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30 Oct 18 - 10:49 AM (#3959239) Subject: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson A devastating famine is gearing up to kill millions in Yemen, where a war and an economic collapse are conspiring to make food impossible to acquire for the poor. There was a report from Yemen this morning - not sure what station I was listening to; I think it might have been RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland - where the reporter said the shops were full of food, but because of the economic collapse people were starving, unable to buy it. Very much like what happened in Ireland in the 1840s, where the British Army and the Royal Irish Constabulary escorted vast trains of food past the starving to be exported. And the causes of the economic collapse in Yemen? This article from the English paper The Guardian may give a clue, or may not…? |
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30 Oct 18 - 11:18 AM (#3959246) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll MORE OF A CLUE HERE Jim Carroll |
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30 Oct 18 - 11:41 AM (#3959251) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Stilly River Sage Famine is Saudi Arabia's answer to comprehensive warfare. Why waste bombs when you can lock everyone inside the nation's boundaries and forget about them? We're hearing more about it here in the US because of Trump's support for the Saudi crown prince despite the murder of Khashoggi and his behavior toward Yemen. |
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30 Oct 18 - 02:50 PM (#3959272) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson Yes, all the horror, but the RTE report said that even where the war is far away, people are moving closer to starvation - including the middle classes, by the way - because the economy is so wrecked. |
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30 Oct 18 - 03:59 PM (#3959275) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Mossback USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! Heil Trump |
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30 Oct 18 - 04:52 PM (#3959280) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains Yemen civil war 2015 to present. Presidency Trump January 20, 2017 I think the sorry saga started on the democrat watch under Obama. Just one more inherited situation for Trump to contend with. Saudi Arabia and the United States have a relationship that stretches back almost a century, since the 1933 kickoff of oil exploration in the kingdom. Since then, the two countries have maintained a baseline of economic and security cooperation that has kept ties between them strong. Saudi Arabia is the US' largest foreign military sales customer, and the US has long had a physical and advisory military role in the kingdom. Perhaps a partial antidote to the starvation in the Yemen would be for the US to cease aiding the Saudis. I cannot say I am totally clued up on the politics but I believe the Houthis booted out the previous corrupt regime based in Saana and ever since the Saudis and their allies have done their best to destroy the country. " The military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes, tortured detainees, raped civilians and used child soldiers as young as 8 — actions that may amount to war crimes, United Nations investigators said in a report issued Tuesday."(aug28 2018 NYT) The country was poverty stricken when I was there around 2000 and since then the situation has deteriorated dramatically. I cannot say that I have seen a cogent reason as to why the Saudis are there. The Houthi receive help from Iran and are Shiite whereas the Saudis are Wahhabi Sunnis. The major powers are also fighting a proxy war there. Meanwhile the war crimes continue, the people continue to die, starvation is imminent and nobody appears to give a shit. |
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30 Oct 18 - 06:03 PM (#3959286) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Mossback Origins aside, its the Trumpist Arseholes that are currently actively perpetuating this obscenity. HEIL TRUMP! |
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30 Oct 18 - 06:12 PM (#3959290) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains I would have thought the origins of vital importance.How else did you get in such a mess? |
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30 Oct 18 - 08:37 PM (#3959301) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Stilly River Sage Your concept of origins will always blame a Democrat, I am sure. The guy in office now can do something immediately as this grows much worse, but doesn't. You don't want to hear that, though. |
