Thousands rally against Netanyahu’s visit to The Hague
Former Dutch Prime Minister Dries Van Agt
Press TV – September 7, 2016
Thousands of people have staged a demonstration in The Hague in protest at an official visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Netherlands, saying he should be brought to justice for his crimes.
On Tuesday, the protesters carried Netanyahu’s mugshots and signs that read “Bring Bibi Netanyahu to International Criminal Court” as the Israeli leader arrived in the Netherlands and met with senior Dutch officials.
Chants such as “Free free Palestine, boycott boycott Israel” could also be heard during the demonstration.
“I’m standing here because Netanyahu is visiting the Netherlands. I’m standing in The Hague and we think that rather than him being received by the parliament, he should be put on trial in the Peace Palace of the UN tribunal,” a protester said in English.
Some of the protesters also criticized local authorities for attempting to cancel the anti-Netanyahu gathering.
“This demonstration is not only against Netanyahu, but it’s also for our right to demonstrate, at the places where we want, where it’s happening, because the Zionists, they always get the permission to stand in front of the parliament,” another demonstrator commented.
The rally was originally planned to be staged outside the Dutch parliament building in The Hague downtown, but authorities later did not allow the protesters to proceed.
The demonstration came a day after former Dutch prime minister Dries Van Agt reacted angrily to Netanyahu’s two-day visit to the Netherlands, calling on government officials to “send him right away to the International Criminal Court.”
Speaking in an interview with the NPO1 public broadcaster on Monday, Van Agt described the 66-year-old Chairman of Israel’s right-wing Likud political party as a “war criminal,” arguing that the Tel Aviv regime has been committing a crime under the ICC’s Rome Statute.
“The occupation and expansion… building of settlements, of occupied territory, this is according to the Rome Statute, which is… the setup… the statute on which the international criminal court is based, in so many words, a war crime,” he said.
“So why should we receive someone who continues with such things, we could have sent him right away to the International Criminal Court, that would have been better,” the 85-year-old politician and activist, known for his vocal support of the Palestinian cause, the ex-PM pointed out.
The Rome Statute, which went into effect in July 2002, outlines the four grave international crimes, namely crimes of aggression, war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The statute forms one of the foundations of The Hague-based International Criminal Court.
Israel signed the treaty in December 2000, but “unsigned” it two years later by means of the US lobby.
One of the primary reasons behind the decision was a clause in the document, which allowed the prosecution of the Israeli regime over war crimes for “transfer of parts of the civilian population of an occupying power into occupied territory.”
Ben Gurion’s Plan for Regional Conquest and Israeli Empire
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | September 1, 2016
Ben Gurion’s 1948 vision of Israeli empire
Odeh Bisharat, one of Haaretz’s few Israeli-Palestinian columnists (Sayeh Kashua is another), published an incisive article on what he calls “the end of the road” for Zionism. But the first paragraph, which comprised a quotation from David Ben Gurion (the full archival passage in Hebrew is here), really opened my eyes. At the first meeting of the Haganah military command after statehood was declared on May 15, 1948, he told the assembled leadership his strategic goals for the coming war. This grandiose vision dispels a long-standing claim by proponents of the Israel-as-victim view, who argue that Israel’s enemies have commenced all the wars against it and that the “Jewish state” has only acted in self-defense:
“We must immediately destroy Ramle and Lod. … We must organize Eliyahu’s brigade to direct it against Jenin in preparation for [conquering] the Jordan Valley. … Maklef needs to receive reinforcements and his role is the conquest of southern Lebanon, through bombing-support against Tyre, Sidon and Beirut. … Yigal Allon must strike Syria from the east and from the north. … We must establish a Christian state whose southern border will be the Litani [River]. We will forge an alliance with it. When we break the strength of the [Jordanian] Legion and bomb Amman we will eliminate Transjordan too, and then Syria falls. And if Egypt still dares to fight, we will bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo.
… That is how we will end the war – and make a reckoning on our forefathers behalf with Egypt, Assyria and Aramea.”
Pro-Israel advocates will chalk this up to the braggadocio of a national leader preparing the troops for battle. He offers them a vision full of victories and maximalist territorial gain. It cheers them for the difficult battle ahead. Defenders may argue that Ben Gurion had to have been realistic enough to know that the new state had little chance of achieving such objectives.
But in my reading of Ben Gurion, there are two separate personalities: one of the pragmatist who accepts half a loaf instead of the whole; the other the ambitious politico-military strategist harboring imperial visions of Israel’s future (including the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian inhabitants of the new state). But even the pragmatist is only pragmatic in the moment. Ben Gurion makes clear that his pragmatism is only temporary until Israel is in a position to realize its maximalist goals.
