U.S.’s bloody, lawless march across Arabia

Amnesty International, news sources
Edited excerpts by Carolyn Bennett

“It is particularly worrying that states such as Saudi Arabia and the USA are directly or indirectly aiding the Yemeni government in a downward spiral away from previously improving human rights record,” Amnesty reported today.

“An extremely worrying trend has developed where the Yemeni authorities, under pressure from the USA and others to fight al-Qa’ida [al-Qaeda], and Saudi Arabia to deal with the Huthis, have been citing national security as a pretext to deal with opposition and stifle all criticism.”

The number of death sentences passed in trials of people accused of having links to al-Qa’ida [al-Qaeda], or to the Huthi armed group has noticeably increased. In 2009, at least 34 people accused of links to Huthi armed groups were sentenced to death.

The security forces have killed at least 113 people since 2009 in operations the government says target ‘terrorists.’ Attacks have become more frequent since December 2009 with security forces in some cases making no attempt to detain suspects before killing them.

At least 41 people were killed, 21 of them children and 14 of them women, on December 17, 2009, when their settlement in al-Ma’jalah area in the southern district of Abyan was hit by missiles.

“All measures taken in the name of countering terrorism or other security challenges in Yemen must have at its heart the protection of human rights.”

“The Yemeni authorities have a duty to ensure public safety and to bring to justice those engaged in attacks that deliberately target members of the public, but when doing so they must abide by international law. … Enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions are never permissible, and the Yemeni authorities must immediately cease these violations.”


Reports from Yemen today
Yemeni officials were reported saying Yemen’s army has killed 12 anti-government fighters and retaken control of a southern town after several days of fighting. The reports late yesterday said the army had begun its assault on the town of Loder after a Friday ambush left 11 soldiers dead.

Sources and notes

Yemen abandons human rights in the name of countering terrorism” (quoted Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa Programme), © Amnesty International, the Yemeni security forces have killed at least 113 people since 2009, © ASSOCIATED PRESS, August 25, 2010, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/yemen-abandons-human-rights-name-countering-terrorism-2010-08-24


“Yemen kills ‘al-Qaeda fighters,’” August 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/2010825132359773721.html

Geopolitical implications
[U. S. in Middle East and S/Central Asia, Horn of Africa region)


YEMEN
Yemen (officially Republic of Yemen, Arabic Al-Yaman or Al-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah) is situated at the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.


Most of Yemen’s northern frontier with Saudi Arabia traverses the great desert of the peninsula and remains without demarcation, as does the eastern frontier with Oman. In the west and the south, Yemen is bounded by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, respectively.


Its territory includes a number of islands including the Kamaran group located in the Red Sea near Al-Ḥudaydah; Perim (Barīm) in the Bab el-Mandeb, which separates the Arabian Peninsula from Africa; the most important and largest island, Socotra (Suqutrā), located in the Arabian Sea nearly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) east of Aden; and The Brothers, small islets near Socotra.


The present Yemen came into being in May 1990, when the former Yemen Arab Republic, or North Yemen, merged with the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, also called South Yemen [Britannica notes].


ARABIA
Arabic (“Island of the Arabs”) is a peninsular region together with offshore islands located in the extreme southwestern corner of Asia.


The Arabian Peninsula is bounded by the Red Sea on the west and southwest, the Gulf of Aden on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south and southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf (also called the Arabian Gulf) on the northeast. Geographically the peninsula and the Syrian Desert merge in the north with no clear line of demarcation, but the northern boundaries of Saudi Arabia and of Kuwait are generally taken as marking the limit of Arabia there.

The peninsula’s total area is about 1,000,000 square miles (2,590,000 square kilometers). The length, bordering the Red Sea, is approximately 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) and the maximum breadth, from Yemen to Oman, 1,300 miles.

The largest political division is Saudi Arabia followed, in order of size, by Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain.


The island of Socotra in the Indian Ocean, about 200 miles southeast of the mainland, has strong ethnographic links to Arabia; politically it is part of Yemen [Britannica notes].

