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Black Cat

Business of war: US, UK cash-in on weapons sales furthering Saudi's horrific war crimes in Yemen

yemen
© Reuters / Khaled Abdullah
As the Syrian Army and its Russian partners gradually regain control of the disaster created by Washington and its NATO and GCC allies in Syria, the western media is slowly coming around to realize 12 months late (but better late than never) that Saudi Arabia has been pounding its neighbor Yemen, and killing and maiming many innocent people in the process.

Why the silence? The answer is simple: business. More specifically, the arms and 'defense' (what an oxymoronic term this has become) business. As we reported yesterday, as Saudi Arabia continues to drop its US and UK-made bombs down on the people of Yemen, the US and UK have cashed-in on sales to the GCC worth at least $33 Billion - in just eleven months according to Defense News.

Comment:
Who is to blame for the tragedy in Yemen?

According to official data, this useless war has killed about 5,900 Yemeni civilians, leaving more than 27,800 injured (NGOs say about 30,000 killed Yemenis). Approximately 2,500,000 people have become refugees, with almost 8,000,000 Yemenis in need of drinking water. Hunger and thirst have affected almost 300,000 children; 1,800,000 children have been forced to leave school.

One of the main reasons for such a horrific UN humanitarian catastrophe is the multi-day air strikes of the Arabian coalition. All condemn the bombing of civilian targets, including schools and hospitals, but that does not stop anyone. The coalition uses cluster bombs (which Riyadh itself was forced to admit), while the UN Secretary General warned that the use of such weapons will be considered a war crime.

The UN Group of Experts concluded that many of the Arab coalition airstrikes were systematically carried out on civilian targets in Yemen, which can be considered crimes against humanity.
Further reading:


SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: Behind the Headlines: ISIS routed in Syria - New clashes along Russia's southern flank - EU Reign of Terror?

palmyra ISIS
Despite Russia's shock announcement that it is scaling down anti-terror operations in Syria, the Syrian Arab Army continues advancing across eastern Syria towards the Iraqi border. In the meantime, Russia has new problems 'closer to home', with NATO building up forces along its border, Kiev building up forces along the Donbass contact line, and clashes breaking out between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in the Caucasus.

This week on Behind the Headlines, we discussed these latest developments on the global stage, along with the dodgy EU-Turkey refugee deal that threatens increasing chaos in Greece, and the ongoing fallout from the Brussels Bombings.

This show aired live on the Sott Radio Network from 12pm-1.30pm EST / 5-6.30pm UTC / 6-7.30pm CET on Sunday April 4th, 2016.

Running Time: 01:30:28

Download: MP3


Newspaper

Russia suggests sanctioning NYT after Ukraine pres. accuses newspaper of 'hybrid war'

The New York Times
© Carlo Allegri / Reuters
The Ukrainian president accused the New York Times of engaging in a 'hybrid war' against his country after it published a damning report on corruption. Russia suggested that Kiev should now ask Washington to impose sanctions against NYT editors.

The article, penned by the influential US newspaper's editorial board, blamed the Ukrainian authorities, including President Petro Poroshenko for failing to deal with corruption and called on Kiev's sponsors to withhold credits until the situation changes.

"Poroshenko seems to have accepted continuing corruption as the price to pay for a modicum of maneuvering room," the Times wrote. "But the president, the prime minister and the parliament must be made to understand that the International Monetary Fund and donor nations, including the United States, cannot continue to shovel money into a corrupt swamp unless the government starts shaping the democratic rule that Ukrainians demanded in their protests."

Chalkboard

Best of the Web: Russia's gameplan against the Empire of Chaos

Sergey Glazyev
© Fort RussSergey Glazyev is a prominent economist, advisor to the Russian President on regional economic integration, and the mind behind the Eurasian Economic Union.
Is there any reason to expect the lifting of American sanctions?

The sanctions are an element of the hybrid war that the US is waging against us. They are doing this not because they do not like Russia's 'annexation' of the Crimea, but because of the objective and subjective interests of the American establishment.