The irony here is that it is Israeli advocates who continually claim that conspiring Palestinian militants only accept Israel on an interim basis until they are powerful enough to eradicate it. Therefore, Israel may never trust such enemies and never make peace with them; because a knife in the back is the only future Israel can expect from them. We can see that it is Israel that the Arab states had reason to distrust.
Another bitter irony is the claim by Israel and anti-Iran forces in the U.S. and elsewhere, that Iran has a nefarious plan to spread Shia hegemony throughout the Middle East to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the Gulf region. In truth, Ben Gurion shows that Iran is a piker by comparison. He envisioned a Greater Israel not just from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean), but a Davidic imperium spreading its influence from Syria to Egypt. Even those Arab states Israel permitted to remain would be little more than vassals of this new regional Goliath.
Just think how Ben Gurion’s successors implemented most of the strategic vision he proclaimed that day: a Christian state in southern Lebanon; the fall of Syria; Israeli bombardment of Arab capitals in Beirut, Damascus and elsewhere. The only elements of his plan that were unrealized (conquest of Jordan and the pacification of Egypt) weren’t necessary because both states sued for peace.
Today’s radical settlers, with their considerably ‘pared-down’ vision of a pure, racialist Judean state, rid of Palestinians, from the Jordan to the sea are inheritors of Ben Gurion’s legacy.
Bisharat quotes another telling statement from a pre-State Zionist leader who could be describing current Israeli strategy of sabotaging peace negotiations with the Palestinians. This was written in 1937:
“It turns out that we have put out our hand for peace, but took it back right away, when the other side expressed its interest in accepting it. This dangerous game did not help to raise our honor in their eyes as honest people, and the accusation that they blame us for, that we are conducting two-faced politics: On one hand we pretend as if we are asking for an agreement, and on the other hand we only want to gain time – is not baseless.”
This clearly explains Netanyahu’s Bar Ilan speech of 2009 in which he pretends to embrace a two-state solution (under severe pressure from the Bush administration to do so). The few times since when the Israeli leader has trotted out his affirmation of a two-state solution were times when he was under great duress and had to throw a sop to foreign interlocutors like the Obama administration. Clearly, Bibi’s heart is not in it, nor does he believe it.
Historic: Peru Jails 10 Military Men for Brutal State Massacre
Claudia Pomacongo holds a card detailing the case of her husband, who was murdered in the Accomarca massacre. | Photo: AFP
teleSUR – September 1, 2016
Among the military officials sentenced for the 1985 rape massacre of civilians was the Peruvian general nicknamed the “Butcher of the Andes.”
A Peruvian court Thursday sentenced 10 former military officials and soldiers to between 10 and 25 years in prison for the 1985 massacre of 69 civilians, mostly women and children, in the town of Accomarca, in one of the most iconic cases from the South American country’s so-called “war on terror.”
Three high-ranking military men, then-Lieutenants Telmo Hurtado and Juan Rivera Rondon and then-general Wilfredo Mori, were sentenced to 23, 24, and 25 years in jail as the masterminds behind the massacre. Judges singled out Hurtado — infamously known as the “Butcher of the Andes” — and Rivera Rondon as those principally responsible for carrying out the violence as the leaders of the patrols, while Mori was held responsible by giving the orders as the highest in the chain of the command.
Two other accused received 25 years in jail each, and another five were sentenced to 10 years each, all for carrying out the violent tragedy. Six were acquitted, including then-general Jose Williams Zapata. Sentences were not handed down for 11 others accused in the case, because one died before the trial was completed and 10 others are fugitives.
People gathered outside the National Criminal Court in Lima to await the results of the sentencing trial, which was delayed more than eight hours. Families of the victims and other Accomarca community members prepared food to share with those waiting to hear the announcement outside the court.
The outcome of the six-year-old case establishes a precedent for prosecuting similar crimes against humanity at the hands of the state in the guise of cracking down on left-wing insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Accomarca massacre trial is also groundbreaking because it is the only such case in Peru—aside from prosecutions of members of the military death squad known as Grupo Colina—that brings charges against the military’s entire chain of high command, according to local media.
On Aug. 14, 1985, at the height of the government’s conflict with the notorious Shining Path rebel army, the Peruvian military massacred at least 69 unarmed victims—30 children, 27 women, and 12 men—in Accomarca, located in Peru’s southern department of Ayacucho. Troops raped the women, then herded all the men, women, and children into houses before launching hand grenades at them. They finally burned the houses to kill every last victim.
The National Human Rights Coordinator and the Washington Office on Latin American had stressed in a joint statement leading up the the hearing the importance of the trial and the “need for a sentence that imparts real justice for one of the most heinous crimes and reminders of the internal armed conflict” in Peru from 1980 to 2000.
“Peruvian justice has an enormous debt with the victims in the Accomarca case,” said Jorge Bracamonte, executive secretary of Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator, in a statement, stressing that the massacre has gone unpunished for too long. “We not only hope for an exemplary sentence, but we also hope that the court will order the collective return of the bodies of the Accomarca victims so that the families can bury their dead and close their grief.”
