Scramble for the Island of Bliss: Socotra!
The island of Socotra is part of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It is so isolated that a third of its plant life is found nowhere else on the planet.
Photo credit
12 January 2010
Socotra (an Island belonging to Yemen) derives its magic name from the Sanskrit “dvipa sukhadhara” (“Island of Bliss”). Dragon’s blood trees that look like flying saucers perched on trunks, trees that look like elephants’ legs with pink flowers on top, unique song birds such as Socotra’s Starling, Sunbird, and Grosbeak. Bats are its only native mammal. Sokotra! The most beautiful Island on Earth. One third of its plant life is found nowhere else.
And now the USA scrambles for beautiful Socotra, “Island of Bliss”, to make it a base for war?
This uniquely preserved living museum, this surviving Noah’s Ark, this masterpiece of evolution, this escape from extinction, this time capsule of uncommon beauty, this delightful enchanting spirit of tranquility, this island of dreams, this Garden of Eden, a USA military base to wage war on Yemen? To kill more Arab and Moslem people? To kill more shepherds and farmers in these, our ancient, lands?
This most alien-looking island on the planet, a military base?
Since antiquity, the delicate balance established between the ancient people of Socotra and nature has remained undisturbed, preserving indigenous species and delicate eco-systems. Since antiquity, Socotra has been famous for its botanical riches. Cinnabar, resins of Frankincense (Boswellia) and Myrrh (Commiphora), used in medicines and rituals, and the juice of the native Bitter Aloe (Aloe perryi), were exported to the ancient Mediterranean region from Socotra.
Today, the inhabitants of Socotra, all Moslems, preserve an astonishing archaic language called Soqotri. Their occupation: a lifestyle that has changed little since the first settlers thousands of years ago: fishing, livestock rearing, dates, and gathering plant products. Almost all the inhabitants of Socotra, numbered at 50,000, live on the main island. The principal “city” is Hadiboh (pop. 8,545 – 2004 census).
Are the people of Socotra to be turned into servants and prostitutes to Americans?
Until at least 10 million years ago, Socotra was part of the African mainland and, before that, part of the African-Arabian tectonic plate. Today the ancestors of plants from these ancient landmasses can still be found growing on the island. Relics of ancient plant species are so abundant that the island looks like most people’s idea of a prehistoric world.
This living garden museum, a military base?
In a document dating back 3800 years (18 century BC) the Ancient Egyptians identified what was probably Socotra “(Pa’-Ankh)” as as the home of incense. Socotra! Undoubtedly the setting for the famed Egyptian legend called the Shipwrecked Sailor which inspired the story tellers of the Arabian nights to recount the story of Sindbad the Sailor.
Following the Egyptians, reference to an island which could be identified as Socotra, was made by Herodotus (5th century BC), by Indian authors (4th century BC), by Diodorus of Sicily (1st century BC), and by an unknown Greek sailor (1st century AD) who gave a long and detailed description of Socotra referring to it as Dioscorida, and in the Greek navigation aid “The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea”. The Yemeni historian al-Hamdani (d. 334 H/945 AD), and his contemporary al-Mas’udi (d. 345 H/956 AD), both recorded that Alexander the Great had sent a small group of Greeks to Socotra to cultivate the famous aloe.
Detailed descriptions of the Island were numerous around the 10th century AD. For example, Socotra was described by Arab historian and geographer Abu Mohammed Al-Hassan Al-Hamdani, and was also mentioned in “The Travels of Marco Polo”, the medieval geographers Al-Idrisi, Ibn Battuta, Yaqut Al-Hamawi, and Al-Muqaddasi. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries an account of Socotra was given by Ahmad Ibn Majid, the great Arab pilot who guided Vasco Da Gama’s ship from the East African port of Malindi to the coasts of India.
Socotra lies strategically at the mouth of the Red Sea, North-Western Indian Ocean at the junction between the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea; some 80 kilometers east of the Horn of Africa (Somalia) and 380 kilometers (240 mi) south of Aden, the Arabian Peninsula, some 380 km south-east of Ras Fartak on the Gulf of Aden coastline of Yemen and about 250 km east of Cape Guardafui, the headland that forms the geographical apex of what is commonly known as the Horn of Africa.
The Socotra archipelago includes the main islands of Socotra (or Soqotra), Abd al-Kuri, Samha and Darsa (also known jointly as “The Brothers”), as well as the smaller islets of Sabuniya and Kal Farun, and other rock outcrops.
The main island is approximately 110 km long and about 40 km wide, with a total surface area of 3625 km2. Its highest elevation is at Jabal Dryet (1526 m) in the central Hagghier Massif. The rocky island of Abd al-Kuri is almost halfway between Socotra and Cape Guardafui (Somalia) at the tip of the Horn of Africa. It is approximately 33 km in length and about 2-5 km across from north to south, with a total area of about 133 sq km. The island of Samha, with a total area of about 41 sq km, is located 60 km east off the western tip of Abd al-Kuri Island. The smaller and uninhabited island of Darsa lies 17 km east of Abd al-Kuri.
In July 2008 Socotra was recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site. The European Union supported such a move, calling on both UNESCO and IOPE (International Organization of Protecting Environment) to classify the island archipelago among the world’s environmental heritages, and a natural wildlife refuge.
Socotra a military base?
According to UNESCO, Socotra is one the most well-preserved island eco-systems in the world. A unique assemblage of species and habitats, and representing one of the few surviving examples of local people living in a delicate balance with their natural environment. Distinct for its biodiversity, 37% of Socotra’s plant species, 90% of its reptile species, and 95% of its land snail species do not occur anywhere else in the world. Moreover, its marine life boasts 253 species of reef-building corals, 730 species of coastal fish, and 300 different species of crab, lobster, and shrimp. In addition, Socotra possesses a sizable cave system found within the limestone plateau that stretches over much of the island. A total of over 22km of caves has so far been explored for the first time in recent years.
Socotra a military base?
On January 19, 2009, The Yemen Post, quoting Russian military officials, announced that Russia is set to construct a military base on the Island, but that the timing for the establishment of the base had not yet been determined. These same sources said there was a political decision that had been taken to establish a Russian Navy base on Socotra.
The move came with the goal to protect Russian interests in the region, the officials said, pointing out that the base on the Yemeni Socotra Island would provide security to Russian civil vessels in the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. Piracy had soared off Somalia’s coast and in the Gulf of Aden, with almost 115 ships and vessels having been attacked by Somali pirates. At the same time, however, the official spokesman for the Russian Navy, described the rumors about Russian and US Navy establishing military bases in Yemen as “baseless and incorrect.”
But why not? After all, Rick Rozoff gets it right: “the officially discarded but in fact revived and expanded “global war on (edit: fake) terrorism” is now to be fought in a single theater of war that extends from the Red Sea to Pakistan.”
“The permanent stationing of U.S. military forces in Seychelles is part of a pattern in recent years of basing American troops to man missile batteries, interceptor missile radar sites, air bases, counterinsurgency forward bases, and other installations in countries where their presence would have been inconceivable even a few years ago: Afghanistan, Colombia, Bulgaria, Djibouti, Iraq, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Poland and Romania. A report of January 7 claims that the U.S. plans to establish an air base in Yemen in the Socotra archipelago in the Indian Ocean.”
No wonder there is a scramble for Socotra by the US dogs of war. No wonder the sudden “surge” in threats of al Qaeda in Yemen, as claimed by President Obama in recent weeks. Is it for the USA to walk into Socotra, instead of the Russians?
Yes.
On 7 January 2010, we hear from Press TV (Iran), that Mr. Ali Al-Ahmed, a Saudi political analyst, announced that “his sources” revealed that the Yemeni government decided to let the US military establish an air base on the island of Socotra. “The US can no longer rely on Yemen’s government to fight al-Qaeda alone, because it is losing its legitimacy and becoming weaker.” Ali said. Well Ali aught to know the intentions of the Yemeni government, after all, he is Saudi, and everyone knows how the Saudis are propping up the government of Yemen. And this “decision” comes in the wake of the “crotch bomber” incident over Detroit, whereby a Nigerian Youth is accused of receiving much exaggerated (read fake) al Qaeda training in Yemen.
