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President Trump announced last week that he was returning North Korea to the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism” after having been off the list for the past nine years. Americans may wonder what dramatic event led the US president to re-designate North Korea as a terrorism-sponsoring nation. Has Pyongyang been found guilty of some spectacular terrorist attack overseas or perhaps of plotting to overthrow another country by force? No, that is not the case. North Korea is back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism because President Trump thinks the move will convince the government to give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. He believes that continuing down the path toward confrontation with North Korea will lead the country to capitulate to Washington’s demands. That will not happen.

President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson argued that North Korea deserved to be back on the list because the North Korean government is reported to have assassinated a North Korean citizen – Kim Jong-Un’s own half-brother — in February at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. But what does that say about Washington’s own program to assassinate US citizens like Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son under Obama, and later Awlaki’s six-year-old daughter under Trump? Like Kim’s half-brother, Awlaki and his two children were never tried or convicted of a crime before being killed by their own government.

The neocons, who are pushing for a war with North Korea, are extremely pleased with Trump’s move. John Bolton called it “exactly the right thing to do.”

Designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism will allow President Trump to impose the “highest level of sanctions” on North Korea. Does anyone believe more sanctions – which hurt the suffering citizens of North Korea the most – will actually lead North Korea’s leadership to surrender to Washington’s demands? Sanctions never work. They hurt the weakest and most vulnerable members of society the hardest and affect the elites the least.

So North Korea is officially a terrorism-sponsoring nation according to the Trump Administration because Kim Jong-Un killed a family member. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is in the process of killing the entire country of Yemen and no one says a word. In fact, the US government has just announced it will sell Saudi Arabia $7 billion more weapons to help it finish the job.

Also, is it not “state-sponsorship” of terrorism to back al-Qaeda and ISIS, as Saudi Arabia has done in Syria?

The truth is a “state sponsor of terrorism” designation has little to do with actual support for global terrorism. As bad as the North Korean government is, it is does not go abroad looking for countries to invade. The designation is a political one, allowing Washington to ramp up more aggression against North Korea.

Next month the US and South Korean militaries will conduct a massive military exercise practicing an attack on North Korea. American and South Korean air force fighters and bombers will practice “enemy infiltration” and “precision strike drills.” Are these not also to be seen as threatening?

What is terrorism? Maybe we should ask a Yemeni child constantly wondering when the next Saudi bomb overhead might kill his family. Or perhaps we might even ask a Pakistani, Somali, Iraqi, Syrian, or other child who is terrified that the next US bomb will do the same to his family. Perhaps we need to look at whether US foreign policy actually reflects the American values we claim to be exporting before we point out the flaws in others.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

Mohammed bin Salman, who seems to be running Saudi Arabia these days, is one of the bad guys. If he were a good guy, he wouldn’t have attacked his neighboring country, Yemen. He wouldn’t be committing war crimes there in conjunction with vital U.S. support. If he were a good guy, he’d respect not only the rights of females but also the rights of everyone else.

Based upon some cursory research, all that I have time for at the moment, I suggest that the dominant media in America are biased in their reporting about this political potentate. I searched Google using “Mohammed bin Salman 2016”. You can check me. I found headlines with terms like this: “…the prince trying to wean Saudi Arabia off oil”, “shatters decades of Royal tradition”, “plotting to try and take over as the country’s new king by the end of 2016”, “buys £452m yacht”, “Mohammed Bin Salman seems to have won a power struggle in the Kingdom”, “The 30-year-old prince who is changing the world”, “just pushed through a bold package of reforms”, “Prince Muhammad Bin Salman Three-Pronged Approach to Counter-Terrorism”, “Saudi deputy crown prince to visit the United States”, “Obama hosts Saudi Prince Salman at White House” and “Saudi Arabia Prince Mohammed Bin Salman To Visit Silicon Valley”.

The preceding articles mainly sell bin Salman as progressive, modern, bold, daring, and innovative. They paint him as a great guy with youthful energy. His age is almost always mentioned.

