Free Yemeni political prisoners

This 2011 video is called Yemeni Jail Joins Anti-Government Uprising.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Sanaa marchers want activists to be freed

Sunday 29 July 2012

Thousands of Yemenis marched through the capital Sanaa yesterday, urging the authorities to expedite the release of 117 protesters arrested during the uprising against former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Organiser Fathi al-Baadani said the rally is also a protest against the government’s sluggishness to release the detainees despite an order to review their cases and set them free.

The delay is due to the fact that Saleh’s followers still hold influential security and military positions, Baadani claimed.

Many thousands had demonstrated on the Friday against the continuing role of relatives of ex-president Saleh in the police and armed forces.

Yemen Human Rights Minister Huriya Mashhour confirmed the number of detained protesters and added that others are also being held in unofficial detention centres.

Prime Minister Salem Mohammed Bassindwa has publicly expressed strong dissatisfaction over the lack of action to free the prisoners.

Yemeni army kills protesters

This video is called US Supports Yemen Dictator.

Security forces clashed with protesters in several cities across Yemen at the weekend, leaving at least four people dead and dozens injured: here.

Top CIA and Pentagon officials could face court action after a lawsuit was filed by the relatives of three US citizens killed in a drone strike in Yemen: here. And here.

“The Moral Case for Drones,” published in the New York Times on July 14 [2012], seeks to justify the assassination program run out of the Obama White House: here.

US drones kill Yemen civilians

This video is called Yemeni Civilians Protest U.S. Drone Attacks (November 2011).

By Will Morrow:

US expands military intervention into Yemen

4 July 2012

Under the guise of the “war on terror,” the Obama administration is expanding US military operations in Yemen through stepped-up drone attacks and special operations forces on the ground.

What is being presented as a US offensive against the local Al Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is in reality a direct military intervention to prop up the widely despised regime of President Mansour al-Hadi, which confronts a developing civil war throughout the country. The Yemeni military is fighting armed tribal and Islamist forces, particularly in the south and, reportedly, southern separatist armed groups and protesters.

In its coverage of US military operations, the Western media has, predictably, repeated as good coin US and Yemeni government claims—without any evidence—that those killed by Yemeni forces and US drone strikes are AQAP “militants.”

In the latest display of the US military’s reckless indifference toward civilians, Yemeni officials told Xinhua news agency that a drone pursued a pick-up truck into the southern port city of Aden on June 25, before firing two missiles and killing all three passengers. It is reportedly the first strike inside Aden, which has a civilian population of more than 800,000 people. No evidence has been provided to support claims that the three men were AQAP members. Referring to an article in the Arabic-language Mareb Press, UPI noted: “Residents in Aden worry the drones will bring only destruction to the province.”

The Military Solution: The Lessons Washington Can’t Draw From the Failure of the Military Option. Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch: “Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us – less than 1% – serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours and, on the face of it, Washington’s constant warring in distant lands seems barely to touch the lives of most Americans”: here.

USA: Billions of Tax Dollars for Drones While Kids Starve and Cities Go Broke: here.

Drone strikes are “capital punishment for people accused of a crime without being given a trial” – German legal expert: here.

Tensions between the Obama administration and the Pakistani government remain high amid continuing US drone strikes in Pakistan: here.

CIA drone strikes violate Pakistan’s sovereignty, says senior diplomat: here.

“Whatever Is Left Is Just Pieces of Bodies and Cloth”: New Report Details the Horror of Living Under Drones: here.

US drone strikes cause worldwide opposition

This video from the USA is called MEDEA BENJAMIN TALK ON DRONE WARFARE.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

US drone strikes prompt global anger

Wednesday 13 June 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

The Obama administration’s escalation of its illegal drone assassination campaign in foreign countries is widely opposed around the world, according to a Pew Research Centre survey released today.

In 17 out of 21 countries surveyed by the US think tank more than half of the people disapproved of US drone attacks targeting people deemed extremist in underdeveloped countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

But in the United States a majority, or 62 per cent, approved the drone campaign including 74 per cent of Republicans and 58 per cent of Democrats.

The polls were nationally representative surveys conducted by telephone or in-person interviews in 21 countries during March and April.

“There remains a widespread perception that the US acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries,” the study authors said, especially in predominantly Muslim nations where US meddling in the name of anti-terror operations is “still widely unpopular.”

The White House declined to comment on the report titled Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted.

Speaking in advance of the release Pew Research Centre President Andrew Kohut said: “We continue to see the public thinking Obama has not fulfilled his promise that he would seek international approval for military force and that’s related to displeasure with the drone strikes.”

This is the first year Pew has included a question about the use of drones in its survey on the Obama administration.

“It’s now a global issue,” Mr Kohut observed.

