Thousands of people took to the streets of the Yemeni capital Sana'a on Sunday to protest against Saudi Arabia's bombing campaign of the country which has entered its third year.

According to the UN, over 10,000 people have been killed and more than 40,000 injured in the campaign. Some three million people – over 11 percent of Yemen’s population - have been forced to flee their homes to safety.

The US and the UK have been heavily criticized for supporting Riyadh's coalition.
The Red Cross warns that if a solution to the conflict is not found, Yemen may run out of food in the next four months.

Author and historian Gerald Horne says the humanitarian crisis has been provoked by US action in the Middle East.

The ongoing famine that is gripping Yemen “is having a particularly devastating impact on children and youth and pregnant women,” he told RT. “This is a direct result of the Saudi-led intervention in Yemeni internal affairs.”

In Horne’s opinion, this intervention “is a part of a great game.”

“Just as in Syria, where you see the US and the Saudis are attempting to destabilize the Damascus-based regime of President Assad. In Yemen the Saudis and their US allies in their minds are fighting a proxy war with the Houthis, an indigenous Yemeni group that is backed by the Iranians just like the Assad regime in Damascus is backed by the Iranians,” he explained.

He added though that “the intervention is backfiring…it is draining the Saudi treasury.”
Horne continued that “famine is ultimately a political question.”

“That is why even though like any humanitarian I would support the provision of food to the starving and the famished in Yemen. Ultimately, there has to be a political solution in order for this famine to stop which is one of the reasons why I would hope the parties would pay attention to the words of the special envoy of the UN Secretary-General who is calling for speedy talks to resolve this very troublesome problem,” he said.

Horne argued that the problem in Yemen “in no small measure is made in the USA and their North-Atlantic allies.”

“Keep in mind that a few decades ago in Aden and southern Yemen, in particular, there was a socialist-oriented government, The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. But the US, because of its Cold War psychosis couldn’t stand for the existence of such a regime. So it began to destabilize it and out of that destabilization has risen the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for example,” Horne said. “Supposedly, Washington is opposed to the rise and the surge of Al-Qaeda. But for whatever reason, they are supporting the Saudi-backed intervention which is sharing a trench with Al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. As ever, US foreign policy in Yemen is incoherent just as it is incoherent in Syria where it is pursuing a similar harebrained policy,” he added.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/385168-yemen-us-saudi-arabia/

US forces failed to take necessary precautions before launching a lethal drone strike in northern Syria last month that hit a mosque full of worshipers, three separate investigations have revealed.

Research by Human Rights Watch (HRW), London-based Forensic Architecture and open-source investigative unit Bellingcat reveal that US air strikes hit a western Aleppo mosque on March 16, killing at least 38 people and injuring dozens of others.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed they targeted "an al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location", killing "dozens of core al-Qaeda terrorists" after thorough surveillance. 

read more:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/air-strike-syria-hit-peaceful-mosq...

oh boy...

 

you can't beat a trump...

 

 

 

The American media and government’s unstated principle is that ‘anybody killed by the US deserves it,’ and the best thing they say is that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, says political commentator Lew Rockwell, editor of LewRockwell.com

Human Rights Watch issued a report on Tuesday accusing the US of failing to take precautions to avoid civilian casualties in the airstrike on March 16 in Syria. 

At least 38 people were killed in a US air raid that hit a mosque, according to data obtained by Human Rights Watch.

The strike took place as worshippers were gathering for evening prayers. However, The Pentagon denied its planes had hit the mosque saying it targeted a building 15 meters away from where Al-Qaeda members were reportedly meeting.

RT: Will anyone take responsibility for the casualties, do you think?

Lew Rockwell: No one will take responsibility, and they will draw out their investigation till everybody has forgotten it. And then they will say one thing or another. They never are going to say “Yes, we did the wrong thing.” You will never hear the US government say that about anything. Civilians are always the most casualties in any modern war. It was true in the ancient world. It is certainly true ever since WWI with the democratic wars that come into operation. It sees every single civilian in the opposing country is connected to the government and can be killed. Factories can be bombed, neighborhoods can be bombed, churches and mosques can be bombed. So, the US killed a million civilians in Iraq. How many people have been killed in Afghanistan? I am just talking about the recent wars. Yemen, Libya, if we were to look at all the US wars in its history, there were millions of civilians killed. This is not an accident. They don’t necessarily target civilians, but a lot of times they do target civilians if you just look at WWII when they deliberately targeted German and Japanese civilians. Sometimes they just don’t care. “It is collateral damage, it happens, don’t worry about it.” But we should all worry about it. It is one of the great evils of war, maybe the great evil of war. The classical liberals always warned that “If we have to have a war, it should be a war of the soldiers.” Not the soldiers attacking the people. But ever since WWI we’ve had the soldiers attacking the people as the main thing they do. It is more dangerous in a lot of these countries to be a civilian than to be a soldier.

