Today’s News 15th June 2018

• German Police Uncover Jihadist "Ricin Bomb" Terror Plot

  A 29-year old Tunisian man has been arrested Cologne, Germany after he successfully produced Ricin which authorities say he intended to weaponize as a bio-chemical terror agent. Ricin is considered by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as among the most toxic biological agents known — classified as a Category B bioterrorism agent and a Schedule number 1 chemical warfare agent.

  According to German media reports, police believe they thwarted a potential jihadist terror attack in the planning stages, which intended to utilize Ricin that the suspect made from castor bean seeds. 

  

  The AP reports the plans were inspired by an online instruction manual for a “ricin bomb” on an ISIS website, citing the German newspaper Bild: 

  Bild also reported that the suspect bought bomb-making materials and chemicals used in the production of ricin. It said the suspect lived in the Chorweiler neighborhood of Cologne with his wife, a convert to Islam, and four children. He supposedly used instructions to make a ricin bomb that had been posted online by the extremist Islamic State group.

  American intelligence reportedly tipped off German authorities after the suspect was monitored ordering unusual quantities of castor bean seeds online, which are naturally toxic and can be used to create the poison. 

  “We don’t know how, or how widely, the ricin was to have been distributed,” the German prosecutor was quoted by the AP as saying. It is as yet unknown if the man, identified only as Sief Allah H., has links to terror organizations, nor have police disclosed how much ricin had been produced — only that “He had contacts with people in the jihadist spectrum,” according to the prosecutor. 

  

  “Deeply concerning development in Germany. Never before to my knowledge has a jihadi in the West successfully produced ricin,” notes the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point’s Paul Cruickshank, who further warns, “A new threshold has been crossed in the chemical terror threat.”

  “Ricin is deadlier than then the venom of a cobra. A tiny amount is enough to kill an adult,” one terrorism expert, quoted by NBC, says of the substance which was famously used by Walter White to kill off an an enemy in the final episode of the hit series Breaking Bad. 

  Breaking Bad, “Rice’n Beans” scene:

  In fine powder form, Ricin can kill rapidly if inhaled, as National Geographic explains:

  If ricin is inhaled, initial symptoms may occur as early as 4-6 hours after exposure, but serious symptoms could also occur as late as 24 hours after exposure. The initial symptoms are likely to affect the respiratory system and can include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and cough. Death from ricin poisoning can take place within 36-72 hours of exposure, depending on the route of exposure and the dose.

  Ricin is, according to the chemical arms watchdog group OPCW, a “Schedule 1 chemical agent” due to to the following: chemicals include those that have been or can be easily used as chemical weapons and which have very limited, if any, uses for peaceful purposes.

  So perhaps most worrisome for investigators currently probing the Cologne case is whether or not it is connected with a broader terror plot by an organized jihadist group.

  Given ricin’s relative accessibility of production and the fact that ISIS propaganda sites have been exploring its potential for causing mass deaths, the Cologne case is deeply disturbing as this could potentially be but the tip of the iceberg in a larger terror trend. 

  

• Sweden: "It's Fun To Build A Mosque"

  Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  Some Muslims in Sweden want to be able to broadcast public calls to prayer throughout the country. They have already succeeded in obtaining permission for this in three cities — Botkyrka, Karlskrona and Växjö. “We want to have calls to prayer in more places. There are many Muslims who are Swedish citizens, who have the same rights as everyone else” said Avdi Islami, Press Officer of the Växjö Muslim Foundation, after the police recently gave permission for the Växjö mosque to make a roughly 4-minute-long prayer call every Friday around noon.

  A March poll of 1,000 Swedes showed that a majority of Swedes — 60 percent — are against public Muslim calls to prayer.

  “We do not consider the contents of the loudspeaker broadcast, but [only] the potential noise that it makes,” said Magnus Rothoff, unit commander of the southern Swedish police region, in explaining the decision-making process of the police.

  “Therefore, we chose to refer it to the municipality’s environmental management, where there is expertise on the [noise] level that should apply. Then we came to the conclusion that we are not disturbed to the extent that one can make a different decision than to approve.”

  The municipality also did not consider the content of the call to prayer.

  The desire of Swedish authorities that the content of the Muslim call to prayer, also known as the Adhan, can be ignored and that the issue is only of noise levels is symptomatic of the way Swedish authorities in general approach the increasing Islamization of Sweden: that is continually to deny or ignore the scope of the problem.

