U.S. and Saudis Causing Hundreds of Thousands of Children to Starve to Death In Yemen (great work Nobel Peace prize winner...)

Posted on April 12, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/04/u-s-saudis-causing-hundreds-thousands-children-starve-death-yemen.html 

The United States is a major backer and supporter of the Saudi-led war against Yemen.  The U.S. supplies the weapons, and provides most of the targeting and military tactics.  See this, this, this, this, this and this.  (And see this for background on the Yemen war.)
The Saudi and American military are committing war crimes left and right …
For example, a report from the United Nations Children’s Fund notes:

Attacks on schools and hospitals and the denial of humanitarian assistance to children continue to occur. The UN verified 51 attacks on education facilities, including schools and personnel.

Human Rights Watch reports:

“Even after dozens of airstrikes on markets, schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians, the coalition refuses to provide redress or change its practices,” [Human Rights Watch] said. “The US and others should pull the plug on arms to the Saudis or further share responsibility for civilian lives lost.”

Indeed, in a single attack last month, almost 100 civilians were killed:

The March 15 attack targeted a crowded market in the village of Mastaba in northwestern Yemen, killing at least 97 civilians, including 25 children. HRW said it found remnants of a “GBU-31 satellite-guided bomb, which consists of a U.S.-supplied MK-84 2,000-pound bomb mated with a JDAM satellite guidance kit, also U.S.-supplied.”

Even worse, hundreds of thousands of kids are starving to death.
The UNICEF report notes that – due to the actions of the U.S. and Saudis – Yemen is experiencing mass starvation on a scale last seen in Ethiopa:

Over 320,000 [children] are at risk of severe acute malnutrition ….

But the numbers may be much worse.  For example, Oxfam wrote last year:

Since the start of the conflict, nearly 25,000 additional people are going hungry each day in Yemen as the blockade and fighting restrict food, fuel and other vital supplies, Oxfam warned today.
One in two people – nearly 13 million people – are now struggling to find enough to eat, and half of them are on the brink of starvation. This is an increase of 2.3 million people since the escalation in fighting and beginning of the blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition in March 2015. In a country that has historically faced food shortages, this is the highest ever recorded number of people living in hunger.
***
Over a three month period from March 26 (the beginning of the airstrikes and the blockade) – June 26, 2015, the number of people with limited access to food increased by a staggering 2.3 million people from 10.6 to 12.9; the equivalent of nearly 25,000 extra people a day.

The pictures are absolutely horrific.

How False Stories of Iran Arming the Houthis Were Used to Justify War in Yemen

Thursday, 31 December 2015 10:42 By Gareth Porter, Truthout | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34240-how-false-stories-of-iran-arming-the-houthis-were-used-to-justify-war-in-yemen

A man walks in Saada, in northern Yemen, a stronghold of the Houthi rebels, which has come under intense bombardment by the Saudi-led coalition, September 7, 2015. (Tyler Hicks / The New York Times)
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Peace talks between the Saudi-supported government of Yemen and the Houthi rebels ended in late December without any agreement to end the bombing campaign started by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies with US support last March. The rationale for the Saudi-led war on Houthis in Yemen has been that the Houthis are merely proxies of Iran, and the main alleged evidence for that conclusion is that Iran has been arming the Houthis for years.
The allegation of Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis - an allegation that has often been mentioned in press coverage of the conflict but never proven - was reinforced by a report released last June by a panel of experts created by the UN Security Council: The report concluded that Iran had been shipping arms to the Houthi rebels in Yemen by sea since at least 2009. But an investigation of the two main allegations of such arms shipments made by the Yemeni government and cited by the expert panel shows that they were both crudely constructed ruses.

Diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal that the story of the arms onboard the ship had been concocted by the government.

