This February 2013 video shows an otter in Sweden.
The fast flowing river amidst ice and snow reminds me of the dippers I saw in Finland. And the otter in winter reminds me of the otter I saw on ice along the Finnish coast.
This video from the USA says about itself:
Republicans launch war on coal miners by taking their healthcare
12 December 2016
“A pension fund for thousands of retired coal miners faces insolvency by the end of December, and Congress is running out of time to make the fix.
In September, the Senate Finance Committee approved the Miners Protection Act by 18-8. But neither the full Senate nor the House of Representatives has taken up the bill.
With the clock ticking, 22 senators from both parties wrote Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Tuesday to urge the bill’s passage.
Read more here.
By Samuel Davidson in the USA:
As Trump postures as friend of miners, retirees and widows face April 30 health care cutoff
29 March 2017
In a ceremony at the Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reopening federal lands to coal mining giants like Peabody Energy, and rolling back the modest Obama-era proposals to limit coal-fired power plants.
In his remarks the billionaire president postured as a champion of coal miners, falsely claiming that the destruction of environmental protections and elimination of what he called “job-killing regulations” such as occupational safety and health laws would protect their jobs and livelihoods.
The administration’s real attitude to miners and their families is demonstrated by its indifference to the imminent loss of pensions and health care benefits for tens of thousands of retirees who labored their entire lives producing profits for the coal bosses.
An estimated 22,600 retirees and surviving spouses face a cutoff of retiree health benefits on April 30. The majority worked at Patriot Coal mines in West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio. The company was formed when Peabody Coal, the world’s largest private coal company, spun off its unionized operations in 2007 to escape further payments into the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) Health and Retirement funds.
After Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy in 2012, the UMWA negotiated a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association (VEBA) scheme with the company, which paid the union to take over the provision of retiree health benefits. The new VEBA fund provided union executives with lucrative posts managing the funds, but only a fraction of the amount needed to secure the benefits for the retired miners. The promised contributions to the VEBA were never full paid, as Patriot filed for bankruptcy again in 2015 and Peabody filed for bankruptcy in 2016.
Other UMWA Health and Pension plans are in no better shape and are predicted to run out of funds by the end of the year. The collapse in global demand and coal prices, and the resulting layoffs throughout the industry, have drastically reduced the amount of money going into the funds. Many other companies, with the full cooperation of the UMWA … followed the Peabody-Patriot pattern to shed pension and health care obligations.
A total of 120,000 active and retired miners and their dependents are threatened with the loss of pensions and health benefits because of the near bankruptcy of various UMWA-administered pension and benefit funds.
On March 1, the UMWA funds sent a letter to 22,600 retirees and widows informing them their retiree benefits would be cut off in 60 days.
By Daniel de Vries in the USA:
Trump launches pollution deregulation offensive
29 March 2017
President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to begin the process of undoing a set of climate change policies put in place by the Obama administration, initiating a campaign with long-term implications to human health and the environment far exceeding the minor impact of the rule reversals themselves.
Trump approved the order at a ceremony at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), flanked by the vice president, the secretaries of the Department of Energy and Department of Interior, and the administrator of EPA. Cloaking deregulation as a defense of jobs and a measure to establish “energy independence,” Trump paraded a dozen coal industry employees on stage, promising a return of mining jobs. “We’re ending the theft of American prosperity and rebuilding our beloved country,” Trump proclaimed.
The order signed Tuesday nullifies several Obama-era climate directives and instructs the EPA to begin the process of undoing the Clean Power Plan. It also reverses a Department of Interior moratorium on coal leases on federal land, and orders reviews of environmental rules covering oil and gas production implemented by the Obama administration.
Tuesday’s action builds on previous decisions by the Trump administration to review or repeal environmental rules. An executive order last month directed EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to rework a 2015 rule that expanded clean water restrictions to wetlands and streams. Two weeks ago EPA and the Department of Transportation announced they were revisiting carbon dioxide standards for cars and light trucks in place for vehicles to be built in 2022 through 2025.
