[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] US aircraft have finally raided the sites and radars of Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews ... militias on the Red Sea coast even though the Houthis had bombed US military ships twice before. International tolerance toward Houthi militias, despite the huge number of crimes committed against Yemenis for two years, has frightened locals of this turban religious terrorist group. The Houthis took advantage of this leniency to assassinate political opponents and threaten maritime navigation routes many times. They even bombed an Emirati aid shipment last week.
Do Houthi militias differ from al-Qaeda and ISIS?
The difference is that the Houthis had never attacked American or Western targets before, and this is why they were not included on terror lists. However, today is that tomorrow you were thinking about yesterday... the Houthi militia actually has the same characteristics as al-Qaeda, including the use of religion to target civilians and wage wars. Houthis’ political slogans do not differ from al-Qaeda’s. They both call for fighting the "infidel West" and kill those who are not of their religion. They imposed their religious rules on the Zaidis and Shafi’i Sunnis. The turban organization has filled the cities’ streets with images of religious leaders, along with slogans calling for a war to be waged against the "infidel West" and the Yemenis who are at odds with it.
More recently, Houthis dared to wage battles against neutral parties; in Sanaa, they kidnapped an American teacher who works in an English teaching Institute and has lived in the Yemeni capital for many years. His fate remains unknown. On Sunday, Houthis bombed the US warship USS Mason, the Americans thought that it was a random bombing by the Houthis but the group did it again the following Wednesday and bombed the same ship, despite American warnings that followed the first bombing. The US Air Force raided the Houthis’ radars in Taiz and Hodeida. It was not a harmful sanction but rather a clear message in order to stop the attacks on the US Navy. These limited raids send a specific message to refrain from attacking the US Navy and do not necessarily suggest that the Americans are interested in the safety of navigation routes in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab strait in general. Battles are ongoing between legitimate government forces and the Houthis to seize control over this strait.
Over the past decade, international navigation may have suffered on the other side of the Red Sea, when Somali turban pirates? spread terror. Thorough international coordination and the formation of multinational naval forces controlled the situation. History will repeat itself on the Yemeni side of the Red Sea if the world does not support the peaceful solution based on the same international resolutions which were disrupted when Houthis and former the Yemeni president orchestrated a coup and shared governance. The safety of maritime routes and the security in the region and the world require an international stance against harassment and militias, regardless of their religion, as long as they are carrying weapons.
The Houthi group, also known as "Ansar Allah," was founded by the Iranians and trained by Lebanese Hezbollah. It is still receiving military, logistical and media support from there. It is similar to many gangs founded by Iran in the region, whether from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Leb; they all have one mission: serve Iranian politics through armed force. Dealing with religious groups should be the same whether they are Shiite or Sunni. al-Qaeda, ISIS or Ansar Allah must all be classified as terrorist groups, rather than limiting terrorism to al-Qaeda because it raises its weapons against the West.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/16/2016 00:00 ||
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#1
The Houthi group, also known as "Ansar Allah," was founded by the Iranians and trained by Lebanese Hezbollah.
Emphasis added to key 'non-friendly' word/organization indicators.
[War is Boring] The truth is that Yemen’s government lacks popular support. Its military has largely sided with the insurgents. Iran probably plays very little role. And the terrorists in Yemen are, at best, a side show to the main fighting.
Saudi Arabia’s official position is that the coalition is supporting forces loyal to the internationally-recognized government of Pres. Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi as they battle insurgents from the Iranian-backed Houthi political movement. The Houthis’ position is that they are fighting back against U.S.-supported “Saudi-Zionist” aggression.
The Americans’ position is less clear. Washington insists that the U.S. military is merely providing intelligence and logistical support to its regional allies in their operations against … someone. Who exactly the enemy is from the American point of view is something the U.S. government seems uncertain of or unwilling to clearly state. The only target in Yemen that Washington has clearly defined is the so-called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terror group, or AQAP. However, AQAP is not the Saudi coalition’s primary target. Among the coalition members, only the United Arab Emirates routinely cites AQAP as its main enemy.
