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“A lot of people at least the corporate media, the western media, the establishment media - whatever you want to call it - tend to tell us that this is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran...Is that true?”[R.S.] It’s not to the extent that they talk about it at all. MSNBC ignored this conflict for two years as Fair showed. But, now that they are talking about it; what they need to point out is that the Houthis have been winning for two reasons: One is that they actually recommandeered billions of dollars of weapons the US supplied the deposed and dead dictator Saleh. And worked along side the Yemeni army which was formerly supplied by the US not Iran. Iran is supplying some political and media support but not the weapons that our government and the Saudis claim. So the idea of a proxy war is false. The Houthis are an indigenous nationalistic resistance force that is fighting against a puppet government that poses an existential threat to them!”[M.B.]

--Rick Sanchez & Max Blumenthal--
The ABC’s of the War in Yemen with Max Blumenthal. RT, Nov1, 2018

"...The reality is far grimmer. The Saudi war on Yemen isn't really motivated by the failed political process or the Shia-Sunni divide in the first order. The Saudis attacked to either annex Yemen in its entirety or at least a passage to the ports in the south of Yemen. What Saudi Arabia wants is a direct way to the Arabian sea that prevents the dependence on the [Bab Al-Mandeb] strait between Yemen and Djibouti to facilitate its oil exports. The agreement with Iran came into that and so did the war in Syria. The latter turns around a pipeline from Qatar to Turkey for market share in Europe by ousting the Islamic pipeline from Iran to Syria agreed upon by Assad and Iran. Religion is not involved in this. The Sunni-Shia divide is used by the US to justify the destabilization and fragmentation of Syria by causing a civil war - along the same lines as the civil war in Iraq and Libya: to oust the presidents of these countries in punishment for not submitting to US dictate."

-- Saurav Dutt, Journalist --
Yemen and the Saudi Blood-soaked Box of Tricks, April 23 ,2017

Boyle explained that the Saudis and their allies in the Gulf Arab Emirates wanted to establish full control over the entire Arabian peninsula and also of the choke point region at the head of the Persian, or Arabian Gulf through which all oil exports, including those of Iran and Iraq were shipped by sea. “They want to control the entire Saudi Peninsula, all its resources, and the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait through which all the oil and gas to Europe must pass,” he said.

-- Vanessa Beeley, Journalist --
YEMEN: “Saudis, Emiratis and USA are Inflicting a War of Genocide Against the Houthis" - Prof. Francis Boyle

"The UN embargo/blockade against Yemen and the Yemenis violates Genocide Convention article II (e): Deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

-- Prof. Francis A Boyle --
YEMEN: A Genocidal War Against Children and Civilians Sanctioned by the UN, US, UK & NATO

"They're killing lots of people. ... The greatest humanitarian tragedy since World War II."

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --
The Real News Nov 6, 2017

"This support to the Saudi-UAE effort to wage this war in Yemen, though, is not legitimate. It's illegal. It was started by the Obama administration and continued and emphasized by the Trump administration. It's illegal. It's brutal. "

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --
The Real News Nov 6, 2017

"There's no defense. It's a brutal, bloody war, as I pointed out. It's a major humanitarian disaster, and the United States has no business participating in it. It's that clear. It's that simple."

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --
The Real News Nov 6, 2017

'US & UK can stop Yemen war today, but they love Saudi money'
-- Hussain Albukhaiti, Journalist --

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --
The Real News Nov 6, 2017

Whitney Webb Interview The Ignored Yemen Genocide:
"18.4 Million People Are Starving To Death"
The Last American Vagabond Published on Nov 1, 2018

Manufacturing Disaster: Saudis Allowing Possible
Environmental Tanker Disaster In Hodeida Port

First published at 20:33 UTC on August 3rd, 2019.

This is an excerpt of The Daily Wrap Up 8/2.

Full Episode Can Be Seen Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6dDMvikycY 

 

!!! Humanitarian Crisis In Yemen
Is Worst In The World !!!

- Thousands of Yemenis Protest U.S. - Saudi's Bombs. Oxfam report -

As of March 27, 2017 According to RT Report :

• At least 10,000 people killed from coalition air strikes  
• More than 100 civilians killed in 1 month according to the U.N.  
• More than 3MILLION Yemenis have been displaced from their homes  
• Oxfam describes the humanitarian situation as the worst on the planet  
• An estimated 17MILLION People lack access to food  
• 7MILLION are 1 step away from starvation 
  

RT
Published on Mar 27, 2017
Thousands of protesters in Yemen have vented their anger at the relentless bombing by the Saudi-led coalition, as the conflict in their country rages on. The demonstration coincided with the 2nd anniversary of the Saudi intervention...
RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air 

YEMEN: A Genocidal War Against Children and Civilians Sanctioned by the UN, US, UK & NATO
https://21stcenturywire.com/2017/03/31/yemen-saudis-emiratis-and-usa-are-inflicting-a-war-of-genocide-against-the-houthis-prof-francis-boyle/

April 4, 2016 By Vanessa Beeley

“In a nutshell the Saudis, Emiratis and the USA are inflicting a war of genocide against the Houthis,” University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis Boyle said on Thursday.

Any increase in US military support for the Saudi-led coalition conducting air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemeni would aid a military campaign amounting to genocide against the ‎Houthis and their Zaidi allies in Yemen, analysts told Sputnik.

READ MORE YEMEN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Yemen Files

 Boyle explained that the Saudis and their allies in the Gulf Arab Emirates wanted to establish full control over the entire Arabian peninsula and also of the choke point region at the head of the Persian, or Arabian Gulf through which all oil exports, including those of Iran and Iraq were shipped by sea. “They want to control the entire Saudi Peninsula, all its resources, and the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait through which all the oil and gas to Europe must pass,” he said.

-- Vanessa Beeley --
YEMEN: “Saudis, Emiratis and USA are Inflicting a War of Genocide Against the Houthis" - Prof. Francis Boyle

As More Yemenis Die, U.S. Support Keeps a Major Oil Trade Route “Open for Business”
https://progressive.org/dispatches/yemenis-die-major-oil-trade-route-remains-open-180919/


“I don’t think the Saudis would be conducting this level of atrocity if not for the support from the United States.”

by Edward Hunt
September 19, 2018

As the Trump Administration continues to support the vicious Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, growing evidence indicates that its support is largely motivated by concerns about the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a narrow sea passage off Yemen’s western coast.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is one of the three most important oil trade chokepoints—narrow channels along widely used global sea routes—around the Arabian Peninsula. Although its place in the war has been largely ignored by the U.S. media, the strait has been a central factor in U.S. planning. Roughly five million barrels of oil and oil-based products pass through the strait on a daily basis, eventually making their way to Asia, Europe, and the United States.

Publicly, Trump Administration officials say very little about the strait, insisting they are simply looking for a way to end the war. They claim to be focused on helping the Saudi-led military coalition pressure Iranian-backed Houthi rebels into accepting a political deal that will return to power the government of exiled Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Yet over the past year, Trump officials and analysts have repeatedly prioritized the strait in both strategic and military planning.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service, for example, includes a section titled “Houthi threaten Commercial Shipping in the Red Sea.” The report, which maps the world’s major oil chokepoints, highlights the 4.8 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum liquids that passed through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on a daily basis in 2016.

The war in Yemen began in March 2015, when a Saudi-led military coalition attacked the Houthi rebels, who had taken over the western part of the country. Since the beginning of the intervention, the U.S. government supported the Saudi-led coalition with military advice, intelligence support, precision-guided munitions, and air-to-air refueling.

This has been devastating for the people of Yemen. The U.S.-backed Saudi-led coalition has killed thousands of civilians and caused a humanitarian crisis. More than 8 million people are facing starvation, more than 1 million people have contracted cholera, and more than 2,000 people have died of cholera.

“I’ve argued from the beginning that there is a U.S. imprint on every single civilian death inside Yemen,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, has said. “I don’t think the Saudis would be conducting this level of atrocity if not for the support from the United States.” Additional U.S. officials have accused the U.S. government of complicity in both the killings of civilians and the humanitarian crisis.

While the Trump Administration claims it is trying to end the conflict, its officials are clearly worried that a Houthi-led government will make it more difficult for oil tankers and other ships to pass through the area.

U.S. General Joseph Votel, the Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) warned Congress in February that sixty to seventy ships pass through the strait every day, making any disruption “a very real threat that we have to pay attention to.” A month later, he told Congress that it was a priority for CENTCOM to keep the shipping lanes open. “We are principally focused on the ballistic missile threat and the maritime threat that plays out in the Bab el-Mandeb and in the Red Sea to the west of Yemen,” he said.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has raised similar concerns, warning that shipping would be imperiled if “we don’t get this under control.”

The Trump Administration’s concerns are consistent with broader U.S. strategic priorities for the Middle East. President Trump has repeatedly mused about the possibility of taking the region’s oil, and establishment officials have voiced their commitments to keeping the region’s oil available to global oil markets.

About a year ago, former U.S. diplomat Eric Edelman told Congress that any disruptions in the global oil supply could be problematic for the U.S. economy. “This is especially true of the Middle East, which contains half of global proven oil reserves, accounts for one-third of oil production and exports, and is home to three of the world’s four biggest oil transit chokepoints,” he explained.

In July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Trump Administration would prevent disruptions. “The world should know that America is committed to keeping sea lanes open, to keep transit of oil available for the entire world,” he said.

These intentions clarify the reasons behind the Trump Administration’s military support for the Saudi-led coalition. The administration appears to prioritize the sliver of sea off the western coast of Yemen, where much of the region’s oil remains in transit.

Its support continues despite a recent spate of horrors, including deadly attacks on a fish market, a school bus, and fleeing civilians.

“The Bab el-Mandeb is open for business, as far as we're concerned,” General Votel recently remarked. “One of our key missions here is to ensure freedom of navigation, freedom of commerce, and we will continue to exercise that through the region.”

By prioritizing the security of the Bab el-Mandeb strait for oil transit, the Trump Administration ensures that the war will continue and that the Yemeni people will continue to die.

Yemen Death Toll To Surpass
230,000 By End Of 2019
- One Child Dies Every 12 Minutes: UN report -

The Last American Vagabond
Published on Apr 29, 2019

This is an excerpt of The Daily Wrap Up 4/28.

Full Episode Can Be Seen Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfesf...

Yemen death toll to surpass 230,000 by end of 2019: UN report https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/ye... http://www.arabstates.undp.org/conten... https://twitter.com/moyerjonathan/sta...

'US & UK can stop Yemen war Today, but they love Saudi money'

- Hussain Albukhaiti, Journalist -

Published time: 11 May, 2018 05:01

https://www.rt.com/news/426427-yemen-us-cluster-bomb-airstrike/ 

[Additional Material Added at The End of Interview]

Fatik Al-Rodaini
Journalist, Human Rights Activist and Humanitarian worker - Founder of Mona Relief Yemen charity
https://twitter.com/Fatikr

Hussain Albukhaiti’s Twitter
https://twitter.com/HussainBukhaiti

Arms Dealers and Lobbyists Get Rich as Yemen Burns
See the Top 4 U.S. contractors' profits explode, all while their weapons have been used against civilian targets for years.

Credits: 360b/Shutterstock By Fabian Res /Flickr; F-16 drops MK82 bombs (USAF photo);
Child victim of attack in which MK82 bomb built by Lockheed Martin was dropped on his school bus Aug. 9, 2018. (VOA/Screengrab) 
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/arms-dealers-and-lobbyists-get-rich-as-yemen-burns/

By Barbara Boland • June 25, 2019

Chronic human rights violator Saudi Arabia is using American-made weapons against civilians in the fifth-poorest nation in the world, Yemen. And make no mistake: U.S. defense contractors and their lobbyists and supporters in government are getting rich in the process.

“Our role is not to make policy, our role is to comply with it,” John Harris, CEO of defense contractor Raytheon International, said to CNBC in February. But his statement vastly understates the role that defense contractors and lobbyists play in Washington’s halls of power, where their influence on policy directly impacts their bottom lines.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have waged war against Yemen, killing and injuring thousands of Yemeni civilians. An estimated 90,000 people have been killed, according to one international tracker. By December 2017, the number of cholera cases in Yemen had surged past one million, the largest such outbreak in modern history. An estimated 113,000 children have died since April 2018 from war-related starvation and disease. The United Nations calls the situation in Yemen the largest humanitarian crisis on earth, as over 14 million face starvation.

The majority of the 6,872 Yemeni civilians killed and 10,768 wounded have been victims of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Nearly 90 coalition airstrikes have hit homes, schools, markets, hospitals, and mosques since 2015, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2018, the coalition bombed a wedding, killing 22 people, including eight children. Another strike hit a bus, killing at least 26 children.

American-origin munitions produced by companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon were identified at the site of over two dozen attacks throughout Yemen. Indeed, the United States is the single largest arms supplier to the Middle East and has been for decades, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

From 2014 to 2018, the United States supplied 68 percent of Saudi Arabia’s arms imports, 64 percent of the UAE’s imports, and 65 percent of Qatar’s imports. Some of this weaponry was subsequently stolen or sold to al-Qaeda linked groups in the Arabian Peninsula, where they could be used against the U.S. military, according to reports.

The Saudi use of U.S.-made jets, bombs, and missiles against Yemeni civilian centers constitutes a war crime. It was an American laser-guided MK-82 bomb that killed the children on the bus; Raytheon’s technology killed the 22 people attending the wedding in 2018 as well as a family traveling in their car; and another American-made MK-82 bomb ended the lives of at least 80 men, women, and children in a Yemeni marketplace in March 2016.

Yet American defense contractors continue to spend millions of dollars to lobby Washington to maintain the flow of arms to these countries.

“Companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other defense contractors see countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE as huge potential markets,” Stephen Miles, director of Win Without War, told TAC. “They see them as massive opportunities to make a lot of money; that’s why they’re investing billions and billions of dollars. This is a huge revenue stream to these companies.”

Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics have all highlighted business with Saudi Arabia in their shareholder reports.

“Operations and maintenance have become a very profitable niche market for U.S. corporations,” said Richard Aboulafia, a vice president at Teal Group. He added that defense contractors can make as much as 150 percent more profit off of operations and maintenance than from the original arms sale. U.S. weapons supply 57 percent of the military aircraft used by the Royal Saudi Air Force, and mechanics and technicians hired by American companies repair and maintain their fighter jets and helicopters.

In 2018 alone, the United States made $4.5 billion worth of arms deals to Saudi Arabia and $1.2 billion to the United Arab Emirates, a report by William Hartung and Christina Arabia found.

From the report: “Lockheed Martin…was involved in deals worth $25 billion; Boeing, $7.1 billion in deals; Raytheon, $5.5 billion in deals; Northrop Grumman had one deal worth $2.5 billion; and BAE systems…had a $1.3 billion deal.”

“Because of the nature of U.S. arms control law, most of these sales have to get government approval, and we’ve absolutely seen lobbyists weighing in heavily on this,” Miles said. “The last time I saw the numbers, the arms industry had nearly 1,000 registered lobbyists. They’re not on the Hill lobbying Congress about how many schools we should open next year. They’re lobbying for defense contractors. The past 18 years of endless wars have been incredibly lucrative for the arms industry, and they have a vested industry in seeing these wars continue, and not curtailing the cash cow that…has been for them.”

The defense industry spent $125 million on lobbying in 2018. Of that, Boeing spent $15 million on lobbyists, Lockheed Martin spent $13.2 million, General Dynamics $11.9 million, and Raytheon $4.4 million, according to the Lobbying Disclosure Act website.

Writes Ben Freeman:

According to a new report…firms registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act have reported receiving more than $40 million from Saudi Arabia in 2017 and 2018. Saudi lobbyists and public relations professionals have contacted Congress, the executive branch, media outlets and think tanks more than 4,000 times. Much of this work has been focused on ensuring that sales of U.S. arms to Saudi Arabia continue unabated and blocking congressional actions that would end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. …

Lobbyists, lawyers and public relations firms working for the Saudis have also reported doling out more than $4.5 million in campaign contributions in the past two years, including at least $6,000 to Trump. In many cases, these contributions have gone to members of Congress they’ve contacted regarding the Yemen war. In fact, some contributions have gone to members of Congress on the exact same day they were contacted by Saudi lobbyists, and some were made to key members just before, and even on the day of, important Yemen votes.

Over a dozen lobbying firms employed by defense contractors have also been working on behalf of the Saudi or Emiratis, efficiently lobbying for both the arms buyers and sellers in one fell swoop. One of these lobbying firms, the McKeon Group, led by former Republican congressman and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Howard McKeon, represents both Saudi Arabia and the American defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, MBDA, and L3 Technologies. Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman are the biggest suppliers of arms to Saudi Arabia. In 2018, the McKeon Group took $1,697,000 from 10 defense contractors “to, among other objectives, continue the flow of arms to Saudi Arabia,” reports National Memo.

Freeman details multiple examples where lobbyists working on behalf of the Saudis met with a senator’s staff and then made a substantial contribution to that senator’s campaign within days of a key vote to keep the United States in the Yemen war.

American Defense International (ADI) represents the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s coalition partner in the war against Yemen, as well as several American defense contractors, including General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, L3 Technologies, and General Atomics.

Not to be outdone by the McKeon Group, ADI’s lobbyists have also aggressively pursued possible swing votes in the U.S. Senate for the hefty sum of $45,000 a month, paid for by the UAE. ADI lobbyists discussed the “situation in Yemen” and the “Paveway sale to the UAE,” the same bomb used in the deadly wedding strike, with the office of Senator Martin Heinrich, a member of the Armed Services Committee, according to FARA reports. ADI’s lobbyists also met with Congressman Steve Scalise’s legislative director to advise his office to vote against the congressional resolution on Yemen. For their lobbying, Raytheon paid ADI $120,000 in 2018.

In addition to the overt influence exercised by lobbyists for the defense industry, many former arms industry executives are embedded in influential posts throughout the Trump administration: from former Airbus, Huntington Ingalls, and Raytheon lobbyist Charles Faulkner at the State Department, who pushed Mike Pompeo to support arms sales in the Yemen war; to former Boeing executive and erstwhile head of the Department of Defense Patrick Shanahan; to his interim replacement Mark Esper, secretary of the Army and another former lobbyist for Raytheon.

The war in Yemen has been good for American defense contractors’ bottom lines. Since the conflict began, General Dynamics’ stock price has risen from about $135 to $169 per share, Raytheon’s from about $108 to more than $180, and Boeing’s from about $150 to $360, according to In These Times. Their analysis found that those four companies have had at least $30.1 billion in Saudi military contracts approved by the State Department over the last 10 years.

In April, President Donald Trump vetoed a resolution that would have ended American support for the Saudi-UAE coalition war against Yemen. Such efforts have failed to meet the 60-vote veto-proof threshold needed in the Senate.

There are a few senators who didn’t vote for the War Powers resolution “that will probably vote for the Raytheon sales,” Brittany Benowitz, a lawyer and former adviser to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told TAC. “I think you’ll continue to see horrific bombings and as the famine rages on, people will start to ask, ‘Why are we a part of this war?’ Unfortunately, I don’t think that will start to happen anytime soon.”

Barbara Boland is TAC’s foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC

INTERVIEW: Dilyana Gaytandzhieva reveals US arms trafficking to ISIS

September 12, 2019 By 21wire

“While US President Donald Trump boasts about the defeat of Islamic State in Syria, US government-purchased weapons appear in the hands of Islamic State terrorists in Yemen.”

During EP 294 of the SUNDAY WIRE show, host Patrick Henningsen spoke with Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, to discuss her latest ground-breaking investigation which reveals illegal US Department of Defense operation to traffic weapons clear into 2018-2019 – and into the hands of ISIS terrorists in Yemen and Syria. The details in this story leave no doubt as to the scale and severity of this illegal operation which contravenes US, EU and international law.

For more information on this story, visit Arms Watch:
http://armswatch.com/islamic-state-weapons-in-yemen-traced-back-to-us-government-serbia-files-part-1/

READ MORE ISIS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire ISIS Files

https://armswatch.com/

Links:

YEMEN | SYRIA | WAR ON TERROR IS A FRAUD | MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX | Pawns On The Chessboard |
AFGHANISTAN | C.I.A. | ISIS/AL-QAEDA EXPOSED | The Govt is Raping You | NATO | BENGHAZIGATE

General Summary/Crash Course

"We have to recognize that in every case the United States has intervened in the Middle East countries, whether good or bad, whatever good or bad those countries had before they’re recognizably worse and destabilized and extremist havens now, as you’ve talked about: Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the locations the US controlled in Syria, exactly the same thing. And as you’ve pointed out: they use the excuse of terrorism (that we can demonstrate they created themselves) to invade these countries. And as I’ve shown on the map that I continue to show, of the war map of Yemen - just like I show it in Syria - little pockets of ISIS are snug right inside the US territory. Just like it is in Yemen, these US backed Saudi areas completely surrounding the massive area of Al-qaeda controlled territory. And then the ISIS area is right there on the frontline … It’s all right inside their territory.

So they’re using this allowing it to flourish. And then using that as the excuse for why they are there. It’s very frustrating to see that people can’t recognize, the collusion if you will, between the terrorists and the US backed forces. And then to discuss the Hadi government aspect, unbelievable to recognize to clarify for people … that the US government’s own website information lists the members of the Hadi government that they support currently as sponsors of terrorism. How is that possible! And the UN website as well. And as well as in regard to ISIS. And by the way, I’m sure you remember, Al-qaeda is the group that they still maintain was responsible for 9/11. And they’re currently supporting Al-qaeda. They’re currently supporting groups that are listed on their own websites as supporters of Al-qaeda. How can any American justify that? It’s amazing to me!”

"It’s unbelievable to me how disingenuous it is of the United States to continue to pretend to be fighting terrorism while backing it in all these locations. The very least on record, the people that are backing the Hadi government. And they’re supporting these people while they support Al-qaeda. There’s no way to misunderstand what we’re looking at there. So this idea of humanitarianism, you know, defending the people while they go and kill the people is very clear we should all be paying attention to as we continue to point out: the actions vs the rhetoric."

- Ryan Cristian: Hussain Albukhaiti Interview The US-Backed Saudi Coalition's Fake Ceasefire Support Of Terrorism. 
Published on Youtube, The Last American Vagabond Channel Jan 14, 2019 -

Hussain Albukhaiti Interview 
- The US-Backed Saudi Coalition's Fake Ceasefire  Support Of Terrorism -

The Last American Vagabond
Published on Jan 14, 2019

Joining me today once again is Hussain Albukhaiti from on the ground in Yemen. We discuss the repeated violations by the US-Backed Saudi Coalition of the ceasefire agreement, and the recent drone attack carried by the Houthis in response to these violations, as well as the startling fact that numerous members of the US-supported Hadi government in Yemen (which is currently based out of Riyadh) are listed on the UN's and the US government's own websites as being sponsors of terrorism.

http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/

Hussain Albukhaiti’s Twitter
https://twitter.com/HussainBukhaiti

US BOMBS, SAUDI BLOCKADE & MANUFACTURED STARVATION – THE TRUTH ABOUT YEMEN W/ HUSSAIN ALBUKHAITI
http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.co...

Before the Ink Could Dry: Saudis Violate Yemen Truce with Fierce Attacks on Hodeida
https://www.mintpressnews.com/saudi-a...

UN Warns 10 Million More Yemenis Expected to Starve to Death by End of Year
https://www.mintpressnews.com/un-10-m...

Houthi Drone Attack on Saudi Military Parade in Yemen Kills Top Coalition Officials
https://www.mintpressnews.com/houthi-...

TLAV Show About US-Backed Hadi Gov Terrorist Connections
https://youtu.be/f1a5YoVO1U8?t=1470

At least 4 Yemenis who are currently on the US Treasury List for supporting al-Qaeda in Yemen are part of the Saudi-led coalition.
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center...
https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/sa...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mi...
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-cen...
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center...

Hussain Albukhaiti's Tweet
https://twitter.com/HussainBukhaiti/s...

Yemen: A man suspected of being an al-Qaeda financier is attending the Geneva conference
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/...

Saudis Continue Killing Civilians During Yemen Peace Talks
https://theantimedia.com/saudis-conti...

WHICH PATH TO PERSIA? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/...

***

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A Pact with the Devil (PressTV Documentaries) In the summer of 2014 the world watched in shock as ISIL captured Mosul – Iraq’s second city - and took control of territory the size of Britain. The brutal approach of terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria was not new; however, the main reaction of the West came when ISIL brutally beheaded American and British citizens in front of cameras. The abhorrent act was denounced by Western politicians and media, but almost all failed to point out that Britain has a long history of involvement with such groups and has been prepared to ally with them when it suits the interests of London. This documentary traces to roots of ISIL to the darkest pages of British imperial history.	Saudi Arabia's human rights violations Channel 4 News | Oct 21, 2015 Britain has signed an agreement to assist the Saudis with advice on policing, although there are precious few details on what that British involvement means. Subscribe for more like this, every day: http://bit.ly/1epe41j   How SA Funded Global Terror   (Journeyman Pictures ) Funding Jihad? (2003) - Did the Saudi Royal Family really finance 9/11? Although a key Middle Eastern ally of America and Britain, the Wahhabist Saudi regime is nevertheless suspected of financing terror groups around the world.	Uncovering Saudi Arabia    VIEW VIDEO HERE http://lookintoit.org/General-Summary-Crash-Course-3.html     Undercover cameras expose public floggings, executions and other brutality in Saudi Arabia, and introduce those risking their own lives for change. (www.resetera.com) For many outsiders, Saudi Arabia remains an enigma. A kingdom of dazzling wealth and unmistakable global influence tied, in no small part, to massive oil reserves. It’s known by reputation as a land of glitzy shopping malls and luxurious hotels, but also as an oppressive religious state, showing very little tolerance inside its borders for the unrest and dissent that has found fertile ground elsewhere in the Arab world. Cont. Nxt. Panel
With unprecedented access to an intrepid network of young activists, Saudi Arabia Uncovered reveals the simmering dissent inside the secretive regime. It provides a rare look inside the country, bringing together footage from previously hidden corners of life. It documents prisons, public punishments, and defiance - behind closed doors and out on the streets. Forces from within - and without - are pushing Riyadh’s ruling regime to expand personal liberties and ease up on freedom of expression. Saudi Arabia Uncovered traces the efforts of men and women working to bring about change, often at great personal risk. It tells the story of Raif Badawi, a young blogger sentenced to prison and 1,000 lashes for writing about his government and religion. The stories of dissent are often harrowing and depict a society shifting under the feet of its rulers. It’s a fight between life and liberty, imprisonment and even death. The documentary follows the case of Ali Nimr, a school boy charged with treason and sentenced to death for joining in street protests when he was only 17. His family says he was tortured into confessing. The kingdom is often described as a partner in the fight against ISIS, but Saudi Arabia Uncovered also traces the path of Saudi money and its role in helping to drive terrorism around the world. Recent legislation in the US has allowed the families of 9/11 victims the right to sue Saudi Arabia for any role its government played in the 2001 attacks.

"The coalition is certainly not there [in Syria] to help the Syrian people; it is there to help Saudi Arabia with its Wahhabi radical Islamic domination of the entire world beginning with the countries close to it"

-- U.S. Senator Richard Black, RT Interview: Coalition Crunch --

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/393362-syria-us-russia-drone-paul/
Published time: 21 Jun, 2017 12:53

Saudi Arabia Executes a Man By Crucifixion

American Television News
Published on Aug 9, 2018

Hypocrisy On Display:
Saudi Arabia Beheads 37 People Without Trial

The Last American Vagabond
Published on Apr 25, 2019
This is an excerpt of The Daily Wrap Up 4/24.