Human rights organizations have called for comprehensive reparations for victims as part of the process of seeking justice for acts of state terror.
“Justice not only seeks the punishment of those responsible, it also seeks to dignify the victims who, for so many years, have been sidelined and forgotten,” said WOLA’s Jo-Marie Burt in a statement.
In the sentencing hearing, judges also ordered reparations of US$44,000 be paid to the family of each of the victims of Accomarca.
The massacre took place under the state guise of Peru’s counterinsurgency strategy aimed at wiping out left-wing armed groups that challenged the state. But the Peruvian army killed scores of unarmed rural civilians accused of collaborating with guerrilla groups as part of the bloody conflict that claimed a total of 70,000 lives from 1980 to 2000.
Human rights groups have pointed to the Accomarca case as representative of the reign of state terror inflicted on poor and Indigenous communities.
“It has been shown that the Accomarca massacre was not an excess of the counterinsurgency fight nor an overreaction of soldiers overwhelmed by war,” said Burt, “but the result of a state policy of combating subversion using indiscriminate violence against the civilian population.”
Hillary Clinton speaks on America’s place in the world
RT | August 31, 2016
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is making the case for American “exceptionalism” and US leadership around the world, speaking to the national convention of the American Legion in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The veterans group invited Clinton to speak on Wednesday. Her rival for the White House, Republican nominee Donald Trump, is scheduled to address the convention Thursday.
Clinton began her speech talking about American exceptionalism, which means “America’s unique ability to be a force for peace and progress.”
“We are the indispensable nation. People all over the world look to us and follow our lead,” she said. “When America fails to lead, we leave a vacuum that either leaves chaos, or other countries rush in to fill the void.”
Through her speech Clinton often criticized the words of her major opponent Donald Trump who was skeptical about American foreign police and called the situation with its military “disaster.”
Clinton brought in the Bin Laden raid as an example of US foreign policy successes and touted her participation in advising President Obama.
She also noted that she enjoys “bipartisan support” several times.
She brought up the letter of 50 Republicans who said they won’t vote for Trump, because he’d be “most reckless president in American history.”
Clinton said she’s honored to have so many retired military leaders and these Republican experts on board.
“They know I believe in a bipartisan foreign policy,” she said.
‘Saudi Arabian forces never once targeted ISIS militants in Yemen’
RT | August 29, 2016
The latest car bombing is most likely a personal vendetta, probably more of a gang problem inside Aden over who is going to take control, the rebels or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), political commentator Marwa Osman told RT.
Up to 60 people have been killed in a car bomb attack in the Yemeni city of Aden with dozens more injured. Most of the dead were pro-government troops.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack.
RT: What is ISIS trying to achieve in this attack?
Marwa Osman: First, let’s tell people where ISIS targeted. They targeted a school compound which consists of the Popular Committee Forces who are allied with Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who was the president who resigned twice before the war in Yemen. So, they targeted these people who are already in war with “Ansar Allah” also known as the Houthis in the mainstream media. So, they are now targeting supposedly their own allies. And that is because there is a personal vendetta, probably more of a gang problem inside Aden over who is going to take control now. Is it the rebels who are actually backed by Saudi Arabia, who is still bombing and killing people in Saada and Sana’a? Or is it going to be ISIS which is also backed by Saudi Arabia which has been funneling money and arms by Saudi Arabia for the past seven or eight years in Yemen. Who is going to take control? That is the fight that is going on there. It is not a fight of fighting ISIS or fighting people who are there to try and liberate Yemen. No, because the actual thing is that both groups, these popular movements which are Hadi’s supporters and ISIS – they are both fighting “Ansar Allah” which is also getting beaten by the Saudi-led coalition. So, this is more of who is going to control the area.
RT: With this Saudi Arabian involvement you mentioned, is it possible that Saudi Arabia is using ISIS as some sort of proxy army to achieve its desires in that part of the world?
MO: It is not only possible, it is the only fact on the ground because up until now, since March 25, 2015 when the US coalition led by the Saudis ran… all over Yemen, they have never – not even once – targeted all of the Al-Qaeda-ISIS wilayat. They have eight wilayat inside of Yemen and not once have they targeted them. Why? Because they are actually there to run the on-ground incursion for the Saudis. And up until now they have not been able to do that; they were not able to go to Sana’a or to Saada for that matter. They only have been targeting Aden as we just saw today. It is obviously very devastating: 60 people dead because of the explosion. But these two proxy warriors for the war of Al-Saud, both rebels that supposedly represent Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, the former president and also Al-Qaeda. It is the way it is going on in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and also Libya. So, when you talk about Saudi Arabia funding ISIS, it is the only way that it is going to gain any ground incursions on the Yemeni field. And yet this is not happening…
RT: Are you saying that ISIS is de facto a proxy army of mercenaries being used to achieve regime change?
