17 September 2019 — Media Lens
Nothing happened on September 2 in central London. Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, did not initiate a protest outside the Home Office. He did not sing and play the Floyd classic ‘Wish You Were Here’, or say:
‘Julian Assange, we are with you. Free Julian Assange!’
19 October 2018 — 21st CenturyWire
Imagine a country where a royal family spends billions of dollars on US and UK weaponry in order to increase their domestic and regional hegemony, engaging in a brutal regime change wars by force by bombing its neighbors, as well as funding and arming radical Wahhabi terrorists throughout the Middle East, particularly in Syria, along with killing and beheading hundreds of its own citizens and activists. Would such a country be entitled to demand that Syria reforms its democracy and rewrites the Syrian constitution?
24 July 2018 — TRNN
Tony Blair, fmr Prime Minister of the UK and an architect of the Iraq War, is a mercenary that Saudi Arabia hired to present themselves as modernizers and cover for their invasion of Yemen, says Medea Benjamin, the author of Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection (in. transcript) Continue reading
28 March 2018 — FAIR
A Saudi government spokesperson couldn’t have said it better (Washington Post, 5/31/17).
The Arabia Foundation appeared in spring 2016, seemingly out of nowhere, as a Saudi-focused think tank with “ties to Riyadh,” but vaguely independent of the regime. Or at least independent enough so that media wouldn’t represent it as an extension of the kingdom. But the past few weeks have clearly shown it to be little more than a PR outlet for de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman and his sprawling, opaque business interests.
22 November 2017 — Media Lens
If the human species survives long enough, future historians might well marvel at what passed for ‘mainstream’ media and politics in the early 21st century.
They will see that a UK Defence Secretary had to resign because of serious allegations of sexual misconduct; or, as he put it euphemistically, because he had ‘fallen short’. But he did not have to resign because of the immense misery he had helped to inflict upon Yemen. Nor was he made to resign when he told MPs to stop criticising Saudi Arabia because that would be ‘unhelpful’ while the UK government was trying to sell the human rights-abusing extremist regime in Riyadh more fighter jets and weapons. After all, the amount sold in the first half of 2017 was a mere £1.1 billion. (See our recent media alert for more on this.) Right now, the UK is complicit in a Saudi blockade of Yemen’s ports and airspace, preventing the delivery of vital medicine and food aid. 7.3 million Yemenis are already on the brink of famine, and the World Food Programme has warned of the deaths of 150,000 malnourished children in the next few months.
11 November 2017 — Drone Warfare
The RAF has dropped about 3,500 bombs and missiles, which the BBC estimates has already cost £150m in munitions. Each Brimstone missile costs more than £100,000 and the RAF has already fired more than 350, according to the BBC estimate, defence correspondent Jonathan Beale said. During the last week alone:
10 November 2017 — Media Lens
The truth of corporate journalism, and the great irony of its obsession with ‘fake news’, is that it is itself utterly fake. What could be more obviously fake than the idea that Truth can be sold by billionaire-owned media dependent on billionaire-owned advertisers for maximised profit?
8 November 2017 — WSWS
Hot on the heels of purging his main rivals for the Saudi throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has dramatically ratcheted up tensions in the Middle East, accusing Iran of an “act of war.” This makes clear that the consolidation of power in the hands of the most hardline, anti-Iranian faction of the Saudi royal family threatens to trigger a catastrophic regional conflict across the war-ravaged Middle East.
