[Failed State] Yemen: Bombers Murder Scores Of People

KingCheetah · Mar 22, 2015

Northside Storm said: ↑

you could always go and find out--which is more than you can say about black sites.
Click to expand...

No need to get racist -- black folks can have websites too.

Northside Storm · Mar 22, 2015

basso said: ↑

[rquoter]Trying to make sense of Barack Obama’s foreign policy has become something like a branch of Kremlinology.
Click to expand...

the easiest theory: Obama is the first liberal president sick of the s**t America has to put through to get its fossil fuels and is trying to slowly undermine the Gulf states/Russia/the dirty resources states because he's tired of supporting their violent, oligarchal tendencies in the name of cheap energy.

Given that we are now going through the sixth great extinction in our world's history, this one human-caused, it's about damn time a president or somebody buried his head from outside the sand and saw that in two centuries we will have burned millions of years worth of resources.

cue fracking (which has exploded and btw, which is due to federal government research), an imperfect solution. cue a drive to invest in green energies, which may be better. Cue leaving Saudi Arabia to its own during the Arab Spring.

Where the president has utterly failed is in his dealings with the technology sector: his heavy-handed approach to surveillance will cost America dominance in the fields that matter. He is looking short while shooting his foot in the long run.

However, for all of this leading from behind s**t that conservatives try to peg on Obama, I actually think that he has been unusually brave in challenging the status quo in the Middle East of a devil's deal with the Gulf states. How's this for a neo-con statement: vassal states need to remember who they belong to.

Northside Storm · Mar 22, 2015

KingCheetah said: ↑

No need to get racist -- black folks can have websites too.
Click to expand...

i thought HTML 5 specifically excluded ethnic groups with the RACISM tag.

no more colors except for #FFFFFF!

(ok i'll stop)

basso · Mar 23, 2015

Northside Storm said: ↑

the easiest theory: Obama is the first liberal president sick of the s**t America has to put through to get its fossil fuels and is trying to slowly undermine the Gulf states/Russia/the dirty resources states because he's tired of supporting their violent, oligarchal tendencies in the name of cheap energy.

Given that we are now going through the sixth great extinction in our world's history, this one human-caused, it's about damn time a president or somebody buried his head from outside the sand and saw that in two centuries we will have burned millions of years worth of resources.

cue fracking (which has exploded and btw, which is due to federal government research), an imperfect solution. cue a drive to invest in green energies, which may be better. Cue leaving Saudi Arabia to its own during the Arab Spring.

Where the president has utterly failed is in his dealings with the technology sector: his heavy-handed approach to surveillance will cost America dominance in the fields that matter. He is looking short while shooting his foot in the long run.

However, for all of this leading from behind s**t that conservatives try to peg on Obama, I actually think that he has been unusually brave in challenging the status quo in the Middle East of a devil's deal with the Gulf states. How's this for a neo-con statement: vassal states need to remember who they belong to.
Click to expand...

i don't know which is scarier, that you believe this fustercluck Obama has begotten us is actually part of a coherent strategy, or that the lightbringer himself does.

ChievousFTFace · Mar 23, 2015

KingCheetah said: ↑

There is a video out of one of the bombs going off in a mosque right as the worshipers are chanting 'death to America, death to Israel'.
Click to expand...

Spoilered for those that want no part of it. There's no gore... just chanting and then BOOM.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hbu0T9Iqjf0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Exiled · Mar 23, 2015

[youtube]oGXF1NitHsc[/youtube]

Same influnce found in Lebanon,Syria ,Yemen and Iraq .

basso · Mar 23, 2015

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wa7Im3bkaH0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

SamFisher · Mar 23, 2015

basso said: ↑

i don't know which is scarier, that you believe this fustercluck Obama has begotten us is actually part of a coherent strategy, or that the lightbringer himself does.
Click to expand...

That's what happens when your predecessor was King Joffrey.

Faust · Mar 23, 2015

SamFisher said: ↑

That's what happens when your predecessor was King Joffrey.
Click to expand...

how long are the liberals gonna blame king joff? with that logic king joff was a victim of reagan, bush I, and clinton's policies.