MO: Yes, of course. And that what we have been saying since the beginning of 2010 and all 2011 when Al-Qaeda was changing into ISIS based on the ideology of Wahhabism, which is diffused and brought upon us by the monarchy of Al-Saud. Where they have got their weapons from, where they were funded from? It was obvious; we had all the reports and also the statements from both Qatar and Saudi Arabia. But then Qatar last year started to back off, but Saudi Arabia is still enraged by the incapability of their forces to take any control of Yemen. By God, Yemen is taking land inside of Saudi Arabia; it is that devastating for Al-Saud now. And when we talk about Iraq, Syria as well, it is also the same thing. They are still funding the same group that has the ideology of Al-Saud which is Wahhabism because they have no other choice. They are losing in Yemen; they obviously lost a lot in Syria and Iraq. There is no other place. The Iraqis are asking the Saudis to change their ambassador because he is the main person who is in contact with Al-Qaeda and ISIS inside of Iraq. So, when we talk about this, and talk about the role of Saudi Arabia, I don’t want to just demonize them. There are facts that demonize them. There are facts that Riyadh is still issuing a bloody campaign against Yemen. And there are US and UK so-called consultants inside of Riyadh in the control room of the war on Yemen. And we are still asking if they are funding ISIS or not. How did ISIS come to be if it were not for Al-Saud?
Read more:
At least 60 dead in Yemeni suicide bombing, ISIS takes responsibility
Hudson Institute Award to Netanyahu Named for Neocon Who Inspired Dr. Strangelove
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | August 28, 2016
Herman Kahn as featured in a Life Magazine profile
When Bibi Netanyahu comes to New York next month for the UN General Assembly, the Hudson Institute will bestow its Herman Kahn award on him. Kahn was an early neocon intellectual who advocated U.S. first-use of nuclear weapons. He propounded this theory in his provocatively titled 1960s book, Thinking the Unthinkable.
The Institute is a leading neocon think-tank based in Washington DC. It is a wonky version of the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation. It’s senior vice-president is Scooter Libby, a man who barely escaped spending time in a federal prison.
The Hudson Institute is the primary funder (see Didi Remez’s post for a fuller discussion of the funding and relationships) of the far-right Israeli NGO, Institute for Zionist Strategies, which advocate purging “post-Zionist” material from Israeli academic curriculum. They’ve been so successful at pressuring academia to “Zionize” the curriculum that Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter promised he would personally examine individual course syllabi for tainted content.
Hudson is also the primary backer of Uzi Arad’s Atlantic Forum, a shadowy Israeli think tank founded by the former Mossad officer. The NGO’s mission is to strengthen Israel’s security relationship with NATO. He’s reputed to have “run” Larry Franklin, the former Defense Department analyst caught with Steven Rosen passing U.S. secrets to the Israelis. Rosen too came within a whisker or two of landing in federal prison. Luckily for him, the Israel Lobby came to his defense and the Justice Department dropped the case against him. Arad worked with Kahn at Hudson in the 1970s.
Bush-era neocon analyst, Meyrav Wurmser, runs Hudson’s Center for Middle East Policy. That explains Hudson’s love affair with Netanyahu and the award he is to receive. In many ways it seems fitting for the Israeli leader to receive an award named for Kahn. Israel is, after all, one of the most dangerous of the nuclear states. One of those most likely to engage in first-use of nuclear weapons would the circumstances arise. One may argue whether that distinction should rather belong to North Korea or Pakistan. But the Koreans don’t yet have the capacity to destroy western Asia as Israel does the Middle East. And Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is child’s play compared to Israel’s estimated 200 nuclear warheads.
Herman Kahn (David Levine)
It may be worth hearing some words said about Kahn’s work. A reader summarized another of his books: “On Thermonuclear War, was ‘a moral tract on mass murder: how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it.’” Some other words of wisdom from Kahn on nuclear deterrence:
“If it is not acceptable to risk the lives of the three billion inhabitants of the earth in order to protect ourselves from surprise attack, then how many people would we be willing to risk?”
Another critic said that the publication of that book “should properly have caused the sequestration of its author into psychiatric care.” A science reporter, reviewing Kahn’s book called him a contemporary version of the devil:
“Not the traditional devil, reeking of brimstone and tempting men to old-fashioned sins, but a slick, talcum-scented, contemporary Satan, rationalising hideous emotions by reference to strategic studies, electronic computers, contingency planning, and all the other gimmicks of paranoiac gamesmanship.”
