Yemen – praag.org

Yemeni leader flees while Saudi Arabia continues with air strikes

Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi left his refuge in Aden for Saudi Arabia on Thursday as Houthi rebels battled with his forces on the outskirts of the southern port city.

Throughout the day, warplanes from Saudi Arabia and Arab allies struck at the Shi’ite Houthis and allied army units, who have taken over much of the country and seek to oust Hadi.

Warplanes resumed bombing the Houthi-held capital Sanaa on Thursday evening, shaking whole neighborhoods and terrifying residents. Several civilians have been reported killed in Sanaa.

“My whole family and I are preparing to sleep in the basement, as it’s the safest part of the house,” said resident Fawzia Nedras.

“The windows are rattling and we think they may break. We live near the airport, where we think a lot of the Houthi leaders are living and many of the air strikes are.”

Houthi leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi said in a televised speech Yemenis would confront the “criminal, unjust and unjustified aggression” by Saudi Arabia.

Residents and security officials said the second night of air strikes throughout Yemen targeted air and ground force bases loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose forces have bolstered the Houthi advance.

The Saudi-led military intervention marked a major escalation of the Yemen crisis, in which Iran supports the Shi’ite Muslim Houthis, and Sunni Muslim monarchies in the Gulf back Hadi and his fellow Sunnis in Yemen’s south.

Iran denounced the surprise assault on the Houthis and demanded an immediate halt to Saudi-led military operations.

Tehran also made clear Saudi Arabia’s deployment of a coalition of Sunni states against its Shi’ite enemies would inflame the sectarian hatreds already fuelling wars around the Middle East.

Hadi’s departure under Saudi protection from Aden, his embattled base since fleeing Sanaa in February, could be a turning point.

Saudi state news showed pictures of Hadi smiling and holding hands with the Saudi defense minister receiving him at an airport in the capital Riyadh and said he would go on to Egypt to attend an Arab summit on Saturday.

Mohammed Marem, the director of Hadi’s office, confirmed he would attend the meeting in person, dropping his original plan to address it via video link.

Hadi would seek a “Marshall Plan” from Arab leaders to aid his war-torn country, his foreign minister Riyadh Yaseen told pan-Arab Al Jazeera TV, referring to a major economic stimulus for Europe after World War Two.

It was far from certain whether Hadi would be able to return to Aden.

On the city’s northern outskirts, Houthis and allied troops fought gun battles with militiamen loyal to Hadi. Thirteen pro-Houthi fighters and three militiamen were killed and several others were killed in running street fights in nearby towns.

Pro-Hadi fighters retook Aden airport, a day after it was captured by Houthi forces. The facility remained closed.

Major gamble

The Saudi move was a major gamble by the world’s top oil exporter to check Iranian influence in its backyard without direct military backing from Washington.

“We will do whatever it takes in order to protect the legitimate government of Yemen from falling,” Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, told a news conference in Washington.

In Sanaa, which the Houthis seized in September, warplanes earlier bombed the main airport and al Dulaimi military air base, residents said.

A Reuters witness said four or five houses had been damaged. Rescue workers put the death toll at 13, including a doctor pulled from the rubble of his clinic.

Warplanes also struck Houthi fighters near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia, tribal and Houthi sources said. There was heavy street fighting in Houta, north of Aden, in which five pro-Houthi fighters and four militiamen were killed.

Thousands of Houthi supporters gathered to condemn the air strikes at the gate to Sanaa’s old city, waving Houthi banners and chanting “Death to America!”

Al-Arabiya said Saudi Arabia was contributing 100 warplanes to operation “Storm of Resolve” and more than 85 were being provided by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Morocco and Sudan.

Egyptian air forces were participating and four naval ships headed to secure the Gulf of Aden. Turkey said it might provide logistical support.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said later Iran had been trying to dominate the Middle East.

“It is really not possible to tolerate this. Iran has to understand,” he said, adding Tehran should withdraw any forces it had in Yemen as well as from Syria and Iraq.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said any threat to Saudi Arabia would “evoke a strong response” from Islamabad.

