage we've gotten about the NATO campaign against Libya, plucky rebels or no plucky rebels.

We're told the war is about this, or that, or something else, so it must be so. Humanitarian interventions are humanitarian interventions because we're told they're humanitarian. And they're interventions, so they can't be wars, and we're picking sides, and picking the right one, because the government says so, or Samantha Power says so, or some guy on TV says so, etc.

Could we be making things worse by interfering? As "Davidly66" pointed out recently,

"Denying the myth of American exceptionalism will quickly get you accused of blaming America for all the world's problems."

It takes belief in our exceptionalism, or at least insufficient skepticism of the justness of those with authority and power, to believe that we will inevitably choose the right side when we interfere in somebody else's conflict, that there is a clearly right (and wrong) side, that we should interfere, and that any accusations of nefarious ulterior motives are just mean-spirited and wrong(like for example, that we're stealing somebody else's oil.)

See also

Jyoti Prasad Das, "Why Is Libya in the Crosshairs of the West?"

Rob Payne, "Fifteen to One"

Fred Kaplan, "It's Not What We Ought To Do, But What We Can Do"

(Apparently the original title of this article, per the bookmark data, was

"Humanitarian intervention: Why is NATO bombing Libya but not Syria?"

Maybe this made the war-mongering quality of Kaplan's argument too obvious. I think it's also useful to note that "R2P" was originally described, according to the note at the bottom, as "right to protect" and later changed to "responsibility to protect." Kipling should have been Fred Kaplan's copy editor.)


[1]I say jealousy because several years ago, in 2005-2007, I tried to raise funds to go to Iraq and report on events there but was largely unsuccessful. The persons who helped me were very kind and decent, but it wasn't enough and frankly I went about it the wrong way; I should have attached myself to a graduate program in either journalism or film, and I failed to do this.

30 June 2011

Video: "Breaking the Blockade", via Alternate Focus. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian led movement committed to solving issues between Israel and Palestine. Huwaida Arraf is one of the co-founders of the group and was filmed giving a speech at San Diego State University.


The Christan Science Monitor's title, reinforcing my sense of their recent rightward turn, was "Violent video games: Do parents want help from a nanny state?"

Parents weigh in on Monday's Supreme Court ruling, which struck down, by a 7-2 vote, a California law that prevented the sale of violent video games to minors.

ZDNet:USA PATRIOT Act: The Myth of a Secure European Cloud

Bachmann Backers Edit John Quincy Adams Wikipedia Page, Emulate Palin Camp
Gaffe-prone presidential candidate Michele Bachmann‘s supporters are changing history to support her claim John Quincy Adams was one of our nation’s Founding Fathers.

Eric Holder Announces Full DOJ Investigation Into Deaths Of Two Individuals In CIA Custody

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is conducting a full investigation into the deaths of two individuals in CIA custody during the Bush administration.

Rob Payne, "How America spent trillions, murdered over a million, just so China can drill for oil in Iraq"

Jyoti Prasad Das, "Why Is Libya in the Crosshairs of the West?" June 13, 2011

The thaw in US-Libyan relations came in 2003, when Qaddafi abandoned his WMD program, renounced terrorism, opened up the oil sector to Big Oil, and compensated the victims of the 1986 Berlin disco attack and the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Alternet, "Assault on Gaza Flotilla Ship: 'Sabotaged by Divers' in Port, Attacked by Legal Group Funded by Christian Right 'Mad Pastor' John Hagee"

from CNN: Extreme tuition hikes ahead,Main Street whiplashed on debit fees, Minnesota braces for a shutdown, Milwaukee lays off 354 teachers, Gates gets Medal of Freedom

11 June 2011

Even allowing for the general crappiness of mainstream news, this video startled me. Actually labeling Khaddafy's statements as lies, as opposed to contrasting them with the statements of a US or NATO spokesman. Yes I know, all governments lie, as do all leaders, but given the usual benefit of the doubt afforded others this seems especially brazen. Apparently if our government wants to bomb them and they object, then they are liars. Wasn't the goal of the NATO mission initially supposed to be about reducing the lethality of the struggle in Libya?

elsewhere at CNN: "Daniel Ellsberg: All the crimes Richard Nixon committed against me are now legal" (via)

"A Gay Girl In Damascus" blogger may not be real, according to Facebook pictures

Kevin Carson, "It’s Not Big Government If It Helps the Rich"

