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Israeli forces kill young Palestinian mother of two after alleged stab attempt

Ma’an – June 2, 2016

Cj-E_OlVEAA08PaBETHLEHEM – A Palestinian woman was shot and killed at an Israeli army checkpoint in the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday afternoon, after allegedly attempting to stab a soldier.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that an “attempted stabbing” took place at a checkpoint in the eastern Tulkarem governorate near the Palestinian village of Anabta. She added that the soldiers “responded to the threat” by shooting at the woman, killing her.

The spokesperson added that no Israelis were injured.

Israeli sources later identified the Palestinian woman as 25-year-old Ansar Hussam Harasha. Harasha was reportedly a married mother of two.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that they had been informed by the Israeli military liaison office that Israeli forces had opened fire at a Palestinian woman at the Innab checkpoint eastern Tulkarem and killed her.

Palestinian Red Crescent spokeswoman Errab Foqoha told Ma’an that Israeli forces prevented an ambulance from the health organization from accessing the scene. Foqoha added that Red Crescent staff saw the woman lying on the ground before being taken inside an Israeli ambulance, which stayed on the scene.

More than 200 Palestinians and nearly 30 Israelis have been killed since the beginning of a wave of unrest across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel in October.

The unrest has been characterized by a number of small-scale attacks mainly against Israeli military targets.

According to the UN, investigations showed that in a number of instances since the unrest began, Israeli forces have implemented a policy of extrajudicial execution, killing Palestinians who did not present imminent threat or could have been subdued through other means.

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , | 3 Comments

Trump, Trade and War

By James W Carden | Consortium News | June 2, 2016

Shikha Dalmia, a fellow at the Koch brothers-funded think tank, the Reason Foundation, has castigated CATO’s Doug Bandow and The Nation’s Stephen F. Cohen for having the temerity to note that the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, has raised several important foreign policy issues which need addressing, and soon.

Those questions include why the United States must play the role of world policeman, whether NATO’s mission is obsolete, why the U.S. always pursues “regime change” when the results – in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria, etc. – are a “disaster,” and why Russia has been made into an enemy.

Bandow has praised Trump’s independence from the “neoconservatives and militaristic interventionists who dominate the Republican Party,” while Cohen has argued that “Trump’s questions are fundamental and urgent, but instead of engaging them, his opponents (including President Obama) and the media dismiss the issues he raises about foreign policy as ignorant and dangerous.”

But Dalmia dismissed these “Trump-loving peaceniks” for “kidding themselves” because “above all, his militant protectionism will mean more war, not less.” In an article published in The Week on May 31, Dalmia maintained that Trump and those who see some refreshing thinking in his policy statements fail to appreciate the salubrious (and if Dalmia’s analysis is to be believed, perhaps even miraculous) effect free trade has had on international relations since the end of the Second World War.

The story, as told by Dalmia, is by-now familiar: World War II was brought about, in part, because European nations took refuge in mercantilist trade policies in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Today, it is virtually impossible imagining, say, France going to war with Germany. Why so?

According to Dalmia’s ahistoric piece of sophistry, prior to WWII “military conflict was practically de rigueur in Europe.” (It wasn’t. Between 1871- with the end of the Franco-Prussian war – and 1914 the peace was largely kept on the continent but for a brief Russian-Turkish war in 1877. But never mind.)

What caused this supposedly momentous change in the politics of the continent after World War II? Dalmia tell us that it wasn’t “NATO’s security guarantee” that “put an end to the great wars of dictators. Trade did. Indeed, the more countries trade and the more partners they trade with, the less likely they are to go to war.”

Trade Equals Peace?

This is what is commonly known as the theory of economic interdependence which holds that high levels of trade between countries will inexorably result in global peace and stability. It is said that countries that trade with each other have less motive to fight one another and countries will avoid costly wars that only serve to undermine their mutually beneficially trade relations.

As Dalmia puts it: “trade doesn’t just eliminate reasons for war, it generates forces of peace: Attacking your trade partner means either destroying your buyers or your supplier or both. Trade gives each side a stake in the other’s well being.” This, she worries, is lost on Mr. Trump.