Pakistan, which borders eastern Iran, said it was considering a Saudi request that it send troops to Yemen.

Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, spokesman for the operation, told a news conference:

“There are no plans at this stage for ground forces operations, but if the need arises, the Saudi ground forces and those of the friends and sisterly forces are ready and will repel any aggression.”

Arab foreign ministers agreed in Egypt on Thursday on a draft resolution to form a unified Arab military force.

“The task of the force will be rapid military intervention to deal with security threats to Arab nations,” Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby said.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin called for an immediate cessation of military activities in Yemen in phone conversations with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, the Kremlin said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry raised Yemen on Thursday with his Iranian counterpart before turning to nuclear negotiations in Switzerland.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry demanded an immediate halt to the “aggression and air strikes” in Yemen.

“Military actions in Yemen … will further complicate the situation,” ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said, quoted by Fars news agency.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters: “Iran will use all possible political ways to allay tension in Yemen. Military intervention is not an option for Tehran.”

Riyadh accuses Iran of stirring up sectarian strife throughout the region and in Yemen with its support for the Houthis. Iran denies funding and training the Houthis.

Ambassador Jubeir said the assaults were in response to a request by Hadi. Washington said it supported the operation and had authorized U.S. logistical and intelligence support.

A widening Yemen conflict could disrupt the narrow Bab el-Mandeb strait, through which nearly 4 million barrels of oil are shipped daily to Europe, the United States and Asia. Oil prices surged as much as 6 percent on Thursday.

Yemen closed its main ports. The U.S. military said it would help ensure the strait at the tip of the Red Sea remains open. -Reuters

Saudi Arabia launches military operation in Yemen

A massive escalation of the tribal conflict in Yemen has brought the region closer to an all-out war.

The Shi’ite Houthi rebels have ousted the sitting president and control large parts of the country, a move that riled Saudi-Arabia.

Airstrikes by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, supported by Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Pakistan, Jordan
Saudi-Arabia are concentrating 150,000 troops near the Saudi-Yemenite border.

The US was informed in advance and supports the operation. The Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen has been called “Decisive Storm”.

Saudi Arabia has warned international shipping firms not to approach any Yemenite harbor while Houthi rebels have threatened to escalate and push the entire region into a hot war.

With the military campaign initiated by Saudi Arabia, the risk of an escalation of the conflict with Iran grows as Saudi Arabia is an American ally.

In a sign of the broadening scope of Barack Obama’s intervention across the region, officials in Washington said the US was establishing a “joint planning cell” with Saudi Arabia to co-ordinate the air strikes on the Houthi forces.

A widening Yemen conflict could pose risks for global oil supplies, and Brent crude oil prices shot up nearly 6% soon after the operation began.

ISIS blast kills 142 in Yemen

At least 142 people were killed when four suicide bombers blew themselves up in two mosques in the Yemeni capital Sanaa during Friday prayers, AFP reported.

Both mosques are known to be used mainly by supporters of the Shiite Muslim Houthi group which has seized control of the government.

The Islamic State group, an al Qaeda offshoot of Sunni extremists, claimed responsibility for the attacks, Reuters and AFP reported, citing an online statement by the group.

The four bombers attacked the Badr and al-Hashoosh mosques during midday Friday prayers, traditionally the most crowded time of the week, according to state news agency Saba.

The Shiite rebel-owned Al-Masirah TV channel said area hospitals were urging citizens to donate blood. It also reported that a fifth suicide bomb attack on another mosque was foiled in the northern city of Saada, a Houthi stronghold.

At the Badr mosque, militia guards caught the first bomber while searching worshippers at the entrance and he detonated his device there. Amid the ensuing panic, a second bomber entered the mosque and blew himself up in the crowd, Saba agency said.

Some 120 Muslim religious scholars this week published an open letter refuting the Islamic State’s claim to be a religious political movement. According to their view, the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is flagrantly un-Islamic in its behavior.

The behavior of ISIS have more in common with Mao’s Red Guards or the Khmer Rouge than it does with the Muslim empires of antiquity which they claim to be heirs to.

In synthesizing aspects of both Western and Islamic civilization, the group has crafted a radical ideology which is distinctly modern despite its glorification of a pre-modern past. Recognizing this is the first step to negating the clash of civilizations narrative upon which they thrive, scholars say.

In the eyes of most Muslims the Islamic State is as “Islamic” as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is “Democratic”.

Western embassies in Yemen evacuated

The embassies of Germany and Italy have announced evacuation of embassies’ personnel from Yemen. They followed the example of other NATO member states, such as Britain, France and the Netherlands, which have closed their embassies in Yemen over security fears.

US embassy staff were ordered to destroy all top-secret documents and sensitive equipment and pulled out of Yemen altogether Wednesday.

With major western embassies in Yemen evacuated, Houthi rebels and Al-Qaeda militants were left to deal with each other face to face. As Washington tries to enroll Shia rebels to combat terrorism, Islamic extremists are busy seizing military hardware.

In the meantime, an assault by Al-Qaeda militants on the camp of the 19th Infantry Brigade in Yemen’s Baihan on Thursday ended in the surrender of the garrison and the capture of a large quantity of armored vehicles and heavy weaponry. Seven people have been confirmed dead.

Islamic extremists captured a total of “30 tanks, 90 military vehicles, 25 armored vehicles and 28 artillery pieces,” a Yemeni military official told AFP.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), has confirmed the seizure of the camp, accusing troops there of links with the Houthi rebels. Negotiations between Islamic extremists and tribal leaders resulted in Al-Qaeda releasing six Yemeni servicemen.

The Houthi rebels captured the vehicles used for the evacuation of the closed American embassy.

Officials at Sanaa’s airport confirmed that the looted property included more than 25 vehicles used by the US Marines who maintained security at the embassy, as well as three vehicles used by US Ambassador Matthew Tueller and his staff.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki slammed the seizure as “completely unacceptable” and urged the Houthi rebels to “respect international conventions” regarding foreign embassies.

The militia’s foreign relations chief, Hussein al-Ezzi, confirmed the seizure of an unspecified number of vehicles, but insisted they were taken for “safekeeping” and are going to be handed over “to a trustworthy third party, like the United Nations office.”

The US Marine Corps, which organized the evacuation from Yemen, said that Marines destroyed heavy weapons and personal firearms in their possession before leaving the embassy headquarters. They also destroyed computers, documents, phones and other sensitive materials within the embassy’s perimeter.

The closure of the US embassy in Yemen has affected Washington’s ability to conduct counterterrorist operations in the area against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), believed to be one of the world’s most dangerous jihadist networks.

SA hostage killed in failed US rescue attempt

U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement he ordered the raid that killed hostages Pierre Korkie and Luke Somers.

The American photojournalist and South African teacher held by al-Qaida militants in Yemen have been killed in a failed U.S. rescue attempt, authorities said Saturday.

Information “indicated that Luke’s life was in imminent danger,” Obama said. “Based on this assessment, and as soon as there was reliable intelligence and an operational plan, I authorized a rescue attempt. … I also authorized the rescue of any other hostages held in the same location as Luke.”

The aid group Gift of Givers later identified the second hostage as South African teacher Pierre Korkie, who the group said was to be released Sunday. They said he was to be flown out of Yemen “under diplomatic cover, then to meet with family members in a ‘safe’ country (and) fly to South Africa.”

Lucy Somers, the photojournalist’s sister, told The Associated Press that she and her father learned of her 33-year-old brother’s death from FBI agents at 0500 GMT (12 a.m. EST) Saturday.

American troops “shot the hostage before or during the attack,” Yemen’s national security chief, Maj. Gen. Ali al-Ahmadi said at a conference in Manama, Bahrain. “He [Somers] was freed but unfortunately he was dead.”

The news of the failed rescue comes after a suspected U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed nine alleged militants early Saturday, a Yemeni security official said before news of Somers’ death. The drone struck at dawn in Yemen’s southern Shabwa province, hitting a suspected militant hideout, the official said. The official did not elaborate and spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to brief journalists.