The US is losing its hegemony : it is already producing fewer products and exporting fewer technologies than China. China is also catching up with America in the number of scientists and engineers, and many innovative Chinese technologies are capturing world markets. China's development rate is five times that of the US.The international system of economic entities recently set up in China exemplify the new world economic order.

The economic entities that dominate in the US, serving a financial oligarchy, have destabilized the American monetary and financial system, which defaults about twice a year. The causes of the global financial crisis of 2008 have not disappeared and the American debt bubble — financial pyramids composed of derivatives and the national debt —are still growing.

Bomb

ISIS Chemical weapon & bomb "research centre" barely targeted by US

chemical weapons 'research center' in Mosul
© Stringer / AFP
ISIS has been using a high-tech lab in Mosul for building bombs and chemical weapons and training recruits in bomb-making since its capture in 2014. Barely targeted by US airstrikes, the facility has also provided jihadists with some 40 kg of uranium compounds.

"The University of Mosul is the best Daesh [Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] research center in the world," Iraq's top explosives officer Gen. Hatem Magsosi told The Wall Street Journal. "Trainees go to Raqqa [Syria], then to Mosul University to use the existing facilities."

When the facility was seized by ISIS back in 2014, Iraqi officials reported to UN that some 40 kilos of uranium compounds kept there apparently fell into jihadists' hands.

"Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state," Iraq's UN ambassador wrote at the time, adding that such materials "can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction."

Comment: At this point, it is really no wonder why such a facility - a dream come true for ISIS and their financiers - has not been seriously targeted for 2 years since it's capture.


Bad Guys

Chaos continues: Iraqi casualties double between February and March

Iraqi Mourning
© AFP 2016/ Marwan IBRAHIM
The total number of casualties from an armed conflict and acts of terrorism in Iraq has almost doubled between February and March to over 1,000, the United Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMI) for Iraq said.

The casualty count from terrorism, violence and an armed conflict among Iraqis increased from 670 in February to 1,119 in March, the mission said on Friday.

"I am extremely disturbed at the continuing loss of life and injury as a result of terrorism, violence and armed conflict. It is totally unacceptable that civilians should bear the brunt of violence," Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq Jan Kubis said, as quoted by the report.

Comment: More than 13 years since the barbaric invasion of Iraq, the same forces now continue to cause death and destruction through their mercenary army of drug-crazed psycho head-choppers. When will the madness end?


Wall Street

IMF's Christine Lagarde spells it out: 'When the world goes downhill, we thrive'

Christine Lagarde
When we wrote earlier that based on a leaked Wikileaks transcript, which the Greek government interpreted "as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected", the article promptly went viral. While it remains to be determined if the IMF indeed made such an implied threat, we attribute this spike in interest to the general public's surprise that the IMF could stoop to such a low, even by its own standards, level as to use a nation of 11 million people as a lab rat on which to conduct policy experiments.

But why the surprise?

As the below transcript from a April 2012 interview given by Lagarde to the Wharton school at UPenn, none other than IMF president Lagarde herself admitted that for the IMF to "thrive", the world has to "go downhill", and that the IMF "to be sustainable" it needs to be "very in touch with our client base."

She added that "when the world goes well and we've had years of growth, as was the case back in 2006 and 2007, the IMF doesn't do so well both financially and otherwise"

Comment: It should be pretty obvious by now that international bankers have no interest in the well being of the population. Suffering gives them more opportunities to feed off the people.


Vader

US/NATO ally set to double beheadings this year

Michael Fallon met the Saudi Defence Minister, Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, in Riyadh
© AFPMichael Fallon met the Saudi Defence Minister, Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, in Riyadh
Saudi Arabia has already executed 82 people this year and is on course to behead twice as many prisoners as it did in 2015, according to new statistics compiled by a leading human rights organisation likely to raise fresh concerns about the UK's close ties to the Kingdom.

The British Government has been urged to do more to put pressure on its Gulf allies to halt the bloodshed in light of the figures, which would see the total death toll in Saudi Arabia reach a record high of more than 320 by the end of the year if the current rate is maintained.

This would be more than double the 158 executions carried out by the Kingdom last year, which was in itself a dramatic rise on the 88 people it beheaded in 2014. The figures were compiled by the UK organisation Reprieve using a combination of official statements from the Saudi government and reliable local media reports.

