Middle East

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Vrede too
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Middle East

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Red Cross: Yemen Food Reserves Dwindling as War Escalates

Yemen conflict: Red Cross appeals for access to key port

Hundreds of thousands of Yemeni children are nearing starvation
Petition

To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Donald Trump

End the Saudi war in Yemen. Hundreds of thousands of children face starvation. Yemen's Houthis are not Iran proxies.
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Re: Middle East

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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1312. ETTD.

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Re: Middle East

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@HouseDemocrats: Help @TedLieu, @RepJohnConyers Avert Famine in Yemen

Petition by Robert Naiman

To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives

Sign the Lieu-Conyers letter urging Secretary of State Tillerson to use all diplomatic means to open Hodeida port and avert famine in Yemen.
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Re: Middle East

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General says no bad decisions in Yemen raid, probe is over

In unrelated news, Jess Sessions will lead the investigation into whether Jess Sessions perjured himself before Congress.
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Re: Middle East

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Yemen Market Airstrike Kills at Least 16 People

An airstrike by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia on an open market in western Yemen killed at least 16 people, United Nations and local officials said Saturday....
USG/ERC Stephen O’Brien Statement to the Security Council on Missions to Yemen ...
To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Donald Trump

Join with UN officials, diplomats, & Members of Congress calling for opening Yemen's Hodeida port to food imports to avert famine.
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Re: Middle East

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No Arms Deal for #MohammedBinFamine While Food Blocked At Yemen's Hodeida

To be delivered to The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate

Oppose the Saudi arms deal. Press Saudi Arabia to open Yemen's Hodeida port to food aid to avert famine.
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Re: Middle East

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Petition to be delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Press Admin to open Yemen's Hodeida port to food imports to avert famine.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Re: Middle East

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Democrats urged Obama to cease Yemen war role before Trump took over
Twenty-five House Democrats unsuccessfully wrote to President Barack Obama earlier this month to urge him to end US support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen before Donald Trump took over.

Congress prepares for another showdown over Saudi arms sales
Congress is bracing for another showdown over arms sales to Saudi Arabia less than six months after lawmakers' last fight on the issue.
Petition to be delivered to The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate

Pledge to oppose the Saudi arms deal. Use your leverage to stop the Saudi-imposed famine in Yemen.
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Re: Middle East

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Petition to The United States House of Representatives

Sign the Pocan-Amash-Lieu-Jones letter challenging Admin to show legal justification for participating in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.
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Re: Middle East

Unread post by billy.pilgrim »

Vrede too wrote:
Petition to The United States House of Representatives

Sign the Pocan-Amash-Lieu-Jones letter challenging Admin to show legal justification for participating in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.
signed


if we ain't fucking with people, we are helping others fuck with people


We just can't ever take a critical look at what “could have been’ had we acted differently, or at least our politicians never do and the servant media rarely seems to care. Somehow any discussion of “what could have been“ is seen as an attempt to invalidate history, or as some sort of opposition, instead of being the learning experience that self-evaluation should be to individuals as well as countries.

What would the middle east look like now if we hadn’t overthrown a young democracy in Iran and not only installed, but protected the brutal dictatorship of the shah over his impoverished people while he lived in obscene extravagance.

How difference the ME would look if we had supported that democracy as a model for other countries in the area. Instead we chose to support a series of murderers, dictators and petty kings in their oppression and murders of their own people ultimately resulting in the ME we have today.

What if we hadn’t helped radicalize the mujahideen in Afghanistan. What if we hadn’t trained them to make IEDs, trained them and supplied them with weapons. All in some piss-ant attempt to cause harm to the Soviet Union without ever imagining the potential backfire – as Condi said, who “could have predicted” that someone would use a “hijacked airplane as a missile.” despite fiction writers describing similar attacks for years and the FAA warning long before 9/11, that terrorists might hijack an airplane and try to use it as a weapon.

But even more ignorant, why in hell didn’t we consider what happened to the Soviets in Afghanistan when a bunch of god fearing, backward, uneducated, almost stone age religious crazies with a little American money ran them off when we were facing the very same bunch of god fearing, backward, uneducated, almost stone age religious crazies now high on their victory against the soviets when they politely and full of royal Saudi money threatened us directly and repeatedly to get out of their special place or they would kick us the fuck out. From here, hindsight granted, it seems to be a relevant consideration that before we pledge our undying love and support for another of these berobed turban wearing dictator kings with his weekly city square beheadings (bring the kiddies for a true family lesson in obedience) we would take a good hard look at the downside for us and for them.

