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War profiteering: Western nations are accessories to murder in Yemen

Catherine Shakdam
RT
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 10:45 UTC
destruction yemen
© Abduljabbar Zeyad / Reuters
Is it shame and guilt I smell in mainstream media as Yemen's engineered mass oppression has become a burden no sane journalist can rationalize any longer? Could it be that Western capitals are about ready to flip alliances?

Don't hold your breath just yet but change is most definitely in the air. Yemen has once again grabbing some media attention. Whatever unspoken ban Riyadh managed to impose on the press is just about melting away. Whatever political perspective journalists were taught to follow, has just about disappeared by the reality of a war of aggression which has been as vicious as it has been bloody.

And while the United Nations has still to play catch up on its official figures (Yemen's death toll has been vastly underestimated), this war the kingdom has insisted on waging is finally being labeled a grand atrocity.

Comment: With the continuing carnage that is being inflicted on Yemen and the ongoing weapons sales to the Saudi's, it doesn't appear that anything is changing:
The US double game in Yemen reaches its peak

[It] is quite evident that the U.S.' cardinal objective has been and continues to be to support Saudi Arabia in its nefarious wars. Not only does it allow the U.S. to earn revenue out of such gigantic deals, but also puts it in a position to keep regional countries engaged in warfare, divide them against each other and maintain a situation that can at its best be described as "controlled instability.


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Evil Rays

Behind the Israeli report claiming Abbas was a KGB spy

Adnan Abu Amer
Al-Monitor
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 19:13 UTC
Gideon Remez
© REUTERS/Ammar AwadGideon Remez, one of the Israeli researchers who claimed that Soviet-era documents showed that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas worked for the KGB in the 1980s, holds up a page he received after documents were smuggled out of Russia by a former KGB archivist, Jerusalem, Israel, Sept. 8, 2016.
It's no secret that Israeli-Palestinian relations have been marred by tension since mid-2014. At that time, the path toward a political solution reached an impasse and negotiations were suspended, leading to nonstop Israeli accusations that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not a partner for peace and that he has been inciting violence against Israelis.

The latest Israeli allegation against Abbas came in a report broadcast by Israel's Channel 1 on Sept. 7, claiming that Abbas was an agent for the Soviet KGB when he was a member of Fatah's Central Committee in 1983. According to the report, Abbas' code name was "Krotov," and he was recruited during his Ph.D. studies in Moscow and served as a KGB agent in Syria.

The Israeli allegation immediately sparked angry reactions from Palestinians, and many Palestinian officials protested. In a Sept. 8 statement to Agence France-Presse, presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said he considered the Israeli accusation part of an Israeli smear campaign against Abbas aimed at weakening the Palestinian position.

Comment: This comes as Russia has been pushing to hold talks between Palestine and Israel. Preparing the chessboard in advance? See also:

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Clipboard

The 'pizza and vodka deal': Are the Syria ceasefire deal secrets leaking?

Israel Shamir
The Unz Review
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:52 UTC
syria map
The recent Syria agreement signed in Geneva by Kerry and Lavrov (probably it will be remembered as "Pizza and Vodka deal", as the journalists have been served these delicacies by the negotiating teams during the time they had to wait for the results) beside the points disclosed by the foreign ministers included five documents. The US insisted on keeping the content secret, despite Russian insistence to make them known. Here is what we learned about the contents of the secret documents and the negotiation process from our usually reliable Arab and Israeli sources.

The secret documents describe what should happen in Syria after the cease-fire will come into effect. The first day of cease-fire is called Day D. The Russians wanted it to begin at noon, while the Americans preferred sunset on Monday September 12, 2016. The American view prevailed. After first two days, at D+2, if cease-fire holds, the Russians and the Americans will extend it for a longer time. This actually happened on September 14, in a telephone conversation between Lavrov and Kerry. They extended it for another 48 hours. If it will hold for a week, hopefully the sides will extend it indefinitely and proceed to the next stage.