Doug: "What I've never understood about 'what will the children think' is that it is always applied to something trivial, usually to consensual sexual relations among adults. No one ever asks 'what will the children think about genocide in the Sudan?' or 'what will the children think about the government torturing people?'. I can remember as a kid, listening to the news and hearing of horrible atrocities and being genuinely troubled by it (truth be told, I still don't like to listen to that stuff, even though I think it's important that it be reported)."(via)

How Roger Ailes Built the Fox News Fear Factory

Paul Ryan Confronted By Bible-Wielding Protester Decrying Ayn Rand

Weiners in the news

When you watch the network nightly news on TV, if you are a watch-the-network-news sort, you probably want to congratulate yourself on your effort to be well-informed yet normal. Once in a while, I too worry about being well-informed yet normal, so I watched the NBC nightly news this evening where I found out the most important news of the day was Anthony Weiner's press conference contriteness at having 'sexted' some women via Twitter and Facebook.The second item Brian Williams discussed was about how some Sarah Palin supporters editing the Wikipedia biography of Paul Revere to make it seem to conform with Mrs Palin's comments regarding his famous ride, which seems both pathetic and creepy.

But Yemen's Saleh skipping the country and Israel attacking Palistineans at the Syrian border were apparently not so important. Now I realize that Weiner's virtual hanky panky makes for "sexier" and more readily digested news(especially with that name!), and since it's a story about a congressman and not the never-ending Casey Anthony trial, I suppose the typical network nightly news viewer might be forgiven (a bit) if he thinks he did his part to try and get better informed.

Even among Americans who might get their news from the internet, I'm guessing most who might go to CNN.com or Yahoo News aren't aware of, for example, Asia Times Online or the Guardian(of course The Guardian also has some problems as far as perspective goes ).

Still, I have to believe most educated and semi-educated people here must realize how awful most mass media journalism is, and have at least an inkling they can try to use that internet thingie to access broader and more sober perspectives(at least for now). So it's "on them", as the saying goes.

As far as the notion that the big media powers that be are just giving people what they want, I wonder if that's entirely true. For example I seem to remember that at the height of protests in Egypt the networks said their viewership rose a bit, so maybe there's more to it than that. In the case of the protests in Syria, for example, we have another country that borders Israel, and if you believe that most US news coverage from the Middle East is calculated in terms of whether it may have an impact on Israel, then the protests in Syria certainly fit the bill, but the networks seem less interested. I suspect this is less about whether Syria's government's fate would affect Israel, but simply because there was already a Western news bureau presence in Cairo, but very little in the way of a Western journalistic presence in Syria. In the case of Saleh of Yemen I guess the "Arab Spring" is so February 2011, and the Western news people have moved on. Maybe they're weiners too.

28 March 2011

Xymphora, "End Game in Libya"

and, also via Xymphora:
NYT, "Marines Face Questions About Officers in Libya"

I also found this incident referred to at Wikinews,

"U.S. military denies reports helicopter opened fire on Libyan civilians during rescue mission A spokesperson for the United States military has categorically denied reports of an American helicopter opening fire on Libyan civilians during a rescue mission of two fighter pilots who crashed near the eastern city of Benghazi."

but no mention on CBS News, CNN or MSNBC.

"We're Number One!"

IOZ:

"...while it may be morally correct for a hypothetical power with capacities far in excess of and motives far less questionable than those possessed by the actual West to intervene in a hypothetical conflict in which there are no dubious, hazy conditions of relative morality and relative good, in the practical, actual world, none of this obtains, and what you have, as per usual, is the US and its allies lobbing cruise missiles into a country without reason or planning; just another brutal exercise of DOING SOMETHING because the roots of our narcissism drink from a deep well of insecurity that requires we constantly blow shit up lest we admit to human limitations."

Duncan, "Please Master"

Vikash Yadav , "We're sorry"

AP: Analysis: GOP wins cuts without government closure
Montag the commenter has a blog. Not new, just new to me, here.

"'Brain waste' thwarts immigrants' career dreams "(also here)

Two from Jay Taber:

"Christian Jihad",

Bruce Wilson reports on the Department of Defense merger with Christian jihad. With army bases in the United States now co-sponsoring evangelical Christian rock concerts, American invasions in Central Asia and the Middle East unavoidably take on the ambience of a religious crusade.