Weekend U.S. sphere, resistance, protests abroad

Aljazeera, wire reports from
America, Middle East
Compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett

April 25, 2010
U.S. - OCCUPIED PACIFIC
Demonstrators are afoot in Okinawa, Japan, in protest to the United States’ 47,000-troop military occupation on the island nation. Many on the island have for years complained of noise, pollution and conflicts with U.S. soldiers. Japan is unhappy with the heavy American military presence. Al Jazeera reports that today’s rally is expected to include Okinawa’s governor Hirokazu Nakaima and more than 30 town mayors. The Kadena air base close to where the rally is taking place is the largest U.S. military facility in the Asia-Pacific region.

April 23, 2010
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
Israel accuses Syria of supplying missiles to Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Syria denies Israel’s charges. Interviewed from the Syrian embassy in Washington, spokesperson Ahmed Salkini told Al Jazeera the reports of alleged missile transfers are part of Israel’s disinformation campaign to divert the world’s attention from Israel’s actions on the ground. The representative said Israel’s charge “showed how it was evading any responsibility for building peace in the region, by pressing ahead with its occupation of Arab land. ‘Syria is calling for a comprehensive and just peace in the region whereby Israel withdraws from all occupied territories the UN and the international community have declared illegally occupied.’”

Leading on from Israel’s charge, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Middle East Jeffrey Feltman reacted, “‘If these reports turn out to be true, we’re going to have to review the full range of tools that are available for us in order to make Syria reverse what would be an incendiary, provocative action.’” In a 34-day Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, 1,200 mostly civilian Lebanese died and more than 160 mainly Israeli soldiers died.

April 22, 2010
Israel has deported two Palestinians to the Gaza Strip raising fears that more expulsions could follow under a controversial new Israeli military order. The action “fits into a pattern of Israel’s strategy to treat Gaza and the West Bank as separate geopolitical entities,” Al Jazeera’s Jackie Rowland reported from Jerusalem. An estimated 70,000 Palestinians could be at risk of deportation under an Israeli military order condemned by Arab politicians.

April 25, 2010
Jewish settlers marched in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinian protesters and Israeli police clashed. Israeli settlers living in illegal housing units on occupied Palestinian land want Arabs’ homes demolished and Arabs removed from the area to make way for Israeli construction projects.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that if the Obama administration believes in and is committed to Israel’s security together with a peace settlement that gives a state to Palestinians, the American administration has a “duty to call for steps to reach the solution, impose the solution. [But] don’t tell me it’s a vital national strategic American interest, then not do anything.”

Having pulled out of talks with the Israelis during Israel’s 22-day [December 2008-January 2009] offensive in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have refused to return until all settlement activity stops.

April 24, 2010
IRAQ
Iraqis are burying their dead. An estimated 69 people died Friday when a series bombs exploded in Baghdad and Sadr City. Funeral processions set off on Saturday from Sadr City, site of the deadliest attacks, for the holy city of Najaf. Since the start of 2010, April has been the bloodiest month in the country.

April 22, 2010
JORDAN
Rockets on Wednesday landed in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba one damaging an empty storage space, the other splashing into the Red Sea. Police found remains of a Katyusha rocket. They were trying to determine the source of the attack. Five years ago, three Katyusha rockets, missing two U.S. warships docked in the port, had been fired in Aqaba. In that incident, rockets hit a warehouse and crossed a border with Jerusalem. A Jordanian soldier died.

April 24, 2010
PAKISTAN
Four police officers died when gunmen opened fire torching twelve NATO oil tankers in Talagang, a town in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The gunmen escaped after police returned fire. Fighters routinely attack routes and supplies supporting the war in Afghanistan in an effort to halt resources available to NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

April 24-25, 2010
MISSISSIPPI
As estimated 10 people including children died when tornadoes hit several southeastern/Gulf states of the United States ─ Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama among them.