Full Episode Can Be Seen Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdnW3...

Saudi Arabia Executes 37 People in Largest Mass Beheading in Years https://theantimedia.com/saudi-arabia... https://twitter.com/MadawiDr/status/1... https://twitter.com/DanielLMcAdams/st...

YEMEN: UN Whitewashing Saudi Coalition
War Crimes and International Human 
Rights Violations.
https://21stcenturywire.com/2016/04/03/yemen-un-whitewashing-saudi-coalition-war-crimes-and-international-human-rights-violations/

By Vanessa Beeley, April 3, 2016 21st Century Wire “If those who support aggressive war had seen a fraction of what I’ve seen, if they’d watched children fry to death from Napalm and bleed to death from a cluster bomb, they might not utter the claptrap they do.” ~ John Pilger

Professor Francis Boyle, distinguished Professor of Law in Illinois and long-time thorn in the side of the Imperial Establishment has publicly expressed his disgust at the UN complicity with the sanctions that engendered starvation on a catastrophic scale in Iraq in the early 1990s. Over 500,000 children died from malnutrition:

“During the summer of 1991 I was contacted on behalf of several Mothers in Iraq whose children were dying at astounding rates because of the genocidal economic sanctions that had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August of 1990 at the behest of the Bush Senior administration.”

Boyle went on to present his complaint accusing President Bush of committing international genocide against the 4.5 million children in Iraq, “in violation of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 and in violation of the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world”

“My Complaint estimated that since sanctions were first imposed against Iraq in August of 1990, Iraqi children were dying as a direct result thereof at the rate of about 500 per day.”

Boyle expressed his frustration at the UNSC [Security Council] failure to suspend the crippling sanctions against Iraq.

“Despite my best professional efforts working on behalf of my Clients pro bono publico, the grossly hypocritical United Nations Organization adamantly refused to act to terminate these genocidal sanctions and thus to save the dying children of Iraq.”

Professor Boyle’s full speech: Legal Protection of Children in Armed Conflict: The Iraqi Children Genocide

Shortly after Professor Boyle’s attempt to derail the genocide being carried out against an entire generation of Iraqis, endorsed by the UNSC, then US secretary of State, Madeleine Albright made her horrifying statement on CBS TV network.

May 12^th 1996 TV presenter, Leslie Stahl posed this question:

“We have heard that a half a million children have died [in Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And-and, you know, is the price worth it?”

Albright’s reply is still shocking, 20 years after the first US NATO campaign of extermination in Iraq.

“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

Is the UN Repeating History in Yemen?

Mona Relief 1/4/2016: Bani Quis, Hajjah, Northern Yemen on border with Saudi Arabia.

Since the start of the illegal Saudi-led coalition war of aggression against Yemen that began on the 26th March 2015, the UN has appeared to work in lock-step with the lawless aggressor, Saudi Arabia and its allies to exacerbate the widespread suffering of the Yemeni people.

UNSC Resolution 2216 was adopted on the 14th April 2015. It called specifically for the arms embargo to be imposed against 5 named individuals.

“Arms Embargo: All Member States shall immediately take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to, or for the benefit of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Abdullah Yahya al Hakim & Abd al-Khaliq al-Huthi.”

Two other names were included in the Annex to this list, Abdulmalik al-Houthi and Ali Ahmed Saleh.

Basis for Resolution 2216

This resolution was entirely based upon the premise of the legitimacy of the fugitive, former President of Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

“Reaffirming its support for the legitimacy of the President of Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and reiterating its call to all parties and Member States to refrain from taking any actions that undermine the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen, and the legitimacy of the President of Yemen” ~ Resolution 2216

On the same day that the UNSC signed off on a resolution of staggering partiality and bias towards one party in the conflict, namely ex President Hadi and his Saudi backers, a letter had been addressed to the UN by Ali AlAhmed, Director of the Gulf Institute. In this letter, AlAhmed clearly states that, legally, Hadi is NOT the legitimate President of Yemen.

“To reiterate, at present Mr. Hadi is a former president of Yemen. The UNSC has no legal authority to appoint him as president of Yemen, or treat him in such capacity. Although his term ended February 25, 2014, Hadi remained in office until February 2015; one year after his term has expired, in violation of the UNSC-endorsed GCC Initiative. He also failed to call for general presidential elections per the agreement he signed.

Because the Saudi-led war on Yemen was built on the false premise that Hadi is the current legitimate president of Yemen, it must be emphasized that he is, in fact, not a legitimate leader of that country. Legally, Mr. Hadi is the former transitional president of Yemen whose term expired February 24, 2014.”

AlAhmed reminds the UNSC that Hadi had been elected in a one-horse-race election in February 2012 under the terms of the GCC Initiative [Gulf Cooperation Council]. That term of presidency had been set to expire after two years, when new elections would be held in Yemen.

One month prior to the agreed election date, in January 2014 the NDC [National Dialogue Conference] took the decision, to extend Hadi’s term under the pretext that the transition period was incomplete and that a draft constitution would not be ready for referendum until March 2015.

According to Abdulazeez Al-Baghdadi, a former legal advisor for the Ministry of Interior, the extension of Hadi’s term in office and the justification for this action was:

“A fraud that has no legal basis in constitutional terms….the NDC has no legal authority to extend Hadi’s term because NDC members do not represent the Yemeni people,” he said. “Hadi’s term expired when his two-year term stipulated in the GCC Initiative ended in February 2014.”

During the UNHRC [Human Rights Council], 31st Session in Geneva March 2016, Mohammed al Wazir, Yemeni-American Lawyer and Director of Arabian Rights Watch Association testified that:

“UN Security Council Resolution 2216 is about an arms embargo on 5 people, yet its being used as a cover to justify a blockade on 27 million Yemenis. According to the 2016 Humanitarian Needs Overview released in November 2015, 21.2 million people making up 82% of the population are now in need of some form of Humanitarian assistance. Nearly 2.1 million people are currently estimated to be malnourished, including more than 1. 3 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition.”

Mona Relief: Bani Quis April 2016

According to Al Wazir’s statement to the UNHRC, Hadi had in fact resigned on the 22nd January 2015 and despite calls from various political factions, he refused to withdraw his resignation prior to the expiry of his questionable extended term as President of Yemen.

In a bizarre turn of events, perhaps after his Saudi controllers had put pressure on their marionette, Hadi fled Sanaa [Yemen’s capital] for the port city of Aden. Once safely ensconced in Saudi loyalist territory, Hadi plucked up the courage to renew his claim to the Presidency.

Hadi even attempted to relocate the Government to Aden but once he realised this was not a popular decision and with the Yemeni army closing in, Hadi fled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From there he requested that the Saudi Arabian government launch a war against his own people to reinstate him as President, a post he had resigned from, weeks previously.

So are we seeing the UN endorse and sustain an illegal war without a UN mandate, being waged against the Yemeni people by a known human rights violating, totalitarian, absolute monarchy, Saudi Arabia? And if so, on what basis? To protect an illegitimate, fugitive President who has called for the destruction of his own people?

Is the UN Defending Yemen’s Sovereignty, Independence & Territorial Integrity?

Resolution 2216 states:

“Reaffirming its strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Yemen, and its commitment to stand by the people of Yemen”

Why then did the UN ignore the statement of their own Special Envoy, Jammal Benomar, made on the 28th April 2015?

“When this campaign started, one thing that was significant but went unnoticed is that the Yemenis were close to a deal that would institute power sharing with all sides, including the Houthis”

Why then did the UN not strongly oppose the Saudi war of aggression that has decimated the Yemeni people or demand that humanitarian aid be allowed entry to alleviate the universal suffering of the already impoverished nation?

Instead the UN flung the door wide open to the Saudi-led war of aggression against Yemen. A war devoid of any legal, moral or ethical justification. A war that would punish the Yemeni people for striving to form their own government without foreign meddling or Saudi corruption and neo-colonialist intent.

Why is the UN not defending the determination of the Yemeni people to create a new government that would guarantee equal citizenship and governmental proportional representation for previously marginalised minorities?

Is the UN Preventing the Deteriorating Humanitarian Situation in Yemen?

Again, Resolution 2216 states:

“Expressing grave alarm at the significant and rapid deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Yemen, and emphasizing that the humanitarian situation will continue to deteriorate in the absence of a political solution.

Recalling that arbitrary denial of humanitarian access and depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supply and access, may constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.”

Having allowed the Saudi-led coalition to bomb all hopes of a political solution into smithereens, why is the alarm not being sounded against this oppressive, despotic regime that has the worst human rights record in the region?

Mohammed Al Wazir at the UNHRC:

“So, in summary, the Saudi-led coalition of absolute monarchies and military dictatorships conducted daily airstrikes and imposed a comprehensive land, air and sea blockade for the past year on 27 million Yemenis in order to re-install Hadi, a person whose mandate had expired in Yemen. Is this what we call defending legitimacy? Collective punishment and terror, inflicted on the entire population in order to deter a group called the Houthis who are less than 1% of the population. I can say with utmost confidence, there is a major issue with proportionality and a reckless disregard for the principles of distinction and military necessity not to mention international law.”

Mona Relief: September 2015 KSA bombing of Humanitarian
convoy on the Hodeida to Taiz road.
 

The UN is, in reality, actively allowing the denial of human rights to the Yemeni people by the predatory aggressor, Saudi Arabia. The UN is sanctioning the “depriving of civilians of objects indispensable to their survival”. When the Saudi Coalition bombs humanitarian supply convoys does the UN not consider this to be “wilfully impeding relief supply and access”?

Is the UN wittingly allowing these grave violations of humanitarian law or is it an unwilling victim, prey to far more powerful geopolitical players in the region?

What is the UN’s Mandate in Yemen?

“The UN was established to maintain state sovereignty, and both national and international unity. Instead we appear to be witnessing a process of fracturing society along false sectarian fault lines and the disruption of internal reconciliation and political peace processes within nation states.”

The UN is allegedly seeking a ‘peaceful political transition’ in Yemen according to the terms laid out in the GCC initiative and its implementation mechanism.

This objective becomes untenable when we consider that effectively, the GCC initiative has expired.

So who precisely is obstructing the peaceful political transition? The Yemenis or those who launched an illegal war against them and who are destroying their ability to survive let alone decide their political future?

“That is if we take the GCC initiative as a legal document with full force and effect, which is not conceded by any means….but even by its own terms, it has expired.” ~ Mohammed al Wazir

The illegitimate, fugitive President, Mansour Hadi fled Yemen and incited a war against his own people from Riyadh. A war that has massacred over 8000 people and injured tens of thousands more. A war that has left Yemen without resources, infrastructure, electricity, communication, food and water.

In a logical, rational world, all those who supported Hadi’s endeavour should be found by the UN “Sanctions Committee” and Panel of Experts to be “obstructing the peaceful political transition in Yemen” and be considered the main instigators of instability and insecurity in Yemen.

Conclusions

It is almost impossible not to conclude that multiple parties are colluding to starve Yemen into submission to Saudi objectives. Objectives that are aligned with those of the US, NATO and Israel.

“The UN embargo/blockade against Yemen and the Yemenis violates Genocide Convention article II (e): Deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” ~ Prof. Francis A Boyle

The Arms Trade

The UK has sold over £ 2.8bn in arms to Saudi Arabia since this illegal war began. The US, a staggering $33bn. Lockheed Martin, a major player in the Military Industrial Complex announced in January 2016 that they would be opening an “expanded repair capability centre” in Saudi Arabia, the first support centre for their Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod technology outside the US. To ensure “fleet readiness”. France has just signed off on a mind-blowing $ 7.5 billion arms contract with Qatar [member of the Saudi coalition].

The Oil Trade

Saudi Arabia’s annual $10 trillion oil revenue is a major factor. Yemen is essential for the survival of the Gulf States in this market, and by default, pivotal to US and NATO resource needs. If Saudi Arabia lost control of Yemen, the effects would be catastrophic for the Gulf states.

Saudi Arabia is the only Gulf state with the geographic potential of an east-west pipeline which would give access to the west and the Red Sea, if ever a conflict should arise with their arch enemy Iran who controls the eastern Straits of Hormuz, the primary crude oil shipping channel. However that east–west pipeline was converted in 2001 to gas and it would take some time to restore it to suitability for oil. Saudi Arabia has recently replaced Iraq as India’s number one crude oil supplier.

The Terror Trade

It is no accident that AQAP [Al Qaeda Arab Peninsula] and ISIS have seized swathes of land in the southern province of Hadramaut and the port of Aden. They seem to share the exact same strategic agenda as Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies in Yemen, so they appear to be acting as Saudi proxy forces. According to a 2008 Wikileaks cable, Saudi Arabia’s intent is to lay a pipeline from the oil and gas rich areas of Al Jawf and Marib in Yemen to the southern coastline, enabling them to avoid both the Straits of Hormuz and the Yemen controlled, Bab el Mandeb straits.

“A British diplomat based in Yemen told PolOff that Saudi Arabia had an interest to build a pipeline, wholly owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through Hadramawt to a port on the Gulf of Aden, thereby bypassing the Arabian Gulf/Persian Gulf and the straits of Hormuz.” ~ Wikileaks

This would liberate Saudi Arabia from the clutches of Iranian logistical control and challenge Iran’s regional hegemony head on. With Japan, India, China and S Korea representing the expanding crude oil markets, the geopolitical and economic significance of Yemen to the Gulf States becomes transparent.

The Human Trade

Finally and perhaps most disturbingly, lets review the actions of known US outreach agent and neo-colonialist battering ram, USAID. In July 2015, USAID announced that it would turn the aid tap off to Yemen.

“Given the current situation in Yemen, USAID is placing most development programs on a full suspension,” spokesman Sam Ostrander told Al-Monitor. “The suspension will allow us to keep programs in place so that we can restart development activities quickly when the situation becomes more permissive.”

Criticism abounded against this decision accusing the US of facilitating Saudi human rights violations in Yemen. However, nothing should surprise us when we learn that almost simultaneously Saudi Arabia established its first, official, international Human Rights NGO..there are so many oxymorons in that one sentence.

“A UN source said he expected it to operate as the Gulf State’s equivalent of USAID – the state aid agency of the United States”

With barely a fanfare, the King Salman Centre was launched to fill the crater left in Yemen, by the departure of USAID and by the US UK and NATO supplied weapons of mass destruction. The chutzpah of this move is only challenged by the flattening of Gaza by Israel who is then tasked and paid to rebuild it.

During my recent visit to the UNHRC, to testify against the Saudi coalition’s illegal use of US supplied cluster munitions on civilian targets in Yemen, I had the misfortune to attend a Saudi presentation of their Humanitarian flagship. There were numerous UN organisations in attendance. At the end of the Saudi unveiling, oozing with hypocrisy and inflated claims of universal humanitarianism, the representative of UNICEF raised their hand. I paraphrase their comment.

“We would like to thank Saudi Arabia for their continued efforts to provide humanitarian assistance on a global basis and look forward to many years of continued and increased collaboration”

So, having appointed Saudi Arabia to chair of a key human rights panel inside the UNHRC, the UN is now fully endorsing an absolute monarchy’s attempt to further whitewash their crimes against Humanity.

One look at King Salman Centre’s partners denies UN impartiality when dealing with Saudi atrocities against the Yemeni people. Does it implicate the UN in these crimes? Combined with the unjustified and illegitimate bias of UN Resolution 2216, it must certainly raise questions that need answering. The Yemeni people deserve an answer.

UN For Sale?

Has the UN been bought and paid for by a Monarch? Is this the ultimate spin cycle to rinse the blood of innocent Yemeni men, women and children from the hands of the Saudi monarchy and its allies, including the UN, US, NATO & Israel.

The UN is disproportionately influenced by the 5 permanent members of the Security Council, with particular reference to the helmsman, the US and it includes 3 permanent members who are backing the Saudi-led coalition. France, the UK and the US. Maintaining impartiality is virtually impossible under these circumstances and too much is geopolitically at stake if Saudi Arabia loses its grip on Yemen.

“Impartiality does not – and must not – mean neutrality in the face of evil. In the face of genocide, there can be no standing aside, no looking away, no neutrality – there are perpetrators and there are victims, there is evil and there is evil’s harvest.” ~ Kofi Annan, Rwanda 1998 after UN peacekeeping forces deserted, handing 1 million civilians over to mass murderers.

It is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that Iraq does not happen again. Yemen does not deserve this level of collective punishment from one of the world’s most oppressive, soulless and malevolent regimes and the UN must answer for its failure to protect Yemen against the Saudi coalition murderous ravages.

Author Vanessa Beeley is a contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.

READ MORE YEMEN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Yemen Files

"The Saudis attacked to either annex Yemen in its entirety or at least a passage to the ports in the south of Yemen. What Saudi Arabia wants is a direct way to the Arabian sea that prevents the dependence on the [Bab Al-Mandeb] strait between Yemen and Djibouti to facilitate its oil exports."

-- Saurav Dutt, Journalist --
Yemen and the Saudi Blood-soaked Box of Tricks, April 23 ,2017

Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s pipeline wars
in Yemen and Syria
http://www.atimes.com/saudi-arabia-and-turkeys-pipeline-wars-in-yemen-and-syria/

By Christina Lin
June 12, 2016 7:28 AM

Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of the war in Yemen, at considerable cost in blood and treasure, is a literal affirmation of the term “backdoor strategy.” However, both the “door” and the actual contours of that strategy remain submerged beneath the murky waters of Mideast politics.

In June 2015, a senior advisor on Yemen in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joke Buringa, wrote an article regarding Saudi Arabia’s interest in building an oil pipeline through Yemen. Her piece underscored the energy geopolitics behind Riyadh’s bombing campaign over the past year.

Saudi oil pipeline through Yemen’s Hadramaut

In her article entitled “Divide and Rule: Saudi Arabia, Oil and Yemen,” Buringa revealed that the Saudis fear an Iranian blockade of the Hormuz Strait, and were seeking pipelines through Yemen. This would provide Riyadh with direct access to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean to reach the Asian market.[1]

Middle East Eye columnist Nafeez Ahmed, citing a 2008 State Department cable from Wikileaks, has confirmed the Saudi interest in building a pipeline that is “wholly owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through Hadramawt to a port on the Gulf of Aden.”[2]

Hadramaut is Yemen’s wealthiest governorate that counts 4 of the 26 million population, 50% of Yemen’s landmass, 80% of its oil exports, a sufficient water supply, and gold reserve worth $4 billion.

When Iran and Oman signed an agreement for a gas pipeline in 2014, this increased Riyadh’s distrust of Oman and increased the attractiveness of the Hadramaut pipeline option in Yemen. In February 2015 when the Houthis took control of the government, Riyadh began its bombing campaign the following month.

Interestingly, according to Buringa, Hadramaut (which is now under the control of al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula or AQAP), is one of the few areas where the Saudi-led coalition didn’t conduct airstrikes. This has left the port and international airport of al-Mukalla in optimal shape. She observed “Saudi Arabia has been delivering arms to al-Qaeda, who is expanding its sphere of influence” and assessed that “those pipelines to Mukalla will probably get there eventually.”

Indeed, Jamestown Foundation’s terrorism analyst Michael Horton concurs Riyadh views AQAP as a useful proxy in its war against the Houthis, which “would mirror the situation in Syria where al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra has for some time been regarded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States as a relatively moderate proxy force” to counter the Assad government.[3]

Unfortunately, one year of Saudi-led bombing campaign on Yemen has resulted in an empowered al-Qaeda that is establishing a Hadramawt emirate.[4]

Similarly, Syria’s al-Qaeda branch, al-Nusra, is now establishing an Islamic emirate in northern Syria.[5] Syria is also where Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey are interested in building a gas pipelines to reach the lucrative EU market.

Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline through Syria’s Aleppo

Writing in Armed Forces Journal, Major Rob Taylor joined numerous other pundits in observing that the Syrian civil war is actually a pipeline war over control of energy supply, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey needing to remove Assad “so they can control Syria and run their own pipeline through Turkey.”[6]

“Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as al-Qaeda and other groups, are maneuvering to depose Assad and capitalize on their hoped-for Sunni conquest in Damascus. By doing this, they hope to gain a share of control over the ‘new’ Syrian government, and a share in the pipeline wealth.”

The proposed pipeline would traverse Aleppo where Turkey’s Erdogan has been lobbying for a no-fly zone backed by US military power and American tax dollars.

Turkey is also increasing defense ties with various energy producers and building military bases abroad to access key energy corridors. These include natural gas-rich Qatar in the Persian Gulf, Somalia in the Horn of Africa, Georgia in the Caucasus, and Sudan in the Red Sea. It also has troops in oil-rich northern Iraq, northern Cyprus with its offshore gas reserves, and is amassing troops by the Syrian border.[7]

In December 2015, Turkey announced plans to establish a military base with 3,000 troops in Qatar, followed in January 2016 by plans to establish a military base in Somalia.[8] This was preceded by a memorandum for trilateral military cooperation with Georgia and Azerbaijan in May 2015. Azerbaijan supplies gas to Turkey and there are discussions regarding a future Turkish military base in Georgia.[9]

Also in May 2015 ahead of the Sudanese elections, Turkish warships conducted joint military exercises with Sudan.[10]  Sudan shares Erdogan’s support for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and is strategically located in the Red Sea that links maritime trade between Europe and Asia. Since Morsi was ousted in 2013, Cairo-Khartoum ties have deteriorated, and in November 2015 Sudan began a troop buildup by the Egyptian border.[11]

Along with troops in northern Iraq, northern Cyprus, and along its border with northern Syria, Turkey is building is first aircraft carrier.[12]  With Riyadh and Doha’s vast energy reserves and Ankara’s NATO-trained military power, this Triumvirate has been backing the al-Nusra led Army of Conquest in northern Syria to overthrow the Syrian government, AGAP to overthrow the Houthis in Yemen, while in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood-led Libya Dawn is supported by Turkey, Qatar and Sudan.

Jihad in the Mediterranean Sea?

Should Egypt, Libya, Syria and other countries in the Eastern Mediterranean fall to Islamist forces, this would not bode well for maritime commerce in the region.

In 1801, America under President Thomas Jefferson waged the Barbary wars (1801-1805, 1815) with three Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and an independent Sultanate of Morocco to counter their maritime terrorism in the Mediterranean. These states on North Africa were known as the Barbary States, and they engaged in piracy to collect ransoms and tributes.

After repeated seizure of American merchant ships, holding and enslaving crews for ransom and extorting excessive tribute to the Barbary rulers, Jefferson finally waged war with them and deployed the US Navy overseas for the first time. The US Marines eventually defeated the Barbary States, which is memorialized in a line of the Marines’ Hymn—“the shores of Tripoli.”

Now the “Barbary” coast of North Africa, Suez Canal, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are once again facing a return of maritime terrorism with the presence of Islamist groups including ISIS and al-Qaeda.[13] With so much focus on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and France pushing EU for joint patrols, one wonders if France should look closer to the Mediterranean for patrols, and move forward with the EU parliament’s proposed arms embargo on Saudi Arabia that is supporting jihadi groups to destabilize the EU’s southern neighborhood.[14]

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20150701113930/http:/www.jokeburinga.com/divide-and-rule-saudi-arabia-oil-and-yemen-3/

[2] Nafeez Ahmed, “Saudi war for Yemen oil pipeline is empowering al-Qaeda, IS”, Middle East Eye, 10 February 2016,  http://www.middleeasteye.net/essays/saudi-war-yemen-oil-pipeline-empowering-al-qaeda-1386143996

[3] Michael Horton, “The Hadramawt: AQAP and the Battle for Yemen’s Wealthiest Governorate”, Terrorism Monitor, Volume 13, Issue 14, 10 July 2015,  http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=44145&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7#.V1qu8VdOtSU

[4] Bruce Riedel, “Al-Qaida’s Hadramawt emirate”, Brookings Blogs, 12 July 2015, http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/07/12-al-qaeda-yemen-emirate-saudi-riedel

[5]  Jabbat al Nusra in Syria: An Islamic Emirate for Al-Qaeda, Institute for the Study of War, http://www.understandingwar.org/jabhat-al-nusra-syria-islamic-emirate-al-qaeda  ; Charles Lister, “Al Qaeda is about to Establish an Emirate in Northern Syria”, Foreign Policy, 4 May 2016,  http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/04/al-qaeda-is-about-to-establish-an-emirate-in-northern-syria/  ; Raf Sanchez, “Al Qaeda leader gives blessing for terror group to form own ‘Islamic state’ in Syria”, Telegraph, 8 May 2016,  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/08/al-qaeda-leader-gives-blessing-for-terror-group-to-form-own-isla/

[6] Maj. Rob Taylor, “Pipeline politics in Syria”, Armed Forces Journal, 21 March 2014, http://armedforcesjournal.com/pipeline-politics-in-syria/

[7] Dorian Jones, “Turkey Military Masses at Syria Border, but Why?” Voice of America, 13 May 2016, http://www.voanews.com/content/turks-mass-syria-border/3329295.html; “Russia: Turkish troops in Syria for operation against the Kurds”, Associated Press, 13 March 2016,  https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkey-declares-24-hour-curfew-mainly-kurdish-town-090847152.html?ref=gs

[8] “First Turkish military base in Africa to open in Somalia”, Daily Sabah, 19 January 2016,  http://www.dailysabah.com/diplomacy/2016/01/19/first-turkish-military-base-in-africa-to-open-in-somalia

[9] Joshua Noonan, “Turkey’s military in the Caucasus”, Silk Road Reporter, 9 May 2015, http://www.silkroadreporters.com/2015/05/09/turkey-in-the-caucasus/

[10] Morgan Winsor, ‘Turkish Warships Dock in Sudan for Joint Drills Ahead of Sudanese Elections”, International Business Times, 6 April 2016,  http://www.ibtimes.com/turkish-warships-dock-sudan-joint-drills-ahead-sudanese-elections-1870978

[11] Mohammed Amin, “Ongoing tension between Egypt, Sudan”, Anadolu Agency,1 June 2016, http://aa.com.tr/en/politics/ongoing-tension-between-egypt-sudan/501366

[12] Thomas Siebert, “Just what the Middle East Needs: Turkey’s Getting an Aircraft Carrier,” Daily Beast, 1 May 2016,  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/05/just-what-the-middle-east-needs-turkey-s-getting-an-aircraft-carrier.html

[13]  Niklas Anzinger, “Jihad at Sea-Al Qaeda’s Maritime Front in Yemen”, Center for International Maritime Security, 25 February 2014, http://cimsec.org/jihad-sea-yemen-al-qaedas-new-frontier/9733; Akiva J. lOrenz, “Al Qaeda’s Maritime Threat”, Maritime Terrorism, 15 April 2007, http://www.maritimeterrorism.com/2007/04/15/al-qaeda’s-maritime-threat/  ; Ben Farmer, “Isil wants its own navy for attacks on cruise ships in the Mediterranean”, Telegraph, 28 January 2016,  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/12128328/Isil-wants-its-own-navy-for-attacks-in-the-Mediterranean.html  ;

[14] Eldar Mamedov, “European Parliament Calls for an Arms Embargo against Saudi Arabia”, Lobelog, 1 March 2016,  https://lobelog.com/european-parliament-calls-for-an-arms-embargo-against-saudi-arabia/  ; http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0330-whitson-yemen-strikes-20160330-story.html

Dr. Christina Lin is a Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University where she specializes in China-Middle East/Mediterranean relations, and a research consultant for Jane’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Intelligence Centre at IHS Jane’s.

