Posted on 08/11/2018 9:56:16 PM PDT by robowombat
Thursday, from Al Jazeera: “Yemen ‘on Brink of New Cholera Epidemic,’ Charity Warns.” The piece details how recent developments in the Yemeni civil war — specifically, the possible siege of the port city of Hodeidah — may cause a surge in cholera cases. There were over a million reported cases of cholera between the fall of 2016 and spring of 2018, the largest documented outbreak in modern times. The rate of infection had slowed, but observers now fear resurgence.
Since the conflict began, medical services have been devastated across the war-torn country, and children in particular have been affected, with as many as 400,000 at imminent risk of starvation. In April, U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres said that 8 million people in Yemen didn’t know where they were getting their next meal.
...... Yemen is a catastrophe on a scale similar to Syria, but coverage in the United States has been sporadic at best. PBS News Hour did a thorough three-part series, but MSNBC, for instance, has barely mentioned the crisis in a year, during a period when it has done 455 segments on Stormy Daniels (this according to media reporter Adam Johnson).
The reason for inattention is obvious: The United States bears real responsibility for the crisis. A quote from a Yemeni doctor found in PBS reporter Jane Ferguson’s piece sums it up: “The missiles that kill us, American-made. The planes that kill us, American-made. The tanks … American-made. You are saying to me, where is America? America is the whole thing.” The Yemeni civil war pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels against Saudi-backed government forces, who receive weaponry and other forms of assistance from the U.S., including the in-air refueling of Saudi warplanes. You can see the reporter Ferguson touring collections of American-made weapons dropped on Yemen — including cluster bombs — at about 2:40 of this video.
Leaving aside the complex question of who is right and who is wrong in this multipolar war (which also includes Al-Qaeda/ISIL forces), there is no question that masses of innocent civilians have wrongly become targets. Hospitals, schools, mosques and other non-military locations have been destroyed indiscriminately.
The reason for a lack of coverage of this crisis is because the mainstream would rather talk about “Trump, Trump, Trump, Russia, Russia, Russia” until the cows come home.
This has to be one of the least discussed active wars (of this size) going on right now. I don’t think the Govt. wants to say much about it, because we are in essence assisting the Saudi’s if not fighting their enemy for them.
The Saudi’s have billions just sitting idle. One would think they could train their own armed forces by now. Perhaps Americans are doing the training. What do we get from this, though? Oil prices don’t seem to be affected.
The West doesn’t have a clue about this Saudi Arabian versus Iran proxy war that is happening in Yemen. For all our critiques about Saudi Arabia, we must help them destroy the Houti Rebels who are sponsored by Iran. It is an epic clash for Mecca and Medina, between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and it will effect us eventually.
I tend to agree....although here in Germany...at least three nights a week, it gets a 20-to-30 second mention on the prime news (8 pm). It never dives into the reason for the war....it just mentions the latest results.
I think you could go and ask a hundred Americans where Yemen is generally located, and less than eight would give a decent answer.
Umm...islam?
Yep, thats it.
THREE articles on Yemen in the news today alone. Looks like the Left is starting to get active to blame Trump and save Iran’s bacon. F them.
well, it’s not exactly US backed; it’s Saudi-led. But, the bigger question is, why is Yemen a topic suddenly? Wasn’t Saudi making some headway in pressuring Yemen to get with the program?
>>The West doesn’t have a clue about this Saudi Arabian versus Iran proxy war that is happening in Yemen.
Saudi Arabia versus Iran means Sunni vs. Shia. The Islamic world is not monolithic, though Americans tend to view it as such. And they do both at core hate the U.S. as a majority Christian nation. But the fact is that this internal division in Islam goes back 1400 years and is the source of many Islamic conflicts. The Iran-Iraq War notably in modern times,
Leaving aside the complex question of who is right and who is wrong in this multipolar war ‘’
Thus ends the article.. It is not possible to leave our who is right and who is wrong. There is a reason the war is going on. If you ignore that then you have no basis for anything you write about it!
“Hospitals, schools, mosques and other non-military locations have been destroyed indiscriminately.”
Biased reporting, at least for the Middle East. This isn’t WW2 in Europe where both sides agreed that certain targets would not be militarized and thus would be off-limits, this is the MIDDLE EAST, and as we’ve seen when Israel is attacked, the FIRST PLACE the Arabs militarize are “Hospitals, schools, and mosques”, with the hope that Israel hits back at those targets and thus has to deal with the massive US media barrage.
With Syria calming down the Globalists are simply changing the narrative in an attempt to keep us sucked into these never ending ME conflicts.
Always a “reason” for us to expend treasure and lives in those shytholes. Good for the Bankers and arms merchants, though.
I am sick to death of the Arab world. All they do is fight. They’ve contributed nothing to humanity except algebra, and some really pretty mosaic tiles. Far as I can tell, that’s it.
Algebra came from Hindus.
The reason for the lack of coverage cannot be explained by the American military sales to Saudi Arabia, or even what little direct military support that the U.S. provides to the Saudis in their battle with the Houthi rebels. Nor can it be that the civilian collateral victims - caused by all sides in the conflict - are non-whites, for when has it ever been that the media would not raise its flag in “defense” of “non-whites” anywhere American authorities are involved? Never.
It is simple really’ taking time to really cover conflicts like Yemen or Syria would take the media into too much time off of their assigned (yes, it is ASSIGNED) agenda - going after Trump.
As to the parts of the story about, and interviewing, the civilian victims, the media, including the Rolling Stone always has just one side the in a conflict it thinks carries the guilt for the civilian victims; and in this case its the Saudis.
They always mistakenly think the side to whom they are ascribing guilt in the conflict should just single handedly back out of the conflict. In such a conflict as Yemen, where, in my view, truly one side is not so much morally superior to the other, it means one side is not so much morally worse than the other as well, so on that score why should the Saudis just “give it up” and why should we ask them to. We shouldn’t.
However, if Iran was not in the conflict and not backing the Houthi rebels and not using the Houthi rebels for its own agenda in the region, I think the U.S. might, and rightly, take a different position toward the conflict.
The fundamentalist Sunnis and the fundamentalist Mullahs in Tehran have turned Syria and Yemen into proxy war zones where as far as U.S. interests go neither side is really wearing the white hats.
Correct. Islamics just carried it West from the Mogul Empire.
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