[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Important Announcement

[David Green]

For what it's worth, the NYT does have this article, taken from an
"objective" moral distance:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/world/middleeast/un-saudi-airstrike-yemen-children.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer

But of course no genuine context about the source of the problem.

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 8:56 AM Karen Aram via Peace <
peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Sorry to ruin your day folks with news that you won’t get from mainstream
> media, I know this isn’t the kind of announcements you want to hear. One
> would think being on the Peace List, you would want to know of the lack of
> peace in our world today, especially at the hands of our own government.
> After all, you can get news of local get togethers to celebrate something
> or other, elsewhere in the community.
>
>
>
>    - Print
>    <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/27/yeme-a27.html?view=print>
>    - Leaflet
>    <http://intsse.com/wswspdf/en/articles/2018/08/27/yeme-a27.pdf>
>    - Feedback
>    <http://www.wsws.org/en/special/contact.html?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsws.org%2Fen%2Farticles%2F2018%2F08%2F27%2Fyeme-a27.html&t=US-backed%20Saudi%20air%20strikes%20massacre%20dozens%20of%20Yemeni%20children%20for%20second%20time%20in%20two%20weeks>
>    - Share » <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/27/yeme-a27.html#>
>
> US-backed Saudi air strikes massacre dozens of Yemeni children for second
> time in two weeks By Jordan Shilton
> 27 August 2018
>
> At least 22 children and four women were killed by Saudi air strikes in
> Yemen on Thursday as the US-backed coalition continues its onslaught on the
> port city of Hodeidah and surrounding areas. The latest atrocities came
> just two weeks after a Saudi aircraft dropped an American-supplied bomb on
> a school bus in the northern town of Dahyan, killing 40 children and
> injuring more than 50.
>
> According to reports from a news network aligned with the Houthi rebels,
> the first Saudi air strike hit a camp for internally displaced people
> (IDPS) in Duraihami, killing five people and injuring two. Then, in an act
> of cold-blooded murder that has become the hallmark of the Saudi air war in
> the impoverished country, an aircraft struck a group of 26 women and
> children trying to flee the scene of the earlier air strike by bus.
>
> The Saudi-led coalition sought to justify the bombing by claiming that the
> rebels fired a ballistic missile from the area earlier in the day. In
> reality, the indiscriminate targeting of civilians is nothing new.
> According to data compiled by al-Jazeera and the Yemen Data Project, around
> one third of the 16,000 Saudi air strikes on Yemen since March 2015 have
> hit civilian targets. These have included weddings, water treatment plants,
> hospitals and electricity plants.
>
> As with every air strike launched by the Saudis and their allies, which
> bear responsibility for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of
> civilian deaths caused by the bloody three-year-long conflict, the two
> strikes Thursday would not have occurred without the support of the United
> States. US military personnel operate a joint headquarters with their Saudi
> counterparts in Riyadh for intelligence sharing, regularly refuel Saudi
> jets in midair so they can continue their murderous raids, and supply the
> reactionary dictatorship with billions of dollars worth of bombs and other
> military equipment. Analyses of contracts between US defence contractors
> and Riyadh indicate that $90 billion in military equipment was sold to
> Riyadh by the US between 2010 and 2015.
>
> Just one week prior to the latest massacre, research published by CNN
> revealed that the 500-pound bomb dropped by Saudi aircraft on a school bus
> on 9 August was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, the US' largest defence
> contractor. It was supplied to the Saudi air force in a munitions deal
> approved by the State Department after former Secretary of State Rex
> Tillerson lifted restrictions on supplying precision-guided arms shipments
> to Riyadh in march 2017.
>
> Washington's support for Riyadh's near-genocidal assault on the Yemeni
> population was initiated by the Obama administration in March 2015. It has
> been intensified over the past year, including with the deployment of US
> special forces on the ground to call in air strikes, and a dramatic
> increase in the number of air strikes launched directly by the US in Yemen.
> These attacks, ostensibly directed against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian
> Peninsula and ISIS forces, saw a five-fold increase to over 130 in 2017.
>
> Responding to the latest attack, United Nations officials renewed the
> organization's demand, issued following the August 9 school bus bombing,
> for an independent inquiry into the latest round of atrocities. Mark
> Lowcock, the UN's top relief official, declared that there was no doubt of
> Riyadh's responsibility for Thursday's twin attacks.
>
> The bombing is part of the Saudi-led coalition's brutal offensive,
> relaunched in early July in close collaboration with Washington, to take
> the port city of Hodeidah, which Houthi rebels have held since 2014. The
> port remains one of the few lifelines through which aid can pass into the
> war-ravaged country. The siege of the city is causing aid organisations to
> fear that 8 million Yemenis, more than a third of the population, could be
> left without food.
>
> Horrendous war crimes like those carried out on Thursday and in the school
> bus attack are a regular occurrence. On 2 August, at least 60 people were
> killed and over 130 injured after a fish market in Hodeidah was bombed.
> Meanwhile, Middle East Eye reported on 16 August that residents of the town
> of Duraihami, some 20 kilometres south of Hodeidah, had been stranded in
> their houses for days as Saudi forces and mercenaries carried out an
> offensive against the city to retake it from the Houthis.
>
> “There are some people that have bled to death [in the street] and no one
> dared to help them because of the clashes. Some corpses have decayed in the
> streets,” Ahmed Mubarak, a Duraihami resident, told Middle East Eye. “The
> town lives under siege, and also we are under siege inside our houses, as
> the snipers in the city from both sides kill anyone who leaves his house to
> the street.”
>
> On Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a 90-page report accusing the
> Saudi-United Arab Emirates alliance of war crimes. HRW criticised the Joint
> Incident Assessment Team (JIAT), set up by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to
> examine allegations of war crimes, for “absolving coalition members of
> legal responsibility in the vast majority of attacks.” The report
> continued: “JIAT investigations show no apparent effort to investigate
> personal criminal responsibility for unlawful air attacks. This apparent
> attempt to shield parties to the conflict and individual military personnel
> from criminal liability is itself a violation of the laws of war.”
>
> Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said, “For
> more than two years, the coalition has claimed that JIAT was credibly
> investigating allegedly unlawful air strikes, but the investigators were
> doing little more than covering up war crimes.”
>
> The slaughtering of civilians in Yemen has been all but ignored by the
> corporate-controlled media. The few expressions of concern that have been
> made, including from a handful of members of the US Congress, have focused
> on the danger that US military personnel could be charged with war crimes,
> rather than expressing any real concern for the plight of the Yemeni people.
>
> The massacring of tens of thousands of civilians in pursuit of US
> imperialism's predatory interests in the Middle East long ago became a
> routine affair for the media and political establishment. If the Saudis now
> feel they can act with such impunity in Yemen, it is not merely because
> Washington backs Riyadh's aggressive war to the hilt, but also because the
> United States has been no less ruthless in its slaughtering of civilians.
> Since the launching of the “war on terror” 17 years ago, US imperialism has
> laid waste to entire societies and bears responsibility for deaths in the
> millions, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
>
> US imperialism's unwavering support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen is
> bound up with its determination to retain its unchallenged dominance over
> the strategically significant and oil-rich Middle East. Washington's drive
> to crush the resistance of the Houthis, whom the US and Riyadh routinely
> accuse, without providing any evidence, of being Iranian puppets, is viewed
> as the prelude to an even bloodier and more devastating conflict with Iran.
>
> The threat of such a catastrophic war is growing. In tandem with its
> backing for the escalation of the Yemen conflict over recent months, the
> Trump administration has moved to abrogate the 2015 nuclear accord with
> Iran. At the same time, Washington has given Israel a free hand to bomb
> Iranian installations in Syria, which has emboldened the right-wing
> Netanyahu government.
>
> Earlier this month, the US began to reimpose punishing sanctions against
> Tehran, with a further round due to target Iran's lucrative oil exports in
> November. Washington has used these measures of economic warfare to bully
> its nominal allies and rivals alike to line up behind its provocative
> threats against Iran, which could rapidly erupt into a region-wide military
> conflict that would draw in the major powers.
>
> WSWS.ORG <http://wsws.org>
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