  The content of the Adhan prayer, from a Western point of view, is deeply problematic. Its purpose is not only a neutral call to prayer — such as church bells, which consist only of musical notes. Here is the translation of the prayer:

  “Allah is the greatest (Allahu akbar). I testify that there is no God but Allah (Ashhadu anna la ila ill Allah). I testify that Mohammed is Allah’s Prophet (Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah). Come to prayer (Hayya alas salah). Come to security/salvation. Allah is the greatest (Allahu akbar). There is no God but Allah (La ilah ill Allah)“.

  “Allahu akbar” means “Allah is greatest” or “Allah is greater ” — presumably meaning than other deities.

  In 1993, when the Catholic Church wanted to build a tower for ringing church bells in Växjö, the municipality advised the church to refrain, as the neighbors had complained that they would be bothered by church bells.

  As recent decisions by Swedish authorities in Växjö and Karlskrona have undoubtedly created a legal precedent, however, Avdi Islami’s wish to have calls to prayer from mosques all over Sweden is likely to succeed. The Swedish authorities, therefore, are themselves creating the conditions for further Islamization.

  Apart from wanting to spread the call to prayer to mosques all over Sweden, new mosques continue to be planned and built. In Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm, the construction of the Rinkeby Mosque is about to begin. With 18 domes and at an estimated 5,000 square meters –1500 of which are dedicated to the mosque, and the rest to a restaurant, classrooms and a library — the mosque will be among Scandinavia’s largest, comparable to the Malmö mega mosque, which opened in April 2017. The Rinkeby mosque, designed by the Swedish architect Johan Celsing, will be constructed by NCC, a major construction company in Sweden. The firm estimates that the complex should be ready in 2020 at a cost of around 100 million Swedish kroner ($11.4 million). “It’s going to be fun to build a mosque, from a construction point of view,” said Fredrik Anheim, Head of Division at NCC Building.

  “For eight years, we have been trying to get funding, but now we are as close as you can get,” said Ibrahim Bouraleh, Vice President of the Rinkeby Mosque Collection Foundation, who refutes claims that the mosque is being funded by foreign donors. The foundation, however, has only collected 3 million out of the 100 million Swedish kroner needed, so the question arises, who indeed is funding the project?

  The organization behind the mosque is the Islamic Association of Järva (Islamiska förbundet i Järva), part of the Islamic Association in Sweden (Islamiska Förbundet i Sverige, IFSI), considered an organizational front for the Muslim Brotherhood. As IFSI clearly states (at the bottom of the linked page and in its statutes), it is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), which is generally acknowledged as an umbrella organization for local Muslim Brotherhood groups from all over Europe.

  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2005, then-president of FIOE, Ahmet al-Rawi, said, when asked about ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, “We are interlinked with them with a common point of view. We have a good close relationship.”

  The area of the future mega mosque, Rinkeby, is considered an “especially vulnerable area” — known as a no-go zone — defined by the police as an area “characterized by a social problem and criminal presence that leads to a widespread unwillingness to participate in the judicial process and difficulties for the police to fulfill its mission. The situation is considered acute”.

  Rinkeby subway station was recently categorized as a place too dangerous to work unless escorted by the police, due to the security risk created by stone-throwing and hostile gangs.

  

  Rinkeby subway station, in Stockholm, Sweden, was recently categorized as as a place too dangerous to work unless escorted by the police, due to the security risk created by stone-throwing and hostile gangs. (Image source: Tricia Wang/Flickr)

  In December 2017, Lise Tamm, Head of the National Unit against International and Organized Crime, said, “Rinkeby is almost like a war zone. When the police work there, they work as the military defense would”.

  Sweden’s Islamization of itself barrels on.

  

• Predicting The Unpredictable: Who Will Win The World Cup?

  32 nations will be competing at the FIFA World Cup in Russia over the next four and a half weeks, but only one team will fly home victorious.

  And, as Statista’s Felix Richter notes, even though every fan/expert has an opinion on who will ultimately win, much of the game’s beauty lies in its inherent unpredictability. Football – at least the one played in Russia these days – is a notoriously low-scoring game (just ask American sports fans about the appeal of a goalless draw) and hence one false decision, one dropped ball or one dislocated shoulder can decide the outcome of an entire season or tournament.