Later Saturday, tribal leaders said they saw helicopters flying over an area called Wadi Abdan in Shabwa province.

Korkie was kidnapped in the Yemeni city of Taiz in May, along with his wife, Yolande. His wife later was released returned to South Africa. A non-governmental group, Gift of the Givers, helped mediate her release. Those close to Korkie said al-Qaida militants demanded a $3 million ransom for his release.

“The psychological and emotional devastation to Yolande and her family will be compounded by the knowledge that Pierre was to be released by al Qaida tomorrow,” Gift of Givers said in a statement Saturday. “A team of Abyan leaders met in Aden this morning and were preparing the final security and logistical arrangements, related to hostage release mechanisms, to bring Pierre to safety and freedom. It is even more tragic that the words we used in a conversation with Yolande at 5.59 this morning was ‘The wait is almost over.’”

Members of a South African family was killed in Afghanistan earlier, just ahead of a donor conference.

Obama comes out against self-determination

By Paul Craig Roberts.

The White House Fool has repeatedly declared erroneously and foolishly that it is “against international law” for Crimea to exercise self-determination. Self-determination, as used by Washington, is a propaganda term that serves Washington’s empire but is not permissible for real people to exercise.

On March 6 Obama telephoned Putin to tell the Russian President again that only Washington has the right to interfere in Ukraine and to insist against all logic that only the “government” in Kiev installed by the Washington-organized coup is “legitimate” and “democratic.”

In other words, the elected government in Crimea pushed by the people in Crimea to give them a vote on their future is “undemocratic” and “illegitimate,” but a non-elected government in Kiev imposed by Washington is the voice of self-determination and legitimacy.

Washington is so arrogant that it never occurs to the hubris-infected fools what the world thinks of Washington’s blatant hypocrisy.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has done nothing but violate international law–Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia.

Does Russia have an Africa Command? No, but Washington does.

Is Russia surrounding the US with military bases? No, but Washington has used the NATO organization, whose purpose disappeared 23 years ago, to organize western, eastern, and southern Europe into an empire army with forward bases on Russia’s borders. Washington is determined to extend the boundaries of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Georgia in central Asia and to Ukraine on the Black Sea. Both Georgia and Ukraine are former constituent parts of both Russia and the Soviet Union.

Washington is doing the same thing to China and Iran. Washington is working to establish new air and naval bases in Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, with which to block the flow of oil and other resources into China. Iran is surrounded by some 40 US military bases and has US fleets standing off its coastline.

In Washington’s propaganda, this rank militarism is presented as “defending democracy.”

The Russian government continues to act as though Washington’s thrusts at Russia’s independence and strategic interests can be defused with good sense and good will. But Washington has neither.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has been in the hands of a collection of ideologues who are convinced that the US is “the exceptional indispensable country” with the right to world hegemony. Everything that Washington has done in the 21st century is in pursuit of this goal.

Washington intends to break up the Russian Federation itself. Washington funnels huge sums of money into NGOs inside Russia that serve as Washington Fifth Columns and work hand-in-hand with Washington to discredit Russian free elections, to demonize Putin and the Russian government, to spread anti-Russian propaganda and agitation. It is amazing how many Russians actually believe the Western propaganda.

Washington is also working to isolate China with the Trans-Pacific-Partnership, but at this time is primarily focused on destabilizing and isolating Russia. Washington is desperate to break up the BRICS, the emerging organization of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. With the largest countries and half of the world’s population, the BRICS organization is emerging as a political and economic power, especially with the organization’s plan to cease using the US dollar as reserve currency. Ringing Russia with US missile bases on Russia’s borders impairs Russian sovereignty and independence and, thus, weakens the BRICS as a countervailing power to Washington.

Many have been deceived by Washington’s propaganda. The world is slowly waking up, but is it in time?

The US media and much of Europe’s speak with one voice parroting Washington’s propaganda, demonizing Washington’s targets, and preparing insouciant Western populations for more war. The Western media, like Western governments, is devoid of integrity. Liars and whores rule.

Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the “Father of Reaganomics”. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, among others. He has recently published How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds and is coauthor with Lawrence Stratton of The New Color Line and The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Killing with impunity: US covert targeted deaths

The Council on Foreign Relations has released its estimates on the year’s covert targeted killings in Yemen and Pakistan, carried out primarily by drones. The numbers are based on reports from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, The Long War Journal, and The New America Foundation. Each source provides slightly different numbers, but the Long War Journal figures estimate a total of 54 strikes and 253 casualties, of whom 31 were civilians. The Council estimates a total of 3,520 casualties since the drone strike program began in 2004, of whom 457 have been civilians.

The numbers are only estimates, as data on civilian casualties is notoriously unreliable, but CFR is straightforward about its goals in releasing the report. “The current trajectory of US drone strike policies is unsustainable,” author Micah Zenko wrote in his initial report last year, to which these new numbers are an update. “Without reform from within, drones risk becoming an unregulated, unaccountable vehicle for states to deploy lethal force with impunity.”

Obama okays military aid to countries with child soldiers

Amid the hoopla of the government shutdown, the White House quietly passed a bill Monday that overrides a law banning military aid to countries that use child soldiers.

The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 prohibits the U.S. government from providing military assistance to countries that directly use, or support the use of, child soldiers. Built into the law is an option allowing the U.S. president to override the ban if he/she deems it necessary.

On Monday, President Obama issued complete waivers to Yemen, Chad, and South Sudan, opening up those countries to U.S. military aid despite their known use of child soldiers, declaring in a written memorandum it is “in the national interest of the United States” to override the ban.

Obama also granted partial waivers to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia to allow “International Military Education and Training” and “nonlethal” defense for both countries and “provision of assistance under the Peacekeeping Operations authority for logistical support and troop stipends” in Somalia. According to Think Progress writer Hayes Brown, these waivers open the door for military aid for ongoing “peacekeeping” operations in both these countries.

“Obama is becoming an expert at waiving human rights laws,” writes Ken Hanly in Digital Journal. “He waived part of a law last month that banned the US from supplying lethal aid to terrorist groups so he could send aid to Syrian rebels. In the case of Egypt, Obama has refused to call the coup by the armed forces a coup and by doing so does not run afoul of a law that would ban aid to a country where there had been a military coup.”

“Human rights are to be promoted but only insofar as they do not conflict with US national interest as understood by the president,” he added.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government has come under criticism for filling its own military ranks with hundreds of thousands of teenagers, including 17-year-olds who can enlist with parental consent. – wakeupfromyourslumber.com

Did Mandela’s friend supply chemical weapons to Syrian rebels?

Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Nelson Mandela

by Terry Crawford-Browne

REPORTS from Syria by Jordanian journalists allege that it was Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia who distributed those chemical weapons to the Syrian rebels.( Here he is shown with that other unrepentant terrorist)

If true, it indicates the chemical attack in Damascus to have been a false-flag operation by the American war business.

This would be entirely in keeping with Prince Bandar’s history of organising the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, the Iran-Contra weapons exchanges, Libya in 2011, the suppression of the Shia uprising in Bahrain, Saudi support for the coup d’etat in Egypt and support for Syrian rebels.

Other reports confirm that Prince Bandar also went to see Russian President Vladimir Putin last month and offered to buy $15bn worth of Russian weapons provided Mr Putin abandoned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Mr Putin gave him short shrift.

Prince Bandar was not only the Saudi ambassador in Washington for 22 years and friends of Ronald Reagan and the Bush family, but he also negotiated the 1985 £43bn Al-Yamamah weapons deal with Margaret Thatcher, which Tony Blair renewed in 2007 with the Al-Salaam weapons deal.

When the British Serious Fraud Office investigated the bribes which BAE Systems paid him, Prince Bandar allegedly threatened blood in the streets of London.

Mr Blair squelched the investigation citing “national security.” The Guardian newspaper revealed a couple of months later how BAE with collusion of the British government had laundered bribes to Prince Bandar of over £1bn through Riggs Bank in Washington DC and other US banks.

