And remember, this happened during the Obama Admin.
/jd
Investigation: As U.S.-Backed War in Yemen Raged, UAE Hired U.S. Mercenaries to Kill Yemeni Leaders
‘A shocking new investigation has revealed that the United Arab Emirates hired U.S. mercenaries to carry out assassinations of political and clerical leaders in Yemen. The former elite U.S. special operations fighters were paid to take part in missions to kill those deemed to be “terrorists” by the UAE. The UAE worked with the U.S. company Spear Operations Group, founded by an Israeli-American man named Abraham Golan, who told BuzzFeed, “There was a targeted assassination program in Yemen. I was running it.” The group’s first target in Yemen was a local leader of al-Islah, a political party whose members include Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Tawakkul Karman. We speak with journalist Aram Roston of BuzzFeed News, who broke the story. His new piece is titled “A Middle East Monarchy Hired American Ex-Soldiers to Kill Its Political Enemies. This Could Be the Future of War.”’
‘…ARAM ROSTON: Indeed, it did happen under Obama, yes. The period of time was after the war—I mean, an interesting point was, after the war started in March, the U.S. pulled its forces directly out of Yemen, during the chaos of that war, when the war first started. The UAE, of course, still stayed there. They were the ones on the ground. And the Yemen war is a very complex war. People see that the UAE and the Saudis are in the same coalition, but the UAE and the Saudis have kind of different aims there, or traditionally had different aims there. The Saudis were bombing the Houthis, fighting the Houthis, which they believed are proxies for Iran, and the UAE, most experts will confirm, was really trying to consolidate control over the south. They want the south to separate, to secede. They want control of the ports in the south. And they want to control the political space there, because the UAE and Yemen are very close.
AMY GOODMAN: So they were trying to get the head of the al-Islah party. This is the party of Tawakkul Karman, who was sitting here a few years ago, right at the time the Nobel Peace Prize—the Nobel committee announced she was winning the Nobel Peace Prize. UAE can call them terrorists. UAE can hire a mercenary firm, the State Department would approve, to attack anyone they consider unfriendly to them?…’
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/17/investigation_as_us_backed_war_in
original Buzzfeed article…: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-assassination-us-yemen-uae-spear-golan-dahlan
No, the US didn't create ISIS – but it did help to create the circumstances from which it emerged. The conspiritorial Left fails and fails again to understand the difference between intent and unintended consequences, and also of taking advantage of a situations that which the US is not fully in control of.
That said, the US does tend to support the worst of the worst because it thinks it can with with them and rarely the people who want democracy and human rights - because how could the US ever control people with that agenda??
/jd
The ISIS Conspiracy That Ate the Web
‘…The intelligence report about Syria is just that — a report, It’s not a policy directive and there’s no proof that any action was taken based on its analysis. Nevertheless, people across the political spectrum are taking it as if it were a presidential order. Anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller thinks it’s a scandal because it proves President Obama knew about ISIS and chose to do nothing. Geller’s outrage is the inverse of the indignation expressed by far-leftists like the Guardian’s Seumas Milne who takes the report as proof that the U.S. abetted ISIS to sow discord in the Middle East, part of a grand divide and conquer strategy. Neither one seems to understand what they’re actually looking at.
Milne’s Guardian piece is subtler than its headline. It grants that the DIA report, “doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course,” and adds caveats likes, “the report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language.” But it assumes, ambiguities aside, that the report reveals some level of collusion with ISIS as a tenet of U.S. policy seeking to inflame sectarianism…’
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-isis-conspiracy-that-ate-the-web
The Empire gets fucked back
/jd
Moldova Grudge Could Cost U.K. Access to $1.7 Trillion Projects
‘…The U.K.’s post-Brexit access to $1.7 trillion in public projects relies on the good will of its European neighbors. Too bad Moldova holds a grudge.
The tiny country wedged between Romania and Ukraine is joining half a dozen nations in blocking the U.K.’s re-entry to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement, an accord that smooths the bidding process on public contracts, including in the $837 billion U.S. market.
Why the hold-up? Corina Cojocaru, Moldova’s economic counselor to the WTO, and her team were denied entry to the U.K. last year when they wanted to discuss their future relationship with Britain after it leaves the European Union.
And Cojocaru has a good memory.
“I couldn’t get a visa and a diplomatic passport to go to London to negotiate on government procurement,” Cojocaru said in a telephone interview. “Nobody listened to us for six to seven months.”…’
‘…On 27 September, the administrative court of the northwestern German city of Oldenburg ruled that the municipality’s decision to cancel a 2016 BDS event had been unlawful.
It determined that the city council had “undermined the fundamental right of the applicant’s freedom of assembly” as well as freedom of expression, which, it added, “was (and is) severely interfered with.”
“The fundamental right to freedom of expression is, as the most direct expression of the human personality in society, one of the most distinguished human rights of all.”
The ruling, the first of its kind in Germany, could have broader political implications for BDS activism, said Ahmed Abed, the lawyer who represented event organizers in court. “This ruling could have a great impact because it is the first time an administrative court has said it is unlawful to disallow a BDS event.”…’
https://electronicintifada.net/content/big-bds-legal-win-germany/25741
Nationalist rabbi: European Right no longer anti-Semitic
‘…Rabbi Melamed – who heads the Har Bracha Yeshiva in Samaria – explained that for many years, Israel’s Foreign Ministry was wary of the European right wing parties, because they harbored Nazi supporters and Holocaust deniers.
“But in recent years, the extreme right wing movements have been undergoing a process of change,” he added. “Leaders have emerged who want nothing to do with the racist Nazi heritage, and who openly support the state of Israel.”
These leaders “have distilled the movements’ nationalist positions, and now they express a proper position, which demands maintaining the European people’s national, religious and cultural identity,” the rabbi insisted.
Rabbi Melamed went on to say that “[j]ust as it is forbidden to steal the property of a private individual, as the communists did in the countries that they took over, so it is forbidden to steal from people their national and religious identity, as the communists’ successors – the extreme liberals on the Left, like the British Labor party – seek to do.”…’
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/253164
If he wins, his brother Jack can take his place.
/jd
everything wrong and surreal about today’s #Murica Republican Party contained in one screenshot ????
source: https://www.facebook.com/TheHill/posts/10156481355824087
How restrictive voting requirements is the USA target minorities
Carol Anderson: ‘…And that’s one of the great ways the way voter suppression works, is that it sounds reasonable, until you see how it’s operationalized, and when you also understand, for instance, that the issue of voter I.D. is based on the lie of voter fraud.
And what I mean by that is that Justin Levitt, a professor out of California, did a study. And from 2000 to 2014, he counted up all of the votes in all of the elections and came to one billion votes. Out of that, he identified 31 cases of voter fraud, 31 cases out of one billion votes…’
transcript: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-restrictive-voting-requirements-target-minorities
There are so few refugees left in #Hungary these days that PM Viktor Orbán has selected a new scapegoat,,,,, the danger posed by Gender Studies ????
/jd
‘…On October 12, 2018, without any public statement or explanation, gender studies Master degrees were removed from the list of accredited subjects in Hungary. Students currently enrolled can finish their course of studies as usual and with both Hungarian and US accreditation, but no new students enrolled from September 2019 will be able to earn a Hungarian accredited degree in the field of Gender Studies…’
https://gender.ceu.edu/statement-annulment-gender-studies-ma-degree-accredited-hungary
music starts at 1:10
/jd