The Hadramawt: AQAP and the Battle for Yemen’s Wealthiest Governorate
https://jamestown.org/program/the-hadramawt-aqap-and-the-battle-for-yemens-wealthiest-governorate/#.V1qu8VdOtSU

Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 14
By: Michael Horton
July 10, 2015 06:30 PM

CALL TRUMP OUT ON HIS 
SUPPORTING TERRORISM!

FIGHT THE REAL WAR AGAINST TERRORISM BY DECRYING HIS WEAPONS DEAL

THE WHITE HELMETS NEARLY STARTED WWIII !!!

https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-funds-white-helmets/244031/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/14/us-commits-funds-syrias-white-helmets/
https://thehill.com/policy/international/392383-trump-administration-releases-funding-for-syrias-white-helmets

Visiting Douma ‘chemical attack’ site:
Witnesses recall how White Helmets shot the video

RT Published on Apr 20, 2018

As more doubts are raised over videos purporting to show the aftermath of an alleged chemical attack in Syria's Douma...
an RT crew visits places seen in the footage and speaks to eyewitnesses.

WATCH Syrian Boy in White Helmets FAKE Chemical Attack Video Reveals Truth
Truthhttps://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201804181063698154-syrian-boy-reveals-truth-helmets/

Middle East
22:35 18.04.2018

Earlier the White Helmets, a Western-backed NGO known for its ties with terrorist groups, released a video showing alleged victims of the false-flag chemical attack in Douma. The US and its allies used the video as a pre-text to conduct a missile strike on Syria. (Highlight Added)

TRUMP INTENDS MILLIONS MORE FOR TERRORISTS 
MARCH 14, 2019!

https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2019/03/290364.htm

Robert Palladino
Deputy Spokesperson
Department Press Briefing
Washington, DC
March 14, 2019

"Ambassador Jeffrey also announced, at the direction of the President and subject to Congressional approval, the United States intention to provide additional 5 million to support the vital, lifesaving operations of the White Helmets in Syria and the United Nations International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism, the IIIM. The United States strongly supports the work of the White Helmets. They have saved more than 114,000 lives since the conflict began, including victims of Assad’s vicious chemical weapons attacks. And we stand firmly with them against attempts to delegitimize their work."
 

MORE HERE: Trump Openly Funds Terrorists

!!MADNESS!!

US/Saudi Coalition
Giving Yemen Citizenship To Known Terrorists
While US Secretly Gives Saudis Nukes

The Last American Vagabond
Published on Mar 30, 2019

This is an excerpt of The Daily Wrap Up 3/29.

** This story was reported by RT on Mar 28, 2019, so don't take the April 1st reports any less serious.

"Trump essentially continues to massively fund terrorism, including future attacks on American targets via the CIA and the Deep State"

(Quote from Article Below)

Trump Bows Deeply to Globalists, Surrenders to Puppet Masters

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-bows-deeply-to-globalists-surrenders-to-puppet-masters/5591488 

By Larry Chin
Global Research, May 23, 2017

[Highlighted Emphasis Added]

In bowing and groveling before Saudi royalty and the all-powerful Israeli regime and Washington-controlling Israeli lobby, President Donald Trump continues to demonstrate that he is a puppet of globalist masters, the Deep State, and the existing international criminal political establishment.

In signing over the single largest arms deal in US history with Saudi Arabia, “both the neo-cons in DC, as well as the all-powerful American Military-Industrial complex can declare a truly unprecedented victory”. It is also a triumph for the CIA, and the CIA’s international network of terror fronts, including ISIS and Al-Qaeda. This arms deal, globalism on super steroids, is on top of already immeasurable military-industrial lucre, a mushrooming Pentagon budget, and a CIA black budget that is uncounted as well as bottomless.

It is a promise that the existing criminal Anglo-American war and terrorism agenda—the Bush-Obama-Clinton/New World Order blueprint for conquest—not only continues, but receives a super escalation, towards regime change in Syria, as well as continuing aggression towards Iran.

Trump essentially continues to massively fund terrorism, including future attacks on American targets via the CIA and the Deep State, while spewing nonsensical hot air about fighting terrorism. His performance was tantamount to lecturing a den of chuckling mafia godfathers about the dangers of crime, while paying them billions of dollars. Trump will do the same in Israel, where Jared Kushner, who is deeply connected to Netanyahu and Israeli interests, will cut yet more power deals on behalf of Tel Aviv.  (Article Continues Below)

Keys to the Kingdom:

Trump visits Saudi Arabia first, signs $380bn deal

[ Including An Arms Deal Worth $110Billion ]

Published on May 20, 2017

Donald Trump's received a lavish, royal welcome in Saudi Arabia, where he's kicking off his first foreign tour as U.S. president. Trump's signed a number of defence and business deals totalling in excess of $380bn, including an arms deal worth $110bn. Trump is the first American president to make Saudi Arabia, or any Muslim-majority country, his inaugural stop overseas and he's pleased with his progress so far. READ MORE: https://on.rt.com/8c79

(Article Continued)

Lee Stranahan is among many who is alarmed by Trump’s 180 degree reversal from long-held views, and views pushed by Trump throughout his election campaign.

“Here’s what you wrote about Saudi Arabia in the past, POTUS. Your 180 on this subject is very distburbing.” Trump previously wrote: “It’s the world’s biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petrodollars, our very own money, to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people while the Saudis rely on us to protect them.”

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard also blasted Trump with a series of Twitter posts:

   “Trump refuses to acknowledge Saudi Arabia remains world’s largest sponsor of terror and Wahhabi Salafist ideology fueling al-Qaeda/ISIS.”

  “Opening counter-terrorism center in Saudi is a farce; Saudi is #1 exporter of Wahhabi Salafi jihadist ideology that fuels grps like ISIS/AQ”

Even Trump’s most ardent supporters are worried. Roger Stone was sickened by the sight of Trump bowing to the Saudis, and posted:

  “While I support our President, disturbing 2 see @realDonaldTrump embrace those who financed 9/11 attack on America”

Alex Jones was similarly disturbed:

  “The House of Saudi is the number one $ of terror. They better rollover after Trump bent over or I am pissed!”

Trip itself is capitulation

Trump’s foreign junket amply demonstrates how little control Trump has over his own actions. According to Mike Cernovich was forced to make the trip by the globalists who actually control the White House, and who drive foreign policy: National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Habib Powell (and here) and Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn (and see here).

This neocon Saudi lobby has co-opted the White House, along with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (Dina Habib Powell is Ivanka Trump’s advisor). This is the definition of an internal coup, and a continuing political suicide that Trump himself has enabled, and seems unwilling and unable to recognize or combat.

The arms and nuclear weapons deal itself was orchestrated by McMaster, according to Cernovich, all towards a ground war in Syria.

Powell is close to Hillary Clinton aide and Muslim Brotherhood-connected Huma Abedin, Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, and others who are working to destroy Trump. Both McMaster and Habib Powell are suspected of leaking anti-Trump stories to the Washington Post and New York Times.

Between his continuing foreign policy capitulations, the appointment of dangerous Bush neocon and 9/11 fixer Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor to dog his presidency, and the looming appointment of another political enemy (such as Joe Lieberman) as FBI director, Trump’s sabotaged, bleeding presidency appears doomed.

Full Transcript of Trump's Riyadh Speech:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-bows-deeply-to-globalists-surrenders-to-puppet-masters/5591488 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-signs-single-largest-arms-deal-in-us-history-with-saudi-arabia-worth-350-billion/5591313

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trumps-speech-in-riyadh-signals-us-escalation-against-iran/5591409

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-350-billion-arms-sale-to-sauds-cements-u-s-jihadist-alliance/5591350

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-accuses-iran-of-supporting-terrorists-and-spreading-instability/5591398

http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-in-riyadh-a-gulf-nato-to-gang-up-against-iran-and-syria/5591387

http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-and-oil-reserves-trumps-us-saudi-partnership/5591261?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

LINK: MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

U.K Military Industrial Cartel and Tory Government Profit from Mass Murder in Yemen
https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/08/09/u-k-military-industrial-cartel-and-tory-government-profit-from-mass-murder-in-yemen/

August 9, 2018 By Vanessa Beeley

Vanessa Beeley
21st Century Wire

Yemen is hemorrhaging. After more than three years of a brutal and genocidal war waged by a U.S/U.K-armed Saudi Coalition against 27 million Yemenis, life in Yemen has been reduced to a diseased, starving, mutilated and preyed upon nation that is still resisting some of the world’s most powerful nations in their attempts to drive Yemenis to their knees.

In May 2018, Sir Roger Carr, chairman of BAE, gave a speech to shareholders at the BAE AGM. “There is no doubt that 2017 was a successful year as reflected in our sales, profits and cash flow, which, I am pleased to say, has supported an increase in your dividend for the year to 21.8pence per share.”

Shareholders in arms production benefit from bloodshed globally. The deaths of Yemeni children pay “healthy” dividends. In 2015 the UK exported £ 2.94 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia over a period of 9 months. The illegal aggression against Yemen began in March 2015. BAE jumped at the opportunity to reap a harvest from the murder of Yemeni civilians. According to Amnesty International:

“They (UK) recently diverted a batch of 500-pound ‘Paveway IV’ bombs to Saudi Arabia. These bombs are used by Tornado and Typhoon fighter jets, both of which are manufactured and supplied to Saudi Arabia by the UK arms company BAE Systems.”

In May 2018 Carr said “our customers are our lifeblood” while those customers shed blood globally. Saudi Arabia is crucial to BAE’s success in the arms industry and is its third largest market sector after the U.S and U.K.

“According to the company’s own figures for 2015, the Saudi military market helped boost its overall performance. Sales increased by £1.3 billion to £17.9 bn.”

In 2016 Carr was questioned regarding the ethics of supplying arms to the Saudi regime. Carr dismissed such troublesome moral issues “We are not here to judge the way that other governments work, we are here to do a job under the rules and regulations we are given.”. The shareholder returns weigh more heavily upon the minds of war-vultures like Carr than the mass murder being committed with BAE weapons and equipment in Yemen by a despotic Saudi regime and human rights violator of world record proportions.

In 2016, BAE defended the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia with a very familiar slogan “We provide defence equipment and support to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under a Government to Government agreement.”. The old self-defence canard, deployed so rigorously by the Zionist regime while it batters the concentration camp that is Gaza with chemical weapons and uses the Gazan people as lab rats for testing new armaments on behalf of firms like BAE.

In 2017, it was revealed that British arms companies had earned in excess of £ 6bn from trade with Saudi Arabia during the war of aggression waged against Yemen since March 2015. Profit extracted from the bombing of weddings, schools, hospitals, civilian infrastructure, blind schools, fishing villages and residential areas across Yemen – a bombing campaign that has created the breeding ground for cholera and other silent killers.

A Sanaa-based, Yemeni journalist and activist, Hussain Al-Bukhaiti was interviewed on RT Going Underground. Al-Bukhaiti holds the U.K and U.S government and private sector military industrial complex wholly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Yemen since the illegal war began in 2015.

The US and the UK are making a profit from the war in Yemen
-- Hussain Albukhaiti --

goingundergroundRT
Published on Feb 12, 2018

We speak to journalist in Yemen Hussain Albukhaiti about the Saudi, British and American bombs
that are killing civilians in Yemen while returning a profit.

 

According to Carr  – “We (BAE) supply equipment government-to-government to enable the job to be done as seen fit. We separate ourselves from the war itself… we’re not involved in any part of prosecuting, planning or executing the war.” – this defies logic, if you knowingly hand the means to commit mass murder to a known psychopath, you are an accessory to the dreadful consequences Mr Carr. I will not call you “Sir”.

Graphics pictures
Death toll rises to 41 people and 55 injures in an attack by Saudi airstrikes on a school bus in Dhahian area of Saada in northern #Yemen.
A new massacre committed today days after the massacre of #Hodeidah's hospital and fish market. pic.twitter.com/rIm4SKVAYA

— Fatik Al-Rodaini (@Fatikr) August 9, 2018 

A report in Drone Warfare pointed out that “While being repeatedly questioned about civilian deaths by supporters of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Sir Roger claimed that BAE Systems hoped for peace in Yemen and other countries, adding: “One death of anybody is one death too many.” There is no room for crocodile tears while you are patting yourself on the back for profit margins gained from the deaths of millions around the world. Carr’s rank hypocrisy was exposed when he later refused a minute’s silence to commemorate the innocent victims of his products worldwide.

BREAKING NEWS
ANOTHER Wave of strikes targetd a funeral procession in Majz in #Saada
7killed
9injrd
.
Number of casualties by #Saudi #UAE strikes on a school bus in Dhahiaan market n #Saada north #Yemen reached
43 dead
63 injured
Number could still go up as still many ppl missing pic.twitter.com/qZUIBzmspm

— Hussain Albukhaiti (@HussainBukhaiti) August 9, 2018 

The self-defence slogan was unfurled again by Carr who claimed that the U.S/U.K-backed Saudi regime had the right to “protect itself” against “Houthi” cross border missile attacks. No mention of Yemen’s need to defend itself against the ravages of imperialist super-powers and their sophisticated weaponry being rained down upon the Yemeni people.

“We are not an aggressive company. We don’t conduct wars, we manufacture equipment in order to ensure that those who protect and serve us are equipped appropriately and hope that having given that equipment it will avoid others being aggressors.” was Carr’s plea for exoneration from international justice. When did Saudi Arabia serve and protect us exactly Mr Carr? When did Yemen aggress the U.K Mr Carr? Why not be truthful, why not admit you will supply arms to global terrorists if it expands your profit margins and maintains the cycle of perpetual war?

“The reason that BAE doesn’t know if its weapons were used in the bombing of the wedding in Yemen is because it doesn’t want to know. Its entire business model is based on perpetual war. To ask questions or to take any kind of moral stance would be to jeopardise its position as a major arms exporter.” ~ Andrew Smith of CAAT ( Campaign Against Arms Trade).

Theresa May, Philip May and BAE

At the 2018 BAE AGM, Carr stated that “our defence customers are approved by government and products are exported under strict regulations.”. How stringent are those “regulations”? How are they influenced and how are they enforced?

It is worth noting that among the U.K Prime Minister’s Business Ambassadors is former BAE executive, Sir Richard Olver who is PM’s Ambassador for “Manufacturing and Advanced Engineering”. This role includes:

• leading trade delegations
• 1-2-1 meetings with senior government ministers
• hosting high level incoming visitors
• meeting key businesses in market
• keynote speeches at business events

Effectively one of the elite influencers attached to the PM’s office was a major player in the military supply sector and a promoter of BAE in particular.

Philip May is Theresa May’s husband. Philip May is also a “ relationship manager” at an investment management company, Capital Group. According to CG “his job is to ensure the clients are happy with the service and that we understand their goals.” CG is the major shareholder in none other than BAE and the second largest shareholder in Lockheed Martin, also heavily invested in partnership with the Saudi regime and its campaign to wipe Yemen from the map.

It also cannot be coincidence that BAE profited handsomely from Theresa May’s unlawful aggression against Syria in April 2018 alongside the U.S and France. Based upon open source narratives provided primarily by the UK FCO-created and financed White Helmets, May’s government cobbled together a flimsy pretext to bomb alleged chemical facilities in Syria that had already been designated non-chemical-weapon manufacturing sites by the OPCW earlier in 2018.

£6.3m worth of BAE missiles were fired in Syria. May's husband's company, Capital Group is the largest shareholder in BAE pic.twitter.com/k3XT8hZ6SZ

— Mr Ethical (@nw_nicholas) April 17, 2018 

“It has been reported that the UK’s contribution to military strikes was to fire eight ‘Storm-Shadow’ missiles at an alleged chemical weapons facility, each of which cost £790,000 ($1.13 million) – totaling £6.32 million ($9 million). The missiles were manufactured by BAE Systems.” ~ Market Screener report.

Did Philip May relationship manage consent for that illegal strike and its subsequent financial benefits for BAE?

The Tory Government connections to BAE don’t end with Philip May. George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, current editor-in-chief at the Evening Standard, also works as a consultant for Blackrock Investment Institute. Blackrock has substantial shares in BAE. Since February 2017, Osborne has secured £ 162, 500 per quarter, plus equity as the “adviser on the global economy to Blackrock”.

These war-brokers and conflict-investment cartels will not spare a thought for lives thousands of miles away in a poverty stricken corner of the world that represents nothing more to them than attractive salaries and shareholder perks. The moral bankruptcy of these military industrial structures defines description when they can survey the broken bones and emaciated corpses of children, the birdlike skulls and protruding eyes of human beings clinging to life, without sustenance and they can super-impose balance sheets and project forward to the next killing field.

On the 28th April 2015, UN Peace Envoy, Jamal Bennomar stated that:

“When this campaign started, one thing that was significant but went unnoticed is that the Yemenis were close to a deal that would institute power sharing with all sides, including the Houthis”

In July 2015, a young Yemeni mother who had fled the Saudi bombing with her 8-year old daughter, told me that:

“Yemeni people are not bad people, they are good people. They want to be respected, they want their sovereignty to be respected. We did not wage a war, a war was brought upon us. Our issue was an internal one and it would have been sorted out internally.”

In 2016, International Law Professor, Francis Boyle made the statement that:

“The UN embargo/blockade against Yemen and the Yemenis violates Genocide Convention article II (e): Deliberately inflicting on the group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” ~ Prof. Francis A Boyle

None of these contextual factors are of any consequence to the providers of justification for war, the Tory Government minute-men who ensure the arms industrial sector is nurtured by the prospect and reality of perpetual conflict in as many arenas as possible. Death, destruction, starvation, human misery is viewed as nothing more than “collateral damage”, a forgotten and ignored corollary of their drive to world dominance and supremacy.

When the world is eventually laid waste and entire peoples eradicated, what will the machine do, will it turn upon itself and its own people to keep the shareholders happy? Yemen, Syria and all those who resist this machine and its inner workings, stand between us and the rapacious ambitions of the murderers in our midst, we should never forget this simple equation – we just might be next.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. Please support Vanessa at her Patreon account.

READ MORE YEMEN NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Yemen Files

SUPPORT 21WIRE – SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV 

Whitney Webb Interview
The Ignored Yemen Genocide:
"18.4 Million People Are Starving To Death"
   The Last American Vagabond
Published on Nov 1, 2018

Joining me today is Whitney Webb of Mint Press News, someone I greatly respect and who has done extensive work
 exposing the true nature of what has been dubbed "The Forgotten War" and that is the US-backed invasion of Yemen.

Get a TLAV "Question Everything" T-Shirt or Sticker at: https://truthclothing.io/collections/... Like What You See? Help Us Stay People Funded: https://www.patreon.com/TheLastAmeric... http://paypal.me/TLAVagabond https://streamlabs.com/ryancristian  .Bitcoin Donations: 3HybuDuvH4x5uJHemgc7EW4ms2nz3F8Gah  IN-SHADOW: A Modern Odyseey - Animated Short Film:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j800S...

https://www.mintpressnews.com/un-10-million-more-yemenis-expected-to-starve-to-death-by-end-of-year/242906/ 

https://www.mintpressnews.com/saudi-money-trump-arm-twisting-fail-to-stop-bill-to-end-us-military-support-for-saudis-yemen-war/252443/

https://www.mintpressnews.com/with-3-8-million-yemenis-displaced-last-year-new-report-shows-countrys-crisis-growing-worse/254934/ 

https://www.mintpressnews.com/oxfam-report-starving-yemen-families-selling-daughters-as-young-as-three-into-marriage/256053/ 

https://www.mintpressnews.com/as-yemen-fishermen-risk-their-lives-to-feed-their-nation-saudi-arabia-use-them-for-target-practice/255162/ 

 
https://www.mintpressnews.com/pentagon-accounting-error-had-us-taxpayers-paying-to-refuel-saudi-jets-in-yemen/252709/ 

25ppl kild&33injured by #Saudi #UAE CO strikes on Khlqa market in Nehim East #Sanaa #Yemen
👆Thread4 Prvs markt
👇bfrhttps://t.co/X5tRG5l5lV

— Hussain Albukhaiti (@HussainBukhaiti) February 27, 2016

-------------------------------------------------------------------
AN APPEAL TO THE NEARLY 240 MILLION CHRISTIANS IN THE US
-------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"This horror, and I’m sorry it’s hard to see, is caused in part by our decision to facilitate a bombing campaign that is Murdering Children!”

-- Senator Chris Murphy --

"This support to the Saudi-UAE effort to wage this war in Yemen, though, is not legitimate. It's illegal. It was started by the Obama administration and continued and emphasized by the Trump administration. It's illegal. It's brutal. "

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson -- 

20 Million Starving Yemenis Fueling
the Saudi-US-NATO War Machine

MintPressNews
Published on Sep 10, 2018

The people of Yemen have found themselves struggling not only for survival, but for a space in the Western media's war coverage. In the shadow of the conflict in Syria, the men, women and children of Yemen are being deliberately starved and targeted by strategic airstrikes and an illegal blockade in a war initiated by Saudi Arabia and aided, massively if not entirely, by the United States.Within days of starting the war, Saudi Arabia imposed a total land, air and sea blockade, along with targeting vital agriculture and food supply infrastructure that sustains life for the 29 million Yemenis -- all of which constitute war crimes under international law.

Many Pastors And Christians Behaving More Like Herod Than Wise Men And Shepherds
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/3824/Many-Pastors-And-Christians-Behaving-More-Like-Herod-Than-Wise-Men-And-Shepherds.aspx

Published: Thursday, December 20, 2018

Preachers and Christians in America talk a lot about loving Jesus. They sing songs to Him; wave their hands in the air; pray to Him; and talk about His teachings. And at Christmas time, they retell the story of Christ’s virgin birth, and boys and girls sing songs and put on plays—complete with shepherds and Wise Men. But in reality, a huge number of preachers and Christians today behave more like King Herod than they do the Christmas shepherds and Magi.

What was Herod’s conduct at the time of Christ’s birth? He ordered the deaths of all of the children in Bethlehem, males and females, two years old and younger. Herod used his authority as a governmental head of state to murder innocent children. So, how does this relate to today’s pastors and Christians? I’ll tell you.

Last week, the U.S. House and Senate voted on resolutions to discontinue U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's three-year war against Yemen. As many as 80,000 men, women and children have been slaughtered in this ongoing bloodbath, and 85,000 Yemeni children have starved to death. And the United States, under Presidents Obama and Trump, has supported Saudi Arabia’s barbarism with financial and military aid. In fact, without America’s aid, Saudi Arabia would not have been able to perpetuate this genocidal war. So, this is as much America’s war as it is Saudi Arabia’s.

The brutal, torturous assassination of permanent U.S. resident, journalist Jamal Khashoggi, by Saudi assassins (under orders from the Saudi crown prince) somehow jolted the dead conscience of the U.S. Congress, and both legislative branches voted on resolutions to discontinue America's participation in the brutal Saudi war against Yemen.

Of course, Donald Trump and his ranking cabinet members lobbied Congress hard to NOT cut off funding for this illegal war. (Tell me again how Trump is so much different than Obama.) The House voted to CONTINUE participating in the war, but the Senate voted to DISCONTINUE participating in the war.

The vote in the House was 206 to 203 to keep America involved in the Saudi war on Yemen; the vote in the Senate was 56 to 41 to stop America's involvement in the Saudi war on Yemen.

And here's the rub: The vast majority of congressmen and senators who voted to continue America's participation in the Saudi barbarism against Yemen were Republicans.

In the House, 201 Republicans voted for the war and only 18 Republicans voted against it. In the Senate, only 7 Republicans voted against the war and all 41 senators who voted for the war were Republicans.

The 7 brave Republican senators who voted to stop America's involvement in Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen were:

Collins (Maine); Daines (Montana); Flake (Arizona); Lee (Utah); Moran (Kansas); Paul (Kentucky); and Young (Indiana).

Enthusiastic kudos to these senators!

This is another example of how the "left-right," "liberal-conservative" and Democrat-Republican paradigm is so phony and misleading. Whatever praise one wants to heap on the GOP, when it comes to expanding America's never-ending "war on terror,” its limitless wars of aggression overseas and the overall Warfare State, Republicans are almost always the first ones to shout their enthusiastic support. These votes in the House and Senate reflect that reality.

It also further proves that Donald Trump is just another warmonger, no better than Barack Obama or G.W. Bush. These presidents (and the members of Congress who support their wars) have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims dripping from their hands. I'll say it straight out: Donald Trump is a murderer! Forget King Cyrus; King Herod is the one that Trump more resembles.  

Again, only 18 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the illegal, brutal war in Yemen, and only 7 Republicans in the Senate voted against it. Thankfully, those 7 Republican votes in the Senate were enough to help carry the vote against the war; but in the House, the 18 Republican votes fell 2 votes short.

Here are the 18 House Republicans who bravely voted against America's participation in Saudi Arabia's brutal war in Yemen:

Amash (Michigan); Biggs (Arizona); Blum (Iowa); Brat (Virginia); Cloud (Texas); Gaetz (Florida); Garrett (Virginia); Gohmert (Texas); Gosar (Arizona); Graves (Louisiana); Jordan (Ohio); Labrador (Idaho); Massie (Kentucky); Meadows (North Carolina); Perry (Pennsylvania); Posey (Florida); Sanford (South Carolina); and Schweikert (Arizona).

I don't expect that this will have any impact on the millions of Christians and conservatives who are caught up in blind (almost idolizing) support for Donald Trump and in the phony left-right paradigm. But in case you are interested in truth, there it is.

Here is the down and dirty little secret: Christians and conservatives are the ones promoting and sustaining America's Warfare State and perpetual war doctrine. The absence of outrage from Christians and conservatives at the Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate and at President Trump for supporting and voting to continue providing financial and military assistance for Saudi Arabia's barbaric war against Yemen is an eternal indictment against these right-wing warmongers.

God hates murder and wars of aggression. But today's evangelical pulpits are filled with warmongers; today’s churches are filled with warmongers; today’s Christian colleges and universities are filled with warmongers; and today’s GOP is filled with warmongers.

Satan is the author of murder, and nothing or no one commits murder on the scale or magnitude of government. Therefore, government is Satan's most effective tool at fulfilling his highest priority: murder. And, disgustingly, millions of evangelical pastors and Christians are among the most enthusiastic supporters of the wicked, wretched warmongers (many if not most of them Republicans) in Washington, D.C.

Next year, the new U.S. House could take another vote on withdrawing support from the Yemen war, but if it passed (and it probably would under Democratic control), Trump will surely veto it, and pastors, Christians and conservatives everywhere will enthusiastically support Trump's veto—and these illegal and immoral wars will keep going on and on.

The fact that Republicans are right on some issues (and they are) does NOT give them the right to commit murder in the name of the American people. Nor should conservatives—and especially Christians—support them when they do.

Bottom line: If America's pastors, Christians and conservatives would stop supporting America's perpetual war machinations, most of these immoral wars would cease forthwith.

So, as you are watching and listening to your pastor homilize about the miraculous birth of the Lord Jesus Christ this Sunday, and as you enjoy the boys and girls in their costumes singing Christmas hymns about “peace, good will toward men,” pause for a moment to see the cadaverous, starving bodies of tens of thousands of little Yemeni children, see the charred bodies of innocent grandfathers and grandmothers who have been burned to death from the fires caused by U.S.-made missiles and bombs, see the arms and legs flying through the air from the dismembered bodies of Yemeni sons and daughters from U.S.-made jet bombers and attack helicopters that have been raining down death and destruction upon a hapless, helpless civilian population via the brutal, bloodthirsty regime of America’s “great ally” (Trump’s words), Saudi Arabia, for three long years.

