Yemen

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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jun 06, 2017 12:12 pm

Qatar hosts the Al Udeid Air Base, a major U.S. military base.

Trump Dumps Qatar Alliance Via Twitter, Takes Credit For Gulf States Cutting Ties

Andrew Harnik/AP
By ESME CRIBB Published JUNE 6, 2017 10:24 AM

President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to cut ties with Qatar via Twitter and took credit for a number of Arab states that have also broken off relations with the nation.

“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!” Trump tweeted. “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off.”

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During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!
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...extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!
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In the wake of Trump’s first trip abroad as president, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and cut diplomatic ties with the nation. Yemen, the Maldives and Libya’s eastern-based government also broke off relations with Qatar.

Qatar hosts the Al Udeid Air Base, a major U.S. military base.

U.S. officials nevertheless claimed that the rift between Qatar and other Arab nations will not affect anti-terrorism efforts.

“I do not expect that this will have any significant impact, if any impact at all, on the unified fight against terrorism in the region or globally,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday.

“I am positive there will be no implications coming out of this dramatic situation at all,” Secretary of Defense James Mattis said the same day. “The diplomatic situation, it will probably take some time — I don’t know how long — but it will be resolved.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/t ... matic-rift
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: Yemen

Postby Grizzly » Tue Jun 06, 2017 12:28 pm

https://archive.fo/dLwzY
Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen cut ties with Qatar

Also,
Senior Analyst: Saudi Arabia, Allies May Take Military Action Against Qatar as Next Move
https://archive.fo/ApKMn
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Yemen

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue Jun 06, 2017 1:17 pm

Grizzly » Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:28 am wrote:https://archive.fo/dLwzY
Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen cut ties with Qatar

Also,
Senior Analyst: Saudi Arabia, Allies May Take Military Action Against Qatar as Next Move
https://archive.fo/ApKMn


This is starting to look like a resource and strategic territory grab.

Given the USA Qatar military base, one wonders if Saudi et al are operating regards communication and shared goals with USA military and political leaders.

Closing of borders and air space and removal of citizens in such rapid fashion indicates a high probability of other action.

Wonder what Trump knows and if he knew beforehand and is complicit.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jun 06, 2017 6:38 pm

FIRST ON CNN: US suspects Russian hackers planted fake news behind Qatar crisis
Shimon Prokupecz
By Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz, CNN
Updated 6:34 PM ET, Tue June 6, 2017
Sources: Russia planted fake Qatar crisis news

Washington (CNN)US investigators believe Russian hackers breached Qatar's state news agency and planted a fake news report that contributed to a crisis among the US' closest Gulf allies, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, Qatari and US government officials say.
Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say. Qatar hosts one of the largest US military bases in the region.
The alleged involvement of Russian hackers intensifies concerns by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try some of the same cyber-hacking measures on US allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.
US officials say the Russian goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies. In recent months, suspected Russian cyber activities, including the use of fake news stories, have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries.
It's not yet clear whether the US has tracked the hackers in the Qatar incident to Russian criminal organizations or to the Russian security services blamed for the US election hacks. One official noted that based on past intelligence, "not much happens in that country without the blessing of the government."
The FBI and CIA declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Qatari embassy in Washington said the investigation is ongoing and its results would be released publicly soon.
The Qatari government has said a May 23 news report on its Qatar News Agency attributed false remarks to the nation's ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel and questioned whether President Donald Trump would last in office.
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.
"Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation," the foreign minister told CNN's Becky Anderson. "Because it was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked and proved by the FBI."
Sheikh Saif Bin Ahmed Al-Thani, director of the Qatari Government Communications Office, confirmed that Qatar's Ministry of Interior is working with the FBI and the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency on the ongoing hacking investigation of the Qatar News Agency.
"The Ministry of Interior will reveal the findings of the investigation when completed," he told CNN.
Partly in reaction to the false news report, Qatar's neighbors, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have cut off economic and political ties, causing a broader crisis.
The report came at a time of escalating tension over accusations Qatar was financing terrorism.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted criticism of Qatar that mirrors that of the Saudis and others in the region who have long objected to Qatar's foreign policy. He did not address the false news report.
"So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off," Trump said in a series of tweets. "They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!"
In his tweet, Trump voiced support for the regional blockade of Qatar and cited Qatar's funding of terrorist groups. The Qataris have rejected the terror-funding accusations.
Hours after Trump's tweets, the US State Department said Qatar had made progress on stemming the funding of terrorists but that there was more work to be done.
US and European authorities have complained for years about funding for extremists from Saudi Arabia and other nations in the Gulf region. Fifteen of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
Last year during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Obama administration officials raised the issue of Saudi funding to build mosques in Europe and Africa that are helping to spread an ultra-conservative strain of Islam.
US intelligence has long been concerned with what they say is the Russian government's ability to plant fake news in otherwise credible streams, according to US officials.
That concern has surfaced in recent months in congressional briefings by former FBI Director James Comey.
Comey told lawmakers that one reason he decided to bypass his Justice Department bosses in announcing no charges in the probe of Hillary Clinton's private email server was the concern about an apparent fake piece of Russian intelligence. The intelligence suggested the Russians had an email that indicated former Attorney General Loretta Lynch had assured Democrats she wouldn't let the Clinton probe lead to charges.
The FBI came to believe the email was fake, but still feared the Russians could release it to undermine the Justice Department's role in the probe.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/ ... index.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:54 am

Qatar crisis: Can Al Jazeera survive?
1 hour ago

Al Jazeera launched in 1996 as first 24-hour rolling news channel in the Arab world

Qatar's Al Jazeera media network has undoubtedly put the tiny Gulf state on the international map.

It is the showpiece of the oil- and gas-rich nation's efforts to turn its financial largesse into outsized global influence and visibility, a two-decades long effort that includes its successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup.

But there are growing fears that the current diplomatic crisis in Qatar could place the high-profile network's future in jeopardy.
Al Jazeera's broadcasting has caused controversy and drawn anger in various Arab states, not least in Egypt after the fall of Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring and the subsequent ousting of the elected president, Mohammed Morsi - a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It has already been caught up in the current crisis, with its website blocked by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain in late May.
Those nations all severed ties with Qatar on 5 June, accusing it of supporting extremism. Saudi Arabia has closed Al Jazeera's offices and withdrawn its broadcast licence, saying it promotes terrorist "plots", supports Houthi militias that Saudi Arabia is fighting in Yemen, and has attempted to "break the Saudi internal ranks".
Al Jazeera has long defended its editorial independence and says it is objective.


Qatar now finds itself isolated and vulnerable. It denies backing terrorist groups but will be pressed for concessions in order to resolve the tense situation, which has left its international airport, a key hub, deserted, and residents stocking up on food supplies.
Egyptian Muslim brotherhood and supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi rally outside Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo on November 4, 2013Image copyrightAFP


Al Jazeera has been accused by Egypt of being biased towards supporters of deposed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi
BBC Arabic's Feras Kilani, in Doha, says sources tell him that media reforms will be a key condition placed on Qatar. Al Jazeera might not be closed but its editorial policies will have to change, he says, while the newer Qatari Al-Araby TV network, based in London, could be shuttered.

"For many years Al Jazeera has been a bone of contention for the Gulf states and Egypt, even before its heyday of rolling news coverage during the Arab Spring," writes the Emirati commentator Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi.
He points out that in 2002, Saudi Arabia was angered over coverage of its peace plan for the Israel-Palestine conflict and recalled its ambassador from Qatar as a result. An ambassador was only sent back in 2008.

In 2014, Qatar promised to stop "interfering" in its Gulf neighbours' domestic politics to resolve another diplomatic spat that saw Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain withdraw their ambassadors
This time around, Qatar's neighbours in the Gulf "will demand the complete shuttering of the Al-Jazeera TV network before any mediation can take place", Mr Qassemi predicts.
That would have major consequences for the country's media ambitions, and for the network's 3,000-plus staff in Doha and around the world.

