The Pentagon announced an additional $1.15 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia this week, even as a three-month cease-fire collapsed and the Saudi-led coalition resumed its brutal bombing campaign of the Yemen capital Sana.
The U.S. has already sold more than $20 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia since the war began in March 2015, defying calls from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to cut off support. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the majority of the 7,000 deaths in the conflict, which has left more than 21 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. Saudi Arabia has been accused of intentionally targeting homes, factories, schools, markets, and hospitals.
On Tuesday, the coalition targeted and destroyed a potato chip factory, killing 14 people (see top photo). The Yemeni press has since reported that coalition has conducted hundreds more airstrikes across the country, killing dozens of people.
The Saudi-led coalition started bombing Yemen several months after Houthi rebels overran the capital and forced the U.S.- and Saudi-backed dictator, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, into exile. Saudi Arabia has demanded the return of their preferred ruler, calling the rebel group a “coup militia.”
Tuesday’s bombing comes after months of negotiations failed to reach a peace deal between Saudi Arabia, the Houthis, and Yemen’s exiled government. Both the Saudi regime and exiled Yemeni government were quick to place blame on the Houthi rebels, who rejected a U.N.-brokered peace deal.
But the deal was not an even-handed compromise. Middle East Eye reported that the deal was “broadly in line” with what Saudi Arabia wanted — it would return control of Yemen to Hadi, and require the Houthis to turn over their weapons and leave the capital.
The deal would have given Saudi Arabia what it wanted from the start: disarming the Houthis, removing them from power, and installing its preferred ruler. The Houthis rejected the deal, calling the proposal a “media stunt.”
Adam Barron, a Yemen analyst and fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, echoed that assessment, and told The Intercept that the deal was not a serious attempt to work out a compromise. “You’d have to look far and wide to find someone familiar with Yemen who would think the Houthis would accept that deal,” he said.
Previous negotiations have floated the idea of forming a unity government — composed of Houthi and former Hadi government leaders. But the exiled Hadi leaders have consistently rejected any deal that would diminish their power over Yemen, and the Houthis have said that they will reject any deal that does not give them a seat at the table.
The State Department has repeatedly stressed that the United States “strongly encourages” peace talks to continue, but it is unclear whether the U.S. would welcome a compromise solution.
Shortly after the bombing campaign began, the U.N. Security Council in April 2015 passed a resolution at the request of Saudi Arabia and with the support of the United States, urging that Saudi Arabia’s demands be met in full. The resolution placed an arms embargo on the Houthis and demanded that they “withdraw forces from the areas they have seized, including the capital, Sana’a.”
The U.N. has since deferred to other Saudi Arabian demands, as well. Earlier this year, after Saudi Arabia was put on the U.N.’s blacklist of child-killers, it threatened to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the U.N. The U.N. secretary general removed the country from the list, pending a “joint review” with the coalition, and indicated that their name will remain off the list until that happens.
Top photo: An employee looks through the damage at the Al-Aqel food factory that makes potato chips in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sana.
The U.S. always, always wants nothing but peace. That, of course would be a piece of the action. Because war is good for business.
An illuminating tweet by @BaFana3
In the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is the only democracy, with contested elections and a Constitution. Saudi Arabia, GCC : Family-owned states.
Not hard to guess what’s planned for Tunisia, the only more-democratic survivor of the Arab Spring, when empire occupies Libya next door – to supposedly fight ISIS (and for oil).
Saudi have turned their back to US and UK and they are now doing what they like, they want to show US that they exist and they can act without their command… + they really showed the world that they can buy the United Nations Silence over killing women and kids in Yemen with their money…..
So it would be useful to allow them now to be permanent member of the security council… They are doing what they like regardless of US, UK and Russia notes…
Wonder how long it will take for the embarrassment that is the nsa shills to post in this article telling people all they have to do is sign an Amnesty International petition after some wahhabbi rapes and murders a woman for having female genitalia in order to stop other women from being born without male genitalia in a desert country without an automobile to their parents’ name because the embarrassment terrorist organization that is the nsa decided to delude themselves into thinking and acting on some unproven theory that a galaxy far away that no person who ever has lived or will live on Earth will possibly be able to acquire every single piece of information regarding any such galaxy is proof that some deity that for whatever reason is enraged about not being capable of stopping time wanted all women to get raped at one point in their lives, but only by people that the terrorist organization that is the nsa has chosen for it’s own selfish reasons to experience such horrible and terrible atrocities.
I hope any survivor’s guilt I feel after posting this comment doesn’t deprive me of any more sleep than I’ve already had forcibly removed from my sleep cycle over the past two years, or that white guilt doesn’t make me pee myself when I think about the fact that I don’t know if I’m going to be reincarnated at some point in time, or that self-hate for not having enough money to pay for a daesh slave girl to be rescued by somebody who is willing to end up being murdered just to save one doesn’t get utilized by the terrorist organization that is the nsa to psychologically torture me into gaining fifty pounds or smoking another dozen cigars.
Can somebody please tell me when the leaks regarding the spying of civilians by the terrorist organization that is the nsa while they’re showering in their underwear without any lights on and the formation of cgi images of said civilians doing so are going to take place?
Huh?
Thanks very much for this excellent reporting.
I’m definitely with those peace-loving Houthis who were forced to fight for their way of life, being savagely attacked through government oppression.