"Never What They Seem"

Americans, as we see time and time again, are incredibly naive about world politics. By and large, they accept government propaganda, no matter how absurd. They bought the Cold War script, the drug war script, and the War on Terror script, mostly without a second thought. They even bought the Hope and Change script, electing a Wall Street toady to fight as their champion against the powers that be.

Two from the Christian Science Monitor:
"Wisconsin union-gutting law took effect Saturday – or did it?"

and, " If America were a corporation, would you invest in it?"

(I don't even know where to start explaining how much this creeps me out. I'm going to go through Meeker's entire presentation(I've started it; it's pretty long) and see if I may discuss it some more.)

Dennis Perrin, "Kill Buzz" and "This time for sure"

ATR: "Expanded Memory Hole Now Accepting Cabinet Secretaries"

Who is Beryl Howell? "RIAA lobbyist becomes federal judge, rules on file-sharing cases"

20 March 2011

BBC

Reuters, "Some states consider cutting 2012 primaries to save money"

Bob Somerby:

You live inside a plutocrat war—a war being waged by the top one percent. (Well—by the top one-tenth of the top one percent.) This war has been underway for thirty-five years; the plutocrats clearly are winning. In the process, all average people are getting looted—those who voted for Bachmann, those who voted for her opponent. But guess what? The plutocrats will continue to win as long as we slow-witted liberals keep taking the bait from cynics like [Lawrence] O’Donnell—as long as we keep getting conned into heightening our tribal wars.

Two from Slate,

Christopher Beam, "Why so little looting in Japan? The explanation is legal as much as cultural"

Bethany McLean, "Infrastructure privatization: Can banks be trusted?"

commenter Peter D writes:

Privatization of state roads just highlights the inefficiencies and waste of state government. Here in Pennsylvania they debated privatizing the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which they gave up on). If the new owner was going to be able to operate and maintain the roadway AND turn a profit for less than the state is currently paying just to operate and maintain the road (since they don't necessarily have to turn a profit), that just shows how much waste there is in the state system.

Instead of selling off public assets for a one time injection of money, run the state-owned property more efficiently and let the public reap the rewards in lower fees/tolls and/or lower taxes. What is inevitably going to happen when that one time shot of money runs out is that you will end up with no more public assets AND high fees and taxes from the lack of income producing assets. Then what are you going to do?

Naked Capitalism, "Everything you need to know about torture"

"Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages"
(Apparently CNBC counts social security payments as a 'handout', ignoring the years of payments you have to put into the system to be eligible.)

Thomas Daulton, American Crackpot,"Risking other people's money":

The supposedly 'for-profit' nuclear industry is completely a creature of government subsidies.

Rob Payne, "The Libyan question"


And yes, it seems we are at war with Libya, Kosovo-intervention style. I want to preface my remarks by noting that I don't for a moment doubt that Khaddafy is indeed brutalizing his people, and that large numbers of them want him gone. All the same I can't help but be reminded of that old photo from the Vietnam conflict of a soldier's helmet that read "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity."

Inevitably, the idea of a 'humanitarian intervention' is attractive to people, the good guys coming to the aid of the virtuous freedom fighters trying to overthrow a brutal oppressor. I imagine the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan also regard themselves as virtuous freedom fighters trying to get rid of an oppressor. I also imagine the protesters in Yemen and Bahrain feel they are being brutally oppressed, what with the massacres and such. So how are all these things different, and why do we not come to the aid of the people of Yemen and Bahrain?

Of course if we did come to the aid of Yemen and Bahrain, we would do it knowing that we weren't going to destabilize the region, and any deaths were modest, acceptable losses. We can know what are 'acceptable' losses in Libya, I guess, because Khaddafy has a long history of dressing up in fanciful garb, so any announcement regarding casualties in Libya is probably a lie that can be dismissed. Khaddafy also nationalized Libya's oil in the 70s, so a mean-spirited person might wonder if a strong man will emerge among the rebels who means to cut a deal to privatize them after the revolution.

Cairo Spring

Robert Springborg, Foreign Policy "Game over: The chance for democracy in Egypt is lost" Feb 2nd

Gareth Porter, "The Illusive Quest for Dominance: Why Washington Clings to a Failed Middle East Strategy"

Juan Cole, "Saad’s Revolution"

‘ Saad Eddin Ibrahim has spoken out forcefully on human rights and democracy for decades, and he is finally being vindicated. But his message that the United States needs to support democracy in the Arab world and put aside its paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements may be unpalatable to Washington’s elites. ‘

Firedoglake,“No One Could Have Predicted the Housing Bubble Middle East Status Quo Would Crash” [via Corrente]

Ahdaf Soueif: The regime unleashes its thugs

Washingtonblog, "Why Did Mubarak's Thugs Ride In On Camels?"

