Tag Archives: kuwait

These Charts Show How the US Is Failing Syrian Refugees

by DarrylSkurrie Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The United States and some other rich nations need to step up their game when it comes to helping millions of Syrians fleeing their country’s brutal civil war, according to a new study released this week by international aid group Oxfam.

Since 2011, about 250,000 people have been killed and 11 million more have fled from their homes amid fighting between the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the country’s rebel groups. On Thursday, the United Nations is co-hosting a conference in London to raise money for Syrians who have been affected by the crisis.

Ahead of that conference, Oxfam crunched some data to figure out how much the United States and other rich countries donated in 2015—and whether, based on the relative size of their economies, they gave their “fair share” of the $8.9 billion total that Oxfam says was needed. For many of the countries, Oxfam found, the answer to that second question was a resounding no. The United States, for example, donated $1.56 billion in aid last year, more than any other country. But with the world’s biggest economy, its “fair share” contribution should have been more than $2 billion, according to Oxfam—and it only gave 76 percent of that. Russia and France, which have also been deeply involved in Syria’s civil war, were relatively stingy, too. By contrast, Kuwait, a smaller country, gave 554 percent of its fair share by donating $313 million in aid.

Oxfam also evaluated whether countries have pledged to take in their fair share of Syrian refugees—again, based on the size of their economies. Oxfam has called on rich countries to resettle at least one-tenth of refugees living in Syria’s neighboring countries—about 460,000 people—by the end of 2016, but notes that to date they have only collectively offered to resettle 128,612 people. Since 2013, the United States has agreed to take in only 7 percent of what Oxfam deems to be the country’s fair share of refugees.

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These Charts Show How the US Is Failing Syrian Refugees

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We’re Still Waiting to Find Out What Happened Off Farsi Island Last Week

by JacklynHume Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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A week after two Navy boats were taken into custody in Iranian waters, the Pentagon still doesn’t seem to have any idea what happened:

The two boats were supposed to follow a course that would keep them in international waters. They were scheduled to refuel at a rendezvous with the Monomoy, a Coast Guard cutter, at about 5 p.m. But the two boats veered off course Into Iranian waters.

….The crews then stopped to try to fix a mechanical problem in one boat’s diesel engine. “This stop occurred in Iranian territorial waters, although it’s not clear the crew was aware of their exact location,” the report said.

At about 5:10 p.m., one of the boats apparently sent a brief radio report that Iranian boats were approaching. A second message was garbled. All communications were cut off by 5:45 p.m., the report said

This is all still pretty peculiar. On a trip from Kuwait to Bahrain, all these boats had to do was stay within 60 miles of the shoreline and they would have been fine. Why were they so far out? Where was the Monomoy? Did they really suffer an engine failure, two GPS failures, and two comms failures all at once? I know that a thorough investigation can take some time, but this one doesn’t seem very complex. What the hell happened out there?

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We’re Still Waiting to Find Out What Happened Off Farsi Island Last Week

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25 Years Later: Photos From the First Time We Invaded Iraq

by Meridith7282 Posted on January 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Twenty-five years ago, former President George H.W. Bush took to the airwaves to announce the launch of what is now known as Operation Desert Storm, a US-led military operation to drive Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait. “Just two hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait,” Bush said on the evening of January 16, 1991. “These attacks continue as I speak.” For five weeks, coalition forces bombarded Iraqi positions from the air and sea. When a ground invasion followed in February, it took only 100 hours to drive Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

Operation Desert Storm marked a shift in how Americans experience combat when the US military deploys in far-flung countries. For the first time, the beginning of a conflict played out on live TV, and viewers could “watch the war” from the comfort of home as it unfolded.

It was billed as a smashing success: an “accurate” bombing campaign, followed up by a swift, four-day ground assault that led to Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait and a ceasefire. Then again, how does one define success in Iraq? Coalition losses reached the hundreds, while Iraqi troop deaths reached into the tens of thousands, and another 2,000-plus civilians were killed.