They won and only want to be treated as any free people would want to be treated.
Yemen is today’s poster child of failed geo-political neoliberalism.
Yemen’s real people won and were governing, and, so, the powers that be objected.
No uprisings allowed here.
Too close to the House of Saad .
That stuff might spread. That peaceful coexistence stuff.
Rather, the arms sellers keep moving their product and we make life unbearable as a good lesson in Arabian Peninsula politics. Blame the itinerant Houthis, until they surrender.
It’s a win-win for American power and interest.
So let’s sell some arms.
Go Houthis !
The good guys.
More like extortion talks than peace talks; no justice, no peace!
No surprise that the criminal enterprise United States Global terrorist government is continuing to supply the Saudi terrorists with arms. That is precisely what its dirty wars, and its self perpetuated War on Terror is all about – transferring billions of tax payers bucks into the political elites arms corporations.
This is how they make a bin Laden, isn’t it?
Throwing exceptions to the wind, break points for bodhi, printf debugging. Need to go to the bookstore, Amazonian. Support your library. Learn coding on paper.
Go at it, apophonics. Metallica, metallica, who is the AoS?
return “thank you”
Parsley error, Tori. Cibolla, TCM.
//AoH?
Macaroons and warm legumes and Quaker oats and mares eat oats but little rams go Cray-Cray. It’s lengthy, Milton-Bradley, boardwalks, chutes and ladders. Ergotamine. Figs and dates go great in cakes, penny henny, footprints in the sand. Right back atcha, bar none. Heres lookin at you, kid. Andre the Giant, Carey Elwes, waah waah waah. Ya follow, Mr Kelly? Something something Fudgesicles. I drank WHAT?
Mutual of Omaha, cow: Holstein. Ali McGraw?
Just kidding, ravioli.
…
Lol.
Nothing funny about it, Globetrotters/Seventy-Sixers. Don’t touch that dial soap palmolive, tide. Crazy lady speeches at art museums, Bruce Willis meet Madeline Stowe. Shaggy.
Stop thinking this means anything. :)
Dont bother trying to read that, thumper, unless youre really feeling stiff. It doesn’t mean anything important, nor will it repeat. I made it up for you, though. So there’s that.
Life is what you make it.
strawberry feels forever
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/08/12/mike-morells-kill-russians-advice/
“The State Department has repeatedly stressed that the United States “strongly encourages” peace talks to continue, but it is unclear whether the U.S. would welcome a compromise solution.”
Taken out of context, it is impossible to tell which country the statement refers to: Yemen, Palestine or another Middle Eastern nation.
Is there ever any correct context? They knew what they meant. Pay attention to the timing. I have never seen them truly willing to compromise, cq, cq.
for whatever reason, the US is so lame (except when Pres Obama made a deal with IRAN which i favor) in peace talks, i often wonder if the US really wants peace at all. Consider Israel.
I suspect the reason for the US insolvency for negotiating any peace anywhere is because lawyers typically do not know how to make good relationships. Lawyers may be technically skilled at their craft, but in the larger context, ELECTED lawyers generally fail miserably because of their worship for power, not equality.
This is why the US is mostly a trash dump that hasnt been cleaned up. The elected lawyers and their backers know they would be pouring money into something they will then proceed to rob and trash out again. They cannot resist having and keeping that power to continue robbing America. It’s what they do. And now, TPP, they want to make it GLOBAL.
TPP is just part of it, though, you know? I mean… Look at the economy in 2009. Sure people made mistakes, for instance the mortgage crisis (which never should have been permitted to happen) but it takes big banks willing to manipulate things in the background before, during, and after the fact, too. But (strangely) capitalism itself is sort of the ersatz kryptonite of capitalism, isn’t it?
I disagree vis a vis trash dumps. I just think our country is a bit off-course. Will it be easy? No. But when is anything worthwhile ever easy?
so lets list US allies who are at risk of defecting to the other side
1. Turkey
2. Philippines
3. Pakistan (less so than the others)
4.
iran will join with russia
putin will tell the US to FO
so will china
putin will “LEVEL” the US nuke sites on Russia’s borders
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo
Turkey is its own thing, a former empire consisting of assholes. Which way it goes will be determined by whatever it thinks is best for its own interests.
The Philippines and Pakistan are virtually U.S. colonies (the former actually so formerly and still pretty much so), and they’re not defecting in the foreseeable future.
philippines… When the revolution began the streets were flooded with angry people. Ismelda, and i suppose her husband, were out somewhere fleeing i suppose, when Ismelda suddenly realised how much they were giving up. Much as in moola. Marcos kept a boatload of cash in his palace. So she ordered her attache’ to return to the palace and get the money. The attache’ took a van and upon nearning the palace became afraid to proceed and turned around. I didnt ask how much but needing a van not a car, indicated to me duffelbags.
Wherever the US has a base, the US rules the politicians. The reason the Saudis (as opposed to US) are hitting yemen is because the US owns the politicians in yemen and the US does not want to have to defend the base in a fashion as an invader.
but you probably know most of this, i include it for those who may not. When the great Mel Brooks said “It’s great to be a king.” i think he was saying if you live in a world of chaos and conflict, you would be foolish to want to be the victim.
“Which way it goes will be determined by whatever it thinks is best for its own interests.”