  Defying the game’s unpredictability, analysts from Goldman Sachs have developed a sophisticated statistical model in order to try to predict Germany’s successor as world champions. According to their analysis, based on 53 separate variables including team ratings, player ratings, recent performance and recent opposition performance, Brazil is the favorite to win the title with a probability of 18.5 percent. France is the second most likely champion with a likelihood of 11.3 percent followed by defending champion Germany (10.7 percent).

  As the following chart illustrates, the global public disagrees with the statistical model and sees Germany as the most likely World Cup winner.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  23 percent of the roughly 12,000 respondents in an Ipsos poll conducted across 27 countries gave Joachim Löw’s team their vote of confidence, while 21 percent favor Brazil to win the title.

  England, a team known to struggle at the world stage, is objectively more likely to win the title than people give them credit for.

  Find all Statista’s World Cup related charts here.

  

• The Babchenko False Flag Exposed The Deep State-Journalist Nexus

  Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

  Self-exiled Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko’s false flag “assassination” in Kiev is one of the most scandalous media stunts in recent memory.

  Most people are already aware of his dramatic stunt in appearing at a live press conference about his reported “killing” and then admitting that the whole thing was staged in order to capture what he claimed were his Russian-backed wannabe assassins, but many have yet to realize the larger implications of what just happened.

  A lot of commentary has since been made about how irresponsible it was of Ukraine to carry out this false flag incident in tricking the world for the sake of smearing Russia’s reputation right before the World Cup, with the revelation that this was 100% fake news being used to cast even more suspicion on the Mainstream Media – and especially those that are operating within Ukraine – than ever before.

  Relatedly, it reinforces claims that the White Helmets’ famous videos of dead children in Syria were also faked like how independent journalist Vanessa Beeley proved through her extensive investigative reporting in the country over the years, to say nothing of renewing doubts over the official narrative about the Skripals.

  In hindsight, this self-admitted false flag provocation retroactively adds credence to the argument that these two aforementioned high-profile examples were also staged as well, though there’s also another angle to all of this that hasn’t been given the attention that it deserves, and that’s the cooperation between journalists and the ‘deep state’.

  

  Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko (R), who was reported murdered in the Ukrainian capital on May 29, and head of the state security service (SBU) Vasily Gritsak attend a news briefing in Kiev, Ukraine May 30, 2018.

  By now it’s taken for granted that some journalists clandestinely cooperate, and even coordinate their activities, with their de-facto handlers from the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies after witnessing how the media waged its infowar against Trump over the past 3 years, but Babchenko’s false flag “assassination” introduced a new dimension into all of this.

  Surprisingly, the US-funded “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty” platform reported that the staged photo of his “killing” was “first published on the Facebook page of a former Ukrainian reporter who says he now works for a shadowy consultancy organization based in the Washington, D.C., area”.

  The only way that he could have received that was from a member of the Ukrainian “deep state” itself, which passed it along to their DC-based asset with the intent of “laundering” the picture through social media and making it “organically” go viral, representing yet another level of collaboration between the “deep state” and so-called “journalists”.

  Altogether, this false flag involved two separate, but interconnected, influence operations through willing journalist participants, the first and most obvious being Babchenko himself – who can be described more as an information provocateur and even a troll instead of a journalist – and the second DC-based individual who laundered the fake pic of Babchenko’s ”assassination”.

  

• Millennials Expect To Retire At 56 Despite Negative Net Worth

  Not only are millennials the most populous generation in the American workforce, but the tremendous amount of credit card and student loan debt they carry has made them the most indebted generation in modern history – which is forcing them to put off other major life decisions.

  But despite the fact that a surprising number of millennials are fat and broke, many still have an optimistic view on when they expect to retire. Though their generation mostly lacks the generous pensions offered to Baby Boomers and some Gen Xers, A TD Ameritrade survey found that millennials who use the service expect to retire at the surprisingly young age of 56. That’s six years below the current minimum age for receiving social security.

  

  What’s even more surprising, of the 1,500 millennials surveyed for the study, 53% expect to become millionaires at some point in their lives. However,  that percentage is unevenly divided between men and women: Of those surveyed who expect to become millionaires, 70% are men, compared with 38% of women.