And as you are watching all of this death and destruction in your mind, remember that it is a majority of evangelical pastors and churches (maybe even the pastor and church where you attend) who are among the biggest cheerleaders for these murderous, immoral, unjust and unconstitutional wars of aggression all over the world. In other words, they are behaving more like Herod than they are the Christmas Wise Men and shepherds.

Remember all of this as you hear the sermonizing and songs about the birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, in your church this Sunday.

P.S. I have two DVD messages that speak directly to the subject of war—just and unjust. These messages present the true Biblical teaching on the subject of war. America’s colonial pastors and Founding Fathers well understood the Biblical Natural Law principles of Just War. Sadly, these principles are all but forgotten by today’s pastors, Christian teachers and elected civil magistrates.

The first message is entitled The Crime Of Aggression: Condemned By The Law Of Nature And Nature’s God.

The second message is entitled Biblical And Natural Law Principles Regarding War.

And we have put both of these DVD messages in a 2-DVD package entitled War: Just And Unjust. A Biblical/Natural Law Analysis. If you purchase both of these messages together, there is a 33% discount. The 2-DVD package costs $20, and there is no cost for domestic shipping. (International rates vary.)

Order the 2-DVD package here:

War: Just And Unjust. A Biblical/Natural Law Analysis

FULL ARTICLE AT LINK ABOVE

One of the Greatest Deceptions
of Church History

Link: Christian Zionism

The Truth About Trump’s Withdrawal Of U.S.
Forces From Afghanistan And Syria
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/3827/The-Truth-About-Trumps-Withdrawal-Of-US-Forces-From-Afghanistan-And-Syria.aspx

Published: Thursday, January 3, 2019

As we all know, Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of disengaging U.S. forces from unconstitutional, perpetual foreign wars. However, the first two years of Trump’s presidency was a flagrant disavowal of that campaign promise. Not only did Trump not disengage our forces from these illegal and immoral wars, but, as I have documented, he dramatically INCREASED America’s involvement in these wars. In fact, President Trump has dropped more bombs on more people in his first two years of office than President Obama did in his entire last term in office. Plus, he sent thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan and Syria and several other countries.

Now Trump is saying that he is going to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria (ostensibly 2,000 in number) and half of our forces (reportedly numbering 7,000 troops) from Afghanistan. Of course, high level government globalists such as Senator Lindsey Graham and Secretary of Defense James Mattis are incensed at the announcement. Mattis tendered his resignation over the decision, and Graham has had lengthy discussions with Trump about the matter.

And, sadly, the majority of conservatives around the country are likewise chagrined. Remember that almost all (if not all) of these conservatives are also Zionists, and they know the only reason America is fighting these wars of aggression in the Middle East is for the purpose of assisting the offensive military machinations of the State of Israel. And they are pouting over the possibility that Israel might actually be stymied from some of its bloodlust and apartheid atrocities. They really shouldn’t worry, however. The U.S. has no intentions of cutting the bloody umbilical cord from the Zionist state.

RT.com has the story:

The US 'withdrawal' from Syria might not mean the end of all its Syria-related operations where Israel is concerned, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reaffirmed Washington’s ongoing commitment to Israel’s security on Tuesday.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Brazil, Pompeo said the US’ commitment to Israel was unchanged, despite the pullout of US troops from Syria announced by the Trump administration last month. Pompeo said that the US effort to “counter Iranian aggression” would continue along with the “protection of Israel” just as it had before.

Earlier, Trump had reassured Israel that the US would “take great care” of Israel despite the withdrawal, citing the billions in foreign aid Washington gives to Israel every year.

And this report states:

Donald Trump has told Benjamin Netanyahu that the US is paying billions of dollars a year for Israeli security, and that Tel Aviv should not be worried about losing its influence in the region after US troops withdraw from Syria.

“I spoke with Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu]. I told Bibi, you know we give Israel 4.5 billion dollars a year. And they are doing very well at defending themselves,” Trump told reporters on his way back from Iraq where he paid a surprise visit to US soldiers stationed there. “We are going to take great care of Israel. Israel is going to be good,” US president added, replying to a question on how his announced withdrawal from Syria will impact Israel.

During Trump’s surprise, sudden visit to U.S. forces in Iraq, he made it clear that he has no intentions of withdrawing America’s troops from the Syrian theater.

RT.com again reports:

President Trump’s big announcement to pull US troops out of Syria and Afghanistan is now emerging less as a peace move, and more a rationalization of American military power in the Middle East.

In a surprise visit to US forces in Iraq this week, Trump said he had no intention of withdrawing the troops in that country, who have been there for nearly 15 years since GW Bush invaded back in 2003.

Hinting at private discussions with commanders in Iraq, Trump boasted that US forces would in the future launch attacks from there into Syria if and when needed. Presumably that rapid force deployment would apply to other countries in the region, including Afghanistan.

In other words, in typical business-style transactional thinking, Trump sees the pullout from Syria and Afghanistan as a cost-cutting exercise for US imperialism. Regarding Syria, he has bragged about Turkey being assigned, purportedly, to “finish off” terror groups. That’s Trump subcontracting out US interests.

What Trump seemed to be doing was reassuring the Pentagon and corporate America that he is not going all soft and dovish. Not at all. He is letting them know that he is aiming for a leaner, meaner US military power, which can save money on the number of foreign bases by using rapid reaction forces out of places like Iraq, as well as by subcontracting operations out to regional clients.

Most of the U.S. forces (5,000+) fighting in Syria are actually based in Iraq. And as Trump assured them, they are not going anywhere, in spite of the fact that Iraqi lawmakers have demanded that the U.S. leave their country. So, those anti-establishment Trumpites who think that The Donald has fulfilled some kind of anti-war campaign promise and is “sticking it” to the Deep State have yet again fallen victim to one of Trump’s masterful con jobs.

As Trump was telling the world that he is withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria, the U.S. Army was in the process of building two brand new bases in the Anbar province, less than 100 kilometers from the Syrian border.

And the Times of Israel reported that after holding extensive meetings with President Trump, ultra-globalist war hawk Senator Lindsey Graham gleefully ensured that Trump is NOT going to abandon the Syrian theater:

A senior Republican senator said Sunday that President Donald Trump had promised to stay in Syria to finish the job of destroying the Islamic State group — just days after announcing he would be withdrawing troops immediately.

“He told me some things I didn’t know that made me feel a lot better about where we’re headed in Syria,” the South Carolina lawmaker said.

Of course, now Trump is saying the withdrawal will take “months.”

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Now, reports indicate that the US will allow “months” for the withdrawal, as opposed to a specific 30-100 day timeline.

The new timeline presented and reported in the US now appears to be within 120 days; Trump says that the US is “slowly” bringing the troops home.

There are also new questions about the degree to which the withdrawal will be coordinated with Turkey. Trump made his decision after a conversation with the Turkish president on December 14. Ankara had threatened a military operation in northern Syria against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it accuses of being linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Trump claimed on December 23 that the US withdrawal would be “slow and highly coordinated” with Turkey.

John Bolton, the national security adviser, is now planning a trip to the region – along with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and Syria envoy James Jeffrey – to discuss the withdrawal in Turkey and Israel. According to CNN’s Kevin Liptak, only Bolton will travel to Israel, not the whole delegation. This comes on the heels of reports that Israel had sought to convince Trump to slow down the withdrawal.

Trump is coordinating the war against Syria (and Lebanon, Iran, etc.) with Israel and Turkey in such a way as to provide those two countries with the opportunity to unleash their war machines (supplied by the United States, of course) against Syria (and eventually Iran) without risk to U.S. troops, while, at the same time, expanding U.S. efforts to oust Bashar al-Assad and take the war closer to Iran’s doorstep. Even with the assistance of American military forces, U.S. and Israeli proxy armies (ISIS, al-Nusra, etc.) failed miserably in their assignment to overthrow Assad. Trump is not angry about U.S. forces being there; he is angry that they failed to defeat Israel’s manufactured adversaries in the region.

But not only is Trump pandering to Israel and Turkey (a NATO member-state that is on the verge of allying itself with Russia over Washington’s agitating actions toward Ankara), true to his “make Big Business bigger” MO, here is the real story behind Trump’s military decisions in the Middle East—and it should horrify all men and women of decency. It won’t, but it should.

You should shudder as you read this report in the Military Times:

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis is out.

Mattis' resignation comes amid news that President Donald Trump has directed the drawdown of 2,000 U.S. forces in Syria, and 7,000 U.S. forces from Afghanistan, a U.S. official confirmed to Military Times, a story first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

This month, in the January/February print issue of the gun and hunting magazine “Recoil," the former contractor security firm Blackwater USA published a full-page ad, in all black with a simple message: “We are coming.”

Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ― about to be privatized?

If Blackwater returns, it would be the return of a private security contractor that was banned from Iraq, but re-branded and never really went away.

[Blackwater founder Erik] Prince  has courted President Donald Trump’s administration since he took office with the idea that the now 17-year Afghan War will never be won by a traditional military campaign. Prince has also argued that the logistical footprint required to support that now multi-trillion dollar endeavor has become too burdensome. Over the summer and into this fall Prince has engaged heavily with the media to promote the privatization; particularly as the Trump administration’s new South Asia Strategy, which was crafted with Mattis, passed the one-year mark.

The news of a leaning on a smaller number of privatized forces, instead of a larger U.S. military footprint — and contracted support for U.S. forces that knew few bounds and at times included coffee shops, base exchanges, restaurants, a hockey rink and local vendor shops — may be welcomed by current U.S. military leadership on the ground. That includes former Joint Special Operations Command chief Army Lt. Gen. Scott Miller, a source familiar with Miller’s approach told Military Times. Miller replaced Gen. John Nicholson as the head of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan in September.

In an [sic] previous exclusive interview with Military Times, Prince said he would scrap the NATO mission there and replace the estimated 23,000 forces in country with a force of 6,000 contracted personnel and 2,000 active-duty special forces.

The potential privatization of the Afghan War was previously dismissed by the White House, and roundly criticized by Mattis, who saw it as a risk to emplace the nation’s national security goals in the hands of contractors.

But Mattis is out now, one in a series of moves that has surprised most of the Pentagon.

Drastic change would “be more likely” now, one DOD official said.

That’s right. Donald Trump is preparing to replace U.S. military forces with mercenaries to fight Israel’s wars.

Here’s the horrifying part: These “private contractors,” i.e., mercenaries, operate in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the rule of law. Totally! They operate outside the Constitution, outside the Rules of Engagement, outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), outside the Law of Nations, outside law period—and also outside public scrutiny. There is virtually no accountability for whatever murders, rapes, plunderings or criminalities of any sort that these mercenaries commit.

The Pentagon has already admitted that U.S. Special Forces troops are under fire for “rampant crimes”:

After a string of horrific PR disasters saw elite US soldiers arrested for drugs, abuse, rape and murder, the Pentagon is cracking down on disciplinary issues in its Special Operations Command, according to a new report.

With "allegations of serious misconduct" piling up too high to ignore after two decades of war, General Raymond 'Tony' Thomas, head of Special Operations Command, and Owen West, head of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict for the Pentagon, have outlined an ambitious 90-day plan to find out how the military's most elite corps lost its way.

Combining Special Forces units that are already plagued with rampant abuses of power with mercenaries who are virtually unaccountable to any human authority is a recipe for the worst kind of barbarity and atrocity. This is what the Roman Empire did during its last days of power and what Great Britain did in its failed war against the American colonies. And this is exactly what Donald Trump is preparing to do. In fact, Trump is already setting the table for an unaccountable military force by shutting down military watchdog groups, thus turning off the light of public knowledge and ensuring military unaccountability.

Donald Trump’s presidency—a presidency that is rife with graft, fraud, extortion, bribery, immorality and now government collaboration with unaccountable mercenaries and military units to wage war on behalf of foreign nations—is what happens when supposed Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell, Jr., have their way.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Falwell said, “You don’t choose a president based on how good they are.” He also said in that interview that there was “nothing” Trump could do that would jeopardize his (Falwell’s) support. “Nothing” means no lie, no act of immorality, no theft, no act of betrayal, no act of murder or no act of wanton military slaughter would prevent Falwell from supporting Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, such an attitude is nothing short of insane idolatry. In essence, Falwell was saying that he knows how immoral, unethical, dishonest and violent Trump is, and he doesn’t care; it doesn’t matter to him.

Trump wasn’t kidding when he boasted that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and his supporters would still vote for him. Falwell proves that.

Tragically, Falwell is representative of the vast majority of evangelical Christian pastors and leaders in this country today. They have sold their souls (not to mention their spiritual birthright) to sit at Trump’s treacherous, tainted, twisted, thoughtless, tumultuous, terrifying, terrorizing, tortuous, tyrannical, Talmudic table. They should apologize for all of their sermonizing about the Ten Commandments, the beatitudes of Christ, the teachings of the Apostles, the Golden Rule, etc. They should take back all of their admonitions of honesty, integrity, morality, trust, fidelity, honor, adherence to law, etc.

Let’s face facts: These evangelical Christian “leaders” believe in situation ethics; they believe that some people are above the laws of men and God; they believe the principles of biblical morality and honesty are apportioned according to position and power (or the lack thereof); and their blind allegiance to the moral and ethical deviant Donald Trump has proven they never meant what they preached.

Christian people by the millions have supported, defended, lauded, extolled and glorified a man (Donald Trump) whose personal morals and ethics rival the most vile leaders in world history. Donald Trump is a man without conscience. His behavior is pathological and diabolical. And he is successfully searing the consciences of the millions of Christian people who have sullied their own hearts by willingly partnering with his incessant crimes.

Trump is not pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Syria; he is pulling the wool over the eyes of millions of Christians and conservatives.

FULL ARTICLE AT LINK ABOVE

www.chuckbaldwinlive.com

Now It’s William Barr: When Will Christians And Conservatives Stop Making Excuses For Donald Trump?
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/3833/Now-Its-William-Barr-When-Will-Christians-And-Conservatives-Stop-Making-Excuses-For-Donald-Trump.aspx

Published: Thursday, January 24, 2019

Okay, we all know how awful Hillary Clinton is. We all know that Donald Trump said all the right things (well, many of the right things) on the campaign trail. We all know—at least believed—that Trump was not an establishment insider. We all know that Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” dramatically reduce America’s out-of-control deficit spending, protect the Second Amendment, get America out of its endless foreign wars, terminate taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, overturn Roe v Wade and build a wall on our southern border—that Mexico would pay for—in order to stop the flow of illegal immigration into America.

Now, after two full years of a Donald Trump administration in which he enjoyed both houses of Congress being held by fellow Republicans, we all know (and if we don’t, it’s because we don’t WANT to know) that none of the above has happened. Yet, Christians and conservatives by the millions continue to make excuses for this faker.

First, a brief comment about the border wall: All of the drama regarding a partial government shutdown and incessant public theater by actors from both political parties is quite nauseating. Republicans had control of both houses of Congress and the White House for two years. Why wasn’t money appropriated for the wall then? Why was there no government shutdown over the lack of funding for the border wall then? Why wait until Democrats take over the House to shut down (partially) the federal government and threaten to declare a State of National Emergency?

Forgive me, but this stinks to high heaven. This is nothing but smoke and mirrors. All of the high profile theatrics over the border wall is the biggest distraction to envelop our country in quite a spell. While everyone is fighting over the wall, some very serious attacks against our liberties are being waged almost without notice. And all of the hullabaloo over the wall is completely covering up Trump’s failure to carry out the rest of his campaign promises—and the fact that Trump himself has often worked in direct opposition to many of his campaign promises.

Secondly, his rhetoric notwithstanding, President Trump has NOT drawn down America’s involvement in endless foreign wars. Trump’s promise to bring U.S. forces home from Syria is so much hot air. Trump’s “immediate” withdrawal order is now mired in an indefinite time schedule. In other words, there is no time schedule. Our troops that are still fighting in Syria are not only still based in Syria, but they are also still using bases in Iraq as launching pads for military excursions into Syria. Of course, Trump promised that the U.S. bases in Iraq were not going anywhere—and that’s one promise he will keep.

Our troops are still fighting endless wars in Afghanistan and Somalia. In fact, Trump has shoved record military spending through Congress and has done nothing to reduce America’s global military presence (U.S. troops are stationed in over 160 countries, which equates to 95% of the world’s foreign military bases). America is as much the global cop as it was when Trump was elected. No, that’s not quite true: We are MUCH MORE the global cop than when Trump was elected, as Trump has expanded our military presence in Eastern Europe to unprecedented levels—levels not even seen during the Cold War.

Thirdly, as we have just passed the 46th anniversary of the ignoble Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion-on-demand nationwide, unborn children continue to be legally murdered—in spite of the fact that Donald Trump was President and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress during the past two years. All of Trump’s “pro-life” rhetoric hasn’t saved the life of a single unborn baby. Since Trump was elected, over 2 million unborn children have been mercilessly murdered in the wombs of their mothers—with the complete approbation of a Republican-led federal government.

The GOP controlled the entire federal government for 4.6 years of G.W. Bush's eight years in office—and they controlled the entire federal government for the past two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. They did NOTHING about Roe v Wade under Bush, and they have done NOTHING about Roe v Wade under Trump. These phony pro-life GOP congressmen and senators haven't even defunded America's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

Fourthly, as to ending the federal government’s extravagant spending habits, what a crock! During 8 years of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, the federal debt INCREASED $7.9 trillion. And a Trump presidency did nothing to reduce Washington’s out-of-control spending—even with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress.

Fifthly, what about Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”? This is one of Trump’s biggest lies of all. Trump never intended to drain the swamp. From the outset of his presidency, he began appointing mostly CFR globalists, neocons, warmongers, Zionists, corporate elitists and corrupt government insiders to his administration. And he hasn’t stopped.

I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing my conservative Christian brethren say things like, “Trump is trying his best, but he’s getting no help from his cabinet and staff.” Well, DUH! Who picked his cabinet and staff? Trump did.

Then they say things like, “Trump doesn’t really understand these issues; he really wants to do right, but he’s getting bad advice.” BARF! If he didn’t understand the issues, he’s had two full years as President of the United States to get caught up. But he continues to make the same unconstitutional, big-government, warmongering decisions over and over again. The excuse that “he wants to do right, but is getting bad advice” just doesn’t wash anymore. It’s time for Trump’s supporters to wake up and realize that Donald Trump is a great big boy, not a little kid, and is fully capable of thinking for himself.

Donald Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s known exactly what he’s been doing from day number one. He is the consummate con man. He is a charlatan. He is a double-tongued pretender. He has filled the executive branch of the federal government with the same crooks as presidents before him.

And now Trump’s selection of William Barr as America’s next attorney general is the final straw. There can be NO MORE DOUBT.

William Barr is the swamp creature’s Swamp Creature. He is the personification of all of the evil and wickedness that has gone on in Washington, D.C., during the past 30 years. Name the act of criminality, cover-up or act of chicanery that has taken place in Washington D.C., over the last 30 years, and William Barr is probably neck deep in it.

Here is a summary of Barr’s career:

*Barr was a full-time CIA operative, recruited by Langley out of high school, starting in 1971. Barr’s youth career goal was to head the CIA.

*CIA operative assigned to the China directorate, where he became close to powerful CIA operative George H.W. Bush, whose accomplishments already included the CIA/Cuba Bay of Pigs, Asia CIA operations (Vietnam War, Golden Triangle narcotics), Nixon foreign policy (Henry Kissinger), and the Watergate operation.

*When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s “legal office” and Bush’s inner circle, and worked alongside Bush’s longtime CIA enforcers Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines, and others, several of whom were likely involved with the Bay of Pigs/John F. Kennedy assassination, and numerous southeast Asian operations, from the Phoenix Program to Golden Triangle narco-trafficking.

*Barr stonewalled and destroyed the Church Committee investigations into CIA abuses.

*Barr stonewalled and stopped inquiries in the CIA bombing assassination of Chilean opposition leader Orlando Letelier.

*Barr joined George H.W. Bush’s legal/intelligence team during Bush’s vice presidency (under President Ronald Reagan). Rose from assistant attorney general to Chief Legal Counsel to attorney general (1991) during the Bush 41 presidency.

*Barr was a key player in the Iran-Contra operation, if not the most important member of the apparatus, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the legal end, ensuring that all of the operatives could do their jobs without fear of exposure or arrest.

*In his attorney general confirmation, Barr vowed to “attack criminal organizations,” drug smugglers and money launderers. It was all hot air: as AG, Barr would preserve, protect, cover up, and nurture the apparatus that he helped create, and use Justice Department power to escape punishment.

*Barr stonewalled and stopped investigations into all Bush/Clinton and CIA crimes, including BCCI and BNL CIA drug banking, the theft of Inslaw/PROMIS software, and all crimes of state committed by Bush.

*Barr provided legal cover for Bush’s illegal foreign policy and war crimes.

*Barr left Washington, and went through the “rotating door” to the corporate world, where he took on numerous directorships and counsel positions for major companies. In 2007 and again from 2017, Barr was counsel for politically connected international law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Among its other notable attorneys and alumni are Kenneth Starr, John Bolton, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and numerous Trump administration attorneys. K&E’s clients include sex trafficker/pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital.

If all of this isn’t bad enough, William Bar is a co-conspirator in the murders of Vicki and Sammy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. James Bovard tells the story:

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for Attorney General nominee William Barr have focused heavily on Barr’s views on Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But nobody is asking about Barr’s legal crusade for blanket immunity for federal agents who killed American citizens.

Barr received a routine questionnaire from the Judiciary Committee asking him to disclose his past work including pro bono activities “serving the disadvantaged.” The “disadvantaged” that Barr spent the most time helping was an FBI agent who slayed an Idaho mother holding her baby in 1992. Barr spent two weeks organizing former Attorneys General and others to support “an FBI sniper in defending against criminal charges in connection with the Ruby Ridge incident.” Barr also “assisted in framing legal arguments advanced… in the district court and the subsequent appeal to the Ninth Circuit,” he told the committee.

That charitable work (for an FBI agent who already had a federally paid law firm defending him) helped tamp down one of the biggest scandals during Barr’s time as Attorney General from 1991 to early 1993. Barr was responsible for both the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two federal agencies whose misconduct at Ruby Ridge “helped to weaken the bond of trust that must exist between ordinary Americans and our law enforcement agencies,” according to a 1995 Senate Judiciary Committee report.

After Randy Weaver, an outspoken white separatist living on a mountaintop in northern Idaho, was entrapped by an undercover federal agent, U.S. marshals trespassed on Weaver’s land and killed his 14-year-old son, Sammy [by shooting him in the back]. The following day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed his wife, Vicki, as she was standing in the cabin doorway [holding her baby in her arms]. Horiuchi had previously shot Randy Weaver in the back after he stepped out of the cabin. The suspects were never given a warning or a chance to surrender and had taken no action against FBI agents. Weaver survived.

After an Idaho jury found Weaver not guilty on almost all charges, federal judge Edward Lodge slammed the Justice Department and FBI for concealing evidence and showing “a callous disregard for the rights of the defendants and the interests of justice.” A Justice Department internal investigation compiled a 542-page report detailing federal misconduct and coverups in the case and suggested criminal charges against FBI officials involved in Ruby Ridge.

Barr told the New York Times in 1993 that he was not directly involved in the Ruby Ridge operation. Two years later, the Washington Post revealed that “top officials of the Bush Justice Department had at least 20 [phone] contacts concerning Ruby Ridge in the 24 hours before Vicki Weaver was shot,” including two calls involving Barr.

In January 1995, FBI director Louis Freeh announced wrist slaps for the FBI officials involved, including his friend Larry Potts, who supervised the operation from headquarters and who approved the shoot-without-provocation orders that “contravened the constitution of the United States,” according to the Justice Department internal report.

When Attorney General Janet Reno later nominated Potts for deputy director of the FBI, top newspapers and members of Congress protested, but Barr told the New York Times that his friend Potts “was deliberate and careful, and I developed a great deal of confidence in his judgment… I can’t think of enough good things to say about him.” A few months later, the FBI suspended Potts after suspected perjury regarding Ruby Ridge. (Potts was not charged and retired two years later.)

The Justice Department paid $3 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit from the Weaver family. But when Boundary County, Idaho filed criminal charges against Horiuchi, Barr sprang to action seeking immunity for FBI snipers. He spearheaded efforts to sway the court to dismiss all charges because holding a sniper liable would “severely undermine, if not cripple, the ability of future attorneys general to rely on such specialized units in moments of crisis such as hostage taking and terrorist acts.”

When the Justice Department won an initial appeals court victory in the case in 2000, federal judge Alex Kozinski warned in a dissent of a new James Bond “007 standard for the use of deadly force” against American citizens. The same court reversed that decision the following year. Kozinski, writing for the majority, declared: “A group of FBI agents formulated rules of engagement that permitted their colleagues to hide in the bushes and gun down men who posed no immediate threat. Such wartime rules are patently unconstitutional for a police action.”

Does William Barr still endorse “wartime rules” and a “007 standard” that absolve federal agents for questionable shootings of Americans?  Does Barr consider “illegal government killings” to be an oxymoron? Best of all, can Barr explain to us his understanding of the phrase “government under the law”?

See also this report in The American Conservative.

In addition, as far as William Barr is concerned, the Fourth Amendment does not even exist. Senator Rand Paul notes that Barr "has been a big supporter of the PATRIOT Act, which lowered the standard for spying on Americans, and he even went so far as to say the PATRIOT Act was pretty good — we should go much further."

Rand also said that Barr is a “big fan” of seizing people’s property through civil asset forfeiture. Rand continued by saying that “the first things I’ve learned about him [Barr] being for more surveillance of Americans is very, very troubling.”

Furthermore (yes, there is more), William Barr told liberal gun grabber Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in his senate confirmation hearing for becoming America’s next attorney general that he fully intends to push forward with Donald Trump’s Hitlerian “take the guns first, go through due process second” gun confiscation laws, also known as “red flag” laws. And remember: It was Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, who gave us more gun control by outlawing “bump stocks.”

Yep! The promise to protect the Second Amendment is another promise Trump has broken (that’s Number Six).

I have written previously about these Stalinesque “red flag” gun confiscation laws. And I will continue to warn people about these unconstitutional, draconian “red flag” laws as long as they continue to pose a threat to our liberties.

Of course, not only are most of the individual states currently in the process of considering “red flag” gun confiscation laws (13 states have already passed them), Republican Senator Marco Rubio (FL) has also introduced a national “red flag” law.

“Red flag” gun confiscation laws are the same kind of laws that were used to confiscate the weapons of undesirables (meaning anyone the state doesn’t like) in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China—and in every despotic nation of the world.

Here is a warning about “red flag” laws (and the NRA) from TheFireArmGuy.

And here is William Barr’s statement that “red flag” gun confiscation laws are the “single most important thing” government can do regarding gun control.

Internet blogger and longtime supporter of Donald Trump, Carl F. Worden, recently wrote this:

Now I can understand how Trump fell for the wrongful nominations of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray.  That was early-on in Trump's presidency and Trump had no way of knowing those he trusted for advice were in fact Deep State maggots intent on destroying his presidency.  But this is a solid two years into Trump's first term, and it is more than obvious that Barr will not be a team player for Trump -- or us! In fact, Barr has a very troubling record on Second Amendment issues.

At this time, I have no confidence left in Donald J. Trump.  He is either a complete fool, or he knows exactly what he's doing, and either way he's not fit to represent me anymore.

No more excuses, Mr. Trump!

Bravo, Carl!

Sadly, a host of Trump’s supporters continue to be bamboozled by the elaborate psyops misinformation (translated: propaganda) entity known as QAnon, which keeps reassuring the Trump faithful that he is covertly waging war against the globalist insiders and that any day now the curtain is going to collapse on the swamp creatures. It’s all a hoax to give Trump cover—and more time.

