Yemen: A US-Orchestrated Holocaust
By Stephen Lendman | Peoples Voice | January 9, 2016
Millions of lives are at risk from violence, starvation, lack of vital medical care, and overall deprivation.
A new UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) report downplayed the ongoing catastrophe, shamelessly undercounting civilian casualties since conflict began last March.
It’s likely in the tens of thousands from Saudi terror-bombing heavily populated areas and absence of vital essentials to life.
Claiming it’s only 2,800, another 5,200 wounded mocks the unbearable suffering of millions of Yemenis, victims of US imperialism.
The world community remains largely indifferent, ignoring an entire population at risk. Millions may perish before conflict ends. Nothing is being done to prevent it.
Fighting shows no signs of abating. Obama’s orchestrated war complicit with Riyadh is another high crime on his rap sheet, major media scoundrels giving it short shrift.
Famine stalks Yemen, around 20 million at risk, children, the ill and elderly most vulnerable. War without mercy continues.
Secure sources of food, potable water, fuel, electricity and medical care are absent or in too short supply in most of the country – impossible conditions to survive for many.
Malnutrition is rampant, near-starvation commonplace. So are preventable diseases claiming unknown numbers of lives for lack of treatment. Body counts exclude nonviolent deaths.
A phantom mid-December ceasefire ended in the new year. Saudis escalated terror-bombing US selected targets, including densely populated residential areas, hospitals, refugee camps, vital infrastructure and other non-military sites.
A blockade remains in force, preventing vital to life essentials from getting to people in need in amounts enough to matter.
Washington and Riyadh want war, not peace. Ceasefire was more illusion than reality – Houthis irresponsibly blamed for imperial crimes. Yemenis continue suffering horrifically.
Their country is being systematically ravaged and destroyed – increasingly looking like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
US imperialism bears full responsibility, destroying life on earth one country at a time, making things unbearable for survivors.
Last September, a largely Saudi-drafted (US/UK supported) UN Human Rights Council resolution on Yemen excluded an independent international war crimes investigation, whitewashing imperial high crimes.
It authorized only UN provided technical assistance to a Yemeni inquiry headed by illegitimate president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi – US-installed in a 2012 election with no opposing candidates.
Yemen remains a black hole of endless violence and instability, no relief in sight for its suffering millions.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Protesters slam Pakistan’s role in Saudi-led coalition
Press TV – January 9, 2016
Pakistanis have taken to the streets in Islamabad to express their anger at the government’s decision to join a Saudi-led coalition allegedly set up to counter terrorism.
Protesters presented a memorandum to the Pakistani Foreign Office, calling on Islamabad to withdraw from the Saudi-led alliance.
The demonstrators said Islamabad had agreed to join the Saudi-led coalition for money.
“Neither the Pakistan army nor the nation is for rent, we will oppose any attempts to sell the army to the House of Saud for a few billion riyals,” Gul-e-Zahra, a senior activist, said in an address to the rally.
Last December, Saudi Arabia said it had formed an alliance of 34 countries to combat terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria.
The kingdom has long been accused of supporting terror groups operating against the Damascus government.
Meanwhile, some of the key countries in the coalition have said they were surprised by inclusion in the group without their knowledge.
At the time when the coalition was announced, Pakistan reacted cautiously and said it needed further details before deciding the extent of its participation.
In a U-turn following the two-day visit by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, Islamabad said Thursday it would join the Saudi-led coalition.
“Pakistan welcomes Saudi Arabia’s initiative and supports all such regional and international efforts to counter terrorism and extremism,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement.
Pakistanis are also angry at the Saudi regime’s execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
On Friday, people staged a demonstration, chanting slogans against Saudi Arabia. They had staged another demonstration a day earlier to protest Saudi foreign minister’s arrival in Islamabad.
North Korea’s bomb test hysteria
By Jan Oberg | January 6, 2016
Here media hysteria goes again. This is BBC.