The government of the Republic of Yemen, then dominated by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, claimed that it had seized a vessel named Mahan 1 in Yemeni territorial waters on October 25, 2009, with a crew of five Iranians, and that it had found weapons onboard the ship. The UN expert panel report repeated the official story that authorities had confiscated the weapons and that the First Instance Court of Sana'a had convicted the crew of the Mahan 1 of smuggling arms from Iran to Yemen.
But diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Yemen released by WikiLeaks in 2010 reveal that, although the ship and crew were indeed Iranian, the story of the arms onboard the ship had been concocted by the government. On October 27, 2009, the US Embassy sent a cable to the State Department noting that the Embassy of Yemen in Washington had issued a press statement announcing the seizure of a "foreign vessel carrying a quantity of arms and other goods...." But another cable dated November 11, 2009, reported that the government had "failed to substantiate its extravagant public claims that an Iranian ship seized off its coast on October 25 was carrying military trainers, weapons and explosives destined for the Houthis."
Furthermore, the cable continued, "sensitive reporting" - an obvious reference to US intelligence reports on the issue - "suggests that the ship was carrying no weapons at all."
A follow-up Embassy cable five days later reported that the government had already begun to revise its story in light of the US knowledge that no arms had been found on board. "The ship was apparently empty when it was seized," according to the cable. "However, echoing a claim by Yemen Ambassador al-Hajj, FM [Foreign Minister] Qaairbi told Pol Chief [chief of the US Embassy's political section] on 11/15 the fact that the ship was empty indicated the arms had already been delivered."

President Saleh had hoped to use the Mahan 1 ruse to get the political support of the US for a war to defeat the Houthis.

President Saleh had hoped to use the Mahan 1 ruse to get the political support of the US for a war to defeat the Houthis, which he was calling "Operation Scorched Earth." But as a December 2009 cable noted, it was well known among Yemeni political observers that the Houthis were awash in modern arms and could obtain all they needed from the huge local arms market or directly from the Yemeni military itself.
Unlike the government's story of the Mahan 1 and its phantom weapons, the official claim that a ship called the Jihan 1, seized on January 23, 2013, had arms onboard was true. But the totality of the evidence shows that the story of an Iranian arms shipment to the Houthis was false.
The ship was stopped in Yemeni waters by a joint patrol of the Yemeni Coast Guard and the US Navy, and an inspection found a cache of weapons and ammunition. The cargo including man-portable surface-to-air missiles, 122-millimeter rockets, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, C-4 plastic explosive blocks and equipment for improvised explosive devices.
Some weeks later, the UN expert panel inspected the weaponry said to have been found on board the Jihan 1 and found labels stuck on ammunition boxes with the legend "Ministry of Sepah" - the former name of the Iranian military logistics ministry. The panel report said the panel had determined that "all available information placed the Islamic Republic of Iran at the centre of the Jihan operation."
But except for those labels, which could have been affixed to the boxes after the government had taken possession of the arms, nothing about the ship or the weapons actually pointed to Iran. All of the crew and the businessmen said to have arranged the shipment were Yemenis, according to the report. And the expert panel cited no evidence that the ship was Iranian or that the weapons were manufactured in Iran.

The expert panel cited no evidence that the ship was Iranian or that the weapons were manufactured in Iran.