A true sovereign State then it seems.
The Saudis are pretty convincing villains here, but I still have to ask: why the hell did the Houthis have to go south anyway?
Before the fighting ever started, they had control of nearly all of North Yemen. It’s where their demographic religious base is located. WHY didn’t they just send troops out to the former boundary, put up some barbed wire, declare the unification in the 1990s to be illegal, null, and void, and be done with it?
I know, I might as well ask why the U.S. seems more interested in backing a fight against Houthis than the territory in the south physically held by the Al-Qaida organization that attacked us on September 11th. I mean, why isn’t “enemy of my enemy” a thing here, when they are certainly eager to apply it everywhere else?
http://muftah.org/southern-question-yemen-war/
There are several other articles and links at that site that seem to answer your question.
Specifically, after the 2011 uprising, by 2014 there was a government plan to divide Yemen into six federal regions (instead of two north/south federal regions); this was apparently viewed as the equivalent of U.S. gerrymandering of voting districts by the Houthis. This would have left them isolated and subject to the Saudi effort to impose strict Wahhabi Sunni ideology across the entire region; and of course the House of Saud’s alliance with this rabid religious ideology is all about using it to expand their political power (see the rulers of Spain and the Inquisition in medieval Europe for a good analogy of this strategy). And what is the extent of involvement between the Saudi government and Al Qaeda in Yemen, i.e AQAP?
In any case, Western media narratives on Yemen are highly suspect:
The Iranian narrative is not any more reliable; the groups in Yemen are Arab, not Persian, and Iran is merely out to keep Saudi Arabia tied down in Yemen. Iran’s claims about “fighting western colonial imperialism” are not very believable; both Saudi Arabia and Iran are attempting to manipulate the situation in Yemen for their own benefit. The U.S., by backing “regional ally” Saudi Arabia, is just pouring more gasoline on the fire and increasing the bloodshed.
For a comprehensive background:
The Failure of the Transitional Process in Yemen
The Houthi’s Violent Rise to Power and the Fragmentation of the State
Mareike Transfeld (2015)
The best approach the U.S. could take would be to stop viewing Saudi Arabia any differently than Iran and instead pursue a balanced diplomatic approach to the Sunni-Shia issue; but the U.S. is still committed to controlling Middle Eastern oil, and that means keeping Saudi Arabia as a client state, regardless of all other factors.
” Iran’s claims about “fighting western colonial imperialism” are not very believable; both Saudi Arabia and Iran are attempting to manipulate the situation in Yemen for their own benefit.”
I agree that both sides are acting in their own selfish interests, but that doesn’t mean that Iran’s claim is not true; it certainly is. Just because a country or ruler is an asshole doesn’t mean that everything they say is wrong.
This is geopolitics, and there are no good guys here. The best we can realistically expect to achieve is a balance of assholes (formerly a balance of terror, but one Cuban Missile Crisis in a lifetime is enough for me).
Hmmm. I don’t see the relevance of the gerrymandering to the specific question of why the Houthis didn’t stop at the border. It seemed so within their reach to simply undo the unfortunate unification and separate the two countries again, at which point any districting system in the south would be left to be settled between southern government(s) and al-Qaida.
But that article does reiterate the sense in which the south feels it has been exploited, and indeed generally they have been the ones more known for demanding independence. Looking at the situation now, it doesn’t seem like any potential imperialism would be worth it, but you could tell the same to the Saudi Arabians and the U.S. I suppose…
Good luck!
Aleppo: The Reality Is Not Good News for Americans
http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/12/aleppo-the-reality-is-not-good-news-for-americans-2/
Thanks much…
A “peace deal” that amounts to getting everything they want knowing damn well the deal won’t be accepted?
Why does that sound so familiar to me?
Anyway, with the US providing the weapons, the targeting, and mid-air refueling, calling this a Saudi led coalition is hogwash.
Absolutely no danger of that, at this point. They dont want peace. They want it to look that way while they pave paradise to put up a parking lot. Massive one, too. There is a LOT of firepower and it is pretty clear who is behind it.
Is this the first time that Saudi Arabia is actively bombing another Arab country?
In the medium to long term, this will cost the Saudi rulers as Muslims in Saudi Arabia and in the middle East and elsewhere will get alienated from the House of Saud.
So Trump has finally spoken the truth on ISIS and who created it.
All part of his rope-a-dope strategy…let the media and politicians show the American public where THEY stand(which it has to be said they’ve been doing for eons now) then..bam bam bam : )
Hopefully the American public will answer the wake-up call, and finally start demanding some real, positive change..
No, he’s just aping the John McCain line about how the U.S. should have kept military forces in Iraq – the truth is that the rise of ISIS & Al Qaeda in Syria was a joint action supported by neocon Republicans and neoliberal Democrats in alliance with Gulf Arab dictatorships, Israel and Turkey:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-saudi-arabia-iraq-syria-bandar/373181/
I think the actual history is that Obama was pressured to directly arm the ISIS/Al Qaeda groups in Syria by Congressional neocons, State Department members (Hillary Clinton) and the CIA (Leon Pannetta and his deputy Mike Morrell) but rejected that approach; so instead covert programs were set up for the same purpose utilizing Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel and Jordan. There’s evidence that the Benghazi debacle was related to a program to ship Libyan weaponry to the Syrian rebels (possibly including Gaddafi’s sarin stocks to be used in that 2003 chemical attack, that the U.S. tried to spin into an argument for direct intervention, shades of 2003 Iraq WMD lies?).