There’s little doubt that the Houthis — an armed religious-political movement of Yemeni Shia Zaidis — expresses strongly anti-American, anti-Jewish and anti-Saudi views. The group, which calls itself Ansar Allah — “Supporters of God” — operates from strongholds in northern Yemen. Its 20,000-strong militia force has fought a series of bitter campaigns against the central government in Sana’a since 2004. Since taking over the capital of Sana’a in September 2013, the Houthis’ rule has increasingly been characterized by violence against any sort of political opposition. Indeed, the methods of rule they apply in the parts of Yemen under their control are as bad as those of the most oppressive Middle East regimes.
There’s scant evidence of direct Iranian support for the Houthis. Authorities have intercepted one or two small ships loaded with small arms and ammunition heading for the Yemeni coast. The truth is, with Syria gobbling up money and men, Tehran cannot afford a major proxy war in Yemen.
Likewise, there are reasons to doubt Saudi Arabia’s claim that it’s defending Yemen’s legitimate government. Actually, Pres. Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has next to no popular and political support in Yemen. His predecessor, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is much more popular than Hadi is within the Yemeni armed forces. Between September 2014 and March 2015, up to two-third of the Yemeni army either sided with the Houthis — because Saleh also did so — or were overrun by them. In total, more than 50 out of around 90 brigade-size formations of the Yemeni military aligned with the Houthis, only four or five with Hadi and three with southern separatists. AQAP overran four.
Moreover, it’s not the Houthis who are firing ballistic missiles including Scuds, Frogs, SS-21s and SA-2s at Saudi Arabia, at Saudi bases inside Yemen and — more recently — at the American destroyer USS Mason. Rather, the three brigades of the Yemeni army Missile Defense Command and several air-defense units are the ones lobbing the missiles.
But you won’t read that in many mainstream news reports. Most of what we in the West think we know about the war in Yemen bears little resemblance to what’s actually happening on the ground.
#1
The truth is, with Syria gobbling up money and men, Tehran cannot afford a major proxy war in Yemen.
This where I'll disagree. Tehran can afford a major proxy war, where the Houthis and the Hadi faction (and to a lesser extent, Hesb'allah) provide the bodies and the Iranians (and again to a lesser extent, Hesb'allah) provide money, guidance, training, and select munitions.
#2
Iran is richer now than it was a little while ago. $150 billion funds a lot of terrorism. And nuclear research...
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/16/2016 0:29 Comments ||
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#3
More importantly, they have got the Saudis and Gulf Arabs outspending them by a very large margin. Which I have been thinking for a while is the Iranian plan.
#4
I know a toilet when I see one. The only "help" I care to give when it is not a toilet in my house is to depress that flush handle thingee, repeatedly if necessary...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/16/2016 8:53 Comments ||
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#5
The Saudi and Yemeni governments both accuse Iran of helping the Houthis.
Let's see, as I recall Obean sent $400B to the Iranians. The Iranians are supporting the Houthis. Ergo, some of the $400B is used to fund the Houthis. Obean is supporting terrorism? Too nuanced for my feeble brain. Where does Hillary stand on this? What did she tell the W$ money people and what did they give her?
[GP] Donald Trump’s former butler stepped forward to debunk another accuser’s story.
Anthony Senecal said the so-called incident with the People magazine hack "never happened."
The Palm Beach Post reported: Donald Trump’s former Mar-a-Lago Butler backed up the Republican nominee for president in denying the billionaire groped a reporter from People magazine.
"No, that never happened. Come on, that’s just bull crap," said Anthony "Tony" Senecal.
People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff wrote an essay this week about how she was groped by Trump at Mar-a-Lago during an interview in the early 2000s. She is one of four women to make accusations against Trump of unwanted sexual advances.
The issue has become central to the presidential race since a 2005 hot-mic video surfaced of Trump bragging about using his celebrity to grope women. He has downplayed the incident as "locker-room talk."
Trump, at his rally in West Palm Beach on Thursday, said he was always in a public place with Stoynoff and denied he ever acted inappropriately.