The case rested on the testimony of the Yemeni crew members of the Jihan 1 - then still in government custody - who said they had sailed from Yemen to the Iranian port of Chabahar, had been taken to another Iranian port and then ferried by small boat to the Jihan 1 sitting off the Iranian coast. But although the panel said it had access to "waypoint data retrieved from Global Positioning System (GPS) devices," it did not cite any such data that supported the crew members' story. In fact, the panel acknowledged that it had "no information regarding the location at which the Jihan was loaded with arms...."
A crucial fact about the cargo, moreover, points not to Iran but to Yemen itself as the origin of the ship: The weapons on the ship were hidden under diesel fuel tanks and could be accessed only after those tanks had been emptied. The expert panel referred to that fact but failed to discuss its significance. But the June 2013 report of a UN Security Council Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said that Jihan 1's crew members had "divulged to a diplomatic source who interviewed them in Aden that the diesel was bound for Somalia." An unnamed Yemeni official confirmed that fact, which the crew members had kept from the Security Council expert panel, according to the UN Monitoring Group report.
The fact that the Jihan 1 was headed for Somalia indicates that the ship was engaged in a commercial smuggling operation - not a politically motivated delivery. The lucrative business of smuggling diesel fuel from Yemen to Somalia had long been combined with arms smuggling to the same country across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, as the Monitoring Group report made clear. The Monitoring Group report explained that the reason authorities in the Puntland region of Somalia had made it illegal to import petroleum products was that arms had so often been smuggled into ports on its coast hidden under diesel fuel.
The same UN Monitoring Group report also revealed that a series of arms shipments had been smuggled to Somalia in late 2012 - just before the Jihan 1 was seized - in which rocket-propelled grenade launchers were the primary component and IED components and electrical detonators were also prominent. Those were also major components of the Jihan 1 weapons shipment. The report said information received from the Puntland authorities and its own investigation had "established Yemen as a principal source of the these shipments."
A key piece of evidence confirming that those arms had originated in Yemen was a communication from the Bulgarian government to the UN Monitoring Group indicating that all the rocket-propelled grenade rounds and propellant charges in one lot manufactured in Bulgaria and seized in Somalia had been delivered to the Yemeni armed forces in 2010.
The information in the Monitoring Group report thus points to Yemeni arms smugglers as the source of the cargo of weapons and diesel fuel aboard the Jihan 1. When the arms were seized by the joint US-Yemen patrol, the Yemeni government evidently decided to exploit it by creating a new story of an Iranian arms shipment to the Houthis, and later used the Yemeni crew to provide the details to the UN expert panel.
The Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group's report created an obvious problem for the official story of the Jihan 1, and the Yemeni government's anti-Iran, Western backers sought to give the story a new twist. Reuters quoted a "Western diplomat" as citing the Jihan 1 arms shipment as evidence that Iran had actually been involved in supplying arms to al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia. The anonymous source noted that the cargo had included C-4 explosives such as were used by al-Shabaab for terrorist bombings, whereas the Houthis were not known to carry out such operations. But that claim was hardly credible, because al-Shabaab had close ties to al-Qaeda and was therefore an enemy of Iran. It has not been repeated except in pro-Saudi and pro-Israeli media outlets.
The Jihan 1 story and the broader narrative of intercepted Iranian arms shipments to the Houthis, as recycled by the UN Security Council expert panel, have nevertheless become key pieces of the widely accepted history of the regional conflicts involving Iran.

Cyclone Chapala dumps a decade worth of rain on Yemen causing major flooding

Posted on November 4, 2015 by The Extinction Protocol

November 2015 – YEMEN – The coast of Yemen, an area unaccustomed to dealing with the devastation of tropical systems, has taken a direct hit from the powerful and dangerous Cyclone Chapala. As Chapala made landfall Tuesday, it dumped enormous amounts of rainfall on the arid coast – as much as a decade’s worth, according to some forecasts. This caused major flooding and swamped entire towns. Relief Web reported Tuesday that the cyclone has already caused severe flooding in the country’s fifth-largest city, Mukalla, with 25 reported injuries. Initial reports suggest that more than 12,750 people have left their homes in coastal areas of Hadramaut governorate.  At least 90 homes have reportedly been damaged or destroyed.

“The wind knocked out power completely in the city and people were terrified. Some residents had to leave their homes and escape to higher areas where flooding was less; it was a difficult night but it passed off peacefully,” Mukalla resident Sabri Saleem told Reuters. There have been no confirmed injuries in Mukalla so far, the report added. Chapala weakened to a tropical storm late Tuesday night, according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, in its routine monthly Desert Locust Bulletin issued Tuesday, said heavy rains from Cyclone Chapala “are likely to result in favorable ecological conditions” for the growth of desert locusts in the central part of the country. The bulletin warned those conditions “could last well into next spring.”

Before hitting the mainland, Chapala sideswiped the Yemeni island of Socotra on Sunday. At least three people were killed and more than 200 were injured on Socotra, according to Emirates 24/7. There was also a huge loss of property on the island, the report added. An estimated 20,000 people were reportedly evacuated from coastal areas and close to 400 houses were damaged or destroyed, Relief Web reported. “The damage is enormous and we fear human losses,” Socotra Island Minister of Fisheries Fahd Kafain told Emirates 24/7. Locals sought shelter in government buildings and schools, as high water levels flooded numerous streets in Hadibo. It is likely that a combination of heavy rainfall and storm surge caused the flooding. –Weather

In Bed With The Despotic House Of Saud

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/07/2015 21:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-07/bed-despotic-house-saud
Submitted by Paul Pillar via ConsortiumNews.com,

The U.S.-Saudi alliance is no longer just an anachronism. It has become a dangerous anachronism with the Saudis implicating the United States in their brutal sectarian conflicts, such as the wars in Yemen and Syria, and in their reactionary human rights policies, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

Saudi King Salman visits Washington amid disagreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia on a broad range of issues. Moreover, the disagreements are rooted in fundamental characteristics of the anachronistic Saudi regime.
Many regimes around the world, and the political and social systems of which they are a part, are markedly different from what is found in the United States, but the Saudi polity is one of the most different. The anachronism that is Saudi Arabia represents a major problem for U.S. foreign policy, both because of the impact Saudi-related matters have on the Middle East and beyond and because of the close association between Saudi Arabia and the United States that has come to be taken for granted.