This kind of thinking, such as it is, was the regnant ideology in Bill Clinton’s Washington and was used with abandon to disguise aggressive geopolitical actions – such as the expansion of NATO eastwards – by couching them in the benevolent rhetoric of neo-liberalism.

In a West Point commencement address in 1997, Clinton claimed that “our security is tied to the stake other nations have in the prosperity of staying free and open and working with others.” NATO expansion would, according to Clinton’s Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, help to create a Europe “increasingly united by a shared commitment to open societies and open markets.”

From the vantage point of 2016, the increasingly authoritarian nature of the governments in Poland, Hungary and Estonia, to say nothing of the war in Ukraine, have put an end to these grand ambitions.

Contrary Facts

Yet, is there any compelling reason to give credence to Dalmia’s claim that “the more countries trade and the more partners they trade with, the less likely they are to go to war?” Not really.

To see why, lets examine the years leading up to the First World War. In The Economic Consequence of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes opens his account of the Versailles negotiations by describing the situation on the continent as it obtained during the mostly peaceful 45-year period from 1870-1914.

“What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August 1914!” he exclaimed.

What was taking place was nothing less than what the neo-imperialist economist and historian Niall Ferguson has called “the first age of globalization.”

Keynes tells us that before the war, an illusion of permanence held sway over the middle and upper European classes, indeed, “the projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries … appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.” [emphasis mine]

Still more, according to Keynes, “the interference of frontiers and of tariffs was reduced to a minimum, and not far short of three hundred millions of people lived within the three Empires of Russia, Germany and AustriaHungary … over this great area there was an almost absolute security of property and of person.” Keynes observed that “the statistics of economic interdependence of Germany and her neighbors are overwhelming.”

Sounds like a free trader’s paradise, one which Dalima and the rest of Washington’s neoliberal cheerleaders would happily approve. And yet, by August 1914, the war came. Trade was no match for the toxic brew of nationalism and populism unleashed by an assassination in Sarajevo.

Nevertheless, while the idea that free trade paves the way for peaceful inter-state relations is wholly unsupported by the historical record, it remains oddly pervasive over a century after the commencement of the Great War. Even worse, it becomes the trusted panacea that prevents a critical examination of other foreign policy illusions that could be laying the groundwork for another war.

James W Carden is a contributing writer for The Nation and editor of The American Committee for East-West Accord’s eastwestaccord.com. He previously served as an advisor on Russia to the Special Representative for Global Inter-governmental Affairs at the US State Department.

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Why Today’s Privacy-Invading Online Ecosystem May Not Last

By Jay Stanley | ACLU | May 31, 2016

In recent years we have seen the growth of an enormous infrastructure for routine commercial surveillance on the internet. This infrastructure includes not only “free” advertising-based services like Google and Facebook, but also a largely invisible system of ad networks that track people across the different sites they visit. While most people are not familiar with the extent of tracking and/or are uncomfortable with it, the advertising industry would like to normalize this surveillance and have us believe that humanity has reached some new phase where privacy is not as important as it once was.

I have seen this firsthand in the current battle over whether the FCC should extend longstanding privacy protections from old communications networks like the telephone, to the newest communications network, broadband internet service.

As I have discussed before, when an American picks up the phone to call a suicide hotline, an outreach service for gay teens, or a cancer doctor, he or she doesn’t have to worry that the phone company will sell that information to others, thanks to a privacy law (section 222 of the Communications Act) that prohibits such privacy invasions. There is no reason why that same privacy protection should not apply to the internet, which has superseded the telephone system as the most important communications network in Americans’ lives. Chairman Tom Wheeler of the FCC is moving to do just this — apply the traditional privacy protections of the Communications Act to broadband internet access service — and on Friday the ACLU filed comments with the FCC supporting that agency’s proposal.

The influence and example set by the advertising-based services that use the internet have loomed large in the efforts of industry to convince the FCC not to apply the law as clearly written. And some of the people I’ve discussed broadband privacy with have just shrugged their shoulders at the issue, as if privacy has already been so compromised online that one more set of rules won’t really make a difference.