Crews off the coast of Louisiana delayed cleaning up an oil spill that had followed an offshore oilrig explosion causing the platform to sink earlier in the week. Storms damaged a chemical plant tank in Tallulah, Louisiana, causing a nitrogen leak. The Mississippi governor declared a state of emergency in 17 counties.

Casualty sites reporting
April 25, 2010 (accurate totals unknown, usual reporting not updated)

• Anti-war dot com casualties in Iraq starting March 19, 2003: Since January 20, 2009 inauguration: 165 dead; 31,785-100,000 wounded; 320,000 U.S. veterans with brain injuries; 18 suicides a day [April 17 update], http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count: documented civilian deaths from violence 95,965 – 104,682, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,393 U.S, 4,711 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,050 U.S., 1,736 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/

CASUALTIES UPDATE
Monday April 26, 2010 update
Occupied Territories
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces destroyed a house owned by a Hamas commander’s relatives and assassinated the commander. Though an Israeli high court order has deemed the killing of Palestinian suspects not engaged in a firefight illegal, media reports indicate that the Israeli military pursues a policy of assassinating prominent Palestinian fighters. A previous alleged assassination carried out by Israeli forces was last December in Nablus in the West Bank; four members of Fatah’s military wing died. “Monday’s killing appeared likely to aggravate an already tense situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories” [“Israeli troops kill Hamas fighter,: April 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201042610119512795.html].

Monday April 26, 2010 update
Gulf of Mexico – Louisiana USA
Off Louisiana’s coast 1,525 meters (5,003.2 feet or 0.9 miles) into the ocean, an oil well is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil a day. Eleven workers involved in last Tuesday’s “worst oil rig disaster in almost a decade” are missing and presumed dead. In the past nine years, 69 people have died, 1,349 have sustained injuries, 858 fires and explosions have occurred in oil-rig operations off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf off Mexico [“Engineers in race to seal oil leak,” April 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201042653915904166.html].

Monday April 26, 2010 update
Yemen
Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world and confronts serious political and administrative problems. The country today sustained its first suicide attack in a year. The attack by a suicide bomber occurred in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa near the British ambassador’s convoy. No one died or sustained injuries. In March 2009, a South Korean delegation sustained an attack while investigating a bombing that had occurred a few days earlier; four South Korean tourists died. In 2008, two suicide bombers set off a series of blasts outside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa. Sixteen people died [“UK diplomat escapes Yemen attack,” April 26, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201042655759873579.html].


Sources
”Japanese rally against U.S. air base,” April 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/04/201042554723575134.html
“U.S. tightens pressure on Syria,” April 23, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/20104223206497761.html
“Palestinians deported to Gaza,” April 22, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/2010422124915701529.html
“Clashes as Israeli settlers match,” April 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/20104258757856525.html
“Baghdad mourns bombing victims,” April 24, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/20104247396232723.html
“Rockets land in Jordanian port city,” April 22, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/201042210215107533.html
“NATO tankers attack Pakistan,” April 24, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/04/2010424191518201134.html
“Tornadoes hit southeastern U.S.,” April 25, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/04/201042545832872872.html

Flaming Cavalry Gunboat “Democracy” Gallops to rescue

Excerpts, editing, notes and comment by Carolyn Bennett
U.S. Government and Corporations continue pouring across Southwest/Central Asian borders now into Yemen. The Persian threat persists. We’re going to save these suckers for “democracy” even if we don’t practice democracy ourselves and even if we have to kill every one of them to achieve our ends. Feigning “democracy” as justification for war, Barack Obama pushes the Bushes-Clinton-Reagan precedent galloping across Persia, the Middle East/Southwest Asia in killing sprees. Taking out everything in their path ─ children, men and women, destroying lives and livelihoods, culture and art over and over again in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, as well as in African countries, incessant threats against Iran and other countries whose citizens practice Islam ─ on the pretext of transporting “democracy” and “saving the poor beggars.”