Gary Farber, "De Nile Truly Is A River"

Steve Lendman, "Revolutionary Change in Egypt: Internal or Made in USA?" 1/31

Parvez Sharma, 'We are very much in the early stages of our revolution’ Feb 3rd

Helena Cobban, "Obama's know-nothings discuss Egypt" 1/28

Chris Floyd had several interesting posts up about recent events in Egypt but apparently hackers have removed them.


I've seen very little in the way of polling regarding the turmoil in Egypt. From the somewhat right-wing Rasmussen people there's this.


Juan Cole mentions another poll, here: "Why Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979"

A recent Pew poll found that 59% of Egyptians favor democracy in almost all situations. And fully 60 percent are very or somewhat worried about the specter of religious extremism in their society. About 61% do not even think there is a struggle between modernizers and religion in Egypt.

Among the 31% who did see such a struggle, 59% favored religious forces and 21% favored the modernizers. Barry Rubin and Michael Totten misread this latter statistic to be true of all Egyptians. They are wrong. The statistic is not about Egyptians in general, but about the third of them who see a conflict between modernizers and religion. 59% of 31% is 18% of the whole Egyptian population who favor fundamentalists over modernizers. The rest either favor the modernizers or think it is a phony conflict. Not thinking that modernism and religiosity conflict is generally a liberal point of view.

Vermont's Bernie Sanders has an interactive poll on his Senate web site, here. Last I checked about 2,700 people had participated. I know it's not remotely scientific, but I found it interesting.

Regarding Gary Farber and Marc Lynch (whom Farber quotes extensively), I'm inclined to think they both make too many excuses for Obama-- although I doubt that if Obama actually took a more forthright stand in favor of a meaningful change to democratic government it would make much difference in terms of actual events. My sense of Obama is that he just cares about avoiding having people and events making him look bad, and at this point the US government's main rhetorical struggle is the attempt to seem relevant to events in the Middle East. I wonder if many Americans can see how our influence in the region has declined, and it's not about dems versus the GOP, any more than Iraq was about WMDs. At any rate I hope Robert Springborg is wrong and the street revolutionaries really have a chance to get rid of the government and replace it with something better. History suggests the odds against them are steep, not because Arabs "don't understand" democracy, but because outside forces tend to interfere if they can.

Hezbollah and Israel

Peace talks, yet again

Russia Today September 14, 2010
'US - Israel's partner in crime, not a referee'

Israeli and Palestinian leaders are holding a new round of direct talks. The main issue being discussed is whether a current freeze on Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank will be extended. Palestinian President Abbas threatens to walk out on the negotiations if construction continues. For more on this, RT talks to Omar Barghouti, an activist from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

no. 2: RT America September 02, 2010
Is Israel-Palestinian peace attainable?

Peace negotiations have started in Washington DC between Israelis and Palestinians. President Barack Obama held a series of high-stakes meetings with Israeli and Arab leaders. As negotiations continue today, is there a chance the negotiations today could work?

/////////////////////

Is Israel manipulating media?
RT America June 01, 2010

In many ways, public opinion is shaped by the media, so will the media coverage of the attack affect public opinion of Israel. The mainstream media has been pro Israel in the past but will that change now after the conflict on the Mediterranean? Danny Schechter says that Israel has targeted conservative media in America, saying that Israel is the victim not the Flotilla participants.

The verbiage above is from Russia Today. I am not optimistic about the peace talks. I also think most observers here in the US, both the establishment press and people in general, have tuned them out, in part because nobody really expects them to be successful, even if many(maybe most?) Americans might have difficulty understanding Barghouti's point of view, and may just chalk it up to Palistinian intransigence, or shrug about how difficult it is to understand the middle east.

I'm guessing very few Americans would easily accept the possibility that US foreign policy is an obstacle to peace. It's hard not to wonder if the only reason these talks are even happening is because of the Memorial Day weekend flotilla raid, and the need Israel and the US have to seem to respond with a peace overture, and the need Fatah has to seem to reciprocate. So, they all go through the motions. I remember in 2000 I was under the impression that Arafat was walking away from a pretty good deal, but later I learned that most of the land swaps was of desert for arable, cultivated land that had been taken by settlers, in exchange for desert.

