https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/at-the-end-of-the-day-662/  Link to full article

Since last Wednesday, crude oil prices have been rising until the global median reached $45.Tanks need oil, and now that the Saudis have invaded North Yemen – seizing control of two areas in the Saada province – demand may go up. Really? Enough to evoke a 5-bucks rise? The rationale for the invasion is the Saudi need to counter growing retaliatory attacks by Yemeni forces on Saudi soil. Um, just run that past me again: ‘to counter growing retaliatory attacks’? Always get your retaliation in first, that’s what I say.

But what exactly is going on here? Sadly, it all seems rather same-old-same-old. The ‘Yemeni’ forces are in fact Houthi tribesmen – supposedly moderate Islamics who object strongly to the Government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. Hadi ‘requested’ help from the Saudis, whose crushing of every last sign of equality in their country has naturally made them a close ally of the Americans and British. Just so we remain even-handed, The Houthi have been radicalised religiously in the last decade; but equally, Mansur Hadi was chosen as President for a two-year transitional period on February 21, 2012, in an election in which he was the, um, as it were, only candidate. Many experts in this area see him as a Saudi/US puppet: I can’t comment for certain, but let’s look more closely at the facts.

On 22 January 2015, Hadi resigned, and – being fine democracy-loving Arab Springers – the Houthis seized the presidential palace and placed him under virtual house arrest. But he escaped to his hometown of Aden, did a Farage on his resignation, and denounced the Houthi takeover as an unconstitutional coup d’état. Which, to be fair here, it was. In the same way as his election was somewhat Soviet in the model used.

Words like houses, plague and both come to mind, but we need to focus on the human suffering and repression involved: the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen is in fact a ‘coalition’ that includes the Persian Gulf monarchies of Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Jordan and Egypt. It would be kind, I think, to describe every one of these régimes as States where freedom of speech is routinely suppressed. The Yemen invasion has been described across the political spectrum as a “humanitarian disaster” and a “catastrophe”: the imposed aerial and naval blockade has left some 78% of the Yemeni population in urgent need of food, water, and medical aid. Yet on one occasion, Coalition jets prevented an allegedly Iranian Red Crescent plane from landing by bombing the Sana’a International Airport’s runway – thus discouraging all aerial aid deliveries to the capital city.

All is spin and cover story these days, so events are increasingly hard to verify. But perhaps what follow are the three best clues relating to these shifting sands of complexity:

1. Thanks to this war, an excuse has been given to manipulate the price of oil up and out of the risk-zone for US fiscality.

2. The Houthi rebels were originally armed by…..er, the United States – although a March 2012 article in The New York Times cited claims by unnamed US military and intelligence officials that the Quds Force,  the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) was smuggling significant quantities of arms to the Houthis. There is little these days upon which one can rely, but the NYT’s serial US State Dept toadying is one of them.

3. On July 25th this year, the US Defense Department awarded major weapons maker Raytheon to provide the Saudis with 355 air-to-ground missiles to support its campaign of aerial strikes against civilian and economic targets in Yemen. The missiles are state-of-the-art AGM154 infra-red guided killing machines.

Waydergo! We godda drum up some business here guys, so let’s arm everyone and keep that gdp figure rising. “YES SIR SERGEANT MAJOR SIR!” replied the unfortunate grunt.