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30 Oct 18 - 11:39 PM (#3959310) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson Mmmno. Yemen's modern history started with the poisonous British colonial habit of partition. Quoting part of the linked article (because, under the new internet de-globalisation, it may not be available to readers outside Europe): The Yemeni capital Sana'a is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. The 'old city' is a Unesco Heritage site. In the 19th century, the area that is now Yemen was divided between the British Empire, which occupied the port of Aden and the south, and the Ottoman Empire, which occupied Sana'a and the north. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, a Shia Imam from the Zaidi sect consolidated power in the north. Britain continued to occupy the south. In the 1960s war broke out in the northern part, which saw factions backed by Saudi Arabia and Egypt respectively face off in a civil war. They were in turn backed by the US and the Soviet Union respectively. The Yemen Arab Republic emerged from this war. Ali Abdullah Saleh became its leader in 1978. Britain withdrew from Southern Yemen in 1967, which then became a Marxist State called the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. Fighting broke out between the northern and southern republics during the 1970s, but co-operation over energy exploration and the collapse of the South’s backer, the USSR, saw the republics unify in 1991 after a popular vote. Northern leader Ali Abdullah Saleh became head of the new state. A civil war broke out shortly after unification which lasted until 1994. Mr Saleh remained in power until 2011, when he was replaced by Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi after a popular uprising during the Arab Spring. How did the current war break out? President Hadi faced instability on several fronts when he came to power. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula carried out several large attacks on government targets. Ousted former President Saleh, who also retained the loyalty of some military commanders, forged an alliance with his former enemies, the Shia Houthis in the north of the country. The instability led many Yemenis to become dissatisfied under President Hadi. A Houthi mounted an offensive and took the capital Sana'a in late 2014. President Hadi fled abroad in early 2015. Saudi Arabia then intervened, along with a coalition made up of United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar (until 2017), Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal and Sudan. The US and the UK are the main international backers of the Saudi coalition. The war is predominantly a local civil war, in which Saudi Arabia has intervened to protect its southern border and to try to prevent a Houthi takeover by restoring to power President Hadi. Saudi Arabia maintains the Houthis are an Iranian proxy. The Houthis do receive Iranian support but are not Iranian proxies. While the Houthis are Shias, they belong to a different sect to the one that is prevalent in Iran. Iran is also primarily engaged in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon and does not see Yemen as a vital interest, nor does it want to commit large-scale resources to the conflict. Iran-Houthi links could be summarised as 'Saudi's difficulty is Iran's opportunity' and even limited support to the rebels achieves this outcome. Iranian help to the Houthis has escalated since the Saudi intervention. In an effort to choke off this support, a blockade has been imposed on Yemeni ports by the Saudi-led coalition, which has had devastating humanitarian consequences. The US and the UK are Saudi Arabia’s most powerful supporters. The US signed a $110bn arms deal with Saudi Arabia last year, while the UK has sold around £4.5bn worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia since 2015. UK and US personnel have also provided advice in Saudi Arabia’s aerial command and control centre, which both countries say is aimed at avoiding civilian casualties. What has the human cost of the war been? An estimated 22.2 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance according to the UN, 13 million people are at risk of starvation. There have been over 16,000 civilian casualties since March 2015. This includes around nearly 7,000 killed, of whom nearly one in five were children. Around two million people have been displaced. RTÉ News spoke to Yemen expert Iona Craig, who has reported regularly from the country. What’s driving the conflict? "There are now multiple groups on the ground fighting for several different reasons. They have different end goals and it’s an extremely complex conflict now. "It started as a civil war - really a fight between two presidents: The former president of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced out of power in the Arab Spring uprising of 2011. "The man who replaced him [was] President [Abdrabbuh Mansour] Hadi. Saleh used the Houthis to seize the capital in September 2014, but it’s morphed into a broader regional conflict now between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as a multi-faceted conflict on the ground with all of these groups fighting for different reasons." What’s the role of Saudi Arabia in Yemen’s conflict? "Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen’s civil war back in March 2015. That was at the behest of the Saudi Minister of Defence at the time, Mohamed bin Salman (below) - he is still Minister of Defence and he later became Crown Prince and a somewhat infamous character. "Saudi Arabia formed a coalition quite rapidly of regional nations from the Gulf Co-operation Council as well as other countries such as Senegal and Sudan and the other key player with them has been the United Arab Emirates. "Saudi’s part in the war has really been leading this bombing campaign which has resulted in nearly 19,000 air raids in Yemen since the war began. "The UN has said that has caused 60% of the civilian casualties in the conflict and has had many other effects. There have been import restrictions on the country, for example, which has affected food supplies. (snip) Have food supplies been curtailed