The broadband providers are trying to milk that attitude for all it’s worth. They’re asking the FCC not to enforce the law precisely because they want to get in the game — grab short-term profits by monitoring communications as they provide internet service, just like many of the companies that use the internet do. They are pointing to the Googles and Facebooks of the world and saying, “why should we be subject to stricter rules than they are?”

It’s a big mistake to view things that way. There is a fundamental difference between the destinations at the edges of the network that people choose to use online, and can abandon for a competitor virtually at the click of a mouse, and the internet infrastructure itself. Broadband providers have the potential to monitor not just one area of a customer’s internet use, but all of them. We pay for broadband, it is not a free, ad-supported service. And the state of competition among broadband carriers (oligopolistic at best) is such that they have significant market power, and even where equivalent competitive options are available, the switching costs can be considerable. Most importantly, perhaps, the broadband providers are clearly covered by those privacy protections in the Communications Act, and the edge providers are not.

But there’s one more big reason that we should not consider the online advertising system to be a normalized part of life: it is far from clear that it is here to stay. As we stressed to the FCC in our comments, the online ecosystem is a fluid, rapidly changing environment, where consumers can stampede from one web service to another at a whim, where empires rise and fall seemingly overnight (for example Myspace, Friendster, Netscape, RealNetworks, Orkut, and Digg), or across a decade (for example AOL or Yahoo). The ad-based regime of today may look completely different in a few years.

There’s reason to think it will. While some communications infrastructures have been regularly spied upon from time to time throughout history, in the end people need, and always demand, privacy. As historian David Kahn put it, invasions of privacy contradict

a long evolution toward the secrecy of communications. Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the ‘black chambers’ of absolutist monarchs.

Across Europe, Kahn writes,

the public knew about the letter-opening and hated it. The pre-revolutionary French assembly, the Estates-General, received complaints from all regions of France and from all classes of society about this invasion of their thoughts. A month after the fall of the Bastille, Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man held that citizens may write with freedom — in effect nullifying the right of the government to read letters. In the United States, the 1792 law establishing the Post Office forbade its agents from illegally opening the mail entrusted to it.

In 1794 Prussia enacted a law punishing letter-opening, Kahn writes, and “other states of Germany and elsewhere in Europe followed.” In 1844 the British Parliament “exploded” when an Italian visitor learned his letters had been opened, and the resulting “uproar” ended the practice.

More recently, the revelations about wholesale spying by the NSA have created a new firestorm of controversy—and a worldwide movement toward increasing the protection of privacy through both political and technological means.

In the end, people demand privacy. Confidentiality and control over the information about oneself that one disseminates are an inherent part of human life, and privacy is a core human need. When communications media are not regarded as trustworthy and private, people seek out other means of communicating — or demand change in the media they do use.

Often there is a lag, sometimes substantial, between when people first lose their privacy and when they begin to understand and resent that loss, and demand its correction. It is just this lag that the advertising industry is currently depending upon in today’s online edge-provider ecosystem. But this ecosystem, in which millions of people appear to have traded their privacy for free online services, evokes profound discomfort in many people, according to numerous polls.

In short, while many industry players would like to proclaim the advent of a “new era” in which privacy matters less, nothing could be further from the truth. The current prevalence of privacy invasions among certain edge providers does not enjoy wide legitimacy and should not be used to justify a betrayal of legally clear, culturally deep, and historically longstanding protection for privacy in our essential communications infrastructure. We must not let the essentially corrupt practices that happen to dominate our online ecosystem at the current moment in time be imported into the essential communications infrastructure on which that ecosystem lives. As one commentator put it, “we are only in the Middle Ages of digitization. The Renaissance has yet to come.”

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Video: Crime scene manipulated after Hebron killing, possibly disproving claims by Israeli soldier

Ma’an – June 1, 2016

BETHLEHEM – New video footage has surfaced of an Israeli ambulance driver kicking a knife towards the body of Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, a young Palestinian whose execution-style murder by an Israeli soldier in March was caught on video, sparking international outrage.

