Home > Wars of Opportunity: West and its gulf allies just won’t stop

Wars of Opportunity: West and its gulf allies just won’t stop

by Daniel Patrick Welch - Open-Publishing - Saturday 12 September 2015

My live appearance from yesterday on PressTV’s Top 5 discussing Yemen and the ongoing series of wars against the Global South and resistance everywhere from Venezuela to Ukraine.

Video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3YNOUx5ObE

Transcript below:
What will it take for the so called ’International Community’ pay attention and to take action?

"Well. I think it would take moving from Bizarro World back onto this planet, honestly. Because there is nothing that will convince—becausee the international community, when you say it like that, the supposed or alleged, in quotation marks, consists of the US empire, its Brit lackeys, and its vassal states throughout western europe, and the gulf monarchies that it can buy and keep loyal. You point out exactly the double standard in media coverage between this war and ones the west wants to focus on. But it follows a very similar pattern: you know, you want to steal the newly discovered oil resources in Yemen, so the empire teams up with its usual suspects, and funds and arms and trains this illegal and horrific war, aims at civilians, blockades the country, so that you can terrorize the population, and hops for the best. And guess what, it’s not going that well is it?"

What should Yemeni activists do to stop Saudis from attacking their land?

"I hesitate—I mean I hope I have at least some humility left that I won’t dictate to the people who are living through this hell on the ground as to what they should do. And I think that all of us on our end should continue to shout from the rooftops even though the western media won’t pick it up. We have good resources like PressTV, RT, AEETV and so on, so that we can get the word out. It’s true—I mean I was smug a little bit about it, but the international community in general has to take notice. It’s atrocious what is going on. And I also see that the invasion, the ground invasion, inviting these Bahrain and other Arab countries—is a sign of escalation, but also, I’m hoping, a sign of a bit of desperation. Remember, the Saudis have an army of something like 225,000 troops or whatever, and Yemen is a population of 25 million. It’s virtually impossible to think that they could win this. But they can destroy a very ancient culture, and they can create a lot of havoc and misery on the ground by bombing people who don’t really have an air force. It’s a sickening and repeating pattern that we see, these wars of conquest and wars of empire repeated over, and over and over. It’s sad."

Do you see any similarities with Gaza, with the difference between the international community’s reaction and what is happening on the ground?

"Right. Yes, I was thinking specifically of that when I mentioned the barricade. You pen them in and shoot them from the air, like fish in a barrel. It’s really disgusting. You also have the same players: the US and Israel are supplying and maintaining a lot of the military hardware that’s being used in both campaigns. But I would go beyond Gaza and point out all these wars throughout the middle east and north africa, and actually all throughout the world, against the peoples and the governments of the Global South. In Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, in Venezuela, the longstanding war against Cuba... in Ukraine, the coup that was fomented by the west. This is a *huge* global, full frontal attack on any resistance that dares to raise its head against the empire and do something other than what the empire wants, which is to give up all its resources and just be slaves to international capital"

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