and is this deliberate? "Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East before the war started and there has long been a problem with malnutrition amongst children in Yemen. "But because of the restrictions put in place on imports into the country - restrictions put in place by the Saudi-led coalition; because of the collapse of the currency; because of government wages going unpaid for more than two years, all of those have contributed to the food crisis in Yemen. "Now some of that is deliberate. There is evidence that there has been deliberate targeting in the air campaign of agriculture, of fishermen and even warehouses with the aim of an economic siege, particularly in Houthi-controlled territory. "I think most people view that as a tactic by the Saudi coalition to create unrest in those territories held by the Houthis to cause civil unrest so that people will rise up against the Houthis to try and overthrow them internally. "But of course the impact has really been particularly on children, the very young, the very old, the most vulnerable, this problem of mass starvation. This has been happening in Saudi-controlled areas as well as the Houthi-controlled North. "So there is evidence that this is absolutely deliberate, but at the same time the Saudis would argue that they are pumping in millions of dollars into the central bank and that they are providing aid and funding to the country as well. "But of course one doesn’t outweigh the other. The damage that is being done as a result of the import restrictions, as a result of the currency collapse, as a result of the air war, as a result of wages going unpaid for so long - that damage far outweighs any aid that is been given to the country whether it’s by Saudi Arabia, the UK, or even the US." What is the role of global powers in Yemen? "Obviously the US and the UK as well as other European countries have been selling a considerable amount of arms to Saudi Arabia and to the UAE over the course of the conflict and for many years before. "But the US is more heavily involved, essentially because they provide mid-air refuelling for fighter jets carrying out these bombing raids on a daily basis. "Without that mid-air refuelling, planes wouldn't be able to do their bombing runs. If they stop that mid-air refuelling, bombing runs literally have to stop tomorrow. "I’m sure they’d probably find an alternative in the long-run, but the US is crucial to the air war continuing. They’ve also been helping more heavily on target selection - or their argument is they're not helping in target selection, they've created a list of non-targets, i.e. targets, sites which should not be hit. "I think the excuse of both the US and UK over the course of this war has been that they have tried to mitigate civilian casualties by helping the Saudis with international humanitarian rules and both in their training and in their processes they use for target selection. Unfortunately that hasn’t played out. "The US has given millions of dollars to the Saudis for training on international humanitarian rules, yet there have continued to be cases of mass civilian casualties, there has been mounting evidence of blatant disregard for civilian life and even the deliberate targeting of civilians. "Probably the most famous case has been the airstrike on a school bus which killed dozens of children in northern Yemen and air raids on civilians have gone up every year since the air war began. "Despite the fact the US and the UK and other countries said Saudi is taking steps to avoid civilian harm and improve their targeting, that’s just not happening. "The reality on the ground is you're still getting these events where civilian targets are being hit and there are mass civilian casualties." Is there any kind of effective peace process? "There is a special UN envoy, there was a new one appointed in March of this year, Martin Griffiths, who has been attempting to bring the parties to the conflict together for discussions. "In fact last month there was a meeting in Geneva but unfortunately the Houthis didn't even make is as far as Geneva, so it never happened. "So at the moment we are a long way from reaching even talks, never mind reaching a political solution. "There are attempts now at confidence-building measures, which include prisoner swaps, to re-open airports in Sana'a and Houthi-controlled territories but there are no indications that the parties to the conflict are going to sit down and talk to each other and in fact the conflict has escalated on the ground and the political process that is in place doesn’t involve any agreement with the fighters on the ground and is not representative. "And this is part of the issue: Even if the Saudi coalition pulled out tomorrow, this would not mean an end to the war in Yemen because the country is so fragmented, so there is very little, if any light at the end of a very long dark tunnel for the civilian population in Yemen at the moment." |
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31 Oct 18 - 02:56 AM (#3959320) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains The present situation in the Yemen has evolved over multiple Presidencies as the excellent summary above demonstrates. A cynical person would say Saudi oil dictates the narrative. Also the Yemen has considerable unexploited mineral wealth. It is a pity the UN is a worthless organisation. With Independence, teeth and a cancellation of veto powers it could achieve great things. The situation in the Yemen is an extreme case of the instability rocking much of North Africa and the Middle East. Is it civil war, proxy war, religious war, energy war or a mix of all? From Libya, Iraq, Syria, the Yemen, and many other places, western intervention has created nothing but grief for the indigenous peoples, especially children. Not a legacy to be proud of! |