Damn, we even went back into the same fucking country that threw the Soviets out on some lame ass excuse that their government wouldn’t run out and catch bin Laden for us and then we engineered a sequence of events which included invading an innocent country and inflicting all manner of imprisonment, torture and murder on its citizens after days and sometimes weeks of relentless bombings, presumably to recruit tens of thousands to join the previously small Al-Qaeda bands and later into the hundreds of thousands and splitting into ISIS and other more and less radical religious crazy fucks.


It’s just one jackass mistake and blunder after the next. And to think, our situation today is a direct result of the idiotic slogan diplomacy “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” in our support of the mujahideen against the Soviet Union and even that situation may not have been had we supported democracy all those years ago in Iran.
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Re: Middle East

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How different would the ME look without the massive, decades-long infusion of US arms and would we still be a prime target for Islamist terrorists?
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Re: Middle East

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Vrede too wrote:How different would the ME look without the massive, decades-long infusion of US arms
Pretty much the same. For the four or more decades the major trouble spots - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya - have gotten the bulk of their arms from Europe and Russia. Saudi Arabia and others would simply have bought from Europe and Russia. Egypt would have simply kept buying from Russia.

Heck, BEFORE that four decades, American meddling in the middle-east was pretty minor compared to that of Europe.
Vrede too wrote:and would we still be a prime target for Islamist terrorists?
Yup. Because America wasn't just exporting arms; it was exporting culture. Even worse is American exceptionalism - not the bragged about kind but the demonstrated kind. (Digs out an old post...)

Much of the 9/11 gang come from fairly affluent families in Saudi Arabia. That's because Saudi Arabia was the target of the 9/11 attacks. Bin Laden was trying to overthrow the House of Saud, and found it impossible with the Saudis being supported - not just militarily, but financially and politically - by the US. A major goal of 9/11 was to drive a wedge between the US and the Saudis, so he chose Saudis for the attacks.

Beyond that, there's a side-effect of slavery. Saudi Arabia only abolished slavery in 1967, and visitors have reported seeing slave auctions as late as 1981. The case can be made that it hasn't yet ended. And as a replacement, much of the work is done by hired foreigners, often from third world countries. Major accomplishments - engineering and technical work, is done by the non-Muslims from western countries.

The point being, in a slave society, work is not honorable and cannot be a source of self-worth. Without honorable work, and with any accomplishments not overshadowed by western countries, their sense of self-worth comes from being the possessors of the One True Religion.

And Allah doesn't seem to be delivering on his promises of being exalted above the unbelievers these days. America is the worst offender. The largest economy. Nukes. Moon and Mars landings. Action movies. Decent porn. The tech industry. America is too successful for a country of unbelievers.

But that's Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism. Go to Tunisia or Jordan - without the recent slavery heritage - and you'll find people doing their own work and picking up skilled professions. And a lot less terrorist recruits.

America is simply the biggest, most obvious, most high-value target. That wouldn't have changed. Especially for the (so-called) Islamists who want an all-out war between Islam and the west.

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Re: Middle East

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We are and have been for decades the world's biggest arms supplier, I see little difference between Europe and the US on this, complicity matters, we led the stupid invasion and occupation, and we've long been prime sponsors of Saudi Arabia. We know what we did and we know how things are, we can only guess how things would be there and here if we'd done things differently.
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Re: Middle East

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Cluster Munitions Used in Syria, Yemen

Putin or Obama/Trump - not much difference when your kid is killed by a cluster bomblet.
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Re: Middle East

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Vrede too wrote:Cluster Munitions Used in Syria, Yemen

Putin or Obama/Trump - not much difference when your kid is killed by a cluster bomblet.

can't blame thumper. Obama the warlord stopped selling cluster bombs almost a year ago - another one of his after thought ideas
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Re: Middle East

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billy.pilgrim wrote:can't blame thumper. Obama the warlord stopped selling cluster bombs almost a year ago - another one of his after thought ideas
The blame is in our sponsorship of Saudi war crimes, just as Putin sponsors Assad's war crimes.
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Re: Middle East

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REMEMBER WHEN OBAMA PROMISED SYRIA GOT RID OF THEIR CHEMICAL WEAPONS? ... WE DO.

For several years, Democratic lawmakers and Obama administration officials touted that Syria turned over “100 percent” of its chemical weapon stockpile.

• “It turns out we are getting chemical weapons out of Syria without initiating a strike,” Obama said.

• “We struck a deal where we got a hundred percent of the chemical weapons out,” then Secretary of State John Kerry said.

The Obama White House even tweeted out a statement promoting their achievement.

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Re: Middle East

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Join Murphy, Paul, Durbin & Franken: Block Selling Arms to Saudis to Kill Civilians

Petition to be delivered to The United States Senate

Cosponsor SJRes40. Block selling weapons to Saudi Arabia until civilians in Yemen are protected.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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Re: Middle East

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Re: Middle East

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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