Socotra a US military base?
Why not? After all, on January 1 2010 General David Petraeus, the chief of the Pentagon’s Central Command, in charge of the wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as clandestine bombings of civilians in Yemen and Pakistan, speaking from occupied Baghdad, said of deepening military involvement in Yemen, “We have, it is well known, about $70 million in security assistance (to Yemen) last year. That will more than double this coming year”. The following day, on January 2 2010, Petraeus was in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, where he met with the country’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to discuss “continued U.S. support in rooting out the terrorist cells.”
But what does the US really face in Yemen? “It is widely known that Al Qaeda is a subsidiary brand under the control of CIA, MI6 and Mossad with the purpose of spreading fear and terror. When the Western media use “Al Qaeda” to produce war sentiments in the population, then it should be immediately clear to everyone that there is something very suspicious happening. Currently, the mass media are scaremongering using the label “Al Qaeda” to persuade the population of the western world to join a US war in Yemen. But the US is not at war in Yemen against Al Qaeda. It is against the Shia Houthis whose strict anti-Americanism has already been a thorn in the US’s and its lackeys in the Arabian peninsula’s flesh.”
In July 1999 a new airport opened in Socotra. Yemen Airways now provides flights (once a week) to Aden (South Yemen), and (everyday) to Sanaa, the capital of (North) Yemen. Thanks to these flights, there are a number of videos on YouTube about Socotra, taken by tourists who fell in love with Yemen as a place with wonderful people, beautiful country, and amazing architecture, pristine and unpolluted country side and beaches.
In 1507, the Portuguese fleet of explorer and naval commander Tristão da Cunha together with Afonso de Albuquerque (second governor of Portuguese India) landed an occupying force on Socotra to build a fortress base. The intention was to control the lucrative Red Sea commerce from the Indian Ocean to the cities of Venice and Verona, and eventually the ancient traffic through to China. However, they were not welcomed as enthusiastically as they had expected and abandoned the island four years later. In any case, interest in Socotra was soon lost because of the discovery of the alternative trade rout to India and China, round Africa, which had already been discovered by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama in 1488, 1497.
The Socotra islands passed under the control of the Mahra Sultanate of Ghayda and Socotra in 1511. The capitals of Mahra were Qishn in Mahra (east Hadramout on the mainland) and Tamrida (Hadiboh) on Socotra.
After two hundred years of relative tranquility, Socotra’s importance to the Europeans became evident again. Some twenty years prior the opening of the Suez canal, in 1833, the British government wished to reach an exclusive agreement with the Mahra Sultanate to land and store coal for steamships, resupply ships with sweet water, and shelter during the tempestuous monsoon seasons. Actually the island had already been selected by the East India Company as a station for vessels connected with the steam navigation of the Red Sea. To put this into effect Lieutenant Wellsted, of the Bombay Marine, was charged with contacting the Mahra authority at Qishn (Socotora being some 300 KM off shore).
Lieutenant Wellsted writes of his assignment to the Sultan of Qishn:
“I visited its Sheikh, Omar Ibn Tuari, styled by ancient writers “King of Furtak”, in order to make arrangements respecting a sum of money our government had resolved to offer him for ceding to us the island of Socotra. Although possessing scarcely a shadow of authority, or even the means of procuring a scanty subsistence, the old Chief manifested a greatness of soul worthy an emperor. Perfectly blind from extreme age, he was led into the room by a little boy. After listening to my proposals with affected composure, when I had concluded, he sprang on his feet, and exclaimed with bitter energy, “Your (British) Government wish to purchase Socotra, do they?”
“Socotra! which for so many ages has been the heritage of my fathers?”
“Never!”
“Were they to heap this room with gold, they should not obtain a space equal to its floor’s breadth.”
“When the British force landed there without his permission, he collected and headed a body of Bedowins, to cut them off, but want of money prevented his hiring vessels to carry them across the sea; he has however, since seized on two vessels trading under the British flag.”
After all, the Hadramouti’s of Mahra, like Somali sailors, and no doubt pirates as well, must have known Socotra since antiquity.
Five years later, in 1839, the British forcefully and violently occupied the port of Aden and established a colony. They set up a Mafia-like “protectorate” system with the local tribes and sheikhdoms around Aden having to pay for their own “protection” from the British.
By 1886 the Mahra State of Qishn and Socotra became a parcel of the British protectorate system through a formal treaty. For the British, Socotra became a naval base in the matter of “communication between India and the mother country”, as Lieutenant Wellsted put it.
On December 10, 1963 a state of emergency was declared in the Aden Protectorate. The Emergency was precipitated in large part by a wave of Arab nationalism spreading through the Arabian Peninsula and stemming largely from the Socialist and pan-Arabist thinking of Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser. The British, French and Israeli forces that had invaded Egypt following Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 had been forced to withdraw, following intervention from both the United States and the Soviet Union.
Anti-British guerrilla groups fighting for the liberation of Aden gained considerable strength. By 1965, the RAF station (RAF Khormaksar) was operating 9 Squadrons. These included transport units with helicopters and a number of Hawker Hunter ground attack aircraft. These were called in by the army for strikes against guerrilla positions when they would use “60 lb” high explosive bombs and their 30 mm Aden cannon. Much like Israeli, Saudi, and American F16s carry on today to kill Arab and Moslem civilians.
By October 1967, some 124 years after they first arrived in full force to impose themselves as colonialists, the British were forced to withdraw “earlier than expected” from Aden.
The independent People’s Republic of South Yemen was proclaimed on 30 November 1967. On that same day, a detachment of the South Yemeni National Liberation Front, which had led the guerrilla struggle for the liberation of their country, landed on Socotra. The sultanate of Mahra and Socotra was abolished. The Island of Bliss became part of the Mahara governorship, which belonged to the new Republic of South Yemen.
North Yemen, on the other hand, had become independent of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, and became a republic in 1962 following an Egyptian supported military coup, against the Zeidi Imam of Yemen. Ironically, the Saudis supported the Zeidi Shia Imam against the Republican forces, by cash and arms, in a bitter war that lasted years.
When the two countries (North and South Yemen) were formally united as the Republic of Yemen on May 22, 1990, the Island of Socotra became part and parcel of the (independent) Republic of Yemen.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh became the first (and only) President of unified Yemen since 1990, and he was/is President of North Yemen since 1978. He was last “re-elected” to office in September 2006. He has held the reigns of power for over thirty years. President Saleh and his family, have a tight grip on Yemen. This concentration of power goes far beyond their control of the instruments of force (military and security forces) but extends also to the national economy of Yemen.
For example (security): Presidential son Ahmed Saleh is head of the Yemen Republican Guard and the country’s Special Forces. The president’s nephews — sons of his late brother — include Amar, the deputy director for national security; Yahye, head of the central security forces and the counter-terrorism unit; and Tarek, head of the Presidential Guard. The president’s half brother is head of the air force. Brigadier General Ali Saleh Al-Ahmar, chief of staff of the general command, is half brother of president Saleh. Brigadier General Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, commander of the first tank division , commander of the North Western military zone, half brother of president Saleh. Brigadier General Mehdi Makwala, commander of the Southern military zone, Hashd tribe and Sanhan village of Saleh, Aden Zone. Brigadier General Mohammed Ali Mohsen, Commander of the Eastern Military Zone ( Hadramout ) Hashed Tribe and Sanhan Village of President Saleh. Colonel Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh , Commander of the Republican Guards and Commander of the Special Forces, son of President Saleh. Colonel Yahya Mohamed Abdullah Saleh , commander of the Central Security Forces son of Saleh’s brother. Colonel Tareq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, Commander of the Special Guards.
