American-made bombs are being used to massacre large numbers of civilians in Yemen, and new reporting shows that the Trump administration is allowing this carnage to continue and escalate in order to protect the profits of defense contractors.
Just days after the Yemen-based human rights group Mwatana gave CNN exclusive access documents showing that U.S.-manufactured bomb fragments have been found at the scene of at least 11 separate Saudi-led attacks on Yemeni civilians since 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opted to continue American military support for Saudi Arabia over the objections of his staff in an effort to preserve $2 billion in weapons sales to the brutal monarchy.
“Pompeo overruled concerns from most of the State Department specialists involved in the debate who were worried about the rising civilian death toll in Yemen,” the Journal reported, citing a classified State Department memo. “He sided with his legislative affairs team after they argued that suspending support could undercut plans to sell more than 120,000 precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).”
Former top aide to NY Gov. Cuomo sentenced to 6yrs in prison
Convicted of soliciting and accepting more than $315,000 in bribes, the former executive deputy secretary to the Governor of the State of New York, was sentenced Thursday to six years in federal prison. Although Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not been charged in the case, his administration has taken official state action to benefit large companies that paid bribes to his former top aide.
While serving as the Executive Deputy Secretary to the Governor between January 2012 and mid-2014, and again in 2015, Joseph Percoco abused his official position by seeking and accepting bribe payments from executives at energy company Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) and Syracuse-based real estate developer COR Development. Percoco received more than $287,000 in bribe payments from CPV, including expensive meals, a Hamptons fishing trip, and hiring his then-unemployed wife to work for CPV, in exchange for his political power and influence over lucrative contracts.
ICE is arresting the sponsors of undocumented children
The Trump administration is using the process of placing undocumented immigrant children with sponsors as a way to track down and arrest undocumented individuals, according to a CNN report.
From early July through early September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained 41 undocumented immigrants who came forward to take care of undocumented children in government custody, and the agency is reportedly planning to go after more.
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