Comment: See our ceasefire coverage in our daily reports here:

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USA

US 'donates' $1.3 million to family of Italian hostage killed by drone strike in Pakistan


RT
Fri, 16 Sep 2016 18:38 UTC
US President Barack Obama
© Jonathan Ernst / ReutersUS President Barack Obama apologized on April 23, 2015 for a drone strike in January that year that killed Giovanni Lo Porto and Warren Weinstein, aid workers held hostage by al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
The US has given a "donation" of $1.32 million to the family of Giovanni Lo Porto, the Italian aid worker killed in January 2015 by a US drone strike. Documents detailing the condolence payment also confirmed the attack took place in Pakistan.

In April 2015, US President Barack Obama admitted that Lo Porto and another aid worker, Warren Weinstein, were killed in a drone strike against a suspected Al-Qaeda base in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Lo Porto and Weinstein had been held hostage by the terrorist group since 2011.

Documents quoted by the Italian daily La Repubblica this week show that the US government signed an agreement with the Lo Porto family on July 8, to pay a total of 1,185,000 euros ($1.32 million) as a "donation in the memory of Giovanni Lo Porto."

The agreement also confirmed that Lo Porto was killed in Pakistan.

The admission was made shortly after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's visit to Washington.
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Stormtrooper

Abusive behavior: Judge rules 'bullying' UK troops caused drowning death of Iraqi teen


RT
Fri, 16 Sep 2016 18:15 UTC
British soldiers
© Atef Hassan / Reuters
Bullying UK troops' conduct was the "plain and certain" cause of the 2003 drowning death of a 15-year-old Iraqi boy, an official inquiry has found.

The Iraq Fatality Investigations (IFI) inquiry into the death was led by former senior judge George Newman and reported Thursday.

The investigations' results were the polar opposite of a manslaughter court case into the death carried out in 2006 which saw all soldiers involved exonerated.
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USA

Clinton email scandal: What is the FBI hiding?

Andrew P. Napolitano
The Washington Times
Wed, 14 Sep 2016 17:44 UTC
Illustration on the co-option of the FBI and Justice Department over the Hillary email investigation
© Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
Earlier this week, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress took the FBI to task for its failure to be transparent. In the House, it was apparently necessary to serve a subpoena on an FBI agent to obtain what members of Congress want to see, and in the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee accused the FBI itself of lawbreaking.

Here is the back story.

Ever since FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 he was recommending that the Department of Justice not seek charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a result of her failure to safeguard state secrets during her time in office, many in Congress have had a nagging feeling that this was a political, not a legal, decision. The publicly known evidence of Mrs. Clinton's recklessness and willful failure to safeguard secrets was overwhelming. The evidence of her lying under oath about whether she returned all her work-related emails that she had taken from the State Department was profound and incontrovertible.

And then we learned that people who worked for Mrs. Clinton were instructed to destroy several of her mobile devices and to remove permanently the stored emails on one of her servers. All this was done after these items had been subpoenaed by two committees of the House of Representatives.
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Briefcase

Apple hit with $118 million tax bill in Japan after funneling money through Ireland


RT
Fri, 16 Sep 2016 17:09 UTC
Apple logo on window
© Clodagh Kilcoyne / ReutersTaking a bite out of public finances: Apple paid zero taxes.
Apple's tax bills continue to mount after yet another multi-million penalty was handed down to an iTunes unit in Japan. A total of $118 million (12 billion yen) is owed after it was found the company was funneling money through Ireland.

After investigating the company, the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau found that the royalties earned from fees paid by Apple iTunes subscribers in Japan were withheld from the exchequer, with the money instead channeled through a licensing firm owned by Apple in the Republic of Ireland.

The royalties earned should have been subject to a 20.42 per cent withholding tax but instead, as the royalties were earned through iTunes software built into the iPhone, the money was included into the cost of buying an iPhone handset, according to FT.
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Jet3

Saudis bombed a water well in "double tap" airstrike in Yemen, killing dozens including children and first responders

Andrea Germanos
Common Dreams
Mon, 12 Sep 2016 17:03 UTC
anti-Saudi protests
© Campaign Against Arms Trade/flickr/ccHuman rights campaigners protest against Farnborough International arms fair on July 11, 2016.
A United Nations official has condemned airstrikes, including a "double tap" attack, on a water well in Yemen that killed dozens of people including children. The statement comes as the Obama administration's proposed $1.15 billion arms to Saudi Arabia, who's leading the U.S.-backed coalition's bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, faces opposition both on and off Capitol Hill.