You would not know that he started a war against Yemen unless you searched on “saudi aggression on yemen 2016”. Then you’d find some headlines like these: “Airstrikes on Yemen funeral kill at least 140 people”, “U.N. experts warn Saudi-led coalition allies over war crimes in Yemen”, “Yemen conflict: The view from the Saudi side”, “US/Saudi Aggression in Yemen Celebrated by Co-Aggressor UAE”, “Why Saudi Arabia Is Continuing Its War In Yemen”, “Saudi-Led Coalition Says It Bombed Yemen Funeral Based on False …”, and “Why is Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen”.

Some of these war-oriented articles are justifying the Saudi aggression. One article explains that bombing the funeral procession can be blamed on false intelligence. The man’s name who is responsible for all this is not in these headlines.

Nowadays, the press is busy associating Yemen with Iran in order to justify Saudi aggression. However, it is reluctantly being forced to acknowledge the Saudi starvation strategy. The spread of cholera and the rising number of deaths is the attention-getter after 2 years.

Had the dominant press recognized and reported the Saudi aggression for what it was in 2015, the image of bin Salman would have been entirely different. Today he’s being celebrated in these media as a liberalizer, even a populist. He’s letting women drive cars! Think of that! He must be okay. He must be a good guy.

He’s not. Good guys do not kill with the left hand while distributing Thanksgiving turkeys with the right hand. That’s what neighborhood gangsters and Mafia do. Bin Salman is a gangster. He’s a bad guy.

ADDENDUM: 9 hours after this was written, an article in The Duran confirms the media bias.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

It’s remarkable that whenever you read an article about Yemen in the mainstream media, the central role of Saudi Arabia and the United States in the tragedy is glossed over or completely ignored. A recent Washington Post article purporting to tell us “how things got so bad” explains to us that, “it’s a complicated story” involving “warring regional superpowers, terrorism, oil, and an impending climate catastrophe.”

No, Washington Post, it’s simpler than that. The tragedy in Yemen is the result of foreign military intervention in the internal affairs of that country. It started with the “Arab Spring” which had all the fingerprints of State Department meddling, and it escalated with 2015’s unprovoked Saudi attack on the country to re-install Riyadh’s preferred leader. Thousands of innocent civilians have been killed and millions more are at risk as starvation and cholera rage.

We are told that US foreign policy should reflect American values. So how can Washington support Saudi Arabia – a tyrannical state with one of the worst human rights record on earth – as it commits by what any measure is a genocide against the Yemeni people? The UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs warned just last week that Yemen faces “the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims.” The Red Cross has just estimated that a million people are vulnerable in the cholera epidemic that rages through Yemen.

The United States is backing Saudi aggression against Yemen by cooperating in every way with the Saudi military. Targeting, intelligence, weapons sales, and more. The US is a partner in Saudi Arabia’s Yemen crimes. Does holding hands with Saudi Arabia as it slaughters Yemeni children really reflect American values? Is anyone even playing attention?

The claim that we are fighting al-Qaeda in Yemen and thus our involvement is covered under the post-9/11 authorization for the use of force is without merit. In fact it has been reported numerous times in the mainstream media that US intervention on behalf of the Saudis in Yemen is actually a boost to al-Qaeda in the country. Al-Qaeda is at war with the Houthis who had taken control of much of the country because the Houthis practice a form of Shi’a Islam they claim is tied to Iran. We are fighting on the same side as al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Adding insult to injury, the US Congress can’t be bothered to even question how we got so involved in a war that has nothing to do with us. A few conscientious Members of Congress got together recently to introduce a special motion under the 1973 War Powers Act that would have required a vote on our continued military involvement in the Yemen genocide. The leadership of both parties joined together to destroy this attempt to at least get a vote on US aggression against Yemen. As it turns out, the only Members to vote against this shamefully gutted resolution were the original Members who introduced it. This is bipartisanship at its worst.

US involvement in Saudi Arabia’s crimes against Yemen is a national disgrace. That the mainstream media fails to accurately cover this genocide is shameful. Let us join our voices now to demand that our US Representatives end US involvement in Yemen immediately!

From Lewrockwell.com, here.