Bad Guys

Activist: UN fosters 'culture of impunity' that enables horrible sexual assaults by peacekeepers

United Nations peacekeepers
© Flickr/ United Nations Photo
Over 100 girls from a province in the Central African Republic claim they were sexually abused by UN peacekeepers, the AIDS-Free World's campaign Code Blue reported. Co-founder of Code Blue Paula Donovan told Radio Sputnik that the reports are just the tip of the iceberg.

According to Donovan, the United Nations has been deliberately concealing the information about sex crimes committed by peacekeepers for the sake of its reputation, leaving 'thousands' of victims without hope.

"The United Nations by being so slow and so secretive and so careful about their reputation, they're actually culpable in these crimes," she argued.

Donovan said that documents in the recent case were leaked to her organization by an insider, and that the data they received included correspondence and notes from meetings that imply that the victims were interviewed two weeks before the information was released and that the UN was notified but — for unknown reasons — never informed the civilian population or the governments involved.

Comment: The UN has a long history of covering up the crimes of its 'peacekeepers'. Back in 2002 their investigation arm could 'barely cope' with the number of cases being sent to it for investigation. If anything it's gotten worse, with the UN going so far as to essentially ally with terrorists in Syria in the mistreatment of the Syrian people.

The institution has been thoroughly ponerized thanks to its alliance to Western power and the horrendous and despicable crimes they commit around the globe. For more on what the UN could have been, and the direction it was heading under the leadership of Dag Hammarskjold, listen to The Truth Perspective: Interview with Henning Melber: Dag Hammarskjold, why he died and why it matters.

For more on the vast criminal conglomerate that the UN has become, see:


Binoculars

After Palmyra: Syrian Army takes strategic mountain range near Al-Qaryatayn (plus ceasefire updates)

Syria
© Sputnik/ Iliya Pitalev
The Syrian Army backed by popular forces has taken control over the Suniyat-Homs mountain range, two kilometers away from the town of Al-Qaryatayn, in central Syria.

The operation to liberate the Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn from Daesh militants began on Saturday morning. Covered by artillery fire, vanguard units of the army and its allies began an assault from the south, southeastern and northwestern directions, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported.

Comment: Ceasefire Update

After a period of stagnation, more militia groups and towns have joined the truce. The totals now stand at 56 towns and 44 armed groups. 1230 mines and IEDs have been defused in and around Palmyra. al-Nusra continues provocations in northwestern Aleppo, near the border with Turkey. The fighting there continues. Ziad Fadel at SyrPer humorously commented on the discredited Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' announcement of a 'glorious' Nusra offensive as follows:
Amazingly, news sources as widespread as UPI, API, Reuters, inter alia, (with reporters everywhere but in Syria) are quoting this lunatic who has "zero" sources inside Syria and whose only access to news is the MI6 Department of Creative Writing at Vauxhall Cross in London.
In reality, Nusra was destroyed, losing 41 (mostly foreigners, including many Turks) to the Russian/Syrian response, and allowing the SAA to enlarge their control over the surrounding area. Fadel writes:
The fact remains that the British terrorist handlers, most of whom are MI6 independent contractors formerly with the agency or retirees from SAS, cannot keep any secrets. They use mediocre communications platforms which are easily intercepted by the Russian military, the Syrian counterintelligence branch of the MI or HZB, which is proving itself to be surprisingly adept at the most complicated forms of encryption and deciphering. Not only that, citizens are regularly reporting events to the MoI which uniquely controls 3 separate intelligence agencies all reporting to Maj. Gen. Muhammad Ibraheem Al-Sha'aar. The Intel was clear: British handlers in Gaziantep would micro-manage the assault based on detailed satellite and drone intelligence from the CIA and MI6.

When the assault started at the time mentioned herein-above, you could hear British accented voices barking out orders in execrable Arabic - so dreadful it sounded like bad Spanish. It was only a few times, according to Wael, when a fluent speaker of Syrian Arabic could be heard with British voices in the background correcting this message or modifying this order. It was as though they were playing team table tennis using Korean.