In a statement released Monday, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said that 30 people were killed and 17 were wounded, with the casualties including first responders and two children, as a result of the airstrikes in the village of Beit Saadan in northern Yemen.

According to reporting by Reuters, several workers drilling for water were killed in the first strike; then, in what is known as a double-tap strike, warplanes came back and hit those who had rushed out to help the workers.

"I remain deeply disturbed by the unrelenting attacks on civilians and on civilian infrastructure throughout Yemen by all parties to the conflict, which are further destroying Yemen's social fabric and increasing humanitarian needs, particularly for medical attention at a time when the health sector is collapsing," Goldrick said, and urged all parties involved to adhere to the April 10 ceasefire.

UN Human Rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein last month called for an international investigation into human rights abuses in Yemen, saying the conflict was creating "devastating" toll on the country's population and that the "international community...has a legal and moral duty to take urgent steps to alleviate the appalling levels of human despair." International human rights groups have made a similar call.

As Kristine Beckerle and John Sifton of Human Rights Watch wrote last week, "the U.S. continues to provide logistical, tactical, and intelligence support to the Saudi-led military operation against the Houthis and their allies in Yemen that has resulted in numerous laws-of-war violations."
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Padlock

Media remains silent as Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Pipeline, steals more land in Texas for a different project

Claire Bernish
The Free Thought Project
Wed, 14 Sep 2016 16:56 UTC
Energy Transfer Partners steals land in texas
© countercurrentnews.com
Energy Transfer Partners, the company responsible for construction of the hotly contentious Dakota Access Pipeline, has another controversial pipeline project with the potential to contaminate drinking water and the environment and destroy an area in Texas described as sacred and environmentally vital — and the ruthless company has been suing landowners to snatch their property for its own profiteering.

Known as the Trans-Pecos pipeline, the relatively short 143-mile project would carry natural gas from western Texas' Permian Basin — likened to "America's Saudi Arabia" as the country's "Most Important Oil and Gas Resource" by Forbes — across the border into Mexico. But this project will run through the state's pristine, remote Big Bend area, considered sacred to some and an environmental treasure to others, and — despite Texas' long history of devotion to Big Oil and Gas — has sparked vociferous debate about property rights and corporate power.

"It's a sacred landscape," explained Texan David Keller, an archaeologist at Sul Ross State University's Center for Big Bend Studies, for the Texas Tribune last year. "It truly is the last best place in Texas. When you destroy that landscape, you lose that sense of place."
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Info

How and why Russia and China are supporting Syria's devastated economy

Rasmus Jacobsen
Global Risk Insights
Fri, 16 Sep 2016 13:40 UTC
View of Syrian city
An economy in ruins

More than five years of armed conflict has had a catastrophic impact on the Syrian economy. National GDP has plummeted to less than 50% of pre-conflict output, and according to recent figures, the total economic loss to date amounts to 275 billion USD - around five times the 2010 GDP. And as violence continues in several parts of the country, especially in the pre-conflict commercial powerhouse of Aleppo, Syria's economic downfall can be expected to continue.

The extreme damage to the economy owes to a combination of a 25% drop in overall population, the displacement of half of all Syrians, a steep drop in economic activity, capital flight, massive destruction of infrastructure and productive capacity, as well as the loss of 25 million school years for Syria's children, which will reduce labor productivity for the coming generation. Furthermore, large segments of the Syrian business elite that initially remained confident in the future of the country have lost faith and divested their assets and relocated to neighboring countries.

Such an economic impact is not only affecting the Syrian population at present, but will be felt for decades, if not generations. If the war ended this year, it would take 10-15 years before Syria's per capita GDP would return to pre-conflict levels. And as the violence is expected to continue well into the future, total long-term economic costs could reach up to 1 trillion USD - nearly 20 times the 2010 GDP.

Comment: The Syrian war is about the natural gas and oil pipelines:

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