Yemen
The “Rules-Based International Order”
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/a58659088be82cb95bcee4fdcedaf3b7/href
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the incineration of Gaza, and the bombing of Yemeni forces who are trying to stop it.
The “rules-based international order” allowed hundreds of thousands of people to be killed by western-backed Saudi atrocities in Yemen.
The “rules-based international order” allowed NATO powers to knowingly provoke a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine.
The “rules-based international order” allowed western powers and their regional partners to plunge Syria into a horrific civil war by flooding the nation with heavily armed fascistic extremist factions.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US to invade and occupy a vast stretch of Syrian territory in order to control the nation’s natural resources and prevent reconstruction.
The “rules-based international order” allowed Libya to be turned into a chaotic hellscape after western-backed forces killed Gaddafi following a long-desired western regime change operation disguised as “humanitarian intervention”.
The “rules-based international order” allowed the invasion of Iraq to destabilize an entire region resulting in millions of deaths following a campaign of deliberate lies and propaganda.
The “rules-based international order” allowed the invasion of Afghanistan and a decades-long occupation sustained by lies and corruption.
The “rules-based international order” allowed the imprisonment of Julian Assange for journalistic activities exposing US war crimes.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the planet to be circled by hundreds of US military bases, including in places where the people who live there vehemently oppose their presence like Okinawa, Iraq and Syria.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US and its allies to kill huge numbers of civilians with siege warfare tactics in nations like Yemen, Iraq and Venezuela.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US to interfere in scores of elections around the world at will and forcibly topple inconvenient governments whenever it wants to.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed China to be surrounded by a rapidly increasing amount of US military bases and war machinery in preparation for a future conflict of unimaginable horror.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the US to plunge the world into a new cold war with rapidly-escalating brinkmanship against nuclear-armed Russia and China.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed our civilization to be controlled by the most powerful propaganda system ever devised, creating a mind-controlled dystopia of brainwashed gear-turners who are deceived into believing they are free.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed unfathomable amounts of government malfeasance to be hidden behind an increasingly opaque wall of government secrecy.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the interests of ordinary human beings to be subordinated and subjected to the interests of billionaire corporations and sociopathic government agencies.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed the destruction of our ecosystem for the enrichment of powerful plutocrats.
The “rules-based international order” has allowed our planet to be dominated by an empire of extreme murderousness and depravity at the cost of nonstop bloodshed and ever-increasing tyranny.
If the “rules-based international order” has allowed all these things to happen, what kind of “rules” are we talking about exactly? And what kind of “order” do they sustain?
If this is what the “rules-based international order” looks like, would we not, perhaps, be better off without it?
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Attack on Yemen raises risk of wider war
Labor has backed the savage attack on at least 60 targets in 16 locations around Yemen by the US and Britain.
Aerial bombardments took place in the capital Sanaa, the Houthi Red Sea port of Hudaydah, Dhamar and the north-western city of Saada.
The bombing was a response to harassment of shipping connected to Israel by Houthi forces in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow waterway at the entrance to the Red Sea which commands the route to the Suez Canal.
A Houthi official responded defiantly, “Do the American, British and Zionists expect that any aggressive act against Yemen will distract us from defending Gaza?
“We swear, even if we turned into atoms scattered in the air, we will not leave Gaza. We will continue to target Zionist ships and those going to the Zionist entity [Israel].”
Australia was one of ten countries to participate in the attack. Australian personnel were likely to have been involved in Bahrain at the joint maritime task force headquarters.
And Anthony Albanese gave political cover for the offensive when he signed a joint statement sponsored by the US that threatened the Houthis.
The Houthis are allied to Iran, which also supports the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
Greens spokesman David Shoebridge slammed the bombing as an “effective death sentence for thousands of people” who relied on Yemeni ports to receive food and medicine.
Yemen is the 177th poorest country in the world and has been wracked by civil war for a decade. More than 370,000 people have died from fighting or famine, according to the United Nations.
Labor has done nothing to stop the slaughter in Gaza. It has refused to call for a permanent ceasefire, continues to approve weapon exports to Israel and has not backed South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
But it has sprung into action to defend shipping lanes, putting profits before the lives of people in Palestine, Yemen and Lebanon, which Israel bombs almost daily.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said, “The actions that have been taken today, supported by Australia, are about maintaining freedom of navigation on the high seas.
“They are about maintaining global trade, and that is completely central to Australia’s national interest.”
It’s a message that he will no doubt want China to hear in relation to shipping lanes in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
The West’s bombing of Yemen puts the lie to any idea that the US is trying to constrain Israel’s savage attack on Gaza.
The US continues to provide the arms for Israel’s butchery and is now threatening regional war to intimidate anyone who provides support to the Palestinians.
The attack on Yemen is yet another reason to be out on the streets for Gaza, building a mass movement against not just Israel but US and Australian imperialism.
By David Glanz
The post Attack on Yemen raises risk of wider war first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Western Empire Bombs Yemen To Protect Israel’s Genocide Operations In Gaza
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/e2d96d8ee90d94a9d190c4318efaac55/href
The US and UK have reportedly struck over a dozen sites in Yemen using Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, backed by logistical support from Australia, Canada, Bahrain and the Netherlands. A statement from President Biden asserts that the strikes against “targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels” are a “direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea”.
What Biden does not mention in his statement about his administration’s “response” to Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea is the fact that those Red Sea attacks are themselves a response to Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza. Also unmentioned is the fact that the strikes took place after the first day of proceedings in the International Court of Justice in which Israel stands accused by South Africa of committing a genocide in Gaza.
So the US and the UK just bombed the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide. Not only that, they bombed the very same country in which they just spent years backing Saudi Arabia’s genocidal atrocities which killed hundreds of thousands of people between 2015 and 2022 in an unsuccessful bid to stop the Houthis from taking power.
Antiwar.com on Twitter: "US and UK Bomb Dozens of Sites in YemenThe Houthis have warned of a major responseby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #Gaza #RedSea #Biden https://t.co/B6FIwy85UL pic.twitter.com/OiKAdmSICG / Twitter"
US and UK Bomb Dozens of Sites in YemenThe Houthis have warned of a major responseby Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Yemen #Houthis #Gaza #RedSea #Biden https://t.co/B6FIwy85UL pic.twitter.com/OiKAdmSICG
The Houthis, formally known as Ansarallah, threatened ahead of the attack to fiercely retaliate against any strikes from the US and its allies. Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who leads the Houthi movement, said that the response to any American attack “will be greater than” a recent Houthi offensive which used dozens of drones and several missiles.
“We, the Yemeni people, are not among those who are afraid of America,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech. “We are comfortable with a direct confrontation with the Americans.”
An unnamed US official who informed Huffington Post’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed about the imminent strikes on Yemen shortly before they occurred complained that the airstrikes “will not solve the problem” and that the approach “doesn’t add up to a cohesive strategy.”
Ahmed has previously reported that behind the scenes, officials in this administration have been getting increasingly nervous about the risk of Biden igniting a wider war in the middle east. This latest escalation, along with the Houthi pledge to retaliate, adds a lot of weight to this concern.
Dave DeCamp on Twitter: "Biden has now bombed Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, all to ensure Israel can continue slaughtering Palestinian women and children. / Twitter"
Biden has now bombed Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, all to ensure Israel can continue slaughtering Palestinian women and children.
And all for what? To protect Israel’s ability to conduct a months-long massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
This is what the US empire is. This is what it has always been about.
These people are showing us exactly who they are.
We should probably believe them.
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Featured image via Number 10 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Parliament to reconvene to approve UK airstrikes on Yemen
As world unites in horror at Israel’s genocide, UK Establishment reaction is to protect Israel and billionaires by attacking country taking action for Palestinians
UDPATE: The UK is bombing Yemen tonight, without bothering to have Parliament approve it – and will recall MPs tomorrow to rubber stamp it. The UK is not at war with Yemen but is acting as a rogue state to protect Israel from the economic impact of the shipping interceptions.