#2
Trump ‘grabbed me and went for my mouth,’ woman says Heller acknowledged to The Guardian newspaper that she has donated $2,700 to the Democratic campaign, and her husband has had a long-running legal squabble with Mar-a-Lago over membership fees.
Trump rep Jason Miller said Saturday that Heller was making a “false accusation.”
Check out her pic at the link. That's not a forehead, that's a fivehead. Not his type
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/16/2016 7:44 Comments ||
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#3
Donks aren't accustomed to a candidate fighting back.
WikiLeaks shows the Dems were worried about how to handle Slick Willy's numerous sexcapades if they should happen to show up during HRCs campaign--apparently, he was viewed as the perverse horney uncle in the attic, figuratively speaking. It's about time to release the Epstein Orgy Island tapes that Anonymous claims to have.
#4
Anyone remember how the Dems fabricated a similar charge against Presidential Candidate Herman Caine ?
And the charge fabricated that an airline stewardess allowed Trump to keep his hand up her dress for "15 minutes" is a bit much don't you think. If I felt a hand up my butt for one second the hand is going to be traced and then the face attached is going to need surgery. But 15 minutes ? THAT is allowing the hand to have a LOT of time.
One might question that sort of action being truthful in an honest woman.
I think its safe to doubt the statement is true, and if it isn't true then the Democrates have a LIE problem and Trump is right.
Besides do YOU trust the Donks to tell the truth? The Donks don't have a food record for that. LIES are their stock in trade. You can keep your Doctor and your Health Plan...period,..... ring any bells?
#7
People who "want to believe" will do so no matter what they are shown. They are usually trying to fill some personality void. Some guy named Eric Hoffer wrote a book about it. "True Believers" it was titled...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/16/2016 10:56 Comments ||
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#8
DJT's problem is that he left the objects of his alleged dalliances alive.
#9
Democrates have a LIE problem and Trump is right.
The problem is we are watching the "new normal" in Democrat dirty tricks. Until the republicans come up with an antidote, the dems will take the most dangerous opponent they face, pay a bunch of hard up women to tell lies about that opponent, and disrupt the campaign.
When you look at Herman Cain, 9 out of the 10 women accusing him made up their stories and dropped their accusations as soon as he dropped out of the race.
One woman had contact with Cain during an Xmas party when he introduced the woman to his wife (who was standing right next to him). Herman Cain put his hand on the woman's shoulder and she felt uncomfortable being touched.
It would not surprise me to find the Trump stories have a similar BS to truth ratio.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
10/16/2016 13:01 Comments ||
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#11
Conservative journalist Prissy Holly set Twitter on fire Sunday when she released a tongue-in-cheek video describing how Hillary Clinton “groped” her in an airplane bathroom.
“She just kept staring at my breasts the whole time,” Holly said. “The next thing I knew she completely forced herself on me.
People are calling this ‘Hillary groped me on a plane’ video brilliant; see why:
#13
The Big D must more carefully craft his statements. To point out something, but neglect to tell us why, serves him poorly.
Mr. Trump is a "Big Picture/Vision" kind of guy, used to delegating to his team the task of filling in the blanks. He can't do this when running for office.
His "Look at her." statement was ambiguous enough to foster outrage. I looked at her and saw a glib, scripted and disingenuous person. His statement, however, left it open that he may have meant she looked like the south end of a northbound bulldog.
Overestimating the intelligence and reasoning ability of the American electorate is not working. "The Dawnald" has to be clear, concise, complete and unleash the extraordinary salesperson he is.
[WAPO] UNNATURAL CAUSES: Sick and Dying In Small-Town America. Since the turn of this century, death rates have risen for whites in midlife, particularly women. In this series, The Washington Post is exploring this trend and the forces driving it.
Cancer patients taking high doses of opioid painkillers are often afflicted by a new discomfort: constipation. Researcher Jonathan Moss thought he could help, but no drug company was interested in his ideas for relieving suffering among the dying.
So Moss and his colleagues pieced together small grants and, in 1997, received permission to test their treatment. But not on cancer patients. Federal regulators urged them to use a less frail -- and by then, rapidly expanding -- group: addicts caught in the throes of a nationwide opioid epidemic.
