>b's weblog

150,000 people are thought to have starved to death in Yemen last year, with one child dying of starvation or preventable diseases every ten minutes, and another falling into extreme malnutrition every two minutes. […] The cause is well known: the Saudi-led coalition’s bombardment and blockade of the country, with the full support of the US and UK […]

150'000 Menschen sind letztes Jahr im Jemen vermutlich bereits an Hunger gestorben, mit ca. einem Kind alle Zehn Minuten, dass an Hunger oder an vermeidbaren Krankheiten stirbt, und zudem mit je einem alle zwei Minuten, das zu denen hinzukommt, die an extremer Unterernährung leiden. […] Der Grund dafür ist wohlbekannt: das Bombardement der saudi-geführten Koalition und die Blockade des Landes, mit voller Unterstützung der USA und der Briten […]

Den Bericht gibt's hier.

An exceptional investigation by the IRIN news agency reported that “the press release journalists received announcing the [YCHO] plan came neither from the coalition itself nor from Saudi aid officials. It came, along with an invitation to visit Yemen, straight from a British PR agency”. That agency was Pagefield Global Counsel, one of the successor companies to disgraced PR giant Bell Pottinger (employing over 20 former Pottinger staff).

The investigation also revealed that the powerpoint presentation used to introduce the YCHO to high level UN officials was authored by Nicholas Nahas, of Booz Allen Hamilton, a US management consultancy with long-established links to the US state – including involvement in the illegal SWIFT and PRISM mass surveillance programmes – and which currently has, says IRIN “35 job listings in Riyadh on its website, including “military planner”, a role that requires the applicant to: “Provide military and planning advice and expertise to support the coordination of Joint counter threat operations executed by coalition member nations and facilitate resourcing to enable operations.””

Another PR company involved in ‘selling’ the YCHO, long on the Saudi payroll, is Qorvis MSLGROUP, who, says IRIN, “booked US revenue of more than $6 million from the Saudi Arabian embassy [in the US] over a 12-month period up to September 2017”.