Blog 130 | The Libertarian Institute

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Biden Levies New Sanctions on Yemen, Stops Short of Catastrophic ‘Terrorism’ Designation

by Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | Feb 24, 2022 | Blog

The US Treasury Department has announced new sanctions targeting a “key” financial network for Yemen’s Houthis, claiming it has supported the group in its years-long war against the US-backed Saudi coalition.

The department said Sa’id al-Jamal, allegedly an “Iran-based Houthi financial supporter,” had helped to transfer “tens of millions of dollars to Yemen via a complex international network of intermediaries in support of the Houthis’ attacks.” A number of affiliated businesses and individuals in places ranging from the UAE to Sweden were also penalized.

The sanctions “fall short of the tougher measures that the Saudis and Emiratis, key strategic partners of the US, had sought from the Biden administration,” US state media outlet Voice of America reported, referring to recent talks in the White House on whether to reinstate the Houthis to the Foreign Terror Organization list.

Though the Houthis – officially known as Ansarallah – were previously placed on the FTO under the Donald Trump administration, Joe Biden reversed the decision last year in “recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.” Major Houthi leaders remain sanctioned, however.

Humanitarian groups and the UN have repeatedly warned that an FTO designation for Ansarallah would effectively criminalize international aid to Yemen, whose civilian population has already been devastated by Saudi Arabia’s brutal seven-year bombing campaign.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have lobbied hard for the designation, and have reportedly found a partner in the White House, with top Middle East foreign policy adviser Brett McGurk leading an effort to place the group on the terror blacklist. Other advocates of the move have cited a recent Houthi attack that killed three migrant workers in Dubai.

Though the Houthis have launched attacks beyond Yemen’s borders, often targeting Saudi energy assets, the US-Saudi-UAE coalition has inflicted a far greater toll throughout its lengthy air war. Coalition warplanes have pounded Yemeni cities for years, frequently striking civilian structures, farms, bridges, roadways, hospitals and schools (and school buses full of children). More recent atrocities include the slaughter of 91 people at a migrant detention facility last month, while a strike on a telecoms hub one week earlier reportedly killed three children playing soccer nearby.

The Biden administration recently condemned a Houthi operation that injured 12 in Saudi Arabia as a “terrorist attack,” but was silent as Saudi airstrikes killed 139 civilians in January alone, the most in a single month since 2016. A minimum of 400,000 people have been killed throughout the conflict to date.

At least for now, Biden’s decision to keep the Houthis off the FTO will delay the worst-case scenarios predicted by international bodies. However, the president has failed to come through on his repeated vows to bring an end to the conflict. Short of withdrawing the crucial American support for the Saudi war effort, the slow death of Yemen will continue.

Texas Prosecutor Worked for Judges in ‘Fundamental Conflict of Interest’

by Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | Feb 24, 2022 | Blog

Weldon Ralph Petty Jr. spent decades working in the Midland County District Attorney’s Office in Texas as a prosecutor before returning in 2018. Just a year later, a scandal was unearthed, showing Petty had spent much of his career working as a clerk for judges on cases in which he was also a prosecutor.

Petty is documented to have worked on both sides of the bench in at least 355 cases, writing decisions and jury instructions. He also gained access to information that aided his cases against defendants. The same corrupt arrangement even occurred in the death-sentence conviction of Clinton Young, a USA Today investigation revealed:

“Petty was part of the legal team that convicted Young in a high-profile capital murder trial two years later. Petty’s roles in the case included amending Young’s indictment, examining witnesses at a pretrial hearing and writing the instructions that jurors took with them to deliberate…

Even after the conviction, Petty continued to work both sides of the bench in Young’s case. As a prosecutor, Petty was responsible for opposing Young’s appeals and writs. At the same time, though, he billed the county for work he did consulting with the judge who recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals deny Young’s appeals. Court filings show that Hyde submitted a document using language identical to what Petty had proposed in Young’s case.”

After spending nearly 20 years behind bars, Young was finally released from custody last month, after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted him a new trial in September 2021 following the revelations about Petty’s misconduct.

Petty not only gained leverage over the justice system in his side gig, but also enriched himself in the process. Records from 2001-2018 show that he made more than $250,000 in clerking for justices, in addition to his yearly prosecutor’s salary of more than $150,000.

Practicing defense attorney Patrick MacFarlane told the Libertarian Institute that Petty’s double-dealing role would create “incredibly difficult” obstacles for any defendant, as “the person making substantive rulings on the case either is the opposing party, or is being unduly influenced by the opposing party.” He added that the clerk-prosecutor was engaged in a “fundamental conflict of interest.”

Damn!

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 24, 2022 | Blog, Foreign Policy

Vladimir Putin’s invasion and bombing of Ukraine deserve the condemnation of all decent people. Regardless of what has been going on over there, Putin did not have to do it. He had a moral obligation to deal with the issues properly. His actions cannot be excused.

Russia, China, Iran, and the U.S.

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 23, 2022 | Blog, Foreign Policy

At this tense moment it is important to realize that the hardliners on both sides of any geopolitical rivalry are de facto allies. They need each other in their struggles against their domestic pro-diplomacy, antiwar opposition. So when the hardliners ascend on one side, their counterparts on the other side also ascend. If they could, they’d grab a beer together after work.

Biden to Deploy National Guard to Confront American Trucker Protest

by Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | Feb 23, 2022 | Blog

Inspired by the movement created by Canadian truckers, anti-Covid lockdown and vaccine mandate protests are springing up around the world. The American iteration has been dubbed the ‘People’s Freedom Convoy’ and is set to kick off Wednesday, when truckers will begin a trek to the nation’s capital timed for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

As in Ottawa, however, they may face a harsh crackdown when they arrive.