The rise of Al Jazeera


Attracted large audiences - soon in the tens of millions - with dynamic coverage and criticism of Arab leaders
Came to global prominence by airing video messages from Osama Bin Laden after 9/11

Set up English-language channel in 2006, which has won many awards and broadcasts to more than 100 countries
"If you follow coverage on both channels, you wouldn't believe this is the same brand," says Arab media expert Noha Mellor
Spent huge sums to launch Al Jazeera America in 2013 to break into US market but the channel folded in 2016
Lost large audiences in Egypt after coverage of the Arab Spring. Al Jazeera Arabic and its local channel Mubasher Misr (later suspended) was accused of serving as mouthpiece of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, which it denied
Qatar finds itself in a delicate position, says H A Hellyer, a senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.
It is perceived as a "loose cannon" over its coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood, he says, and its relationship with Saudi Arabia's chief rival for regional influence, Iran.
US President Donald Trump, a key ally, has meanwhile praised Qatar's isolation.
The country has little wiggle room, and any deal to bring Qatar's foreign policy closer in line with Saudi Arabia's will probably involve changes to its influential media networks - including Al Jazeera - and possibly the end of Al-Araby Al Jadeed (The New Arab), an outlet part of the same company as Al-Araby, Mr Hellyer writes.
Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy (left), Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed (right)Image copyrightAFP
Image caption
Three Al Jazeera journalists were convicted in Egypt of "spreading false news" in 2015, in a case that drew global condemnation
David Roberts, a Qatar expert at King's College London, agrees that Al Jazeera will probably be on the Gulf countries and Egypt's "shopping list" of concessions they want from Qatar.
"But this is a negotiation and there is no certainty that Qatar would capitulate on this point," he told the BBC.
He says that Al Jazeera Arabic, although it has toned down its coverage, "is still prickly towards Egypt in particular".
But the channel did stop "going after" Saudi Arabia close to a decade ago - around the time the ambassador was returned.
'Change of tone'
It has been reported that in late 2007, Qatar's government assured Saudi Arabia that its coverage of the kingdom would be mellowed as it moved to reset relations as Iran's nuclear ambitions grew.
"Orders were given not to tackle any Saudi issue without referring to the higher management," a newsroom employee told the New York Times. "All dissident voices disappeared from our screens."
Others aren't convinced that the end of Al Jazeera will be a specific demand made of Qatar, but agree its foreign policy will undoubtedly have to change if it wants to bring an end to its current isolation.
This means changes to the tone and coverage of government-funded media networks like Al Jazeera would follow, says Professor Noha Mellor, a pan-Arab media expert at the University of Bedfordshire.
"They might just tone down their media discourse in line with their foreign policy, because [Qatar's] foreign policy will have to tone down, in style and ambition."
Al Jazeera Arabic: How does it cover events? - by Nada Rashwan, BBC Monitoring
Al Jazeera's Arabic channel was strongly supportive of the 2011 Arab uprisings and it has veered towards an overtly pro-Islamist line amid the upheavals that have engulfed the region since.
With that shift, the channel has come to be perceived as a pillar of Qatar's foreign policy and a reflection of its ambitions in a changing Arab world.
Al Jazeera was at the forefront of tensions that strained relations between Egypt and Qatar after the toppling of Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
In Syria and Iraq, Al Jazeera's coverage of the so-called Islamic State (IS) militant group has differed from other outlets.
In referring to the group, Al Jazeera uses the expression "the state organisation", which is not very far removed from what IS calls itself, as opposed to the pejorative Arabic acronym "Daesh" used by Saudi media, including Al Jazeera competitor Al-Arabiya.
In 2015, Al Jazeera used the positive term "Sunni revolutionaries" to refer to Sunni fighters, including IS militants, who took control of Iraq's key city of Mosul.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40187414
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:08 am

Yemen cholera cases pass the 100,000 mark: WHO
The number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen has risen to more than 100,000 since an outbreak began on April 27, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

"To date, 101,820 suspected cholera cases and 789 deaths have been reported in 19 governorates," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yeme ... SKBN18Z17N


Yemen cholera killing one person nearly every hour: Call for massive aid effort and a ‘cholera ceasefire’
Yemen is in the grip of a runaway cholera epidemic that is killing one person nearly every hour and if not contained will threaten the lives of thousands of people in the coming months said international agency Oxfam today. The agency is calling for a massive aid effort and an immediate ceasefire to allow health and aid workers tackle the outbreak.

According to the World Health Organisation in the five weeks between 27 April and 3 June some 676 people died of the disease and over were 86,000 were suspected of having the disease. Last week the rate jump to 2,777 suspected cases a day from 2,529 a day during the previous week. Given Yemen’s neglected medical reporting system and the widespread nature of the epidemic these official figures are likely to be under reporting the full scale of the crisis.

In the coming months there could be up to 150,000 cases of cholera, with some predictions as high as 300,000 cases.

The cholera crisis comes on top of two years of brutal war which has decimated the health, water and sanitation systems, severely restricted the essential imports the country is dependent upon and left millions of people one step away from famine.

Sajjad Mohammed Sajid Oxfam's Yemen Country Director said: “Yemen is on the edge of an abyss. Lives hang in the balance. Two years of war has plunged the country into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and at the risk of famine. Now it is at the mercy of a deadly and rapidly spreading cholera epidemic. Cholera is simple to treat and prevent but while the fighting continues the task is made doubly difficult. A massive aid effort is needed now. Those backers of this war in Western and Middle Eastern capitals need to put pressure on parties to the fighting to agree a ceasefire to allow public health and aid workers to get on with the task.”

The international agency said that the outbreak is set to be one of the worst this century if there is not a massive and immediate effort to bring it under control. It is calling on rich countries and international agencies to generously deliver on promises of $1.2bn of aid they made last month.

Money, essential supplies and technical support are needed to strengthen Yemen's embattled health, water and sanitation services. Health workers and water engineers have not been paid for months while hospitals, health centres, public water systems have been destroyed and starved of key items, such as medical supplies, chlorine and fuel. Even basic supplies such as intravenous fluids, oral rehydration salts and soap are urgently needed to enable an effective, speedy response - some of which will have to be flown into the country. Communities also need to be supported with their efforts to prevent the disease spreading and quickly treat people showing the first signs of infection.

Running an effective nationwide cholera response cannot succeed while the country is at war and Oxfam is calling on all parties to the fighting to agree a ‘cholera ceasefire’ to allow health and aid workers to get on with the task.

For more information contact: Ian Bray 01865 472289, 07721 461339

Notes to Editors:

Cholera is easily prevented with simple and affordable efforts at home and in the community, such as disinfection of water with chlorine, safe collection and storage of water, washing hands with soap, and understanding the myths, behaviours associated with cholera. When people suspect they have the symptoms they can drink a mix salt and sugar to rehydrate them while they make their way to the medical centre.
http://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/yemen ... nd-cholera
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:12 am

This is the real story behind the economic crisis unfolding in Qatar
Only Shakespeare’s plays could come close to describing such treachery – the comedies, of course

Robert Fisk @indyvoices 5 hours ago


Doha, Qatar. The nation is now embroiled in a diplomatic and economic crisis – but what part is Saudi Arabia playing in stoking that crisis? Reuters
The Qatar crisis proves two things: the continued infantilisation of the Arab states, and the total collapse of the Sunni Muslim unity supposedly created by Donald Trump’s preposterous attendance at the Saudi Muslim summit two weeks ago.

After promising to fight to the death against Shia Iranian “terror”, Saudi Arabia and its closest chums have now ganged up on one of the wealthiest of their neighbours, Qatar, for being a fountainhead of “terror”. Only Shakespeare’s plays could come close to describing such treachery. Shakespeare’s comedies, of course.

