1. where did Yemen get all the weapons? from Russia and China, according to Stockholm think tank, so if you’re gonna get mad at someone for this mess, blame Russia and China ‘kay?
NEW YORK - Russia has stolen a march over the United States in the multimillion-dollar arms market in cash-strapped Yemen, whose weapons purchases are being funded mostly by neighboring Saudi Arabia. The Yemeni armed forces, currently undergoing an ambitious modernization program worth an estimated $4 billion US, are equipped with weapons largely from Russia, China, Ukraine, eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics….According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), one of the world’s best-known think-tanks researching arms control and disarmament, Russia accounted for nearly 59% of all major weapons deliveries to Yemen from 2004 to 2008, followed by Ukraine at 25%, Italy at 10%, Australia’s 5%, and the United States at less than 1%….A resource-starved Middle Eastern nation, Yemen has negligible quantities of oil and is categorized as one of the world’s poorest countries. The US State Department has described Yemen as “desperately poor” but a “vital counter-terrorism partner”.
read more @ asia times
negligible quantities of oil? but location location location. - ed.
2. US and UK military spending in Yemen
US has increased military aid package to Yemen from less than $11m in 2006 to more than $70m in 2009
From just 11 million dollars to 70 million. A better then 6x increase? In 2009- US spent tens of millions of dollars boosting Yemen’s coastguard and border security and providing helicopters with night-vision cameras. The US has also provided intelligence gathered over Yemen by unmanned drones.
The US has not been alone, the UK has been there with them in all of 2009. The UK has also invested heavily in aid to Yemen. It has quadrupled its development assistance since 2007, allocating £105m between 2009 and 2011, though no figures on funds for military training were available
Both the US and UK have trained Yemen’s counter-terrorism unit
And the US has bombed and killed scores of civilians in Yemen Including a cruise missile attack on December 18th/09 ordered directly by the White House.
read more @ penny for your thoughts
3. CIA has been in Yemen since 2008: evidently we do the “training”
A new report released shows that the US and the CIA have opened a covert operation in Yemen against al-Qaeda to assist the nation’s military operations, according to AFP. In 2008, the CIA sent field operatives, who have experience in counterterrorism, to the region. The report further cites that the most secretive US special operations commandoes have begun training Yemeni security forces.
guns don’t kill people, people kill people…
4. speaking of weapons, Thai detention of alleged arms traffickers extended — this one’s been in teh crockpot for a while…
The Bangkok Criminal Court on Wednesday extended by 12 days the detention of five alleged weapons traffickers, the crew on a transport plane detained at Don Mueang airport, as police continue to investigate their sanctions-busting flight from North Korea. The suspects claim they believed the cargo was oil drilling equipment bound for Ukraine, according to their lawyer Somsak Saithong.
But a flight plan obtained by researchers showed the plane was bound for Iran, while US intelligence chief Dennis Blair said last month that it was headed for an unspecified Middle East destination.
read more @ bangkok post
5. more crazy people with weapons: 6 police killed in North Caucasus
MOSCOW, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) — Six police were killed and about 10 others were injured in an explosion in Russia’s restive North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, Russian new agencies reported on Wednesday. A suicide bomber detonated his car laden with explosives outside the traffic police headquarters in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, local police source said….Dagestan and the other mainly Muslim regions of Russia’s North Caucasus have been plagued by instability and violence recently. Skirmishes between troops and militants, and attacks on police and other officials have been reported daily.
6. 1 killed, 4 wounded on israeli airstrike on Gaza — who are these “witnesses”?????
GAZA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) — A Palestinian militant was killed and four wounded during an Israeli airstrike in southeastern Gaza Strip late Tuesday, witnesses and medical sources said. An Israeli drone fired a rocket on a group of militants that was monitoring the security fence separating between Israel and Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip, killing one and wounding four, the witnesses said.
The fighters were apparently planning to fire a missile into the Israeli lands, added the witnesses.
The dead and the wounded were transferred to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis where officials identified the dead as Jihad al-Sumiri, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), an armed faction close to Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