It is very difficult to know what has happened. The media and many governments around the world immediately condemn this test. The EU says it is against UN Security Council resolutions – a council consisting exclusively of much stronger, nuclear powers.
Before we get carried away, it should be pointed out that North Korea’s military expenditures (US$ 7-10 bn and very complicated to calculate, but anyhow) is around 1% of those of the U.S., about 20% of South Korea’s and about 15% of Japan’s.
North Korea’s entire military costs a bit less than the newest single nuclear bomb the U.S. tested last year.
Nuclear weapons remain a huge problem to the world. However, countries that have nuclear weapons themselves focus on proliferation. Humanity focuses on the existence of nuclear weapons. Simply put, as long as there are some who have nuclear weapons, others will try to acquire them.
Mass media that blow this inferior nuclear power’s test of whatever it was up on the front pages but forget to tell their audiences much much more serious nuclear stories are – knowingly or not – part of a militarist propaganda machine. Thereby they promote what I have called MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.
That should not be the role of any media. It would be to highlight all nuclear activities by any government, get some proportions, highlight how these weapons violate international law and inform the world about both the huge risks and what would happen if they are used and, finally, inform us about the activities for nuclear disarmament and abolition.
Just contributing to “fearology” about a nuclear dwarf and keeping us uninformed about the giants militates against objectivity, pluralism and freedom of the press. And it contributes indirectly to militarism.
What are the much more serious nuclear stories I mentioned above?
Well, it has just been revealed that 33,000 U.S. atomic factory workers have died over the last 70 years because of the dangerous environment.
Fact is that nuclear weapons cause many problems even without being used directly – such as the war on Iraq [depleted uranium munitions?], such as polluting the environment and making larges areas – like in Khazakstan – uninhabitable. There are constant nuclear accidents and the world could be more or less totally destroyed from a single technical or human failure.
And what does the U.S. do with a president who wanted to work for a nuclear-free world and received the Nobel Peace Prize?
It has decided to spend US$ 1 trillion – i.e. 1000 billion – the next 30 years on new nuclear weapons. Read more about this perverse ‘peace’ policy here.
Saudi Arabia top buyer of UK arms in 5 years: Report
Press TV – January 7, 2016
The UK has licensed the sales of over eight billion dollars of military hardware to Saudi Arabia since British Prime Minister David Cameron took office in May 2010.
According to the latest figures released by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) NGO, since Cameron was elected almost six years ago, Britain has also sold arms to 24 of the 27 states on its own list of “countries of humanitarian concern,” The Independent reported on Wednesday.
Apart from Riyadh’s ongoing purchase of the 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets, which are worth over six billion dollars at completion, major licenses worth over two billion dollars including Hawk fighter jets, bombs, guns and tear gas were sold to Saudi Arabia during the said period.
Based on the figures released by CAAT, the Saudis have access to twice the number of British-made warplanes than the Royal Air force has.
CAAT spokesperson Andrew Smith noted that the amount of arms sales to countries on the list, especially Saudi Arabia, shows that “human rights are playing second fiddle to company profits.”
He went on to say that the income from arms sales “is being put over the rights of people being executed and tortured. It’s completely inconsistent to condemn these regimes while signing off on billion-pound arms deals.”
“Two-thirds of UK arms exports go to the Middle East, and that’s unlikely to change. We know that Saudi Arabia is arming a number of groups in and around Syria, but we’ve no idea what weapons are being sent there. Once a weapon enters a war zone there’s no such thing as arms control,” Smith added.
Cameron has been under pressure to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia which faces massive criticism from the international community for launching an unabated war against impoverished Yemen, its growing number of beheading and other forms of execution, cracking down on political dissidents and the most recent atrocity of the mass execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other people.
In October last year, during an interview with the UK’s Channel 4, Cameron suggested that London’s “relationship” with the Saudi Arabia supersedes its human rights record.
