Ethiopian migrants abused and unwelcome in Yemen by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
London
December 17, 2012

Desperately seeking a future

Year on year the numbers of men, women and children leaving Ethiopia in search of work and freedom from repression in one of the Gulf States and beyond is increasing. Lured by the often hollow prospect of earning enough money to support their family, United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)[i] estimate around 85,000 men women and children, desperate and naïve, have this year, no matter the severe risks, made their way to Yemen, the hub of migration out of the Horn of Africa. In the last six years around 250,000 Ethiopians have made the dangerous journey into this very poor, deeply divided country besieged with internal problems, which has limited resources, the second highest rate of chronic child malnutrition in the world and where 45% of the population live in poverty.

Executive Order-Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen by Barack Obama

Image by SS&SS via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

Propaganda Alert!

by Barack Obama
The White House
May 16, 2012

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
May 16, 2012

Executive Order — Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen

Tarek Mehanna’s Powerful Statement As He Received a 17-Year Sentence Despite Having Harmed No One by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
April 14, 2012

What a disgrace. On Thursday, Tarek Mehanna, a 29-year old pharmacist from Sudbury, Massachusetts, was sentenced to 17 and half years in prison, after being found guilty in December on seven charges, including “providing material support to terrorists,” conspiracy to kill in a foreign country and lying to law enforcement officers. Perhaps that sounds appropriate, but as Nancy Murray of the ACLU explained in an article for the Boston Globe, the extent of his involvement in “terrorism” was that he had “emailed friends, downloaded videos, translated and posted documents on the web, and traveled to and from Yemen in 2004.”

Aiming to Preserve Autocratic Mideast Rule, Saudi Arabia Helps Crush Uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen

Dandelion Salad

Democracy Now!
June 16, 2011

Image by malyousif via Flickr

While the United States remains heavily involved in the Libya conflict, it has been noticeably silent on the violent suppression of popular uprisings against autocratic regimes in Bahrain and Yemen, both of which are close allies of Saudi Arabia. In March, Bahrain called in Saudi troops to help crush massive pro-democracy protests. We discuss the role of Saudi Arabia in recent regional uprisings with Toby Jones, assistant professor of history at Rutgers University and a former Persian Gulf analyst with the International Crisis Group.

Pentagon And NATO Apply Afghanistan-Pakistan War Model To Africa by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
January 2, 2011

The New Year began with three North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers killed in Afghanistan and 20 people, all portrayed as militants, killed in four American missile strikes in northwest Pakistan. The third drone missile attack killed four people attempting to rescue and remove the bodies of the victims of the first, a technique used by the U.S. and NATO in their war against Yugoslavia in 1999.

Anwar Al-Awlaqi: Judge Rules that President’s Decision to Assassinate US Citizens Abroad, Without Due Process or Explanation, is “Judicially Unreviewable”

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
9 December, 2010

On Tuesday, in an extremely troubling ruling in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge John D. Bates dismissed a lawsuit contesting what is described as President Obama’s “targeted killing” policy, but which is, in fact, a program to assassinate US citizens anywhere in the world, without explanation, and without the involvement of Congress or the judiciary.

The case concerns Anwar al-Awlaqi (aka al-Awlaki or al-Aulaqi), an American citizen living in Yemen, who “was placed on kill lists maintained by the CIA and the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) earlier this year,” as the Center for Constitutional Rights has explained. Al-Awlaki was also labeled as a “specially designated global terrorist” on July 16, even though, behind the rhetoric, doubts have been expressed about his significance, which make it obvious that there are profound problems in allowing the executive branch to have the unfettered power to decide when American citizens should be designated for assassination.

Israel to UK: Behind what is happening in Lebanon and Yemen, you will find an Iranian finger

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
4 November 2010



1) Israeli President to UK Foreign Minister: Behind what is happening in Lebanon and Yemen, you will find an Iranian finger (3 November 2010)

2) President Obama: Explosive material was found on two US-bound packages from Yemen (28 October 2010)

Arabian Sea: Center Of West’s 21st Century War by Rick Rozoff

by Rick Rozoff
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Stop NATO
Stop NATO-Opposition to global militarism
October 24, 2010

A quarter of the world’s nuclear aircraft carriers will soon be in the Arabian Sea.

The Nimitz class nuclear-powered supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the region on October 17 to join the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, which in turn had arrived there on June 18 as part of a regular rotation.

The Charles de Gaulle, flagship of the French navy, the country’s only aircraft carrier and the sole non-American nuclear carrier, will soon join its two U.S. counterparts.

Yemen: The Covert Apparatus of the American Empire by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
September 10, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of his least known and ultimately one of his most important speeches ever, “Beyond Vietnam,” in which he spoke out against the American war in Vietnam and against American empire in all its political, military and economic forms. In his speech, King endorsed the notion that America “was on the wrong side of a world revolution.” Dr. King explained:

During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military “advisors” in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”[1]

Walid Al-Saqaf on Yemen, the real conflict

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

http://therealnews.com

Poverty, dictatorship & suppression of socialist movement till soil for extremist forces

Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways by Michel Chossudovsky

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

by Michel Chossudovsky
www.globalresearch.ca, February 7, 2010

Securing US Control of Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden

The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site.

Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (See map below). It is of crucial importance to the US military.

Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
12 January 2010

On the eighth anniversary of the opening of the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the implications of a ruling last week in the Court of Appeals (PDF) have added another layer of uncertainty to the prisoners’ future, in a week that was notorious for a barrage of lies and misinformation, and a promise by President Obama that he was freezing the release of all Yemeni prisoners until further notice.

The Appeals Court ruling dealt with the case of Ghaleb al-Bihani, a Yemeni who lost his habeas corpus petition, challenging the basis of his detention, in January last year, seven months after the habeas petitions resumed, following the Supreme Court’s ruling, in Boumediene v. Bush, that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas rights.

Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth? By Paul Craig Roberts

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/

By Paul Craig Roberts
ICH
January 08, 2010

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

On Democracy Now! Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo, Yemen, Lies, Hysteria and the False Recidivism Report

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
8 January 2010

Today, I made my way to a TV studio in central London to hook up with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez in New York to discuss the recent uproar over the release of Yemeni prisoners from Guantánamo, and the Pentagon’s most recent claims that 1 in 5 released prisoners have engaged in terrorist activities, for Democracy Now! The segment, entitled, “After Years in Guantánamo Prison Without Charge, Future Even More Uncertain For Yemeni Detainees,” is available below, and is featured here on the Democracy Now! website:

Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
7 January 2010

For the last 12 days, since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab slipped through every security net going, and tried and failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Republican critics of Barack Obama have tried every trick in the book to undermine the President’s authority, with former Vice President Dick Cheney claiming that the incident demonstrated that Obama’s “low key response” to the failed attack “makes us less safe,” and numerous lawmakers and pundits — joined by a few easily frightened Democrats — stating that no more Yemeni prisoners should be released from Guantánamo, following the transfer to Yemeni custody of six men the weekend before the failed attack.

The first of these assaults on the administration was dealt with robustly, in response to Dick Cheney’s statement to Politico, when the former VP claimed: