#Jamar Khashoggi

[racingtoaredlight]

Opening Bell: October 19, 2018

The drama associated with the disappearance, and alleged murder, of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, continues to evolve. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump insisted that the Saudi government had categorically denied any involvement in the disappearance of Khashoggi, and that this denial was “firm.” Then the president indicated that perhaps a “rogue” element of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service had undertaken any alleged killing, a talking point which was parroted by Riyadh hours later. This statement by Trump, however, was made without any reference to Khashoggi’s fate. Then, yesterday, the president acknowledged that it did appear that Khashoggi was dead, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who recently returned from Riyadh, asserted that Saudi Arabia be given time to undertake a “transparent” investigation of the entire incident. Given that several members of the alleged hit-team which killed and dismembered the corpse of Khashoggi have close ties to Muhammed Bin Sultan—popularly referred to in the media as ‘MBS’—the actual level of transparency to any investigation is questionable to say the least. In order to give a patina of legitimacy to the investigation, it appeared yesterday that Riyadh was ready to implicate a senior intelligence official of acting without orders. This entire episode is the stuff of a spy thriller: foreign intelligence agents committing a horrific act, allegedly witnessed by the intelligence agents of another country, both of whom are important strategic allies of the United States. Were there not already preexisting tensions attendant to each spoke of these international relationships, this would still be a difficult time, but Saudi Arabia and Turkey have a profoundly frayed relationship while that of the United States and Turkey, a NATO member and ostensible ally, has also been uneasy for years due to the increasingly nationalistic and anti-democratic actions of Turkish President Recep Erdogan. There are multiple major consequences for everyone involved in this, and no tidy resolution is readily apparent.

Stop me if I’ve started a post with the following words before: This week, in a news story which would ordinarily be a front page potential scandal for a cabinet member, and therefore imputed to the White House itself, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke allegedly attempted to install a political appointee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development as the Inspector General (IG) at Interior. Suzanne Tuft would be the direct supervisor of the current Deputy IG, an Obama-appointee who happens to be overseeing four different investigations into Zinke and his use of department resources for personal and family purposes. At least one of the investigations is directed at Zinke’s wife, which allegedly is why Zinke sought to put a damper on things by placing a political appointee between himself and Interior’s Deputy IG. This took a turn later in the day when, shortly after a public announcement by HUD Secretary Ben Carson that Tuft was in fact moving to Interior to become the IG, only for the Interior Department’s press secretary to deny any move was occurring and that the White House, which nominates IG’s for each cabinet level agency, had not submitted any candidates. This somewhat bizarre turn of events comes off as a clumsy attempt to correct a larger political and ethical miscue before it occurred. Given that two cabinet level officials—Scott Pruitt at the EPA and Tom Price at HHS—have already been forced to resign after they were found to be misusing department funding and resources, the IG’s investigations at Interior could pose a threat to Zinke’s job, which provides a motive for squelching any investigation in the first place. 

In 1994, Republicans scored one of the most decisive midterm election victories in modern American history when they won 54 seats in the House of Representatives, 8 seats in the Senate, and flipped dozens of state legislatures around the country, ushering in a period of Republican legislative power that has persisted; we still live in the legacy of 1994 to this day. 1994 was a watershed election and for the first time in four decades, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. The leader of this Revolution, who would become the first Republican Speaker of the House since the first Eisenhower administration, was Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich. Gingrich had arrived in the House years earlier, but chafed under the collegial relationships which Democratic and Republican leaders fostered with one another. Gingrich represented a new wave of political bomb throwers who cast aside collegiality and compromise in favor of brash rhetoric, crass name-calling, and ostentatious political advertising. Congress was forever changed and many commentators point to 1994 as when modern congressional dysfunction really began. In a long piece for The Atlantic, McKay Coppins interviewed Gingrich to understand his view of politics and why he believes the current political animosity is actually a good thing. While the length of this article is daunting, the writing is breezy and it’s a relatively quick read.

For much of history, everyone but the upper class and nobility was more or less bound to the land where they lived. Travel was difficult and most people lived and died within miles of where they were born. Allegiance to a local lord through an obligation to provide agriculture output and manpower to that lord also generally prevented a person of the peasant, later the working class, from uprooting and moving elsewhere. Travel was largely limited to the wealthy, the merchant class, and those of itinerant occupations, such as sailors. Later, as nation-states evolved to envelope the people who lived within their boundaries, restrictions on the freedom to travel elsewhere came in the form of paperwork and documents which had to procured first from both the nation of residence and the destination country. Visas and passports became a new form of control in the absence of a feudal system of allegiance. In the movie Casablanca, the coastal Moroccan city had, during the course of the Second World War, a jumping off point for those looking to escape the war on the European continent and travel, via neutral Portugal, to unoccupied Europe or the New World. But to depart Casablanca, an individual required exit visas which could only be signed by a local government official, the Vichy French. And, as the movie tells it, the presence of Germans in Casablanca served as a check on who could make their way through the French territory. Today, travel has become more expensive than ever and many  nations place financial asset minimums in order for an individual to become a permanent resident, ensuring that only the ultra-wealthy can afford to move to a new country and start over.

It is well-known among most people that Islamic scholars of past centuries contributed vast amounts to math, science, and literature. Algebra, the concept of zero, great works of literature, and great advances in astronomy are all credited to Islamic academics of a thousand years ago. In recent decades, with a growing fear of Islamic militarism and religious fanaticism around the globe, a reemphasis has been placed on the academic achievements of adherents of Islam. The only problem is that certain artists have chosen to represent Islamic scientific achievements in art, in an inaccurate manner; e.g. showing Muslim astronomers using telescopes at a time when they instead used sextants. The intent of the artists behind these works is probably benign or even positive, but in inaccurately showing the ways in which Muslim scholars contributed knowledge that has benefitted the rest of the world undermines these achievements. This is problematic when such works are featured in prominent collections of Islamic art both in the east and the west. This is a thoughtful piece which explores the importance of procedurally presenting history in an accurate manner.

Perfume has for centuries been used by people to mask their own bodily odors and secretions through smells that evoke nature, flowers, forests, plants, and other deep primal smells. Many of these scents are in turn the product of animal body secretions such as ambergris, civets, and other things which the perfume user would not want to see in their original forms. Perfumes today are still mixed in much the way they were 100 or even 1,000 years ago, though with synthetic substitutes for the natural ingredients of the past: going on whale hunts in order to seek ambergris is generally frowned upon by most of the international community these days. This is an example of just one luxury item that has kind of a disgusting backstory.

Finally, another week gone by and another week closer to the 2018 midterm election. Much has been made of the so-called “Kavanaugh effect” which supposedly energized Republican voters and has closed the enthusiasm gap with Democratic voters. However, recent generic ballot polls do not show any appreciable gain, as Democrats have consistently been between +7 and +9. Most handicappers believe that Democrats are overwhelming favorites to retake control of the House. Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics takes a race-by-race look at the House and, though a few race forecasts have moved back towards Republicans, on the whole Democrats remained well-placed to retake the House; the only question is the margin of victory.

 Welcome to the weekend.