Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

He was arrested at 13. Now Saudi Arabia wants to execute him, by Muhammad Darwish, Tamara Qiblawi and Ghazi Balkiz

Posted on June 7, 2019 | Leave a comment

Our close ally Saudi Arabia wants to kill an eighteen-year-old for protesting the regime when he was ten. From Muhammad Darwish, Tamara Qiblawi and Ghazi Balkiz at cnn.com:

A group of boys on bicycles gather on a dusty side-street in eastern Saudi Arabia.

Foot on pedal, 10-year-old Murtaja Qureiris is about to lead the group of around 30 children. In video footage obtained by CNN, he is wearing rolled up denim jeans and black flip-flops on his feet, and grinning at the camera recording the event. It may look like a regular bike ride, but the group is staging a protest.

Moments after they set off, Qureiris gets lost in the sea of boys, struggling to keep up as he lifts a megaphone and presses it against his lips. “The people demand human rights!” he shouts.

As a boy, Qureiris participated in demonstrations like this bike ride, expressions of dissent in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province during the 2011 Arab Spring.

Three years after he was filmed taking part in the bike protest, Saudi authorities arrested Qureiris, then just 13 years old. He was traveling with his family to Bahrain when he was detained by Saudi border authorities on the King Fahd causeway that connects the two countries.

At the time, he was considered by lawyers and activists to be the youngest known political prisoner in Saudi Arabia.

Now, at the age of 18, Qureiris is facing the death penalty after being held for almost four years in pre-trial detention, CNN has learned.

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Can We Expect No Consequences for Killing Yemeni Children? by Dave DeCamp

Posted on June 6, 2019 | Leave a comment

The title question answers itself. Of course we won’t see any consequences, other than those borne by the people of Yemen. From Dave DeCamp at antiwar.com:

The war in Yemen is still raging on with no end in sight and the Saudis are beginning to see the war come home to them. The Houthi regime has been increasing drone strikes inside of Saudi Arabia, hitting an oil pipeline and an arms depot in recent weeks. While the Saudis are beginning to see blowback from their brutal military campaign in the country, we must not forget that this war would not be possible without US intelligence and weapons. President Trump recently bypassed congress by declaring a state of emergency to sell more weapons to the Saudis, using the “Iranian threat” as the excuse.

In 2015 Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their allies launched an attack on Yemen after the Houthis began to take control of some key cities, including the capital Sanaa. On March 25th 2015, the Obama administration released a statement pledging military and logistical support to the coalition. Four years and over 19,000 airstrikes later the UN has estimated if the war ended in 2019 it would account for 233,000 deaths, 140,000 of those deaths being children under the age of five. Eighty percent of the country’s population relies on humanitarian aid for their food, with 13 million at risk of starvation.

The UN report said the conflict is Yemen was turning into a “war on children,” they estimated 330,000 could be dead by 2022. The Saudis are known to target vital civilian infrastructure in their airstrikes, such as water treatment plants, hospitals, schools and markets. The Saudis have even targeted fisherman to further squeeze the country’s food supply.

This “war on children” is similar to the US campaign against Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. After Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait over a discrepancy of a contested oil field on their vague border, the UN security council, led by the US, imposed economic sanctions on Iraq. The sanctions were intended to make Iraqi forces withdraw from Kuwait, but even after they did, the US refused to allow the sanctions to be lifted.

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Troika Fever, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on May 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

Catchy names like Troika of Tyranny are only applied to the US government’s enemies, but might not that catchy name apply to the US government’s friends in the Middle East? From Danny Sjursen at tomdispatch.com:

Key American Allies in the Middle East Are the Real Tyrants

American foreign policy can be so retro, not to mention absurd. Despite being bogged down in more military interventions than it can reasonably handle, the Trump team recently picked a new fight — in Latin America. That’s right! Uncle Sam kicked off a sequel to the Cold War with some of our southern neighbors, while resuscitating the boogeyman of socialism. In the process, National Security Advisor John Bolton treated us all to a new phrase, no less laughable than Bush the younger’s 2002 “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea). He labeled Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny.”

Alliteration no less! The only problem is that the phrase ridiculously overestimates both the degree of collaboration among those three states and the dangers they pose to their hegemonic neighbor to the north. Bottom line: in no imaginable fashion do those little tin-pot tyrannies offer either an existential or even a serious threat to the United States. Evidently, however, the phrase was meant to conjure up enough ill will and fear to justify the Trump team’s desire for sweeping regime change in Latin America. Think of it as a micro-version of Cold War 2.0.