McCain, incidentally, like Clinton, has a private foundation that takes in Saudi money ($1 million at least). However, Trump is under pressure to be a loyal Republican, so he’s not going to say anything about neocon Republicans boosting ISIS & Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria in alliance with Clinton.
The reality is, the Clinton and Trump narratives on this issue are just a war of lies that the corporate media won’t question. A good example is the very long NYT Magazine article by Scott Anderson, which is perhaps decent up through 2011 – then it turns into BS, ignores how the Saudis crushed the Bahrain pro-democracy protests, ignores the whole issue of how ISIS was armed and financed in order to overthrow Assad by the Obama team and their regional allies, a game supported by neocon Republicans in Congress and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Neither Trump nor Clinton wants to open this can of worms in an election season; it makes both Republicans and Democratics, as well as federal bureaucrats, look like incompetent jackasses in bed with dictators and terrorists, and points to a U.S. agenda of crushing or hijacking the pro-democracy Arab Spring that is in complete opposition to the “humanitarian” image the U.S. likes to promote. The real truth would only encourage voters to abandon them for the Green or Libertarian parties.
This is a government of criminals and liars and war pigs in which Republicans and Democrats play equal roles; that’s the real truth.
Much of what you say is correct but the truth might lie even deeper. ISIS looks like a CIA creation that is increasingly becoming this kind of amorphous threat everywhere. Increasingly we are hearing of ISIS supporters in India. It is part of the neocon & neoliberal strategy for their wars for global domination.
But Trump has come very close to the truth when he called Obama and Hillary the founders of ISIS though he is backtracking today maybe. He probably knows the truth but cannot say it, given how badly it implicates the US.
US contractors like Erik Prince probably helped the CIA create ISIS with mercenaries, but over time it has probably acquired a loose following with disaffected radicalized Muslims ad some loonies.
With India, the US wants to draw us into the middle-East wars as India has a large army and life is cheap, so cheap cannon fodder or boots on the ground. I hope India does not get dragged in, as it will be disastrous for India.
India sold its soul by making that nuclear deal with the U.S. It was much cooler when it stood up to the U.S.
And life is cheap there because there are way too many people, simple as that. You should take a hint from China and do something about your horrible overpopulation problem immediately, which is quickly becoming the worst in the world.
I agree, India under Manmohan Singh and now Modi is selling out to the US. In fact, Manmohan Singh was nothing but an unelected US-installed puppet. His becoming Prime Minister without being elected was one of the greatest frauds on the Constitution of India. Modi also won because the US decided they wanted him.
I also agree India is heavily overpopulated and that is only one of several reasons why life is cheap here and why living conditions can be hellish. But I think endemic corruption is a bigger reason for this.
But let me also point out that India’s large population also makes it one of biggest markets in the world. Also labor is damn cheap here. I sometimes wonder at the kind of human services we take for granted in India. For instance, even in 45 degrees Celsius temperatures, you can get a man standing in the sun the whole day to pump your car tires as a free service offered by petrol pumps.
Indian elections now use voting machines and it is clear that Central and State elections are now being rigged on a large scale. These electronic voting machines were introduced under Manmohan Singh.
The US has recently extracted agreements from the Indians that the US can use Indian military bases. The Indian defence minister under Modi is already talking about sending Indian soldiers to fight ISIS in the middle-East. India has capitulated and the elite here are actually proud of being seen as “friends” of the US establishment and of having CIA contacts.
And that nuclear deal with the US was and is a huge fraud against the Indian people, and Manmohan Singh the US puppet facilitated it. First it was actually passed in the Indian Parliament using bribes to legislators. Wikileaks cables showed that US embassy figures knew about these bribes. Second, the deal was sold to the Indians as one which would solve India’s energy problem by bringing in nuclear plants from GE and Japan and France. Mainly the deal was being driven commercially by GE’s lobbying. The truth is that energy from imported nuclear power plants will not happen for the next 50 years and will be prohibitively expensive. Also GE wants to sell India untested virgin nuclear power plant designs. And GE also forced India to amend its liability laws in case of a nuclear accident. Imagine a nuclear accident in heavily populated India with its already scarce land resources. A nuclear accident in India from these new power plants is in my view something that will certainly happen one day. Safety standards and enforcement in India is so lax. And life is cheap. Nuclear incidents that happen in India even in our existing nuclear facilities get covered up.
The deal was also opposed by some nuclear scientists as it has effectively brought Indian nuclear activities under international control without India getting anything in return. India’s military nuclear efforts are now curtailed while there is no such restriction on India’s neighbors including Pakistan or China. I am just pointing this out as a strategic concession by India. I personally am anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons.
Hey, it’s India’s choice. Tough shit.
And are you saying the US rigged the election? Is there any hard evidence of that? Likewise, there is no hard, documented evidence of historical US intervention in India’s internal affairs.
Likewise, regarding these damn bribes. Sure, the US tried to bribe our legislators. But if those pricks were too spineless to refuse, who exactly do we have to blame?
India’s foreign policy has traditionally been very independent. I don’t see that changing much in the future.