DEMOCRACY for simple minds
“The United States still works with an early prototype version of democracy – Democracy 1.0 Beta – which could have evolved into a modern representative democracy given the chance, but now seems to be devolving into a monarchy,” Dmitry Orlov writes in Reinventing Collapse. “There is the Bush dynasty, and next we might have the Clinton dynasty.” Orlov was writing before the election of Barack Obama, but the evidence of his “democracy”-mission-dripping-in-blood policies leads one to wonder whether candidate Obama had struck a backroom bargain promising to retain the Clinton/Bush dynasties.

“The evidence of two sparring royal families,” Orlov continues, “can be used to obscure the fact that they are both proxies for largely the same group of people.”

Orlov spells out the historical line, the precedent of America’s false mission of democracy. “In recent years, the United States has … attempted to stage-manage democratic revolutions in various unfortunate countries that were formerly part of the Soviet sphere of influence. These were the work of the Color Revolution Syndicate. They were well organized, foreign-financed events that involved mass production and shipping in of flags and t-shirts, promotion via international mass media, coordinated political pressure from Western governments and even catering services for the demonstrators, who were mostly young, bored and did not need much of an excuse to go and demonstrate.

“They demonstrated for freedom and democracy and while the freedom in question was mainly intended for foreign corporations and democracy was to stand for money politics and stage-managed elections, such subtleties were lost on their simple minds.”

Sources and Notes
Color Revolution
Color revolution is a term used to describe related movements that developed in several societies in the Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR) and Balkan states during the early 2000s. Participants in the cooler revolutions have mostly used nonviolent resistance to protest against governments seen as corrupt and/or authoritarian, and to advocate democracy. These movements all adopted a specific color (Iranian ‘green’) or flower as their symbol. Color revolutions are notable for the important role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and particularly student activists in organizing creative nonviolent resistance. [wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution]
Orlov’s book
Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov, Paperback: 176 pages, New Society Publishers, June 1, 2008, excerpts from pages 56 and 57
Yemen
Yemen’s critical geography: Republic of Yemen (Arabic Al-Yaman or Al-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah) is situated at the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.
Most of its northern frontier with Saudi Arabia traverses the great desert of the peninsula, the ‘Empty Quarter’, and remains un-demarcated, as does the eastern frontier with Oman.
Yemen’s uncharted desert marches make its precise land area impossible to determine.
In the west and south, Yemen is bounded by the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, respectively. The country’s territory includes a number of islands including the Kamaran group, located in the Red Sea near Al-Ḥudaydah; Perim (Barīm), in the Bab el-Mandeb, which separates the Arabian Peninsula from Africa; the most important and largest island, Socotra (Suqutrā), located in the Arabian Sea nearly 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) east of Aden; and The Brothers, small islets near Socotra. [Britannica]
Iran
The heart of the storied Persian empire of antiquity, Iran has long played an important role in the region as an imperial power and later—because of its strategic position and abundant natural resources, especially petroleum—as a factor in colonial and superpower rivalries.
Iran’s critical geography: A mountainous, arid, ethnically diverse country of southwestern Asia, the world’s only Shiite state, Iran is bounded to the north by Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan, and the Caspian Sea, to the east by Pakistan and Afghanistan, to the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and to the west by Turkey and Iraq. Iran also controls about a dozen islands in the Persian Gulf. About one-third of its 4,770-mile (7,680-km) boundary is seacoast.
Much of Iran consists of a central desert plateau, which is ringed on all sides by lofty mountain ranges that afford access to the interior through high passes. Most of the population lives on the edges of this forbidding, waterless waste. Tehran, the country’s capital, is a sprawling, jumbled metropolis at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains. Famed for its handsome architecture and verdant gardens, the city fell somewhat into disrepair in the decades following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, though efforts were later mounted to preserve historic buildings and expand the city’s network of parks. Tehran and cities such as Eṣfahān and Shīrāz combine modern buildings with important landmarks from the past and serve as major centers of education, culture, and commerce. [Britannica]