Most importantly, Prince Bandar and Ms Thatcher negotiated the Al-Yamamah deal under the British Official Secrets Act, meaning that it cannot be investigated in Britain.

Saudi Arabia ships thousands of barrels per day of oil consigned to the Bank of England, which is then distributed to Shell and BP.

Over the years a surplus has developed, which is guesstimated to be worth over $150bn. Its purpose is a) to guarantee British and US support for the Saudi royal family against domestic insurrection and b) to fund covert destabilisation of resource-rich countries in Asia and Africa under the guise of the war on terror.

Having targeted Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and other countries over the years, Syria and Egypt are Prince Bandar’s current targets. When will SA be targeted by the American and British “war business” given our country’s mineral wealth?

Saudi Arabia made lavish donations to the African National Congress. Prince Bandar was also the only foreigner present at Nelson Mandela’s secret wedding to Graca Machel, and was a frequent visitor to SA when the arms deal was being negotiated.

Embassy threats ‘had no basis in fact’

A high-ranking Yemeni security official has told McClatchy that the Obama administration’s recently announced terror threat which supposedly targeted US embassies had “no basis in fact” and was manufactured merely to dampen opposition to drone strikes.

After initially warning of a terror plot “thought to have been one of the most serious against American and other Western interests since the September 11 attacks,” the US closed 20 embassies and consulates earlier this month, 18 of which reopened soon after.

The announcement of the threat occurred as it was simultaneously acknowledged that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last year was linked to a clandestine CIA arms smuggling operation based in the Libyan city that was being used to transport arms to rebels in Syria, many of whom are allied with Al-Qaeda militants.

The announcement of the threat against US embassies also served to justify blanket NSA surveillance, leading some to suggest that the alleged plot was being hyped to distract from the Edward Snowden scandal. It was later claimed that the NSA had intercepted a “conference call” of Al-Qaeda members during which militants discussed an attack.

However, in a report entitled U.S. embassies in Muslim world reopen amid still-murky threats, McClatchy cites, “A high-ranking Yemeni security official speaking on the condition of anonymity,” who told the news outlet that the threat “had no basis in fact,” with the source bemusedly attributing “media reports about imminent terror strikes to a single official’s comments, which he cast as a misguided attempt at shifting public opinion in the face of increasing and unpopular American drone strikes.”

Dozens of people, labeled “suspected militants” by the US, have been killed in Yemen over the last two weeks as a result of at least eight drone strikes, attacks that have outraged Yemeni citizens. According to Princeton University professor and Yemen expert Gregory Johnson, the drone strikes are actually serving to recruit more terrorists.

“There are strikes that kill civilians. There are strikes that kill women and children. And when you kill people in Yemen, these are people who have families. They have clans. And they have tribes. And what we’re seeing is that the United States might target a particular individual because they see him as a member of al-Qaeda. But what’s happening on the ground is that he’s being defended as a tribesman,” said Johnson.

Figures show that 50 civilians are killed for every one terrorist taken out by a drone strike, which means that 95% of the victims are innocent men, women and children.

As Ron Paul noted recently, while the Obama administration is conducting drone strikes in Yemen to supposedly target Al-Qaeda terrorists, the White House is simultaneously supporting the allies of Al-Qaeda terrorists, the vast majority of whom have pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, in Syria.

Furthermore, as the high-ranking Yemeni security official reveals, the administration is also apparently manufacturing terror plots in order to justify these drone strikes as well as mass NSA surveillance. – Infowars.com

US deploys forces in 18 countries against Muslim anger

Washington said it was deploying forces to cope with violence in as many as 18 different locations as deadly Muslim anger spreads over a US-made movie that mocks Islam.

Two US marines were killed in Afghanistan when insurgents armed with guns and rockets stormed a heavily fortified air base late on Friday in an attack that the Taliban militia said was to avenge the film.

The attack on Camp Bastion in Helmand province, which continued until Saturday morning, was a major security breach at a base where Britain’s Prince Harry is stationed and has been the target of specific death threats.

It came after at least six protesters died in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon and Sudan on Friday as local police battled to defend American missions from mobs of stone-throwers.