The following comment by Kahn to a reporter surely served as the inspiration for Terry Southern’s screenplay for Dr. Strangelove: “I can be funny on the subject of thermonuclear war.” In fact, writing in the NY Times, Fred Kaplan says:
… The real model [for the Strangelove character] was almost certainly Herman Kahn, an eccentric, voluble nuclear strategist at the RAND Corporation, a prominent Air Force think tank. In 1960, Mr. Kahn published a 652-page tome called “On Thermonuclear War,” which sold 30,000 copies in hardcover.
… When Dr. Strangelove talks of sheltering people in mine shafts, President Muffley asks him, “Wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they’d, well, envy the dead?” Strangelove exclaims that, to the contrary, many would feel “a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead.”
Mr. Kahn’s book contains a long chapter on mine shafts. Its title: “Will the Survivors Envy the Dead?” One sentence reads: “We can imagine a renewed vigor among the population with a zealous, almost religious dedication to reconstruction.”
So it is altogether fitting that Bibi Netanyahu be enshrined along with Herman Kahn in a sort of Nuclear War Hall of Fame, as two men prepared to see their region (in Bibi’s case) or world (in Kahn’s) go up in flames in order to “save” their country.
It’s perfectly fitting that a past recipient of the award was Dick Cheney (especially considering his former protege, Scooter Libby works for Hudson).
Saudi Arabia Cries Foul Play in Yemen
By Catherine Shakdam | New Eastern Outlook | August 27, 2015
As the Yemen International Conference in the Support of Yemen was in full swing in the British capital, London, Yemenis came in their hundreds of thousands to pledge their support to the Resistance movement this August 20, 2016 – yet another popular show of force, yet another grand display of sovereign political will in the face of foreign diktat.
To the sounds of explosions, and flying Saudi war planes it is Yemen which came to defy its invaders; a proud nation under unprecedented duress, a land united under the banner of its resistance.
“We won’t bow down to the House of Saud” chanted the crowd. “We will never bow down to the criminal House of Saud,” millions repeated in unison.
If Yemen remains in the throes of a brutal war of attrition for its dared ambition to live free under its skies, its people are quite determined to weather whatever storm Saudi Arabia will throw, so that their right to self-govern and resist oppression could be affirmed – never to be questioned again.
However one chooses to look at Yemen’s war, it would be foolish to deny still that those brave souls corporate media still label as “rebels” are in fact the carrier of a nation’s will; the very expression of a people’s inherent right to carve its own political future, regardless of what anyone else might think.
Let me be brutally honest here – Yemen neither needs foreign approval, nor does it require foreign vetting. Yemenis want what they want because they can! It is really that simple.
Yemen needs no liberating from the Houthis, for the Houthis are Yemen. Yemen is not being overrun by Shiites, Yemen is Zaidi country. There is no Iranian agenda at play either, only a desire to disappear the suffocating influence of the House of Saud.
Standing in opposition of the most violent, radical and reactionary theocracy ever to grace the pages of our history does not make Yemen an “Iranian agent”, it makes Yemen an expectant independent nation.
Media coverage of Yemen so far has been criminal at best, misleading always.
The public has been conned into a narrative which is devoid of all humanity, and democratic courtesy. The simple fact that media feel entitled to slap derogatory adjectives before the Houthis as to direct their readers’ self-righteous sense of political morality is despicable.
I read the terms Iran-backed Shia Houthis rebels too many times not take offense. How dare you define a people whom you know nothing about? How dare you speak over and at an entire nation because their will does align with yours?
Let’s play the adjective game shall we?
When have you ever read the following statement: Wahhabi-backed-Western-sold-out- twice-resigned-once-runaway-child-killer-Sunni President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi? Likely never … Why? Because Saudi Arabia and its allies are still hiding behind this pale figure of a man to legitimize their odious genocidal military intervention against Yemen.
Let me tell you of this so-called legitimate political figure the West has canonised as Yemen’s forever president.
Hadi is a fraud and a traitor. Not only did he allow for the killing of his countrymen, he actually actively pursued their annihilation in the name of a chair he never truly was appointed to. Hadi was elected in a one-man election in 2012 for the duration of a 2-year’s mandate – not exactly what you call democratic.
Hadi was never the choice of the people, he was Riyadh’s choice through the GCC-brokered transition of power agreement (2011).
How can anyone speak of democracy and refuse Yemenis their own?
How can anyone still read corporate media and not deplore the stench of their abominable hypocrisy and bias?
Do not tell Yemen what it wants, but hear what it is telling you.
Hear what an entire nation is screaming from the top of its glorious lungs, and witness the rise of a Resistance which breadth will maybe crumble al-Saud tyranny.
“We won’t bow down to the House of Saud … We will never bow down to the criminal House of Saud!”
Can you hear them now? Can you not respect that a nation simply cannot bring itself to live the abomination which is Wahhabism? Can you not recognise that Yemen is the last line of defense for all free folks in Arabia?