If the nomination of William Barr as America’s next “Top Cop” doesn’t awaken the “Always Trumpers,” there is absolutely no hope for them. Even worse is the fact that the longer Christians and conservatives continue to make excuses for Trump’s lies and deceptions, there is less and less hope for America.

© Chuck Baldwin

*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:

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Listen to "Dr King - Why I Oppose The War In Vietnam" on Spreaker.

Authors Forum: "Christianity and War" | Laurence M. Vance

Listen to "Christianity and WAR" on Spreaker.

Laurence M. Vance discusses his book "Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State" at the Ludwig von Mises Institute's 2008 Austrian Scholars Conference, the international, interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian School, held annually at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. http://mises.org

 

The Opposite of Love

"No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."  I once asked a class I was teaching, "What would you say was the Christian's number one sin?" to which a jokester replied, "Apathy, but who cares?" And as the old saying goes, "Many a true word spoken in jest."

In the book The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, a devil briefs his demon nephew, Wormwood, in a series of letters on the subtleties and techniques of tempting people.  In his writings, the devil says that the objective is not to make people wicked but to make them indifferent.

This higher devil cautions Wormwood that he must keep the patient comfortable at all costs. If he should start thinking about anything of importance, encourage him to think about his luncheon plans and not to worry so much because it could cause indigestion. And then the devil gives this instruction to his nephew: 'I, the devil, will always see to it that there are bad people. Your job, my dear Wormwood, is to provide me with people who do not care.'"2 The opposite of love is not hate. It's apathy or indifference that is practiced by people who don't care enough to care. The fact is that "people don't care what we know until they know how much we care." http://www.actsweb.org/articles/article.php?i=1122&d=2&c=3

James 2:15
Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them,
"Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?
In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

1 John 3:17
If anyone with earthly possessions sees his brother in need, but withholds his compassion from him,
how can the love of God abide in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

Maj Gen Smedley Butler on Interventionism

MORE INFORMATION HERE:

WE WHO DARE SAY NO TO WAR! , MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX , U.S. Military Killing Its Own Troops! , War and Collateral Damage , Troops Protect Government Drug Dealing , THE FAKE WAR ON TERROR , Obama Orders Children Murdered!! , [ AL-QAEDA EXPOSED!! ]

---------------------------------------------
MEDIA BLACKOUT
---------------------------------------------

Whitney Webb Interview The Ignored Yemen Genocide:
"18.4 Million People Are Starving To Death"
The Last American Vagabond Published on Nov 1, 2018

"We journalists... have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country... That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home... In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us... Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power." 

-- John Pilger --

 
Western Media Whitewash Yemen Genocide
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/06/18/western-media-whitewash-yemen-genocide.html 

Finian CUNNINGHAM | 18.06.2018

With the United Nations warning that millions of civilians could die from violence or starvation from the ongoing military siege of the Yemeni port city of Hodeida, there is no other way to describe what is happening except as “genocide”.

The more than three-year war on Yemen waged by a Western-backed Saudi coalition has been arguably genocidal from the outset, with up to eight million people facing imminent starvation due to the years-long blockade on the Arabian country, as well as from indiscriminate air strikes. [Highlight Added]

But the latest offensive on the Red Sea city of Hodeida threatens to turn the world’s already worst humanitarian disaster into a mass extermination.

Hodeida is the entry point for 90 per cent of all food and medical aid into Yemen. If the city’s port stops functioning from the military offensive – as UN aid agencies are warning – then an entire country population of more than 20 million will, as a result, be on the brink of death.

The Saudi coalition which includes Emirati forces and foreign mercenaries as well as remnants from the previous regime (which the Western media mendaciously refer to as “government forces”) is fully backed by the US, Britain and France. This coalition says that by taking Hodeida it will hasten the defeat of Houthi rebels. But to use the cutting off of food and other vital aid to civilian populations as a weapon is a blatant war crime. It is absolutely inexcusable.

This past week an emergency session at the UN Security Council made the lily-livered call for the port city to remain open. But it stopped short of demanding an end to the offensive being led by Saudi and Emirati forces against Hodeida, which is the second biggest stronghold for Houthi rebels after the capital Sanaa. The port city’s population of 600,000 is at risk from the heavy fighting underway, including air strikes and naval bombardment, even before food, water and medicines supply is halted.

Since the Security Council meeting was a closed-door session, media reports did not indicate which members of the council voted down the Swedish call for an immediate end to hostilities. However, given that three permanent members of the council, the US, Britain and France, are militarily supporting the Saudi-led offensive on Hodeida, one can assume that these states blocked the call for a cessation.

As the horror of Hodeida unfolds, Western media are reporting with a strained effort to whitewash the criminal role of the American, British and French governments in supporting the offensive. Western media confine their focus narrowly on the humanitarian plight of Hodeida’s inhabitants and the wider Yemeni population. But the media are careful to omit the relevant context, which is that the offensive on Hodeida would not be possible without the crucial military support of Western governments. If the Western public were properly informed, the uproar would be an embarrassing problem for Western governments and their servile news media.

What is notable in the Western media reportage is the ubiquitous descriptor when referring to the Houthi rebels. Invariably, they are described as “Iran-backed”. That label is used to implicitly “justify” the Saudi and Emirati siege of Hodeida “because” the operation is said to be part of a “proxy war against Iran”. The BBC, France 24, CNN, Deutsche Welle, New York Times and Washington Post are among media outlets habitually practicing this misinformation on Yemen.

Both Iran and the Houthis have said that there is no military linkage. Granted, Iran politically and diplomatically supports the Houthis, and the Yemeni population generally, suffering from the war. The Houthis share a common Shia Muslim faith as Iran, but that is a far cry from military involvement. There is no evidence of Iran being militarily involved in Yemen. The claim of a linkage relies heavily on assertion by the Saudis and Emiratis which is peddled uncritically by Western media. Even the US government has shied away from making forthright accusations against Iran supporting the Houthis militarily. Washington’s diffidence is a tacit admission that the allegations are threadbare. Besides, how could a country which is subjected to an illegal Saudi blockade of its land, sea and air routes conceivably receive weapons supplied from Iran?

By contrast, while the Western media repeatedly refer to the Houthis as “Iran-backed”, what the same media repeatedly omit is the descriptor of “American-backed” or “British and French-backed” when referring to the Saudi and Emirati forces that have been pounding Yemen for over three years. Unlike the breathless claims of Iranian linkage to the Houthis, the Western military connection is verified by massive weapons exports, and indeed coy admissions by Western governments, when they are put to it, that they are supplying fuel and logistics to aid and abet the Saudi and Emirati war effort in Yemen. 

Last week, the New York Times  affected to lament the infernal conditions in Yemen as a “complex war”, as if the conflict is an unfathomable, unstoppable mystery. Why doesn’t the New York Times publish bold editorials bluntly calling for an end to US government complicity in Yemen? Or perhaps that is too “complex” for the Times’ editorial board?

The Washington Post also wrung its hands last week,  saying: “The world’s most dire humanitarian crisis may get even worse. Emirati-led [and Saudi] offensive underway against port city of Hodeida, which is controlled by Iran-backed [sic] Houthi rebels.”

In its report, the Post did not mention the fact that air strikes by Saudi and Emirati forces are carried out with American F-15 fighter jets, British Typhoons and French Dassault warplanes. Incongruously, the Post cites US officials claiming that their forces are not “directly involved” in the offensive on the port city. How is that credible when air strikes are being conducted day after day? The Washington Post doesn’t bother to ask further.

In a BBC  report last week also lamenting the “humanitarian crisis” in Hodeida, there was the usual evidence-free casual labelling of Houthi rebels as “Iran-backed”. But, incredibly, in the entire article (at least in early editions) there was not a single mention of the verifiable fact that the Saudi and Emirati military are supplied with billions-of-dollars-worth of British, American and French weapons.

In the final paragraph of its early edition of the report, the BBC editorializes: “In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and eight other mainly Sunni Muslim Arab states launched a military campaign to restore [exiled president] Hadi’s government after becoming alarmed by the rise of the Houthi group which they see as an Iranian Shia Muslim proxy.”

Note the BBC’s lame and unconvincing implication of Iran. This is a stupendous distortion of the Yemeni conflict by the British state-owned broadcaster which, astoundingly, or perhaps that should be audaciously, completely airbrushes out any mention of how Western governments have fueled the genocidal war on Yemen.

At the end of 2014, the American and Saudi puppet self-styled “president” Mansour Hadi was kicked out by a Yemeni popular revolt led by the Houthis, but not exclusive to these rebels. The Yemeni uprising involved Shia and Sunni. To portray Iran as sponsoring a Shia proxy is a vile distortion which the Saudis and their Western backers have used in order to justify attacking Yemen for the objective of re-installing their puppet, who has been living in exile in the Saudi capital Riyadh. In short, covering up a criminal war of aggression with lies.

In reality, the Yemen war is about Western powers and their Arab despot client regimes trying to reverse a successful popular revolt that aspired to bring a considerably more democratic government to the Arab region’s poorest country, overcoming the decades it languished as a Western, Saudi client kleptocracy.

For over three years, Saudi and Emirati forces, supported with Western warplanes, bombs, missiles, attack helicopters, naval power, and air refueling, as well as targeting logistics, have waged a non-stop bombing campaign on Yemeni civilians. Nothing has been off-limits. Hospitals, schools, markets, mosques, funerals, wedding halls, family homes, farms, water-treatment plants and power utilities, all have been mercilessly obliterated. Even graveyards have been bombed.

Even during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Saudi-led coalition – the supposed custodian of the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina – has continued to massacre innocents from the air.

Elsewhere in the region, Western politicians and media have mounted hysterical protests against the Syrian government and its Russian ally when they have liberated cities from Western-backed terrorists, accusing Syria and Russia of “war crimes” and “inhuman sieges”. None of these hyperbolic Western media campaigns concerning Syria has ever been substantiated. Recall Aleppo? East Ghouta? The Syrian people have gladly returned to rebuild their lives now in peace under Syrian government protection after the Western terror proxies were routed. Western media claims about Syria have transpired to be outrageous lies, which have been hastily buried by the media as if they were never told in the first place. 

Yet in Yemen there is an ongoing, veritable genocidal war fully supported by Western governments. The latest barbarity is the siege of Hodeida with the callous, murderous objective of finally starving a whole population into submitting to the Western, Saudi, Emirati writ for dominating the country. This is Nuremberg-standard capital crimes.

With no exaggeration, Western news media are a Goebbels-like propaganda ministry – par excellence – whose duty is to whitewash genocide conducted by their governments. The barefaced lies and sly omissions being told about Yemen is one more reason among many reasons why the Western media have forfeited any vestige of credibility. They are serving as they usually do – Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria among others – as accomplices in an epic war crime against Yemen.

 

Selected Articles: US War Crimes

By Global Research News
Global Research, November 19, 2017

In an era of media distortion, our emphasis has been on the “unspoken truth”. As an independent site, it is our mandate to challenge the engineered truth by the corporate media. The selected articles below reveal media omission pertaining to US war crimes across the globe.

President Trump Accelerates Drone Strikes in Somalia

By Zero Hedge, November 19, 2017

U.S. Africa Command has conducted fourteen airstrikes since August bringing the year’s total to eighteen. The increased tempo of airstrikes started in September between the Kismayo and Mogadisu region.

Secretary Mattis Is Off Base: US Military Presence in Syria Has No Legal Grounds

By Peter Korzun, November 19, 2017

Although the US has many times stated that its target is IS only, it appears that its intentions may go beyond the stated objective. In fact, Washington is seeking to retain post-conflict  zones of influence within the country, where the American presence is illegal.

The US-led War Against ISIS Is Killing 31 Times More Civilians Than Claimed. Report

By Alex Ward, November 19, 2017

It turns out that the military’s assertion is a stunning underestimation of the true human cost of Washington’s three-year-old war against ISIS. An 18-month-long investigation by the  New York Times has found that the US-led military coalition is killing civilians in Iraq at a rate 31 times higher than it’s admitting.

America’s Renegade Warfare. Is the U.S. Guilty of Genocide

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, November 18, 2017

Claiming the right to launch preemptive wars and fighting an ill-defined “global war on terror,” the U.S. government has slaughtered vast numbers of civilians in defiance of international law, says Nicolas J S Davies.

Trump and the Nuclear Option: The Fiction of Sanity

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, November 18, 2017

It had not happened in decades. On Tuesday, members of the US Congress gathered to consider the scope of presidential power in launching a nuclear strike. The state of the mind of the current president was very much at the forefront of the discussion, even if some present preferred not to name him specifically.

Who is Behind “Fake News”? Mainstream Media Use Fake Videos and Images

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, November 18, 2017

These are four examples and there are many more. The manipulation of videos and images is routine. In some cases, these manipulations are revealed by readers, independent media and social media. In most cases they go undetected. And when they are revealed, the media will say “sorry” we apologize: they will then point to technical errors. “we got the wrong video”.

Please go and Donate to GR. Page Link :
https://www.globalresearch.ca/selected-articles-us-war-crimes/5619051

Vanessa Beeley on Yemen:
‘Saudi, US are Guilty of
War Crimes’
September 21, 2017 By 21wire

VERDICT: US & Saudi Arabia now Guilty of War Crimes in Yemen

21WIRE Associate Editor Vanessa Beeley speaks to host Patrick Henningsen about the current deteriorating situation in Yemen. Beeley gives a comprehensive breakdown and heart-felt analysis of the conflict during Episode #202 of the SUNDAY WIRE radio show. What's become clear now after 2 and half years of an undeclared war of aggression on neighbouring Yemen, is that Saudi Arabia and its allies - particularly the US and UK - are now guilty of international war crimes for their own roles in the mass suffering and death which has resulted from this senseless conflict.

Save the Children:
130 Yemeni children die each day due to Saudi blockade

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/save-children-130-yemeni-children-die-day-due-saudi-blockade/

 
 

Infowars Turns a Blind Eye to the Impending Deaths of 50,000 Children in Yemen!

The disparity between Infowars taking to task prior and current presidential administrations is contemptible.

lookintoit.org
November 21, 2017

Though the mounting war crimes of the present administration are abundant (as seen by the Global Research links above) Infowars (namely Alex Jones) continues to report the misdeeds of Donald Trump in a positive light, or omits them all together if they cannot be spun that way. Such is the case in Yemen with its unprecedented humanitarian crisis. (For background watch the video below: ‘Untold 1000s of innocent victims will die’: UN urges end of Yemen blockade)

If you've waited like I have, in the hopes that Alex Jones at some point would show impartiality in his journalism toward Trump, despite helping him get in office, I think the lack of coverage on Yemen - its circumstances being so dire and severe - to me regrettably makes it safe to say that that's not going to happen. Alex would have you believe that Trump is some maverick outside of the controlled left right paradigm, but his actions clearly prove otherwise: the impending deaths of 50,000 children because of his approved US military involvement is just one egregious example! And the overwhelming magnitude of PR Alex uses day by day to keep this facade going, I believe would have even embarrassed Edward Bernays.

Here are just three examples out of many that you can find on this site of Infowars holding Obama and his administration accountable of its unconstitutional military actions. In contrast, there are no video special reports from Infowars to post about Trump, though he’s continued and even exacerbated these same illegal actions! This in itself shows the disparity and bias of their current reporting, and marked the beginning of the end of me seeing Infowars as a trustworthy impartial news source.

This is why I feel morally obligated, especially in light of the Yemeni genocide, to dissuade people from listening to Jones unless you want to experience geopolitical news tainted by obfuscations, omissions, and distractions...he's recently made 25+ youtube videos on the NFL for crying out loud. The irony is, that the Alex Jones/Infowars videos I've chosen to remain on this site, are largely a repudiation to what Alex is now.

In short, I am compelled to believe that Alex Jones' reporting omission of what most would agree as the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet, clearly displays a stark change from him being an independent news journalist who cares about justice for all, into being a venal propagandist for persons that view the publicizing of their war crimes, counter productive to their geostrategic aims in the region. For more background as to why I say this, please watch the 12 videos at the beginning of this section. Once you have done that perhaps you'll have a similar view.

Look for more on this subject to be posted later. But for now I hope that all who actually care about the men, women and children in Yemen who are caught in this nefarious war, will put pressure on our government by calling to account the politicians and the news journalists who make it possible, and to use whatever viable way you can to inform others about these horrific and tragic circumstances.

"We journalists... have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else's country... That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is. For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home... In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us... Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power." -- John Pilger

 

	"...Yemenis Terror Networks..." - Alex Jones - Emergency Alert! Deep State Preparing To Launch Yemeni Terrorist Attacks In The US Published Nov 8, 2017
"...Iranian Networks All Over The United States..." - Alex Jones -	Alex Jones Ignores Yemen Genocide To   Demonize Iran/Yemen Fearmonger  &  Misdirect	"[Israel] It's Just A Complete Red Herring" - Alex Jones -
	"...We're Gonna Nuke Your Ass!" - Alex Jones -

** All bracketed comments are opinions of lookintoit.org unless otherwise stated.

Adaptation and Conformity
The Selling Out of Alex Jones/Infowars

To learn more about how the media manipulates the public goto these links:

Media Controllers ,Media Controllers2 , Media Controllers3 , Propaganda History , MSM IS GARBAGE , Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation 

"People don't understand the scams; I do."
-- Alex Jones 2014, Video: Line Up and Die --

"F*CK TRUMP!"...THEN A FEW MONTHS LATER..."TRUMP IS MOSES"

(In those few months, how many people died in Yemen because of "Moses"?!)

[Comment]

JUNE 14, 2018, Alex Jones had nothing to say about Donald Trump funding the White Helmets, who Infowars called ISIS Terrorists in their video: Proof White Hats Are ISIS Terrorists. This is the same group that nealry started WWIII with a fake chemical attack in Douma! Instead of holding Trump accountable, Jones step-ups his PR/smokescreen by celebrating Trump's birthday. He completely omits the fact that after all his antics of crying and cursing Trump's April 13, 2018 attack on Syria,[51] Trump turns around and gives millions to the very group that started the whole thing![47] Where are the F-bombs and media coverage for this?! (see all videos here: Psywars)

Please watch the Ben Norton video below in the middle column.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/un-10-million-more-yemenis-expected-to-starve-to-death-by-end-of-year/242906/

NEITHER TEARS NOR COVERAGE FOR YEMEN GENOCIDE

[Comment]

Yemen receives the same media blackout from Infowars as it does with the MSM. But, what's worse is that Alex Jones obfuscated the true significance of Trump's arms sales to Saudi Arabia in regard to Yemen in his YouTube video: Trump Goes To Heart Of Islam To Free The Slaves. The horrors of this war are so underreported that even Alex Jones' antics likely have received more media attention than the suffering people of Yemen. His interview with Patrick Bet-David has over 1million views...sickening.

https://theantimedia.com/msnbc-stormy-daniels-yemen-0/

Beware of both MSM & ALT-Media 

RT - “Shouldn‘t Washington be more concerned about the humanitarian catastrophe that is happening in Yemen?” Daoud Khairallah - “Absolutely. Washington should be more concerned and it bears more responsibility than other countries…Why? Because it is so close to Saudi Arabia, because it is the source of weapons that are used in Yemen. And because it can do much more, and it doesn’t. The other party that I really would blame is the media, international media, in particular the American media. They don’t do what is necessary in order to bring into the attention of the public in general the scope of these atrocities to put an end to them, to some pressure on responsible people! I just don’t understand why the US is dormant on, or not…it’s an accomplice it’s not dormant! And why is it doing this?! What is the purpose that is being served in these atrocities?…I don’t know. I really feel so upset with what is going on - continuously going on - and for what?!”

-- Daoud Khairallah - Professor of Intl Law, Georgetown University --
RT Video: Saudi coalition air strike hits Yemen market, killing dozens, Published on Dec 26, 2017

"The Great Epiphany": Precursor To Alex Jones' Selling Out

LINK: Psywars

THE lNFOWARRlOR
Published on Mar 17, 2014

"It's nightmarish to not be arrogant and to able to sit down with major CEOs of major companies who get a lot of it and say, 'You'll never stop it you might as well just join with it.' Or, to talk to major, you know, people who are very successful and billionaires and people and they don't even understand it all. They know their business and that's it. I mean it's very lonely, sitting here watching it all in white papers and all public taking place in front of me and people have lived their lives in it so they're comfortable with it, and they've adapted to it in a bad way. And that was The Great Epiphany I was given by the head of a major US bank off record on that first class American Airlines flight to be on The View."

"They will adapt to whatever we do.  Don't you understand not all adaptation is good?"  And he laughed at me and said, "We win, you lose." "...They'll muddle through everything and there's no way out of it."

-- Head of a major US bank off record, Alex Jones 2014, Video: Line Up and Die --

[Adaptation and Conformity Article Continued]

Notes:

1. Nuclear War Imminent: US Prepares To Strike North Korean Missile Sites. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, Apr 5, 2017.

2. Is The Civil War Here NOW? Published on YouTube: We Are Change Channel, Jul 2, 2018.

3. Warning: Alex Jones & Mike Adams Are Pushing a Faux “Revolution”. Published on YouTube: The Conscious Resistance Channel, Sept 24, 2018.

4. Isis Plots Christmas Attack in US/UN moves Against Israel. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, Dec 24, 2016.

5. Alex Jones Talks About Why He Supports Israel. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, May 14, 2018.

6. OMNIBUS BILL - Alex Jones: It's Time To Impeach Trump. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, Mar 23, 2018.

7. Does Saudi Arabia Own Donald Trump? Published on YouTube: The Intercept Channel, Oct 16, 2018.

8. LIVE - #IsraelGate, #Khashoggi & Trump's Dirty Deal with Saudi Arabia. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Nov 20, 2018.

9. Banksta’s Paradise feat. Donald Trump. Published on YouTube: Know More News Channel, Aug 6, 2018.

10. The Rothschild Syria Connection - Major Revelations. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, May 9, 2018.

11. Trump To Embassies: Sell American Weapons! Published on YouTube: Ron Paul Liberty Report Channel, Jan 10, 2018.

12. This is the perfect Explanation of How the War Industry Works! Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Feb 20, 2019.

13. The Truth About the Deep State - Part 3 of 3 - Military Industrial Complex. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Jun 4, 2018.

14. Weinstein & Trump - Are They Victims of False Allegations? Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Mar 21, 2018.

15. Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and the Sexy Daughter. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Mar 15, 2018.

16. Trump Is The Swamp. Trump’s Jewish Mafia & The 5 Dancing Israelis. Published on YouTube: Raising Awareness World Wide Channel, Apr 10, 2017. [Phoney Opposition]

17. American Elite Who Betrayed USA. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, June 7, 2012.

18. News You Won’t Hear Christians And Conservatives Talk About, by Chuck Baldwin Nov 29, 2018.

19. More News You Won’t Hear Christians And Conservatives Talk About, by Chuck Baldwin Dec 6, 2018.

20. Still More News You Won’t Hear Christian And Conservatives Talk About, by Chuck Baldwin Dec 13, 2018.

21. Many Pastors And Christians Behaving More Herod Than Wise Men And Shepherds, by Chuck Baldwin Dec 20, 2018.

22. Now It’s William Barr: When Will Christians And Conservatives Stop Making Excuses For Donald Trump? by Chuck Baldwin Jan 24, 2019.

23. America’s Burgeoning Imperial Presidency, by Chuck Baldwin Feb 21, 2019.

24. An Open Letter To Our Legislators, Judges And Lawmen, by Chuck Baldwin Jan 31, 2019.

25. The Truth About Trump’s Withdrawal Of U.S. forces From Afghanistan And Syria, by Chuck Baldwin Jan 3, 2019.

26. He GOP Continues To Fully Fund Planned Parenthood, by Chuck Baldwin Sept 27, 2018.

27. “The Illusions of Hope”, by Chuck Baldwin Oct 4, 2018.

28. Alex Jones “I’m Ready to Die” - Exclusive Interview After Being Banned. Published on YouTube: Valuetainment Channel, Sep 13, 2018.

29. Trump's Ties to Russia - Part 1- From #Watergate to #Russiagate. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Dec 10, 2018.

30. Trump's Ties to Russia - Part 2- The Russian Mafia. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Dec 15, 2018.

31. Trump's Ties to Russia - Part 3- Mafia Money Laundering. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Dec 18, 2018.

32. I'm in Love With Donald Trump (But Today is Opposite Day) #MAGA #DrainTheSwamp. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, March 14, 2018.

33. How Trump Helps the Mafia to Launder Blood Money. Published on YouTube: Blackstone Intelligence Network Channel, Mar 14, 2019.

34. CORSI EXPOSES TRUTH - TRUMP RECRUITED BY MILITARY!!! Published on YouTube: JustInformed Talk Channel, Apr 11, 2018.

35. Dr. Steve Pieczenik on the Soft Coup and the Counter Coup in the US. Published on YouTube: sacredheartsvideo Channel, Nov 3, 2016.

36. Dr Steve Pieczenik & ALEX JONES Soft Coup and the Counter Coup. Published on YouTube: Dr Steve Pieczenik Channel, Oct 4, 2017.

37. Former Marine Colonel’s Wife: Kay Griggs, Sleeping With The Enemy [Unedited]. Published on Youtube: Facundo Soares Gache Channel, Oct 17, 2015.

38. Bombs Away! US Airstrikes Every 12 Minutes? Published on YouTube: Ron Paul Liberty Report Channel, Jun 21, 2018.

39. Exclusive: "Trump Unleashes Secret Life Extension Technology To Public, game-changing tech no longer suppressed by global elite" Infowars, June 4, 2018.

40. Trump Wants To Save America, Release Secret Technologies, And Retire. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, Jun 22, 2018.

41. The CIA Director Just Cheerfully Chatted up the CFR About Chemtrails. Published on YouTube: Truthstream Media Channel, Jul 6, 2016. [Geoengineering].

42. 5G and Trump’s Tweets - Ignorance, Greed, or Insanity? By Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, Feb 22, 2019.

43. Trump's Best Birthday Yet. Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, Jun 14, 2018.

THREE OUTRAGEOUS STORIES The Media Wants You To Forget! Published on YouTube: WeAreChange Channel, Jun 14, 2018.

US releases 6.6$mn for White Helmets, UN agency. Published on YouTube: RT Channel, Jun 15, 2018.

44. The Pentagon’s Missing Trillion: What You Need to Know. Published on YouTube: Corbett Report Extras Channel, Dec 18, 2018.

45. Learn The Secrets Of Trump 's "Space Force" Published on YouTube: The Alex Jones Channel, Jun 18, 2018.

46. Arrest Angelina Jolie For War Crimes Kony 2012. Published on YouTube: greatnessurvives Channel, Aug 21, 2012.

47. “Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.” -- Donald Trump Fox and Friends on the morning of February 17, 2016.

48. Save the Children: 130 Yemeni Children Die Each Day Due To Saudi Blockade, By Brecht Jonkers Nov 11, 2017 Almasdarnews.com.

49. Alex Jones “I’m Ready to Die” - Exclusive Interview After Being Banned. Published on YouTube: Valuetainment Channel, Sep 13, 2018.

50. Propagandist UN front Angelina Jolie Needs To Go To Prison. Published on YouTube: AwaketoTruth Channel, Mar 13, 2012.

51. "He's playing a character. He is a performance artist." Randall Wilhite Alex Jones' Attorney According to Austin American-Statesman Report of Child Custody Hearing. Exclusive: In Travis County custody case, jury will search for real Alex Jones, by Jonathan Tilove, Apr 18, 2017.