King Salman the President and First Lady to a reception room at Erga Palace during a state visit to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Little of this has anything to do with the just-completed agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program, despite the attention that subject has been receiving. Riyadh is more likely to accept the agreement as a done deal — and already has publicly indicated its formal acceptance — than the accord’s opponents in the United States and Israel.
The Saudis will continue to look for ways to discourage others, including the United States, from developing warm relations with their rival across the Persian Gulf, but this will not preclude the Saudis themselves, along with the other Gulf Arabs, from undertaking their own rapprochement with Tehran, just as they have done in the past.
In hot spot after hot spot in the Middle East, U.S. and Saudi objectives and priorities diverge, even if in some loose sense they are considered to be on the same side. In war-torn Syria, the United States and Saudi Arabia have never agreed on whether the ouster of the Assad regime or the containment of ISIS should be the main objective.
Saudi priorities are based on a variety of considerations that are specific to it and not to the United States, including hatred of the Assads for whatever role they may have played in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri, a special friend of the Saudis. Reflecting the different priorities and objectives is disagreement over selection and vetting of Syrian rebels to be deemed worthy of support.
In Iraq, Saudi priorities are influenced by some of the same sectarian motives that shape Saudi policy toward Syria. And again, such motives are quite different from U.S. interests. Desired overthrow of the regime is not the factor that it is in Syria, but distrust of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad is a major part of the Saudi approach toward Iraq.
In Yemen, the United States has allowed itself to become associated with a destructive and misguided Saudi military expedition, and thus also with the humanitarian tragedy that the operation has entailed. The main Saudi objective is to show who’s boss on the Arabian Peninsula, another objective not shared with the United States. Saudi Arabia’s operation has shown itself, more so than Iran, to be a destabilizing force intent on throwing its weight around in the neighborhood.
In his most recent column Tom Friedman identifies what may be the most worrisome thing about Saudi Arabia for U.S. interests: “the billions and billions of dollars the Saudis have invested since the 1970s into wiping out the pluralism of Islam — the Sufi, moderate Sunni and Shiite versions — and imposing in its place the puritanical, anti-modern, anti-women, anti-Western, anti-pluralistic Wahhabi Salafist brand of Islam promoted by the Saudi religious establishment.”
Friedman notes that Islamist extremist groups that the United States has come to consider preeminent security concerns, including Al Qaeda and now ISIS, “are the ideological offspring of the Wahhabism injected by Saudi Arabia into mosques and madrasas from Morocco to Pakistan to Indonesia.”
The specific terrorist consequences of what the Saudis have done is justifiably an immediate concern for U.S. policy-makers. But the underlying bargain that Ibn Saud, the founder of the current Saudi kingdom, reached years ago with the Wahhabis also underlies much else that makes Saudi Arabia what it is today, and makes it the problem that it is. The kingdom’s troublesome characteristics are inextricably linked to how Ibn Saud’s offspring are trying to claim legitimacy and thus to cling to power.
Consider some of the chief characteristics of the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is a family-run enterprise in which the distribution and exercise of political power are every bit as medieval as they ever were in any country ruled by the Plantagenets. There is no religious freedom. Human rights in many other respects are sorely lacking. Women are still subordinated. It was considered a big deal when they recently were told they could vote and run as candidates — in elections to local councils with scant power and in which the king will still appoint half the members — but women still cannot function as independent persons in many aspects of daily life. They still are not allowed to drive.
It ought to be astounding that a place this far removed from the liberal democratic values with which the United States likes to be associated, even without considering the aforementioned divergence of objectives elsewhere in the region, still is considered a close partner of the United States. The usual, and to a large degree valid, explanation is that, as Friedman puts it, “we’re addicted to their oil and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.”
But there is another American attitude involved, which persists even in the shale-fracking era. Once a nation is considered a partner or ally in a region that is perceptually divided into allies and adversaries, the perceived line-up tends to stay fixed until and unless there is a political alteration sufficiently great to be labeled regime change.
And regime change would be the most troubling chapter of all in the Saudi story. Some Saudi leaders, including the late King Abdullah, seem to have recognized the need to move in the direction of modernization and liberalization, even if only at the glacial pace that is possible in a Wahhabi-committed family enterprise.
It is an open question whether the regime will be able to keep this kind of change ahead of demands for change of a more drastic and radical sort. If it fails to do so, and the revolution comes, then the association of the United States with the ancien régime will an even greater problem for U.S. policy-makers than what they face now.