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31 Oct 18 - 04:36 AM (#3959331) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson The UN is scarcely worthless; it is, however, stymied by the self-interest of wealthy countries. We have made a society in which selling weapons to kill each other trumps having healthy, well-fed children. |
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31 Oct 18 - 05:05 AM (#3959332) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Steve Shaw In assessing the usefulness or otherwise of the UN, look to the long-time undermining of it by the US. |
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31 Oct 18 - 10:52 AM (#3959386) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: David Carter (UK) Its a proxy religious war, for domination of the Islamic world, between Shia (backed by Iran) and Sunni (backed by Saudi). The west in such conflicts always favours the Sunni because they are more compliant in giving the west access to oil reserves. Hence Iran is part of the axis of evil and Saudi Arabia isn't, despite the human rights record of the former, whilst not being perfect, being far better than the latter. |
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31 Oct 18 - 01:26 PM (#3959414) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson Again defaulting to RTE reporting for my minor knowledge on this, but the reporter said that the type of Shia followed in Yemen is different from the type in Iran. So it's a bit like saying Greece would support Ireland because both are Catholic countries (Greece being Orthodox Catholics, Ireland Roman Catholic…sorta). |
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31 Oct 18 - 01:42 PM (#3959416) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: David Carter (UK) Greece is Orthodox, not Catholic. There is plenty of suspicion between these communities too, for instance between Serbia which is Orthodox and Croatia which is Catholic. |
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31 Oct 18 - 02:05 PM (#3959418) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic Yemen has been a punching bag for generations. Shortly before the Six-Day War (between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan), there were news articles about Egypt (then calling itself the United Arab Republic) using poison gas against civilians there. The reports at the time are eerily premeniscient of the recent reports of what's gone on in Syria. The experts flew in afterwards and could testify to the poison gas effects but unfortunately they were not there to 'see' the attack itself therefore they could do everything but accuse Egypt. Dona Dona |
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01 Nov 18 - 10:16 AM (#3959515) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson Greek Orthodox are so Catholic that the only think keeping them from joining up with Rome is the fact that one side would have to give up its Pope. |
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02 Nov 18 - 02:38 PM (#3959762) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains There were shortlived rumours of an American ceasefire, but renewed Saudi bombing has scuppered that. Was it the Kashoggi factor briefly Latest news: Saudis respond to peace calls with heavy Sana'a bombing |
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02 Nov 18 - 06:23 PM (#3959797) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson And the little girl of ten whose skeletal photo was all over the papers died on the way to hospital. |
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03 Nov 18 - 06:29 PM (#3959944) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic Thompson I think you are flat wrong about Greek Orthodox/ Catholic but I also think that's a topic for a different thread. The Sunni/ Shiite split is pretty major but the difference between Saudi Arabia and Iran is on many levels and probably mostly geopolitical as far as what's driving the nasty proxy war in Yemen. If so many Syrians had been unable to emigrate to Europe and beyond there would have been an even bigger humitarian crisis there than the severe crisis they have already endured. Meanwhile, there's this |
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04 Nov 18 - 03:54 AM (#3959991) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson I'm not, you know. And yes, virtually all famines are political: some come from genocide, others from conflicts over resources, some both. |
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04 Nov 18 - 06:09 AM (#3960005) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains The famine would appear to be so all embracing that perhaps attempted genocide might be more accurate. The linked article pulls no punches. I hope some of the matters alluded to are exaggerated. https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/29/the-us-led-genocide-and-destruction-of-yemen/ |