SamFisher · Mar 23, 2015

Faust said: ↑

how long are the liberals gonna blame king joff? with that logic king joff was a victim of reagan, bush I, and clinton's policies.
Click to expand...

For a long, long time- and so will history.

Cohete Rojo · Mar 24, 2015

CometsWin said: ↑

It's a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia with the U.S. in the middle.
Click to expand...

Starting to look that way. I think when Saudi Arabia rejected the invitation to join the UN security counsel, that may have been a sign that something big was going to develop later on down the road - like this. I'm guessing that the Qataris are just some kind of middle-man in all of this seeing how they are still allowing the former Iraqi VP to stay in their country.

Saudis are moving heavy artillery along their border with Yemen. I think ISIS may be setting in motion, for the first time, the start of what it wants - a Shiite-Sunni civil war. They've committed a major attack outside their home turf, flexed their muscle and got the Saudis attention. While I don't think it's Saudi Arabia's goal to actively condemn ISIS, but they can't quite be fans of what the consequences of the bombings are going to be.

Bonus: PBS Frontline: The Rise of ISIS

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia building up military near Yemen border - U.S. officials

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is moving heavy military equipment including artillery to areas near its border with Yemen, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, raising the risk that the Middle East’s top oil power will be drawn into the worsening Yemeni conflict.

The buildup follows a southward advance by Iranian-backed Houthi Shi'ite militants who took control of the capital Sanaa in September and seized the central city of Taiz at the weekend as they move closer to the new southern base of U.S.-supported President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The slide toward war in Yemen has made the country a crucial front in Saudi Arabia's region-wide rivalry with Iran, which Riyadh accuses of sowing sectarian strife through its support for the Houthis.

The conflict risks spiraling into a proxy war with Shi'ite Iran backing the Houthis, whose leaders adhere to the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam, and Saudi Arabia and the other regional Sunni Muslim monarchies backing Hadi.

The armor and artillery being moved by Saudi Arabia could be used for offensive or defensive purposes, two U.S. government sources said. Two other U.S. officials said the build-up appeared to be defensive.

One U.S. government source described the size of the Saudi buildup on Yemen's border as "significant" and said the Saudis could be preparing air strikes to defend Hadi if the Houthis attack his refuge in the southern seaport of Aden.

Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington had acquired intelligence about the Saudi build-up. But there was no immediate word on the precise location near the border or the exact size of the force deployed.

Hadi, who supported Washington’s campaign of deadly drone strikes on a powerful al Qaeda branch based in Yemen, has been holed up in Aden with his loyalist forces since he fled Sanaa in February. On Tuesday, forces loyal to Hadi drove Houthi fighters from two towns they had seized hours earlier, residents said, apparently checking an advance by the Shi'ite fighters toward Aden.

SAUDIS "DEEPLY CONCERNED"

Saudi Arabia faces the risk of the turmoil spilling across its porous 1,800 km (1,100 mile)-long border with Yemen and into its Shi'ite Eastern Province where the kingdom's richest oil deposits lie.

“The Saudis are just really deeply concerned about what they see as an Iranian stronghold in a failed state along their border,” U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Matthew Tueller told Reuters on Monday at a conference hosted by the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

But a former senior U.S. official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the prospects for successful external intervention in Yemen appeared slim. He said Hadi’s prospects appeared to be worsening and that for now he was “pretty well pinned down.”

Riyadh hosted top-level talks with Gulf Arab neighbors on Saturday that backed Hadi as Yemen's legitimate president and offered "all efforts" to preserve the country's stability.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said on Monday Arab countries would take necessary measures to protect the region against "aggression" by the Houthi movement if a peaceful solution could not be found.

In March 2011, Saudi troops, along with those from the United Arab Emirates, entered neighboring Bahrain after weeks of protests by that country’s Shi’ite majority that Riyadh feared could lead to an expansion of Iran’s influence.

A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on any military movements.

Yemen asked the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday to back military action by "willing countries" to combat Houthi militias, according to a letter from Hadi seen by Reuters.

Hadi wants the 15-member body to adopt a resolution that would authorize "willing countries that wish to help Yemen to provide immediate support for the legitimate authority by all means and measures to protect Yemen and deter the Houthi aggression."