For, truly, there is something vastly fantastical about this charade. Qatar’s citizens have certainly contributed to Isis. But so have Saudi Arabia’s citizens. No Qataris flew the 9/11 planes into New York and Washington. All but four of the 19 killers were Saudi. Bin Laden was not a Qatari. He was a Saudi. But Bin Laden favoured Qatar’s al-Jazeera channel with his personal broadcasts, and it was al-Jazeera who tried to give spurious morality to the al-Qaeda/Jabhat al-Nusrah desperadoes of Syria by allowing their leader hours of free airtime to explain what a moderate, peace-loving group they all were.

Saudi Arabia cuts ties with Qatar over terror links
First, let’s just get rid of the hysterically funny bits of this story. I see that Yemen is breaking air links with Qatar. Quite a shock for the poor Qatari Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, since Yemen – under constant bombardment by his former Saudi and Emirati chums – doesn’t have a single serviceable airliner left with which to create, let alone break, an air link.

The Maldives have also broken relations with Qatar. Be sure this has nothing to do with the recent promise of a Saudi five-year loan facility of $300m to the Maldives, the proposal of a Saudi property company to invest $100m in a family resort in the Maldives and a promise by Saudi Islamic scholars to spend $100,000 on 10 “world class” mosques in the Maldives. And let us not mention the rather large number of Isis and other Islamist cultists who arrived to fight for Isis in Iraq and Syria from – well, the Maldives.

Now the Qatari emir hasn’t enough troops to defend his little country should the Saudis decide to request him to ask their army to enter Qatar to restore stability – as the Saudis persuaded the King of Bahrain to do back in 2011. But Sheikh Tamim no doubt hopes that the massive US military air base in Qatar will deter such Saudi generosity. When I asked his father, Sheikh Hamad (later uncharitably deposed by Tamim) why he didn’t kick the Americans out of Qatar, he replied: “Because if I did, my Arab brothers would invade me.”

Like father, like son, I suppose. God Bless America.


All this started – so we are supposed to believe – with an alleged hacking of the Qatar News Agency, which produced some uncomplimentary but distressingly truthful remarks by Qatar’s emir about the need to maintain a relationship with Iran.

Qatar denied the veracity of the story. The Saudis decided it was true and broadcast the contents on their own normally staid (and immensely boring) state television network. The upstart emir, so went the message, had gone too far this time. The Saudis decided policy in the Gulf, not miniscule Qatar. Wasn’t that what Donald Trump’s visit proved?

But the Saudis had other problems to worry about. Kuwait, far from cutting relations with Qatar, is now acting as a peacemaker between Qatar and the Saudis and Emiratis. The emirate of Dubai is quite close to Iran and has tens of thousands of Iranian expatriates, and is hardly following Abu Dhabi’s example of anti-Qatari wrath. Oman was even staging joint naval manoeuvres with Iran a couple of months ago. Pakistan long ago declined to send its army to help the Saudis in Yemen because the Saudis asked for only Sunni soldiers and no Shia soldiers; the Pakistani army was understandably outraged to realise that Saudi Arabia was trying to sectarianise its military personnel. Pakistan’s former army commander, General Raheel Sharif, is rumoured to be about to resign as head of the Saudi-sponsored Muslim alliance to fight “terror”.

President-Field Marshal al-Sissi of Egypt has been roaring against Qatar for its support of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood – and Qatar does indeed support the now banned group which Sissi is falsely claiming to be part of Isis – but significantly Egypt too, though the recipient of Saudi millions, does not intend to supply its own troops to bolster the Saudis in its catastrophic Yemen war. Besides, Sissi needs his Egyptian soldiers at home to fight off Isis attacks and maintain, along with Israel, the siege of the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

But if we look a bit further down the road, it’s not difficult to see what really worries the Saudis. For Qatar also maintains quiet links with the Assad regime. It helped secure the release of Syrian Christian nuns in Jabhat al-Nusrah hands and has helped release Lebanese soldiers from Isis hands in western Syria. When the nuns emerged from captivity, they thanked both Bashar al-Assad and Qatar. And there are growing suspicions in the Gulf that Qatar has much larger ambitions: to fund the rebuilding of post-war Syria. Even if Assad remained as president, Syria’s debt to Qatar would place the nation under Qatari economic control.

And this would give tiny Qatar two golden rewards. It would give it a land empire to match its al-Jazeera media empire. And it would extend its largesse to the Syrian territories which many oil companies would like to use as a pipeline route from the Gulf to Europe via Turkey or via tankers from the Syrian port of Lattakia. For Europeans, such a route would reduce the chances of Russian oil blackmail, and make sea-going oil routes less vulnerable if vessels did not have to move through the Gulf of Hormuz.

So rich pickings for Qatar – or for Saudi Arabia, of course, if the assumptions on US power of the two emirs, Hamad and Tamim, prove worthless. A Saudi military force in Qatar would allow Riyadh to gobble up all the liquid gas in the emirate. But surely the peace-loving “anti-terror” Saudis – let’s forget the head-chopping for a moment – would never contemplate such a fate for an Arab brother.

So let’s hope that for the moment, the routes of Qatar Airways are the only parts of the Qatari body politic to get chopped off.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/qat ... 78616.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:18 am

What’s Happening in the Persian Gulf

by Derek Davison

Early Monday morning, five Arab states—Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen—along with the Maldives, broke all diplomatic and physical ties with the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. All six countries say they are withdrawing their diplomats from Qatar within 48 hours and expect Qatari diplomats to reciprocate within the same time frame, and other Qatari nationals in those countries have two weeks to leave. Those countries have also cut all land, sea, and air contact with Qatar—meaning, among other things, that Qatar’s land border with Saudi Arabia is now closed, airlines from those six countries will no longer fly into Qatar, and Qatar Airways flights have been barred from their airspace.

In its official statement explaining this move, Riyadh noted Qatar’s “grave violations” against Saudi Arabia and Bahrain:

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has taken this decisive decision as a result of grave violations being committed by the authorities in Doha over the past years in secret and public aiming at dividing internal Saudi ranks, instigating against the State, infringing on its sovereignty, adopting various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region including the Muslim Brotherhood Group, Daesh (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, promoting the ethics and plans of these groups through its media permanently, supporting the activities of Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the governorate of Qatif of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Bahrain, financing, adopting and sheltering extremists who seek to undermine the stability and unity of the homeland at home and abroad, and using the media that seek to fuel the strife internally; and it was clear to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the support and backing from the authorities in Doha for coup Al-Houthi militias even after the announcement of the Coalition to Support the Legitimacy in Yemen.
The Kingdom has also taken this decision in solidarity with the Kingdom of Bahrain being subjected to terrorist campaigns and operations supported by the authorities in Doha.
The statement offered no evidence in support of these charges, only one of which (Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood) is well documented. The charge that Doha has been aiding Houthi militants in Yemen is particularly interesting given that Qatari soldiers have been participating in, and reportedly suffering on behalf of, the Saudi-led, anti-Houthi military coalition. In response, Qatar’s government declared that there was “no legitimate justification” for this move and argued that it was an effort to “impose guardianship” on Qatar and thus was a “violation of its sovereignty.”

This is a fast-developing story, but certain core elements of it appear to have taken shape.

A History of Shaky Relations

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have had a love-hate relationship for over two decades—a fact acknowledged in Monday’s statement from Riyadh: “Since 1995, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its brothers have made strenuous and continued efforts to urge the authorities in Doha to abide by its commitments and agreements.” The Saudis didn’t select that date at random. In 1995, the former Emir of Qatar, Hamad b. Khalifa Al Thani, overthrew his father, Khalifa b. Hamad Al Thani, in a bloodless coup. Sheikh Hamad abdicated in 2013 in favor of his son, Tamim, who is the current Qatari ruler. Hamad’s decision to maintain friendly relations with Israel (Qatar broke off those relations over the 2009 Gaza War) was a source of tension with the Saudis. For several years the two countries also disputed the precise location of their land border, before finally reaching an agreement on its location in 2008. Monday’s events come out of this years-long tension.

The immediate cause of the diplomatic break can be traced back to the 2011 Arab Spring. Unlike Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which quickly opposed any revolutionary movements that threatened established Arab autocracies, Qatar decided to bet on the revolutionaries and used some of its vast fossil-fuel wealth to support them. In particular, Sheikh Hamad decided to throw its weight behind Muslim Brotherhood movements in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere, building off of his long-standing support for Brotherhood branches around the Arab world, including Hamas. This represented a radical shift from Hamad’s previous “no problems” foreign policy, which presumably reflected Hamad’s desire to increase Qatar’s prominence on the geopolitical stage commensurate with its financial clout. Under Hamad, and then Tamim, Qatar has adopted a number of foreign policies that have at times, placed it at odds with its fellow Gulf states:

Qatar was an early supporter of Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising and the elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government that succeeded former dictator Hosni Mubarak. Doha pumped an estimated $10 billion into Mohamed Morsi’s government and lined up deals to sell natural gas to Egypt and help rebuild the Suez Canal. In contrast, Riyadh, which loathes the Muslim Brotherhood, has poured at least $12 billion into Egyptian coffers since the military coup that overthrew Morsi and brought Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power in 2013. Qatar’s support for Morsi explains why the Saudis initiated this boycott and why Egypt joined it.
Qatar supported the now-defunct General National Congress in Libya. The Islamist GNC, based in Tripoli was one of two competing governments, alongside the House of Representatives based in Tobruk, that contested control of Libya after the Arab Spring-driven fall of Muammar Gaddafi. It has since been driven mostly out of the picture by the country’s internationally recognized Government of National Accord, also based in Tripoli. The UAE, in contrast, supported and continues to support the secularist Tobruk government (which has also announced that it has broken off ties with Qatar, but since it’s not a recognized government the impact of that decision is minimal). For a time the two Gulf states were effectively fighting a proxy war in Libya that helped destabilize that country and contributed to tensions in the Gulf.
Qatar has also played an active role supporting and arming Syrian rebel groups, including—allegedly—extremist groups like the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front (also known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham or Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) and even the Islamic State (ISIS or IS). It’s possible that this has contributed to inter-Gulf tensions. But as the Saudis have allegedly been supporting these same rebel groups it’s hard to see what the problem would have been. However, in April, Qatar was reportedly behind a negotiated settlement to evacuate four besieged Syrian towns, a deal Doha reportedly reached through negotiations with Iran. Qatar’s cordial relationship with Iran, in addition to its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, is one of Riyadh’s chief grievances.
Qatar has also long supported Hamas, whose biggest foreign patron has consistently been Iran. And with the Saudis coming together with Israel over their shared hostility toward Iran, Riyadh would certainly not have viewed that support for Hamas favorably.
There’s one other elephant in this room, which is Qatar’s support of the Al Jazeera network. The Saudis and Emiratis in particular have long criticized the news channel for promoting Muslim Brotherhood voices and for criticizing the policies of other Gulf states. After announcing the diplomatic cut off on Monday, Riyadh shut down Al Jazeera’s local offices.

This is not the first time these tensions have come to a boiling point. In March 2014, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE cut diplomatic ties with Qatar over Doha’s support for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. They did not sever land, sea, and air contacts with Qatar, but it did take eight months for relations to finally be restored. More recently, the Saudis and Emiratis objected to alleged remarks given by Sheikh Tamim at a commencement ceremony, in which the Qatari Emir was said to have spoken favorably of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas while denigrating Saudi and American foreign policy. Although the Qatar News Agency reported this speech, the Qataris insist that QNA was hacked and that the speech never took place. Nonetheless, both Saudi and Emirati state media have reported on the speech and expressed anger over its contents, apparently refusing to believe Qatar’s hacking explanation.

The Washington Factor

Monday’s diplomatic crisis also has roots in President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Riyadh. During his trip, Trump fully embraced the Saudis’ anti-Iran, anti-political Islamist view of the region, and that support has emboldened the Saudis to take a harder line against Arab states that deviate from their foreign policy aims:

“You have a shift in the balance of power in the Gulf now because of the new presidency: Trump is strongly opposed to political Islam and Iran,” said Jean-Marc Rickli, head of global risk and resilience at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
“He is totally aligned with Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, who also want no compromise with either Iran or the political Islam promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The Trump administration has had little to say about the dispute apart from calling for dialogue and offering to mediate between the Saudis and Qataris. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that this diplomatic rupture shouldn’t have “any significant impact” on U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, but it’s difficult to know how he can determine that at this point. The centerpiece of Trump’s Riyadh visit was supposed to be the creation of a broad coalition of Islamic states working together to combat extremism and terrorism. That coalition is already falling apart a scant two weeks after Trump’s trip. The U.S. military said Monday that it has no plans to change its posture in Qatar, where the al-Udeid air base is one of U.S. Central Command’s primary forward operating bases.

Additionally, it’s hard to avoid connecting Monday’s events with revelations over the weekend about the hacking of Yousef al-Otaiba’s personal email. Emails leaked to The Intercept and Huffington Post show that Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the U.S., who was once profiled by Huffington for his “extraordinary influence” in Washington, has been lobbying the Trump administration to break America’s long-standing alliance with Qatar. From Huffington’s report on the leak:

In private correspondence, Otaiba ? an extremely powerful figure in Washington, D.C., who is reportedly in “in almost constant phone and email contact,” with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law ? is seen pushing for the U.S. to close down its military base in Qatar and otherwise poking at issues that could drive a wedge between the U.S. and that Arab nation. He also says that his country’s de facto ruler is supportive of a wave of anti-Qatar criticism in the U.S. that the Gulf state last month called a smear campaign and that has prompted behind-the-scenes alarm inside the U.S. government.
The leaked emails also suggest that Otaiba has had a close, ongoing relationship with the pro-Israel think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), including collaboration on anti-Qatar policymaking:

The emails detail the proposed agenda of an upcoming meeting between FDD and UAE government officials that is scheduled for June 11-14. Dubowitz and Hannah are listed as attending, as well as Jonathan Schanzer, FDD vice president for research. UAE officials requested for meetings include Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince who commands the armed forces.
The agenda includes extensive discussion between the two on Qatar. They are scheduled to discuss, for instance, “Al Jazeera as an instrument of regional instability.” (Al Jazeera is based in Qatar.)
On Monday afternoon, Buzzfeed’s Borzhou Daragahi tweeted that “two separate sources” had told him that Monday’s diplomatic moves were “driven by” that upcoming FDD/UAE conference. Given FDD’s staunchly pro-Israel orientation and Qatar’s ties to Hamas, this collaboration over mutual antipathy toward Doha is unsurprising.

What Happens Now

As noted above, the last time a diplomatic rupture with Qatar occurred it took eight months to repair relations. But this rupture seems more serious—for one thing, more countries are involved, and for another the countries in question have also cut off all physical contact with Qatar in addition to diplomatic contact. In the near term, it may be difficult for the Qataris to move around, to export their natural gas, and even to obtain food, since much of Qatar’s imported food comes overland via the Saudi border. Indeed, there are already stories of people making runs on Qatari grocery stores.