26 August 2010

Joe Bageant: "honk if you love caviar" OK, the essay is actually entitled "Understanding America's Class System," but I like the subtitle Joe appends to it. The video above is an excerpt from a documentary about him that's due out shortly.


Helena Cobban, "The Iraqi skeleton in America's closet"


Aug. 14, CBS News, "Historians Rethink Key Soviet Role In Japan Defeat"

Historians: Soviet Offensive, Key To Japan's WWII Surrender, Was Eclipsed By A-bombs

Oh please. This new "theory" is a smokescreen designed to obscure the better established and better documented position, put forward by Gar Alperovitz and James Carroll and others, that Truman used the bomb precisely because of the Soviets, to send them a signal of postwar resolve and strength. At any rate, the Japanese were ready to surrender before the first atom bomb was dropped.


CNN Poll: Opposition to Iraq, Afghanistan wars reach all time high

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report: "Obama Snarls at the Left, But Winks at the Right"


For some reason the Christian Science Monitor seems to be shifting ever so slightly rightward. This is very discouraging to me because for the longest time they struck me as one of the last decent yet sort of mainstream US news portals. But consider these two recent items:


"Amid record debt, we need a welfare state we can believe in – and afford" This was authored by one "William Voegeli." Sounds like a pseudonym to me. I wonder if he also answers to Alan Simpsoni.

"Jimmy Carter: Can Obama trust him in North Korea talks?"

Maybe it's just the op-eds. Either way, I have a hard time understanding the supposed need to add right-wingers for "balance" when they're durn near everywhere already.

Two standards

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas has received a great deal of criticism for recent comments about Israel, but the comments of someone else involved are at least as offensive.

Asked by Rabbi David Nesenoff if she had “any comments about Israel?” Thomas responded, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” Upon further questioning, Thomas would say that Israelis should go to countries like Germany, Poland and the United States.

Nesenoff, who appears to lead a congregation in Smithtown, New York, put these comments in a brief youtube video and predictably, as well as understandably, there has been outrage. The matter has been picked up on the web by outlets like The Drudge Report (where the current lead is a link to a breitbart.tv page featuring the embedded clip), WorldNetDaily and Mediaite. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer believes Thomas should lose her job as a columnist for Hearst and the gang of intellectuals on this morning’s edition of Fox & Friends seemed to agree with this sentiment.

Thomas has apologized on her website, helenthomas.org, where she added that “mutual respect and tolerance” are necessary for “peace” in the Middle East. Many will no doubt find her apology weak. Writing on the popular Hot Air blog, Allahpundit sarcastically responds, “I’m satisfied. Who among us hasn’t innocently stumbled into a statement of support for ethnic cleansing when we didn’t really mean it?”

I think Thomas may be sincere. At one point in the video, Thomas is laughing as if she might not literally mean what she is saying. Furthermore, the clip is so short that it is hard to believe that Nesenoff and Thomas did not communicate with each other before and after the depicted exchange. Perhaps this would add context that changes the appearance of her comments. Perhaps not.

More importantly, there is the issue of how highly critical comments about Israelis spur more anger in the popular media of the United States than does Israel’s actual mistreatment of Palestinians or their attack on a naval vessel bringing much needed supplies to Gaza. This is a comparison that I’m sure Dead Horse readers had already made on their own, but this affair does bring one more example of the double standard that exists in terms of what is considered acceptable to say about whom.

Nesenoff operates a website called RabbiLIVE.com. On the main page of this site, one can currently find a commentary by the proprietor that compares those trying to break the Gaza embargo to the oil spewing from Deepwater Horizon. “As the White House and BP scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do about the crap creeping up onto the coast,” Nesenoff writes, “Israel knows exactly what to do.” As far as I can tell, nobody has been angered by this statement.

Perhaps the full contents of the essay are needed to insure that it is clear Nesenoff is talking about:

Sludge At Sea

By Rabbi David Nesenoff

At at recent press conference Helen Thomas, the White House correspondent, chimed in with calling the recent flotilla event a “massacre”, the same words used by the President of Turkey. In a recent interview I had with Thomas on the White House lawn, she aped the mantra of the Iranian terrorist Ahmedinajad as she pleaded for the Jews to leave Israel and go back to Germany and Poland.

