#global terrorists

[brexiiton]

Yemen strikes: Houthis hit US-owned ship after 'terror' designation

By Matt Murphy, BBC News, Washington

Yemen's Houthis have targeted a US-owned vessel in the Gulf of Aden after Washington said it will re-designate the group as "global terrorists".

The group said they hit the "Genco Picardy" bulk carrier with missiles which resulted in a "direct hit".

The US military says the vessel was hit by a drone on Wednesday evening.

Washington's new designation of the Houthis will require US financial institutions to freeze Houthi funds and its members will be banned from the US.

The Houthi attacks in the Gulf of Aden and neighbouring Red Sea are a response to Israel's military operation in Gaza.

Earlier this month, the UK and US launched air strikes on dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen in an attempt to stop the group from targeting vessels in the waters.

On Wednesday evening, a Houthi spokesperson said the group had successfully targeted the Genco Picardy, and that the attack was a response to "the American-British aggression against our country".

The US military said the ship was hit by a drone launched from Houthi controlled areas in Yemen. It said there was some damage but no injuries, and the vessel remained seaworthy.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the re-designation of the Houthis as "global terrorists" is in response to the Iran-backed group's attacks on commercial shipping in the region.

The move to re-designate the Houthis reverses Secretary of State Antony Blinken's 2021 decision to remove the rebels from the US Specially Designated Global Terrorist Like (SDGT).

In a statement, Mr Sullivan said the recent Houthi attacks "fit the textbook definition of terrorism", as they have put US personnel in danger and jeopardized global trade operations.

"If the Houthis cease their attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the United States will immediately re-evaluate this designation," Mr Sullivan added.

In the waning days off the Trump administration officials imposed the SDGT and foreign terrorist organisation (FTO) labels on the Houthis.

The action was taken despite warnings from the UN and aid groups that it could push-war-torn Yemen into a large-scale famine.

But in 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden's inauguration, that decision was reversed by Mr Blinken, the newly installed Secretary of State. He cited the dire humanitarian situation faced by the people of Yemen.

"It was the correct step to revoke," one official said, arguing that it was a move taken in "recognition of a very dire humanitarian situation" in the country and to ensure that "US policies weren't impeding" civilians' access to urgent aid.

But they accepted that the Houthis' campaign of attacks on commercial shipping, which has now seen dozens of missiles fired at vessels in the Red Sea, has become "unacceptable".

The new SDGT designation will also bar people and companies in the US from offering any support to the Houthis.

However, officials were keen to emphasise that a range of exemptions will be worked into the new designation to ensure humanitarian aid continues to flow into Yemen, a country devastated by almost a decade of civil war.

"We are rolling out unprecedented carve outs and licenses to help prevent adverse impacts on the Yemeni people," said Mr Sullivan in his statement. "The people of Yemen should not pay the price for the actions of the Houthis."

The Houthis began attacking merchant vessels in November, saying they were responding to Israel's military operation in Gaza. Since then, the group has launched dozens of attacks on commercial tankers passing through the Red Sea, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

In response, the US and UK launched a wave of air strikes against dozens of Houthi targets on 11 January. The strikes - supported by Australia, Bahrain, the Netherlands and Canada - began after Houthi forces ignored an ultimatum to cease their attacks in the region.

Biden administration officials denied that the new terrorist designation was an acceptance that the air campaign may not deter further Houthi attacks.

"We see these sanctions as one piece of a broader effort to bring the Houthis back from the terror attacks they are currently committing," one official said. "Our sanctions are best not seen in isolation but as part of a broader effort."

In the wake of last week's strikes, the Houthis said the US and UK would "soon realise" the action was "the greatest folly in their history".

"America and Britain made a mistake in launching the war on Yemen because they did not benefit from their previous experiences," senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti wrote on social media.

Yemen has been devastated by a civil war that escalated in 2015, when the Houthis seized control of large parts of the west of the country from the internationally recognised government and a Saudi-led coalition intervened in an effort to restore its rule.

The fighting has reportedly left more than 160,000 people dead and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with two thirds of the population - 21 million people - in need of some form of aid.

[clownngutzz]

[nando161mando]

The warmongering US

[palestinegenocide]

GLOBAL STRIKE FOR GAZA HAS BEGUN!!

Please participate:

During the 21st - 28th of January:

Do not shop/online shop

Avoid these companies

Skip school/work if you are able to

Be present & active on social media and uplift Palestinian voices

Participate in local actions

Draw, write, sing, create art for Palestine

Repost & boost Palestine related content on social media

Don't engage in other content

Educate yourself about the issue

Share footage from Gaza

We have been asked to strike during these days by the hardworking journalist Bisan from Gaza. this infographic should tell you the basics while the ig post by Bisan goes into detail. stock up well, extract physical money from your accs, let's do our best

We're in this together!!

[pineappleciders]

elevate palestinian voices

do not stop talking about the genocide in gaza

[rapha-reads]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bisan’8 - حكواتية (@wizard_bisan1)

Bisan's words from this night, after she survived an attack on Al Nassr hospital.

[sugas6thtooth]

[reuna]

My painting 11.12.2023. This is just a solidarity post, inspired by this:

Please go check out Palestinian art https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/palestinian%20art

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

[sweaters-and-vertigo]

why is it so difficult for people to understand that the holocaust caused by the nazis was horrific AND the holocaust being caused by the zionists is equally as horrific.

these are both genocides. these are both tragedies. these are both horrible injustices. how can you possibly use one to justify another?

i am so confused, as well as angry and sad on behalf of the palestinians. on behalf of all muslims, actually. they probably feel like the whole world has turned it’s back on them. i’m just heartbroken for them. and if one more person calls me antisemitic for feeling that way, i will gouge my eyes out and mail them to you. zionism is what’s truly antisemitic.

history will know the truth but unfortunately the palestinians can’t wait that long.

[chryblossomjjk]

joe biden really said “you don’t have to be jewish to be a zionist” … like obviously not but you do have to have an evil dark sided soul to fund genocide and be one of the direct causes for the murder of thousands of innocent people

[troythecatfish]

1st April - global strike for Palestine. Block the roads, block the embassies. Block the weapons. Block the businesses supporting Israel....

No more life as normal, while genocide is happening

If there is to be an end to this horror, it's on us to stop it. Let's do this ✊🇵🇸

freepalestine

[justacynicalromantic]

"Take it and everything will be more peachy than in Bucha!" - the add of a Russian bodybuilding supplements brand.

No one before has ever come up with an idea to use mass slaughter of civilians for a product advertising. Neither Milošević, nor Pol Pot, not ever Hitler.

[palestinegenocide]

[traditionaldream]

So sad to hear the news about the Southport terrorist attack (even though the media persists on not calling it a terrorist attack).

It's even worse, knowing that one of the girls that died was portuguese. My heart goes to Alice's family and friends, as well to the relatives of all the victims and the people in critical condition at the hospital, fighting for their lives.

Of course the media persists in hiding the identity of the murderer, but everyone already knows who he is. The more they try to hide and protect those individuals, the more the people look for the answers by their own means.

People who don't conform to European culture, don't belong in Europe.

It's not Europe's fault, as some like to portrait. And it's not racism or xenophobia. It's facts.

May God have mercy on their souls. May they rest in His embrace.

🕊🤍

[proudzionist]