US Refuses to Accept Nuclear North Korea – State Department
Sputnik – 06.01.2016
WASHINGTON — According to the US Department of State, Washington refuses to accept North Korea as a nuclear state.
The United States will not accept North Korea as a nuclear state and will respond to provocations, US Department of State spokesman John Kirby said in a statement as North Korea announced it had successfully tested a hydrogen bomb.
”North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and, until today, has done so twice since, but we have consistently made clear that we will not accept it as a nuclear state,” Kirby said.
”We will continue to protect and defend our allies in the region, including the Republic of Korea, and will respond appropriately to any and all North Korean provocations,” he added.
In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a deal meant to prevent the making and use of nuclear weapons.
On December 10, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that North Korea had a hydrogen bomb and was ready to use it to protect its sovereignty.
American Casualties of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program
By Lawrence Wittner | CounterPunch | January 4, 2016
When Americans think about nuclear weapons, they comfort themselves with the thought that these weapons’ vast destruction of human life has not taken place since 1945—at least not yet. But, in reality, it has taken place, with shocking levels of U.S. casualties.
This point is borne out by a recently-published study by a team of investigative journalists at McClatchy News. Drawing upon millions of government records and large numbers of interviews, they concluded that employment in the nation’s nuclear weapons plants since 1945 led to 107,394 American workers contracting cancer and other serious diseases. Of these people, some 53,000 judged by government officials to have experienced excessive radiation on the job received $12 billion in compensation under the federal government’s Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. And 33,480 of these workers have died.
How could this happen? Let’s examine the case of Byron Vaigneur. In October 1975, he saw a brownish sludge containing plutonium break through the wall of his office and start pooling near his desk at the Savannah River, South Carolina nuclear weapons plant. Subsequently, he contracted breast cancer, as well as chronic beryllium disease, a debilitating respiratory condition. Vaigneur, who had a mastectomy to cut out the cancer, is today on oxygen, often unable to walk more than a hundred feet. Declaring he’s ready to die, he has promised to donate his body to science in the hope that it will help save the lives of other people exposed to deadly radiation.
Actually, workers in nuclear weapons plants constitute only a fraction of Americans whose lives have been ravaged by preparations for nuclear war. A 2002 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintained that, between 1951 and 1963 alone, the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons—more than half of it done by the United States—killed 11,000 Americans through cancer. As this estimate does not include internal radiation exposure caused by inhaling or swallowing radioactive particles, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research has maintained that the actual number of fatal cancers caused by nuclear testing could be 17,000. Of course, a larger number of people contracted cancer from nuclear testing than actually died of it. The government study estimated that those who contracted cancer numbered at least 80,000 Americans.
Who were these Americans? Many of them were “downwinders”—people whose towns and cities were located near U.S. nuclear testing sites and, thus, were contaminated by deadly clouds of nuclear fallout carried along by the wind. During the 1950s, the U.S. government conducted close to a hundred atmospheric nuclear explosions at its Nevada test site. Nearly 30 percent of the radioactive debris drifted over the towns to the east, which housed a population of roughly 100,000 people. The residents of St. George, Utah recalled that a “pink cloud” would hang over them while they worked amid the fallout, walked in it, breathed it, washed their clothes in it, and ate it. “Even the little children ate the snow,” recalled one resident. “They didn’t know it was going to kill them later on.”
During subsequent decades, leukemia and other cancer rates soared in the counties adjoining the Nevada test site, as they did among the 250,000 U.S. soldiers exposed to U.S. nuclear weapons tests. From the standpoint of U.S. military commanders, it was vital to place American soldiers close to U.S. nuclear explosions to get them ready to fight in a nuclear war. Subsequently, as many of these soldiers developed cancer, had children with birth defects, or died, they and their family members organized atomic veterans’ groups to demand that the federal government provide medical care and financial compensation for their suffering. Today, atomic veterans receive both from the federal government.