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04 Nov 18 - 06:53 AM (#3960010) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll There seems little concern here that Western Governments continue to support the Saudi regime in it's assisting genocide - International business interests come before human life every time, as displayed by Britain's sale of fighter planes which were almost certainly used in Yemen Jim Carroll |
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04 Nov 18 - 07:56 AM (#3960019) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: bobad Then we have China and Russia keeping Iran well supplied as it foments terrorism and supports terrorist groups in the Middle East - isn't international business just grand. |
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04 Nov 18 - 08:33 AM (#3960027) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll ACTUALLY, THEY'RE ALL AT IT BOBAD Where there's brass, there's muck, as they should say Jim Carroll |
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04 Nov 18 - 12:34 PM (#3960051) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains When Saudi produces roughly 13.5% of world oil and is the number one producer of primary oil, this allows them to flex their muscles politically. The western world cannot survive without Middle Eastern imports. Should the west upset Saudi, China may up her present 16% of oil already obtained from Saudi. China is already in Iraq and imports Iranian oil. The geopolitics is closely allied to oil and unraveling that connection will not be easy. It is easy to say this is not good, but oil shortages/supply disruptions are not good either. It is a tangled mess of mutual benefit/continual chaos. It has spent decades evolving, it will not reform overnight. The western forays into middle eastern countries were not performed for altruistic motives no matter what the MSM may say. Events in the Yemen kinda confirm it. It is the resource wars unfolding. Probably those responsible are happy to see the instability labelled as terrorism, Jihad, religious war or anything else to minimise or hide the reality |
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04 Nov 18 - 01:11 PM (#3960054) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll Much of this can be applied to the act that we fill our shops with goods produced under virtual slave labour conditions - it means we can kiss any attempts at humman rights goodbye By tolerating it out of self-interest, we become part of it Jim Carroll |
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04 Nov 18 - 01:59 PM (#3960060) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll Should have added The fact we have sold fighter -lanes to the Saudis doesn't mean that we are only guilty o standing by and doing nothing, (a we did in Syria) but that we have become part of the slaughter that has taken place. Brexit has guaranteed that when Yemeni refugees come streaming out, looking for asylum Britain will send them packing. They have already been greeted with hostility in South Korea - they ain't seen nuffin' yet Jim Carroll |
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05 Nov 18 - 05:02 AM (#3960146) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson Jim's right, where there's brass there's muck. And calling the Iranians the greatest fomenters of terror is pretty ripe from the president of a country that makes billions selling arms to autocrats, matter not who! |
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05 Nov 18 - 05:16 AM (#3960152) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll It's worth investigating which nations are selling Iranians parts for nuclear weapons - might come as a surprise to some people Jim Carroll |
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05 Nov 18 - 06:50 AM (#3960169) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic Supposedly no one if the Iranians are still honoring the agreement. |
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05 Nov 18 - 06:59 AM (#3960171) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains Should all those munitions cease traveling to the middle east, can you be confident your car will have the fuel to reach the nearest shop? That is the reality of the world we have created. Demonising Russia, China and Iran has to be the height of hypocrisy considering the behaviour of the west. |
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05 Nov 18 - 07:00 AM (#3960172) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll The article was removed from this thread - presumably to stop a bickering match, fair enough I'll PM you the link - do with it what you will Jim Carroll |
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05 Nov 18 - 07:16 AM (#3960176) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Jim Carroll Accepting the realities our politicians (not us) has created the present world bloodbath If we had done something about the Saudis, Assad and all the despots we have sucked up to we would have neither the refugee crisis nor the holy wars that are taking place in The Middle east and on the streets of our cities We sided with the monsters and became the equivalent of James Bond's Q to their military, so those seeking some sort of freedom and justice took the law into their own hands and in the process, got sucked in by Isis Instead of trying to win hearts and minds we filled the coffers of the Arms Traders and became implicated in mass murder -we have compounded that by refusing shelter to innocent victims Now we are becoming the victims of our politicians indifference and our economy's greed Stupid - stupid - stupid Jim Carroll |