Who will speak for democracy and political self-determination when radicalism will have nations at the mercy of their guns? Can you not see that what you refuse Yemen – free will, is exactly what you demand for yourself?
Do not tell me of the will of a people when under bombs millions have rallied before their appointed leaders.
Yemen is free today by the strength of its Resistance movement.
Yemen is dignified today for one man rose from the oppression of religious repression to reclaim pluralism his own coat of arms. Sheikh Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, one of the sons of Hamdan, Yemen’s very own legacy offered Yemen its Freedom to keep none for himself.
Sheikh al-Houthi liberated Yemen from al-Saud never to demand a seat at power’s table.
Do not speak of what you don’t know Mr corporate media. Do not define with your adjectives the nature of a land for which you have no respect for.
Yemen might be poor and battered but it is a grand and noble land.
Of course Saudi Arabia would want you to believe that Yemen’s political ambitions are illegitimate, unlawful and nefarious.
Have you ever bothered asking why? Have you even given the infamous “Houthis” the time of day before dismissing them under misapprehension?
I think not. What the public did is assume. What the public did is read those adjectives media associated ad nauseam to Yemen resistance movement, and automatically accept those labels as truths. Adjectives those days have become dangerous weapons of mass-destruction.
Adjectives have cost Yemen its freedom!
Yemenis this August 20, 2016 came to publicly offer their support to the new highest political council – and still Riyadh has cried foul play.
Millions took to the streets knowing full well that Saudi Arabia warplanes were up above to offer their voice and their arms to the Resistance, and still Western capitals have called for Hadi’s “restoration.”
What will it take for you to wake up?
Yemen has bled, burnt, exploded, pleaded, negotiated, mourned, cried and starved while you turned your nose up in disgust arguing what future a people should have instead of the one they want for themselves.
If you like the idea of a life spent in the shadow of Wahhabism why not book a ticket to Saudi Arabia and experience first-hand the type of democracy al-Saud have in mind for Yemen, you might find new respect then for the Houthis of Yemen.
One more thing before I go: no one said you had to love the Houthis, only that you respect that Yemenis do.
Catherine Shakdam is the Director of Programs of the Shafaqna Institute for Middle Eastern Studies and a political analyst specializing in radical movements.
US Okay With Surgical Strikes on Yemen Hospitals
By William Boardman | Reader Supported News | August 24, 2016
Nuremberg: “a war of aggression … is the supreme international crime”
Waging genocidal war on a defenseless country was never so baldly and honestly put on any agenda for talks among US secretary of state John Kerry, representatives of Saudi Arabia’s dictatorship, and their mutual allies, even though they are all engaged in an endless genocidal war on Yemen. This war is a war of aggression, started by Saudi Arabia in March 2015, with crucial US blessing, participation, personnel, and ordnance. The US has been a willing, guilty partner and enabler in 18 months of military atrocities in a one-sided war that everyone involved knew – or should have known – was a pure war crime based on a paranoid delusion.
American participation in this war of aggression was a war declared by press release from the National Security Council on March 25, 2015, another example of the imperial presidency’s ability to act by fiat without fear of serious objection from the public, the media, or even Congress:
President Obama has authorized the provision of logistical and intelligence support to GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council]-led military operations. [emphasis added]
The fundamental crime in Yemen is waging a war of aggression, which encompasses all the subsequent war crimes including bombing civilians, using cluster bombs, bombing hospitals, bombing food supplies, and trying to starve a population to submission or death. Yemen, with a population of 26 million people, was the poorest country in the region even before it was attacked. What the US supports and sanctions against Yemen makes any US complaint about Russian actions in Crimea sound like howling hypocrisy.
For all that the Saudis frame their war on Yemen as a defense against a threat from Iran, there has never been any credible evidence of any credible threat to Saudi Arabia from any element of the miniscule Iranian presence in Yemen. Yemen is fighting a civil war, a new version of the same old civil war Yemenis have been fighting for decades, both before and after Yemen was two separate countries. The Iran “threat” is the paranoid delusion supposedly justifying a merciless war on a civil population already beset by a four-sided civil war. There is no way that those who decided to wage this war of aggression could not have known the reality in Yemen if they had wanted to know it. Presumably they knew it all full well and chose a war of aggression anyway, recklessly, perhaps even thoughtlessly, but criminally all the same.