Uranium miners comprise yet another group of Americans who have suffered and died from the U.S. nuclear weapons program. To obtain the uranium ore necessary to build nuclear weapons, the U.S. government operated thousands of uranium mines, often on the lands of Native Americans, many of whom worked as miners and died premature deaths. The U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institute for Public Safety and Health conducted studies of uranium miners that discovered alarmingly high rates of deaths from lung cancer, other lung diseases, tuberculosis, emphysema, blood disease, and injuries. In addition, when the uranium mines were played out or abandoned for other reasons, they were often left as open pits, thereby polluting the air, land, and water of the surrounding communities with radiation and heavy metals.
This American nuclear catastrophe is not only a matter of the past, but seems likely to continue well into the future. The U.S. government is now beginning a $1 trillion program to “modernize” its nuclear weapons complex. This involves building new nuclear weapons factories and labs, as well as churning out new nuclear weapons and warheads for firing from the air, land, and sea. Of course, if these weapons and their overseas counterparts are used, they will destroy the world. But, as we have seen, even when they are not used in war, they exact a dreadful toll—in the United States and, it should be noted, in other nations around the world.
How long are people going to tolerate this nuclear tragedy?
Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany.
1,000 crack British troops deployed to Libyan oil fields to ‘halt the advance of ISIS’
RT | January 4, 2016
British Special Forces have been deployed in Libya to wrest back control of more than a dozen oil fields seized by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants, it has emerged.
Approximately 6,000 European and US soldiers, including 1,000 British troops, will be involved in a number of offensives set up to halt the advance of the jihadist terror group.
The operation will be led by Italian forces and supported mainly by Britain and France.
Special Forces, including military close observation experts from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, are spearheading the major coalition offensive against the jihadist group, according to the Daily Mirror.
IS has seized several revenue-boosting oil fields in Libya and is eager to win more control over the country, as the land could provide them with millions of dollars to fund terror attacks.
The terrorist network is now targeting the Marsa al Brega oil refinery, the biggest in North Africa.
If jihadists successfully capture the oil refinery, located between Sirte and Benghazi, they would gain full control of the country’s oil.
Britain’s SAS is working with Libyan commanders to advise them on key “battle-space management” tactics to control the battlefield using troops, tanks, warplanes and navy ships.
They will also send intelligence to Ministry of Defence (MoD) chiefs that could be used to determine whether airstrikes are needed.
A senior military source told the Mirror: “This coalition will provide a wide range of resources from surveillance, to strike operations against Islamic State who have made significant progress in Libya.
“We have an advance force on the ground who will make an assessment of the situation and identify where attacks should be made and highlight the threats to our forces.”
“Moreover, the ideologies of jihadism and of political Islam are alive and well. It is far too soon to write off Islamic State and organizations similar to it.”
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told IB Times : “In Libya, there is the perfect mix ready to explode and in case it explodes, it will explode just at the gates of Europe.”
The Libya intervention would mark the first time British troops have officially taken part in a direct ground assault against IS.
Libya has been in the throes of a chaotic civil war since the 2011 ousting of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. Today, two rival governments and parliaments compete for dominance amid a deepening Islamist insurgency.
More than 5,000 IS extremists are active in the country, according to the Libyan Interior Ministry.
Israel military launches artillery into Lebanon
Press TV – January 4, 2016
The Israeli military has fired a number of artillery rounds into Lebanon amid a pledge by the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah, that it will not leave unanswered Israel’s assassination of its high-ranking member Samir Qantar.
On Sunday, Israeli forces shelled the Lebanese border fence for the fourth consecutive day. The Israeli military feared that Hezbollah forces might take advantage of the stormy weather and the poor visibility to launch a strike.
The Israeli shelling comes two weeks after Qantar was killed during the Israeli raid that targeted his home in the southern Syrian city of Jaramana, located 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) southeast of the Syrian capital, Damascus, early on December 20, 2015.
Following Qantar’s death, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, “We reserve the right to respond to this assassination at the time and place of our choosing. Those of us in Hezbollah will exercise that right.”