Rather than embracing the Bill of Rights, the Biden administration seems to be adopting the policies of Justin Trudeau’s regime in Canada. The Pentagon announced Tuesday that the Capitol Police had requested a deployment of National Guard troops to contain the protesters.

Later in the day, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin granted the request and will send 400 soldiers and 50 large tactical vehicles from the National Guard to the streets of DC. The capital city will have a military presence from February 26th to March 7th, with the DoD noting that the troops will “provide support at designated traffic posts, provide command and control, and cover sustainment requirements.”

The Capitol Police announced last week they were considering sealing the Capitol grounds with temporary fencing prior to Biden’s SOTU. After the January 6th riot in the halls of Congress last year, thousands of National Guard soldiers and miles of razor-wire fencing were placed around the Capitol, remaining for the first several months of the Biden presidency.

Since taking office, Biden has often split the world into two camps: democracy and authoritarianism. As the host of the ‘Summit of Democracy,’ a virtual event held by the US in December, the president championed himself as a Western heir of the enlightenment. Crushing unarmed opposition protesters with soldiers, however, is the hallmark of an authoritarian thug.

Sanctions & Troop Deployments: US Retaliates to Russia’s Donbass Move

by Will Porter | Feb 22, 2022 | Blog

Reacting to Moscow’s decision to recognize the independence of Ukraine’s Donbass region, the United States has imposed a raft of harsh sanctions targeting Russian financial entities and bolstered its troop presence in the Baltics.

The White House announced its “first tranche” of “swift and severe” measures against Russia on Tuesday, bringing “full blocking sanctions” on two major financial institutions and dozens of their subsidiaries, as well as sovereign debt prohibitions designed to deny Moscow’s access to capital and key US markets.

A release by the Treasury Department elaborated on the penalties, noting they would target Russia’s Vnesheconombank (VEB) and Promsvyazbank Public Joint Stock Company (PSB), in addition to “five Kremlin-connected elites” and their family members.

“These measures will freeze their assets in the United States, prohibit American individuals or businesses from doing any transactions with them, shut them out of the global financial system and foreclose access to the US dollar,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters.

US allies in Europe have vowed to follow suit with similar measures, and – more significantly – Germany on Tuesday agreed to suspend the Nord Stream 2 natural gas line from Russia indefinitely, halting a major, years-long energy project between the two nations.

The international sanctions follow a previous executive order issued by President Joe Biden on Monday, which effectively barred any and all US business activity in the Donetsk or Luhansk Republics – break-away states which declared secession from the Ukrainian government following a US-sponsored coup in 2014.

In addition to the financial measures, Biden also ordered a new deployment of US troops to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, shifting forces from elsewhere in Europe after Russia decided to retain its presence in Belarus following weeks of military drills there. The president did not specify the number of soldiers deployed, but the US has sent some 6,000 troops to Europe during the latest bout of tension.

Western officials have repeatedly accused Moscow of plans to invade Ukraine in recent months, claiming it has amassed more than 150,000 soldiers on the country’s border. Russia has disputed that figure and denies any intention to attack, though acknowledges active military exercises near its border with Ukraine.

After recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk as independent, Russian President Vladimir Putin went further on Tuesday and endorsed the separatists’ claims to much of the Donbass, a largely Russian-speaking region of eastern Ukraine which shares a border with Russia.

The separatists declared succession soon after 2014’s EuroMaidan coup that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych – in which Western-friendly opposition figures were bankrolled by millions in State Department dollars funneled through the National Endowment for Democracy. Ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi factions played a significant role in the putsch, some of which have since been integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

Freshly installed with officials hand-selected by US diplomats, as one of its first acts in power the post-coup government launched an ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ against the secessionists, marching troops clear across the country to kill fellow Ukrainians and deny their aspirations to independence. Though the full extent of Moscow’s involvement is unclear, the separatists have reportedly enjoyed Russian backing throughout the conflict, which has claimed some 15,000 lives on both sides.

With Moscow’s recognition of the separatist-held regions, as well as a troop deployment to the Donbass for a “peacekeeping mission,” the Biden administration has hinted at an even stiffer response in the coming days, saying it “remains fully prepared to impose further, expansive economic costs” on Russia.

A planned meeting between Blinken and his Russian counterpart set for later this week, meanwhile, has been called off, with the secretary of state citing Moscow’s “wholesale rejection of diplomacy” as reason to skip the talks. While Russia proposed the sit-down last week as a way to relieve tensions over the Donbass crisis, the United States is now refusing to negotiate, considering the “invasion” of Ukraine already in progress.

Why Provoke Putin?

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 22, 2022 | Blog

No one I know who criticizes America’s post-Cold War policy toward Russia — including the U.S. position on Ukraine — thinks Vladimir Putin is a good guy. Indeed, the case against U.S. bellicosity toward Russia in no way depends on a favorable view of the Russian ruler. On the contrary, it is because Putin is who he is (an aggrieved nationalist) and because of Russia’s place in history that the U.S. policy of ignoring, when not belittling, Russia’s security concerns is so dangerous. Russia’s history — including multiple invasions from the west — is what it is, and that huge nuclear power isn’t going anywhere, no matter what America’s warmongers would like. Neither are its neighbors going to relocate anytime soon. So a regional modus vivendi is imperative. If the U.S. government continues to stand in the way — remember the U.S.-backed coup against the elected Ukrainian government in 2014 and the repeated eastward expansion of NATO since the Cold War — it is an agent of war, not peace.

See Peter Hitchens’s take.