In Pakistan CIA drone strikes have killed about 2,500 civilians since 2004, as well as senior anti-US militants like Abu Yahya al-Libi while US drone controllers have killed an estimated 800 people in Yemen since 2002, with attacks intensifying since Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in February in the face of a popular uprising.

Meanwhile around 170 people are believed to have been killed by US drone strikes in Somalia.

On Monday a former counter-terrorism adviser to Mr Obama accused him of having “routinised and normalised extra judicial killing from the Oval Office.”

Michael Boyle said that Mr Obama “is authorising murder on a weekly basis.”

A column by Jimmy Carter provides extraordinary testimony by an ex-president against the Obama administration for engaging in assassinations and other criminal violations of international law and the US Constitution: here.

Yemen, Bahrain revolutions on Dutch TV

This video is called Bahrain: royal family orders army to shoot unarmed civilians.

As the last part of a TV series on revolutions in Arab countries, tonight at 20:30 Central European Time on Dutch Nederland 2 TV, there will be reports from Yemen and Bahrain.

After the reports will have been broadcast, there will be a video of them, here.

Translated from Dutch TV on tonight’s report:

[Last] part: The invisible insurrection

In Yemen, [reporter] Rosenmöller visits Tawakkul Karman, the Nobel laureate who, despite the resignation of President Saleh, is still protesting in a tent camp. Karman accuses Saleh of still pulling the strings behind the scenes, and says that the army secretly supports Al Qaeda. But the cousin of Saleh, still at the head of the security services, smears the winner of the Nobel Prize for supposedly being a liar. “You will hear many lies in Yemen!”

…

Finally, Bahrain, the political football between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, a small country of great geopolitical importance. The country where the protests seem to have no end, and where many a journalist is arrested or expelled. At the border, all equipment is seized. Despite the fact that the film crew must give up all equipment, they manage to talk with opposition members, to visit a family of one of the killed protesters, and to interview Bahraini doctor Ali Ekri. Ekri is out on bail. In anticipation of a prison sentence of fifteen years for helping the wounded and the disclosure of the practices of the police and the army. A unique insight into the uprising which the Bahraini royal family is anxiously trying to keep secret.

Bahrain: After UPR Geneva session, Alkhalifa lost legitimacy to remain: here.

Bahrain Live Coverage: Regime on Human Rights “You Are Biased. P.S. We’ll Sue You”: here.

US State Department: Bahrain Report on Human Rights Practices for 2011: here.

Bahrain human rights defenders who were in Geneva earlier this week for the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process are to be questioned by Bahrain’s Ministry of the Interior on their return to Bahrain, Jalila al Salman told Human Rights First: here.

Bahrain-Update: Human rights defender Mr Nabeel Rajab released on bail: here.

Ending the US War in Yemen, Tom Hayden, June 1, 2012: here.

New skink species discovery on Yemeni island

This video is on Socotra in Yemen.

From Wildlife Extra:

New species of skink discovered on Socotra Archipelago

Unique biodiversity

May 2012. The Socotra Archipelago, in the north-west Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia, is considered to be one of the most biodiversity rich group of islands in the world, thanks to a very distinct fauna and flora with a high level of endemicity at both species and generic levels.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

For this reason, it has been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Natural site in 2008. Nevertheless, the natural history of most groups is still not clear, and their origin and evolution remain unknown.

A team of researchers from the Department of Animal Biology (Università di Pavia, Italy), the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF, Barcelona, Spain), the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Carmagnola (Italy) and the Museum of Science of Trento (Italy), have been investigating the herpetofauna of the archipelago since 2007, in the framework of the ‘Socotra Conservation and Development Project‘ funded by the Cooperazione Italiana and under the auspices of the United Nations Development Project (UNDP) to collect ecological data on the reptiles of the Socotra Archipelago in order to improve the sustainable development and conservation of the Socotra Archipelago’s biodiversity.

In a recent paper, the team presented some new highlights on the systematics, biogeography and evolution of Trachylepis socotrana, the only endemic reptile (a skink) supposed to live in all four islands (Socotra, Darsa, Samha and Abd Al Kuri). By comparing the skinks of the archipelago with representatives of the genus Trachylepis from Middle East, Africa and Madagascar plus some individuals from each of the other three genera of Mabuya skinks sensu lato (Chioninia, Eutropis and Mabuya), they have been able to trace back the history of the Socotran skinks.

Trachylepis cristinae is a newly described species occurring only on Abd Al Kuri island

Skink arrived on Socotra twice, 3 million years apart

Interestingly, the results of the phylogenetic analyses indicate that members of the genus Trachylepis arrived in the archipelago in two independent events, firstly colonizing Socotra, Samha and Darsa about 10 million years ago, and then, 3 million years ago, colonizing Abd Al Kuri Island, when all the islands had already drifted away from the mainland.

New species

Furthermore, the Abd Al Kuri skink has proved to be a distinct new species, named by the authors Trachylepis cristinae, to credit the herpetologist who found the holotype while the team was surveying the island. This finding also means that reptiles of Abd Al Kuri, the westernmost island of the archipelago, are, without exception, all endemic to the island.

Once again, the Socotra Archipelago proves to be one of the most unique places in the world to witness and investigate evolutionary processes, and indeed is worthy of its nickname of “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean”.

No extinctions in 20th century

And worthy of similar note, as Kay Van Damme remarks in Nature – Middle East, Socotra has lost none of its unique terrestrial bird, reptile or mollusc species in the last century, contrary to what happened in many other islands in the world. Though, the archipelago is not invulnerable.

Challenges include habitat fragmentation, over-exploitation and loss of traditional knowledge. Tourism, which exponentially increased in recent years, could also be a threat for the most protected -and thus visited- sanctuaries in the islands. But the main concern is nowadays represented by political instability that spreads across Middle East. As Van Damme underlines, political upheavals in Yemen will initiate changes in decision-making on long-term policies and conservation strategies that, in the end, will affect the Socotra Archipelago biodiversity for decades to come.

Skinks in the USA: here.

A walking cactus, a wandering leg sausage, a snub-nosed monkey that sneezes when it rains and a blue tarantula are among a list of the top 10 newly discovered species announced by Arizona State University today: here.

US drones kill Yemeni civilians

This video from the USA is called CIA Wants To Expand Drone Strikes In Yemen.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

US drone strikes kill civilians in Yemen

17 May 2012

Missile strikes by US drones claimed the lives of at least a dozen civilians in Yemen’s southern Abyan province Tuesday, as Washington escalated its military intervention in the impoverished Arab country.

The attack took place in the town of Ja’ar, which together with the provincial capital of Zinjibar and several other towns was seized by Islamist insurgents during the protracted popular uprising against the US-backed regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to relinquish his post last February.

Saleh’s former vice president and successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has aligned himself even more closely with Washington, taking his orders from the US embassy and American special operations “advisers” who have been sent back into the country after being withdrawn during the recent popular upheavals.

According to Yemeni officials, Tuesday’s drone strikes followed a familiar pattern used to lethal effect in the CIA campaign in Pakistan. A first missile was fired against alleged insurgents meeting inside a house. The explosion drew a crowd to the scene as people sought to aid victims trapped in the rubble. These civilians then became the target for a second missile, which killed at least 12 people. Another 21 civilians were wounded in the second attack.

These latest casualties are part of a growing death toll as the Yemeni military, backed by US warplanes and directed by American special forces troops, wages a bloody campaign to retake the areas that came under the control of the Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) militia.

The US and Yemeni governments have claimed that the militia is merely another name for Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), while other Yemeni analysts insist that it includes both Al Qaeda elements and local groups and tribal factions. By branding all armed opposition as Al Qaeda, Washington is providing the justification for an open-ended war in Yemen against multiple opponents of the regime, including Shia rebels in the north of the country and those in the south seeking separation or autonomy from the central government.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva issued a statement Wednesday declaring: “Over the past few days, an escalation in fighting has resulted in scores of civilian casualties in Ja’ar.” Eric Marclay, the ICRC representative in Yemen, expressed particular concern about reports of “air strikes in civilian locations” and appealed to all sides to “protect civilians and allow health care workers to do their job safely.” The Red Cross said that it had distributed food and other items to some 100,000 internally displaced persons in Abyan province.

Both the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA are waging drone missile campaigns in Yemen, where the number of strikes over the past month has exceeded all previous attacks in the country carried out over the past nine years.

Spy drone could have almost brought down a plane in Colorado: here.

Aid agencies rang the alarm on Wednesday over the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where one million children are malnourished: here.

Al-Qaeda bomb plot, CIA plot?

This video from the USA says about itself:

3 May 2012

On Tuesday, the FBI thwarted a plan of five self-described anarchists who were planning to blow up a bridge near Cleveland, Ohio. It turns out the FBI played an instrumental role in helping the Cleveland Five plan the alleged scheme. Stephen Webster, senior editor of Raw Story, joins us with more.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

The political uses of the latest “terror plot”

10 May 2012

One day after publicly announcing that the CIA had foiled an Al Qaeda plot to bomb a commercial airliner, US officials revealed Tuesday that the would-be bomber was in fact an informant working for the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

This turn of events is in line with so many domestic terror plots “disrupted” by federal authorities, which—in the overwhelming majority of cases—have featured confidential informants acting as agent provocateurs, instigating stage-managed plots and providing targeted patsies with money, dummy bombs and fake weapons before they are rounded up.

The account given for this latest operation is decidedly murky. Officials have claimed that the plot originated with the infiltration of a group affiliated to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula by the CIA-Saudi double agent. Why the US government would choose to expose such a seemingly valuable mole by making the supposed plot public is unclear to say the least.

It is impossible to sort fact from fiction in the versions being reported by the media. A highly skeptical attitude toward the most basic claims about this episode is more than warranted. However, the saturation news coverage is itself an unmistakable indication that, with less than six months to go before the US presidential election, elements within the Obama administration and the state apparatus want to move the “war on terror” to the front burner of American politics.

A key motivation for this was made clear Wednesday by the Washington Post, which published an editorial entitled “The US is right to strike hard at terrorists in Yemen.”

Underwear bomb seizure being ‘exploited’ by FBI: here.

U.S. Treasury Claim of Iran-Al-Qaeda “Secret Deal” Is Discredited: here.

More US drones on Yemeni civilians

This video is called Yemeni Civilians Protest U.S. Drone Attacks (November 2011).

By Patrick Martin in the USA:

US steps up drone war in Yemen

27 April 2012

President Barack Obama has approved much wider use of drone-fired missiles in Yemen, according to press reports Thursday, quoting unnamed US government officials. The result will be a much higher death toll from American attacks in that country, which has joined Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia as a battlefield for the US military and CIA.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama had given the green light to a request by CIA Director David Petraeus to allow the agency to fire missiles at buildings, cars and armed groups without identifying exactly who is being targeted, based simply on a pattern of activity observed by US surveillance satellites or on-the-ground informants.

These “signature” strikes are a marked escalation from the previous “personality” strikes, which were restricted to individuals targeted as alleged leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a militant Islamist group that Washington claims has attempted terrorist attacks against US targets.

Petraeus and the signature of U.S. terror. The CIA pressures Obama to step up indiscriminate attacks in Yemen: here.

US drone controllers killed 15 people in the Yemeni province of Abyan on Wednesday: here.

A US peace activist interrupted a top White House aide today as he delivered a speech in Washington that sought to justify the government’s drone assassination programme: here.

John Pilger | You Are All Suspects Now. What Are You Going to Do About It?. John Pilger, Truthout: “You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished. Turn on your computer and the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely ‘al-Qaeda,’ but ‘exercise,’ ‘drill,’ ‘wave’…. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming Western democracy. What are you going to do about it?” Here.

US: ‘Targeted Killing’ Policy Disregards Human Rights Law: here.

A Pakistani human rights organisation filed petitions in Peshawar’s High Court yesterday, on behalf of the victims of Washington’s illegal drone strikes in the country’s tribal regions: here.

America as a Shining Drone Upon a Hill: here.

Robots “R” Us: Military-Style Drones Reported on 63 Bases in the US. Danny Schechter, The Rag Blog: “It’s easy to understand why presidents, politicians, and the military love robots. They don’t talk back. They follow orders. You press a button and they do what they are told. They are considered so efficient, and so lethal. These modern killing machines represent science fiction reborn as science ‘faction’ … And that’s why drone warfare has become such a weapon of choice”: here.

Evidence in British court contradicts CIA drone claims: here.

More CIA assassinations in Yemen

This video is called Drones in Yemen: ‘CIA has become a paramilitary force’.

By Patrick Martin in the USA:

CIA seeks to widen assassination campaign in Yemen

20 April 2012

The US Central Intelligence Agency is seeking to expand its authority to carry out remote-control assassinations in Yemen, according to a report Thursday in the Washington Post. CIA Director David Petraeus has made the request to the White House and the National Security Council is now discussing it, the newspaper said.

Petraeus is seeking permission to engage in “signature strikes,” using drone-fired missiles to attack targets identified “solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior,” the Post reported, without knowing exactly who was being targeted for extermination.

For all practical purposes, this means turning large parts of Yemen, a sovereign country whose government has a military alliance with the United States, into a free-fire zone, in which US missiles could be fired at virtually any gathering of men thought to be armed. The country is awash in weapons, particularly in the rural areas where tribal sheiks, rather than the central government, hold sway.

The request marks a significant escalation of the US operations in Yemen, which are conducted both by the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command. Both agencies use remote-controlled missiles as their primary weapons, selecting targets based on satellite intelligence and reports from on-the-ground spotters. According to published estimates, US agencies have conducted at least 27 strikes against Yemeni targets in the last three years, killing some 250 people.

Petraeus greatly increased the role of special forces in Afghanistan during his year as the commander of US military forces there, and he has continued this focus on covert paramilitary operations since becoming CIA director in 2011. “Signature strikes” have been a staple of CIA operations in the tribal regions of Pakistan, and now Petraeus wants to extend these methods into Yemen.

See also here.

Yemeni president announces cosmetic changes to military: here.