‘US closing eyes to Saudi atrocities – sign of extraordinary hypocrisy for Iranians’

Published time: May 14, 2015 14:46

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (C) and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington May 13, 2015.(Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)

http://rt.com/op-edge/258581-us-persian-gulf-iran-deal/

The US is accusing Iran of being a “sponsor of terrorism” while ignoring their Saudi allies are slaughtering Yemeni civilians, funding Al-Qaeda, and have occupied Bahrain, said political analyst at Tehran University Seyed Mohammad Marandi.

Read more'Sponsor of terrorism': Obama slams Iran months after saying it's off terrorist list

President Obama has reassured the Persian Gulf countries that Washington is on their side, despite efforts to clinch a nuclear deal with Iran. In an interview with an Arab newspaper he said Iran is clearly involved in dangerous and destabilizing activities across the region, and called it a “state sponsor of terrorism”. The statements were made on the eve of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting at Camp David – a key US-Arab summit which several Gulf leaders decided to skip.
RT:Obama was at first hailing diplomatic progress at the talks in Switzerland, but how do you explain his latest harsh remarks against Iran?
Seyed Mohammad Marandi: Many in Teheran believe the US is stuck in a very strange position: on the one hand the US speaks about rapprochement with Iran, but on the other hand, it constantly threatens Iran with military strikes and with war. Yet, the US closes its eyes to the reality where the Saudis are destroying Yemen, they are slaughtering many thousands of Yemenis on a daily basis, the Saudis have occupied Bahrain, an independent country, and the Saudis are funding Al-Qaeda in Yemen, in Syria, and extremist groups in Iraq. We know that they helped to create ISIL alongside the Turks.
The Americans are basically calling supporters of extremism and those who advocate Wahhabism across the region and beyond as their allies, countries that bomb other nations and occupy nations. Yet Iran is somehow a threat to the region [and] an exporter of terrorism. For Iranians this is an extraordinary sign of US hypocrisy.
RT: Some commentators say Obama's trying to build Arab support for a nuclear accord with Iran. Do you think that's possible?
SMM: An accord with Iran depends on many factors. One is that the US first has to come to recognize Iran’s sovereign rights. We have to see if that is coming in the next few weeks, the US ultimately has to give up the sanctions regime, and it has to recognize all of Iran’s rights within the framework of the non-proliferation treaty. Beyond that the US had major problems in implementing any agreement because the Saudis and the Israelis as regional allies are very much opposed to any agreement with Iran. Both countries desperately want the region to remain unstable because it benefits them for a host of reasons.

Reuters / Heinz-Peter Bader

But the ball is in the American court. It is more harmful when the US makes such hypocritical statements. They may shore up support from Saudi Arabia, but I think the international community sees the extraordinarily brutal and barbaric behavior of the Saudi regime in Yemen and how it is destroying a nation and slaughtering innocent civilians. And the people in the international community now know that it is Wahhabism whether it is in Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or Pakistan and Afghanistan, all of this is coming from Saudi Arabia, because it is the official Saudi ideology. Therefore, as long as the US continues to attack Iran and use such language the chances for an agreement with Iran lessen because Iran simply can’t trust the US.
RT: How much could Obama's comments hurt efforts to reach the final nuclear deal which is expected by the end of June?
SMM: When Obama or the Vice President [Joe Biden], or the Secretary of State [John Kerry] says [that] all options are on the table, or that “we may attack Iran,” that is basically sending a message to the Iranian people that “we are threatening you with murder and death.” When the US speaks about terrorism (yet, its closest allies like Turkey are supporting ISIL, Saudi Arabia is supporting Al-Qaeda in numerous countries), when the US says that Iran is the source of [instability], then in Iran people wonder if the US President is so dishonest in his public discourse, then how can we trust him, how can we come to an agreement. It makes it all more difficult for people in Iran and for the negotiators to trust the US when such dishonesty is blatant in the public narrative of the US President, the Congress, and the media in the West.