52. Glenn Beck Is Rat Poison, Operation Paul Revere Video Contest, By Anthony Coralluzzo 2013.

(See All Reference Material Here: Psywars)

C  O  N  F  O  R  M  I  T  Y:
A Glaring Example That Happens Everyday!


The TSA
(and other experiments in evil)

corbettreport
Published on Feb 1, 2019

TRANSCRIPT AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/tsa

In 1961, a psychologist conducted an experiment demonstrating how ordinary men and women could be induced to inflict torture on complete strangers merely because an authority figure had ordered them to do so. In 2001, the United States government formed the Transportation Security Administration to subject hundreds of millions of air travelers to increasingly humiliating and invasive searches and pat downs. These two phenomena are not as disconnected as they may seem. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we explore The TSA (and other experiments in evil).

 ...

“We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”
- Former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg -


TRUMP LIED!
https://chuckbaldwinlive.com/Articles/tabid/109/ID/3875/TRUMP-LIED.aspx

Published: Thursday, May 16, 2019

It is undoubtedly true that the vast majority of politicians are liars. Some, however, are more prolific liars than others. And any honest, objective, even semi-intelligent person knows that Donald Trump takes the blue ribbon in the lying game. He lies so much, he can’t even play a game of golf without cheating.

In a column dated August 10, 2017, I wrote a piece entitled The Truth About Donald Trump. In the column I documented the truth about Trump’s lifetime conduct. In short:

*Donald Trump spent his entire adult life scamming people out of billions of dollars.

Trump’s seven bankruptcies (which he brags about) cost investors, employees and consumers multiplied billions of dollars. Doug Heller, the executive director of Consumer Watchdog, said Trump is the "most egregious, almost comical example" of the disparity between what the average American faces when going through bankruptcy and the "ease with which the very rich can move in and out of bankruptcy."

*Donald Trump spent his entire adult life as a perverse philanderer and miserable misogynist.

I documented what I could on this subject in the column referenced above. The full account of Trump’s lifelong moral debauchery could not even be reported in polite company. In short, Trump is a sick moral reprobate of the lowest order.

*Donald Trump spent his entire business life consorting with international crime syndicates and the Jewish mafia.

In my column, I documented Trump’s crooked, illegal, unethical and immoral penchant for deal-making with some of the most unscrupulous, dishonest and evil mafia figures in the world (I even named a few of them). Donald Trump wouldn’t know what honesty and truth were if they came up and bit him on his dumpy derriere. (Read my column referenced above for documentation and details.)

Remember, the focus of that 2017 column was on Donald Trump’s conduct over his entire lifespan right up to and including when he became President. But what about Trump’s track record since becoming President? With his first administration more than half finished, we now have that track record. Surprise! Surprise! Trump is the same kind of miserable, lying, pretending, duplicitous scoundrel he was before being elected.

Here are a few examples of President Trump’s many lies. (“Thank you” to one of my faithful readers, JT, for helping me with this creepy compilation of Trump’s deceit and deception.)

1. Trump promised to put Hillary Clinton in jail.

On the campaign trail, Trump talked about putting Hillary in jail in just about every city in which he held a rally. But after becoming President, Trump has gushed all over Bill and Hillary, calling them “good friends” and saying they are “good people.” Of course, what he’s said since becoming President IS true. He and the Clintons are good friends. They have been good friends for almost a lifetime. The “good people” part, of course, is just another lousy lie.

TRUMP LIED!

2. Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.

But after becoming President, Donald Trump’s administration is almost a carbon copy of G.W. Bush’s globalist insiders. Trump’s appointment of CFR and Bilderberg swamp creatures matches those of Bush or Obama. If he gets a second term, his appointment of globalists will surpass his predecessors. And his appointment of Zionists already exceeds those of Bush or Obama.

TRUMP LIED!

3. Trump promised to reduce deficit spending.

What a crock of bull manure that promise was! Trump and his fellow Republicans have exploded federal spending and federal deficits to records never seen before. Plus, Trump has superintended over another serious stock bubble that most economists predict is nearing another crash.

TRUMP LIED!

4. Trump said that government vaccinations of small children should “stop now,” rightly linking vaccinations to certain diseases such as autism (and even death).

Now, Trump tells parents that their children “have to get shots.” He repeated: “They have to get their shots.”

TRUMP LIED!

5. Donald Trump promised to get America out of these infernal, incessant foreign wars.

Talk about a whopper of a lie! Trump never intended to stop America’s foreign wars.

As I have noted several times in this column:

Trump has dropped more bombs and missiles on Middle Eastern countries in a comparable period of time than any modern U.S. President. Presidents Bush, Obama and now [2017] Trump have dropped nearly 200,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Trump’s rate of bombing eclipses both Bush and Obama; and Trump is on a pace to drop over 100,000 [180,000 to be precise] bombs and missiles on Middle Eastern countries during his first term of office—which would equal the number of bombs and missiles dropped by Obama during his entire eight-year presidency.

Here’s more perspective:

The United States Government, under the Trump administration, reportedly drops a bomb every 12 minutes, which means that 121 bombs are dropped in a day, and 44,096 bombs per year. The Pentagon’s data show that during George W. Bush’s eight years he averaged 24 bombs dropped per day, that is, 8,750 per year. Over the course of Obama’s time in office, his military dropped 34 bombs per day, 12,500 per year. This shows that even though American presidents are all war criminals, Trump is the most vicious of them all.

As I said:

Trump is dropping almost FOUR TIMES MORE BOMBS than Barack Obama and over FIVE TIMES MORE BOMBS than G.W. Bush—which included military invasions of two countries.  

We also know that Trump expanded America’s wars in Afghanistan and Syria (and, no, he is NOT bringing U.S. troops home from Syria) and is ramping up America’s war machine against Venezuela, Somalia, China and Russia. And this does not even take into account the way Trump has given Benjamin Netanyahu’s raunchy racist regime the green light to expand its wars against the Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria and Iran or the U.S./Israeli proxy war (with Saudi Arabia taking the lead) in Yemen.

Now, Donald Trump is escalating a U.S. war in Iran.

On Tuesday the US military announced that B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers will be deployed to the Middle East in response to what US Acting Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan dubbed "indications of a credible threat by Iranian regime forces." (Source)

“Credible threat” to whom? Does anyone actually believe that Iran poses a “credible threat” to the United States? What a farce! The truth is, Israel has been itching for a war with Iran for almost forever. But typical of the bullying apartheid Zionist State, Israel knows it cannot take on Iran unless the U.S. brings in military assistance. Hence, the Zionist toady Donald Trump is ratcheting up a U.S. war with Iran. Yep! This is just another war for Israel, folks.

Vice President Mike Pence wasn’t kidding when he told attendees at the recent AIPAC convention: “Her [Israel’s] fight is OUR fight.” Really, Mike? Tell me, when did the American people get to vote on THAT? And please tell me, Mike, where did you find THAT in the Constitution that you took an oath to preserve, protect and defend?

National Security Advisor John Bolton (CFR) and Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan (CFR) reportedly now have a plan in place to send 120,000 U.S. ground forces to Iran’s doorstep. Donald Trump is inching toward military confrontation with Iran.

Ladies and gentlemen, under Donald Trump, America’s wars are literally “off the charts.”

TRUMP LIED!

6. Donald Trump emphatically promised to build a wall on the U.S./Mexican border, which Mexico would pay for.

This is one promise I am glad he hasn’t kept. I AM ALL FOR STOPPING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. But I do NOT like border walls. I agree with Ron Paul: The same walls that ostensibly are used to keep people out can also be used to keep people IN. Plus, unless the United States is prepared to put military snipers and machine gunners on and around the walls (like Israel does), they do not work.

But Trump’s lie is not simply about the wall; it is about the entire phony façade that he truly wants to stop illegal immigration. It’s all a BIG, FAT LIE, folks.

Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) recently reported the stark truth about Donald Trump’s record on illegal immigration. And like most of the things, the truth is exactly opposite Trump’s rhetoric. ALIPAC produced a factual record of Trump’s immigration policies.

ALIPAC documents how Trump hasn’t reduced legal immigration levels like he said he would; instead he has raised them. That Trump promised to stop illegal caravans, but instead he has allowed them to enter the U.S.—and has even supplied transportation for many of these illegals, at taxpayer expense, of course. That Trump promised to end Obama’s DACA amnesty, but he has NOT ended DACA. That he promised to oppose amnesty for illegals, but he and son-in-law Jared Kushner have cut a deal with Democrats to actually INCREASE the number of illegals receiving amnesty. That he promised to end birthright citizenship, but hasn’t done it. That he promised to end sanctuary cities, but hasn’t done it. That Trump promised to end the catch-and-release of illegals. But not only has he not ended the practice, he has INCREASED the practice.

ALIPAC President William Gheen notes:

Trump's border wall promise remains 90% broken because a wall will not work as long as Border Patrol catches and releases illegals and escorts them into the USA.

Gheen goes on to say:

As you can see from these ten painful facts above [read his article], President Donald J. Trump is conducting the largest fraud ever committed upon the American public.

We thought we were electing another President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but we got another GW Bush because Trump's immigration policies and legislative agenda are very similar to the Bush administration.

We need all Americans to come to terms with these betrayals and begin to organize rapidly to defend against these policies and the new legislative Amnesty push coming from the White House.

With lifelong Democrats like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump running the show in the White House and espousing plans to run for President as Democrats one day it makes many of us wonder... Was Trump ever really a Republican at all or merely an actor playing the role of a Judas Goat leading conservatives to our doom?

If you listen to Trump carefully or read his numerous Tweets, you will see Trump blaming Mexico, Democrats, judges, anyone and everyone but himself for these outrages at our border. Trump wants us to believe it is everyone else's fault and responsibility but his own, when in truth the illegal immigration buck stops with Trump!

TRUMP LIED!

7. Trump said he would release documents investigating 9/11.

Of course, that was another one of Trump’s monster fibs. He knows 9/11 was not carried out by 19 Muslim hijackers. He knows that his Jewish Mafia buddies were neck-deep in the 9/11 conspiracy. Trump never intended to investigate 9/11. It was all a ruse to fool conservatives and get elected.

TRUMP LIED!

8. Donald Trump said he “loved” government whistleblower Julian Assange and called WikiLeaks “amazing.”

Now that Assange has been arrested by British authorities after Ecuador stripped him of his political asylum and his citizenship was suspended, Trump declared, “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing.” And you watch: Trump is going to sit back and let the U.S. government and its allies in Europe torture and murder Assange for having the guts to blow the whistle on the U.S. government’s illegal spying on the American people.

TRUMP LIED!

Speaking of which…when it came to illegal government spying on the American people, Trump actually DID keep his word. But it’s not a good thing. He told us during his presidential campaign in 2016 that he fully intended to maintain—and even expand—the federal government’s illegal spying on U.S. citizens. And he has definitely kept that promise.

Under Donald Trump, America’s burgeoning Police State is growing faster than ever.  Under Trump, the IRS is not only a tax-gathering agency; it is a spy agency. I could spend almost forever on this point.

9. Trump promised the American people that he would be the greatest Pro-Second Amendment President the country has ever seen.

Since becoming President, however, Donald Trump has foisted more gun-control laws on the American people than Barack Obama.

Trump signed the worthless “bump-stock” ban into law. Trump repeatedly says that he is open to siding with Democrats in supporting additional gun control legislation. Plus, Trump is enthusiastically championing (along with Republicans Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham) one of the most—if not THE MOST—dangerous, draconian and downright Stalinesque gun-control laws to ever be proposed in the United States: “red flag” gun confiscation laws.

Since Trump’s emphatic call for law enforcement to “take the guns first and go through due process second,” 15 states and the District of Columbia have passed these communist “red flag” laws, and THOUSANDS of innocent Americans, who did not commit a crime, did not threaten to commit a crime, were not accused of committing a crime—and without a hearing, without a trial and without any constitutional due process—have ALREADY had their guns CONFISCATED by police. And who is the chief promoter of these unconstitutional gun confiscations? President Donald Trump.

TRUMP LIED!

10. Trump promised to make America great.

But since taking office, Donald Trump has done everything he can, not to make America great, but to make Israel great. 

After Trump was elected, I predicted:

2017 will see a tsunami of Zionistic thought and theology immersing the church. Ultra-Zionists in Congress such as John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Ted Cruz are preparing to launch a fresh Israel-First political campaign like this country has never seen. And I predict that Donald Trump will likewise launch his own Israel-First campaign from the White House. (Source)

They did, and he did.

TRUMP LIED!

Then again, should we expect anything different? Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo admitted (gleefully) that “we [he and President Trump by the inferred chain of command] lie, cheat and steal.” He went on to say, “We [have] entire training courses [on how to lie, cheat and steal].” Of course, Pompeo claims to be an ardent Christian. BARF!

From what I can tell, an Internet blogger by the name of Fred Reed is a sarcastic skeptic when it comes to religion. And I certainly do NOT share many of his sentiments and statements (and I wouldn’t use his language). However, he wrote a blog entitled Christians Who Hate, specifically pointing to Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo. And I have to tell you, the bulk of what he said in this blog is spot-on. And, truth be told, if I wasn’t already a devoted disciple of Jesus Christ—and I had to judge Christ and Christianity by the likes of Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, GW Bush, Robert Jeffress, John Hagee and Jerry Falwell Jr.—I would probably be a sarcastic skeptic too.

The point of all of this is: Donald Trump is a pathological liar, and anyone who still believes a word he says is gullible beyond belief. The greater problem is, this man’s deceit and duplicity has the potential to plunge America into World War III and the mother of all depressions—not to mention a Police State to rival Mao’s China.

I’m not faulting anyone who voted for Donald Trump. You couldn’t stomach Hillary Clinton (neither can I). He told you what you wanted to hear. And you believed him. What else could you do? But there is absolutely no excuse—NONE—for continuing to believe this total phony after over two years of his myriad and continual lies and deceptions.

Sooner or later, conservatives and Christians are going to wake up to the fact that Donald Trump is the consummate corrupt CON MAN. My fear is that they will not wake up in time for America to be spared from what this fraud is about to rain down upon the world.

© Chuck Baldwin

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'US & UK can stop Yemen war today,
but they love Saudi money'
- Hussain Albukhaiti, Journalist -

Trump Signs 380bn Weapons Deal with Terrorist State,
Makes US an Accomplice in Yemenis Genocide

"They are particularly upset that president Trump arrived in Riyadh to sign a 110bn arms deal.  These arms will go to the Saudis and they will use these arms in their war in Yemen." 

-- Martin Smith PBS Frontline --

!!UNCONSCIONABLE!! 

Business As Usual: More Weapons To The Saudis

RonPaulLibertyReport
Streamed live on Jan 8, 2019

With the killing of opposition journalist Khashoggi safely out of the headlines and with the House refusing to hold a vote on US involvement in the Yemen war, the Trump Administration is back to its Plan A: Sell more weapons to the Saudis as the Saudis annihilate Yemen. The latest is a $200 million missile "defense" deal. Will the Democrat-controlled House reverse former Speaker Ryan and hold a vote on US participation in the Yemen war?

Trump ignores Congress to sell more weapons to the Saudis...


Weekly Update --- Congress Fiddles While Trump Lurches Toward War on Iran

RonPaulLibertyReport
Published on May 29, 2019

Trump ignores Congress to sell more weapons to the Saudis...

[A-Must-See]

LIVE - #IsraelGate, #Khashoggi
Trump's Dirty Deal with Saudi Arabia

Blackstone Intelligence Network
Streamed live Nov 20, 2018

For all the talk about #RussiaGate, the media ignores the true group behind US election interference: the Zionist state of #Israel. The debt owed by #Trump to the Zionists is a big reason for his defense of Crown Prince #MBS despite the overwhelming evidence of his complicity in the death of #Khashoggi.

Link: C.I.A. 
(the link has been updated)

ONLINE PDF:

www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/06_iran_strategy.pdf 

“This channel [Truthstream Media] has covered multiple times that Iran is so much in the crosshairs, it’s such a persistent target. It’s such a country that these war generals and policy wonks in Washington are salivating over, that an actual entire book was written by the Brookings Institute - yeah satan’s own think tank - raising the question, ’which path to Persia?’ Not whether there would be a conflict in Iran, not whether they seek regime change, but how to get there and maintain international credibility. And they ran through everything from a false flag attack, to a joint air strike with Israel or Saudi Arabia, to a domino situation with Syria or surrounding countries, to a PT boat confrontation and much more.”

-- Aaron Dykes, journalist, Truthstream Media, video : While Everyone Was Busy Being Distracted by Texas… --

http://truthstreammedia.com/

GORKED: Trump’s Dim Khashoggi Statement Used to Promulgate Lies on Iran, Middle East
https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/11/21/gorked-trumps-retarded-khashoggi-statement-used-to-promulgate-lies-on-iran-middle-east/

November 21, 2018 By 21wire

This week, the White House released a bizarre screed, apparently authored by US President Donald Trump entitled, “Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia” (read his full statement below). As Trump statements go, this was one of the most incoherent proclamations made to date. In it, the President rambles with the usual prefabricated talking points on the evils of Iran, Assad, Hezbollah, while exonerating the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for any and all misdeeds and international war crimes, whilst crooning the virtues of how US arms sales abroad create jobs at home. It’s raffish even by Trump standards, and that’s saying a lot. The worst part about this statement is the lack of push-back from his sworn opposition in Congress and the ‘free press.’ But there are definite reasons for their relative laissez faire reaction. It turns out that foreign meddling and influence in US affairs is fine, so long as those doing it are lining the right pockets.

Because this address is coming at a pivotal time in US and Middle East relations, it would behoove all parties to apply a thorough cross-examination to the President’s catalogue of errors and disinformation. Evidently, the western media is not up to the task, so we’ve decided to weigh-in to inspect Trump’s errant soliloquy point by point.

CAVEAT: Perhaps the most frustrating part of this misadventure is that the length of the critique exceeds that of the offending article. Alas, we hope readers will find the following analysis useful.

Below we rebut each of Trump’s 12 erroneous claims:

FALSE: Iran is responsible for Saudi Arabia’s three & a half year-long illegal war of aggression against Yemen
REALITY: In March 2015, Yemen was viciously attacked by a coalition of gulf monarchies led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, armed and supported militarily and diplomatically by the US and UK. By all standards of international law, this is an illegal war of aggression which has already killed tens of thousands of innocent Yemenis.

FALSE: “On the other hand, Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave.”
REALITY: Iran is not in Yemen. This statement is ludicrous. What’s even more amazing though is that no Democrat possesses the intellectual or political wherewithal to refute it.

FALSE: Trump claims that the Iranian government has stated “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
REALITY: In the past, there have been some anti-American protests in Iran (and understandably so considering the last 70 years of US lording over Iran) where crowds have demonstrated with these types of expletives, but the Iranian government has not, nor did its previous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad say such things in 2007.

FALSE: “Iranians have killed many Americans and other innocent people throughout the Middle East.”
REALITY: If one is to read through this recycled neoconservative trope, they will find it’s referring to the 1983 truck bombing of an US Marine on October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War, killing 241 soldiers. Despite the repeated proclamations by Neoconservatives, FOX, CNN and Israel, there is no proof the Iranian government mounted the attack. Furthermore, even if a link could be made between the two, the reality is the US was a party to the war in Lebanon on the side of Israel, while concurrently backing Saddam Hussein in a brutal eight year war against Iran at that time – which would mean the entire Middle East was an active war theater. In an ideal world, all of this would be vital context for White House speech writers, but sadly, the President’s foreign policy team seems to lack any real grasp of events in this regard. Moreover, Iran has fought ISIS and al Qaeda in both Syria and Iraq, and so by taking his ill-informed stance, Trump is effectively aligning himself with ISIS and al Qaeda.

FALSE: Iran is “trying to destabilize Iraq’s fragile attempt at democracy.”
REALITY: The assistance provided by Iran was decisive in defeating ISIS. Just ask any Iraqi. By taking this position, Trump is effectively siding with ISIS and the continued destablization of Iraq through punitive sanctions against its most important trading partner and neighbor, Iran.

FALSE: Syrian President Bashar al Assad “has killed millions of his own citizens.”
REALITY: Trump’s fantastic projections here are based on the same fraudulent methodology applied by the entire western mainstream media and body politic since 2011. Much of the early Syria casualty figures provided to international agencies were ad hoc and unverified, provided by western-based and western financed pseudo NGOs like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The current figure circulating of “500,000 dead Syrians” is not based on any veritable data, and does not discriminate between dead Syrian Army, Syrian Police, Syrian Militia, human shields, Syrian civilians killed by terrorist shelling and bombs, and most notably: enemy combatants including militants, terrorists, and tens of thousands of foreign mercenary fighters imported into the conflict since 2012. If properly and objectively parsed, data will likely reveal Syrian civilian casualties to be between 150,000 to 200,000, and from those a large percentage will have been killed by the “rebel” terrorist operations against Syrian civilians, in Aleppo, Damascus etc. Not to mention the 10,000 plus Syrians killed by Washington’s reckless bombing of Raqqa. By any real metric, Trump’s statement is pure fabrication.

FALSE: Hezbollah is “propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria.”
REALITY: Hezbollah are fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, so by taking this position, Trump has sided with ISIS and al Qaeda.

FALSE: “It is our paramount goal to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world!”
REALITY: The US have already procured billions of dollars in arms for al Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria, much of it paid for by Saudi Arabia.

INCOHERENT: “They [Saudi Arabia] have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran.”
REALITY: US and Iran are not in a military war with each other, but the US has waged a renewed, unprovoked economic war on Iran this year. However, both Israel and Saudi Arabia are waging direct war against Iran, its allies and Shia Muslims in the Middle East. By siding with Saudi and Israel in this way, Trump is advancing a sectarian agenda for the region which will result in more bloodshed and instability.

RIDICULOUS: “Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism.”
REALITY: Saudi Arabia, like Qatar and other gulf monarchies, have spent billions of dollars backing Radical Islamic Terrorism in Syria, as well as deploying radical Wahabbi clerics to Mosques around the world which has been essential in the continuous recruitment of Mujahedeen Islamist fighters and terrorists since 1979.

IDIOTIC: On the charge that Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi: “… maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”
REALITY: Among all the patently stupid, nonsensical and fanciful projections in Trump’s remarks, this one shows this President has close to zero political aptitude in the field of international relations. In a normal political situation, the press would pan this speech so viciously that the President’s chief of staff would be forced to fire the speech writer or communications director. But as we’ll demonstrate below, this is not an independent White House.

MORALLY BANKRUPT: Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend $110 billion with Uncle Sam Inc. to “purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors.”
REALITY: This is the height of corruption, placing arms sales above victims of war. If the said deals go through, expect Saudi Arabia to use those weapons to continue attacking Yemenis and facilitate an illegal occupation of parts of Yemen.

What’s more amazing than Trump’s fantasy projections however, is the complete impotence of the Democratic opposition to pull him up on the string lies and disinformation contained in this statement. In football terms, this would be a ‘open goal’ for the opposition, as each of his false statements carries grave foreign policy implications with it. The fact that Congressional Democrats including Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein, and also ‘independent’ Bernie Sanders – are all silent on this issue decisively proves that both the Executive Branch, the Congressional Republicans and Democrats, all controlled by whip-line imposed by two foreign lobbies who share a pronounced anti-Iranian policy: Israel and Saudi Arabia. For this same reason, even supposedly ‘anti-Trump’ media outlets like CNN – who will routinely spend days on end deconstructing a flippant tweet by Trump – will not be ‘fact checking’ Trump’s speech on this occasion for the simple reason that by doing do they would expose their own continuously slanted, limp non-reporting of real events in the Middle East, especially in relation to Israel. CNN’s own direct links to the Israeli Lobby, the Pentagon and the CIA ensure that there will be no real critique of this debacle of statement by Trump. In this way, they are preserving the binary narrative required by both the US establishment and the Israeli lobby:

Israel = Good
Iran = Bad
Saudi Arabia = American Jobs Creator, Necessary Evil

If one was to make an educated guess, it’s very likely that the following statement was drafted by either the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee  (AIPAC), either of whom would be relying on a White House operating under an extreme level of ignorance when it comes to the real state of affairs in Iran, Syria, and most of all, Yemen.

Although it may be too early to call, this is perhaps the stupidest Presidential foreign policy statement in the history of the United States of America. It is simply breathtaking. A full transcript of the President’s statement  here:

 LINK: MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The Military-Security Industrial Complex: Brainwashed Public. Endless Wars Presented as “The New Normal”?

Richard Galustian
Global Research

August 11, 2018 By Featured News

Why has it become acceptable that we and particularly our children take for granted wars to be normal? It is because of the profits of Defense companies?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US continues to have the highest military expenditure of any country in the world. In 2017 the USA spent more on its military than the next seven highest-spending countries combined. At $610 billion, which does not include the strongly rumored secret funds available to the military/security industrial complex, thought to be an additional $200 billion; and they will do absolutely anything, and I mean anything, to protect their interests. Many expect that Congress by 2020 will approve close to a Trillion dollars a year budget for them!

Media is a critical part of their strategy.

Every type of media.

Social media in particular but that is a whole other subject of investigation of itself. Will leave that for someone else to write about. The reason of this piece is to open a window by giving one particularly pertinent example for the reader of the Pentagon’s influence on Hollywood and mention other facts seemingly kept hidden from the public, about how we treat our veterans.

The Military/Security Industrial Complex have a never ending quest to counter movies that do get through their net that put American soldiers and wars in a bad light.

The fact is that America and their surrogates are involved today in 2018 in 76*, yes 76 wars around the world. Another shocking fact is that U.S. military forces have directly been responsible for at least 15 million deaths since WW11.

(*This number was quoted in the closing minutes of an hour special on the legendary Seymour Hersh by DEMOCRACY NOW with Amy Goodman last month.)

These include the Korean and Vietnam Wars also including fatalities in Cambodia and Laos. The two Iraq Wars and Afghanistan, alone caused in excess of 3 million deaths.

Let’s not forget the disgrace of the millions of injured and currently still being killed for no reason whatsoever in Yemen by US Ally, Saudi Arabia.

In other past and present surrogate US wars there have been another 10 million plus deaths in such far off places as Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Libya, Syria and Sudan, to name a handful of the countries where America is responsible directly or indirectly for death, mayhem and destruction.

The zombie like American public seems unaware of these numbers and knows even less about the proxy wars that the United States is supporting. The main stream media, in part, we can thank for that.

How brainwashed has the public become?

How do they promote their propaganda for war?

Well, the US government agencies have worked behind the scenes on almost all major action movies and thousands of TV series over the years including for example 24, Homeland, Mission Impossible, Charlie Wilson’s War even Meet the Parents.

The most poignant and relevant example i can sight is from Jon Voight’s film ‘Transformers’ ; a scene, just after American troops have been attacked by a robot, the Pentagon’s Hollywood liaison for nearly 30 years based in Los Angeles, Phil Strub personally inserted the line “Bring ’em home”, reportedly according allegedly to Strub, a very important protective, paternalistic quality to be projected, when in reality, the Pentagon does not have any such rules, principles or morality; quite the opposite.

“Bring ’em home” to what?

Look at the real life situation; the disregard for American Veterans is legendary with an estimated 250,000 sleeping rough on the streets of America. Nearly 60,000 are reportedly awaiting immediate medical assistance, still not forthcoming. Suicides are at the highest rates in history amongst Vets.