The Saudi goal was always to get rid of a longstanding threat on its southwestern border, where the tribal land of the Houthis lay both in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. When the long-oppressed Houthis, a Shia minority in a Sunni world, drove out the Sunni government of Yemen in 2015, the Saudis, without saying in so many words, decided on a course of action that could lead to a final solution. And everyone knew, at the time, and no one objected, according to this account by the highly reliable Andrew Cockburn on Democracy NOW! (whose piece in Harper’s Magazine for September 2016, ironically titled “Acceptable Losses,” provides an excellent exegesis of the war on Yemen, but with a more elegiac tone):
I was told, very early on in the war, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken went to Riyadh to ask the—this is two weeks—yeah, it was two weeks into the war [mid-April 2015], when they had already been bombing away, using the U.S. bombs, U.S.-supplied bombs, using U.S. weapons, killing already dozens, if not certainly, you know, hundreds of civilians, destroying factories. And finally, Blinken turns up in Riyadh and asks, “By the way, what are you trying to accomplish here?” And the Saudis effectively said, or at least the Americans understood them to say, “Well, we basically want to wipe out the Houthis.” Well, they termed it as “end all Iranian influence in Yemen.” So, the Americans—Blinken was a bit shocked by that, so I’m told, and said, “Well, you know, that’s going a bit far. But it’s—you should certainly stop the Houthis taking over the country.” And that, effectively, gave the Saudis carte blanche to continue this kind of mindless carpet bombing….
By 2015, American hands were already bloody with the US drone assassination program that had killed not only innocent civilians, but American citizens, without a trace of due process of law. In effect, already enmeshed in its own nexus of war crimes in Yemen, the US green-lighted the Saudi-led war of aggression that would make American crimes pale by comparison. As American policy over the years would have it, American weapons have been dispersed all over Yemen since 2006.
Kerry to consult on terrorism, but not US or Saudi terrorism
Terror bombing, an example of which is Saudi pilots flying American planes dropping American bombs on defenseless Yemeni civilian targets, is probably not the terrorism Secretary Kerry wants to discuss – ever – with the Saudis and their allies, never mind other weapons suppliers like France and the United Kingdom. As the official State Department notice put it in deadly opaque prose:
Secretary Kerry will travel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for a series of meetings with senior Saudi leaders, his counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council, the United Kingdom, and the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen. His discussion will focus on the ongoing conflict in Yemen and efforts to restore peace and stability….
Those “efforts to restore peace and stability” notably include the destruction of two schools, another hospital, and a potato chip factory, along with the associated men, women, and children, especially at the schools. Perhaps the latest great military “victory” achieved by the war criminals known as the Saudi-led coalition is to drive the world’s leading medical crisis-zone organization out of Yemen by targeting its hospitals over and over and over and over since March 2015. Of course, America the Exceptional does not stand for this betrayal of human decency, and our presidential candidates of all parties have railed ceaselessly against this indiscriminate murder of patients, their families, their doctors and other medical personnel, forcing the White House to take action to bring to an end 17 months of aggressive war and other war crimes and crimes against humanity – no, wait, that’s not happening, is it?
Actually, if any presidential candidate of any political party has expressed the slightest objection to the Saudi-coalition’s genocidal war on Yemen, such evidence is so hard to come by that it may as well not exist. (In August 2015, Jill Stein of the Green Party mentioned in passing that the Saudis “are committing war crimes right now in Yemen,” and more recently she called for an end to US funding for Saudi Arabia and Israel because of their violations of human rights laws. She does not tend to make a point of the US support for a war of aggression in Yemen, but she’s better than any other candidate on Yemen.) At this point, a year and a half into our shared war of aggression, every candidate is complicit in this horrendous, unjustified war promoted and pursued with smug disdain for anything like peace by our peace prize winning President Obama. The blood drips from all their hands, their feet, their tongues and eyelashes, but most of all from every pore of our Nobel Laureate in the White House. (As the book Double Down reported in 2012: “Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” Obama said quietly, “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”)
With the US at war, Congress has nothing to say about any of it
The US is at war with Yemen, in support of the Saudi-led coalition that launched its undeclared war of aggression on March 26, 2015. US war-making includes, but is not limited to: US intelligence services providing intelligence to the aggressor nations; US military personnel participating in daily target planning and attack assessment; US tanker aircraft re-fueling aggressor nation aircraft bombing Yemen (46,500 acknowledged sorties in the first 11 months of war); US drones targeting and attacking under US control; US military contractors servicing the Saudi F-15s that bomb Yemen; US personnel training Saudi military; US military personnel operating in Yemen; and the US Navy reinforcing the Saudi blockade intent on starving Yemen into submission.
The US Congress has never debated, never authorized US participation in a war of aggression against Yemen. The US president has never asked Congress for such authorization of a war of aggression against Yemen. Neither house of Congress has acted on any bill that directly addresses the war of aggression against Yemen. More than a year after the war started, two Democratic members of Congress (joined by two Republicans) introduced identical bills intended to respond to the war. California congressman Ted Lieu (joined by Florida congressman Ted Yoho) and Connecticut senator Christopher Murphy (joined by Kentucky senator Rand Paul) asked their colleagues to address the horrors of the war (briefly enumerated in the bill), not by ending the war, but only by temporarily limiting US arms sales to Saudi Arabia. That’s it. They did not mention US participation in the war. Both their bills were referred to committee. At the time there was a spotty ceasefire in Yemen while peace talks proceeded in Kuwait (the talks were suspended in early August, leading to the Saudi escalation currently killing more civilians).