Symbols of US influence in cities across the Muslim world came under attack — embassies and schools as well as fast food chains — as protesters vented their fury at the low-budget American-made YouTube film, “Innocence of Muslims”.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Washington was configuring its forces to be able to cope with widespread violence following its deployment of Marine counter-terrorism units to Libya and Yemen and its stationing of two destroyers off the North African coast.

“We have to be prepared in the event that these demonstrations get out of control,” Panetta told Foreign Policy magazine.

He did not offer any specifics. But the magazine said that the Pentagon was discussing, but had not yet decided, whether to send a third platoon of 50 specially trained Marines to protect the US embassy in Khartoum.

Guards on the roof of the embassy fired warning shots on Friday as the compound was breached by protesters waving Islamic banners, after earlier ransacking parts of the British and German missions in the Sudanese capital.

The US embassy compounds in Egypt and Yemen have also been breached in the past week, and on Tuesday the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed when a mob torched the consulate in Benghazi.

Panetta said Friday that it was still too early to say exactly what happened in Benghazi where there have been suggestions that Al-Qaeda sympathisers rather than angry Muslim protesters may have been responsible.

“It’s something that’s under assessment and under investigation, to determine just exactly what happened here,” he said.

The assault on the consulate came on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the head of Libya’s national assembly, Mohammed al-Megaryef, on Friday blamed Al-Qaeda as he laid a bouquet of flowers in front of the devastated mission.

Protests spread across continents

In Friday night’s attack in Afghanistan, the assailants managed to penetrate the air base and damaged several aircraft although military spokesman Major Adam Wojack declined to say what type or how many.

Wojack said 18 insurgents were killed — including a suicide bomber. Prince Harry was never in danger, officials confirmed.

A Taliban spokesman said the attack was to avenge the YouTube movie.

“Last night, a number of mujahedeen fighters have carried out suicide attacks on Camp Bastion of Helmand in revenge for the insulting movie by the Americans,” spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP by telephone.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in June that the massive base, spread over several square kilometres (miles) of desert, is home to more than 28,000 people and the attack raised serious questions about security.

Police in Sydney fired pepper spray to contain protesters trying to enter the building housing the US consulate on Saturday, as Australia became the the latest focus of disturbances.

Bottles, shoes and other objects were hurled during the clashes with police which resulted in eight arrests, with six police officers injured as the unexpected protest brought parts of the city to a standstill.

Shoppers looked on in surprise as protesters, including children, shouted “Down, down USA” and waved banners such as “Behead all those who insult the prophet”.

Hundreds also demonstrated in Indonesia and the Maldives.

In Somalia, the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militia, which controls large swathes of the country called on Muslims to launch revenge attacks on Western targets.

“The Shebab mujahedeen are urging people of Somalia to show their love for Islam and particularly to our Prophet Mohammed by making attacks against the West,” Shebab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage told AFP by telephone.

US President Barack Obama urged Americans not to be disheartened by images of anti-American violence in the Islamic world, expressing confidence that the ideals of freedom America stands for would ultimately prevail.

“I know the images on our televisions are disturbing,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “But let us never forget that for every angry mob, there are millions who yearn for the freedom, and dignity, and hope that our flag represents.”

Obama said his administration was doing everything it could to protect Americans serving abroad.

“We are in contact with governments around the globe, to strengthen our cooperation, and underscore that every nation has a responsibility to help us protect our people,” he said. – AFP

Why I am so sad

by Ilana Mercer

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because a justifiably angry crowd of Libyans in Benghazi stormed an embassy that represents the brute force that destabilized their lives for decades to come.

I feel for my countrymen who perished in that embassy, but the truth remains that they acquiesced in leveling Libya. And by so doing, they invited into that country the very lynch mob that took their lives. The Americans targeted had become an irritant to the long-suffering Libyans, who will use any U.S. provocation, real or imagined, to expel the people who “came, saw and conquered.”

To those who imagine the death of our diplomats in Libya turns on American free-speech, I say this: You have no right to deliver your disquisition in my living room. You have only the right to request permission to so do from this (armed) private-property owner.