The government is reconvening Parliament to push through a vote to approve airstrikes against Yemen, because of Yemen’s success in intercepting Israel-bound shipping to put pressure on Israel to end its genocide. The disruption to seaborne trade is said to be having a significant impact on the Israeli economy.
Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has been taken to a Whitehall briefing tonight and is expected to recall MPs from their usual Friday activities away from Westminster to vote through the attacks – of course, ‘opposition’ leader and ‘Zionist without qualification’ Keir Starmer is fully expected to vote with the Tories.
With most of the world united in horror at the ICJ evidence of Israel’s genocide and war crimes against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the UK Establishment reaction, always ready to side with the oppressor against the oppressed, is to protect Israel and billionaires by attacking a country to help Palestinians, regardless of the likely consequences of igniting a regional war.
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Silencing Teachers in Yemen
As the Houthi replaced the internationally recognized government of Yemen, dismissing it predictably as illegitimate and manipulated by Western forces, they dismantled the nation’s academic institutions, imposing a coercive educational regime with an ideologically-driven curriculum on instructors at every level, from primary schools to universities....
Video: Starmer supports UK hitting Houthis trying to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Red Tory ‘leader’ backs Shapps plan to stop Yemeni de facto government attempt to block trade shipping to pressure Israel into ending mass slaughter
‘Zionist without qualification’ Keir Starmer has said that he supports the Tory government’s plan to use UK military forces to stop Houthis – the de facto government in a large part of Yemen – blocking Israeli-bound shipping, a measure the Yemenis are taking, with considerable economic impact, to try to pressure Israel into ending its genocide in Gaza.
Starmer told Sky News that he backs Defence Secretary Grant Shapps – far from the first time he has supported the Tories at a cost of innocent lives:
Yet again, while many of the world’s developing nations and the vital BRICS bloc are backing the prosecution of Israel for its crimes, the oppositionless UK is on the wrong side of world events and backing a genocidal regime that has slaughtered more than 30,000 people, more than ninety percent of them innocent civilians and more than two thirds women and children.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
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We Are Entirely Too Close To Another Major War In The Middle East
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/f2b333f1a74dd08742ae748eb91a8a26/href
The US and its allies have published a joint statement warning Yemen’s Houthis to cease the attacks they’ve been making on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The Houthis, officially known as Ansarallah, have successfully slashed Israeli port activity by an extremely massive margin with their maritime tactics in response to Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza.
The statement asserts that the Yemeni attacks “are a direct threat to the freedom of navigation that serves as the bedrock of global trade in one of the world’s most critical waterways,” complaining that they are “adding significant cost and weeks of delay to the delivery of goods,” and ultimately threatens that the Houthis will “bear the responsibility of the consequences” should these attacks continue.
Many critics have been pointing out the irony of the western power alliance threatening military intervention to protect shipping containers and corporate profits while actual human beings are being butchered by Israeli airstrikes and starved by Israeli siege warfare with nothing but friendly support from these same powers.
“Palestinians would really love to get the same amount of attention and protection as shipping containers,” tweeted Palestinian-Canadian journalist Yasmine El-Sawabi.
Dave DeCamp on Twitter: "The US and some of its Allies just put out a joint statement threatening the Houthis over their Red Sea attacks on commercial shipping. Seems like they're preparing to bomb Yemen. pic.twitter.com/tV6VFdhybj / Twitter"
The US and some of its Allies just put out a joint statement threatening the Houthis over their Red Sea attacks on commercial shipping. Seems like they're preparing to bomb Yemen. pic.twitter.com/tV6VFdhybj
That the US and its allies would go to war against the people who are trying to stop an active genocide tells you everything you need to know about them. The fact that they’d do it for corporate profit margins tells you even more, and the fact that they’d do it to a nation they’ve already helped inflict unfathomable horrors upon in recent years tells you more still.