RT: How much has the US President endangered Washington's traditional alliances in the Gulf region by negotiating with Iran?
SMM: The real question is not endangering these alliances, the question is: are these alliances a good thing for the international community. Saudi Arabia is supporting Al-Qaeda in Yemen. On the other hand the Saudi ideology of Wahhabism is linked to Al-Qaeda, on the other side of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, Al Shabaab is Al-Qaeda. So is it in the interest of the international community to have Al-Qaeda empowered on both sides of these narrow straits? It is a major threat to the international economy; the spread of these extremist groups in Syria, Libya - is this really beneficial?
The US has to think: is its alliance with these countries going to serve any good purpose for the US. The US is not behaving in a moral manner, from the Iranian perspective it is utterly immoral. But is it in the strategic interest of the US? The view from Tehran is that in the long-term US policy by supporting these regimes, enhancing terrorist organizations is going to create a major global problem and it could endanger world trade off the coast of Yemen.

Reuters / Yaser Al-Khodor

Israel interest – only explanation to US contradictive stance on Iran

Daoud Khairallah, International law professor, Georgetown University shared his opinion on US interests in the Middle East.
RT: Obama is slamming Iran ahead of the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit .What do you read into the timing of these comments?
Daoud Khairallah: I think he wanted to send a message about the purpose of this meeting. Obama is very much in the driver’s seat on this, even though there are noises and a little bit of discontent here and there. But the US and the Obama administration are very much in control of the way things are going. He in one sense is keeping his focus on finishing a deal with Iran on the nuclear issues, and on the other, keeping these allies; they’re more or less feeling a sense of security, declaring to them that he will not give up a very strict control on the Iranian behavior. He labels Iran as sponsor of terrorism and gives them the right to be worried, but he pledges support, he doesn’t go into detail about what kind of support, but he said: The purpose of the meeting is to deepen the cooperation with the Gulf countries starting with Saudi Arabia.
RT: According to some statements of the White House it seems to be favoring a diplomatic approach when it came to Iran. So how much do Obama's comments now threaten those delicate negotiations with Tehran?

Read more‘Gulf rulers snub Camp David summit: Total disarray of US policy in Mideast’

DK: The US is in a contradictory position: on the one hand it wants to keep Iran in check because Israel is in the first place [among] its Gulf countries, allies. And their fear, anxiety about Iran and the activities of Iran in supporting the Syrian regime, supporting Hezbollah, supporting the Houthis, and this is why Mr. Obama labels it as “sponsoring terrorism”.
[At the same] time, Obama and his administration know that the Syrian regime is the only regime that is credibly fighting terrorism in Syria. Hezbollah in Syria is doing the same thing supporting the regime, fighting terrorism, fighting ISIS and Al-Qaeda derivative al-Nusra and others. The Houthis are fighting Al-Qaeda in Yemen. On the one hand he declared terrorism as the enemy, on the other hand he helps the parties that are fighting or help promoting these terrorists, and he goes against the counties and the forces that are fighting terrorism.
This obvious position [and] obvious contradiction in the US is explainable only because of the Israeli interest in the area. But at the same time he sees a strategic US interest in completing a deal with Iran about the nuclear issues, and to be able to deal with Iran on certain issues in a healthy way that the interest of the US dictates.
RT: The Saudi King will not be at the summit. Will that be taken as a snub by the US?
DK: ... Where would the Saudi King or any other Gulf ruler go? They don’t have anywhere to go. They don’t draw any legitimacy from their own people, they don’t have civil societies. These are groups of rulers who have control of the wealth of their nations that they spend buying influence, buying mercenaries, buying whatever they can buy. I don’t think they are in a position to tell “no” to Obama on any serious issue.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