By extension, you have no universal right to “free speech” on another man’s land. More so than to America’s diplomats – Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran belong to the people of Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Iran.

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen a most inopportune time to insert himself into the middle of a rancorous American election season and by so doing make Mitt Romney’s foreign-policy bellicosity look good to a war-weary people that can ill-afford it.

Now is not a good time, Bibi. Israel is a wedge issue in the coming election. If Israelis love Americans as Americans love Israel, they need to understand that, “The Titan is Tired”:

“We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own – be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don’t need our friends looking to us to do so.”

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

I AM SO SAD – and it is not because another 9/11 has come and gone. The polls indicate that Americans want to move on; have moved on. Perhaps Americans have realized that it behooves our “overlords who art in D.C.” to keep them stuck in grief. By stunning us like cattle to the slaughter, the statists have been able to perpetrate in our name crimes way worse than 9/11.

I AM SO SAD because my sweet, kind friend, Thomas Szasz, has passed away. Tributes merely touch on professor Szasz’ unmatched genius and attendant achievements (professor of psychiatry emeritus, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, N.Y., and author of the seminal work, “The Myth of Mental Illness”).

I attempted to word what Thomas Szasz did over decades, in the advance praise he requested for one of his many magisterial masterpieces, “Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry”:

“Bit by barbarous and bizarre bit, Thomas Szasz dismantles psychiatry’s rickety scaffolding, exposing over two centuries of physical torture and tortured logic. Professor Szasz takes the necessary analytical and empirical solvents to this state-empowered fraternity of sorceresses. He also supplies the only salve for the psychiatric violence he correctly dubs ‘psychiatric slavery’: abolition: Now, ‘Let the sunshine in.’”

“This will be hard to beat,” Tom quipped. (“Tom” was how he’d sign off.)

Allow me, then, to speak but briefly to the tender friendship professor Szasz and I developed over the years. Briefly, for the breezy ease with which my countrymen share their feelings with strangers is alien to me. Abreacting à la Oprah in public bespeaks a shallowness that was foreign to Tom too. Whenever we communicated, it was in succinct, intense and precise language. We spoke a similar language. Dare I say that it was our shared ancestry as European Jews that accounted for these cultural commonalities?

For example, we came together – yet stood apart from libertarian mainstream – on the all-time moral litmus test: the state-sanctioned, slow execution of Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo.

Even eerier was the way we both drew on the allegoric power of William Faulkner to capture the late Ms. Schiavo’s plight, before knowing one another. “A Rose for Emily” was Tom’s source of inspiration, in June of 2006; mine was “As She Lay Dying,” in March of 2005.

“Kindred souls” was Tom’s reaction.

Late in 2009, we decided to meet near Huntington Beach, where, Dr. Szasz, nearing 90, was to address a conference. Alas, he was detained on the East Coast by bad weather, and my husband and I went on to visit in the vicinity. “Maybe I’ll mobilize myself and visit you next summer in Seattle,” he promised.

I last heard from Dr. Szasz on July 27, this year. Characteristically, it was in response to a column I had written, “‘You didn’t build that’: Obama’s political epitaph.” As he would so often do, the great man excerpted his favorite lines. “BRAVO, AGAIN!,” he added in capitals.

I replied:

Thank you, my dear. It seems so futile.
But I like hearing from you.
How have you been?

Tom wrote back laconically but poignantly:

Yes. Disheartening. “Virtue is its own reward.” – I am OK.

Would that everyone rationed speech thus; the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.

Earlier this year – it was in May – I made my way to Manhattan, where it was my distinction to address Victor Niederhoffer’s New York City Junto gathering as featured speaker. I inquired whether Tom would be gallivanting around, as was his wont.

Ever sweet and affectionate, there was a finality to his reply:

Many thanks, dear Ilana. Sadly no. I am OK but progressively weakening and everything is too much of a schlep. I enjoy and agree with all that you send me.
Love (without a first sight), Tom.

“Promise me,” I wrote back, “that this will not be unrequited love.”

“It is NOT,” Tom replied.