And what or who is India that it makes a choice?
Yes the 2009 and 2014 elections were rigged.
“there is no hard, documented evidence of historical US intervention in India’s internal affairs.” – There is a whole lot of evidence but lets not hijack this thread for that.
Good to know you acknowledge that the US tried to bribe or did bribe Indian legislators on the nuclear deal.
“India’s foreign policy has traditionally been very independent. I don’t see that changing much in the future.: – yeah sure, that’s what some people like to delude themselves with.
It has already changed. But lets not hijack this thread.
You’re talking about India? WTF?
Why do you always feel the need to hijack these discussion threads with topics that have little to NOTHING to do with the actual article?
WTF is your issue? I was responding to a comment by Jeff D directed at me.
The U.S. started all of this stuff (Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS) by creating and supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s (another big thanks to Ronald McReagan) in order to fight its proxy war against the Soviet Union. And keep in mind that ISIS is run by former Iraqi Bathist military leaders who were deposed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Capitalists and imperialists would blow up the Earth to maintain their profits, which is clinically psychotic, psychopathic, and ecopathic. But hey, most Americans love their crapitalism!
‘Israel created Isis’ professor placed on leave by top liberal college
Joy Karega claimed Isis is not an ‘Islamic terrorist organisation’, but a ‘CIA and Mossad operation’.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/israel-created-isis-professor-placed-leave-by-top-liberal-college-1574165
Last I heard a good majority of those Bathist leaders got massacred. I did read a few of their leaders were in top spots at one point but if I recall a good handful also supposedly got killed in different airstrikes.
Yes let’s reflect that in the 1980s our CIA geniuses funded and armed Osama bin Laden, the fashionable “moderate rebel” of the times. Our stupid Empire learns nothing from its past mistakes – even recent ones. How can Hillary justify regime change in Syria after Iraq and Libya went so terribly?
I think we are in a pretty bad shape both economically and militarily in comparison to China and Russia. It is baffling that these two countries did not veto the UN resolution calling for war on Yemen, unless you attribute it to their strategy to purposely bleed us and our allies while they develop their war machine and prepare to fight us. In the recent past whenever these two countries flexed their muscle, be it the invasion of Crimea, or the creation and militarization of islands near shipping lanes, we have meekly accepted the consequences. This will not do. Our obsessive indulgence with Islamic mutants is diverting our focus from the main issues that challenge our world hegemony.
If we want to maintain global domination then we have to do something to destabilize China before it is too late. China is a very tough nut to crack. They neither have a divergent demography to inflame, nor a porous border to infiltrate with Latino mercenaries and fake moderate Islamic terrorists. Politically also they are pretty inert. At best we can hit their external interests where they have lesser control.
In any case, nothing would suit China better than to have Hillary Clinton in charge here.
You are following a way you will never walk down to its end. May be you are lucky with that!
Aleppo: The Reality Is Not Good News for Americans
http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/12/aleppo-the-reality-is-not-good-news-for-americans-2/
“Emerging reports from Syria suggest United States naval and special warfare elements may be assisting extreme jihadists break out of embattled Aleppo. Unconfirmed reports of US warships sharing intelligence with the group Jeish al-Fatah, also suggest US Special Forces elements may be trapped within the surrounded city. If confirmed, these reports would not be the biggest surprise to objective observers. Al Nusra and Al Qaeda, along with ISIL having changed identities a dozen times supersedes any adamant amazement by now. As the Syrian civil war seems to be winding down, we must begin to question America’s real role in this catastrophe.”
http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/12/aleppo-the-reality-is-not-good-news-for-americans-2/
There will be a massive cover up attempt.
And someone should email this article to Donald Trump.
Obama created Isis just as Trump correctly said.
Vote for Trump.
Yada yada yada! Saudi Arabia is one of the bad nations, has been since 9/11.
Why ZERO Intercept articles on the Clinton Foundation laundering bribes by Foreign countries? Deflection and propaganda, I hoped for better.
Peace talks are often necessary while you’re negotiating your next weapons deal. It’s like a game of chicken; you try and convince the weapons manufacturers that you are seriously interested in peace. Eventually they blink, and sell you the next batch of weapons at a reduced price.
No one ever said the Saudis are poor deal makers.
i hope that is not correct but experience tells me it’s absolutely true. If that is the case, and certainly it is of israel, the more peace talks we have the closer we are to war. Mix wallstreet greed and profiteering + negligible return of worker productivity + a giant wealth pool monster who ways many trillions of dollars and is hungry + a deals-for-dollars-for-death X secretary of state with ambitions so high you could walk to the moon on it + a reckless disregard for the lives of others and citizens too + the current drone enabled pressure cooked gas soaked operating environment = what? With hillary clinton at the helm to insist on showing the world she is in charge, once we hit DEFCON 4 we will go to DEFCON 1 in about an hour.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/is-hillary-a-warmonger_b_10440976.html
I know you like satire but it is pretty spot-on. The problem is they also do not want peace. So, one hand dirties the other hand. Quite a racket.
Links linking the “rebels”/Daesh use of chemical weapons in Syria….who can forget the infamous “red line”? As I recall, it was Putin who helped put out that fire, though probably f’ed up when he tried to appeal directly to the US people through his op/ed piece at the NY TIMES. That got twisted by our “powers that be” to no end.
