United Arab Emirates

Background here.

By Kristen Breitweiser, one of the four 9/11 widows – known as the “Jersey Girls” – instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks. Follow Kristen Breitweiser on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kdbreitweiser.

Everyone knows about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s connections to the September 11th attacks. In fact, most Americans can easily recite that 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudi.

For the better part of a year now Americans have speculated over precisely what pressing national security issue may have prompted the Obama administration to take the extreme measure of unmasking the names of Trump officials captured in foreign intelligence reports...you know, because bypassing the typical warrant process and violating an American citizen's fourth amendment protections is kind of a big deal. 

Either the blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and its allies (recall the Saudi ultimatum expires on July 3) and the whole Qatar "crisis" is the most staged and produced diplomatic stunt since last summer's Turkish "coup", or for some unknown reason, the worse the diplomatic relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia get, the more they cooperate in the only industry that matters for Saudi Arabia.

Submitted by Ben Norton of Alternet

A highly influential top Emirati diplomat heaped praise on a prominent Washington Post columnist for writing pro-Saudi propaganda, a leaked email shows.

Yousef al-Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, applauded journalist David Ignatius for his writing on Saudi Arabia. Ignatius is notorious for fawning coverage of the kingdom, promoting its supposed efforts at reform and taking its line on regional conflicts without a shred of skepticism.

The United Arab Emirates declared on Wednesday that anyone publishing statements sympathetic to Qatar could be punished with up to 15 years in prison, and said it would deny entry to anyone with a Qatari passport or resident visa.