US, UK thank Russia for evacuation of their citizens from Yemen

Published time: April 13, 2015 18:44
Edited time: April 14, 2015 14:26

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The British Foreign Office, as well as the US Secretary of State, have thanked Moscow for the evacuation of their citizens from war-torn Yemen, as Russian planes and ships take hundreds of Russian and foreign nationals from the conflict zone.
In a phone conversation with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry “expressed gratitude for assistance in evacuation of American citizens” from Yemen, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Monday.
A spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told RT on Monday that, “we can confirm that six British nationals left Yemen at the weekend on a Russian Navy vessel. We thank the Russian authorities for their assistance.”
Over 300 people were evacuated from the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in two Russian flights on Sunday, and another 300 people were earlier taken from the port of Aden to Djibouti by a Russian vessel. According to the Russian Embassy in Djibouti, 18 US citizens and six UK citizens, including children and toddlers, were aboard the ship.
“We feel like we’re left behind. No support. I called every Embassy – all the embassies in Riyadh, in Cairo, in Djibouti – to help me and my family, but they always apologize. They said “help is coming” – but it never came,” an American citizen evacuated on a Russian plane told RT’s Paula Slier. “People now think that Yemeni Americans are like second-class Americans.”

An American citizen currently stranded in Yemen, Summer Nasser, told RT on Monday that “I really want to appreciate the Russian government, because yesterday I got a call from the Russian Ambassador in the capital of Yemen. He was attempting to rescue American citizens. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take the flight at the short notice.”

Read moreRussian planes evacuate over 300 people from war-torn Yemen

The US has stated that there are “no government-sponsored plans” to evacuate US citizens from Yemen. “For more than 15 years the State Department has been advising US citizens to defer travel to Yemen, and we’ve been advising those US citizens who are in Yemen to depart,” answered spokesman Jeff Rathke on the question of “the US Government’s inaction in evacuating US citizens from Yemen”.
“[There are] bombings every other day, a few bombings a day. So, it’s very, very scary right now,” Arwa Al-Iraini , another American, currently stranded in Yemen, described the situation in the country to RT. “Basically, we’re just sitting here and waiting. Nobody will help us evacuate. ”
Shamsan Mansoob from Michigan, who is stuck in central Yemen, told RT on Sunday that there was no access to the internet, and no transportation that could help people flee the country, adding that “there is no news that we can follow”.
According to a recent Red Cross report, over 1,000 people have died in the fighting between the Houthi rebels and supporters of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled the country. The Saudi-led airstrikes, backed by the US, commenced at the end of March, in order to counteract anti-government Shia rebels.

Obama Abandons Americans Trapped in Yemen under His and Abdulaziz’s Blitz

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/04/obama-abandons-americans-trapped-in-yemen-under-his-and-abdulazizs-blitz.html 

When it created a good excuse to help the US re-invade Iraq a few months ago, the US was all about rescuing “trapped” people, the Yazidis, even though it turned out they weren’t actually trapped (though Gazans massacred by US-backed Israel at the same time were and are).
But now it is Americans who are trapped – for real – and they are trapped under a dictator’s illegal blitz, in which the US is a major, open accomplice.
(The bombing of Yemen continues as “Saudi Warplanes Pound Yemen’s Defense Ministry, Food Supply“, and the Saudi naval blockade continues to worsen the humanitarian crisis and food shortage.)
While “at least eight … countries – including Russia, China and India – have rescued their citizens“, as well as rescuing foreign nationals, including Americans, “the United States has refused to launch an evacuation effort“, saying it won’t risk the lives of people Americans pay to, in theory, perform exactly this kind of task, but would risk those lives to refuel Saudi bombers, as the US has been doing, and to rescue Saudi bombers whose planes malfunction.
As for refueling the Saudi bombers, a Pentagon spokesman said “You can expect we will do so every day from now on.”
McClatchy: “Desperation for Americans in Yemen as US Refuses to Mount Rescue”

A Michigan family with two toddlers and an infant was stranded in Yemen after being forced from its home by rebel gunmen. A California woman tried to flee through an arrangement with the embassy of Djibouti, but failed. A mother of four from New York also tried that route, at the State Department’s suggestion, only to hear the same reply: There would be no help.

“Why is the United States not helping us?” said Sallah Elhushayshi, 21, of Brooklyn

Civil rights groups say that between 3,000 and 4,000 Americans remain in the country…

“India took out over 4,000 of their nationals in three days. If India can do it, why can’t the U.S.?”