Examples (national economy): Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, Special Forces and Republican Guards Commander, eldest son, owner of Al-Haj Company For Heavy Equipments and Cars. Ali Abdullah Saleh, President, Partner of Tawfick Abul-Raheem, Sole Distributor of Gas and Petroleum Products. Ali Mohsen Al-Hamar Military Commander Northern and Western regions, Hawan For Petroleum Services and Alraida Group for Engineering. Khalid Alarhabi Deputy Chief of The Presidential Palaces, son in-law ,Yemen Space Company. Mohamed Saleh Al-Hamar, Air Force Commander, half brother, Alhashidi Petroleum Company. Yahya Mohamed Abdullah Saleh Commander Of Security Central Forces, nephew, Al Mas Company For Petroleum Services and Ha Wi Cable Chinese Company. Tawfick Saleh Abdullah Saleh Chairman of The National Tobacco Company, nephew of President Saleh. Abdul-Khalek Al-Qadi Chairman of Yemen Airways son in-law of the President.
No wonder the people of South Yemen are struggling to get out of their ill-fated union, with that failed state, which is now Yemen.
Propped up by its security forces, and with the financial and ideological (read pro-Zionist) support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the EU, NATO, and the USA; the Yemeni government (to put it lightly) is often considered to suffer from rampant corruption. It is responsible for arbitrary searches of homes and arrests of Yemeni citizens, especially in the south. It is also responsible for torture, inhumane treatment, extra-judicial executions, and even outright military attacks by warplanes and missiles on its own citizens.
The people of Yemen experience prolonged pretrial detentions, judicial corruption, inefficiency, and executive interference to undermine due process, suppressed freedom of speech, the press, and religion. In short Yemen has become no different from its masters the USA and Saudi Arabia (Zionist Germany and Israel).
In recent years, the Central government of Yemen has waged war against its own people. Yemeni government forces are engaged in the South because the people there want to secede, and in the North the government is fighting its Sixth War with the Houthis, whose battle cry is “Death to America” “Death to Israel” “Curse on the Jews” “Victory to Islam”.
Indeed, under the influence of Wahabi Saudi Arabia (doing the work of the Zionist West to divide Muslims into Sunni and Shia camps, and in particular to isolate Iran, and divide Iraq according to Israel’s plan), the Shia’s of the North Yemen have had a hard time teaching their enlightened and tolerant Zeidi (Shia) Moslem teachings to their children, while the Saudis have funded, inside Yemen, over 1800 centres of their own brand Wahabism.
These squabbles were long forgotten, much like Protestants and Catholics today, had it not been for Saudi Arabia barking the Zionist bark, insulting the clergy of Iran and Zieidi Yemen.
The Houthi war although focused as an internal Yemeni affair of anti-discrimination, and corruption, and hardly reported in the Western press, threatens the very existence of Saudi Kingdom on the Arabian peninsula, because masks have fallen.
Dissent inside the Saudi Kingdom (even among Saudi princes themselves) against the corrupt ruling Saudi family, against Wahabi discrimination, particularly among the Shia’s who represent a sizable population of Saudi Arabia, is now almost out of control.
It is important to note that the Saudi family owes its Kingdom to the Christian West, because they fought alongside the West to destroy the Moslem Caliphate, the faltering (and yes, by then, tired and corrupt) Ottoman Empire.
Today we have this: Satanic alliance between the USA, Al-Qaeda, the Yemen government, and Saudi Arabia, to commit crimes against Humanity and incite religous hate.
The Saudi King, in his gold robes and marble palaces, in a jest of holier-than-thou humility, now calls himself “servant” of the two Holy Shrines (Mecca and Madina). But as servant of the holy shrines, he never once fired a shot for Palestine. Not even to save Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock (first qibla of Islam) from the Zionists. Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia deployed his American and British equipped army in full force (and for the first time in the Kingdom’s history to fire a shot) to attack and kill Moslems. Wahabi fatwas were released calling the Yemeni Houthis “pagan” to justify their blood! Innocent Yemeni citizens killed inside Yemen by Saudi forces. However, having been humiliated (read defeated) on the ground by the Houthis, Saudi troopes and heavy weapons captured, they now attack North Yemen towns and market places, killing civilians, in cowardly fashion using F16s and Apache helicopter gunships. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia called for, and obtained, detachments of special forces from both the King of Jordan, and the King of Morrocco, to reinforce their operations on the ground. To no avail.
On the other hand, the Houthies captured over 130 Yemeni military bases, complete with arms and ammunition, shot down Yemeni aircraft, including a Mig jet and a couple of helicopters, and now some elements of the Yemeni army have defected to fight the Saudis, alongside the Houthis.
In retaliation to the Saudi air attacks on civilian targets, the Houthis occupied two Saudi military outposts inside Southern Saudi Arabia, bordering on North Yemen. Houthis even attacked the Saudi Red Sea port city of Jizzan, some sixty kilometers away from the Yemeni/Saudi border, using Katyusha rockets inflicting direct hits on an important Saudi government building. Houthis have regularly released videos confirming their exploits against Ali Saleh’s forces, and Saudi Arabia.
The debacles of both the Yemeni and the Saudi armies, prompted the United States to intervene (surreptitiously, with not a sound from the Western press) in the effort to suppress the Houthis, who threatened the stability of both the tyrannical regime of Ali Saleh, and the Western puppet Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To save tyranny, US war planes carried out bombing raids on North Yemen citizens and dispatched special forces advisors and intelligence support.
Ali Abdullah Salah, therefore, not only used the Yemeni Army against his own people, he actually invited foreign forces (American and Saudi) to attack defenseless Yemeni towns and villages with F16 warplanes and white phosphorous bombs, to suppress all dissent. Destroying historic mosques and homes. Destroying Saada, the capital city of the North. Thousands of Yemeni civilians have been killed, and many more have been injured or have become displaced refugees. No press has been allowed in to the conflict zone. No humanitarian assistance either. These war crimes are being committed today under the pretext of the trumped-up “Al Qaeda of Yemen” threat, or the accusation that the Houthis are proxies for Iran. Failing to mention that the Houthis fight with captured weapons.
Videos of the American and Saudi F16 criminal attacks on Yemeni civilians are available on the internet. Today, as the world sits silent, we can watch local people, for the most part shepherds and farmers, living in a delicate balance with their natural environment, devastated by poison gas, white phosphorous, F16 attacks, and missiles! Just like in Gaza, these attacks are being carefully documented as war crimes.
Ali Saleh, like Israel and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, is fighting a war he cannot win.
By what right, therefore, can President Ali Abdullah Saleh, this illegitimate tyrant of a president, this puppet of Zionism, sign off beautiful Socotra as an enduring military base to a foreign power? An enemy of the people of Yemen? A power that is actually complicit in the suppression and bombing of the Yemeni people, and their beautiful ancient homes? The land of the Queen of Sheba, Arabia Felix (“Happy Arabia”) as Yemen was known to the ancient Romans, site of the Great Ancient Dam of Marib, initially constructed as far back as 2000 BC.
Give away the most beautiful and largest of all Arab Islands to the enemy? Is Socotra, Ali Saleh’s own personal property, for example?
Are the 50,000 inhabitants of Socotra, Ali Abdullah Saleh’s personal chattel? Will the people of Socotra have a say? Will they be in danger of being deported off their Island by the Americans, as potential future threats, just like the poor people of Diego Garcia? Diego Garcia, that other Island base in the Indian Ocean, where American black prison ships hide in shame, where stealth bombers take off to bomb Arab and Moslem cities. Who are they going to kill next, using Soctra as a base?
The Nation magazine, reporting already in October 21, 2002, said that the Pentagon was exploring the possibility of building a signals intelligence base on the Yemeni island of Socotra “that would be used to conduct surveillance on Somalia and the Horn of Africa”. Already in June 2002, a US team had arrived in Yemen to begin installation of a computerized surveillance system designed to link the capital of Sanaa with data flowing from major seas, airports and border crossings.
On Sept. 23, 2007, U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Stephen A. Seche, USA Rear Adm. James Hart, as well as numerous other U.S. and Yemen government leaders attended the ceremony of Socotra’s newly built Usama Bin Zaid Primary School. The fruit of a combined effort of the U.S. military, U.S. State Department, and United States Agency for International Development.
