Armies of Liberation

What used to be the al Wasat website is here. Actually al Wasat moderated a lot since a few years ago when Jamal Amer got some pretty serious threats, and the paper was in no way promoting seperatism, just reporting the news of the unrest. But the Yemeni government can’t bear the truth, in any area.

The hackers wrote: “Unity is a Red Line.” It also says “Unity or Death”:

Idiots.

Update 2: Four reported dead now, see update below the fold. This from the Yemen Post: Security in Hadramout shooting randomly in all directions:

A young man was killed and others were injured during violent clashes between protestors and troops in the city of Shahr, Hadramout on Saturday. The killed was named Awadh Sa’ad Barami, 19, and most of those who were wounded were aged 18-22, a local source has said.

A peaceful started from the square of Sheikh Saeed led by young people infuriated by tyrannical arrests of 45 people in the city on Thursday.

Eyewitnesses said the security forces fired bullets in all directions randomly, event targeting the public who were sitting at shops and cafeterias.

Update: News from South Arabia 31/5/2009 till this evening:

1- 1 killed and 3 injured in Thalia’a (Dhalea?) 180 KM northern Aden in a clashes between protester and the Yemeni military.
2- some fire shooting in Mukala, Hadramoot, and no reports of killed or injured.
3- some reports of killed and injured protesters in Shabwah but needs verification.

Original Post: Apparently I posted too soon yesterday. Two of the injured died. How sad this all is. And the deaths don’t intimidate the protesters, it invigorates them. In Radfan in 2007, I think it was, three protest organizers were slaughtered by police on the town’s stage as they were preparing for a demonstration the next day. They were pretty much just shot in the head in cold blood. Tens of thousands came out the next day.

Sana’a, Yemen - At least two protesters were killed and eight wounded in clashes with security forces in two cities in southern Yemen, local sources said on Sunday. The sources said one protester was killed and five others wounded after police opened fire on protesters on Sunday in the southern city of Dalea, some 270 kilometres south of the capital Sana’a.

They said clashes broke out between police and armed protesters after security forces began firing tear gas canisters at dozens of protesters gathered in the city’s main street…In a similar protest in the south-eastern city of Shehiron Saturday evening, one protester was killed and three injured, medical sources said.

Witnesses said protesters held up flags of the former south Yemen and posters of its former president Ali Salim al-Beedh.

Confrontations were also reported in the twon of Anad around 50 kilometres north of the southern port city of Aden, but there were no reports about possible casualties.

(Read on …)

**Bumped, Scroll Down for Newer Posts**

Thats some amazing stuff right there. Around 1:20 the photographer pans out the length of the march, its big:

Demonstrations were held May 30, 2009 in the following locations in South Yemen: Dhalea Gov,Albaha in Lahj Gov., Al shoaib in Dhalea Gov., Ja’ar in Abyean Gov., Alshehr City in Hadramot Gov (some injuries). Alhad city in Yafea, Lahj Gov (police set up checkpoints to block demonstrators from gathering).

Yafea

Dhalie

Note the photos of al Beidh.

Its very, very good, and they all deserve commendation, but will anyone go to jail?

Inquiry into Cement Plants Frauds
SANA’A, May 31 (Saba) – A widening investigation into an enormous graft involving hundreds of billions of Riyals at the state-owned cement plant is underway, head of the Supreme National Anti-Corruption Commission has said. (Read on …)

Convicted in the US last November and sentenced this week:

A U.S. judge on Wednesday handed down 65-year prison sentences to two founders of a U.S. Islamic charity convicted of illegally supporting Palestinian group Hamas, in a major U.S.-based terrorism financing case…Abu Baker, whose brother Jamal Issa is the head of Hamas operations in Yemen, was Holy Land’s chief executive officer and the first to be sentenced

Probably every one of the 22 newly licensed papers is pro-regime and Tawwakol Karaman (WJWC) didn’t get her license yet. I would love to be wrong, really I would.

Al Qaeda can publish magazines and statements on the internet, but not civil society. Whats up with that? Everybody is blocked in Yemen except al Qaeda? The newspapers are inciting hatred but not Wahishi? Such garbage.

Zawya Yemen granted licenses for 22 new newspapers including 14 local newspapers, three newspapers for civil organizations and five for political parties in accordance with legal procedures, said Deputy Minister of Information Mohammed Shaher. Shaher said that there were further requests for issuing newspapers which are under studying by the ministry.

Currently around eight newspapers in Yemen were banned by the information ministry from printing and are accused of inciting hatred and indiscrimination in the country after covering what is happening in the southern governorates. Many local and international organizations have demanded that Yemeni government stop violating the rights of newspapers and freedom of the press.

Previously, Minister of information Hassan al-Lawzi said in a press conference that all Yemeni newspapers must take into consideration the national principles and the common interest of the nation when they are dealing with their press coverage.

This Newsweek article captures several truths. Its also very entertaining: Regarding the Gitmo returnees, “do whatever you want with them,” one Yemeni official told me. “Screw them, bomb them, send them to a country where they have capital punishment.”

The Reeducation of Abu Jandal
Can jihadists really be reformed? Closing Guantanamo may depend on it.

Kevin Peraino
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 8, 2009
All teachers have their problem pupils. Hamoud al-Hitar’s was a young man who liked to call himself “Abu Jandal,” an Arabic nickname that means roughly “The Killer.” The moon-faced, slightly paunchy Yemeni, whose real name was Nasser al-Bahri, had fought in Bosnia, Somalia, Chechnya and Afghanistan—all before his 30th birthday. For six years he worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, who once personally dressed one of al-Bahri’s gunshot wounds near Kabul. In Afghanistan he got to know Mohamed Atta and several of the other 9/11 hijackers. When al-Bahri finally returned home to Yemen about a year before the attacks, “it was the first time in my life that I had a passport with my real name on it,” the former jihadist told me one morning this spring when we met in the lobby of a Sana hotel. (Read on …)

Isn’t it entirely pathetic that the most analyzed “literature” coming out of the Middle East is from these imperialistic fanatics?

You would think the cadre of jihaddi watchers would spend a little time documenting the robust body of indigenous arguments undermining the quite flawed al Qaeda ideology, and I dont mean Dr. Fadli. However it might smack of the pro-freedomism the left finds so tacky, the dictators find so treasonous and that people all over the Middle East are dying for daily.

The actually intelligent people in the Middle East are censored and often fatwa-ed or in jail. If there was a way to unplug censorship in the whole region, (and there is, read this), its clear that development would take off like a rocket.

Alas, what we get is these low mentality jihaddi lunatics ranting that no one is innocent, in rather George Bush-like statments of “with us or against us”. Its kind of funny though that they feel compelled to respond, point by point, to an oped by Munier, and wind up in very dim logic using the same terms as Saleh- a virus. The proof that there is no conspiracy is the fact, they say, that they attack Central Security (Yahya). They may not know they are puppets, but indeed they are. They are going to be cranky when they realize they are working indirectly for Saleh and Iran. Poor dumbass jihaddis. Actually its not these godless murderers I feel sorry for, but the brainwashed 16 year old children they suck in to use as human bombs to kill elderly tourists. From Nashwan News, yet more bad google translation:

Number stated in the ninth edition of the echo response of epic length to a colleague Articles by Monir Maori and the Yemeni political analyst who writes from Washington to an article previously written on the journal of the so-called al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula (Yemen and Saudi Arabia). (Read on …)