The video footage, obtained by Israel’s Channel Two, is expected to be shown to an Israeli military court to disprove claims by the Israeli soldier who killed al-Sharif that he shot the young Palestinian point-blank in the head after al-Sharif moved to grab a knife, according to the Israeli media outlet Ynet.

The footage shows that the knife allegedly used in the attack was far from al-Sharif when he was shot, notably showing an ambulance driving over the knife before it was kicked closer to al-Sharif’s body.

The Israeli military prosecutor reportedly said that an Israeli ambulance driver, Ofer Ohanna, who was near the scene kicked the knife towards al-Sharif’s body following his murder, according to Hebrew-language news outlet Maariv.

Maariv reported that Ohanna refused to speak to the media, and said he gave the military prosecution all the information he had on the incident during interrogations.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem released footage of al-Sharif’s execution by Israeli soldier Elor Azarya in March, showing the placement of the knife far from al-Sharif’s body.

However, the new video reportedly shows what transgressed immediately after the ambulance drove by the scene, with an Israeli ambulance driver directly manipulating the crime scene shortly after the shooting by moving the knife closer to al-Sharif.

A spokesperson for B’Tselem could not immediately be reached for comment.

Al-Sharif was shot alongside Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi after the two Palestinians allegedly stabbed and moderately wounded an Israeli soldier at a military checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron on March 24.

Al-Qasrawi was killed immediately, while al-Sharif was left severely wounded for several minutes without treatment, before Azarya stepped forward and put a bullet through his head, killing him.

A graphic video released by B’Tselem capturing the incident was met with wide condemnation from rights groups and international bodies, with the UN demanding an investigation into the apparent “extrajudicial execution.”

Azarya was charged with manslaughter, rather than murder as had initially been expected, and is being held on a military base in “open detention” where he is free to roam and has received visits from his family. His trial opened in early May.

Palestinians have long held fears that Israeli soldiers and settlers tamper with crime scenes involving Palestinians, with human rights groups accusing Israel of practicing a policy of extrajudicial executions since a wave of violence erupted in October, leaving more than 200 Palestinians and nearly 30 Israelis killed.

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu steps up opposition to French ‘peace’ initiative

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Press TV – June 2, 2016

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up his opposition to a French initiative aimed at reviving talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The path to peace is not via international conferences that attempt to force a settlement, that make the Palestinian demands more extreme and in the process distance peace,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday.

Paris will be hosting on Friday a gathering of more than 20 countries as well as UN and EU diplomats to discuss the Middle East conflict.

The Israeli prime minister reiterated his call for “direct negotiations and without preconditions.”

“If the countries gathering this week in Paris really want to advance peace, they should join my call to Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] to come to such direct negotiations … There is no other way,” said Netanyahu.

In a meeting with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls last month, Netanyahu rejected the initiative, saying direct talks with the Palestinian Authority are “the only way to proceed to peace.”

However, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah dismissed Netanyahu’s proposal, calling it an attempt to “buy time.”

The last round of the so-called peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians collapsed in 2014.

Tel Aviv’s illegal settlement activities and its refusal to release senior Palestinian prisoners were among major reasons behind the failure of the talks.

The Israeli premier formally suspended the so-called peace talks with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority on April 24, 2014, after Abbas forged a unity pact with Hamas.

Israel responded to the unity pact by announcing tenders for the building of 4,800 illegal settler units on the occupied Palestinian territories.

Palestinians are seeking to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, East al-Quds (Jerusalem), and the Gaza Strip.

They are demanding that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel, however, has refused to return to the 1967 borders and is unwilling to discuss the issue of al-Quds (Jerusalem).

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | 1 Comment

Clinton’s Vice President: A Match Made on Wall Street

By Eric Draitser | CounterPunch | June 2, 2016

Earlier this week, Bernie Sanders warned that Hillary Clinton’s eventual vice presidential pick must not be someone from the milieu of Wall Street and Corporate America. And while Sanders is still fighting to win the Democratic Party nomination in what many have argued is a rigged system with a foregone conclusion, it appears that Sanders is also intent on influencing the course of the Clinton campaign and the party itself.