Fighting has spread across the Arabian peninsula country since last September when the Houthis seized Sanaa and advanced into Sunni Muslim areas.

U.S. officials said on Saturday that the United States had evacuated all its remaining personnel in Yemen, including about 100 special operations forces, because of the security situation. The end of a U.S. security presence inside the country has dealt a blow to Washington's ability to monitor and fight al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate.

The Houthis have denied taking material and financial support from Tehran. But last year Yemeni, Western and Iranian sources gave Reuters details of Iranian military and financial support to the Houthis before and after their takeover of Sanaa last year.

However, U.S. officials have said that Iranian backing for the Houthi rebels has been largely limited to funding. They say Iran has its hands full providing armed assistance to its allies in Syria and Iraq.
Click to expand...

bigtexxx · Mar 24, 2015

When backed into a corner, all SamFisher can offer is "Blame Bush!"

that tells me Sam is out of logic

Ottomaton · Mar 24, 2015

I used to read the blog of a guy who was at one point a couple of decades ago the US Military attache to Yemen.

Apparently this is what has been going on since forever in Yemen. For more than 100 years of years, large fractions of the military would just split off on tribal lines and declare autonomy, or war on whatever rival tribe was running things in Sana'a. People with really high rank - generals in charge of entire tank divisions - would just drive their entire divisions to their home territory and say, "F U, these are my tanks now" to the government Sana'a.

You only hear about it now because being attached to al Qaeda/ISIS makes headlines. And if anything, that increased attention only makes the perpetual infighting worse because the attention means we've given them more powerful toys to play with.

In short, this is the status quo for Yemen for the entire history of Yemen. There's no "new instability" that we need to deal with. It's the same old intractable instability. Maybe the terrorism on civilians is more than it used to be, but that isn't really anything organic to Yemen, but just a change in the way the entire world thinks of war/insurgency.

Cohete Rojo · Mar 25, 2015

<iframe width="854" height="510" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ajWdBVgnfEs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

robbie380 · Mar 25, 2015

Ottomaton said: ↑

I used to read the blog of a guy who was at one point a couple of decades ago the US Military attache to Yemen.

Apparently this is what has been going on since forever in Yemen. For more than 100 years of years, large fractions of the military would just split off on tribal lines and declare autonomy, or war on whatever rival tribe was running things in Sana'a. People with really high rank - generals in charge of entire tank divisions - would just drive their entire divisions to their home territory and say, "F U, these are my tanks now" to the government Sana'a.

You only hear about it now because being attached to al Qaeda/ISIS makes headlines. And if anything, that increased attention only makes the perpetual infighting worse because the attention means we've given them more powerful toys to play with.

In short, this is the status quo for Yemen for the entire history of Yemen. There's no "new instability" that we need to deal with. It's the same old intractable instability. Maybe the terrorism on civilians is more than it used to be, but that isn't really anything organic to Yemen, but just a change in the way the entire world thinks of war/insurgency.
Click to expand...

I was trying to explain this to my dad, but he watches fox news and hates Obama so that was pointless.

If you just read thru the wikipedia page of Yemen you get a really quick idea of how "normal" this is for them.

Northside Storm · Mar 26, 2015

basso said: ↑

i don't know which is scarier, that you believe this fustercluck Obama has begotten us is actually part of a coherent strategy, or that the lightbringer himself does.
Click to expand...

it's better to be roughly right than exactly wrong.

How have two deliberate wars panned out for democracy in the Middle East, basso?

Has the systematic violation of civil rights and perversion of the Constitution solved terrorism yet?

Northside Storm · Mar 26, 2015

basso said: ↑

i don't know which is scarier, that you believe this fustercluck Obama has begotten us is actually part of a coherent strategy, or that the lightbringer himself does.
Click to expand...

also wanted to add that a lot of Silicon Valley thinks along the same lines of abandoning devil's deals with resource-heavy miscreants, and they're the ones busy buying Congressmen and presidential candidates lately.