In the longer term, it will be difficult for the Saudis and others to completely isolate Qatar internationally. The Qataris have good relations with several international and regional powers, including the U.S., but also Russia, the European Union, and Turkey, with which it has a defense agreement. And if things really get rough, Doha has a diplomatic “nuclear option,” which is to place itself under Iranian protection. Tehran has already called for a peaceful resolution to the dispute and has offered to send food to Qatar if needed. Qatar’s enormous fossil fuel wealth is another factor that would make it hard to isolate the emirate for very long. It’s already not clear whether any other nations will join the six that have already severed ties with Qatar. It’s doubtful that even the two remaining Gulf Cooperation Council members, Kuwait and Oman, will join in.

The ultimate Saudi goal here is as yet unknown. Riyadh may want Qatar to sever its relations with Iran altogether and/or take tangible steps to divest itself of any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. It may want Qatar to shut down Al Jazeera. Or it may want something more drastic. Last week, Salman al-Ansari, president of the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee in Washington, seemed to warn Sheikh Tamim via Twitter that he could wind up like ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi over Qatar’s relations with Iran and the Saudis.

And, again, the official Saudi statement and its mention of “1995” as the year Riyadh’s troubles with Doha began was not random. The Saudis are quite clearly identifying Qatar’s current emir and his predecessor as the problem, and there’s an unsubtle message there for others in Qatar who might be interested in finding a solution. The Saudis allegedly attempted to interfere in Qatari dynastic politics once before. In 1996, there was an attempt to place Khalifa b. Hamad Al Thani back on the Qatari throne allegedly with some level of Saudi and Emirati support. It could be that Riyadh is attempting once more to engineer a political change in Doha.

Photo: Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar
http://lobelog.com/whats-happening-in-the-persian-gulf/


Qatar-Gulf Crisis: Geoeconomic Implications

by Jim Lobe

In light of the fast-moving events in the Gulf over the past couple of days, LobeLog interviewed Sara Vakhshouri, a Gulf expert who specializes in the region’s energy markets. A long-time contributor to LobeLog, Vakhshouri is president of SVB Energy International, a Washington-based strategic energy consulting firm that provides critical advice on the global energy market to private companies, governments, think tanks, investment banks, and media organizations.

Jim Lobe: You indicated in a tweet on Tuesday that Iran stands to gain a lot from the Saudi-led actions against Qatar. In what ways is it likely that Iran can or will take advantage of this turn of events?

Sara Vakhshouri: Even though historically there have been differences and disagreements between Qatar and Saudi Arabia particularly with regard to their foreign policy and approach toward the conflicted areas in the region, the current diplomatic rift between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is unprecedented. Any rift between the GCC members weakens the Arab nations particularly Saudi Arabia’s policy and approach toward/against Iran.

The current conflict between Saudi and Qatar also drags other Arab countries in to this game; UAE, Egypt and Bahrain have supported the Qatari isolation. This again weakens the ties between the Arab nations and GCC members, which again reduces the influence and effectiveness of GCC policies, especially those against Iran.

While I don’t think that Iran sees this as an opportunity to poke or provoke Saudi Arabia, the current situation creates a strategic opportunity for Iran to weaken the ties among GCC members and to have an impact on Saudi Arab alliances against Iran and Iran’s interest in the region.

The current situation could also offers economic profits for Iran. Saudi Arabia revoked Qatar Airways license to fly over or land in Saudi Arabia. Iranian officials estimate that this could increase Qatar Airways’ use of Iranian airspace up to 20%, which means higher air transit income for Iran. In addition, the 40% of Qatar’s food supplies that come from Saudi Arabia could be replaced by Iran. It’s the closest and most available logistic partner Qatar could chose for supplying its immediate needs.

JL: But is there some risk undertaken by Qatar if it does move closer or become more dependent on Iran as a result of this crisis?

SV: Even though there has been a close relation between Qatar and Iran and, on the other side, historical disagreement with Saudi and its Arab allies, most of Qatar’s strategic depth is located alongside the Saudi Arabia and UAE borders. Also, the historical, cultural, economic, trade and energy ties between Qatar and other GCC members make it hard to imagine that the current status quo would last long. With the help of other Arab nations this conflict would most likely be resolved soon. Qataris realize that the price of choosing Iran could well be the loss if its Arab neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia. The largest US military base in Middle East is located in Qatar. By getting very close to Iran and directly defying Saudi Arabia, Qatar will damage its relation with US especially under the Trump administration.

This mostly looks like a strong message from Saudi Arabia to anyone who wants to have close ties with and benefit from its relation with the Kingdom. The Saudi government has invested significantly in its relations and alliances with different Arab and non-Arab countries. Qatar’s isolation is a strong message that any country that chooses to go against Saudi interests in the region will pay a heavy price—the complete disconnect from any relations or any commercial and political ties with Saudi and its Arab allies.

The current Saudi attitude is very much like the US approach toward those countries that are threatening its national interest. It seems that the new leadership in Saudi Arabia has put an end to one-sided investments in its relations with other countries and is very keen to make sure they receive a return on every dime they invest outside their borders. The kingdom’s new approach to pursuing its national interest is to form and invest in alliances and determine whether their allies comply with their conditions.

In this case, even though they support Saudi policy, the UAE and Egypt are heavily reliant on gas imports from Qatar. Yet, they are still backing Saudi Arabia in isolating Qatar. One-third of Egyptian LNG imports used to meet the country’s electricity demands, for example, is imported from Qatar.

JL: What geo-economic implications are there to this crisis, particularly with respect to the regional and global energy perspective?

SV: We do not expect that Qatar’s LNG supply to non-Arab consumers will be interrupted, but the change of trade flow and replacement of natural gas exports to UAE could have an impact on LNG prices. UAE imports about 1.8 billion cubic feet/day of gas from Qatar via the Dolphin pipeline. This is a significant volume. Even though there is no shortage of supplies in the LNG market, which is bearish at the moment, replacing the amount that Qatar supplies with non-Qatari LNG could have an impact on global prices.

Egypt’s story is different, even though this country is heavily dependent on its LNG imports from Qatar. Egypt has no direct deals with Qatar, as traders like Glencore, Vitol, and Trafigura not only deliver the Qatari LNG to Egypt but also have legal ownership of the cargo from the time it is onloaded at Qatar’s port until its delivery. These traders can also replace Qatar’s LNG with non-Qatari LNG in deliveries to Egypt, if necessary.

JL: Given the fact that Iran and Qatar share a hugely productive gas field, Tehran presumably considers Qatar’s fate much more important to its national interest than Bahrain, for example. Do you think that Tehran would react more aggressively if the Saudis actually intervene militarily or support a coup in Qatar in order to make it much more responsive to Saudi interests?

SV: Iran and Qatar have historically had good relations even though Iranian officials on many occasions complained that Qatar is extracting more natural gas from their shared gas field. At the same time, however, Iran knows very well that it suffers technical disadvantages in exploiting its side of the field (South Pars) and that exploration and development of the Qatari side began decades before and are thus far more advanced. It is thus entirely understandable for Qatar to be way ahead of Iran in total extraction of natural gas from this reservoir. At the same time, Qatar is not alone among the GCC nations in maintaining good relations with Iran. Kuwait and Oman have also enjoyed generally good ties with Tehran. In some cases, they either supported Iran’s policies or, in any event, didn’t oppose them.

Obviously, if there is any Saudi intervention or pro-Saudi coup in Qatar, it is not hard to imagine that Iran would react immediately either directly or indirectly through its proxy groups. Moreover, today’s twin Islamic State attacks against Iran’s parliament and the late Leader’s shrine in Tehran — two key and well-guarded targets that may been chosen precisely to undermine confidence in the regime’s ability to maintain security — could possibly radicalize Iran’s discourse and approach toward what it perceives as extremism and any threat to its domestic security and broader national interest in the region, especially regarding Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. That possibility takes on added force given last month’s declaration by Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman that effectively closed the door to any possibility of negotiations or dialogue with Iran. “We are a primary target for the Iranian regime,” he was quoted as saying. “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, we’ll work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

Given the context, it’s not difficult to imagine that Iran will take extreme measures both internally and externally to secure its borders and fight against the Islamic State and whoever it believes are its supporters. We must wait and see.
http://lobelog.com/qatar-gulf-crisis-ge ... lications/



MSNBC reporting White House sources says Trump "may not have known" the US has troops based in Qatar.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 14, 2017 4:21 pm

U.S. arms sold to Saudis are killing civilians in Yemen. Now the Trump administration is set to sell them more
http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast ... story.html


Yemen cholera epidemic: A child infected 'every 35 seconds', as death toll nears 1,000
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06 ... oll-nears/



Qatar to Sign Deal for U.S. F-15s, Sources Say as Gulf Crisis Continues
by Anthony Capaccio
June 14, 2017, 1:30 PM CDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/arti ... -continues
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 12, 2017 4:15 pm

Yemen Cholera cases heading to 1 Mn. amid Saudi-led War
By Juan Cole | Oct. 12, 2017 |

By Edna Bonhomme | (The Conversation) | – –
As of October 1, 771,945 people in Yemen have been infected with cholera and 2,134 have died from the disease. The epidemic, rare on such a scale in contemporary times, reemerged as a formidable force last year due to Yemen’s ongoing civil war.
The Saudi Arabia-led war began in March 2015 and has caused a spiralling 7,000 new cholera cases per day. This is an enormous public health crisis – and one that could be solved simply. Treatment only demands providing clean water, oral rehydration salts, and gloves.
These wartime conditions allow us to draw parallels with the historical experience of epidemic – after all, it is the massive displacement and conditions of war that have allowed the disease to reemerge and wreak destruction in Yemen. War has overcome the near eradication of cholera that modern advances in medicine and international public health organisations have allowed. So how did these advances come to pass and what can we learn from the historical experience of cholera?

A patient drinks oral rehydration solution in order to counteract cholera-induced dehydration, 1992.
Wikimedia Commons
Cholera imagined

We first find mention of a disease that is recognisably cholera in the works of Arab-Islamic scholars, where it is known of as “heydain”. Around 900 CE, the physician Muhammad ibn al-Razi described cholera in the following way:
It begins with nausea and diarrhoea, or one of the two, and when it reaches the stomach it goes on multiplying itself. The pulse fails, and the breathing is attenuated; the face and the nose become thin; the colour of the skin of the face is changed, and the countenance of the dead succeeds.
Despite this long history, cholera was, in particular, a 19th century tragedy. The disease, which travels through water, thrived on the world’s multiplying population and increased mobility. During the first cholera pandemic (1817-1823), the disease travelled across the Persian Gulf from Bahrain along the Indian Ocean and to the Red Sea in Aden. Over the course of the century, multiple outbreaks of the disease quickly spread through burgeoning coastal cities, along rivers, and into commercial ports from Delhi to New York City.
Image
How to avoid the Cholera, 1848.
Wikimedia Commons
The Arabian peninsula was particularly badly hit given the amount of trade and number of pilgrims travelling through the area, seeing several cholera epidemics during the mid-19th century. The disease wreaked havoc on the pilgrims who gathered in Mecca and Jeddah in 1828, 1831, 1835, 1865, 1881, and 1882. Of those, the Mecca pilgrimage was said to be the most horrific, with an estimated toll of 30,000 deaths over the course of the 19th century.
Medical and public health practitioners such as physicians and midwives played a major role in reducing transmission in the period. These people and institutions were financed through religious taxes and charity, which provided more resources to directly treat patients.
Public health reforms

But it was the emergence of modern medicine, the improvements on sanitation, and the isolation of Vibrio cholerae in 1854 by Filippo Pacini that worked to drastically ameliorate cholera’s impact in the latter half of the century.
The repeated outbreaks also arguably led to the creation of the kinds of public health institutions that we take for granted today. The International Sanitary Convention (ISC), which held its first conference in 1851 in Paris, was set up with the aim of ending the cholera pandemic. The ISC was a predecessor to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a body that was mostly represented by European actors along with the Ottoman central authority (based in Istanbul).

Vibrio cholerae.
Wikimedia Commons
Although the cholera epidemic was still rampant on the Arabian peninsula during the early 20th century, with outbreaks in Mecca between 1908-1912, the disease was then nearly totally absent from the peninsula until it spread in Yemen in 1971 – following the aftermath of the last Yemeni civil war.
Yemen witnessed cholera outbreaks in the 19th century due to the free movement of people and a very limited understanding of the disease. But the conditions and ways that the disease spread was nowhere near as quick-paced and detrimental as they are in the current outbreak.
Cholera today

The human cost of cholera in Yemen today, as we have seen, is grave and growing. There are predictions that the disease could infect a million people by 2018. The incidence and prevalence of cholera infection far exceeds the numbers from the 19th century and the current crisis in Yemen will set a record number of reported cases in the country.
What makes the current epidemic so pernicious is the way that war has exacerbated the disease despite advances in medicine and public health. The doctors and nurses working in the 19th century were not mired by the catastrophic conditions of modern war: massive military occupation, infrastructure meltdown, and political decimation.
The Yemeni government ceased providing money for the public health department in March 2016, shortly after war began. International organisations have provided the principle support, but the amount they can do is limited by their ability to carry out treatment during military sieges. Less than 50% of hospitals in Yemen are operational, with shortages of staff and supplies due to the ongoing conflict. But austerity and war have fractured the public health system. The 30,000 doctors, nurses, and other health care workers of Yemen have been working for the last ten months without pay.
The treatment for cholera is very simple, yet materials – when available – are obstructed from being distributed due to bombing. The arc of authoritarianism and foreign occupation in Yemen has resulted in the destruction of Yemen’s infrastructure, leaving 14m people without access to clean water.
The ConversationHistory provides a glimpse of the tragic past and demonstrates that it is through policy that we can help to correct the tragedies that continue to face Yemen. Cholera is preventable, but public health reform is nearly impossible under conditions of war. The historical trajectory of cholera shows that interventions lose their effect when the public systems are crippled – something we also need to bear in mind in relation to the increased extreme weather events caused by climate change.
Edna Bonhomme, Postdoctoral Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
——–
Related video added by Juan Cole:
The Foreign Desk: “Lawmakers Call for More Scrutiny of U.S. Involvement in Yemen Conflict”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA7aOhAKubU
https://www.juancole.com/2017/10/yemen- ... ading.html
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Re: Yemen

Postby Rory » Sat Nov 04, 2017 3:30 pm

SmartSelectImage_2017-11-04-12-27-30.jpg


One of the loudest Russia Retard grifters

Shows exactly how these disgusting swine get their bread buttered
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:26 pm

How War Created the Cholera Epidemic in Yemen
By ALIA ALLANANOV. 12, 2017


A boy rinses a bucket for collecting well water that is believed to be contaminated with the bacteria that causes cholera, on the outskirts of Sana, Yemen, in July. Credit Hani Mohammed/Associated Press
The quality of mercy is strained in the Middle East. Last week, Saudi Arabia closed off the highways, sea routes and airports in war-torn Yemen, forbidding humanitarian groups from even shipping chlorine tablets for the Yemenis suffering from a cholera epidemic. More than 500,000 Yemenis have been infected with cholera this year and nearly 2,000, mostly children, have died, according to the World Health Organization. The International Red Cross expects about a million people to be infected by cholera in Yemen by December.

The spread of cholera in Yemen glaringly illustrates how disease follows in the wake of bombs.

The seeds of the epidemic were planted in 2015, when a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and backed by the United States joined the fighting in Yemen on behalf of the ousted president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who had been forced out by Houthi rebels. The rebels, who are backed by Iran, today control the capital, Sana, and most of the territory along the country’s Red Sea coast. Saudi Arabia imposed the most recent blockade after the Houthis fired a missile at Riyadh.