US failed to take precautions to avoid civilian casualties in #Syria mosque #airstrike –#HumanRightsWatchhttps://t.co/omO31mp91dpic.twitter.com/NfQkEm4b5y

— RT America (@RT_America) April 19, 2017

RT: What hope is there of getting any kind of independent investigation into these casualties? If not, why?

LR: It is like all these investigations by American police of themselves, of the government of itself. They’ll say“We investigated ourselves and it turns out we are not guilty.” OK, thanks very much for letting us know. These investigations would be quite wonderful, if they were actually able to get to the evidence, have unimpeded access to the crime areas. But the CIA is often among these inspectors. I wish and hope that maybe we will actually learn what happened, we will learn who is responsible…

RT: In incidents similar to Saturday's attack, Western media seems to avoid blaming the rebels. Very different when it comes to blaming President Assad and there's no evidence provided. Why is that?

LR: The unstated principle of the American media and the American government is if anybody killed by the US - deserved it. The best thing they say is that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. How dare they’ve been at the wedding party, you could still be easily mistaken by a drone for a group of Al-Qaeda soldiers…If anybody was killed, don’t worry about it. It may be a PR problem for them. Then they worry. If it is not a PR problem, and the US media always make sure to the extent they can, it is never a PR problem for the US government to kill civilians… There is something wrong with killing soldiers in the opposing country, to invade somebody else’s country, killing their soldiers, blowing up their buildings. Who invited the US to get into Syria? Why is the US in charge of Syria, why the US is in charge of the entire world? I guess they think they are in charge of the whole solar system, too. There is something very wrong about an empire like the US, the most powerful, vicious, deadly and the richest in the entire history of mankind.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/385289-us-hrw-syria-mosque/

 

 

..

Russia and Iran have provided consistent military, financial, and diplomatic support to the Assad regime for the past six years, allowing it to sustain its military campaigns against civilians.

This stands in stark contrast with the intermittent support provided to the Syrian opposition, which has been insufficient to stand up to the military might of the Assad regime and its allies. 

Pithy, albeit in many cases well-intentioned, phrases such as "Hands Off Syria" are not particularly helpful or realistic and have been exploited and propelled further by the very people who support the dictator and his Russia and Iran allies.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-22/why-many-syrians-welcomed-us-strik...

 

We are told that Rifaie Tammas is a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, researching collective violence, regime change and foreign intervention in Syria. He is a Syrian refugee from Homs. Has he ever worked for one of the "rebels" outlet? Is he a Sunni Wahhabi? What does he mean by "the intermittent support provided to the Syrian opposition" considering it has had the full support of the US and of the Gulf Sates, especially the Saudi Arabians since 2011? What is the relationship of the "Syrian oppostion" with Daesh? Has the Syrian opposition never committed any crimes, killed no-one — soldiers and civilians —  and never used chemical weapons?

Russia, though selling weapons to Assad beforehand, only intervened directly in 2015, when the Assad regime was loosing against Daesh and the "Syrian opposition" army which was armed and coached (trained) by the US and the Europeans.

I am grateful the ABC posted Rifaie Tammas' article as an "opinion" as he says:

Most Syrians need no evidence implicating the Assad regime in the chemical weapons attack.

While it is reasonable for the international community to demand a formal inquiry into the attack, Syrians did not wait for any evidence to emerge.

This is bullshit as we know the Syrian opposition and Daesh have access to chemical weapons. Some of these weapons have been used in Mosul as well, not by the Syrian Army but by the Sunni Daesh extremists which are also part of the "moderate" Syrian oppostion such as Al Nusra and Al Qaeda. A proper investigation would show that the latest gas attack was more likely from the bombing of a storage/manufacturing of chemical weapons in the hands of the "opposition".

Many Syrians who are not Sunni are dismayed that under a pretext of freedom from Assad, the country that used to be more liberal, peaceful and westernised is being turned into a bloodshed by the "opposition" that is trying to also turn this country into a extremist Sunni sharia dominion.