In a thinly veiled demand that Clinton embrace the core principles of the Sanders campaign in order to secure the support of Sanders’s political base, the insurgent Democratic candidate hoped aloud “that the vice-presidential candidate will not be from Wall Street, will be somebody who has a history of standing up and fighting for working families, taking on the drug companies… taking on Wall Street, taking on corporate America, and fighting for a government that works for all of us, not just the 1%.”

And while that description may sound positive for its sheer idealism, it does not seem to account for the fact that banks and corporations effectively own both major parties, and that nearly every top Democrat is in various ways connected to the very same entities. In any event, it is useful still to examine a few of the potential Clinton running mates in order to assess just what sort of forces are going to be put in motion to help deliver a Clinton presidency.

The Actors on the Playbill

Beltway pundits are fond of remarking that Tim Kaine, the underwhelming centrist Democrat senator (and former Governor) from Virginia, is at the top of the list for Clinton. He’s safe. He’s experienced. He’s safe. He’s a Democratic Party loyalist with experience fundraising. Oh, and did I mention that he’s safe? Such is the general tenor of the conversation around Kaine, a politician with a long track record and a mostly forgettable personality known more to DC insiders than to the general voting public.

What could be better for Hillary Clinton, perhaps the least liked Democratic (presumptive) nominee in decades, than to have a party establishment insider who represents the status quo as her running mate in an election year that will undoubtedly be remembered for the ostensibly anti-establishment candidates and rhetoric on display throughout?

To be fair, Kaine does represent Virginia, a swing state that is crucial for Donald Trump, and which could spell victory for Clinton should she carry it.  And of course, Kaine can also posture as “tough on Wall Street” from his days as DNC Chairman and party mouthpiece during the passage of the so-called “Wall Street reform” bill.  Despite nothing substantive coming out of the bill, Kaine is still able to cash in the political currency derived from that bill, and perhaps meekly shield Clinton from continued attacks vis-à-vis her connections to Wall Street.

Of course Kaine also comes with his own baggage, including his anti-abortion stance which earned him the ire of many pro-choice activists in Virginia when he was Governor.  Considering the shameless droning from Clinton and her backers about being “the first woman president,” it would certainly raise serious questions – and open up an obvious angle of attack for Trump – were she to sport her feminism and focus on women’s reproductive rights by selecting a man with an anti-abortion record.

A look down the list of other potential choices reveals that Clinton truly has very little to choose from.  Both Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julian Castro, as well as Labor Secretary Tom Perez, have both had their names bandied around as Clinton seeks to solidify the Latino vote in an election where the Republican candidate has worked tirelessly to alienate that all-important demographic as much as possible.  But of course, the obvious question to be asked in response to either of these potential selections would be “Who?” Neither Castro nor Perez is well known nationally, nor have either of them won major elections or really done anything of note in their tenure in Obama’s cabinet.  Despite being Latinos, they are utterly forgettable, and unlikely to bring significant returns to Clinton.

While other names such as New Jersey junior senator Cory Booker, as well as Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, have been discussed, both men hail from states with Republican governors, meaning that were they to accept a VP slot, their senate vacancies would be likely filled by Republicans, a scenario that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has already said “Hell no!” to, vowing to “yell and scream to stop that.”

Who Else Is “Ready for Hillary”?

So that then leaves the two most interesting potential running mates: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders himself. Warren, who conspicuously refused to endorse Clinton over Sanders, has tremendous upside for Clinton as she has been perhaps the Democratic Party’s most vehement opponent of Wall Street, having led many high profile attacks on the major banks in her tenure in the Senate.  From a public relations branding perspective, she is essentially the female Bernie Sanders, a progressive Democrat who presents herself as an ally of working people and an enemy of bankers. For Clinton, Warren would also round out the “First Woman…” card, allowing the Clinton campaign to quite literally become a campaign about breaking the glass ceiling in US politics. The stump speeches almost write themselves.