  

  Roughly 80% of millennials struggle with at least one type of debt. Meanwhile, according to the study, millennials are prioritizing saving unlike previous generations – or maybe it just seems that way. According to the survey, roughly 70% of respondents to the survey described themselves as “savers.” Though that doesn’t quite jive with the official data, which show that the personal savings rate in the US is near all-time lows.

  

  A small percentage of savers say they never expect to pay back their loans (and recently we pointed out that about 100 or so Americans have more than $1 million in student loans). All of this is happening at a time when interest rates are rising, inflation has been showing signs of moving higher, gas prices are climbing and a shortage of homes has forced real-estate values to levels last seen before the housing crisis. Meanwhile, their net worth will likely remain negative for a while.

  Back in March, we pointed out that debt-laden millennials have been set back an average of $140,000 compared with their parents – a problem that has been compounded not just by student loans but by the costs of rent, food and other bills like car loans, which have also seen rapid growth.

  

  Any millennial who honestly expects to retire at 56 should be aware: If you truly want to retire young, you need to start saving in your 20s. Because with “the power of compounding,” as TDAmeritrade strategist JJ Kinahan explained it, “even those who start early can end up with more in the end.”

  Of course, by ‘saving’, Kinahan appears to mean ‘gambling in the stock market’, but tomato-potato.

  

• US Intelligence Developing Better Storage To Hoard Your Data Based On Human DNA

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Since the United States insists on spying its own people and saving massive amounts of personal data, the government is running out of storage space.  So now, they are developing a new and improved data storage system based on human DNA.

  

  It’s obvious the spying isn’t going to stop, and the US is no longer making it a secret that they want every scrap of data available on you stored. The Molecular Information Storage program, run by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), is recruiting scientists to help develop a system for storing huge amounts of data on “sequence-controlled polymer,” molecules with a similar makeup and structure to DNA.

  According to RT, US intelligence services struggle to store the trove of data collected during their snooping operations, so a team of researchers is developing the radical new storage technology. The issue for the government of how to store data is one the world’s intelligence services intend to solve for the overbearing governments of the planet. Costly data centers take up huge amounts of land, which is unsustainable given the increasing amount of data generated by each person on a daily basis.

  Some data centers are currently being housed in urban locations. The Lakeside Technology Center in Chicago is the largest data storage facility in the US. It spans a whopping 1.1 million square feet, which is equivalent to an entire city block. The site is actually at the location of the former printing press for the Yellow Pages, but the center was transformed in 1999 and now holds more than 50 generators whirring around the clock. The Chicago facility is only matched by the NSA’s $1.5 billion Bumblehive data center in Bluffdale, Utah, which is just over 1 million square feet.

  This new technology being developed by the US has huge potential as researchers believe DNA-like polymer technology can store data more than 100,000 times more efficiently than current methods. The IARPA hopes that it could one-day process entire exabytes of data while reducing the amount of physical space required to store all that personal information. To give you an idea of the scale: one exabyte, or one quintillion bytes, is four million times the storage capacity of a 256GB iPhone X. 

  “Faced with exponential data growth, large data consumers may soon face a choice between investing exponentially more resources in storage or discarding an exponentially increasing fraction of data,” the IARPA said in a statement cited by Nextgov. And we all know the government cannot be bothered to leave us alone and give us privacy, so they intend to spend a lot of our money so they can continue to keep tabs on all of us. It’s actually rather demented when one logically thinks about it.

  There are three distinct strands to the project, reported RT. The agency is hoping to create systems for storing and retrieving information, as the IARPA is calling on developers to help put together an easy-to-use operating system.

  We will never have privacy again if the US government has anything to say about it.

  

• Bank Of Japan Leaves Policy Unchanged, Downgrades Inflation, Continues 'Stealth' Taper

  Yen is weaker following The BOJ’s decision (with one dissent) to leave policy rates unchanged and maintain their JGB holdings target. BoJ did downgrade their inflation outlook but made no mention of its ongoing ‘stealth’ bond-buying taper.

  • BOJ Maintains 10-Year JGB Yield Target at About 0.000%

  • BOJ Maintains Policy Balance Rate at -0.100%

  • Bank of Japan Downgrades Assessment of CPI – BOJ Sees CPI in Range of 0.5% to 1.0%

  • As expected, the BOJ has retained the 80 trillion yen bond-buying target that hasn’t been hit for some time now. This showcases just how careful the BOJ is about even the most minor tweak in its policy guidance.