Btw, Seymour Hersh reports it was Hillary…yes THAT Hillary… who authorized the shipments via Libya.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/un-has-testimony-that-syrian-rebels-used-sarin-gas-1.519405
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10039672/UN-accuses-Syrian-rebels-of-chemical-weapons-use.html
http://www.inquisitr.com/3059683/hillary-clinton-pulitzer-prize-winning-journalist-says-presidential-candidate-approved-sending-sarin-gas-to-syrian-rebels/
I won’t overdo it on the links, but just googling sarin gas/ rebels/ Syria turns up a lot of sources..
Rebels, my ass…
Hillary for prez, huh?
Good old Saudi Arabia – state sponsor of terrorism, author of horrific human rights abuses, which insists on permanent second-class status for women and enforces a fanatical version of Islam whose closest analogy is the Catholic Spanish Inquisition of medieval Europe – why is this country a “strong U.S. ally” according to both Bush and Obama?
The answer is: it plays a key role in the American Empire’s financial system, as the world’s largest oil exporter and arms purchaser. Noticeably, SA is not the world’s largest oil income earner – that prize goes to ExxonMobil, who is Saudi Arabia’s largest ‘partner’. This is not about supplying the American consumer with oil; this is about ensuring that the proceeds from all Saudi oil sales end up benefiting Wall Street; and in exchange, the House of Saud is protected from Saudis who want a democratic transition. To understand how this works, we can look at Exxon’s top three Wall Street shareholders, as an example:
Vanguard Group – $25 billion; State Street Corporation – $15 billion; BlackRock – $16 billion, etc.
Let’s say that instead, Saudi Arabia had an Arab Spring event that transformed it into an independent democracy and it cancelled all its oil contracts and set up an impartial bidding process? Everyone who wanted oil would have to pay market rates; Russia and China might get a big share; Exxon profit margins would plummet; Wall Street investors would take a bath, and this would “threaten the American way of life, our national security, and our prosperity.”
SA is also the top purchaser of American-made weapons, and that one of the few things the U.S. still manufacturers domestically are weapons systems (not outsourced to China, ha ha ha), so that’s another slice of pie, let alone all the engineering and security contracts handed out to American firms by the House of Saud – well, of course we have to make sure democracy doesn’t break out in the Middle East!
This is why the Arab Spring pro-democracy movement had to be either co-opted and hijacked (to aid in the overthrow of regimes not tied into the Empire) or brutally crushed (as in Bahrain, Yemen, etc.), an agenda that Obama and the CIA and NSA were entirely devoted to. Clinton is equally dedicated to this agenda; but I think Wall Street’s worry is that Trump might screw it all up, by grossly insulting the House of Saud or something like that. Like setting a bull lose in a china shop. . . Unleash the Donald! Down with Empire! Let chaos reign! Ha ha ha ha! . . . Tempting, isn’t it?
Now, the Green Party position is that we just drop this whole system entirely and instead become a world leader in renewable energy, and use the money freed up from not having to protect the gobal oil system with a giant military to rebuild infrastructure, provide education and healthcare, etc. That’s why Jill Stein is a far, far better choice than either Clinton or Trump.
A world leader in renewable energy. Nice idea. Very needed. However (or but) America is hooked on annuities. Retirement funds are taken as cash by wallstreet and divied out as annuities from utilities junk payments to retired persons. We get that bill in the form of rate hikes from time to time. New energy cannot do that and is actively disallowed by laws written by the elected enery co whores. Utilities are not going to give up their monopoly, nor would wallstreet allow this.
This sort of trap is not unlike the situation in 1775 when the king wanted to raise more money. Faster Better Cheaper works for non-essentials only.
If Jill or Donald will file bankruptcy on behalf of the US, that’s who i vote for. And since Donald is an expert in the benefits of bankruptcy…
Don’t let regular people off the hook, that’s probably the biggest thing wrong with the left. In order to have a substantially less environmentally harmful society, we have to live a lot more simply and naturally. No more driving on a regular basis for starters, and eventually culminating in the end of industrial society, which amounts to war against the Earth in order to benefit just one species. I don’t see the average person being willing to give up these benefits, despite how living this way is destroying our planet.
And BTW, clean energy would do nothing about the oil problem unless all vehicles were electric and the batteries were charge by rooftop solar panels. Conflating oil with electrical energy sources is a common mistake, but it IS a mistake.
I read an article at Activist Post claiming the Houthi rebels advanced into Saudi Arabia and hit a military base with a ballistic missile. I haven’t seen/found anything to coraberate that claim since. Does the Intercept know anything about that?
Yemeni forces strike Saudi soldiers inside kingdom: Video
http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2016/08/11/479590/Yemeni-forces-Popular-Committees-fighters-missile-attack-Saudi-border-guards-Najran
Declassified Docs Detail US Role in Argentina Dirty War Horrors
[“As Hillary Clinton attempts to seal Henry Kissinger’s endorsement, documents reveal how he undermined Jimmy Carter’s human rights agenda in Argentina.
In a much-awaited step toward uncovering the historical truth of the U.S.-backed Dirty War in Argentina in the 1970’s and 80’s, the United States has delivered over 1,000 pages of classified documents to the South American country. But critics argue that there are major gaps in the files, including the exclusion of CIA documents, that keep in the dark important details of the extent of human rights violations and the U.S. role in such abuses.