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05 Nov 18 - 04:00 PM (#3960273) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic What I come back to when I think of Iran is that I knew a lot of young Iranians when I was going to school. Young idealistic people who were at the time very anti-Shah. At the time I was entirely unaware of the U.S. history of subverting and ending a nascent Democracy in Iran, the Mossadegh regime. I'll bet each of my fellow Iranian students (actually they were mostly grad students while I was undergrad) was well aware of that sordid past and could have given me chapter and verse of their unhappy history. It took a book many years later called "All The Shah's Men" to bring me up to date. However Ayatollah Khomeini was an ugly evil minded SOB who came back to his country with murder on his mind and in his heart and his truth was a TRUTH that led directly to the deaths of his enemies and additional deaths of people who were too secular or of the wrong religion (sudh as Ba'Hai). The regime that took the Shah's place has been far worse, far more backwards and far more bloody than the Shah. They are financiers and exporters of terror. They institutionalize hate in their government controlled religious observances. I think Obama took a measured attitude when he hammered out the nuclear agreement with the Iran regime. It was: "these are bad people, let's at least limit the amount of bad they can do." I was in favor of the agreement, and I thought Trump's campaign argument that it was a horrible deal was a terrible approach, but that and other things got him elected. Whether or not that puts nukes back in the mix is not known, but if it's nukes for Iran, why won't the Saudis go there. They can afford the same amount of centrifuges the Iranians can. It reminds me of a book title: "Only the Paranoid Survive". That is the world Obama was trying to avoid, and that is the world that Trump and his enablers have potentially put us back in. The first is a case of leadership and the second is a case of mental instability feeding on itself. I apologize for this being off-topic. I think the Yemenis were going to get beat up in any case. They don't have any oil. |
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05 Nov 18 - 05:02 PM (#3960280) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: bobad if it's nukes for Iran, why won't the Saudis go there Saudi Arabia Admits It Has NUCLEAR BOMBS |
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05 Nov 18 - 09:52 PM (#3960333) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic Yeah, and their nuke designer walked into an embassy and didn't come out! Seriously, there are people who make it their business to know who can make a nuke and where they are on the production schedule. Unfortunately, once you've got a nuclear factory going, you are in the mass production game. The purification process whether it is from centrifuges or breeder reactors is a continuous one. Again, this is why it was a good idea to make an agreement with a regime actively seeking to go that route to severely discourage them while there was time. On the other hand, there are such things as suitcase nukes or the following which I would not read on a full stomach. Someone might be able to steel or buy one, but again, there should be people around keeping track. |
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05 Nov 18 - 09:59 PM (#3960336) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: bobad Robo, the Saudis didn't make their nukes, they acquired them. Here's a hint: guess who funded sixty percent of Pakistan's nuclear development program? They have also acquired ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads from China. |
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06 Nov 18 - 03:07 AM (#3960353) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Iains " I think the Yemenis were going to get beat up in any case. They don't have any oil." Yemen contains proven crude oil reserves of more than 4 billion barrels It provides around 90% of the country's exports. |
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06 Nov 18 - 09:07 AM (#3960387) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic bobad: yikes iains: I did not know that (obviously). According to Wikipedia Yemen is not in OPEC nor is their oil anticipated to last them long. I don't know anything else about them. They seem to have been poor and downtrodden a long long time, and abused by their more powerful neighbors. Quite recently the interesting author Dave Eggers' latest book: "The Monk of Mokha" came out about "the exhilarating true story of a young Yemeni American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana’a by civil war." This is an example of my ignorance about modern Yemen. That's all I got. Coffee, oil, and starvation. You'd think someone could put them together and create an economy that would feed people, wouldn't you? Yet they are in real danger of mass starvation. I believe that, too. |
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08 Nov 18 - 10:35 AM (#3960728) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: robomatic FWIW Today (Thursday, 8 NOV 2018)on NPR radio program "Fresh Air"NYT article on what's going on in Yemen |
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08 Nov 18 - 10:59 AM (#3960735) Subject: RE: BS: Yemen famine From: Thompson It's when you *do* have oil that you're in trouble with the bullies. Unless you're Norway, obviously. |