  The reaction is a weaker yen for now…

  

  While The Bank of Japan’s policies drift further and further away from The Fed and ECB (admittedly BoJ has tapered down its bond-buying ever so quietly), it is hardly surprising that Kuroda didn’t go full hawktard as economic data has been dismal this year and a recession looms…

  Japanese economic data is the most disappointing since 2014…

  

  And the economy is shrinking once again…

  

   

  While no official policy adjustment has been made, The BoJ has been stealth tapering for months…

  

  “Market players have come to realize that the bond-purchase operations aren’t directly linked to monetary policy,” said Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at Daiwa Securities Co. in Tokyo. “Their action is dependent on conditions and does not indicate anything special in store.”

  Again no mention of this tapering as The BoJ attempts to maintain the bond-buying program pace that it promised.

  As @dmwlsw joked so accurately:

  “BOJ doesn’t disappoint. Just continues to buy everything.”

  Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs summed things up nicely when she spoke to Bloomberg Television:

  “When it comes to full blown ‘let’s end QE and lets begin the tapering process,’ until inflation approaches something closer to the BOJ target of 2 percent, I think we are looking at continued central bank divergence for quite some time.“

  

• China Warns Of "Immediate" Retaliation As Trump Set To Impose $50 Billion Tariff Package

  Just hours after President Trump reportedly signed off on tariffs targeting some $50 billion in Chinese goods (a decision that was finalized after a 90-minute meeting with officials from the West Wing, as well as senior national-security officials, the Treasury Department, the Commerce Department and the office of the US Trade Representative), Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a press conference in Beijing that China is prepared to retaliate as it takes a more confrontational approach against the US on trade, according to the Wall Street Journal.

  

  Wang’s comments reportedly followed face-to-face talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, where Wang urged Pompeo to choose a path of “cooperation and mutual benefit.” Pompeo was in Beijing to brief Chinese officials on the North Korea summit.

  On Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China and the U.S. faced a choice between cooperation and mutual benefit on the one side and confrontation and mutual loss on the other.

  “China chooses the first,” Mr. Wang told a joint news conference, after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Beijing.

  “We hope the U.S. side can also make the same wise choice,” Mr. Wang said. “Of course, we have also made preparations to respond to the second kind of choice.”

  Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Mei Xinyu, a researcher at Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, part of China’s Ministry of Commerce, expects China to adopt retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods “immediately.”

  While the official breakdown of Trump’s tariffs won’t be released until tomorrow, a CNBC source noted that Trump has already signed off on the tariffs, and that a list of talking points has been distributed to 10 government agencies, while a list of products has been uploaded to a government database.

  As we noted earlier, one factor that could sway Trump’s thinking on tariffs would be an aggressive response from China. Earlier on Thursday, Xinhua, China’s state news agency reported that President Xi Jinping had told Pompeo that he hopes the US will tread carefully when it comes to sensitive issues like the US’s relationship with Taiwan and the simmering trade conflict so as to avoid a serious breakdown in bilateral ties between the two countries (ties that, aside from the trade spat, are also being tested by military brinksmanship in the Pacific).

  Xi Calls for U.S. to Carefully Handle China Trade Issue: Xinhuahttps://t.co/mC8DGC2VCT

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 14, 2018

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The list of goods that will be subject to the new levies is expected to include between 800 and 900 products, slightly less than the original list of about 1,300 products on a list published by the US Trade Representative in April, as we pointed out earlier, While the two countries have been exchanging trade-related threats for months now, it’s still unclear when the US tariffs will go into effect.

  But remember, this is not a ‘Trade War’ – heaven forbid… the narrative that these shots and retaliations are merely skirmishes (because what would stocks do if they really started thinking a trade war was possible). One can’t help but picture the Black Knight defending his bridge…one “fleshwound” at a time…

  

• "No Escape": Don't Expect A Yemeni Version Of The White Helmets

  Have you noticed the almost complete lack of video footage showing the ongoing Arab and US coalition aerial bombardment of Yemen’s key port city of Al Hudaydah? 

  Reuters reports the following:

  “People are scared. The warships are terrifying and warplanes are flying overhead all the time,” university student Amina, 22, who lives near the port, told Reuters by telephone.

  “People are fleeing the city to the countryside, but for those with no relatives there or money, there is no escape.”