The Argentine government delivered the newly-declassified documents to journalists and human rights organizations on Monday after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented the files to President Mauricio Macri during a state visit last week.
The 1,078 pages from 14 U.S. government agencies and departments are the first in a series of public releases over the next 18 months of declassified documents related to Argentina’s last military dictatorship, including Argentine Country Files, White House staff files, correspondence cables, and other archives, according to a statement from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The files include grisly descriptions of torture, rape, assassinations, and forced disappearances carried out by the military regime under General Jorge Rafael Videla, installed after the 1976 coup against left-wing President Isabel Peron.
The documents also detail Henry Kissinger’s applause of the Argentine dictatorship and its counterinsurgency strategy, including during a visit to General Videla during the 1978 World Cup. National Security staffer Robert Pastor wrote in 1978 that Kissinger’s “praise for the Argentine government in its campaign against terrorism was the music the Argentine government was longing to hear.”
Argentina’s so-called anti-terrorism policy was in reality a brutal crackdown on political dissidents, human rights defenders, academics, church leaders, students, and other opponents of the right-wing regime. It was also part of the regional U.S.-backed Operation Condor, a state terror operation that carried out assassinations and disappearances in support of Sout America’s right-wing dictatorships. In Argentina, up to 30,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the Dirty War…”]
read the rest…http://www.globalresearch.ca/declassified-docs-detail-us-role-in-argentina-dirty-war-horrors/5540487
It never ceases to amaze me how batshit and dirty the CIA, NSA, JSOC, et al can be. Sigh.
…a never ending nightmare.
They’re not crazy, batshit or otherwise. They’re furthering U.S. business interests. Dirty? Definitely, though I’d use a stronger term, like immoral and criminal.
Psychopathic and criminally insane come to mind. One way or another, this darkness got to give.
Why does the Hadi government, the US and Saudi Arabia prefer the wholesale destruction of Yemen to shared rule with the Houthi’s or Houthi rule?
I can tell you one obvious reasons why the US prefers it. It’s right there in the first paragraph. The Pentagon just made $1.5 billion in sales, much of which goes to US weapons manufacturers. They make a killing from killing.
The rest is just plain imperialism. Who do the Saudis prefer to be in control of Yemen?
It sets a bad precedent; if one autocratic dictator that Washington approves of can be overthrown by a populist revolution, so can a few others – Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Because they are easy pickings and bombing Yemen is like bombing a kgarden! The Olympics show China has 11 gold to USA 15, they will overtake us– donot worry we will not bomb China!
Because the ruler Hadi who was deposed by the Houthis is allied with the U.S. and its minion Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis are allied with Iran, the U.S.’s and Saudi Arabia’s avowed enemy.
It’s at least somewhat hilarious that because of oil and U.S. interests therein, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are now allies, at least in matters like this one. These are three groups of people who’ve hated each other for at least a thousand years, but now their rulers are all buddy-buddy.
Many seem to think arms dealing is relatively innocent compared to actual warfare, but as usual the lesser evil is often the more effective evil. US led wars for oil (and ultimately Full Spectrum Dominance), as well as arms deals to the Middle East must cease; it is madness to funnel even more capacity for appalling violence and intimidation into the region, and the conclusion that the US *wants* the present instability, tension and conflict to continue to grow is so self-evident as to render the establishment’s claim of ‘humanist’ intervention and interference a cruel, cruel joke.
Well put.
Do you really think that the rich & powerful stay that way because they don’t know what they’re doing and/or are committing “madness”?
There is no real entity called the U.S., just like money doesn’t exist in reality. These are symbols for things, the “U.S.” being a symbol for the huge conglomeration of people, societies, businesses, etc. here. The problem is, different people and different groups want different things, so saying that “the U.S. wants” anything makes no sense; saying the U.S. rulers (euphemistically called “leaders”) or U.S. business want something would be accurate.
let’s see if my prediction comes true.
god damned wallstreet thieves will see this as an opportunity to print money in USD to loan to “the government house” of Saud to rebuild yemen after it is utterly destroyed provided some gosucker redev pos gets the contracts to do so – like say happyburger whatsisname, oh, brown, the iraq jackass company for iraq, brown and root?
OR, the zionistas will declare it to be a territory of israel and send the settlers and a squadron of the IDF to genocide the population and steal the land.
A or B.
With any luck cooler minds will be able to decide how stuff like that goes, if they even exist. I have my doubts that anybody can do a full analysis of that crapfest. The whole middle east situation is precarious. It is like Leopold and Loeb meets Siegfried & Roy playing John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles with a dash of Cantor-Fitzgerald and/or CS: FB tossed in for good measure (arbitrary crap that came to my head just now). Not sure there will ever be peace in that part of the world with that much power, money and oil at stake.
The Battle for Aleppo and the Hypocrisy of US War Propaganda
By Bill Van Auken
Global Research, August 11, 2016
World Socialist Web Site 10 August 2016
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The Battle for Aleppo and the Hypocrisy of US War Propaganda
By Bill Van Auken
Global Research, August 11, 2016
World Socialist Web Site 10 August 2016
[“This week marks two years since President Barack Obama initiated the latest US war against Iraq and Syria, launched in the name of combating the Islamic State militia. The American president cast the new military intervention as not only a continuation of the “global war on terrorism,” but also a crusade for human rights, invoking the threat to Iraq’s Yazidi population and insisting that he could not “turn a blind eye” when religious minorities were threatened.