The Usama Bin Zaid school is part of a total U.S. government assistance program in Socotra, Yemen totaling more than $1,900,000 in projects for 2007.
With the U.S.A. and Yemen flag flying atop the school, USA Navy Rear Admiral James Hart, Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa commander, clad in battle fatigues, said at the inauguration: “There’s a significance and value in education – a degree of excellence – one which the youth of Socotra are deserving. It has been stated that every person has a right to an integral education, an education which responds to all of the needs of the human person. We hope that these refurbishments will make this process a little easier,”
Other “civil-military” US projects on Socotra include: the Omar Bin Kattab school, a health clinic for women and children in the Qalansiyah district and nearly 20 water storage tanks completed or nearing completion throughout the island. Civil Affairs Teams are working to fund 374 more water storage tanks to help provide potable water throughout Socotra.
Will the people of Yemen really have a say in the matter of a foreign military base on Socotra?
Will UNESCO have a say, to protect the World Natural Heritage Site of Socotra?
Why must we always accept and believe the work of gangsters and thugs?
Will the new foreign military occupiers of Socotra be welcomed by the people of Yemen? Greeted like the Portuguese in the 14th century?
Will the Americans be thrown out of Yemen after years of armed struggle, just like the British?
How soon will pristine and beautiful Socotra submit to the American SCOURGE?
That SCOURGE that seems to follow Americans wherever they go:
Depleted Uranium.
Blow-back from Saada
Blow-back from Gaza
Blow-back from Baghdad
Kabul, Beirut, Khartoum, Mogadishu, and Darfur
Dresden
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Where is that brave old lion Omar Ibn Tuari ?
Surely he would have spoken for us all
Free Peoples of the World
Surely he would have said to David Petraeus:
“Your (American) Government wishes to purchase Socotra? Do they?”
“Socotra! which for many ages has been the heritage of my fathers?”
“Never!”
“Were they to heap this room with gold…”
– informatron
12 January 2010
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Sources:
Socotra: the most beautiful island on earth!
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/linzmnm/teachyemen/1212245520/tpod.html#_
The most alien-looking place on Earth: Socotra
http://atlasobscura.com/places/socotra-island
Socotra Archipelago
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1263
Socotra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socotra
Socotra on YouTube Dream Island~~Socotra, Yemen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzDMlFMrle8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG7eioVfIv0
“UNESCO: Socotra World Natural Heritage page”
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1263/documents/
UNESCO 2006 Nomination File: Socotra World Natural Heritage Site (pdf 59mb)
http://whc.unesco.org/p_dynamic/sites/passfile.cfm?filename=1263&filetype=pdf&category=nominations
The Socotra Archipelago Conservation and Development Programme (SCDP)
www.socotraisland.org
Friends of Soqotra
http://www.friendsofsoqotra.org/aboutfos.htm
A british soldiers memories and photos
http://www.soqotra.info/main.html
http://www.soqotra.info/galleries/index.html
Russia To Set Up Navy Military Base On Socotra
http://www.yemenpost.net/64/LocalNews/20082.htm
Yemen Times
http://www.yementimes.com/DefaultDET.aspx?i=1232&p=local&a=3
Yemen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen
Aden Protectorate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aden_protectorate
“Yemen Russian Military Deals Continue”
http://armiesofliberation.com/archives/2009/03/03/yemen-russian-military-deals-continue/
“Russia could resume naval presence in Yemen”
http://en.rian.ru/world/20081016/117777066.html
“U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ROZ20100108&articleId=16854
“Yemen to let US set up air base on its soil”
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=115536§ionid=3510
American soldiers complete Usama Bin Zaid school in Socotra
http://www.nelsonguirado.com/index.php/Military/2007/10/16/american_soldiers_complete_usama_bin_zai
Mahra Sultanate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahra_Sultanate
Lieut. J.R. Wellsted FRS, Travels in Arabia (Indian Navy), Vol II, London, John Murry, 1888
For Omar Ibn Tuari, Socotra see page 454.
http://books.google.com/books?id=xWcEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA453&lpg=PA453&dq=Omar+Ibn+Tuari&source=bl&ots=B44EhlcFwk&sig=8JLNhCFL7AyUUeCbeGHw6kk-r1M&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Omar%20Ibn%20Tuari&f=false
Restful music: US troops sent to assist the Satanic alliance between Al-Qaeda, the Yemen government, and Saudi Arabia, to commit crimes against Humanity.
http://article19-videoblog.tumblr.com/post/290312854/restful-music-us-troops-sent-to-assist-the
US troops sent to assist Al-Qaeda, Yemen gov and Saudi Arabia commit crimes against Humanity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EKjz6RSE94
Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda = CIAdea
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:Db-UcxHNVc0J:clips.tojsiab.com/index.php%3Fmv_id%3D-EdCwmvgqAs+%22informatron%22+diego+garcia&cd=19&hl=en&ct=clnk
This desperate Yemeni Government is now “Hiring” al Qaeda as Mercenaries in the Sa’ada War.
http://armiesofliberation.com/archives/2009/10/26/yemeni-govt-hiring-al-qaeda-as-mercenaries-in-saada-war/
US fighter jets attack Yemeni fighters
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=113687§ionid=351020206
Yemen’s Economy is a Family Business
http://armiesofliberation.com/archives/2010/01/08/yemens-economy-is-a-family-business/#more-16313
Houthis capture armoured car
http://www.4shared.com/file/194114086/707ac914/_____.html
Houthis): Capture secret Saudi Orders proving that Saudis were attacking inside yemen borders
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=aa1_1258296125
Huh? Morocco and Jordan send elite troops to assist humiliated Saudis in Yemen
Saudis bomb Yemen
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=471_1257623512
Houthi video: Tank direct hit
http://www.4shared.com/file/194258503/f7c01eae/_______.html
Houthi Resistance Humilliates Saudi Armed Forces inside Yemen: Captured USA tanks and heavy weapons, arms, and ammunition.
http://article19-videoblog.tumblr.com/post/263432620/houthi-resistance-humilliates-saudi-armed-forces
Houthis capture Saudi soldiers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njh00_1Gbow
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%80%D9%80%D9%80%D9%80%D9%80%D8%B1%D9%89+%D8%B3%D8%B9%D9%80%D9%80%D9%80%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%8A%D9%86&search_sort=relevance&search_category=0&page=
Houthies capture Saudi weapons and ammunition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekXrp3-EO1Y
Stealing a Nation Diego Garcia
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3667764379758632511#
Diego Garcia: Secret “War on Terror” CIA Prison Confirmed
http://article19-videoblog.tumblr.com/search/diego+garcia
Houthi press and video (arabic)
http://sadahonline.org/ar/home.html
Saudis raid Yemen despite Houthi pledge for peace
Press TV – February 2, 2010
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Saudi airstrikes continue to target northern Yemen despite Houthis pledging to meet the key condition of not attacking Saudi Arabia set by the Yemeni government.
Houthi fighters said Tuesday that Saudi warplanes had been bombarding the country’s north, including the Al-Saqin district.
According to the fighters, Saudi forces poured rockets and artillery shells on border areas.
The fighters offered an initiative to end a nearly six-month conflict when they announced a “withdrawal from Saudi territory and ending the war,” the office of leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in a statement.
He called on both Sana’a and Riyadh to end the conflict, which has so far claimed the lives of countless civilians and displaced thousands of others in the beleaguered northern villages.
Al-Houthi offered on Saturday to accept the government’s five-point truce terms, if the government halts military attacks on the north.
However, the government rejected the offer, pointing to a sixth condition stipulating a Houthi pledge not to attack Saudi Arabia.
Despite the pledge to meet the sixth condition, Riyadh continues to attack Shia-populated areas in the Yemeni north.