31 October 2017 — TRNN
A UK court has acquitted two activists for breaking-in to a BAE Systems factory to disarm Typhoon fighter jets meant for the Saudi war on Yemen (inc. transcript) Continue reading
6 July 2017 — TRNN
Adam Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade calls for a judicial review of the UK government’s continued approval of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. (Inc. transcript) Continue reading
22 June 2017 — Moon of Alabama
The U.S. military and/or the CIA outsourced parts of their ongoing torture campaign in Yemen to the United Arab Emirates, reports AP. Some “interrogations” are done in the presence of U.S. personal and on U.S. ships: Continue reading
5 June 2017 — Media Lens
A key function of BBC propaganda is to present the perspective of ‘the West’ on the wars and conflicts of the world. Thus, in a recent online report, BBC News once again gave prominence to the Pentagon propaganda version of yet more US killings in Yemen. The headline stated:
‘US forces kill seven al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, says Pentagon’
24 May 2017 — FAIR
Reports on the Trump/Saudi arm deals focused on who would get paid–and ignored who it would cost.
The Trump administration wrapped up a weapons deal with the Saudi Arabian government this week that will be worth up to $350 billion over the next ten years. News of the deal came as Trump visited Riyadh and paid fealty to one of the United States’ most enduring allies in the Middle East.
The vast majority of the reports on the topic, however, omitted a rather key piece of context—namely, whom the weapons will be used to kill.
17 May 2017 — FAIR
The New York Times (5/1/17) is critical when Trump embraces a despot not on the Approved Despots List.
After a series of friendly gestures by President Donald Trump toward Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi over the past few months, US media have recoiled with disgust at the open embrace of governments that ostensibly had heretofore been beyond the pale.
13 February 2017 — FAIR
Janine Jackson interviewed Zaid Jilani about Trump’s Yemen raid for the February 3, 2017, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Zaid Jilani: “It’s important for people, whenever they address news events, to understand that we don’t live in year zero. There’s always a history and a context.” (image: Arn Menconi/YouTube)
15 October 2016 — FAIR
US destroyers in the Gulf of Aden launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels, a Shia insurgent group currently withstanding a massive bombing campaign from a Saudi-led coalition in a year-and-half conflict between largely Shia rebels and the Saudi-backed Sunni government in Yemen. The Pentagon insisted that cruise missiles had been fired onto the USS Mason on Sunday and Wednesday from Houthi-controlled territory, and called the airstrikes a “limited self-defense” response.
13 September 2016 — Media Lens
The ‘mainstream’ Western media is, almost by definition, the last place to consult for honest reporting of Western crimes. Consider the appalling case of Yemen which is consumed by war and an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.
Since March 2015, a ‘coalition’ of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, and supported by the US, Britain and France, has been dropping bombs on neighbouring Yemen. The scale of the bombing is indicated in a recent article by Felicity Arbuthnot – in one year, 330,000 homes, 648 mosques, 630 schools and institutes, and 250 health facilities were destroyed or damaged. The stated aim of Saudi Arabia’s devastating assault on Yemen is to reinstate the Yemeni president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and to hold back Houthi rebels who are allied with the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. The Saudis assert that the Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, are ‘proxies’ for Iran: always a convenient propaganda claim to elicit Western backing and ‘justify’ intervention.
8 September 2016 — Drone Warfare
“Arms sales above flesh and blood, terror, heartbreak and humanity, every time”
These words of journalist Felicity Arbuthnot reverberated as the writer belatedly discovered Josie Ensor’s report from Istanbul that a US air strike killed nearly 60 civilians, including children, in Syria after the coalition mistook them for Islamic State fighters. Some eight families were hit as they tried to flee in one of the single deadliest strikes on civilians by the alliance since the start of its operations in the war-torn country.
18 August 2016 — Drone Warfare
A Saudi-led coalition air strike hit a hospital operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres in northern Yemen on Monday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 19, the aid group said. And who is in the coalition?
US and Britain have deployed their military personnel in the command and control centre responsible for Saudi-led air strikes on Yemen, having access to lists of targets.
25 January 2016 — Newpower
[Empire armed to the teeth to impose its will on the Middle East. – NP] (http://www.independent.co.uk/)
The United Nations has said Saudi Arabia is disproportionately killing civilians in its military operation in Yemen
by Jon Stone
British arms companies have cashed-in on Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen by ramping up arms sales to the country’s autocratic government by over a hundred times, new figures show.
The New Dark Age 