In fact statistics show 10% of America’s total homeless population are US veterans, men who wore proudly the American uniform, who faced danger for their country. Yet there’s endless spending; trillions of dollars, of government, tax payers, money for corporate weapons contractors, yet no money for veterans. Why? The Pentagon spends $250m a day since shortly after 9/11 on wars and spends trillions of dollars to buy weapons, many useless or inadequate for purpose, mostly from the five big US defense companies. Something is seriously wrong with the system and American morality. One wonders are the American people aware of these facts?

In movie terms, the turning point, after a string of anti-war films about Vietnam in the 70s, was the movie TOP GUN. This changed everything. This made military sexy. A plethora of what can only be described as follow on films glamorizing the military and bravery of American forces personnel, which in reality is the opposite of the truth. The My Lai massacres being just one example of the obscenity of war.

The Orwellian bottom line is, the propaganda level must feed the now brainwashed and malleable public that Wars are a necessary part of life; making the public think it’s normal, which is of course complete nonsense.

All that money should be spent on US domestic infrastructure, health and education. Its out right political and corporate corruption that maintains the military/security industrial complex.

FULL ARTICLE:

https://21stcenturywire.com/2018/08/11/the-military-security-industrial-complex-brainwashed-public-endless-wars-presented-as-the-new-normal/

The Houthis and War in Yemen

South Front
Published on Jul 3, 2018

1) The full text of this analysis can be found here: You can find a full text of this analysis here: https://southfront.org/the-houthis-an...

2) There is a spelling mistake in the voiceover at 47:48. The voice says "Afghanistan and Iran", but the video means "Afghanistan and Iraq". The updated version of the video can be found on southfront.org.
Sincerely yours,
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Africa & Yemen
-------------------------------

 

"African bases have long been essential, for instance, to Washington’s ongoing shadow war in Yemen, which has seen a significant increase in drone strikes under the Trump administration."

- Tomgram: Nick Turse, The U.S. Military Moves Deeper into Africa -

The US Military Is All Over Africa Despite Not Being at War in Africa

August 31st, 2018
By Strategic Culture Foundation

Around 200,000 US troops are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world. Those forces utilize several hundred military installations. Africa is no exemption. On August 2, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier took command of US Army Africa, promising to “hit the ground running.”

The US is not waging any wars in Africa but it has a significant presence on the continent. Navy SEALs, Green Berets, and other special ops are currently conducting nearly 100 missions across 20 African countries at any given time, waging secret, limited-scale  operations. According to the magazine Vice, US troops are now conducting 3,500 exercises and military engagements throughout Africa per year, an average of 10 per day — an astounding 1,900% increase since the command rolled out 10 years ago. Many activities described as “advise and assist” are actually indistinguishable from combat by any basic definition.

There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel, including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that  figure was only 6,000 just a year ago. The troops are strung throughout the continent spread across 53 countries. There are 54 countries on the “Dark Continent.” More than 4,000 service members have converged on East Africa. The US troop count  in Somalia doubled last year.

When AFRICOM was created there were no plans to establish bases or put boots on the ground. Today, a network of small staging bases or stations have cropped up. According to investigative journalist Nick Turse, “US military bases (including forward operating sites, cooperative security locations, and contingency locations) in Africa number around fifty, at least.” US troops in harm’s way in Algeria, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan Tunisia, and Uganda qualif y  for  extra pay.

The US African Command (AFRICOM) runs drone surveillance programs, cross-border raids, and intelligence. AFRICOM has claimed responsibility for development, public health, professional and security training, and other humanitarian tasks. Officials from the Departments of State, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Energy, Commerce, and Justice, among other agencies, are involved in AFRICOM activities. Military attachés outnumber diplomats at many embassies across Africa.

Last October, four US soldiers lost their lives in Niger. The vast majority of Americans probably had no idea that the US even had troops participating in combat missions in Africa before the incident took place. One serviceman was reported dead in Somalia in June. The Defense Department is mulling plans to “right-size” special operations missions in Africa and reassign troops to other regions, aligning the efforts with the security priorities defined by the 2018 National Defense Strategy. That document prioritizes great power competition over defeating terrorist groups in remote corners of the globe. Roughly 1,200 special ops troops on missions in Africa are looking at a drawdown. But it has nothing to do with leaving or significantly cutting back. And the right to unilaterally return will be reserved. The infrastructure is being expanded enough to make it capable of accommodating substantial reinforcements. The construction work is in progress. The bases will remain operational and their numbers keep on rising.

A large drone base in Agadez, the largest city in central Niger, is reported to be under construction. The facility will host armed MQ-9 Reaper drones which will finally take flight in 2019. The MQ-9 Reaper has a range of 1,150 miles, allowing it to provide strike support and intelligence-gathering capabilities across West and North Africa from this new base outside of Agadez. It can carry GBU-12 Paveway II bombs. The aircraft features synthetic aperture radar for integrating GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack Munitions. The armament suite can include four Hellfire air-to-ground anti-armor and anti-personnel missiles. There are an estimated 800 US troops on the ground in Niger, along with one drone base and the base in Agadez that is being built. The Hill called it “the largest US Air Force-led construction project of all time.”

According to Business Insider, “The US military presence here is the second largest in Africa behind the sole permanent US base on the continent, in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.” Four thousand American servicemen are stationed at Camp Lemonnier (the US base located near Djibouti City) — a critical strategic base for the American military because of its port and its proximity to the Middle East.

Officially, the camp is the only US base on the continent or, as AFRICOM calls it, “a forward operating site,” — the others are “cooperative security locations” or “non-enduring contingency locations.” Camp Lemonnier is the hub of a network of American drone bases in Africa that are used for aerial attacks against insurgents in Yemen, Nigeria, and Somalia, as well as for exercising control over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. In 2014, the US signed a new 20-year lease on the base with the Djiboutian government, and committed over $1.4 billion to modernize and expand the facility in the years to come.

In March, the US and Ghana signed a military agreement outlining the conditions of the US military presence in that nation, including its construction activities. The news was met with protests inside the country.

It should be noted that the drone attacks that are regularly launched in Africa are in violation of US law. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), adopted after Sept. 11, 2001, states that the president is authorized to use force against the planners of those attacks and those who harbor them. But that act does not apply to the rebel groups operating in Africa.

It’s hard to believe that the US presence will be really diminished, and there is no way to know, as too many aspects of it are shrouded in secrecy with nothing but “leaks” emerging from time to time. It should be noted that the documents obtained by TomDispatch under the United States Freedom of Information Act contradict AFRICOM’s official statements about the scale of US military bases around the world, including 36 AFRICOM bases in 24 African countries that have not been previously disclosed in official reports.

The US foothold in Africa is strong. It’s almost ubiquitous. Some large sites under construction will provide the US with the ability to host large aircraft and accommodate substantial forces and their hardware. This all prompts the still-unanswered question — “Where does the US have troops in Africa, and why?” One thing is certain — while waging an intensive drone war, the US is building a vast military infrastructure for a large-scale ground war on the continent.

Top Photo | U.S. Air Force, soldiers of the East Africa Response Force (EARF) depart from a U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules in Juba, South Sudan, Dec. 21, 2013 (AP/U.S. Air Force, Tech. Sgt. Micah Theurich)

FULL ARTICLE:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/africom-us-military-africa/248552/

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The U.S. Military Moves Deeper into Africa
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176272/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_the_u.s._military_moves_deeper_into_africa/

Posted by Nick Turse at 7:48am, April 27, 2017.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch.

If you’re a reader of TomDispatch, then you know something of real importance about this country that most Americans don’t. As an imperial power, there’s never been anything like the United States when it comes to garrisoning this planet. By comparison, the Romans and imperial Chinese were pikers; the Soviet Union in its prime was the poorest of runners-up; even the British, at the moment when the sun theoretically never set on their empire, didn’t compare. The U.S. has hundreds of military bases ranging in size from small American towns to tiny outposts across the planet, and yet you could spend weeks, months, years paying careful attention to the media here and still have no idea that this was so. Though we garrison the globe in a historically unprecedented way, that fact is not part of any discussion or debate in this country; Congress doesn’t hold hearings on global basing policy; reporters aren’t sent out to cover the subject; and presidents never mention it in speeches to the nation. Clearly, nothing is to be made of it.

It’s true that, if you're watching the news carefully, you will find references to a small number of these bases. In the present Korean crisis, for instance, there has been at least passing mention of Washington’s bases in South Korea (and the danger that the American troops on them might face), though often deep in articles on the subject. If, to pick another example, you were to read about the political situation in Bahrain, you might similarly find mentions of the U.S. base in that small Gulf kingdom that houses the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Generally, though, despite the millions of Americans, military and civilian, who have cycled through American bases abroad in recent years, despite the vast network of them (the count is now approximately 800), and despite the fact that they undergird American military policy globally, they are, for all intents and purposes, a kind of black hole of non-news. Don't even think to ask just why the U.S. garrisons the planet in this fashion or what it might mean. It would be un-American of you to do so.

I must admit that, until I met Chalmers Johnson back at the turn of the century, I was a typical American on the subject. I never gave much thought to what he called our “empire of bases.” My own shock on grasping the nature of this country’s highly militarized presence across this planet led me to decide that, at least at TomDispatch, American basing policy would get some of the attention it obviously deserves. This initially happened thanks to Johnson himself; later to David Vine, author of a rare book, Base Nation, on the subject; and finally to this site’s own Nick Turse, who in recent years has been following the U.S. military’s global basing policy as it moved onto the rare continent that had largely lacked them: Africa. No longer. Today, he offers his latest update on the burgeoning set of bases and outposts that the U.S. military has been building or occupying and expanding there without notice, discussion, or debate, a network that will ensure we are plunged into the spreading terror wars on that continent for decades to come. Tom

America’s War-Fighting Footprint in Africa
Secret U.S. Military Documents Reveal a Constellation of American Military Bases Across That Continent

By Nick Turse

General Thomas Waldhauser sounded a little uneasy. “I would just say, they are on the ground. They are trying to influence the action,” commented the chief of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) at a Pentagon press briefing in March, when asked about Russian military personnel operating in North Africa. “We watch what they do with great concern.”

And Russians aren’t the only foreigners on Waldhauser’s mind. He’s also wary of a Chinese “military base” being built not far from Camp Lemonnier, a large U.S. facility in the tiny, sun-blasted nation of Djibouti. “They’ve never had an overseas base, and we’ve never had a base of... a peer competitor as close as this one happens to be,” he said. “There are some very significant... operational security concerns.”

At that press conference, Waldhauser mentioned still another base, an American one exposed by the Washington Post last October in an article titled, “U.S. has secretly expanded its global network of drone bases to North Africa.” Five months later, the AFRICOM commander still sounded aggrieved. “The Washington Post story that said ‘flying from a secret base in Tunisia.’ It’s not a secret base and it’s not our base... We have no intention of establishing a base there.”

Waldhauser’s insistence that the U.S. had no base in Tunisia relied on a technicality, since that foreign airfield clearly functions as an American outpost. For years, AFRICOM has peddled the fiction that Djibouti is the site of its only “base” in Africa. “We continue to maintain one forward operating site on the continent, Camp Lemonnier,” reads the command’s 2017 posture statement. Spokespeople for the command regularly maintain that any other U.S. outposts are few and transitory -- “expeditionary” in military parlance.

While the U.S. maintains a vast empire of military installations around the world, with huge -- and hard to miss -- complexes throughout Europe and Asia, bases in Africa have been far better hidden. And if you listened only to AFRICOM officials, you might even assume that the U.S. military’s footprint in Africa will soon be eclipsed by that of the Chinese or the Russians.

Highly classified internal AFRICOM files offer a radically different picture. A set of previously secret documents, obtained by TomDispatch via the Freedom of Information Act, offers clear evidence of a remarkable, far-ranging, and expanding network of outposts strung across the continent. In official plans for operations in 2015 that were drafted and issued the year before, Africa Command lists 36 U.S. outposts scattered across 24 African countries. These include low-profile locations -- from Kenya to South Sudan to a shadowy Libyan airfield -- that have never previously been mentioned in published reports. Today, according to an AFRICOM spokesperson, the number of these sites has actually swelled to 46, including “15 enduring locations.” The newly disclosed numbers and redacted documents contradict more than a decade’s worth of dissembling by U.S. Africa Command and shed new light on a constellation of bases integral to expanding U.S. military operations on the African continent and in the Middle East.

A map of U.S. military bases -- forward operating sites, cooperative security locations, and contingency locations -- across the African continent in 2014 from declassified AFRICOM planning documents (Nick Turse/TomDispatch).

 

A Constellation of Bases

AFRICOM failed to respond to repeated requests for further information about the 46 bases, outposts, and staging areas currently dotting the continent. Nonetheless, the newly disclosed 2015 plans offer unique insights into the wide-ranging network of outposts, a constellation of bases that already provided the U.S. military with unprecedented continental reach.

Those documents divide U.S. bases into three categories: forward operating sites (FOSes), cooperative security locations (CSLs), and contingency locations (CLs). “In total, [the fiscal year 20]15 proposed posture will be 2 FOSes, 10 CSLs, and 22 CLs” state the documents. By spring 2015, the number of CSLs had already increased to 11, according to then-AFRICOM chief General David Rodriguez, in order to allow U.S. crisis-response forces to reach potential hot spots in West Africa. An appendix to the plan, also obtained by TomDispatch, actually lists 23 CLs, not 22. Another appendix mentions one additional contingency location.

These outposts -- of which forward operating sites are the most permanent and contingency locations the least so -- form the backbone of U.S. military operations on the continent and have been expanding at a rapid rate, particularly since the September 2012 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The plans also indicate that the U.S. military regularly juggles locations, shuttering sites and opening others, while upgrading contingency locations to cooperative security locations in response to changing conditions like, according to the documents, “increased threats emanating from the East, North-West, and Central regions” of the continent.

AFRICOM’s 2017 posture statement notes, for example, a recent round of changes to the command’s inventory of posts. The document explains that the U.S. military “closed five contingency locations and designated seven new contingency locations on the continent due to shifting requirements and identified gaps in our ability to counter threats and support ongoing operations.” Today, according to AFRICOM spokesman Chuck Prichard, the total number of sites has jumped from the 36 cited in the 2015 plans to 46 -- a network now consisting of two forward operating sites, 13 cooperative security locations, and 31 contingency locations.

Location, Location, Location

AFRICOM’s sprawling network of bases is crucial to its continent-wide strategy of training the militaries of African proxies and allies and conducting a multi-front campaign aimed at combating a disparate andspreading collection of terror groups. The command’s major areas of effort involve: a shadow war against the militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia (a long-term campaign, ratcheting upin the Trump era, with no end in sight); attempts to contain the endless fallout from the 2011 U.S. and allied military intervention that ousted Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi (a long-term effort with no end in sight); the neutralizing of “violent extremist organizations” across northwest Africa, the lands of the Sahel and Maghreb (a long-term effort with no end in sight); the degradation of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin nations of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad (a long-term effort -- to the tune of $156 million last year alone in support of regional proxies there -- with no end in sight); countering piracy in the Gulf of Guinea (a long-term effort with no end in sight), and winding down the wildly expensive effort to eliminate Joseph Kony and his murderous Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa (both live on, despite a long-term U.S. effort).

The U.S. military’s multiplying outposts are also likely to prove vital to the Trump administration’s expanding wars in the Middle East. African bases have long been essential, for instance, to Washington’s ongoing shadow war in Yemen, which has seen a significant increase in drone strikes under the Trump administration. They have also been integral to operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, where a substantial (and deadly) uptick in U.S. airpower (and civilian casualties) has been evident in recent months.

In 2015, AFRICOM spokesman Anthony Falvo noted that the command’s “strategic posture and presence are premised on the concept of a tailored, flexible, light footprint that leverages and supports the posture and presence of partners and is supported by expeditionary infrastructure.” The declassified secret documents explicitly state that America’s network of African bases is neither insignificant nor provisional. “USAFRICOM’s posture requires a network of enduring and non-enduring locations across the continent,” say the 2015 plans. “A developed network of FOSes, CSLs, and non-enduring CLs in key countries... is necessary to support the command’s operations and engagements.”

According to the files, AFRICOM’s two forward operating sites are Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier and a base on the United Kingdom’s Ascension Island off the west coast of Africa. Described as “enduring locations” with a sustained troop presence and “U.S.-owned real property,” they serve as hubs for staging missions across the continent and for supplying the growing network of outposts there.

Lemonnier, the crown jewel of America’s African bases, has expanded from 88 acres to about 600 acres since 2002, and in those years, the number of personnel there has increased exponentially as well. “Camp Lemonnier serves as a hub for multiple operations and security cooperation activities,” reads AFRICOM’s 2017 posture statement. “This base is essential to U.S. efforts in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.” Indeed, the formerly secret documents note that the base supports “U.S operations in Somalia CT [counterterrorism], Yemen CT, Gulf of Aden (counter-piracy), and a wide range of Security Assistance activities and programs throughout the region.”

In 2015, when he announced the increase in cooperative security locations, then-AFRICOM chief David Rodriguez mentioned Senegal, Ghana, and Gabon as staging areas for the command’s rapid reaction forces. Last June, outgoing U.S. Army Africa commander Major General Darryl Williams drew attention to a CSL in Uganda and one being set up in Botswana, adding, “We have very austere, lean, lily pads, if you will, all over Africa now.”

CSL Entebbe in Uganda has, for example, long been an important air base for American forces in Africa, serving as a hub for surveillance aircraft. It also proved integral to Operation Oaken Steel, the July 2016 rapid deployment of troops to the U.S. Embassy in Juba, South Sudan, as that failed state (and failed U.S. nation-building effort) sank into yet more violence.

Libreville, Gabon, is listed in the documents as a “proposed CSL,” but was actually used in 2014 and 2015 as a key base for Operation Echo Casemate, the joint U.S.-French-African military response to unrest in the Central African Republic.

AFRICOM’s 2015 plan also lists cooperative security locations in Accra, Ghana; Gaborone, Botswana; Dakar, Senegal; Douala, Cameroon; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; and Mombasa, Kenya. While officially defined by the military as temporary locales capable of being scaled up for larger operations, any of these CSLs in Africa “may also function as a major logistics hub,” according to the documents.

Contingency Plans

The formerly secret AFRICOM files note that the command has designated five contingency locations as “semi-permanent,” 13 as “temporary,” and four as “initial.” These include a number of sites that have never previously been disclosed, including outposts in several countries that were actually at war when the documents were created. Listed among the CLs, for instance, is one in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, already in the midst of an ongoing civil war in 2014; one in Bangui, the capital of the periodically unstable Central African Republic; and another in Al-Wigh, a Saharan airfield in southern Libya located near that country’s borders with Niger, Chad, and Algeria.

Officially classified as “non-enduring” locations, CLs are nonetheless among the most integral sites for U.S. operations on the continent. Today, according to AFRICOM’s Prichard, the 31 contingency locations provide “access to support partners, counter threats, and protect U.S. interests in East, North, and West Africa.”

AFRICOM did not provide the specific locations of the current crop of CLs, stating only that they “strive to increase access in crucial areas.” The 2015 plans, however, provide ample detail on the areas that were most important to the command at that time. One such site is Camp Simba in Manda Bay, Kenya, also mentioned in a 2013 internal Pentagon study on secret drone operations in Somalia and Yemen. At least two manned surveillance aircraft were based there at the time.

Chabelley Airfield in Djibouti is also mentioned in AFRICOM’s 2015 plan. Once a spartan French Foreign Legion post, it has undergone substantial expansion in recent years as U.S. drone operations in that country were moved from Camp Lemonnier to this more remote location. It soon became a regional hub for unmanned aircraft not just for Africa but also for the Middle East. By the beginning of October 2015, for example, drones flown from Chabelley had already logged more than 24,000 hours of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions and were also, according to the Air Force, “responsible for the neutralization of 69 enemy fighters, including five high-valued individuals” in the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

AFRICOM’s inventory of CLs also includes sites in Nzara, South Sudan; Arlit, Niger; both Bamako and Gao, Mali; Kasenyi, Uganda; Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles; Monrovia, Liberia; Ouassa and Nema, Mauritania; Faya Largeau, Chad; Bujumbura, Burundi; Lakipia, the site of a Kenyan Air Force base; and another Kenyan airfield at Wajir that was upgraded and expanded by the U.S. Navy earlier in this decade, as well as an outpost in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, that was reportedly shuttered in 2015 after nearly five years of operation.

A longtime contingency location in Niamey, the capital of Niger, has seen marked growth in recent years as has a more remote location, a Nigerien military base at Agadez, listed among the “proposed” CSLs in the AFRICOM documents. The U.S. is, in fact, pouring $100 million into building up the base, according to a 2016 investigation by the Intercept. N'Djamena, Chad, the site of yet another “proposed CSL,” has actually been used by the U.S. military for years. Troops and a drone were dispatched there in 2014 to aid in operations against Boko Haram and “base camp facilities” were constructed there, too.

The list of proposed CLs also includes sites in Berbera, a town in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, and in Mogadishu, the capital of neighboring Somalia (another locale used by American troops for years), as well as the towns of Baidoa and Bosaso. These or other outposts are likely to play increasingly important roles as the Trump administration ramps up its military activities in Somalia, the long-failed state that saw 18 U.S. personnel killed in the disastrous “Black Hawk Down” mission of 1993. Last month, for instance, President Trump relaxed rules aimed at preventing civilian casualties when the U.S. conducts drone strikes and commando raids in that country and so laid the foundation for a future escalation of the war against al-Shabaab there. This month, AFRICOM confirmed that dozens of soldiers from the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, a storied light infantry unit, would be deployed to that same country in order to train local forces to, as a spokesperson put it, “better fight” al-Shabaab.

Many other sites previously identified as U.S. outposts or staging areas are not listed in AFRICOM’s 2015 plans, such as bases in Djema, Sam Ouandja, and Obo in the Central African Republic that were revealed, in recent years, by the Washington Post. Also missing is a newer drone base in Garoua, Cameroon, not to mention that Tunisian air base where the U.S. has been flying drones, according to AFRICOM’s Waldhauser, “for quite some time.”

Some bases may have been shuttered, while others may not yet have been put in service when the documents were produced. Ultimately, the reasons that these and many other previously identified bases are not included in the redacted secret files are unclear due to AFRICOM’s refusal to offer comment, clarification, or additional information on the locations of its bases.

Base Desires

“Just as the U.S. pursues strategic interests in Africa, international competitors, including China and Russia, are doing the same,” laments AFRICOM in its 2017 posture statement. “We continue to see international competitors engage with African partners in a manner contrary to the international norms of transparency.”

Since it was established as an independent command in 2008, however, AFRICOM itself has been anything but transparent about its activities on the continent. The command’s physical footprint may, in fact, have been its most jealously guarded secret. Today, thanks to AFRICOM’s own internal documents, that secret is out and with AFRICOM’s admission that it currently maintains “15 enduring locations,” the long-peddled fiction of a combatant command with just one base in its area of operations has been laid to rest.

“Because of the size of Africa, because of the time and space and the distances, when it comes to special crisis-response-type activities, we need access in various places on the continent,” said AFRICOM chief Waldhauser during his March press conference. These “various places” have also been integral to escalating American shadow wars, including a full-scale air campaign against the Islamic State in Libya, dubbed Operation Odyssey Lightning, which ended late last year, and ongoing intelligence-gathering missions and a continued U.S. troop presence in that country; drone assassinations and increased troop deployments in Somalia to counter al-Shabaab; and increasing engagement in a proxy war against Boko Haram militants in the Lake Chad region of Central Africa. For these and many more barely noticed U.S. military missions, America’s sprawling, ever-expanding network of bases provides the crucial infrastructure for cross-continental combat by U.S. and allied forces, a low-profile support system for war-making in Africa and beyond.

Without its wide-ranging constellation of bases, it would be nearly impossible for the U.S. to carry out ceaseless low-profile military activities across the continent. As a result, AFRICOM continues to prefer shadows to sunlight. While the command provided figures on the total number of U.S. military bases, outposts, and staging areas in Africa, its spokespeople failed to respond to repeated requests to provide locations for any of the 46 current sites. While the whereabouts of the new outposts may still be secret, there’s little doubt as to the trajectory of America’s African footprint, which has increased by 10 locations -- a 28% jump -- in just over two years.

America’s “enduring” African bases “give the United States options in the event of crisis and enable partner capacity building,” according to AFRICOM’s Chuck Prichard. They have also played a vital role in conflicts from Yemen to Iraq, Nigeria to Somalia. With the Trump administration escalating its wars in Africa and the Middle East, and the potential for more crises -- from catastrophic famines to spreading wars -- on the horizon, there’s every reason to believe the U.S. military’s footprint on the continent will continue to evolve, expand, and enlarge in the years ahead, outpost by outpost and base by base.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch, a fellow at the Nation Institute, and a contributing writer for the Intercept. His latest book, Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan, was a finalist for the 2016 Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award.  His website is NickTurse.com.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, as well as John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 Nick Turse

HELP STOP WAR IN YEMEN

https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/foreign-policy/help-stop-war-yemen/

[POWERFUL!]

Rand Paul's Speech on Saudi Arabia Arms Deal

Published on Jun 13, 2017

Senator Rand Paul makes a passionate speech about rejecting the Saudi Arabia arms deal
because of the increased harm it would do to the region and the United States

Check out Rand Paul's website here
http://www.paul.senate.gov/

YEMEN: Why Won't Australia Condemn Saudi Blockade?

vanessa beeley
Published on Nov 22, 2017

Senator Peter Whish-Wilson

"Millions of people are starving right now in Yemen. Not because of a natural disaster but because Saudi Arabia are conducting a blockade and refusing to let food in. Australia has refused to condemn this action and even is conducting joint military exercises with the Saudis near to blockade. Here is my speech to the Senate calling the Government out on their silence."

https://www.facebook.com/senatorsurfe...

YEMEN: CNN Host Wolf Blitzer
puts Jobs and Revenue above Human Lives

vanessa beeley
Published on Apr 28, 2018

CNN's Wolf Blitzer - Rand Paul: We're essentially part of the bombing campaign in #Yemen,
tens of thousands of civilians died as result. CNN: But there's a lot of jobs at stake, if we stop selling warplanes...

Senators Switched Key Votes On Gulf Arms Ban
Hours After Tanker Attacks

The Last American Vagabond
Published on Jun 16, 2019

This is an excerpt of The Daily Wrap Up 6/1.5

Full Episode Can Be Seen Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOWv9...

"This horror, and I’m sorry it’s hard to see, is caused in part by our decision to facilitate a bombing campaign that is Murdering Children!”

-- Senator Chris Murphy --

Why Is Washington Backing Saudi Starvation Policy In Yemen?

RonPaulLibertyReport
Streamed live on June 15, 2018

As the Saudis attack the Yemeni port town of Hodeidah, the stated goal is to starve the residents into opposing the Houthi forces controlling the city. The US is actively participating in what is clearly a war crime against civilians. Why?

 

-- Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist - 10/6/17 Scott Horton Show --

The Scott Horton Show
Gareth Porter on Congress' Potential Role in Ending the War in Yemen

By Damon Hatheway October 6,2017

Gareth Porter returns to the show to discuss his article for The American Conservative Magazine, “When Did Congress Vote to Aid the Saudi’s Yemen War?” Porter explains why, despite there being zero national security interest at stake, the U.S. is involved in the aerial war in Yemen. He and Scott then discuss the clearly misleading fatality figures which they suspect are being vastly underreported by the U.N. Porter then gets to the crux of his article: how members of Congress are attempting to use the War Powers act to end U.S. involvement in Yemen. Scott delves into the history of the War Powers Act and explains why it’s been utterly misinterpreted. Finally, Porter touches on the Saudi blockade which, with help from the U.S. Navy, is stopping needed supplies from arriving to help the desperate Yemenis.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show.

