A US media report says the détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia has dealt a heavy blow to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had sought a fearmongering campaign against Tehran’s nuclear program and the Islamic Republic’s clout in West Asia.
Though blunting China’s influence in the Middle East and other parts of the world remains a priority for the Biden administration, it is of “two minds” about the latest agreement, said Jon Alterman, a Middle East scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It wants the Saudis to take increasing responsibility for their own security,” he said, “but it does not want Saudi Arabia freelancing and undermining U.S. security strategies.”
The U.S. military is considering sending Ukraine thousands of seized weapons and more than a million rounds of ammunition once bound for Iran-backed fighters in Yemen, an unprecedented step that would help Kyiv battle Russian forces, U.S. and European officials said.
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The challenge for the Biden administration is finding a legal justification for taking weapons from one conflict and transferring them to another. The U.N. arms embargo requires the U.S. and its allies to destroy, store or get rid of the seized weapons. Biden administration lawyers have been looking at whether the resolution creates any wiggle room for them to transfer the weapons to Ukraine, according to U.S. officials.
Since 2014, the tiny country of Yemen has been devastated by the ongoing civil war following the Houthi takeover of the government. It only got worse as in March 2015; President Barack Obama began to aid the Saudi Arabians in the war effort. As of February 2022, over 370,000 people have lost their lives thanks to the war thanks to lack of food, medical necessities, and bombings.
One of Biden’s promises during his presidential campaign was to immediately move to end all support for the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen. In February 2021, Biden stood at a podium at the State Department and proclaimed that the war in Yemen must end. Biden underlined the humanitarian crisis as the key reason the United States withdrew support. An investigation (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office found that the United States is training the Saudi-led coalition, and the US has troops on the ground in Yemen. Biden confirmed that the United States has troops in Yemen in a letter to Congress in June last year. Biden lied to the American people when he claimed that the United States was withdrawing US support for the war in Yemen in 2021.
Are these people for real? The #US + Allies rightly criticised Russia for disrespecting the Sovereignty of Ukraine. But the Sovereignty of #Yemen has been vandalised by #Saudi + #UAE with the help of US + Allies – And now they think that they can carve it up as it suits them…? https://t.co/eFbGOltM6Apic.twitter.com/P3fBhcQlwV
Saudi-led coalition airstrikes using weapons supplied by the U.S. and UK were responsible for killing 87 civilians in Yemen in a 14-month period, a new report has found.
So when the Intercept’s Lee Fang kicked off the 8th installment of the Twitter files, I was not expecting much at all. After all, Fang was one of the authors of the very recent garbage Intercept story that totally misunderstood the role of CISA in the government and (falsely) argued that the government demanded Twitter censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. The fact that the evidence from the Twitter files totally disproved his earlier story should at least result in Fang questioning his understanding of these things.
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LibsOfTikTok was ‘whitelisted’.
Thus, it’s not at all surprising that Twitter clearly has a similar whitelist feature. This was actually somewhat revealed in an earlier Twitter File when Bari Weiss, thinking she was revealing unfair treatment of the @LibsOfTikTok account, actually revealed it was on a similar Xcheck style whitelist that clearly showed a flag on the account saying DO NOT TAKE ACTION ON USER WITHOUT CONSULTING an executive team.
Twitter’s most recent transparency report, published in July, shows that it took action on 4.3 million accounts in the second half of 2021 and removed 5.1 million pieces of content. You could cherry-pick a few of those decisions to fit almost any ideological narrative. Right-wing commentators aren’t the only people complaining about platforms’ actions. Some Black and LGBTQ social-media users have also objected that they’re being unfairly moderated, as automated tools take down posts containing words and phrases deemed offensive. Distrust of Big Tech’s power is universal.
The incoming prime minister said that he wants to build on the Abraham Accords, which his former government signed in 2020 to establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain and the UAE. Netanyahu said it’s “up to the leadership of Saudi Arabia if they want to partake in this effort.”
Saudi officials recently reaffirmed that they seek a Palestinian state as a precondition for normalizing with Israel. But in order to form a coalition government, Netanyahu gave Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler, sweeping powers over the West Bank.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Tuesday night withdrew his request to vote on the Yemen War Powers Resolution that would end US support for the Saudi-led war and blockade on Yemen, citing White House opposition to the bill.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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