Blair’s Monstrous Consistency
By Daniel Larison
The American Conservative
January 30th, 2010
But the failure to achieve a second, explicit, U.N. resolution was a political problem, not a legal obstacle. Few of the anti-war movement care to recall that the Kosovan War was, if anything, predicated upon a flimsier legal case than the Iraqi intervention. ~Alex Massie
One of the reasons why I keep revisiting the illegality and immorality of the intervention in Kosovo long after most people have forgotten about it is precisely because so many opponents of the Iraq war don’t want to acknowledge that Kosovo was every bit as unjustifiable and wrong as Iraq was. By endorsing the war in Kosovo even now, as Obama did again in Oslo, many opponents of the Iraq war have opened themselves up to the attack that Iraq hawks were using from the beginning. If someone pointed out that invading Iraq would violate international law and not have U.N. sanction, the hawks would throw the precedent of Kosovo in his face. Unless he was a principled progressive or antiwar conservative, the opponent of the invasion was always at a loss to respond. If invading Iraq was based on phony or exaggerated intelligence about WMDs, Kosovo was based on lies about preventing genocide and protecting human rights. Unless you are among the fairly small percentage that opposed both, the odds are that you are outraged over invading Iraq in inverse proportion to how outraged you were over bombing Serbia.
Inexplicably, Kosovo is remembered across much of the spectrum, especially the center-left, as a great success, despite having been disastrous for the very people it was supposed to help and despite being based on lies every bit as blatant and outrageous as the invasion of Iraq. As it hapened, Blair was Prime Minister during Britain’s participation in both wars of aggression. As far back as 1999, he has been the chief proponent of liberal interventionism aimed at subverting the normal protections of international law afforded to sovereign states, and he continues to be an outspoken advocate for killing foreigners for their own benefit. What is disheartening about all this is not just that Blair will never be held to account for his responsibility for the war in Iraq, but that he has never had to answer for or defend his decision to support an unprovoked, unnecessary war of aggression against Serbia.
Even though the air war led to the expulsions of Albanians from Kosovo it was meant to prevent, and even though the “negotiations” at Rambouillet involved delivering an intolerable ultimatum designed to start a war, this criminal operation continues to enjoy support or indifference from most Westerners. There were no allied casualties, and the war was brief, so there was little time for the publics in NATO nations to grow weary and disgusted with their criminal leaders. The war was over relatively quickly, so the media lost interest in the false atrocity stories that the Clinton administration used in its war propaganda, and the previous decade of constant anti-Serb coverage made the public receptive to whatever lies the administration wanted to tell.
What I can say about Blair is that he has been quite consistent. State sovereignty and international [law] did not matter to him in 1999, and they didn’t matter to him later in 2002-03. Given his remarks at the Chilcot inquiry about Iran, I am quite sure that he would have no difficulty supporting and even joining in an illegal attack on Iran were he still a minister in the British government. This makes him one of the most unabashed, unapologetic advocates of aggressive war alive today, and I’m not sure that this requires much courage when there have been and continue to be absolutely no consequences, legal or otherwise, for his actions.
US softens stance on Japan base
Press TV – February 1, 2010
Washington strikes a softer tone on its controversial military base in Japan, saying is ready to negotiate the relocation of the US forces on Okinawa Island.
US Assistant Secretary of Defense Wallace Gregson said the White House was not after an “American-imposed” solution to the months-long dispute with Tokyo.
“Our plan is based on our alliance relationships, and if we have to go back to negotiating, we’ll go back to negotiating,” Gregson said in a Tokyo speech on Monday.
“And it’s not negotiating like the United States and the Soviet Union in the old days of the Cold War. This is less negotiation than it is collaboration and mutual effort,” said the retired Marine general.
Locals on the island of Okinawa have long been demanding that the US Marine Corps air base close, citing aircraft noise, pollution, the risk of accidents and crimes committed by American troops.
Under a 2006 agreement between Tokyo and Washington, the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station is to be moved from an urban area to a less populated coastal region within the southern prefecture of the island by 2014.
But Japan’s new center-left government has launched a review of the deal, with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama now also seeking a pull-out of American forces from the island or even out of Japan altogether.
Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Japan to “move on” with the original plan, indicating moving the base within Okinawa was “the way forward”.
But Gregson said Washington could wait until Tokyo reconsidered the relocation deal signed under Japan’s previous conservative governments.
“We certainly understand the need for the new government to reexamine that, we are patient on that.”
The 2006 deal is part of a wider plan to rearrange the presence of some 47,000 US troops currently stationed in Japan.
Call for Blair to face trial in Scotland
By Eddie Barnes |The Scotsman | 31 January 2010
TONY Blair should be tried in a Scottish court for his decision to take the country to war in Iraq, according to a group of SNP MSPs.
The Crown Office, which leads prosecutions, is examining their arguments following the former prime minister’s appearance at the Chilcot Inquiry last week, in which he expressed “no regrets” over deposing Saddam Hussein.
A parliamentary motion calling for Blair to be prosecuted has been laid down at Holyrood and has been signed by eight MSPs. It cites the verdict of a Dutch commission of judges earlier this month, which concluded that the United Nations resolution used to go to war in 2003 was insufficient to justify military action.
The Nationalists claim that, as Scots law complies with international law, Scottish prosecutors have the power to investigate the findings. They say that if the Crown Office then finds that evidence compelling, they should prosecute Blair.
The call is being led by MSP Bill Wilson, but an SNP spokeswoman confirmed last night that it “reflects the views many still hold” about the decision to take military action.
But Labour claimed their opponents were guilty of trying to make “infantile political capital” out of the Iraq issue, saying they should focus their attention on jobs and the economy.
In his letter to the Lord Advocate, Wilson declares: “It would seem you have the power to investigate the conclusions of the Dutch commission and, should you find the evidence against them compelling, prosecute the former UK prime minister. I urge you to do so.”
The Dutch commission, which studied the country’s own political backing for war in Iraq, concluded that UN Resolution 1441 fell short of supporting full military action.
That resolution, passed in November 2002, warned Iraq of “serious consequences” if it continued to obstruct UN weapons inspectors, offering it one final opportunity to comply.
Britain’s own top legal adviser, the Advocate General, Lord Goldsmith, eventually decided that 1441 was enough to justify war, although it emerged last week that he had initially had his doubts.
Wilson is citing Scots law, which declares that a rule of “customary international law” is followed automatically in this jurisdiction.
He said: “Those responsible for misleading the public and initiating such bloodshed should be brought to book. I look forward to seeing the detention and trial of Tony Blair, and I urge the Lord Advocate to look into the matter.”
He believes Scottish courts, and not the International Criminal Court at the Hague, should conduct an investigation.
His demand is being backed by fellow SNP MSPs Jamie Hepburn, Bill Kidd, Aileen Campbell, Christine Grahame, Dr Ian McKee, Gil Paterson and Sandra White.
The move is the second time the SNP has tried to bring Blair to book over the war. First Minister Alex Salmond attempted to have him impeached as part of a move that would have seen the former prime minister effectively tried by parliament.
He argued that Blair had lied to the country about the case for war in Iraq, specifically on the weapons of mass destruction, which allied forces failed to find after the invasion.
A spokesman declined to reply on whether Salmond backed the latest legal bid.
He said: “Mr Salmond strongly supports the Chilcot Inquiry, although it would have benefited from having more legal expertise among the questioners on the panel.”
He added: “Nonetheless, the next stage in that process will be to examine the inquiry’s conclusions.”
Yemen rejects Houthi truce offer
Al Jazeera | January 31, 2010
The Yemeni government has turned down a truce offer from the country’s Houthi fighters.
A government official said on Sunday that the ceasefire deal should have included a pledge by the group not to attack neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
The offer, made by Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ leader, on Saturday, was also rejected because he demanded that the government end its military operations first, the official said.
“The government rejects al-Houthi’s initiative to accept the five points of the government terms for peace, because it does not include a sixth point, which demands a pledge from the Houthis not to attack Saudi territory,” the Yemeni official said.
Yemen laid down ceasefire terms in August that included removing checkpoints, ending banditry, handing over all military equipment and weapons, and releasing civilians and military personnel.
Government officials said Houthi leaders twice rejected the terms, while al-Houthi said Saturday that his fighters had twice declared they wanted to end the conflict.