“We have no doubt or question that Israel is the one which assassinated Samir Qantar, its planes fired precise missiles on an apartment (he was in),” Nasrallah noted.
Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine also said that Tel Aviv will be held accountable for Qantar’s death.
“If the Israelis think by killing Samir Qantar they have closed an account then they are very mistaken because they know and will come to know that they have instead opened several more,” Safieddine added.
Israel launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. About 1,200 Lebanese, most of them civilians, lost their lives during the 33-day war in the summer of 2006.
On both occasions, Hezbollah fighters gave befitting responses to the Tel Aviv regime’s acts of aggression, forcing Israeli military to retreat without achieving any of its objectives.
The Tel Aviv regime has resorted to an intelligence and psychological campaign against Hezbollah to compensate for its fiascos in the two wars on Lebanon.
Israel violates Lebanon’s airspace on an almost daily basis through sending reconnaissance drones, claiming the flights serve surveillance purposes.
Besieged Kurdish Towns Under Heavy Bombardment by Turkish Army
Sputnik – 03.01.2016
Kurdish neighborhoods in Silopi and Diyarbakir are under attack from Turkish military forces. Heavy tank bombardment in civilian areas is being reported.
On the 20th day of a curfew, several Silopi neighborhoods in southeastern Turkey have come under heavy gunfire from tanks and armored vehicles, according to local media.
“Residents are trying to find shelter in safe areas as the neighborhoods, which house thousands, are being targeted by heavy fire from tanks and armored vehicles that have surrounded the area under curfew,” ANF News described.
The Kurdish neighborhoods of Barbaros, Basak and Zap have introduced self-rule and have strong local self-defense, including YDG-H youth units, who are resisting government forces attempting to impose the curfew, ANF News reported. YDG-H, or Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, was founded in 2013 by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) youth members.
“People struggling with hunger and thirst take shelter in the basements of their houses. No passages are allowed out of the blockade,” People’s Democratic Party of Turkey, (HDP) reported on Saturday.
A local Kurdish official, Emine Esmer, a co-mayor of Silopi, was taken into custody and released while investigating a water shortage in the municipality, according to BestaNews.com.
Reports from the Kurdish district of Sur in Diyarbakir, also under curfew, say that tank bombardments in the residential areas intensified on Saturday, with two people injured, according to Jin News Agency.
The HDP reports that almost 200 people have been killed during the blockade and attacks by Turkish government forces. Over 100,000 people have reportedly been displaced in ongoing military actions in Turkey’s majority-Kurdish southeast.
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From the Archives
The Great Recycling Scam
By Dr. Vernon Coleman – 21st Century Wire – September 2, 2022
Recycling was introduced, worldwide, as a tool to teach citizens to become compliant.
Forcing citizens to sort their rubbish into up to nine separate bags or boxes every week had absolutely nothing to do with ‘saving the planet’ and everything to do with teaching citizens (through a mixture of fines and shame) to behave ‘responsibly’ i.e. to do as they were told without looking too closely at the rationale of what they were being told to do.
The recycling never had anything to do with protecting the planet, of course. Most of the rubbish sorted, washed and collected in the UK was taken abroad, by lorry or ship or train, and burnt or dumped. It was, quite simply, impractical and not cost effective to recycle the material that had been collected. And, of course, collecting the sorted rubbish involved massive costs in terms of cash and pollution.
Today, the recycling business has reached an apogee of lunacy. Councils introduce ever more complex rules and fees. They refuse to take away much of the waste that is collected. And those wanting to take their rubbish to a ‘recycling’ centre will probably have to make an appointment and answer a host of questions.
It is no surprise that fly-tipping has become a major problem. The biggest causes of plastic in the sea are dumped fishing gear and plastic waste (much of it officially designated as recycled) which has been dumped by ships.
The good news, however, is that in Britain, recycling rates are falling. More and more people have become aware that the whole recycling movement was just another piece of manipulative trickery.
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- If Americans Knew
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