Meanwhile as our coast and these poor birds and fish are terrorized by the barrels and globs of oil that threaten our people and plates, the sludge of inhumanity endeavors to slither onto the shores of Israel as well. I’ve seen puddles of spilled gas sometimes at the local pump and I’ve watched Schindler’s List and the Pianist, but the magnitude of sludge has never hit me so strongly as I am witnessing unfold on video in my lifetime.

The videos show blackened birds searching for breath and Israeli children dodging rockets fired from Gaza while Israeli soldiers are beaten, knifed and fired upon. A defenseless dead Jew is acceptable; a Jew who kills in self defense is condemned by the world. The Jew is blown up, rocketed upon, blasted, and beheaded. But the tears are reserved for the birds.

As the White House and BP scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do about the crap creeping up onto the coast, Israel knows exactly what to do.

It doesn’t quite match the poetry of “one Palestinian in the sea equals pollution; all Palestinians in the sea equals solution,” but the thought is there.

Al jazeera: traffic lights in Jerusalem

from Al Jazeera's Youtube channel, via Irish4Palestine and Xymphora.

an invisible coup, pt 2

Since my post from the other day I notice that Xymphora has also posted about the presumptive coup, citing the same PressTV item, and "Xenophile" left a telling comment:

Xenophile 08/04/2009 08:47 AM
That sounds like PressTV's revenge for Western coverage/promotion of the astroturf revolution in Teheran.

Lemme see if I get it: a Saudi dissident quoted from the Arabic-language Iranian channel by the Iranian official press is the source. À consommer avec moderation

.

I also came across this: (September 2008)
from Stratfor.com,

Iranian media reported a failed coup attempt in Saudi Arabia on Sept. 3, citing an Arab publication. The details of the reports suggest, however, that they are unfounded. Tehran’s move to pick up the story is likely Iranian psyops against Saudi Arabia, designed to undermine global confidence in the stability of the world’s largest oil producer.

an invisible failed coup?

NOTE: 6 Aug 09: please see additional comments at "an invisible coup, pt 2"

I gather that some Arabic language radio channels have been discussing a possible failed coup this past weekend in Saudi Arabia, possibly led by Prince Bandar.

Have you heard of E.I.R. Gmbh, aka Eirna.com? I know nothing about E.I.R. GmbH, so I'm not really in a good position to assess their veracity. I found this(dated July 16th) at their site in looking for info about the possible failed Saudi coup:

In the U.S., newly declassified documents from the files of the official investigatory Commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, give further evidence of the direct role of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services. One key document, a “Memorandum for the Record” dated April 23, 2004, confirms that a known Saudi intelligence officer, Omar al-Bayoumi, was working closely with two of the hijackers based on the West Coast, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.

This document summarizes an interview that Commission staffers Quinn John Tamm Jr. and Dietrich Snell had with an unnamed source, who was an FBI informant in the San Diego area, and who rented a room in his home to two hijackers during much of 2000. In the interview, the FBI informant confirmed the relationship between al-Bayoumi and the two hijackers.

However, the document omits one highly interesting piece of information, that is included in other 9/11 Commission documents, as well as in a 28-page synopsis suppressed by the Bush White House, on the role of al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan (another identified Saudi intelligence officer) in funding the two West Coast hijackers. That is, that Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, then Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Princess Haifa, paid between $50,000 and $72,000 to al-Bayoumi who, in turn, passed on some of the money to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, to finance their rent, and their flight school attendance, previous to the 9/11 attacks. Note that Princess Haifa is the sister of Prince Turki bin-Faisal, who was the head of Saudi Arabian intelligence at the time of the 9/11 attacks – and resigned, suddenly, shortly thereafter.

The article goes on to mention that former FBI director Louis Freeh is now Prince Bandar's attorney, representing him in the BAE bribery case.(2003 Guardian link) Meanwhile this is the only link I found discussing a possible failed coup in Saudi this past weekend:

Press TV, "In kingdom, Saudi prince's coup 'fails'"

see also
BBC, April 2008, "UK wrong to halt Saudi arms probe"


BBC, July 2008, "Lords says SFO Saudi move lawful"

Times of London, May 2008, "BAE accused of being uncooperative with US investigators"

6 Aug 09: please see additional comments at "an invisible coup, pt 2"