Renewed clashes
The failure of the two sides to reach a deal coincided with renewal of fighting.
Clashes overnight between Yemeni government forces and the Houthis left 24 fighters dead, military officers said on Sunday
The fighting broke out on three fronts near Saada, 240km north of the capital Sanaa, and government jets were carrying out raids in the area, officials said.
The Yemeni defence ministry news website said a Houthi leader, identified as Qaed Abu Malik, was killed along with 20 other comrades in the Safia area of Saada.
The website also claimed that three other fighters were killed while they tried to sneak into farms near al-Aqab, also in Saada.
In an audio message released via the internet on Saturday, al-Houthi said the government must not allow the conflict to be used by “international and regional forces” as an excuse to drag Yemen into a wider war.
“It was these forces and the stupidity of the government that led them to launch attacks on its own people,” he said.
“Nevertheless, and for the fourth time, I announce our acceptance of the [the government’s] five conditions [for an end to the conflict] after the aggression stops … the ball is now in the other party’s court.”
Al-Houthi’s statement came on the heels of an announcement from his group on Monday that they would withdraw from Saudi territory they had occupied since November.
The Houthis have been engaged in sporadic fighting with government forces since 2004, in a war they say is to defend their community against discrimination and the aggression of local government representatives in the northern Saada province.
The latest stage of the conflict broke out on August 11, when the military launched Operation Scorched Earth – an all-out assault against the group.
According to international aid organisations, more than 200,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since 2004.
NATO Calls Air Strike Against Afghan Army Base, Killing Four Soldiers
By Jason Ditz, January 30, 2010
NATO troops in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province had a brief overnight gunbattle with Afghan Army forces, with both sides apparently assuming the other was Taliban. The troops called in an air strike against a newly established Afghan Army base, killing four soldiers and wounding six others.
The Afghan Defense Ministry condemned the attack, and demanded that NATO turn over those responsible. NATO spokesmen called the incident “regrettable,” but insisted that “we work extremely hard to coordinate and synchronize our operations” with the Afghan military.
An angry village elder near the outpost was quoted as saying “as you can see, they dropped bombs on the outpost. It was the Americans, of course.” NATO has yet to confirm the nationality of those involved in the incident.
It is the most high profile “friendly fire” incident since early November, when NATO inexplicably launched an air strike against a warehouse on a jointly owned military base, killing eight Afghan soldiers and 12 civilian laborers.
Mounting Criticism of US Drone Strikes in Pakistan
By Jason Ditz, January 29, 2010
US drones, conspicuously absent from the North Waziristan region for several days after militants shot one down on Sunday, returned to the region today, killing five people in the town in Muhammad Khel.
The drone strikes, and more importantly America’s default “no comment” position on them except on those rare occasions when they successfully kill a high profile target, have long been a sore spot for the Pakistani public, but the broad base of this opposition has only increased.
According to a Gallup poll, only 9 percent of Pakistanis support the idea of US drone strikes on Pakistani soil. There is increasing pressure for the US to be more transparent with their attacks, in hopes that it might calm the opposition to them.
President Barack Obama has dramatically increased the number of drone strikes since taking office. In 2009 the US launched 44 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing over 700 people. The vast, vast majority of those were civilians, with only a handful of meaningful militant leaders slain. Today’s attack was the 12th attack of 2010. Though the attacks killed just under 100 people, only one named militant, al-Qaeda bodyguard Mahmoud Mahdi Zeidan, has been confirmed killed.
Biden: US to increase spending on nuclear arsenal
Reversing a decade of declining spending on nuclear weapons
Press TV – January 29, 2010
US Vice President Joe Biden says that Washington will increase investment in its nuclear arsenal and infrastructure in the country’s new budget.
In an opinion piece which appeared in The Wall Street Journal‘s website on Thursday, Biden said that the administration will propose USD 7 billion to maintain US nuclear weapons stockpile, which would be USD 600 million more than Congress approved last year.
“Even in a time of tough budget decisions, these are investments we must make for our security. We are committed to working with Congress to ensure these budget increases are approved,” Biden said.
The comment comes at a time when the US and Russia are negotiating a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which entails decommissioning of both sides’ nuclear weapons.
The administration of US President Barack Obama will publish its budget for fiscal year 2011 on Monday February 1.
The proposal will include a budget increase for nuclear issues while paring back other areas in an effort to control record deficits.
NATO and Kazakhstan Reach Transit Pact for Afghanistan
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
New York Times
January 27, 2010
MOSCOW — NATO and Kazakhstan completed an agreement Wednesday that will permit NATO allies to ship cargo through Kazakh territory to Afghanistan, providing an important alternative to vulnerable routes elsewhere.
Kazakhstan was the final holdout in the so-called northern supply line, which will allow cargo to pass overland from Europe to NATO troops in Afghanistan. Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan have signed similar agreements.
“This allows supplies for our forces to start moving from Europe to Afghanistan, beginning in the coming days, complementing the very important transit route through Pakistan,” NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a statement in Brussels.
The American-led NATO coalition has been seeking to reduce its reliance on supply routes through the Khyber Pass in Pakistan, where attacks by the Taliban have been frequent.
The accord with Kazakhstan will allow NATO forces to ship only nonlethal cargo by rail through the country’s territory. The cargo will then pass through Uzbekistan into Afghanistan, where the coalition is fighting a growing Taliban insurgency.
The agreement comes as NATO allies prepare to meet Thursday with representatives from Afghanistan and its neighbors in London. The conference, hosted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, will seek to map out strategies for continued international involvement in the war in Afghanistan.
NATO and the United States have been pushing Central Asian countries near Afghanistan to become more involved in the war effort. Last year, the Obama administration persuaded Kazakhstan’s neighbor, Kyrgyzstan, to reverse a decision to close a United States military base that is an important transit hub and refueling stop for troops en route to Afghanistan.
The alliance has also been working with Russia to open up more supply routes. The United States signed an agreement with Russia last summer to allow flights of troops and weapons through Russian airspace to Afghanistan, though bureaucratic wrangling has so far prevented all but a few shipments.
Russian and NATO military officials met on Tuesday in Brussels to further discuss Russian involvement in Afghanistan, among other issues. It was the first formal meeting between military officials from both sides since diplomatic relations broke down after Russia’s war with Georgia in August 2008.
In Washington, the White House welcomed the agreement, calling it “another signal of the commitment of the government of Kazakhstan to support” the international effort in Afghanistan.
The separate American agreement with Russia permitting overflights of soldiers and weapons has had a slow start but is beginning to ramp up, American officials said.
Six months after President Obama and President Dimitri A. Medvedev sealed the agreement, an administration official said 12 flights have passed through Russian airspace and eight are planned in coming days. The Russians have cleared all flights except one, a chartered commercial carrier with hazardous material on board, the official said.
Rule by the Rich
By Paul Craig Roberts | January 27, 2010
The election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate by Democratic voters in Massachusetts sends President Obama a message. Voters perceive that Obama’s administration has morphed into a Bush-Cheney government. Obama has reneged on every promise he made, from ending wars, to closing Gitmo, to providing health care for Americans, to curtailing the domestic police state, to putting the interests of dispossessed Americans ahead of the interests of the rich banksters who robbed Americans of their homes and pensions.
But what can Obama do other then spout more rhetoric?
The Democrats were destroyed as an independent party by jobs offshoring and so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA. The effect of “globalism” has been to destroy the industrial and manufacturing unions, thus leaving the Democrats without a power base and source of funding.
Obama and the Democrats cannot be an opposition party, because Democrats are as dependent as Republicans on corporate interest groups for campaign funding.
The Democrats have to support war and the police state if they want funding from the military/security complex. They have to make the health care bill into a subsidy for private insurance if they want funding from the insurance companies. They have to abandon the American people for the rich banksters if they want funding from the financial lobby.
Now that the five Republicans on the Supreme Court have overturned decades of U.S. law and given corporations the ability to buy every American election, Democrats and Republicans can be nothing but pawns for a plutocracy.