Americans are suing Obama to try to force him to help people in Yemen, but an Obama spokesperson, when questioned, “wouldn’t address the lawsuit“.
McClatchy notes that in Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon (in which Israel saturated entire neighborhoods with millions of cluster bombs), the US was “among the last nations to arrange ships to ferry its citizens to nearby Cyprus.”
Now, for some Americans stranded in Yemen, “it might already be too late”:

With no embassy or consulate for protection, Elhushayshi said, he and his relatives have little choice but to huddle indoors and listen as the world outside descends into chaos.

“Our last airstrike was this afternoon. Our windows were shaking. It was a heavy one,” Elhushayshi said. “We have no gas, no petrol, no bread. Water has become so expensive. And the fighting will start here soon. I see a lot of suffering people taking up guns, and we have no police. It will happen soon. Soon.”

The World's Greatest Oil Chokepoints, And Why Yemen Matters

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/26/2015 19:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-26/worlds-greatest-oil-chokepoints-and-why-yemen-matters

About half the world's oil production is moved by tankers on fixed maritime routes, according to Reuters. The blockage of a chokepoint, even temporarily, can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs and thus, these checkpoints are crucial to global energy security. While Hormuz remains the largest chokepoint (and along with Bab el-Mandeb explains why Yemen matters so much), Malacca (as we noted previously) is quickly becoming another area of potential problems.

And while Yemen is key for The Strait of Hormuz...


With Bab el-Mandeb even more specifically problematic if Yemen tensions get too extreme...

Source: JPMorgan
...it is China's growing presence near The Strait of Malacca that is perhaps most worrisome for the global energy order...


and here's why...

The Claims...


*  *  *

The War on Marriage on Christmas

Posted on December 20, 2013 by DavidSwanson

Very rarely does our government ask us what to have a war on.  The proposal for missile strikes into Syria was a rare occasion when public pressure and other factors compelled Congress to demand a say. Public pressure then compelled Congress to say No.

But daily drone buzzings over various nations aren't occasions for public debate.  We aren't being asked about another decade in Afghanistan or cooking up a future war on Iran.  And our current president and his predecessor combined have wiped out eight wedding parties (six in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and one in Yemen earlier this month) without our having ever been asked about any of them.

What if we were?

There are various ways a debate over whether to launch a war could go.  In a highly-informed debate, we might investigate whether a war would violate the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the U.N. Charter, and the U.S. Constitution.  We might ask how many adults, children, and infants would likely be killed, injured, and traumatized, how many refugees created, what sort of environmental damage, what economic cost, what erosion of our civil liberties, what heightened secrecy in government, what increase in violence throughout our culture and the country attacked, what likely blowback for decades to come, and what obvious alternatives are available to violence.  But, of course, if we asked all that, then we’d never have any wars.

In a more plausible scenario, we might expect a debate to squeeze its way onto our televisions that would ask questions like: How many U.S. troops will die?  How much will it cost?  Why are we on the same side as al Qaeda this time?  How will it end once begun?  How does bombing more people express our support for suffering people?  Or, depending on the circumstances, maybe even this: Haven’t we been arming that dictator for decades — why the urgency to overthrow him now?

But how would a debate over whether to send hellfire missiles screaming into a wedding party look?  What if such a debate were to develop in our news media this Christmas season?

In areas of frequent drone strikes, people are often afraid to get together in large numbers.  In Yemen, parents resort to home schooling for fear of letting their children out of the house.  Few and far between are the events deemed important enough to risk violating that rule.  One such event is a wedding.

How much, we might hear our pundits ask, could be saved by killing 15 people at a wedding as opposed to killing them each separately?  (If the missiles alone cost $1 million each, the answer is well over $14 million.)  What element of surprise might be gained in obliterating people whose minds are distracted by love and friendship and an important right of passage?  What fear and respect might be placed into the minds of the survivors?  Let’s say one of the wedding couple survives and the other doesn’t; which one would it be most desirable to let live?  Does it matter what kind of dress the bride is wearing?  Should fashion consultants be brought in by the Pentagon, or should morning talk shows contribute that analysis as part of their patriotic duty?  Should the missiles hit just as little kids bearing flowers enter the scene?

The debate may sound absurd, but its creation would actually be a significant step toward sound government.  We ought to vote on or be represented by officials who vote on important decisions for us.  We ought to be informed, engaged, and consulted.  Therefore, a debate before the next wedding strike is a perfectly reasonable proposal — unless of course we’re going to unilaterally stop blowing up weddings.  Far be it from me to suggest anything that rash.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/