The toll of this supposed humanitarian intervention has grown ever bloodier. According to a report released this week by the monitoring group Airwars to mark the anniversary, more than 4,700 civilian non-combatant fatalities have been reported as a result of the “US-led Coalition’s” air strikes (95 percent of which have been carried out by US warplanes). More innocent Iraqi and Syrian men, women and children have been slaughtered by American bombs in the course of two years than the total number of US soldiers who lost their lives during the eight years of the Iraq war launched by President George W. Bush in 2003.
All of Washington’s lies and pretexts about its latest war in the Middle East—as well as the decade-and-a-half of wars waged since 9/11—have been exploded in the course of the past several days as the US government and media celebrated purported victories by “rebel” forces in the battle for control of Aleppo, Syria’s former commercial capital.
That the “rebel” offensive has been organized and led by an organization that for years constituted Al Qaeda’s designated Syrian branch, and the operation was named in honor of a Sunni sectarian extremist who carried out a massacre of captured Syrian Alawite soldiers, gave none of them pause. So much for the hogwash about terrorism and human rights!
The scale of the military gains made by the Al Qaeda-led forces in Aleppo are by no means clear. They have, however, apparently succeeded in placing under siege the western part of the city, which is under the government’s control and where the overwhelming majority of the population lives. The “rebels” have killed and maimed hundreds of people with mortar and artillery rounds.
Washington and its allies, the Western media and the human rights groups that accused the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad of crimes against humanity for bombing the jihadists in eastern Aleppo are now indifferent when these imperialist-backed terrorists are killing civilians in the western part of the city.
Sections of the Western media have gone so far as to celebrate the exploits of “rebel” suicide bombers for providing a strategic “advantage” for the Western-backed militias. Among the most dishonest and duplicitous accounts of the recent fighting are those that have appeared in the pages of the New York Times, whose news coverage and editorial line are carefully tailored to serve the predatory aims of US imperialism.
In a Monday article on Aleppo, the Times wrote that the challenge to government control had been mounted by “rebels and their jihadist allies.” The article continued: “A vital factor in the rebel advance over the weekend was cooperation between mainstream rebel groups, some of which have received covert arms support from the United States, and the jihadist organization formerly known as the Nusra Front, which was affiliated with Al Qaeda.”
The newspaper reports this as casually as if it were publishing a report on the late artist formerly known as Prince. The Nusra Front changed its name to the Fatah al-Sham Front and announced its formal disaffiliation from Al Qaeda—with the latter’s blessing—just one week before it launched the offensive in Aleppo…”]
read the rest…http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-battle-for-aleppo-and-the-hypocrisy-of-us-war-propaganda/5540533
two words
YINON PLAN
hellery clinton, mistress of kissyger and now mistress of nutinyahu, will continue helping israel genocide the Palestinians, steal the sinai, allow wallstreet to enslave our children in debtitude, and spark for WW3.
she is certifiable.
What CIA Director Michael Hayden Told President-Elect Barack Obama
[“As part of the anti-Trump offensive of Republican former national security officials working in conjunction with the presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden has been playing a particularly aggressive role.
The Clinton campaign and its media propagandists, first and foremost the New York Times, have enthusiastically embraced this architect of the Bush administration’s CIA torture program and the mass spying on the American people exposed in 2013 by Edward Snowden. This in itself is an indisputable indicator of the right-wing, war-mongering character of a future Clinton administration…”]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-cia-director-michael-hayden-told-president-elect-barack-obama/5540629
Just a reminder of the deep state…
and yes…the verification of the Yinon Plan
Thanks for the link and excerpt, Sparrow. How silently horror continues as the mainstream distracts us.
…pleasure
If you understand that this is a proxy war between the U.S. and its minions on one hand, and the minions of the former Soviet Union on the other (and, as always, it’s also about oil & pipelines), then everything you posted is to be expected. The only moral position is to be completely and unequivocally anti-war except as a direct defense (i.e, if you get directly attacked, “directly” meaning excluding immoral/illegitimate foreign military bases).
If it was not for the US and UK selling weapons to the Wahabis, the Saudis themselves would have gotten rid of these crop of Royal criminals. UN is simply following the lead of the west.
When a political figure talks “human rights” and “democracy”, carefully protect your wife, your house, and yourself. No one cares about us.
— Iraqi laborer in Southern Iraq
Sickening. And the UN’s capitulation re: Saudi Arabia is just as sickening.
the souless worshippers of wealth see poverty as a disease to mask their fear of it as a threat which they are largely responsible for causing.
There can be no poverty without wealth.
Reversal of Saudi blacklist proves again that the UN is a corrupt organization, that can be bought off.
Ban Ki-Moon was pressured into doing that due to the threats from Saudi Arabia to cut funding. Tough call for sure. At least in this instance, the UN wasn’t “bought off” as you say.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/09/u-n-chief-admits-he-removed-saudi-arabia-from-child-killer-list-due-to-extortion/
You’re nitpicking; it amounts to the same thing. The point is that the U.N. can be manipulated with money, whether it’s being given money or money is being withheld.