Finally, there’s Mr. #FeelTheBern himself. His latest comments (mentioned above) certainly do have a subtext that implies his willingness to accept a running mate slot.  Having fashioned himself as the champion of the middle class and threat to the Washington establishment, Bernie would provide much in the way of credibility to a lackluster Clinton campaign which has failed to excite even many ardent Democrats.  Sanders would also guarantee a unified Democratic Party ticket, and provide much needed defense of Clinton’s left flank.  In short, Sanders, like Warren, would give anti-Clinton progressives the pretext many of them need to justify their voting for the much-hated Clinton.

Never mind the fact that neither Sanders nor Warren would actually do anything to combat Wall Street finance capital as Vice President.  Never mind the fact that no one on Wall Street is particularly scared of either politician being given the ceremonial power that comes with the Vice Presidency.  These are just the kind of uncomfortable, but inescapable, facts that progressives must choose to ignore.

The difficulty for either Sanders or Warren is the marketing of their decision to left progressives, some of whom would see collaboration with Clinton and the Clinton political machine as a betrayal and a complete sell-out.  However, aside from driving a some relatively small number of progressives to vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party (or stay home entirely), it is unlikely that the negative impact in the progressive base would amount to anything more than some hurt feelings followed by the usual acquiescence to the Democratic Party line.

If such an analysis sounds cynical and jaded, that’s because it is. Perhaps a better descriptor would be disdainful.  Indeed, as someone who watched with bemused melancholy as progressives lined up to support Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, my position on support for ANY Democrat is the same as Harry Reid’s position on swing state senator VP picks: Hell no!

Indeed, the very notion of collaboration with a war criminal and Wall Street puppet such as Clinton is anathema to everything the left and “progressives” are supposed to stand for.

Of course, there is also the elephant (and donkey) in the room: both major parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of finance capital and the corporations that rule over us. This is the realization that millions of Americans have already made, and which millions more are making.  This is the realization that keeps Democratic and Republican apparatchiks up at night.  And this critical revelation is what Bernie, Liz, & Co. are there to suppress.

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Diseases killed 10,000 Yemeni children in past year: UN

Press TV – June 2, 2016

The United Nations says some 10,000 of Yemeni children, all under five years of age, have lost their lives during the past year alone.

The deaths were caused by “totally avoidable and preventable diseases” such as diarrhea and pneumonia, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday.

Yemen has been under Saudi military attacks almost on a daily basis since March 2015, which have killed thousands and destroyed the country’s civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and factories.

Dujarric said the heavy loss was due to the closure of hundreds of health centers and the total collapse of the healthcare system in the war-torn country.

“The overall healthcare system throughout Yemen has all but collapsed, over 600 health facilities closing their doors due to the lack of financial resources to procure medicine, supplies and fuel for generators,” he said, adding thousands of medical staff have gone unpaid or left Yemen.

“This suffering should, however, turn into an incentive to reach a rapid and comprehensive solution as we approach the month of Ramadan,” he said.

UN special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed also said reports from several cities showed the horrifying magnitude of the suffering that the Yemeni people are going through because of shortages in basic services.

In a March report, the UN Children’s Fund said a year of Saudi war on Yemen had left 934 children dead and 1,356 more injured, with an average of six children suffering casualties every day.

The report said some 320,000 children faced acute malnutrition, a serious case which can leave a child vulnerable to deadly respiratory infections, pneumonia and water-borne diseases.

In a similar report in March, Save the Children, a non-governmental organization, said about 90 percent of children in Yemen needed emergency humanitarian aid.

More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since Saudi Arabia launched its attacks on Yemen. The kingdom launched the offensive in a bid to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power.

Hadi’s loyalists are fighting an all-out war against Houthis who have taken the control of Sana’a and some other areas to prevent them from falling to Takfiri extremists.

Saudi Arabia has been supporting Hadi forces from the air, ground and sea with attacks which, some analysts say, have helped Takfiris expand their foothold in Yemen.

Airstrikes have continued despite a ceasefire put in place since April, scuttling efforts to end the conflict.

Dujarric urged the warring parties to make concessions and put the interests of Yemen and Yemenis above all.

June 2, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment