America’s Dangerous Game
August 23, 2012 § Leave a Comment
This documentary about US intervention in Yemen is a few months old but still just as relevant.
This film reveals the full scale of Washington’s covert war in Yemen and asks: Is the US creating more enemies than it can capture or kill?
Will Americans challenge Obama’s drone war?
May 30, 2012 § 2 Comments
by Medea Benjamin
Shakira, 4, was disfigured in one of Obama’s drone attacks.
On May 29, The New York Times published an extraordinarily in-depth look at the intimate role President Obama has played in authorizing US drone attacks overseas, particularly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is chilling to read the cold, macabre ease with which the President and his staff decide who will live or die. The fate of people living thousands of miles away is decided by a group of Americans, elected and unelected, who don’t speak their language, don’t know their culture, don’t understand their motives or values. While purporting to represent the world’s greatest democracy, US leaders are putting people on a hit list who are as young as 17, people who are given no chance to surrender, and certainly no chance to be tried in a court of law.
Who is furnishing the President and his aides with this list of terrorist suspects to choose from, like baseball cards? The kind of intelligence used to put people on drone hit lists is the same kind of intelligence that put people in Guantanamo. Remember how the American public was assured that the prisoners locked up in Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst,” only to find out that hundreds were innocent people who had been sold to the US military by bounty hunters?
Washington’s war in Yemen Backfires
February 18, 2012 § 1 Comment
Jeremy Scahill discusses his new front page story for The Nation.
Glenn Greenwald on the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki
September 30, 2011 § 1 Comment
For more on the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, see Glenn Greenwald’s article The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality.
Sailing to Yemen with human traffickers
July 19, 2011 § Leave a Comment
(GALLO/GETTY)
Freelance journalist Glen Johnson recently traveled on a human smuggling boat from Djibouti to Yemen, where he was arrested and imprisoned for two weeks. The following is an excerpt from his report on the voyage for Al Jazeera:
I waited for an hour while people filed onto the boats, departures of each boat were staggered by around 15 minutes. Gradually the Affar left and one of the smugglers approached and signalled to me. While dozens of crabs scuttled across the sand, I waded out waist deep and clambered into the boat’s bow. Nearly 50 people were crammed into the boat, which was essentially a fishing dhow. The passengers were squeezed one next to the other as the boat set-off.
A young man from Ethiopia – his forehead covered in a line of 10 faded, blue tattoos depicting the cross – said there was no work in Ethiopia; in Saudi Arabia he would have everything, like his friend in Riyadh, the capital.
“Ethiopia is a very big country. I have no job and no monies. I calling to my friend and he says about his big house and big car. I say I must go, go, go.”
He had little money, but was carrying a block of hasheesh, to sell in Saudi Arabia. Other passengers carried bottles of vodka, to sell to Yemeni bootleggers in order to fund the rest of their trip to Saudi. Those who could not afford to pay for a vehicle would attempt the journey on foot.
The evolution of Arab revolutions
April 23, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The Arab Spring is in full bloom. Peaceful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt sparked a democratic tide that has swept across the region.
In Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, it is now a tale of two protests, with the situation deteriorating into widespread violence and outright war.
It seems some regimes will stop at nothing to resist change. So with no unified leadership or clear agenda, and with domestic complications in each and every country, is this truly a revolution? And if this is an Awakening — what path will it follow — that of Turkey? Of Iran? Or rather a third way, an Arab way. Empire finds out.
Deadly crackdown in Yemen
March 18, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Yemeni security forces have opened fire at a protest in the capital Sanaa, killing at least 30 people.
It is the highest death toll in a single day after weeks of demonstrations calling for Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president, to stand down.
Witnesses say armed men opened fire from nearby buildings as protesters gathered in Sanaa’s University Square after Friday prayers
Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher reports.
Battle for Tripoli continues
February 26, 2011 § 1 Comment
Game is up for Gaddafi. And it seems the balance of power is also shifting in Yemen. Riyadh I presume is preparing for the arrival of two more guests.