Collectively the rules passed over the last eight years have done little to forestall climate change, nor have they contained the environmental damage from oil and gas production, in particular via hydraulic fracturing, which rapidly expanded with the support of the Obama administration. The Clean Power Plan, which sets state targets for power plant carbon dioxide emissions, requires little more than continuing the transition from coal to natural gas, already well under way. …
Similarly, rescinding the moratorium on federal coal leasing amounts to little change. “No one’s looking for new coal reserves,” University of Wyoming economics professor Robert Godby told Bloomberg News. “The decline in coal demand has meant existing reserves will last a lot longer.”
Omitted from the executive order was any mention of the Paris climate change agreement. The international agreement requires the 197 signatory countries to submit voluntary pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration targeted 26 to 28 percent reductions in 2025 compared to 2005 levels. However there are no obligations that legally bind any country, including the United States.
Like its predecessors, the calculus of the Trump administration revolve around the potential relative gain versus economic rivals, in particular China. China’s carbon-intensive economy is now the top emitter of greenhouse gases. Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson testified during his confirmation hearing that he recommends remaining in the Paris agreement. “We’re better served by being at that table than leaving the table,” Tillerson remarked.
Nonetheless the Trump administration along with the majority of the Republican party have furiously denounced the Obama administration rules as “job killers” and “regulatory overreach.” Behind this exaggerated rhetoric is the real goal of rolling back five decades of environmental regulations that in any way constrain the profits of industry. To this ideological campaign Trump adds a poisonous America First nationalism, seeking to tie the interests of workers with the profits of “their” companies. “We want to make our goods here instead of shipping them in from other countries,” Trump said Tuesday. “All over the world they ship in, ship in, take the Americans’ money away, go home, take our jobs, take our companies. No longer, folks.”
The Obama-era regulations are a convenient political target, but formally repealing them is time-consuming and subject to inevitable legal challenges. Tuesday’s announcement effectively initiates agency review, the first step in a long process of rule re-writing, responding to public comment, justifying the changes and defending them in court.
However in the past two months other components of Trump’s environmental agenda have emerged, including attempts to undermine the scientific basis of environmental protection, and above all, using budget cuts to cripple agencies responsible for implementing and enforcing rules.
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt ignited a firestorm of criticism earlier this month after an appearance on the cable news show Squawk Box. “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said, flatly rejecting the scientific consensus that human activity is the main driver of climate change.
Meanwhile the Trump administration has proposed to cut in half the funding for EPA’s climate research program. Likewise they proposed significant cuts to other agencies researching climate change, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and targeted reductions to NASA earth science programs.
But the most significant proposed cuts come to the top-line levels for the EPA. Trump’s budget outline calls for a 31 percent reduction in overall funding for the agency together with job cuts numbering over 3,000. With staffing levels already near their lowest in 25 years, further cuts are intended to debilitate the agency’s ability not just to write new regulations, but to oversee the regulations already on the books as well. What is proposed is a form of budgetary deregulation, which together with Tuesday’s announcement, threaten public health and environmental protection in order to maximize profit.
This 28 March 2017 video is about a herring gull trying to catch worms by trampling on the ground.
Cor Huijgens in the Netherlands made this video.
Again, a blog post about Cuba. This time not about the birds I saw in Cuba (more blogs posts about that will come later). But about some twenty historical wrecked ships in Cuban waters; including some of Dutch buccaneer admiral Cornelis Corneliszoon Jol (1597–1641).
Cornelis Jol was nicknamed in Dutch Houtebeen=in English pegleg=in Spanish Pie de Palo, because he had one wooden leg. So, there is not just the fictional pirate Captain Hook, but also the real Jol.
Jol was an admiral of the Dutch West India Company. As such, he played an important role in making the Dutch important players in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery, which they had not been before. Jol conquered the Portuguese slave export port Luanda in Angola. He also played a role in the conquest of north-east Brazil with its slave plantations.
In 1640, a storm sank some of Jol’s ships off Cuba. Today, Dutch NOS TV reports that there will be joint Cuban-Dutch archaeological research into these shipwrecks.
There are also later Dutch shipwrecks near Cuba: like the cargo ship SS Medea, sunk in 1942 by a German submarine.
The research will start in 2018.
This video is called Birding in the San Diego, Cuba area. Delaware Nature Society Bird Survey Trip, 2010.
After 7 March 2017, on 8 March 2017, we went from Viñales to Santa Clara in Cuba.
As we woke up, four Cuban martins sitting on a TV antenna.
After our journey began, an eastern meadowlark, a North American migrant bird, on a meadow.
Two American kestrels drove a much bigger turkey vulture away.
A cattle egret. A peregrine falcon flying.
We went to the La Güira National Park, near San Diego.
At the entrance, trees with orange flowers, attracting several blackish bird species.
Greater Antillean grackles; tawny-shouldered blackbirds (see photos); and shiny cowbirds.
We continue to the Cuevas de los Portales; caves near a river valley. A Cuban solitaire sings. In 1962, Che Guevara lived in these caves. The Cuban government feared that after the 1961 Playa Giron invasion, there would come another United States military incursion: not this time of a relatively small force of CIA mercenaries as in 1961, but of ten thousands of regular United States soldiers in that Cuban missile crisis year. If that would happen, Che intended to wage guerilla against the invasion forces from the Cuevas de los Portales.
Two great lizard cuckoos in a tree.
In another tree, the Cuban national bird: a Cuban trogon.
A Cuban emerald hummingbird.
At 14:40 we leave Pinar del Rio province for Artemisa province to its east.
Cattle egrets near cattle.
At 15:46, the lake where we had also been on the first day. Brown pelicans. Great egrets.
16:23: we are in Havana province; then, Mayabeque province. 17:30: Matanzas province.
Finally, we arrive in Santa Clara city.
This video from California in the USA says about itself:
15 November 2014
Holocaust survivor Bernard Marks was a guest on “Out Here in The Redwoods” and gave a talk in Eureka California on his survival in two World War II Nazi concentration camps.
Marks, Bernard. The Extermination and the Resistance of the Polish Jews During the Period 1939–1944. Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute, 1955.
“[Bernard Marks] was 7 years old when the Germans invaded Poland. He and his family would end up confined in the Jewish ghetto of Lodz, before being sent to the concentration camps at Auschwitz and later Dachau. Of the 200 extended family members he had in his early years, only five — his father, two cousins and an aunt — would survive the war. Marks’ mother and brother were both killed in Dachau.” (Davis-Enterprise 2013)
By Ed Mazza in the USA:
03/29/2017 05:27 am ET
Auschwitz Survivor Confronts ICE Director: ‘History Is Not On Your Side’
“For no other reason but for being Jewish, I was hauled off by the Nazis.”
A Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in both the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps warned President Donald Trump’s top immigration enforcer that history was not on the administration’s side.
In a dramatic moment at a public forum on immigration Tuesday, 87-year-old Bernard Marks confronted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Thomas Homan.
“When I was a little boy in Poland, for no other reason but for being Jewish, I was hauled off by the Nazis,” Marks said. “And for no other reason I was picked up and separated from my family, who was exterminated in Auschwitz. And I am a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau.”
Marks then proceeded to warn Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who hosted the event, against working closely with Homan to carry out the Trump Administration’s strict deportation policies, which include stalking immigrants at courthouses.
In comments posted online by CBS Sacramento, he said:
“I spent five and a half years in concentration camps, for one reason and one reason only: Because we picked on people. And you, as the sheriff, who we elected as sheriff of this county, we did not elect you for sheriff of Washington, D.C. It’s about time you side with the people here.
And when this gentleman (Homan) stands up there and says he doesn’t go after people, he should read today’s (Sacramento) Bee. Because in today’s Bee, the Supreme Court Justice of the State of California objected to ICE coming in and taking people away from the courts.
Don’t tell me that this is a lie. We stand up here, Mr Jones, don’t forget. History is not on your side.”
Homan said his agency would continue to make arrests at courthouses, but claimed they would not go after victims and witnesses.
Anti-Semitic ‘Alt-Right’ Slogan Flies At Pro-Trump Rally: here.
Trump administration steps up anti-immigrant campaign. ICE raids and push to build border wall: here.
An environmental group is suing the Trump administration, saying its proposed wall along the southern border violates environmental law: here.
This 28 March 2017 video shows a great tit gathering hair as nesting material.
Ciska van Geer in the Netherlands made this video.
This video says about itself:
28 March 2017
Hundreds of Mosul residents were killed by airstrikes in their homes following repeated instructions from Iraqi authorities not to leave, Amnesty International says. It adds coalition forces should have known they were likely to result in civilian deaths.
By Bill Van Auken in the USA:
US accused of war crimes in air strikes on Iraqi city of Mosul
29 March 2017
Amnesty International issued a report Tuesday charging the US-led coalition besieging Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, with war crimes involving the “disproportionate and indiscriminate” bombing of residential areas that has slaughtered hundreds of civilian men, women and children.
The report by the human rights group, which chronicles bloody incidents that took place in eastern Mosul during the end of 2016 and the beginning of this year, has been released amid mounting evidence that the Pentagon carried out one of its worst atrocities in decades in the March 17 bombing of the Jadida neighborhood in the densely populated western sector of the city.
While earlier reports spoke of some 160 dead being pulled from the rubble left by the US airstrikes in Mosul’s Jadida district, on Monday the Iraqi Civil Defense Department released a report saying that 531 bodies have been recovered thus far.
“We probably had a role in those casualties,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top US commander in Iraq and Syria, acknowledged to Pentagon reporters Tuesday. At the same time, however, Townsend suggested that the “the enemy had a hand in this,” alleging that there was no reason for civilians to have congregated inside buildings targeted by US warplanes other than their being exploited as “human shields.”
This attempted alibi is contradicted by multiple reports from survivors of the bombing raid, who said that entire families, terrorized by US bombs as well as mortar attacks by Iraqi government forces, had huddled in basements of homes in the neighborhood. Indeed, before launching the offensive last fall, the US-backed Iraqi military dropped leaflets on Mosul, a city of 1.8 million people, urging residents to “shelter in place” rather than flee to safety.
The US and Iraqi commanders on the ground apparently called in the air strikes to kill small numbers of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) snipers located on rooftops, in the process reducing entire city blocks to rubble.
General Townsend dismissed Washington’s responsibility for the carnage. “If the US did this,” said Townsend, it was an “unintentional accident of war.” Chillingly, he added that civilian casualties in western Mosul are “fairly predictable,” given its crowded residential neighborhoods and the intense street fighting. In other words, many more atrocities like that of March 17 are still to come.
Iraqi vice president Osama al-Nujaifi, who is from Mosul and the most senior Sunni official in the country, described the US bombing as a “humanitarian catastrophe” that had resulted in the “martyrdom of hundreds of civilians.” He called for an emergency session of the Iraqi parliament along with an official investigation of the incident. He charged that the mass civilian casualties were the result of changed rules of engagement on the part of the US-led “coalition” that have minimized any attempt to protect the lives of unarmed men, women and children trapped in Mosul.
This same charge was leveled by Iraqi officers cited by the New York Times Tuesday. According to the Times, the officers report that “the American-led coalition has been quicker to strike urban targets from the air with less time to weigh the risks for civilians. They say the change reflects a renewed push by the American military under the Trump administration to speed up the battle for Mosul.”
In a report from the scene of the devastation, the Times described “a panorama of destruction in the neighborhood of Jadida so vast one resident compared the destruction to that of Hiroshima, Japan, where the United States dropped an atomic bomb in World War II. There was a charred arm, wrapped in a piece of red fabric, poking from the rubble; rescue workers in red jump suits who wore face masks to avoid the stench, some with rifles slung over their shoulders, searched the wreckage for bodies.”
The newspaper reported that “One of the survivors, Omar Adnan, stood near his destroyed home on Sunday and held up a white sheet of paper with 27 names of his extended family members, either dead or missing, written in blue ink.”
The Amnesty International report released Tuesday indicates that the atrocity in Jadida is only the bloodiest in a series of attacks carried out by US forces resulting in mass civilian casualties.
“Evidence gathered on the ground in East Mosul points to an alarming pattern of US-led coalition airstrikes which have destroyed whole houses with entire families inside,” reports Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera following field investigations in the war-ravaged city.
“The high civilian toll suggests that coalition forces leading the offensive in Mosul have failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”
The Amnesty report quoted Wa’ad Ahmad al-Tai, a resident of the al-Zahra neighborhood of East Mosul, who said he and his family were among those who had followed the advice of the US-backed Iraqi government to stay in their homes rather than flee the siege.
He recounted how his extended family had sought shelter in the two-story home of his brother: “We were all huddled in one room at the back of the house, 18 of us, three families. But when the house next door was bombed, it collapsed on us, precisely over the room we were sheltering in. My son Yusef, nine, and my daughter Shahad, three, were killed, together with my brother Mahmoud, his wife Manaya and their nine-year-old son Aws, and my niece Hanan. She was cradling her five-month-old daughter, who survived, thank God.”
Hind Amir Ahmad, a 23-year-old woman who lost 11 relatives, recounted a similar attack in eastern Mosul that took place on December 13, 2016: “We were sleeping when the house literally collapsed on us. It was a miracle none of us was killed. We ran to my uncle’s house nearby. At about 2 p.m. that house too was bombed and collapsed on us … almost everyone in the house was killed—11 people. My cousin, two aunts and I were the only ones who survived. Everyone else died. It took us six days to find only pieces of their bodies, which we buried in a mass grave in a field nearby. … I don’t know why we were bombed. All I know is that I have lost everyone who was dearest to me.”
The Amnesty report also debunked the Pentagon’s attempt to justify the killing of Iraqi civilians with claims that ISIS is using the population as “human shields.” Even if the Islamist fighters showed indifference to human life, this did not justify the indiscriminate air strikes launched by US warplanes, the human rights group said. It also pointed out that the US-backed Iraqi military is setting up its own firing positions in and around civilian homes, exposing them to return fire from ISIS forces.
As of March 21, the monitoring group Airwars had recorded over 1,000 “civilian casualty events” resulting from airstrikes by the US and its allies in both Iraq and Syria. The number of incidents has risen sharply in the course of the first three months of this year with the siege of Mosul and the preparations for a similar bloodbath in the ISIS-held Syrian city of Raqqa.
The group pointed out that the US air strikes have far eclipsed those being conducted by Russia, which intervened in Syria in support of the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Yet the same US and Western media, which waged an intense propaganda campaign over civilian casualties caused by Russian air strikes against Al Qaeda positions in the Syrian city of Aleppo, has proven itself largely indifferent to the killing of Iraqi men, women and children in Mosul.
Nor for that matter have the changed “rules of engagement” enacted by the Pentagon under the Trump administration elicited any protest from its ostensible political opponents in the Democratic Party. This is because, as the Amnesty report documents, the carnage in Mosul was already well under way before Barack Obama left the White House.
The US escalation in Iraq and Syria enjoys bipartisan support. Launched under the pretense of a campaign against ISIS, which is itself the direct product of the US invasion and destruction of Iraq, followed by the proxy wars for regime change in Libya and Syria, the aim of the ever growing American intervention is to assert US imperialist hegemony over the entire oil-rich Middle East.
The US pursuit of this geostrategic aim has already cost millions of lives over the past quarter century. Its aggressive renewal has been launched in preparation for far more dangerous confrontations with Washington’s chief global rivals, China and Russia.
See also here.
US air strike in Mosul killed at least 105 civilians, Pentagon confirms: here.
The relentless bombing of civilians in Iraq and Syria, the expanding intervention in Yemen and the open threats of military confrontation with Iran are all being carried out by the Pentagon with no public debate and the full complicity of the Democrats: here.
Belgium probes own possible involvement in Mosul strike that killed 200+: here.
More than half of Iraqi families—around 20 million people—are at risk of food insecurity and cannot withstand any further shocks such as conflict or increases in basic food prices, warned a joint report by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and the Iraqi government: here.
US-backed Iraqi forces carry out “annihilation tactics” in Mosul: here.
US forces accused of firing white phosphorus into Mosul and Raqqa: here.
Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, a US Navy SEAL awaiting a court-martial for war crimes charges, was systematically protected by his SEAL superiors for a year, a Navy investigation report covered by the New York Times reveals. Gallagher’s trial begins May 28 for premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice and other crimes related to war crimes in Iraq, and there is an ongoing investigation into similar actions in Afghanistan: here.
US Navy SEAL acquitted of murder and other war crimes by military jury: here.
Dutch regional broadcasting organisation Omroep Zeeland reported on 28 January 2017 that a five-legged lamb had been born at Bertus Aartsen’s farm in Sint Jansteen village in Dutch Zeeland province.
In spite of her very unusual five legs, the lamb is healthy.
Normally, farmer Aartsen does not name his lambs. However, in this case he made an exception. He named her Adèle. As she was born on 21 January 2017: the dying day of well-known Dutch actress Adèle Bloemendaal, who starred in TV series ‘t Schaep met de 5 pooten (the five-legged sheep).
Aartsen usually sells his lambs to other farmers or slaughterhouses. However, he will keep Adèle if there is much interest in her, he said.
Earlier this month, another five-legged lamb (a white one; not black like Adèle) was born in England.
This video from the USA says about itself:
14 October 2016
The United States Navy fired missiles at sites in Yemen, continuing America’s long tradition of perpetual wars for profit.
Jimmy Dore breaks it down.
By Ian Sinclair in Britain:
Please don’t mention Western intervention
Wednesday 29th March 2017
By downplaying the West’s role in Yemen and Somalia, the Guardian is keeping its readers ignorant of the true nature of Western foreign policy, says IAN SINCLAIR>
EARLIER this month Stephen O’Brien, the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, warned the world was facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the second world war.
Speaking to the UN security council, O’Brien said more than 20 million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria were facing starvation and famine.
Following up on this, on March 17 2017 the Guardian published a report on Yemen, noting that aid agencies have warned the country is “at the point of no return.”
UN figures show 17 million people face severe food insecurity, the Guardian noted, including nearly seven million people deemed to be in a state of emergency.
With the article relegated to page 29 of the newspaper, there was just one oblique mention of the US and Britain, which the report explained “have influence over the Saudi-led coalition” currently attacking Yemen and blocking aid entering the country.
Here are the basic facts the Guardian chose not to highlight. Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of countries in a bombing campaign to overthrow the Houthi government in Yemen (which itself overthrew the previous government).
According to the United Nations, there have been over 10,000 civilian casualties, with the Saudi-led coalition’s air strikes responsible for the majority.
In 2016 the Yemen Data Project — a group of academics, human rights organisers and activists — reported that one third of Saudi-led air raids have hit civilian sites such as school buildings, hospitals, markets and mosques. Martha Mundy, emeritus professor at the London School of Economics, believes that “in some regions, the Saudis are deliberately striking at agricultural infrastructure in order to destroy the civil society.”
The US and Britain have been closely collaborating with Saudi Arabia in Yemen. “We’ll support the Saudis in every practical way, short of engaging in combat… political support, of course, logistical and technical support,” the then foreign secretary Philip Hammond announced a month into the bombardment.
Speaking to me last year, activist Medea Benjamin, author of Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection, explained Saudi Arabia is “getting munitions from the West… The US is even refuelling their planes in the air.”
President Barack Obama, described as “the reluctant interventionist” by senior Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, sold $115 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia during his eight years in office. This makes the 44th president of the United States “the most enthusiastic arms salesman to Saudi Arabia in American history,” according to senior Brookings Institution fellow Bruce Riedel.
Speaking in January 2017, O’Brien was crystal clear about the main cause of the ongoing humanitarian crisis: “The conflict in Yemen is now the primary driver of the largest food security emergency in the world.”
The Guardian has form when it comes to (not) reporting the causes of the deepening humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Surveying the newspaper’s coverage of Yemen between June 2016 and mid-January 2017, Peace News editor Milan Rai concluded: “The critical role of the Saudi blockade in creating these conditions in Yemen has been effectively suppressed by the British media, including Britain’s most liberal mainstream newspaper, the Guardian.”
According to Rai, there were 70 stories or editorials about Yemen on the Guardian website during this period: “Most of those 70 items (42 stories, 60 per cent of the total) do not mention the humanitarian crisis — or the role of the Saudi blockade — in any way at all.” And though the other 28 articles did refer to the humanitarian crisis “most did so only in a way that effectively suppressed the information,” Rai notes.
Unsurprisingly a recent YouGov/ Independent poll found more than half of British people were unaware of the war in Yemen, with just 37 per cent of 18-24 year olds aware of the conflict.
Turning to Somalia, on March 13 the Guardian published a full-page article on the ongoing humanitarian crisis in east Africa. “As many as 6.2 million Somalis — more than half the population — need urgent food assistance,” noted the Guardian, including “some districts… under the control of Islamist rebels al-Shabab, making [aid] access complicated.” There is one mention of the US: “The US government says it has spent more than $110 million on humanitarian assistance in Somalia in 2017.”
In reality, the US has been heavily involved in Somali affairs since the 1990s. These interventions, noted BBC journalist Mary Harper in her 2012 book Getting Somalia Wrong?, are viewed by “a growing number of experts” as having “contributed towards [Somalia’s] destruction as a viable nation-state.”
Speaking to Democracy Now! in 2013, journalist Jeremy Scahill explained that in the early years of the “war on terror” the George W Bush administration “made a disastrous decision to put [Somali] warlords on the CIA payroll” and “basically had them acting as an assassination squad.”
A relative stability was created for a brief period when the Islamic Courts Union took control in 2006 — quickly shattered by the December 2006 US-supported Ethiopian invasion and occupation.
The occupation, as occupations often tend to do, energised extremists, with Somali journalist Jamal Osman explaining “al-Shabab was born when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 and some still see the group as a resistance movement.”
Since then the US has been trying to destroy the group its actions helped create. In 2012 the Los Angeles Times reported: “The US has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab.”
“Officially, the troops are under the auspices of the African Union,” the report explained. “But in truth, according to interviews by US and African officials and senior military officers and budget documents, the 15,000-strong force pulled from five African countries is largely a creation of the State Department and Pentagon.” The US government “is trying to achieve US military goals with minimal risk of American deaths and scant public debate,” the Los Angeles Times noted.
Since then the US has intensified its clandestine war in Somalia “using special operations troops, air strikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants,” the New York Times reported last year.
Like Yemen, the US military involvement in Somalia has harmed the country’s ability to deal with humanitarian crises. For example, though the Financial Times explains the looming famine in Somalia is primarily the result of regional drought, it goes on to note: “The lack of effective government and an insurgency by al-Shabab, an al-Qaida linked jihadist group, have not helped.”
This quick survey of the Guardian’s recent coverage of Yemen and Somalia puts the lie to Guardian regular Polly Toynbee’s claim that the newspaper is “always free to hold power to account: to take on politicians, global corporations, the secret security state or great vested interests.”
The Guardian may well be free to hold power to account but it’s currently missing some huge open goals when it comes to Western foreign policy.
To be clear, I’m not saying the Guardian never mentions Western interference in Yemen and Somalia or links this to the growing humanitarian crises — I’m arguing the newspaper’s coverage does not match the importance of the issue.
As Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky argue in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, the fact “that the media provide some information about an issue… proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of media coverage… More important is the way they present a particular fact — its placement, tone, and frequency of repetition — and the framework of analysis in which it is placed.”
Indeed, by downplaying of US intervention in Yemen and Somalia, the Guardian has helped to keep the large swatches of the general public ignorant of Western foreign policy — a state of affairs that suits the US government’s interests, as the Los Angeles Times report above makes clear.
Up To 50,000 Cases Of Cholera Expected In Somalia By This Summer: WHO. Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease that can kill within hours if left untreated. Malnourished children are especially vulnerable: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 