And that’s just one of the potential wars looming on the horizon in connection with the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. As Trita Parsi recently explained in The Nation, there are three other fronts along which wars could also erupt in the region apart from a western conflict with the Houthis: in Iraq and Syria where US forces have been repeatedly under attack by militants in response to the Gaza assault, in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, and the absolute nightmare scenario of a full-scale war with Iran.
“That risk exists on four fronts: Between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah, in Syria and Iraq due to attacks on US troops by militias aligned with Iran, the Red Sea between the Houthis and the US Navy, and between Israel and Iran following both the assassination of an Iranian general in Syria and the explosion in Kerman today at the commemoration of the death of General Qassem Soleimani that has killed more than 100,” Parsi writes.
Katrina vandenHeuvel on Twitter: "Will Israel Drag the US Into Another Ruinous War? President Biden refuses to pursue the most obvious way of de-escalating tensions & avoid American deaths: a cease-fire in Gaza.@tritaparsi https://t.co/mHSj1bPDEt / Twitter"
Will Israel Drag the US Into Another Ruinous War? President Biden refuses to pursue the most obvious way of de-escalating tensions & avoid American deaths: a cease-fire in Gaza.@tritaparsi https://t.co/mHSj1bPDEt
It is a potentially ominous sign that Israel has begun focusing on ramping up aggressions against Iran and Hezbollah while simultaneously withdrawing thousands of troops from Gaza. Some analysts argue that we are seeing an attempt by Israel to pull the US into a direct war with Hezbollah, which is something US officials have reportedly been worried would happen ever since the Gaza assault began.
There are entirely too many fronts along which a new horrific war in the middle east could potentially erupt, and things are entirely too close to the brink on all of them. And all for land, money and geostrategic control, same as always. The sooner the US-centralized power structure crumbles, the better it will be for humanity.
________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
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Featured image via Adobe Stock.
War Is Not Abstracted Anymore
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
https://medium.com/media/ceb114b202032f44363cdcdf750d0794/href
Pentagon contractor Elon Musk and war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu had a conversation that they broadcast on Twitter during Musk’s apology pilgrimage to Israel in a desperate bid to salvage his public image amid costly accusations of antisemitism.
The “conversation” was really more of a monologue, with the Israeli leader droning on in his conspicuously American accent while Musk meekly agreed with him on every point. During his lecture, Bibi said something worth highlighting while complaining about the worldwide pro-Palestine protests that have been underway since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing Gaza massacre.
“We have mass demonstrations,” Netanyahu said at around the 15:55 mark. “Where were these demonstrations when over a million Arabs and Muslims were killed in Syria, in Yemen, many of them starving to death, those who didn’t die in explosions. Where were the demonstrations in London? In Paris? In San Francisco? In Washington? Where are they?”
“The answer is they don’t care about the Palestinians, they hate Israel,” Netanyahu said. “And they hate Israel because they hate America.”
Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו on Twitter: "https://t.co/vJDbprlHhj / Twitter"
You hear this “where were the protests over Yemen and Syria?” talking point over and over again from Israel apologists, the argument essentially being that because few people protested the mass killings in those countries then Israel should get to do a little genocide of its own, as a treat.
This talking point is stupid for a few reasons, including the way it tends to avoid the inconvenient fact that the bloodshed in both Yemen and Syria was facilitated by US interventionism, just like the bloodshed in Gaza is. The civil war in Syria was only able to occur because the western alliance and its regional partners flooded the nation with weapons given to extremist factions in the hope of toppling Damascus, and Saudi Arabia’s war crimes in Yemen were fully backed by the US and its allies.
The talking point is also stupid because there are many entirely legitimate reasons the Gaza massacre is getting special attention. In a recent New York Times article titled “Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace,” Lauren Leatherby explains that Israel’s actions in Gaza are actually quite different from other conflicts this century, killing far more civilians far more rapidly than the wars in places like Syria and Ukraine. Last week the UN’s emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths said during a CNN interview that Gaza is the worst humanitarian crisis he’s ever seen, even worse than the Killing Fields in Cambodia. This conflict is being treated differently because it is different.