Incredibly, this non-response response to war crimes in Yemen has gotten Rep. Lieu some recent positive press coverage, in The Intercept of August 22 and elsewhere, even though his bill is designed to have no immediate impact on the carnage. Rep. Lieu is a colonel in the US Air Force Reserve. When he was on active duty he taught the law of war to other Air Force officers. His interview rhetoric, like most of his public action, is soft-edged even though he knows perfectly well his country is committing war crimes. He almost said as much in an August 15 statement objecting to the Saudi attack on a school in Haydan, Yemen, that killed 10 children:
The indiscriminate civilian killings by Saudi Arabia look like war crimes to me. In this case, children as young as 8 were killed by Saudi Arabian air strikes. By assisting Saudi Arabia, the United States is aiding and abetting what appears to be war crimes in Yemen. The Administration must stop enabling this madness now. [emphasis in original]
Rep. Lieu and others have also objected to the State Department’s certification of another arms sale to Saudi Arabia: this one is $1.15 billion for 153 tanks, hundreds of machine guns, and other war materiel. This is in addition to the record $100 billion in arms sales to the Saudis already made by the Obama administration. The latest arms deal suggested to Rep. Lieu “that the administration is, at best, callously indifferent to the mass amount of civilians dying as a result of the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing.” He did not openly consider whether 153 Abrams Main Battle Tanks and other weaponry might open the way for the air war of aggression to be matched by an escalation of the ground war of aggression as well. Twenty of those new US tanks are specifically designated as replacements for tanks lost in combat, some of them in Yemen. On the other hand, the official State Department notice of the Abrams Tank sale assures Congress: “The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.” That’s hardly reassuring in a region where wars of attrition and military quagmires are killing not only thousands of Yemenis, but Palestinians, Israelis, Lebanese, Syrians, Saudis, Turks, Kurds, Iraqis, Afghans, and god knows who else, more often than not with Made-in-USA weapons and munitions.
The proposed US tank sale has drawn the attention of several NGOs (non-governmental organizations) looking to wash American hands of the war on Yemen by blocking the sale, or at least having a debate about it in Congress. Human Rights Watch (HRW) wrote a letter to Secretary Kerry August 19, with temperate language of concern about several countries, including Yemen. HRW asked Secretary Kerry “to emphasize the potential consequences if Saudi Arabia fails to improve its conduct.” But it did not suggest what those consequences might be in light of the reality that the US has coordinated and condones all Saudi conduct to date. CODEPINK is supporting a petition to support the Congressional letter that urges President Obama to postpone the US tank sale to the Saudis.
Even The New York Times is expressing something shy of anguish over “American complicity” and “carnage” and targets that are not “legitimate” under international law as it supports efforts to block the tank sale in Congress. The Times doesn’t mention that this is the same Congress that in June – supporting a White House request – refused to block the sale of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia for fear of “stigmatizing” cluster bombs. That’s a reflection of the American version of reality, since cluster bombs are already stigmatized by most countries of the world and using them on civilians, as US-Saudi forces do in Yemen, is widely understood to be a war crime. The solution, according to the Times :
Congress should put the arms sales on hold and President Obama should quietly inform Riyadh that the United States will withdraw crucial assistance if the Saudis do not stop targeting civilians and agree to negotiate peace.
That can’t happen in the real world, where the president and the Saudis all know they are war criminals and are, like Macbeth, so steeped in blood “that should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
There is no reason to expect any good to come to Yemen until a whole lot more Americans face the reality of their country’s support for a genocidal war of aggression. When enough Americans recognize that, then they will have to do a lot more about it than stop selling tanks to the aggressors. Until then the US-sponsored atrocity of ethnic cleansing in a poverty-stricken country that threatens no one will continue unabated.
Featured Video
Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Oil and the Israel Lobby
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alam offers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ICC ignored ‘very well-documented’ NATO crimes – ex-Libyan minister
- SNSC secretary dismisses US response to Iran’s conditions as ‘inadequate’
- Sanaa says Taiz roads open, secure for residents, warns Saudi forces
- Iraqi resistance group urges Saudi leadership to admit defeat, lift Yemen siege
- Trump’s Retreat: How Al-Aqsa Flood Took Down the US Empire
- Israel’s Military Actions in Lebanon Grossly Violate International Law — Lavrov
- Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
- Leaders Condemn Ansarallah Attack on Saudi Arabia While Ignoring Illegal War Against Yemen
- Leaked: Britain’s Covert Iraqi Psyops Network
- Yemeni Armed Forces Warn Airlines Against Using Saudi Airports, Exempt Mecca and Medina
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