  Don’t expect a Yemeni version of the “White Helmets” to emerge with high-tech cameras, slick new gear, and professional uniforms capturing Yemen’s starvation and slow death under US, Saudi, and UAE warplanes.

  

  Don’t expect prime time news broadcasts to feature images of emaciated Yemeni babies — easily located on social media channels in the thousands.

  And yet he numbers are staggering, as Reuters reports further:

  The United Nations says 22 million Yemenis need humanitarian aid, and the number at risk of starvation could more than double to more than 18 million by year end unless access improves.

  No, there won’t be rebel leaders in Yemen beamed into CNN studios via Skype to detail the suffering of civilians under the brutal siege, because this isn’t Syria… it’s Yemen, where the US and its allies have not only imposed a full military blockade of land, air, and sea on an urban population of half a million people, but have also ensured a complete media blackout of on the ground footage and reporting. 

  

  As we noted in our initial coverage the complete media and humanitarian blockade on the contested port city of Al Hudaydah means confirmation of the rapidly unfolding events have been hard to come by, though we featured what’s purported to be some of the earliest social media footage of the assault, now in its second day. 

  But what is firmly established concerning the conflict?

  First, the Wall Street Journal has characterized the US role in the new operation as actually “deepening” as US intelligence will provide “information to fine-tune the list of targets”. The US has long been a lead and integral part of the coalition (also including Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, and with the UK as a huge supplier of weapons) fighting Shia Houthi rebels, which overran the Yemen’s north in 2014.

  Saudi airstrikes on the impoverished country have involved the direct assistance of US intelligence and use of American and British military hardware. Cholera has also made a comeback amidst the appalling war-time conditions, and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals have been bombed by the Saudi-UAE-US coalition. The coalition claims to ultimately be thwarting Iranian ambitions inside Yemen. 

  Second, the ongoing Arab and US coalition siege of Yemen’s major port city through which 80% of all humanitarian aid for the war-torn country flows could result in the greatest humanitarian disaster and mass starvation in all of recent history according to the United Nations. 

  The city of half a million is one of the sole lifelines of support for Yemen’s over 27 million people from the outside world, thus analysts are predicting this to be a catastrophe for the country’s civilian population in a war The New York Times notes is already “classified as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster“ with “more than 75 percent of the population… dependent on food aid”.

  A new Reuters report estimates that “8.4 million people are on the verge of starvation, potentially the world’s worst famine for generations.”

  And yet on Thursday the US State Department announced it would resume funding for the controversial Syrian NGO state-funded group, the White Helmets, to the tune of $6.6, with presumably more American taxpayer funds to come. The group has long been exposed as essentially playing rescue squad for al-Qaeda and is a creation of international PR firms pushing for regime change in Syria. 

  But again, might Yemen get its own US-funded version of the White Helmets to rescue civilians?

  Why is there no video or photographic media coverage of US, Saudi, and UAE bombs raining down on masses of civilians in Al Hudaydah? Of course, the answer is obvious. 

  * * *

  Early in the Yemeni war the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review produced a short study which attempted to explain, according to its title, Why almost no one’s covering the war in Yemen (in short genocide is OK when US allies do it, according to the actions and words of Western political leaders).

  Other analysts have since criticized the media and political establishment’s tendency to exaggerate Iran’s presence in Yemen and further willingness to ignore or downplay the clear war crimes of US client regimes in the gulf (the US-Saudi coalition claims it must liberate Al Hudayda to cut off Iranian weapons flowing to Houthi rebels). While Iran-aligned states and militias are framed as the region’s terrorizers, the Saudi-aligned coalition’s motives are constantly cast as praise-worthy and noble.

  Meanwhile, the Pentagon has long reiterated its official (Orwellian) line that the US military’s deep level of assistance to the Saudi bombing campaign is actually geared toward reducing civilian harm. One glaring example is contained in an Al-Monitor report from earlier this year: “Speaking to reporters at the Defense Department on the heels of a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last week, Mattis said a contingent of US advisers deployed to help with intelligence sharing are engaged in a ‘dynamic’ role to help ensure a reduction in civilian harm.”

  But Al Monitor also noted that civilian deaths had continued unabated, while further quoting Mattis as saying, “This is the trigonometry level of warfare.”

  So the official Pentagon line on Yemen seems to be (confirmed repeatedly this week) that as it directly assists the Saudis in dropping bombs on civilians, it is actually “helping” those very civilians. 

  

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