Odds are that Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both unrepentant neocons, are the ones driving this Latin American Cold War reboot, even as, halfway across the planet, they’ve been pushing for war with Iran. Meanwhile, it’s increasingly clear that Donald Trump gets his own kick out of being a “war president” and the unique form of threat production that goes with it.

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SAUDI SAVAGERY Saudi Arabia mass execution – Lad, 16, tortured with electricity and BEHEADED just for sending WhatsApp messages about protests, by Patrick Knox and Mark Hodge

Posted on April 27, 2019 | 4 comments

You won’t hear much about this in the American mainstream media. From Patrick Knox and Mark Hodge at thesun.co.uk:

A YOUNG lad was tortured with electricity and beheaded in Saudi Arabia because he sent WhatsApp messages about a protest aged 16.

Abdulkarim al-Hawaj, 21, was a schoolboy when he was detained and accused of being a “terrorist” for sending texts online about an anti-government demonstration.

Abdulkareem al-Hawaj was just 16 when he was arrested

He was a Shiite Muslim – which is a persecuted minority group in Sunni-dominated Saudi – living in the troubled Eastern province.

Abdulkarim was beaten and tortured with electricity while his hands were chained above his head when he “confessed” to his crimes, human rights charity Reprieve said.

Aside from torture, the charity also claims that his captors threatened to kill his family if did not confess to the crimes.

This week, he had his head cut from his body in front of a baying, bloodthirsty crowd along with 36 other men in the medieval country.

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Whom The Gods Would Destroy, They First Make Mad, by Eric Margolis

Posted on April 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

The chances that anything good comes from the Trump administration and Israel’s war against Iran are next to nil. From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

The world is still reeling in horror from the deadly Sri Lanka bombings that may have been the work of Islamic State madmen.  Poor Sri Lanka has suffered so much after three decades of civil war and communal strife.  We weep for this beautiful and once gentle nation.

But behind the horror in Sri Lanka, a huge crisis was building up of which the world has so far taken insufficient notice: renewed tensions in the oil-producing Gulf.  This is the latest attempt by the United States to crush Iran’s independent-minded government and return it to American tutelage.

The Trump administration has demanded that the principal importers of 1.2 billion barrels of Iranian oil halt purchases almost immediately.  This imperial diktat includes China, South Korea, Turkey, India and Japan.  The comprehensive embargo is very close to an all-out act of war.  In 1941, America’s cut-off of oil to Japan provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Gabbard Campaign Video Slams Trump For Making US “The Prostitute Of Saudi Arabia”, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

Of all the people running for the Democratic nomination for president, President Trump should be most afraid of Tulsi Gabbard. She’s sounding many of the same foreign policy themes that candidate Trump did, and subsequently discarded in favor of Pompeo’s and Bolton’s foreign policy. Gabbard will steal Trump voters who were looking for something new in foreign policy. Gabbard also came out against the Assange arrest, another flashpoint for a substantial number of Trump voters. However, Gabbard probably has zero chance of getting the Democratic nomination. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 Rep. Tulsi Gabbard lashed out at Trump on Wednesday after the president vetoed the Yemen War Powers Resolution this week, which sought to end US support for the Sauid-led war in Yemen.

The Hawaiian congresswomen and outspoken US foreign policy critic asserted the president is turning the nation “into the prostitute of Saudi Arabia” and further stated he vetoed the bill “to please his Saudi masters” in a minute-and-a-half campaign video.

“Unlike Donald Trump I will not turn our great country into the prostitute of Saudi Arabia.”

The former combat veteran who served in the Iraq War has gotten visibility and vast push back even within her own party for making “ending regime change wars” her campaign focus.

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With Friends Like These: Abusive Frenemies and American Mideast Policy, by Maj. Danny Sjursen

Posted on April 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Our so-called friends in the Middle East do the US no favors. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

Pop quiz: name the two largest (by far) recipients of U.S. foreign military aid and one other country which recently negotiated the biggest American arms sale deal in world history. Let’s call them the Big three (beneficiaries of largesse, that is). Need some hints? One is ruled by a dictatorial general who came to power in a coup and subsequently ordered the slaughter of some one thousand civilian protesters. Another regularly defies international law, has annexed conquered territory, and boasts a military that has shot to death 250 civilian protesters along its border over just the last year. Finally, the last country fatally starved upwards of 85,000 foreign children and still decapitates women for the crimes of “witchcraft” and “sorcery.” By the way, all three are rather tight with old Uncle Sam – regularly described as “partners” in Washington. Which reminds me of the old saying: with friends like these, who needs…well, you get it.

Ready for the (not-so) shocking answers? So, the military dictatorship is Egypt – recipient of $1.3 billion in military aid per annum. The nation that conquered and annexed adjacent territory is Israel – the donee of some $3.1 billion in military aid each year; and, ironically, the state that US leaders regularly (if incorrectly) tout as the “only democracy in the Mideast.” And the charming, child-starving, woman-beheading regime: that’s the theocracy and absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia – future owner (maybe) of a record $110 billion in US military equipment. Now that’s a proud lot!

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Walter Jones and the Vote to End US War on Yemen, by Walter Jones

Posted on February 20, 2019 | 2 comments

Ron Paul salutes an honest colleague and his efforts against the US war machine. From Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

In a fitting legacy for my friend Walter Jones, Jr. who passed away last week, the US House made history by voting in favor of H.J.Res. 37, a resolution “Directing the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.” As George O’Neill wrote in the American Conservative magazine this week, the historic 248-177 victory for a bill demanding the end of the US participation in the nearly five year Saudi war of aggression “reflects how many hearts and minds were influenced by the late Congressman’s tireless efforts.”

Walter Jones did not care who controlled Congress. He was happy to join forces with any Member to end the senseless US global military empire, which sends thousands of young men and women off to patrol foreign borders, overthrow foreign governments, and needlessly put themselves at risk in missions that have nothing to do with the safety and security of the United States.

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Entering a Major Regional Re-set – The Syria Outcome Will Haunt Those Who Started This War, by Alastair Crooke

Posted on January 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

Odds don’t usually favor dramatic change, because today usually looks pretty much like yesterday, and tomorrow usually looks pretty much like today. However, the odds favor a rather dramatic realigment in the Middle East that leaves Russia and its allies in a position of strength, and the US in withdrawal. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The Middle East is metamorphosing. New fault-lines are emerging, yet Trump’s foreign policy ‘hawks’ still try to stage ‘old movies’ in a new ‘theatre’.

The ‘old movie’ is for the US to ‘stand up’ Sunni, Arab states, and lead them towards confronting ‘bad actor’ Iran. ‘Team Bolton’ is reverting back to the old 1996 Clean Break script – as if nothing has changed. State Department officials have been briefing that Secretary Pompeo’s address in Cairo on Thursday was “ slated to tell his audience (although he may not name the former president), that Obama misled the people of the Middle East about the true source of terrorism, including what contributed to the rise of the Islamic State. Pompeo will insist that Iran, a country Obama tried to engage, is the real terrorist culprit. The speech’s drafts also have Pompeo suggesting that Iran could learn from the Saudis about human rights, and the rule of law.”

Well, at least that speech should raise a chuckle around the region. In practice however, the regional fault-line has moved on: It is no longer so much Iran. GCC States have a new agenda, and are now far more concerned to contain Turkey, and to put a halt to Turkish influence spreading throughout the Levant. GCC states fear that President Erdogan, given the emotional and psychological wave of antipathy unleashed by the Khashoggi murder, may be mobilising newly re-energised Muslim Brotherhood, Gulf networks. The aim being to leverage present Gulf economic woes, and the general hollowing out of any broader GCC ‘vision’, in order to undercut the rigid Gulf ‘Arab system’ (tribal monarchy). The Brotherhood favours a soft Islamist reform of the Gulf monarchies – along lines, such as that once advocated by Jamal Khashoggi .

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Trump Foreign Policy for 2019, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on January 9, 2019 | Leave a comment

Is Trump’s foreign policy method to madness or just madness? From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Never before has any presidential administration been as all over the place in terms of national security and foreign policy as is that of Donald J. Trump. Indeed, one might well argue that there is no overriding policy at all in terms of a rational doctrine arrived at through risk versus gain analysis of developing international situations. Instead, there has been a pattern of emotional reactions fueled by media disinformation supplemented by “gut feelings” about a series of ultimately bilateral relationships that frequently have little or nothing to do with American national interests.

This is not to suggest that the “gut feelings” are always wrong. Established wisdom in Washington has long reflected the view that the United States must exercise leadership in establishing and maintaining the neoliberal consensus that gained currency after the devastation of the Second World War. Elections, free trade and a free media were to be the benchmarks of the new world order but they also came packaged with U.S. hegemony to confront those who resisted the development. And it turned out that those “benefits” were frequently difficult to achieve as elections sometimes produced bad results while trade agreements and an uncontrolled media often worked against broader U.S. objectives. All too often the United States found itself going to war against nations that it disapproves of for reasons unrelated to any actual interests, routinely claiming inaccurately that dissident regimes were both “threatening” and disruptive of the universal values that Washington claimed to be promoting.

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