Most Americans are hard pressed, but the corporations have only begun to milk them.
Wars are too profitable for the armaments industry to ever end. High unemployment is now a permanent state in the U.S., thus coercing job seekers into military service.
The security industry profits from the police state and regards civil liberties as a hindrance to profits. By announcing that he intends to continue the Bush policy of indefinite detention, a violation of the Constitution and U.S. legal procedures, Obama has granted the Democratic Party’s consent to the Republicans’ destruction of habeas corpus, the main bastion of individual liberty.
Jobs offshoring is too profitable for U.S. corporations for Obama to be able to save American jobs and restart the broken economy.
Americans are being squeezed out of health care not only by the loss of job benefits, but also by corporate takeover of medical practice from physicians. Today medical doctors are wage slaves of corporate health providers that leverage doctors by turning them into supervisors of physician assistants, lower paid people without medical degrees who perform the services that doctors once provided. As neither doctor nor physician assistant has any independence, there is no one to represent the patient’s care against the profits of the corporation.
Even environmental concerns are being used to create “cap and trade” rights to buy and sell the ability to pollute. Wall Street is licking its lips over a new source of leveraged derivative instruments.
The American public cannot even get reliable information about their plight as the “mainstream media” has been concentrated into a few corporate hands that do not permit independent reporting. The media is as dependent on corporate money as are politicians.
How can President Obama restart an economy that has been moved offshore? Millions of manufacturing jobs are gone, as are millions of jobs for college graduates, such as software engineering, Information Technology–indeed, any intellectual skill the product of which can be conveyed via the Internet. Even those intellectual skill jobs that do remain in the U.S. are filled increasingly by foreigners brought in on work visas.
The wipe out of blue collar and middle class job growth has stopped the growth of American incomes except, of course, those of the super rich. For a decade American consumers substituted increased personal indebtedness for income growth. In order to maintain and to increase their consumption, Americans consumed their assets, such as their home equity. Americans reached their maximum debt load just as the real estate bubble burst and just as the banksters highly-leveraged, toxic financial instruments brought down the stock market and the values of Americans’ pensions.
The enormous damage done to the U.S. economy by jobs offshoring, work visas, and financial deregulation cannot be offset by government stimulus plans, which expand the debt burdens that are crushing Americans. The federal government’s massive budget deficits and the Federal Reserve’s easy monetary policy are setting the stage for an inflationary depression to follow a deflationary depression.
The Federal Reserve chairman says not to worry about inflation, because the Fed can take the money back out of the economy. But can the Fed take the money out without contracting the economy?
The Federal Reserve says not to worry about financing the federal budget deficit. Banksters are buying the Treasury bonds with the proceeds from their sales of their toxic derivatives to the Fed.
So what is happening to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet? And when will the Fed have no recourse but to print new money in order to finance the federal deficit?
How long can the dollar retain its reserve currency role in such circumstances, and how does the U.S. pay for its imports when this role is lost?
Don’t look to Washington for answers to these questions.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is the author of How the Economy was Lost, just published by CounterPunch / AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
The Drone Surge
Today, tomorrow, and 2047
By Nick Turse
One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, a missile blasted a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that slammed into a compound in Degan village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing three.
What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the Bush years have become commonplace under the Obama administration. And since a devastating Dec. 30 suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an “unprecedented number” of strikes – which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike – have led to more fear, anger, and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most public “secret” war of modern times.
In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized “surge” of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Today’s Surge
Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review – a soon-to-be-released four-year outline of Department of Defense strategies, capabilities, and priorities to fight current wars and counter future threats – is already known to reflect this focus. As the Washington Post recently reported, “The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with the goals of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.”
The MQ-1 Predator – first used in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s – and its newer, larger, and more deadly cousin, the MQ-9 Reaper, are now firing missiles and dropping bombs at an unprecedented pace. In 2008, there were reportedly between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of the CIA’s covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were 45 to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010, there had already been 11 of them.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has instituted a much publicized decrease in piloted air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as part of Afghan War commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy. At the same time, however, UAS attacks have increased to record levels.
The Air Force has created an interconnected global command-and-control system to carry out its robot war in Afghanistan (and as Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room blog has reported, to assist the CIA in its drone strikes in Pakistan as well). Evidence of this can be found at high-tech U.S. bases around the world where drone pilots and other personnel control the planes themselves and the data streaming back from them. These sites include a converted medical warehouse at Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar where the Air Force secretly oversees its ongoing drone wars; Kandahar and Jalalabad Air Fields in Afghanistan, where the drones are physically based; the global operations center at Nevada’s Creech Air Base, where the Air Force’s “pilots” fly drones by remote control from thousands of miles away; and – perhaps most importantly – at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a 12-square-mile facility in Dayton, Ohio, named after the two local brothers who invented powered flight in 1903. This is where the bills for the current drone surge – as well as limited numbers of strikes in Yemen and Somalia – come due and are, quite literally, paid.
In the waning days of December 2009, in fact, the Pentagon cut two sizable checks to ensure that unmanned operations involving the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper will continue full-speed ahead in 2010. The 703rd Aeronautical Systems Squadron based at Wright-Patterson signed a $38 million contract with defense giant Raytheon for logistics support for the targeting systems of both drones. At the same time, the squadron inked a deal worth $266 million with mega-defense contractor General Atomics, which makes the Predator and Reaper drones, to provide management services, logistics support, repairs, software maintenance, and other functions for both drone programs. Both deals essentially ensure that, in the years ahead, the stunning increase in drone operations will continue.
These contracts, however, only initial down payments on an enduring drone surge designed to carry U.S. unmanned aerial operations forward, ultimately for decades.
Drone Surge: The Longer View
Back in 2004, the Air Force could put a total of only five drone combat air patrols (CAPs) – each consisting of four air vehicles – in the skies over American war zones at any one time. By 2009, that number was 38, a 660 percent increase according to the Air Force. Similarly, between 2001 and 2008, hours of surveillance coverage for U.S. Central Command, encompassing both the Iraqi and Afghan war zones, as well as Pakistan and Yemen, showed a massive spike of 1,431 percent.
In the meantime, flight hours have gone through the roof. In 2004, for example, Reapers, just beginning to soar, flew 71 hours in total, according to Air Force documents; in 2006, that number had risen to 3,123 hours; and last year, 25,391 hours. This year, the Air Force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones – Predators, Reapers, and unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawks – will exceed 250,000 hours, about the total number of hours flown by all Air Force drones from 1995-2007. In 2011, the 300,000 hour-a-year barrier is expected to be crossed for the first time, and after that the sky’s the limit.
More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the Washington-based think tank the New America Foundation, in the Bush years, from 2006 into 2009, there were 41 drone strikes in Pakistan that killed 454 militants and civilians. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 42 strikes that left 453 people dead. A recent report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based independent research organization that tracks security issues, claimed an even larger number, 667 people – most of them civilians – killed by U.S. drone strikes last year.
While assisting the CIA’s drone operations in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, the Air Force has been increasing its own unmanned aerial hunter-killer missions. In 2007 and 2008, for example, Air Force Predators and Reapers fired missiles during 244 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, while all the U.S. armed services have pursued unmanned aerial warfare, the Air Force has outpaced each of them.
From 2001, when armed drone operations began, until the spring of 2009, the Air Force fired 703 Hellfire missiles and dropped 132 GBU-12s (500-pound laser-guided bombs) in combat operations. The Army, by comparison, launched just two Hellfire missiles and two smaller GBU-44 Viper Strike munitions in the same time period. The disparity should only grow, since the Army’s drones remain predominantly small surveillance aircraft, while in 2009 the Air Force shifted all outstanding orders for the medium-sized Predator to the even more formidable Reaper, which is not only twice as fast but has 600 percent more payload capacity, meaning more space for bombs and missiles.
In addition, the more heavily-armed Reapers, which can now loiter over an area for 10 to 14 hours without refueling, will be able to spot and track ever more targets via an increasingly sophisticated video monitoring system. According to Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, the first three “Gorgon Stare pods” – new wide-area sensors that provide surveillance capabilities over large swathes of territory – will be installed on Reapers operating in Afghanistan this spring.
A technology not available for the older Predator, Gorgon Stare will allow 10 operators to view 10 video feeds from a single drone at the same time. Back at a distant base, a “pilot” will stare at a tiled screen with a composite picture of the streaming battlefield video, even as field commanders analyze a portion of the digital picture, panning, zooming, and tilting the image to meet their needs.
A more advanced set of “pods,” scheduled to be deployed for the first time this fall, will allow 30 operators to view 30 video images simultaneously. In other words, via video feeds from a single Reaper drone, operators could theoretically track 30 different people heading in 30 directions from a single Afghan compound. The generation of sensors expected to come online in late 2011 promises 65 such feeds, according to Air Force documents, a more than 6,000 percent increase in effectiveness over the Predator’s video system. The Air Force is, however, already overwhelmed just by drone video currently being sent back from the war zones and, in the years ahead, risks “drowning in data,” according to Deptula.
The 40-Year Plan
When it comes to the drone surge, the years 2011-2013 are just the near horizon. While, like the Army, the Navy is working on its own future drone warfare capacity – in the air as well as on and even under the water – the Air Force is involved in striking levels of futuristic planning for robotic war. It envisions a future previously imagined only in sci-fi movies like the Terminator series.
As a start, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon’s blue skies research outfit, is already looking into radically improving on Gorgon Stare with an “Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Infrared (ARGUS-IR) System.” In the obtuse language of military research and development, it will, according to DARPA, provide a “real-time, high-resolution, wide area video persistent surveillance capability that allows joint forces to keep critical areas of interest under constant surveillance with a high degree of target location accuracy” via as many as “130 ‘Predator-like’ steerable video streams to enable real-time tracking and monitoring and enhanced situational awareness during evening hours.”
In translation, that means the Air Force will quite literally be flooded with video information from future battlefields; and every “advance” of this sort means bulking up the global network of facilities, systems, and personnel capable of receiving, monitoring, and interpreting the data streaming in from distant digital eyes. All of it, of course, is specifically geared toward “target location,” that is, pinpointing people on one side of the world so that Americans on the other side can watch, track, and in many cases, kill them.
In addition to enhanced sensors and systems like ARGUS-IR, the Air Force has a long-term vision for drone warfare that is barely beginning to be realized. Predators and Reapers have already been joined in Afghanistan by a newer, formerly secret drone, a “low observable unmanned aircraft system” first spotted in 2007 and dubbed the “Beast of Kandahar” before observers were sure what it actually was. It is now known to be a Lockheed Martin-manufactured unmanned aerial vehicle, the RQ-170 – a drone which the Air Force blandly notes was designed to “directly support combatant commander needs for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to locate targets.” According to military sources, the sleek, stealthy surveillance craft has been designated to replace the antique Lockheed U-2 spy plane, which has been in use since the 1950s.
In the coming years, the RQ-170 is slated to be joined in the skies of America’s “next wars” by a fleet of drones with ever newer, more sophisticated capabilities and destructive powers. Looking into the post-2011 future, Deptula sees the most essential need, according to an Aviation Week report, as “long-range [reconnaissance and] precision strike” – that is, more eyes in far off skies and more lethality. He added, “We cannot move into a future without a platform that allows [us] to project power long distances and to meet advanced threats in a fashion that gives us an advantage that no other nation has.”
This means bigger, badder, faster drones – armed to the teeth – with sensor systems to monitor wide swathes of territory and the ability to loiter overhead for days on end waiting for human targets to appear and, in due course, be vaporized by high-powered munitions. It’s a future built upon advanced technologies designed to make targeted killings – remote-controlled assassinations – ever more effortless.
Over the horizon and deep into what was, until recently, only a silver-screen fantasy, the Air Force envisions a wide array of unmanned aircraft, from tiny insect-like robots to enormous “tanker-size” pilotless planes. Each will be slated to take over specific war-making functions (or so Air Force dreamers imagine). Those nano-sized drones, for instance, are set to specialize in indoor reconnaissance – they’re small enough to fly through windows or down ventilation shafts – and carry out lethal attacks, undertake computer-disabling cyber-attacks, and swarm, as would a group of angry bees, of their own volition. Slightly larger micro-sized Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (STUAS) are supposed to act as “transformers” – altering their form to allow for flying, crawling, and non-visual sensing capabilities. They might fill sentry, counter-drone, surveillance, and lethal attack roles.
Additionally, the Air Force envisions small and medium “fighter-sized” drones with lethal combat capabilities that would put the current UAS air fleet to shame. Today’s medium-sized Reapers are set to be replaced by next generation MQ-Ma drones that will be “networked, capable of partial autonomy, all-weather, and modular with capabilities supporting electronic warfare (EW), CAS [close air support], strike, and multi-INT [multiple intelligence] ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] missions’ platform.”
The language may not be elegant, much less comprehensible, but if these future fighter aircraft actually come online they will not only send today’s remaining Top Gun pilots to the showers, but may even sideline tomorrow’s drone human operators, who, if all goes as planned, will have ever fewer duties. Unlike today’s drones, which must take off and land with human guidance, the MQ-Mas will be automated, and drone operators will simply be there to monitor the aircraft.
Next up will be the MQ-Mb, theoretically capable of taking over even more roles once assigned to traditional fighter-bombers and spy planes, including the suppression of enemy air defenses, bombing and strafing of ground targets, and surveillance missions. These will also be designed to fly more autonomously and be better linked-in to other drone “platforms” for cooperative missions involving many aircraft under the command of a single “pilot.” Imagine, for instance, one operator overseeing a single command drone that holds sway over a small squadron of autonomous drones carrying out a coordinated air attack on clusters of people in some far off land, incinerating them in small groups across a village, town, or city.
Finally, perhaps 30 to 40 years from now, the MQ-Mc drone would incorporate all of the advances of the MQ-M line, while being capable of everything from dog-fighting to missile defense. With such new technology will, of course, come new policies and new doctrines. In the years ahead, the Air Force intends to make drone-related policy decisions on everything from treaty obligations to automatic target engagement – robotic killing without a human in the loop. The latter extremely controversial development is already envisioned as a possible post-2025 reality.
2047: What’s Old is New Again
The year 2047 is the target date for the Air Force’s Holy Grail, the capstone for its long-term plan to turn the skies over to war-fighting drones. In 2047, the Air Force intends to rule the skies with MQ-Mc drones and “special” super-fast, hypersonic drones for which neither viable technology nor any enemies with any comparable programs or capabilities yet exist. Despite this, the Air Force is intent on making these super-fast hunter-killer systems a reality by 2047. “Propulsion technology and materials that can withstand the extreme heat will likely take 20 years to develop. This technology will be the next generation air game-changer. Therefore the prioritization of the funding for the specific technology development should not wait until the emergence of a critical COCOM [combatant command] need,” says the Air Force’s 2009-2047 UAS “Flight Plan.”
If anything close to the Air Force’s dreams comes to fruition, the “game” will indeed be radically changed. By 2047, there’s no telling how many drones will be circling over how many heads in how many places across the planet. There’s no telling how many millions or billions of flight hours will have been flown, or how many people, in how many countries will have been killed by remote-controlled, bomb-dropping, missile-firing, judge-jury-and-executioner drone systems.
There’s only one given. If the U.S. still exists in its present form, is still solvent, and still has a functioning Pentagon of the present sort, a new plan will already be well underway to create the war-making technologies of 2087. By then, in ever more places, people will be living with the sort of drone war that now worries only those in places like Degan village. Ever more people will know that unmanned aerial systems packed with missiles and bombs are loitering in their skies. By then, there undoubtedly won’t even be that lawnmower-engine sound indicating that a missile may soon plow into your neighbor’s home.
For the Air Force, such a prospect is the stuff of dreams, a bright future for unmanned, hypersonic lethality; for the rest of the planet, it’s a potential nightmare from which there may be no waking.
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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’
RT | March 15, 2022
Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.
“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.
Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.
“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”
This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue
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