After Yemeni Offensive Against al Qaeda in South, Militants Keep Low Profile, Say Officials
EXTRACT
Some officials in San'a, however, worry that President Hadi's credibility has been undercut by reports issued by government spokesmen earlier in the day that the country's security forces had uncovered and foiled a variety of terrorist plots—including, the spokesmen said, planned attacks against a major Yemeni oil facility, military installations and Western embassies.
U.S. officials cast doubt on the veracity of the claims, saying that the U.S. hadn't changed its assessment of a broad al Qaeda threat. Later Wednesday, Yemen's SABA state news agency cited security sources denying there had been a threat against the oil terminal.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him @ramikhouri.
BEIRUT — I would love to know who the jerk is who wrote the White House’s press statement on the occasion of the inauguration earlier this week of the new Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani. I say this is the work of a jerk, or a band of war-addicted zealots in Washington, D.C., because it seems designed to totally bury the opportunity that Rouhani represents to improve the wellbeing of Iranians and resolve Western-Iranian and Arab-Iranian tensions on a variety of important issues.
How to turn the US-Mexican border into a war zone [profitable for the few]
Todd Miller
al Jazeera, 3 August 2013
The first thing I did at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix this March was climb the brown “explosion-resistant” tower, 10 metres high and 3 metres wide, directly in the centre of the spacious room that holds this annual trade show. From a platform where, assumedly, a border guard would stand, you could take in the constellation of small booths offering the surveillance industry's finest products, including a staggering multitude of ways to monitor, chase, capture, or even kill people, thanks to modernistic arrays of cameras and sensors, up-armored jeeps, the latest in guns, and even surveillance balloons.
Although at the time, headlines in the Southwest emphasised potential cuts to future border-security budgets thanks to Congress's “sequester”, the vast Phoenix Convention Center hall – where the defence and security industries strut their stuff for law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – told quite a different story. Clearly, the expanding global industry of border security wasn't about to go anywhere. It was as if the milling crowds of business people, government officials, and Border Patrol agents sensed that they were about to be truly in the money thanks to “immigration reform”, no matter what version of it did or didn't pass Congress. And it looks like they were absolutely right.
All around me in that tower were poster-sized fiery photos demonstrating ways it could help thwart massive attacks and fireball-style explosions. A border like the one just over 161 kilometres away between the United States and Mexico, it seemed to say, was not so much a place that divided people in situations of unprecedented global inequality, but a site of constant war-like danger.
Below me were booths as far as the eye could see surrounded by Disneyesque fake desert shrubbery, barbed wire, sand bags, and desert camouflage. Throw in the products on display and you could almost believe that you were wandering through a militarised border zone with a Hollywood flair.
To an awed potential customer, a salesman in a suit and tie demonstrated a mini-drone that fits in your hand like a Frisbee. It seemed to catch the technological fetishism that makes Expo the extravaganza it is. Later I asked him what such a drone would be used for. “To see what's over the next hill,” he replied.
Yemen's National Dialogue Conference decision to criminalise drone strikes is an essential step toward a stable Yemen.
Ghada Eldemellawy
al Ja'zeera, 2 August 2013
“America’s actions are legal” claimed President Obama in a speech on drones earlier this year. It was the latest in a string of attempts made by his administration to justify covert strikes carried out by the US overseas – in countries including the Arab peninsula’s poorest nation, Yemen.
But back in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, it appears the country’s civil society disagrees. Members of Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC) – a US-supported initiative which will map out Yemen’s post-Arab Spring future – overwhelmingly voted to criminalise drone strikes in Yemen. The Yemeni people have spoken. Now Presidents Hadi and Obama must listen – for their own sake, as much as that of Yemen.
While it is clear that no leader may lawfully authorise another sovereign to slaughter his own people, the decision to criminalise drones strikes sends a clear warning message to Hadi – if the current practice is to continue, it may well lead to a criminal prosecution.
But it is not only the threat of a jail cell that should focus the Yemeni President’s mind. Through his unconditional consent to the use of drones in his country, President Hadi has already alienated many of his supporters, especially those, like him, from the south, which bear the brunt of the strikes.
More low-rent police terrorism. They mean well, they are simply stupid and over-empowered by the militarization of the domestic police function. The bond with society has been broken — this calls into question the legitimacy of the police and the government they represent.
Published on Jun 21, 2013
TURTLE CREEK, PA — Police came barging into a woman's home because they wanted to arrest the owner for the length of her lawn. A tenant, Robyn Ruckman, recorded the encounter. As she answered the door, police treated her rudely and started making demands. She told them her name but that wasn't good enough. They wanted her to produce ID. https://www.facebook.com/PoliceStateUSA
After asking them to stay outside, police and health inspectors barged into her home. “You know, I don't even see a nametag,” Ruckman told the officer. “I don't give a sh*t what you see. Go get your ID. You see that?! It says POLICE.” Police were performing a 12-hour roundup of the town's offenders, including the horrendous crimes of having uncut grass. The Lawn Nazis took care of business that day, and the streets were safe once again. Robyn Ruckman got off easy that day, as she was not the landlord. It was the owner of the long grass that was to be put behind bars. SOURCE: http://www.wtae.com/news/local/allegh…
I think this story is quite extraordinary, but not for the reasons given in the report. This year we will spend approximately $682.5 billion on the military budget and by the best unclassified estimates about $80 billion on the intelligence apparat. Hundreds of thousands of men and women work for these vast entities. Yet 19 young jihadists and about $500,000 created 9/11, and after over a! decade of expenditures, a few dozen jihadists still have the power to massively disrupt the U.S. There is something deeply wrong with this picture, and the current SR poll shows that over three-quarters of you feel less safe than you did 15 years ago. So what have we achieved, beyond making a small number of corporations obscenely rich, and killing and maiming a lot of people? One can only wonder if the choices made by first the Bush and, then, the Obama Administrations were the right ones. What would have happened, for instance, if instead of drones and war we had put our money into schools, libraries and hospitals in Islamic countries?
The police are out of control. These two “officers” should hang. This is what the criminally insane 9/11 DHS “lies for empire” and printed money mind-set have accomplished. The militarization of the police — intellectually and morally limited to begin with — has destroyed the social contract between the community and its so-called goverance forces.
95-year-old veteran John Wrana fought for America in World War 2, but he didn’t get a chance to die for his country. Instead, his country killed him with a beanbag shotgun blast to the stomach after a thorough tasering.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The incident began after Wrana, who uses a walker, refused a surgery at his assisted living home. He grew agitated at the staff for pressuring him for medical attention. He was a war hero and didn’t like being pushed around.
Soon the police arrived to subdue the senior citizen, riot gear at the ready to take on the wobbly old man. Conflicting reports have emerged between officers and staff, with the employees of the home reporting that they asked officers not to harm him and requested to intervene.
Police decided instead to taser the war hero and follow it up with a beanbag to the guts. Officers reported that a knife had been pulled, but no knife was found on the scene. The police used a riot shield, shotgun and taser on a 95-year-old man in a walker who arguably presented no threat to anyone but himself.