When the war began on March 26, 2015, workers on the night shift at a wastewater treatment plant in Sana watched Saudi jets bomb airplanes, runways and buildings at the adjacent international airport. A boundary wall was all that separated the airport and the treatment plant. The terrified workers took refuge in a nearby mosque.

The next morning all of the 26 employees of the wastewater treatment plant showed up for work. They knew if human waste wasn’t disposed of properly, waterborne disease could sicken hundreds of thousands.

The workers left the lights on at the plant hoping the coalition pilots would read it as a sign that the plant wasn’t a military target. “Little did we know that all of Yemen was a military target,” said an engineer at the plant, who asked to remain anonymous for his safety. On another night, the coalition bombed a crane at the plant.


On April 17, 2015, the Saudi-led coalition jets bombed the central electricity grid supplying Sana. The capital lost all electricity. The workers kept the plant running with diesel fuel. A week later, as the diesel began running out, they reduced operations to eight hours, to six, to two.

By late May 2015, the fuel was gone and the plant shut down.

Soon after the coalition imposed a naval blockade, ostensibly to prevent weapons from reaching Houthi rebels, reducing the supply of food, medicine and fuel to a trickle. Yemen imports more than 85 percent of its food and medicine, most of it by sea.

Coalition forces turned away or stopped ships heading for Yemeni ports for weeks. Fighting around ports such as Hodeida, the country’s largest cargo port, worsened shortages.

With the treatment plant out of power, wastewater flowed down canals and into the valleys around Sana. Dirty water spread over miles of farmland. Flies hovered above the raw sewage. Cucumbers, tomatoes and leafy greens grown in the contaminated water made their way to markets around Sana. Many cases of acute diarrhea were reported.

Infusions of fuel from the United Nations Children’s Fund helped the sewage plant return to operation, but not full time. Every week bought more people displaced by war into Sana. The treatment plant was built to serve 500,000 people but began handling the waste of nearly 1.5 million. An increasing number of patients sick with acute diarrhea arrived at the Kuwait Hospital in Sana.

In October 2016, tests confirmed cholera in Sana and cases began to be reported around the country. International organizations helped set up and run cholera testing and treatment centers across the city.

War brought even more displaced people to Sana and its population increased to about three million. With no fuel, the plant closed once again in January, for 40 days. It restarted after a small power station in Sana supplied it with six hours of electricity a day. It wasn’t enough. The quantity of untreated wastewater was increasing every day.

In April, cholera was spreading with unprecedented speed across 18 out of 23 governorates of Yemen. In two weeks, more than 20,000 people had been infected and 242 killed by this bout of the disease. Unicef stepped in again to help with the sewage plant’s operation. Since May, the plant has been in service.

Cholera in Yemen is a man-made disaster, and its spread and casualties are tied to the politics of the war. Aerial bombing by the Saudi-led coalition in Houthi-held areas have damaged hospitals, public water systems and sewage plants.

More than half of health care facilities have fully or partly closed. Doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers have gone without salaries for months. Sanitation has worsened. People live amid sewage. Acute watery diarrhea has been more fatal in areas controlled by the rebels than in areas controlled by the government.

According to The Lancet, 78 percent of cholera cases and 81 percent of deaths from cholera have occurred in Houthi-controlled governorates. Governorates controlled by Mr. Hadi’s government have reported 67,346 cases of cholera; the Houthi-rebel-controlled governorates have reported 339,061 cases.

The Saudi-led coalition has delayed or turned away numerous ships carrying fuel and supplies to ports controlled by the rebels. Between May and September alone, according to Human Rights Watch, seven fuel tankers were delayed or diverted.

It has eased the blockade intermittently, allowed varying amounts of fuel, food supplies and medicine. Saudi Arabia and the United States, its leading supporter in the war, have offered $236 million and $427 million for the United Nations humanitarian aid effort in Yemen in 2017. In the summer, Saudi Arabia pledged $33.7 million specifically to help fight cholera.

But severe shortages of food and medicine remain. The United Nations estimates that about seven million people are on the brink of famine in Yemen and nearly 900,000 are infected with cholera. An unrelenting blockade threatens a catastrophic increase in both disease and hunger.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/12/opin ... yemen.html


Yemen's Cholera Outbreak Is Spiraling Out Of Control [Infographic]


Niall McCarthy , CONTRIBUTOR
Data journalist covering technological, societal and media topics

The situation in Yemen is going from bad to worse with senior UN officials warning that the country is facing the world's largest famine in decades. Millions of people are set to be affected unless the Saudi-led coalition lifts its blockade on the country and allows aid deliveries to resume. The coalition said on Monday that they would close all air, land and sea routes into Yemen after Houthi rebels fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh which was intercepted near the Saudi capital. Yemen is also currently struggling to contain a cholera outbreak which is spiraling out of control.

The outbreak is actually the fastest growing cholera epidemic ever recorded and in mid-July, the number of cases stood at just over 350,000. By November 5th, that had increased drastically to 908,400 with 90 percent of districts across 22 governates affected. Over half of suspected cases are children. The blockade is exacerbating the situation with the Red Cross saying a shipment of chlorine tablets vital to combating the epidemic has been blocked. Since the Saudi Coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war, 8,670 people have been killed and 49,960 have been injured, 60 percent of whom were civilians.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)
Image
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccar ... fa5dec51a0
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Nov 18, 2017 1:41 pm

UN leaders appeal for immediate lifting of humanitarian blockade in Yemen – lives of millions are at risk

REPORT from World Health Organization, World Food Programme, UN Children's Fund Published on 16 Nov 2017
Statement by WFP Executive Director David Beasley, UNICEF Executive Director, Anthony Lake, and WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

ROME / GENEVA / NEW YORK - “While the Saudi-led military coalition has partially lifted the recent blockade of Yemen, closure of much of the country’s air, sea and land ports is making an already catastrophic situation far worse. The space and access we need to deliver humanitarian assistance is being choked off, threatening the lives of millions of vulnerable children and families.

“Together, we issue another urgent appeal for the coalition to permit entry of lifesaving supplies to Yemen in response to what is now the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The supplies, which include medicines, vaccines and food, are essential to staving off disease and starvation. Without them, untold thousands of innocent victims, among them many children, will die.

“More than 20 million people, including over 11 million children, are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. At least 14.8 million are without basic healthcare and an outbreak of cholera has resulted in more than 900,000 suspected cases.

“Some 17 million people do not know where their next meal is coming from and 7 million are totally dependent on food assistance. Severe acute malnutrition is threatening the lives of almost 400,000 children. As supplies run low, food prices rise dramatically, putting thousands more at risk.

“Even with a partial lifting of the blockade, the World Food Programme estimates that an additional 3.2 million people will be pushed into hunger. If left untreated, 150,000 malnourished children could die within the coming months. To deprive this many from the basic means of survival is an unconscionable act and a violation of humanitarian principles and law.

“Fuel, medicine and food – all of which are now blocked from entry – are desperately needed to keep people alive. Without fuel, the vaccine cold chain, water supply systems and waste water treatment plants will stop functioning. And without food and safe water, the threat of famine grows by the day.

“We are already seeing the humanitarian consequences of the blockade. Diphtheria is spreading fast with 120 clinically diagnosed cases and 14 deaths – mostly children – in the last weeks. We have vaccines and medicines in transit to Yemen, but they are blocked from entry. At least one million children are now at risk of contracting the disease.

“The world’s largest cholera outbreak is waning and the number of new cases has declined for the 8th consecutive week from a peak of more than 900,000 suspected cases. If the embargo is not lifted cholera will flare up once again.

“All of the country’s ports – including those in areas held by the opposition – should be reopened without delay. This is the only way that UN-chartered ships can deliver the vital humanitarian cargo that the population needs to survive. Flights from the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service - into and out of Yemen - should be given immediate clearance to resume. UN staff who are based in Yemen have been unable to move, even if they need urgent medical attention.