The anniversary of Operation Desert Storm is a reminder of the unfinished history of the United States at war in Iraq. After all, here we are 25 years later, still dropping bombs there.

Here is a collection of images from the first Gulf War.

Stephen Levin of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, watches President George H.W. Bush announce allied forces’ airstrikes against Iraq at an appliance store in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, on the night of January 17, 1991. Amy Sancetta/AP

CNN took Desert Storm as a moment to show the power of what a 24-hour news channel could do.

Source: YouTube.

Iraqi anti-aircraft fire is launched on January 18, 1991, from Baghdad in response to a US and allied aircraft attack on the city. Dominique Mollard/AP

Three US nationals wearing gas masks listen to a news broadcast on a short-wave radio as Iraqi Scud missiles hit the city on Friday, January 18, 1991, in Tel Aviv. People in the city spent most of the night on full alert for a gas and chemical warfare attack. Martin Cleave/AP

A protester in a skull mask and wearing an American flag holds up the late-afternoon edition of the San Francisco Examiner during a demonstration in downtown San Francisco on January 16, 1991. Thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown San Francisco calling for a peaceful solution to the Gulf crisis. The San Francisco protests turned violent, with protesters burning a police car. Paul Sakuma/AP

Senior Airman Richard Phillips of Mobile, Alabama, steps along a line of 2,000-pound bombs at a US airbase on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. AP

F-16A, F-15C and F-15E flying during Desert Storm US Air Force

US Marines in full combat NBC gear as part of a chemical-weapons drill during Operation Desert Shield in Saudi Arabia DOD/Planet Pix/ZUMA

Aerial view of a destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, a BMP-1, and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8. Staff Sgt. Dean Wagner/DOD

US President George H.W. Bush talks to reporters in the Rose Garden of the White House on Monday, February 12, 1991, in Washington after meeting with advisers to discuss the Persian Gulf War. From left: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Vice President Quayle, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, the president, Secretary of State James A. Baker III, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin Powell. Dennis Cook/AP

A US Marine honor guard carries the casket bearing the remains of Marine Captain Manual Rivera Jr. outside St. Anselm’s Roman Catholic Church in the Bronx borough of New York. Rivera was killed when a Harrier jet he was flying crashed on a training mission in the Persian Gulf. Mark Lennihan/AP

An Iraqi prisoner waits with his hands up while a Saudi trooper inspects papers at an Iraqi bunker complex in southern Kuwait. The coalition advance, and massive surrenders by Iraqi troops, continued throughout the second full day of Operation Desert Storm’s ground warfare in the Gulf War. Laurent Rebours/AP

A motorist in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates holds a special afternoon edition of Gulf News, published in response to Saddam Hussein’s Tuesday announcement on Baghdad Radio of the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait on February 27, 1991. Gill Allen/AP

A humvee drives along a road in the Kuwaiti desert following Operation Desert Storm. Oil wells set ablaze by retreating Iraqi forces burn in the background. DOD

A wounded Ken Kozakiewicz, left, cries after being given the dog tags and learning of the death of a fellow tank crewman, body bag at right. The widely published photo came to define the Persian Gulf War for many. At right is wounded comrade Michael Santarakis. The soldiers were from the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division. David Turnley/DOD Pool/AP

Desert Storm trading cards

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25 Years Later: Photos From the First Time We Invaded Iraq

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California Could Be the Next Saudi Arabia

by IvoryT33yv Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the early 1980s, Saudi Arabia embarked upon a bold project: It began to transform large swaths of desert landscape into wheat farms.

Now, “desert agriculture” isn’t quite the oxymoron it might sound like. These arid zones offer ample sunlight and cool nights, and harbor few crop-chomping insects, fungal diseases, or weed species. As long as you can strategically add water and fertilizer, you’ll generate bin-busting crops. And that’s exactly what Saudi Arabia did. As this Bloomberg News piece shows, the oil-producing behemoth grew so much wheat for about two decades that “its exports could feed Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Yemen.”

But starting in the mid-2000s, Saudi wheat production began to taper off. Soon after, it plunged. This year and from now on, the country will produce virtually no wheat, and instead rely on global markets for the staple grain. What happened?

In short, to irrigate its wheat-growing binge, the nation tapped aquifers that “haven’t been filled since the last Ice Age,” Bloomberg reports. And in doing so, it essentially drained them dry in the span of two decades.

In an April 2015 piece, the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Nathan Halverson brought more details. He writes that the first sign of Saudi agriculture’s water crisis began in the early 2000s,when long-established desert springs—ones that had “bubbled up for thousands of years from a massive aquifer system that lay underneath Saudi Arabia”—began to dry up. It had been “one of the world’s largest underground systems, holding as much groundwater as Lake Erie.” Here’s Halverson:

In the historic town of Tayma, which was built atop a desert oasis mentioned several times in the Old Testament, researchers in 2011 found “most wells exsiccated.” That’s academic speak for “bone dry.” The once-verdant Tayma oasis that had sustained human life for millennia—archaeologists have found stone tablets there dating back 2,500 years—was drained in one generation.

In the meantime, farmers’ wells, too, began to go dry, and they had to drill them ever-deeper to keep the water flowing. By 2012, fully four-fifths of the ancient aquifer had vanished; and the Saudi government had begun to reconsider its make-the-desert-bloom ambitions, which have now turned to dust.

Here in the United States, we’ve followed a similar strategy for fruit, vegetable, and nut production, concentrating it in arid regions of California, irrigated by diverting river water over great distances, and, like the Saudis, tapping massive ancient aquifers. But climate change means less snow to feed rivers and thus to water farms—and more reliance on those underwater reserves. In California’s vast Central Valley, a major site of US food production, fully half of wells are at or below historic lows, according to the US Geological Survey. It’s impossible to know when the region’s aquifers will go dry, because no one has invested in the research required to gauge just how much water is left. But the trend is clear. In large swaths of the region, the land is sinking at rates up to 11 inches per year as underground water vanishes, USGS reports. The raiding of the region’s water reserve is part of a decades-long trend, USGS makes clear, made worse, but not caused, by the current drought.

Two other California regions are significant suppliers to the national food market: the Salinas Valley, known as the “salad bowl of the world”; and the Imperial Valley, which specializes in fresh winter produce. They, too, face severe long-term water trouble.

Unlike their Saudi peers, US policymakers don’t have the luxury of waiting until the water runs out and then simply shifting to a reliance on imports—our population is more than ten times larger. One idea for what to do instead: Enact policies that boost vegetable production in other, more water-rich regions, including the Midwest and South—a process I have dubbed de-Californiacation. To bolster themselves, they may want to ponder what’s scribbled on the ruins of a vanished desert kingdom, as imagined by the Romantic poet Shelley: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings/Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

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California Could Be the Next Saudi Arabia

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 18, 2013

by KathiIvest Posted on December 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait – Pfc. Adrian Echeverria, indirect fire infantryman, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, prepares to load a 120mm mortar round during gunnery qualification at Udairi range near Camp Buehring, Kuwait, Nov. 12, 2013. “It’s hard to describe the feeling when you hang that round,” said Echeverria. “Your entire body shakes. It stops your brain for a quick second then you get back to the way you were trained and get the mission done.”

(U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Andrew Porch, 2nd ABCT, 4th Inf. Div.)

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 18, 2013

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 13, 2013

by ChesterRi Posted on November 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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Sergeant First Class Adam Silvis, a medical platoon sergeant with the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, moves under fire during Expert Field Medical Badge testing on Camp Buehring, Kuwait, Oct. 13, 2013. This is the first time in 14 years that EFMB testing has been conducted in Kuwait. Photo by Sgt. Adam C. Keith, U.S. Army Central.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for November 13, 2013

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