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/20...urs-the-distinction-with-washington-presence/

Cohete Rojo · Mar 26, 2015

From the British military adviser to the Saudis during the original Arab Revolt, T E Lawrence:

In Yemen the solution was different. There was no foreign trade, and no
massed industries to accumulate population in unhealthy places. The
towns were just market towns, as clean and simple as ordinary villages.
Therefore the population slowly increased; the scale of living was
brought down very low; and a congestion of numbers was generally felt.
They could not emigrate overseas; for the Sudan was even worse country
than Arabia, and the few tribes which did venture across were compelled
to modify their manner of life and their Semitic culture profoundly, in
order to exist. They could not move northward along the hills; for
these were barred by the holy town of Mecca and its port Jidda: an
alien belt, continually reinforced by strangers from India and Java and
Bokhara and Africa, very strong in vitality, violently hostile to the
Semitic consciousness, and maintained despite economics and geography
and climate by the artificial factor of a world-religion. The
congestion of Yemen, therefore, becoming extreme, found its only relief
in the east, by forcing the weaker aggregations of its border down and
down the slopes of the hills along the Widian, the half-waste district
of the great water-bearing valleys of Bisha, Dawasir, Ranya and Taraba,
which ran out towards the deserts of Nejd. These weaker clans had
continually to exchange good springs and fertile palms for poorer
springs and scantier palms, till at last they reached an area where a
proper agricultural life became impossible. They then began to eke out
their precarious husbandry by breeding sheep and camels, and in time
came to depend more and more on these herds for their living.

Finally, under a last impulse from the straining population behind
them, the border people (now almost wholly pastoral), were flung out of
the furthest crazy oasis into the untrodden wilderness as nomads. This
process, to be watched to-day with individual families and tribes to
whose marches an exact name and date might be put, must have been going
on since the first day of full settlement of Yemen. The Widian below
Mecca and Taif are crowded with the memories and place-names of half a
hundred tribes which have gone from there, and may be found to-day in
Nejd, in Jebel Sham-mar, in the Hamad, even on the frontiers of Syria
and Mesopotamia. There was the source of migration, the factory of
nomads, the springing of the gulf-stream of desert wanderers.

For the people of the desert were as little static as the people of the
hills. The economic life of the desert was based on the supply of
camels, which were best bred on the rigorous upland pastures with their
strong nutritive thorns. By this industry the Bedouins lived; and it in
turn moulded their life, apportioned the tribal areas, and kept the
clans revolving through their rote of spring, summer and winter
pasturages, as the herds cropped the scanty growths of each in turn.
The camel markets in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt determined the
population which the deserts could support, and regulated strictly
their standard of living. So the desert likewise overpeopled itself
upon occasion; and then there were heavings and thrustings of the
crowded tribes as they elbowed themselves by natural courses towards
the light. They might not go south towards the inhospitable sand or
sea. They could not turn west; for there the steep hills of Hejaz were
thickly lined by mountain peoples taking full advantage of their
defensiveness. Sometimes they went towards the central oases of Aridh
and Kasim, and, if the tribes looking for new homes were strong and
vigorous, might succeed in occupying parts of them. If, however, the
desert had not this strength, its peoples were pushed gradually north,
up between Medina of the Hejaz and Kasim of Nejd, till they found
themselves at the fork of two roads. They could strike eastward, by
Wadi Rumh or Jebel Sham-mar, to follow eventually the Batn to Shamiya,
where they would become riverine Arabs of the Lower Euphrates; or they
could climb, by slow degrees, the ladder of western oases--Henakiya,
Kheibar, Teima, Jauf, and the Sirhan--till fate saw them nearing Jebel
Druse, in Syria, or watering their herds about Tadmor of the northern
desert, on their way to Aleppo or Assyria.

Nor then did the pressure cease: the inexorable trend northward
continued. The tribes found themselves driven to the very edge of
cultivation in Syria or Mesopotamia. Opportunity and their bellies
persuaded them of the advantages of possessing goats, and then of
possessing sheep; and lastly they began to sow, if only a little barley
for their animals. They were now no longer Bedouin, and began to suffer
like the villagers from the ravages of the nomads behind. Insensibly,
they made common cause with the peasants already on the soil, and found
out that they, too, were peasantry. So we see clans, born in the
highlands of Yemen, thrust by stronger clans into the desert, where,
unwillingly, they became nomad to keep themselves alive. We see them
wandering, every year moving a little further north or a little further
east as chance has sent them down one or other of the well-roads of the
wilderness, till finally this pressure drives them from the desert
again into the sown, with the like unwillingness of their first
shrinking experiment in nomad life. This was the circulation which kept
vigour in the Semitic body. There were few, if indeed there was a
single northern Semite, whose ancestors had not at some dark age passed
through the desert. The mark of nomadism, that most deep and biting
social discipline, was on each of them in his degree.
Click to expand...