“The clock is ticking and stocks of medical, food and other humanitarian supplies are already running low. The cost of this blockade is being measured in the number of lives that are lost. “If any of us in our daily lives saw a child whose life was at immediate risk, would we not try to save her? In Yemen we are talking about hundreds of thousands of children, if not more. We have the lifesaving food, medicine and supplies needed to save them, but we must have the access that is currently being denied.

“On behalf of all those whose lives are at imminent risk, we reiterate our appeal to allow humanitarian access in Yemen without further delay.”
https://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/un-l ... s-are-risk
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 10, 2018 11:05 am

Pentagon to Congress: You Can’t Stop Us from Fueling Saudi Arabia’s War in Yemen


March 9, 2018

A KC-135 Stratotanker, used to provide aerial refueling to U.S. and coalition aircraft, returns from a refueling mission.

On February 28, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced Senate Joint Resolution 54, a resolution that seeks to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Even before the resolution was introduced, the Department of Defense responded with the extraordinary claim that Congress lacked the legal authority to “override the President’s determination as Commander in Chief” and end the United States’ involvement in the conflict.

The Defense Department has treated Congressional silence as a blank check to wage war wherever and whenever it wants.
It is bad enough the extent to which the Defense Department has treated Congressional silence as a blank check to wage war wherever and whenever it wants. The Pentagon’s claim that Congress lacks the power to limit U.S. involvement in the Yemeni civil war is an even more serious encroachment on Congress’s constitutional authority over the military.

In March of 2015, a coalition of nine Arab governments, led by Saudi Arabia, began a bombing campaign in Yemen. The Saudi airstrikes were aimed at restoring to power the internationally recognized government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who had been deposed by an armed rebel group known as the Houthis.

Since 2015, the United States has been refueling Saudi planes in mid-air before their bombing runs into Yemen. As of last October, the military reported that the U.S. had provided over 80 million pounds of fuel, and refueled over 10,400 in “the Horn of Africa region.” (This total includes support for U.S. and allied counterterrorism operations as well as the Saudi coalition’s war in Yemen. The number of airstrikes by the Saudi coalition is orders of magnitude higher than the number of reported U.S. counterterrorism strikes, so refueling for Saudi planes for operations in Yemen likely constitutes a large share of the total). The war has killed thousands of civilians and contributed to epidemics and widespread food shortages.

Survivors search through the rubble of buildings left after an airstrike, San'a, Yemen.
Survivors search through the rubble of buildings left after an airstrike, San'a, Yemen. (Almigdad Mojalli/VOA)

Congress has never voted to authorize the U.S.’s involvement in the Saudi war against the Houthis, as the House of Representatives recognized in a resolution that passed last fall. Lee, Murphy, and Sanders argue that this makes the conflict unlawful under the War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law designed to limit the executive branch’s ability to wage war without specific Congressional approval.

The War Powers Resolution, passed over President Nixon’s veto, requires the President to notify Congress in writing whenever the U.S. military is “introduced…into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” It requires troops to be removed within 60 days unless Congress votes to authorize the deployment with either a declaration of war or an authorization for the use of military force.

Lee, Murphy, and Sanders have a strong argument that the United States’ involvement in the Yemeni civil war falls within the War Powers Resolution’s criteria of “introduction of the United States Armed Forces” into hostilities, including “assignment of members of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government,” although the executive branch has generally interpreted the War Powers Resolution more narrowly.

But the Defense Department’s letter goes beyond defending the legality of U.S. aid to the Saudi coalition under current law. It also claims that “[e]ven if enacted into law, the Joint Resolution would not achieve its apparent purpose of restricting U.S. support” for the Saudi-led coalition, because “that support does not constitute ‘hostilities.’”

This ignores the text of the draft resolution, which explicitly states that the United States’ current actions in support of the coalition in Yemen fall within the definition of hostilities. If it became law, it would remove any ambiguity about whether the War Powers Resolution’s definition applies, and the Defense Department would have no basis to ignore it.

DoD also claims in a footnote that:

Because the President has directed U.S. troops to support the [Saudi] operations pursuant to his authority under Article II, and because the limited operation does not implicated [sic] Congress’s constitutional authority to Declare War, the draft resolution would raise serious constitutional claims to the extent it seeks to override the President’s determination as Commander In Chief.

The argument that the Commander In Chief clause of the Constitution overrides all of Congress’s war powers recalls one of the arguments that John Yoo made in his infamous 2002 Office of Legal Counsel memo authorizing the CIA’s torture program. Yoo argued that it would be unconstitutional for Congress to encroach on “the President’s complete authority over the conduct of war” by banning torture. Like the Yoo memo, the Defense Department’s letter simply ignores inconvenient Supreme Court decisions as well as the text of Article I of the Constitution. Article I gives Congress the power not only to declare war, but also to “provide for the common defense,” “raise and support armies,” “provide and maintain a navy,” “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces,” and “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”

The draft resolution may not pass the Senate, let alone passing both houses with sufficient support to overcome a likely Presidential veto. But even supporters of the U.S.’s involvement in Yemen’s civil war should strongly reject the Defense Department’s claims that it can disregard laws passed by Congress by interpreting them into meaninglessness, or that it is unconstitutional for Congress to limit the United States’ involvement in wars overseas.
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2018/03/pentag ... yemen.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Yemen

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 14, 2018 10:47 am

Sanders, Lee push for end to US involvement in Yemen war
BY ELLEN MITCHELL - 02/28/18 06:53 PM EST 7

Sanders, Lee push for end to US involvement in Yemen war
© Greg Nash
Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday pushed the White House to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen’s civil war, arguing it’s unconstitutional that Congress has not had a say in entering the conflict.

The two lawmakers, along with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), earlier in the day filed a joint resolution questioning U.S. support to a Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in the country.

Sanders and Lee later in a press conference argued that the American intervention — which includes selling the Saudis weapons, providing limited intelligence and helping with air refueling — has never specifically been approved by Congress.


The lawmakers hope to invoked the War Powers Resolution, a federal law intended to check the president’s power to commit the country to armed conflict without Congress’s consent.

“If the president or members of Congress believe that support for this war is in U.S. interests and that we should be involved in it, then let them come before Congress, let them make their case and let the Congress vote on whether or not we stay in that war,” Sanders said.

Lee argued the legislation “is neither liberal nor conservative.”

“This is an American principle. ... It’s constitutional.”

Civil war has overtaken Yemen since early 2015 when Houthi rebels took over the capital of Sanaa and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi fled to the southern city of Aden.

Saudi Arabia, concerned about Iran’s support of the Houthis in a neighboring country, formed a coalition and intervened in support of Hadi.

In response, the U.S. has provided support for the Saudi campaign.

“If you look at the War Powers Act, what America is currently involved in constitutes a military action,” Sanders said.

The U.S. support in Yemen ties into a larger argument on the Trump administration’s continued use of a 2001 authorization for use of military force (AUMF), passed following the 9/11 terrorist attacks to justify a range of military actions.

Several lawmakers want the language revoked for a more tailored war authorization bill, arguing the current AUMF has reached far beyond what it was meant to allow.

Lee said lawmakers must address the use of military force “conflict by conflict,” instead of a broad new bill.

The two said they would try to move the resolution through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but the committee may table it.

Should that happen, “then in fact the tabling will be a vote on the essence of what we’re talking about,” Sanders said.

“If we can establish this principle, it will be a significant departure from past foreign policy in the United States,” Sanders said.

The resolution is expected to receive pushback from the Defense Department, as prior to the legislation’s filing, the Pentagon’s acting general counsel sent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) a letter Tuesday criticizing it, the Huffington Post reported.


http://thehill.com/policy/defense/37615 ... -yemen-war
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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