Suddenly, Moss said, investors were knocking at his door.
"As clinicians, we wanted to help palliative patients," said Moss, a professor and physician at University of Chicago Medicine. "The company that bought our work saw a broader market."
#1
The Washington Post is exploring this trend and the forces driving it.
Unlike our urban utopias, rural populations tend to be independent, self-sufficient, distrustful of government, and reluctant to move into more structured environments. The 'die off' is probably just coincidental.
#2
Maybe all according to plan. There is that recently released Ivey-Podesta email and Hillary has a very cozy relationship with Wall Street:
And as I’ve mentioned, we’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking – and not just poll driven, demographically-inspired messaging. Ivey to Podesta
The left/Progressives/Dems believe it is important to have an uninformed, unaware and compliant population.
#5
Any idea how Big Pharma gets these drugs into the black market and makes money on it?
Most of what we see is "legally" over-prescribed meds...prescribed to addicts and small time sellers...that shop for doctors in several states. Strange, it seems that ye olde illegal dealers fund both the new opioid treatment centers...and flood the market with very cheap heroin. Get the illegal money on the front end with the heroin, and the government money on the back end with insurance payments for treatment. Hell of a deal ain't it?
[Daily Caller] The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is poised to call for a national moratorium on charter school openings, even though charter schools are very popular with black parents.
Polls have repeatedly shown that, among blacks, support for charter schools is substantially higher than opposition. In heavily-black cities like Washington, D.C., many parents have voted with their feet, transferring their students into charter schools rather than keep them in standard public schools that are often viewed as failing. Nationwide, roughly a quarter of charter school students are black, even though black children are just 15 percent of public school enrollment overall.
But there has been a backlash against charter schools among progressives, who view them as an effort to undermine traditional public schools by depriving them of students and resources. Charters are particularly unpopular with teachers unions (many charter schools, though not all, lack unions or follow different contracts), who have pushed hard to realign the Democratic Party against charters.
#3
Teachers Unions hate Charters. Gotta stay on the plantation
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/16/2016 7:39 Comments ||
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#4
Consider the NAACP an arm of the Democratic Party and charter schools not a part of their outreach program. Teacher unions do hate charter schools therefore charter schools must be good for education.
#10
...the public school has less need for funding with less students...
Charter schools take the students with the most motivated parents, who pretty much correlate with the best students. Very few children are innately driven and disciplined enough to to do well in school without parental involvement.
So, the most motivated, best behaved students gone, the ones who cost the district least to educate. And the schools are left with the expensive to educate ones: those who cause trouble, who don't care, and who struggle with learning disabilities.
#14
And the schools are left with the expensive to educate ones: those who cause trouble, who don't care, and who struggle with learning disabilities.
This is a standard teacher's union talking point about why charter schools are the work of Satan. And it's true. Thing is, the public schools already have these students. And not surprisingly, the schools do a crappy job of educating them.
Public school is basically Henry Ford's assembly line applied to kids: you take a bunch of similar units, run them all thru the same process and out comes a useful product. The catch is your 'similar units' actually need to be similar, otherwise your outputs are all over the map. With engine blocks, you can just scrap your failures and start over. Here, we just push our bad units on to the next stage and eventual failure. Or affirmative action.
Worse, a teacher dealing with the outburst of the moment is not helping other students who might be there to learn. Think of it as one bad engine block stopping the line which means none of the other engine blocks are learning anything. (Mixed Metaphor Alert!).
#16
This is a standard teacher's union talking point about why charter schools are the work of Satan.
Yes, SteveS. The thing is, when you have a specific type of student to teach, you can target your techniques to what is most effective for that population. Not interested but able? Go for uniforms and small, visible achievements that are rewarded until they feel themselves an elite. Troublemakers? Visible security authorized to intervene physically with immediate punishment, uniforms, and privileges restored one by one as each entire class's behaviour meets simple and stated improvement goals, with the troublemakers who wrecked it each time named and shamed. Learning disabilities? Small classes that with lots of teachers aids for one-on-one work and behaviour control. Of course this takes good teachers who really known their stuff and are worth paying more, not union drones.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