Discussed on the show:

• “Quiet Support for Saudis Entangles U.S. in Yemen” (New York Times)
• Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
• Houthis 
• “‘It is not a war, it is kinetic military action’: National security adviser finally puts title on Libya” ( The Daily Mail)
• “Bipartisan Group to Force Vote on U.S. Involvement in Yemen War” ( The Intercept)
• The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)
• War Powers Act 
• “Yemen cholera cases exceed half a million as civil war prevents effective aid” ( The Independent)
• H.Con.Res.81 
• “The Hurricanes You Control Vs. The Hurricanes You Don’t,” by Jason Ditz (The Daily Caller)
• “US involvement in the Yemen war just got deeper” (PRI.org)
• “The Houthis Are Not Hezbollah,” by Joost Hilterman (ForeignPolicy.com)
• Walter Jones 
• Thomas Massie 

Podcast (thescotthortonshow): Play in new window | Download

"They're killing lots of people. ... The greatest humanitarian tragedy since World War II." 

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --

Most of Congress "Likes War" and Opposes 
Ending US Support for Saudi War in Yemen

"There's no defense. It's a brutal, bloody war, as I pointed out. It's a major humanitarian disaster, and the United States has no business participating in it. It's that clear. It's that simple."

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --

TheRealNews, Published on Nov 6, 2017

Several members of Congress have introduced legislation to invoke the War Powers Act with an aim to shut down US support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, but the resolution will not pass because the vast majority in Congress doesn't oppose war explains Col. Larry Wilkerson

Original Transcription

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=20391 

[Highlighted Emphasis Added]

SHARMINI PERIES: It's the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. In October, Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat from California, Thomas Massie, Republican from Kentucky, Mark Pocan, Democrat from Wisconsin and Walter Jones, Republican from North Carolina introduced a bipartisan resolution to stop the U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia in its war against the Houthis in Yemen. This bill has the support of 34 other lawmakers who are willing to invoke the War Powers Act, where Congress can swiftly terminate the U.S. military assistance for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. But some congressional representatives on both sides of the House are reluctant to do so and to end the war that the UN says is the worst humanitarian disaster of the 21st century. The UN is expressing concern at the Saudi led coalition's closing of two airports, seaports, and land crossings in Yemen, warning that this may hamper the delivery of vitally needed humanitarian aid to the Yemeni people where 14.5 million are cut off from access to clean water and sanitation.

There are some 200,000 people suffering from cholera outbreak and over 1,300 of them have already died where a quarter of them were children. Who in Congress might be objecting to stopping this war and why? Let's find out from Colonel Larry Wilkerson. Larry is a retired U.S. colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, now a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary. Larry, good to have you with us.

LARRY WILKERSON Good to be with you, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: Larry, you've been on the Hill working on this effort. Why don't you tell us about the debates that's going on and the debate that's not going on. From what I understand, the bill will pass on but no debate will be taking place in the House, but mostly who is reluctant to pass this bill?

LARRY WILKERSON: I think probably Democrats and Republicans alike, so caught up in the war machine that this country has become, are guilty, guilty as charged. What you have with Walt Jones from North Carolina is a pariah Republican from the very start. What you have with Ro Khanna, and with Mark Pocan and with Tom Massie from Kentucky, Republicans and Democrats, and the co-sponsors are those within the Congress who have the moral courage and the understanding of U.S. history and the U.S. Constitution sufficient to apply it to what is U.S. Code Title 50, Chapter 33, sections 1541 to 48, as I recall, which codifies the War Powers Resolution. Now,a little history there, that's the resolution Congress passed to reassert its constitutional powers over the war power when it grew very, very tired of the Vietnam conflict, and Richard Nixon, in particular, conduct of that conflict towards the end of it.

They essentially told the president, "You've got to do this in order to wage war," abbreviating the Constitution, Article one, Section eight, a bit but nonetheless reaffirming it mostly. Nixon vetoed it, and then the Congress, very unusually, passed the legislation over Nixon's veto. Now they are up to the point where you can only find these iconoclastic members, these pariah members, these members who understand the Constitution, who understand our history and more than anything understand how dangerous is the war power to the very liberties of this republic. That's all you have left in the Congress who would, as you pointed out in your introduction, bring the United States' action to support Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in waging this brutal, bloody war, which incidentally the Saudis and the UAE are losing. They're losing it.

They don't, they're the only ones who want to do this and so this legislation is being fought by hook and crook by everyone from Mark Thornberry, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee who loves to have Raytheon and Lockheed Martin making lots of money off the weapons we're selling to Saudi Arabia, to Ed Royce, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who ultimately has committee jurisdiction over the bill. They all want to stop it, because very frankly, Sharmini, they like war.

SHARMINI PERIES: They like war. When the United Nations is putting out such warnings about the conditions of so many, 14.5 million people who are suffering from this war, the devastation is staring them in the face, there's so many children affected by this, what are their main motivations for not wanting to support this bill?

LARRY WILKERSON They say, in the legislation that we could cite that Steny Hoyer and others have written as an alternative to our legislation, which is called House Continuing Resolution 81, invoking the War Powers and which should enjoy privileged status under the law and therefore have to go to the House for a vote and not be stoppable by a committee chairman. What they're doing is offering 599, which if you read all the whereases, and boy does it go ad nauseam into the whereases, "Whereas this, whereas this, whereas this," if you read it closely, what you see is, they're trying to excuse the Saudis for what they're doing. They know darn well that all those whereases in that other legislation, which recognize the nature of the humanitarian disaster, recognize the nature of the UN recognition of the government supposedly the Saudis are trying to defend, recognize the fact that Iran is participating and so forth.

Of course, they don't point out that Iran wasn't even in Yemen until the Saudis attacked, that Iran wasn't doing anything until the Saudis attacked. All of this legislation that Hoyer and others have put together, and Hoyer by the way, is a Democrat, of course, from Maryland, is just a subterfuge, an obfuscation of the true issue, which is, the Saudis are fighting a brutal, bloody war. They're killing lots of people. By the indirection of their actions, they're killing potentially half a billion people over time. The greatest humanitarian tragedy since World War II. They're bombing sewage and water plants. They're bombing food sources and so forth, and all this to support a government that I think the UN would probably like to retract its vote on in terms of being the legitimate government of Yemen. It is, a piece of this 599 is a piece of legislation that shows just how many ends these folks will go to in order to justify what is truly a brutal war in which the United States is participating.

On top of that, the U.S. participation is causing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the most dangerous terrorist groups with a global capability, to grow, to actually harden and grow in its membership and in its actions. At the same time, we're trying to stop that group under a legitimate AUMF, the one passed after 9/11, in Yemen with Special Operating Forces. We want to separate those two actions. The Special Operating Forces going after Al-Qaeda in Yemen are operating under the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force and therefore are legitimate. This support to the Saudi-UAE effort to wage this war in Yemen, though, is not legitimate. It's illegal. It was started by the Obama administration and continued and emphasized by the Trump administration. It's illegal. It's brutal. It's being lost by Saudi Arabia.

You saw the architect of the war, Mohammad Bin Salman effecting something we haven't seen since the formation of the House of Saud, recently, the last few days. He actually got rid of 11 princes. He's getting rid of a lot of business leaders and so forth. I think this is a sign of the instability of the Saud regime under MBS's leadership, and it's going to be interesting to see how this develops, because this is his war. He started it. There's no defense. It's a brutal, bloody war, as I pointed out. It's a major humanitarian disaster, and the United States has no business participating in it. It's that clear. It's that simple.

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Larry, give us a sense of what they're telling you when you're on the Hill about this unconditional support for Saudi Arabia's war.

LARRY WILKERSON: You'd be amazed, Sharmini. I have gotten answers from staffers and members that range the gamut from, "Well, this is just a niche issue." That's a direct quote. "This is just a niche issue." My response, of course, was, "500,000 people dying is a niche issue?" Well, not a lot, and get them a little off guard with that kind of response, to a response such as this, "Well, I always go with my committee chairman." That is, the committee of jurisdiction. "So, if Ed Royce is going to go against this, I've got to go against it, too." This is the war power. This is your nation using bombs, bullets and bayonets to kill the citizens of other nations and, oh, by the way, put its own men and women in harm's way too.

This is the war power. This is the ultimate power, and you bow to your committee of jurisdiction? Come on, Mr. Congressman. You can do better than that. To an answer like this one that I got, "Well, Iran's there." My response, "Iran wasn't there until the Saudi-UAE coalition attacked and we supported them." "Well, Iran is there now, so we've got to fight them. The Saudis are doing our dirty business for us." Why do we have to fight Iran in Yemen? What is it that Iran is doing in Yemen that's destabilizing, and destabilizing in a way that threatens U.S. national security interest? "Well, Iran always does that." Are you kidding me, Congressman? Can't you think more critically than that? Can't you think more analytically than that? Iran is not always going against U.S. interest. Iran, in this case, is going against U.S. interest, if they are, because we are supporting the Saudi coalition that's waging this brutal war.

You just wouldn't believe it, Sharmini. The first reaction I have is that they don't know what they're talking about. The second reaction I have is that they're venal, they're cruel, they're brutal. The third reaction I have is, they're ignorant, they're just not willing to look at the issues. And the fourth reaction I have is that they're in obeisance to the military-industrial complex, which, if you'll look at the contribution charts, does, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and so forth does contribute a heck of a lot of money to these people's campaigns. And so with a little war like this, what's a little war as long as it maintains me in power?

SHARMINI PERIES: Only the lives of hundreds of thousands of children.

LARRY WILKERSON: Yes. Yes, and just, I mean, when you've got a situation where, for example, you bomb cranes at the only port where you really can offload the food and clean water to save people's lives and you, the United States, recognizing these cranes have been bombed and that the water and the food can't be off-lifted until the cranes are replaced then provide the cranes out of the goodness of your heart, I hope to replace them, only to have the cranes not able to be off-loaded and reinstalled because of Saudi-UAE bombing. Bombing which you're supporting with refueling tankers, with targeting intelligence and so forth. This is not just nonsense, though. It's brutal. Brutal nonsense.

SHARMINI PERIES: Larry, thank you for your relentless work on the Hill and I wish you more success. Thank you.

LARRY WILKERSON: Thank you, Sharmini.

SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.

"I think probably Democrats and Republicans alike, so caught up in the war machine that this country has become, are guilty,
guilty as charged."

-- Col. Larry Wilkerson --

The Illusion Of Choice...Two Faces: One Monster

An easy explanation of how the phony left vs, right arguments are used to divide people from seeing the bigger picture. Both Republican and Democratic leaders serve the same private interests.

GET THE FULL PICTURE HERE: FALSE LEFT/RIGHT PARADIGM , General Summary/Crash Course

NO PRESIDENTIAL WARS STATUTE
More on Bruce Fein's idea as spoken about in RT video - Empire In Crisis & Bruce Fein

"To Avoid the Scourge of War, Follow the Constitution"
-- Bruce Fein --

Constitutional Lawyer Bruce Fein on the Effort to Stop ‘Presidential Wars’
He’s proposing legislation that could halt extrajudicial US military intervention.
https://www.thenation.com/article/constitutional-lawyer-bruce-fein-effort-stop-presidential-wars/

By James Carden
July 19, 2018

At a joint press conference on the morning of July 18, outside the Capitol, Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) announced that they have introduced legislation that would define “presidential wars” as those not declared by Congress under Article I section 8 of the US Constitution as an impeachable “high crime and misdemeanor.”

The resolution, HR 922, which has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, would “prohibit the President from making the United States a co-belligerent in an ongoing war without a congressional declaration under the Declare War Clause” and goes on to define a state of co-belligerency as one in which the United States “substantially supplies war materials, military troops, trainers, or advisers, military intelligence, financial support or their equivalent in association, cooperation, assistance, or common cause with another belligerent.”

At the press conference, Gabbard said the bill is necessary because “our country continues to remain in a state of perpetual war at a great cost to the American people and to the innocent civilians around the world who are affected by these wars, with no declaration of war by Congress and no say by the American people.”

On Wednesday, I spoke with constitutional attorney Bruce Fein, who drafted the Jones/Gabbard legislation. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

—James Carden

James Carden: Mr. Fein, you are a constitutional lawyer who served as an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration. And I know you write frequently on constitutional and foreign policy for The American Conservative, among other publications. What prompted you to take the issue of presidential wars on? Where does your interest stem from?

Bruce Fein: I am keenly interested in war for manifold reasons. War makes what is customarily first-degree murder legal, i.e., intentional killing not in self-defense. War

violates the cornerstone precept of civilization: It is better to risk being the victim of injustice than to be complicit in it. War migrates a nation’s collective genius from production to destruction. War squanders vast sums better spent on infrastructure and education in civics indispensable to discharging the obligations of citizens in a republic. The first casualties of war are the rule of law and truth. As Cicero observed, in time of war the law is silent. War gives birth to a surveillance state and the crippling of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment under a national-security banner. War replaces transparency with secrecy inconsistent with government by the consent of the governed and congressional oversight of the executive. War destroys the Constitution’s separation of powers—a structural Bill of Rights—by entrusting limitless power to the president. If the American people and Congress neglect to terminate and sanction presidential wars, the American republic will crumble like the Roman Colosseum and the sacrifices and hardships of Valley Forge, Cemetery Ridge, and Omaha Beach shall have been in vain. At present, the United States is engaged in nine unconstitutional presidential wars in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and against Al Qaeda and ISIS.

JC: For many (or perhaps when you survey today’s Washington, too few) of my generation, George W. Bush’s Iraq II was a big wake-up call, but the trend of untrammeled presidential war making seemed to have begin in earnest under the Clinton administration, during which time the US militarily intervened in Somalia (1993), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1999). Clinton also directed airstrikes on Sudan in what was said to be an attempt on Osama bin Laden’s life. Clinton also bombed Iraq (1998) over its violations of the NATO-enforced no-fly zone. And the number of unconstitutional wars has only multiplied under Clinton’s successors. What do you think explains the trend toward presidential wars?

BF: The beginning of presidential wars goes further back than that. Presidential wars began with President Truman’s Korean War, which he styled a “police action.” But it involved more than 5 million US military personnel, 3 million Chinese soldiers, millions of North and South Korean soldiers, millions of casualties, and the risk of nuclear weapons. Then came presidential wars in Vietnam, Laos, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, etc. The multiplication of presidential wars was sparked by the disintegration of the Soviet empire in 1991 (which acted as a small deterrent) and the blossoming of the American delusion that we won the Cold War because we had a monopoly of angelic DNA and were the new chosen people.

JC: How would this legislation halt these wars?

BF: HR 922 would end this extraconstitutional phenomenon by defining presidential wars as impeachable offenses, which would expose the president to impeachment by the House, conviction by the Senate, and removal from office.

JC: What has been Congress’s role in all of this? They have seemed to have abandoned their constitutional role for the better part of 25 years, at least since George H.W. Bush was compelled by the congressional leadership to win approval for the first Gulf War. What, in your view, explains this abdication?

BF: Congress has scampered away from voting on war because members are risk-averse and a vote for war would be controversial and expose them to criticism or worse if the war went south. But to be clear on the history: George H.W. Bush did not obtain a declaration of war against Iraq in Kuwait in 1991. He asked and received political, not legal, support. The congressional resolution says nothing about a declaration of war against Iraq, but kicks the decision to the president.

JC: A resolution to end presidential wars has been something you and your colleagues at the Committee for the Republic have been advocating for some time, but this is the first time two House members—Walter Jones and Democrat Tulsi Gabbard—have introduced legislation to address the issue in what could be, if passed, the most consequential foreign-policy legislation since the War Powers Resolution of 1973. What are the prospects for passage? Is there a companion bill in the works for the Senate?

BF: The prospects for passage of HR 922 are remote in the short run. Its immediate purpose is to spark a public and congressional debate about war powers that has been generally silenced by both the Republican and Democratic parties since the Korean War in 1950. At present, there is not a companion bill in the Senate because senators sit as triers of fact and adjudicate articles of impeachment voted on by the House.

JC: President Trump campaigned on an “America first” foreign policy, which, according to one well-known study, may have proved the one of the decisive factors in his surprise win over the liberal hawk Hillary Clinton. In other words, there seems to be popular support for a less activist, militarist foreign policy in the US at large, but such views have virtually no constituency here in DC. What do you think explains the—for lack of a better term—popular/elite disconnect?

BF: I disagree. There is no popular disconnect between the elite and the general populace. In our culture, like others, the armored knight moves across the pages of romance and poetry and excites the rapture of the multitude by offering the vicarious thrill of power or domination of others to deflect attention from their philosophically empty souls. We have 4,000 war memorials and museums and virtually none for philosophers or sages like Nestor or Merlin. At the All-Star Game I attended yesterday in DC, the crowd loved the flyovers of fighter-bombers. War is the oldest scourge of mankind, and will always be. The only way to arrest it is to place the war power in an institution with no incentive to exercise it except in self-defense, i.e., Congress with a temperament of a Labrador retriever, not a pit bull like our current executive-branch personality.

The President Does Not Have Unlimited Power
to Declare War
F.H. Buckley tries and fails to argue that Donald Trump doesn't need Congress to bomb.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-president-does-not-have-unlimited-power-to-declare-war/

By Bruce Fein - May 10, 2018

F.H. Buckley recently wrote an opinion piece in the New York Post headlined “When the president doesn’t need to ask Congress before striking.” Not to give away the ending, but it’s counter-historical, counter-textual, and counter-constitutional. The article’s audacity is more to be marveled at than imitated. The president always needs congressional authorization for offensive use of the United States Armed Forces. Thus, President Trump’s twin missile attacks against Syria for its unsubstantiated use of chemical weapons against third parties violated the Constitution’s Declare War Clause.

That clause’s “plain meaning,” Alexander Hamilton explained, is that “it is the peculiar and exclusive province of Congress, when the nation is at peace, to change that state

into a state of war; whether from calculations of policy or from provocations or injuries received. In other words, it belongs only to Congress to go to war.” George Washington spoke for every participant in the drafting and ratifying of the Constitution when he elaborated, “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until and after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.”

It speaks volumes that Mr. Buckley is unable to reference a single word from the Constitution’s framers to contradict Hamilton or Washington. Instead, he decrees in the manner of a Russian czar that the Declare War Clause has become antiquated and may be ignored with impunity, and that wars in self-defense and wars of aggression are indistinguishable, like erasing the distinction between killing in self-defense and first-degree murder. That should shock even the most stone-hearted.

The Constitution is not like a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only. Neither is it deaf to changed circumstances or the force of better reasoning. Article V authorizes amendments by two thirds of the House and Senate and three fourths of the States. Twenty-seven amendments have been ratified over the course of 228 years, including the Bill of Rights, the Civil War Amendments, and a two-term limit for the presidency. But Mr. Buckley can no more repeal the Declare War Clause by shouting about its alleged unworkability than anti-gun zealots can repeal the Second Amendment’s individual right to keep and bear arms by decrying the use of firearms to commit murder. Mr. Buckley’s reasoning invites every man to become a law unto himself and pick and choose which constitutional prescriptions to obey.

Mr. Buckley also errs by suggesting that Franklin Roosevelt could have fought World War II against Japan after Pearl Harbor without a congressional declaration of war. President Thomas Jefferson confronted a comparable situation after the Barbary States of North Africa had declared war against the United States. He informed Congress that he was “[u]nauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense,” and communicated all information to Congress relevant to determining whether it should authorize “measures of offense also.”

Contrary to Mr. Buckley, the cases of Afghanistan, Syria, and Africa do not excuse flouting the Declare War Clause. In Afghanistan, we are propping up a tottering, corrupt, fraudulently elected, unpopular government that routinely violates the Afghan Constitution. As Mr. Buckley concedes, the feeble Afghan state would immediately collapse in favor of the Taliban if America’s 15,000 mercenary troops were removed. But it is up to Congress, not the president, to decide whether the armed forces should be employed offensively in the hopes of preventing such an eventuality. Why is Mr. Buckley terrified of a congressional vote?

Contrary to Mr. Buckley, neither Syria nor Africa confront the United States with a choice between complete war or nothing under the Declare War Clause. As Chief Justice John Marshall explained in Bas v. Tingy, Congress may authorize the offensive use of the military to conduct limited war: limited in place, in objects, and in time. But Congress has never authorized missile attacks on Syria or the use of the armed forces to fight terrorist organizations in Niger or West Africa generally. Both were unconstitutionally dictated by President Trump alone.

The law on this is clear as day. As the Supreme Court decreed in the Prize Cases: “By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a…foreign war…[The President] has no power to initiate…war…against a foreign nation.”

Mr. Buckley further errantly maintains that the Declare War Clause is much ado about nothing. If asked by the President, says Mr. Buckley, Congress will always approve offensive use of the armed forces whether in Syria or elsewhere. Did he take history lessons from President Trump? In 228 years, Congress has declared war in only five conflicts, and only in response to foreign aggression against the United States. In 2013, Congress refused President Obama’s request for authority to attack Syria. In 1995, it refused President Clinton’s request for authority to conduct military strikes in Bosnia. Congress has the wonderful temperament of a Labrador Retriever. It stays at peace unless attacked.

In sum, there may be better ways to destroy and bankrupt our republic than perpetual presidential wars, but they do not readily come to mind.

Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan and counsel to the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He is a partner in the law firm of Fein & DelValle PLLC.

Reps. Gabbard and Jones Introduce Bipartisan Resolution Requiring Congressional Approval
Before Trump Takes U.S. to War
https://gabbard.house.gov/news/press-releases/reps-gabbard-and-jones-introduce-bipartisan-resolution-requiring-congressional 

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More:

Bruce Fein, Contributor, Constitutional Scholar

To Avoid the Scourge of War, Follow the Constitution
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-fein/to-avoid-the-scourge-of-w_b_12377180.html

A No Presidential Wars Statute, Updated Jan 27, 2018
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-fein/a-no-presidential-wars-st_1_b_14420314.html

Maj Gen Smedley Butler on Interventionism WAR IS A RACKET
	____9 WARS____ "The United States is currently engaged in nine presidential wars:  Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Al Qaeda, and ISIS.   ...The fully allocated cost of fighting presidential wars since 9/11 approaches a staggering $10 trillion." -- Bruce Fein, Constitutional Scholar -- A No Presidential Wars Statute, Jan 27, 2018

__Y_E_M_E_N_'_S__

W_I_N_N_I_N_G____S_P_I_R_I_T____D_E_S_P_I_T_E

_4 YEARS OF HELL_

https://www.mintpressnews.com/historically-large-anti-saudi-rallies-across-yemen-on-wars-fourth-anniversary/256575/

Historically Huge Anti-Saudi Rallies Across Yemen on War’s Fourth Anniversary
Unprecedented numbers of Yemenis took part in the anti-Saudi demonstrations on the fourth anniversary of the war in Yemen this year, indicating a growing opposition to the Saudi-led presence in their country.

By Ahmed Abdulkareem, March 26th, 2019

SANA’A, YEMEN — Massive demonstrations took place across Yemen’s major cities on Tuesday to commemorate the fourth anniversary of the Saudi-led war on the country. The war ostensibly began on March 26, 2015, when Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and other regional allies, launched a large-scale attack on Yemen under the pretext of reinstating ousted former president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. The war’s real purpose was to defeat the Houthi Ansar Allah movement, which gained popular support following the Arab Spring and has grown even more powerful since the Saudi war began.

Massive rallies throughout the country

In Yemen’s capital city of Sana`a, where the largest demonstrations took place, hundreds of thousands of residents from the suburbs of Sana`a and its neighboring provinces gathered in the southern al Sabaeen district carrying Yemeni flags and holding banners emblazoned with messages of steadfastness, promises to challenge to the Saudi-led Coalition, and pledges of resistance against foreign forces in Yemen.

In the Sada’a province in northern Yemen, hundreds of thousands also took to the streets despite an ever-present hovering of Saudi warplane above. The Saudi air presence began two days ago as residents started their preparations for the upcoming rallies. The demonstrations were organized primarily by the Houthis, the main force battling the Saudi-led Coalition in Yemen. Large rallies also took place in the provinces of Hodeida, Ibb, Ta`ze, al-Jawf, Reimah and Dhamar.

The number of people who took part in the demonstrations dwarfed similar rallies that took place in previous years, indicating a growing opposition to the Saudi-led Coalition war in Yemen. Anti-Saudi demonstrations were also held for the first time in the northwest province of Hajjah and the central province of al-Beidha.

Images of demonstrations show a sea of Yemeni flags, posters bearing pictures of Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi and the slogan, “Four years of aggression — We are steadfast for the fifth year — We will win.” A protest leader in Sana`a’s Sabaeen Square rallied the crowd, chanting, “I am ready to make more sacrifices against the Saudi-led Coalition.”

Security was tight across Yemeni cities where the protests were held, as reports circulated that Saudi-allied mercenary groups were planning attacks on demonstrators. Police carried out special measures to ensure security, including the banning of large trucks from central Sana`a and the establishment of additional checkpoints in the Yemeni capital and throughout Yemen’s provinces.

A message of warning and defiance

Mohammed Ali al Houthi, a member of the Supreme Political Council, was among the keynote speakers at the rally in Sana`a, where he addressed U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, promising that Yemenis will win the war against the Saudi-led Coalition regardless of how much support the U.S. gives them.

Pompeo released a statement last Thursday in which he said the Houthis could not win in Yemen and that they are operating at the behest of Iran, specifically the Iranian Revolution Guards Corps. Al Houthi resoundingly rejected these claims in his speech to demonstrators. He told a cheering crowd: “Yemenis will continue fighting to the end and [we] will never give in. We will finally defeat the enemy.” He further condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision on Monday to formally recognize Syria’s occupied Golan Heights as “Israeli territory.”

The Grand Mufti of Yemen, Shams al-Din Sharaf al-Din — the highest religious authority in Yemen — also addressed demonstrators. Sharaf al-Din called on the Muslim religious scholars and the wider Muslim world not to remain silent in the face of atrocities committed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen.

In a live televised speech commemorating the fourth anniversary of the war on Monday evening, ?AbdulMalik al Houthi, the leader of the Houthis, warned the Saudi-led Coalition against launching a new military campaign in Hodeida and promised that the response to such an attack would extend beyond Yemen’s borders to any country backing the Saudi Coalition.

Four years that have not gone as planned

On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia and its coalition allies launched a military campaign against the poorest country in the Arab world without prior warning and with promises that the war would last no longer than a few weeks. However, after four years of a war that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and is backed by the collective military might of the world’s most powerful nations, the Saudi Coalition has been unable to defeat the Houthis, nor to restore the popularly-ousted Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to power.

The Saudi-led Coalition, on the fourth anniversary of the war it began, launched airstrikes against a rural hospital in the Kattaf district of Sada’a, killing eight civilians and injuring eight others.

The Houthis, who comprise a major component of Yemen’s resistance to Saudi interference in their country, show no sign of surrender and still control Yemen’s capital city of Sana`a and large swaths of the country.

Top Photo | A man attends a demonstration in Sabaeen Square in Sana`a where mass demonstrations were held on the fourth anniversary of the Saudi-led war on the Yemen, March 26, 2019. Photo | Ansarallah Media Center

Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

_STOP THE YEMEN GENOCIDE_

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Call White House now 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414

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Trump Vetoes Yemen Bill,
Pakistan Gives MBS Humanitarian Award & New US Maps Show Golan As Israel's

The Last American Vagabond
Streamed live April 17, 2019

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Excerpt from Whitney Webb Interview The Ignored Yemen Genocide:
"18.4 Million People Are Starving To Death"
The Last American Vagabond Published on Nov 1, 2018

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