Years ago, I came across a deeply insightful preface to The Seven Pillars of Islam by Lawrence himself. However, I am not able to find it on the web at the moment, but in it he goes to great lengths to explain the migration patterns out of the Sudan and out of the Horn of Africa into the Arabian peninsula. Yemen and the Hejaz were, as he referred to it, pass through territories made up of tribesmen and clans. The real goal for those risking the journey for a better life, was to the fertile crescent. Though, some made it east and others were capable of making it through Arabia (Saudi Arabia), they were generally met with skepticism and dislike.

These people's ancestors, thousands of years ago, traveled to a wetter and greener land. Yemen may very well have been the better opportunity they were seeking - when the fertile crescent's reach was much greater than today's and northern Africa was more humid. A more hospitable environment, though no Mediterranean climate, they began to settle the land. However, over the thousands of years, the land began to dry and the plants began to wither away, and this must have had profound impacts on their societies.

These people have become the victims of climate change. Instead of devising ways to adapt, survive and thrive, they instead sought refuge in a branch of mystic teachings, moral parables and strict codified law. What is frightening is that it is happening today. There exists a group mystics who seek to cosign morality and blame to the events of climate change, seek to renounce the skeptics and doubters as heretics, and are attempting to impose their economic Sharia law on the masses.

Northside Storm · Mar 26, 2015

Cohete Rojo said: ↑

There exists a group mystics who seek to cosign morality and blame to the events of climate change, seek to renounce the skeptics and doubters as heretics, and are attempting to impose their economic Sharia law on the masses.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and they're getting richer every moment you spend on this website (CPM whatupppp)

though the adaptation is happening as well:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change

There are, no doubt, all manner of unpredictable inventions that are possible, and many ways to bring our CO2 levels down to Hansen’s safety threshold if imagination, science, and engineering run wild.
Click to expand...

Sweet Lou 4 2 · Mar 26, 2015

I don't get the right's obsession with Iran. Let Iran and Saudi vi for power and fight one another. Let's get the F out of the region. We don't need their oil anymore, theres way too much of it anyway.

We should just focus on ISIS. That's our real enemy. Iran is only a threat to Israel.

Forums

[Failed State] Yemen: Bombers Murder Scores Of People

KingCheetah Atomic Playboy
Supporting Member

Northside Storm Member

Northside Storm Member

basso Member
Supporting Member

ChievousFTFace Member

Exiled Member

basso Member
Supporting Member

SamFisher Member

Faust Member

SamFisher Member

Cohete Rojo Member

bigtexxx Member

Ottomaton Member
Supporting Member

Cohete Rojo Member

robbie380 ლ(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿ლ)
Supporting Member

Northside Storm Member

Northside Storm Member

Cohete Rojo Member

Northside Storm Member

Sweet Lou 4 2 Member

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!

[Failed State] Yemen: Bombers Murder Scores Of People

KingCheetah Atomic Playboy Supporting Member

Northside Storm Member

Northside Storm Member

basso Member Supporting Member

ChievousFTFace Member

Exiled Member

basso Member Supporting Member

SamFisher Member

Faust Member

SamFisher Member

Cohete Rojo Member

bigtexxx Member

Ottomaton Member Supporting Member

Cohete Rojo Member

robbie380 ლ(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿ლ) Supporting Member

Northside Storm Member

Northside Storm Member

Cohete Rojo Member

Northside Storm Member

Sweet Lou 4 2 Member

Share This Page

KingCheetah Atomic Playboy
Supporting Member

basso Member
Supporting Member

basso Member
Supporting Member

Ottomaton Member
Supporting Member

robbie380 ლ(▀̿Ĺ̯▀̿ ̿ლ)
Supporting Member