Another reason this specific bombing campaign is getting so much more public backlash than others is because the pro-Palestine movement has had generations to build, whereas when the west lays waste to a country using military explosives it’s normally a fast ordeal which moves from manufacturing consent to execution very quickly. By the time people figure out they were lied to about the justifications for a depraved war the empire is usually two or three new wars down the track. The Israel-Palestine issue has been just sitting there for decades, so there’s been time to accumulate popular opposition. Once someone learns about the realities of the Palestinian plight they very seldom abandon their support for it, so every newly-opened pair of eyes stays open on this issue for a lifetime.
Caitlin Johnstone on Twitter: "I keep seeing this fuzzbrained argument. I've written more words than almost anyone else in the English-speaking world in opposition to the mass atrocities the US empire has caused in Yemen and Syria, and I write against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza for the exact same reasons. https://t.co/OtiQnZv40h / Twitter"
I keep seeing this fuzzbrained argument. I've written more words than almost anyone else in the English-speaking world in opposition to the mass atrocities the US empire has caused in Yemen and Syria, and I write against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza for the exact same reasons. https://t.co/OtiQnZv40h
But perhaps the dumbest thing about this talking point is the fact that it ultimately works against the agendas of the people saying it. Israel apologists keep asking “Where were the protests over Yemen and Syria,” and gradually the millions of people who are beginning to wake up to the criminality of the US-centralized power alliance as a result of the Gaza massacre are going to start asking themselves the same question.
Because the assault on Gaza is so uniquely horrific and is being broadcast onto people’s social media feeds in real time, millions of people around the world are being snapped out of the propaganda-induced coma that has had them consenting to evil war after evil war over the years. People are starting to realize they’ve been deceived about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and they’re starting to wonder what else they’ve been deceived about. Keep asking them “Where were the protests over Yemen and Syria,” and eventually they’re going to start researching those conflicts and learning about their own government’s role in them, and from there it’s only a matter of time before they start asking, “Hey yeah! Where WERE the protests over Yemen and Syria??”
In a new article for The Guardian titled “The war in Gaza has been an intense lesson in western hypocrisy. It won’t be forgotten,” Nesrine Malik writes that “for the first time that I can think of, western powers are unable to credibly pretend that there is some global system of rules that they uphold. They seem to simply say: there are exceptions, and that’s just the way it is. No, it can’t be explained and yes, it will carry on until it doesn’t at some point, which seems to be when Israeli authorities feel like it.”
Nesrine Malik on Twitter: "'The lesson from Gaza is brutal and short: human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied.' https://t.co/RcGEOp7JP0 / Twitter"
'The lesson from Gaza is brutal and short: human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied.' https://t.co/RcGEOp7JP0
“Part of that inability to reach for convincing narratives about why so many innocent people must die is that events escalated so quickly,” Malik adds. “There was no time to set the pace of the attacks on Gaza, prepare justifications and hope that eventually, when it was all over, time and short attention spans would cover up the toll. Gaza has been a uniquely, inconveniently, intense conflict… The area is so densely populated that the toll of civilians is too high, and evidence for having undermined Hamas’s capabilities, the only possible justification for the casualties, is too low.”
This is the sort of political moment in which newly-formed critics of the western war machine are being asked to think carefully about why there hasn’t been a robust resistance to their governments’ other criminal actions. Which looks like a nightmare waiting to happen for the propagandists whose job is to manufacture consent for depraved acts of war.
One thing the empire is about to realize is that the western public has lost all its appetite for war. All the careful sanitising, video-gamifying and propagandizing that has been put in place since Vietnam in order to build a platform of consent for “humanitarian” wars has cratered into nothing over the course of mere weeks.
You can’t have an up close and personal relationship with the reality of bombs and all the things they do to human flesh and then go back to the way you were ever again. Millions of western eyes have been changed forever.
“War” is not abstracted any more.
_______________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Featured image via Gaza Palestine (Public Domain)
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