Is This Your Future?
In Yemen, Twenty Million People Face Starvation
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
[Print version of this article]
This statement is excerpted from Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s weekly internet dialogue with Harley Schlanger. The full video is available here
The United Nations’ farcical donors’ conference raised only $1.7 billion of the $3.8 billion immediately required to rescue 20 million starving people in Yemen. Shown: Mark Lowcock, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, at that pledging event, on March 1.
March 4—We should be conscious of the incredible double standard which is being pushed by the mainstream media. If you listen to or read those news outlets, the Western countries are all about human rights and democracy, and the countries of Russia and China are all the dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. But I think if you look at the situation in Yemen and also Syria, this is hypocrisy such that it makes you sick to the stomach.
What we are now seeing in Yemen is genocide, in which about 20 million people are in various phases of starvation. This is not new. This has been coming. This has been coming for more than a year: UN authorities, the UN World Food Program has been warning about it, and nothing has happened. On March 1 there was the so-called “donor conference” which is a farcical expression given the fact that they don’t really give anything. UN General Secretary António Guterres said that what is required for the situation in Yemen—where a very large part of the population is completely food-aid dependent because the Saudis are blocking the ports and airports and food aid and medical aid cannot be brought in—is $3.8 billion immediately for food and medical programs to save the population.
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UN News
A displaced family in Marib, Yemen, carries winter aid packages back to its shelter.
And what was the result? It was a ridiculous $1.7 billion which is less than last year. And if you think about the trillions of dollars and euros which are being wasted and spent to save the speculators, to save a bankrupt banking system, then $1.7 billion is less than the proverbial peanuts. Then there are reports that 400,000 children under the age of 5 are already in the process of starving to death, that their skin is like parchment, that they have hollow eyes—I mean, this is incredible! It would be so easy—and I don’t want to hear the words “democracy” and “human rights” any more from anybody, who is not mobilizing to change the fate of these Yemeni people. It would be so easy to bring in ships to the ports of Sana’a, and basically say this food will be delivered, and there is no resistance permitted by Saudi Arabia. There would be means to pressure Saudi Arabia to allow this food to go through!
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UN OCHA
Already 400,000 children under the age of five in Yemen are in the process of starving to death. This family could soon be among the starving.
The fact that this is not being done cries to Heaven. And I think this is a complete declaration of bankruptcy for Europe—they’re not doing anything about it—nor the whole so-called West.
Syria Flashpoint
Now, not very different is the situation in Syria, where reports are that one-third of the population is suffering hunger, many of them are going towards starvation if this is not changed. And that is the result of the long war waged by the United States in particular, betting on the al-Qaeda and Al Nusra for regime change against Assad. Last year everything was completely made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. So you have a country reduced to rubble and torn apart by the effects of the pandemic. So, what is now happening? Israel has been making airstrikes against Damascus for weeks! We had eyewitness reports from people in Damascus who said that they’re absolutely horrified, and the pretext is that these [strikes are against] groups which are associated with Iran.
Tulsi Gabbard, former U.S. Representative, upbraided her former colleagues for failing to denounce the U.S. policy of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
So this is now reaching a critical point, because the special envoy for Syria of President Putin, Alexander Lavrentiev, said that the patience of Russia is running out, also of Syria, naturally, but especially of Russia, and there could be some counterstrikes against these strikes on Damascus. Now, that would obviously, immediately have the potential to flare up the conflict, and one should see that in the light, also, that the Biden administration launched its first military strike last week, on the Syrian side of the Iraqi-Syrian border, also supposedly hitting some groups associated with Iran in retaliation for an attack on the U.S. and coalition forces inside Iraq, a few days earlier. Now this was completely illegal, because if that was the case, that there were these attacks, the proper way to deal with it, would have been to take it to the UN Security Council: There was no immediate danger, it was several days afterwards, and therefore it fulfills the criteria of a revenge strike. Tulsi Gabbard, who is one of the few people with guts in the United States, it seems, said it was laudable that some of her former colleagues in the Congress attacked that, but that they failed to attack the larger policy of regime change against Assad, which is still going on, where the United States, again, is working with al-Qaeda and Al Nusra to accomplish that.
I think this is really terrible, because this is the first major indication that the Biden administration is going back to the policy of “humanitarian interventions,” of regime change, and that has been also demonstrated by [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken, who had a phone discussion with the self-appointed “president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, saying that he would work with him in order to return Venezuela to democracy.
Now, it is that policy of regime change, of intervention in foreign countries for the so-called purpose of democracy, but instead creating havoc, which has brought the world to the present point of total crisis. This should be condemned, and I think we need to absolutely seek a different policy, because if you continue that, it is only a question of time, before this will really explode into a big confrontation.
It really comes back to the question, is this policy of permanent war really in the interest of the United States, or not? I would say it is not: It would be much more in the interest of the United States to reconstruct the United States itself, to spend all of that money to retool all the firms which are now producing for the war machine, retool them, and get them going for the domestic reconstruction of the United States. I think this would be better for the United States and it would be better for the world.
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