KPFK is in the midst of a fund drive, so today s transcript is shorter.

Transcription

1 KPFK is in the midst of a fund drive, so today s transcript is shorter. Friends, I'm really very privileged today to have one of the leaders in the international peace movement, Kathy Kelly. She's the co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Non-Violence. She's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize many times. Our friendship began as the First Gulf War was beginning. Can you believe it was 1991? We were both in Iraq at that time. But Kathy has been there time and time again, scores of times in Iraq, Afghanistan, throughout the Middle East, during the 27 year period. She has continued her worked constantly. So we have seen, friends, 27 years of killing innocent people, of killing children, of war crimes. Twenty seven years of obstructing justice and causing vast harm through a policy that has remained the same no matter who or what party was in power. In fact, ever since the murder of John Kennedy, the message has been - to the president of the United States from the Deep State - do what we tell you to do or else. The shadow of Nuremberg reminds the world that you are not free to obey illegal orders. You cannot say you got your orders to nuke someone - you are committing an international war crime and must not obey such an unlawful order. This comes directly from the precedent of Nuremberg - you do not follow illegal orders, you do no unleash nuclear weapons and destroy the world based on an order. We have to learn how not to follow orders, especially when the order is to commit genocide. I hope people can get that through their heads, and no one has made this principle of non-cooperation with radical evil than Kathy Kelly. Kathy: Thank you Blase for your wise words this morning. I am so happy to be with you. Blase: Well, you have done so much recently. I was reading about your comments on the UN and the officials sounding an alarm saying they were shocked to their bones about the ruins that are there today in Yemen and the incredibly level of starvation that his underway as our president visits the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is beyond belief. If it were a movie, it would be called unbelievable. What are your thoughts on what is taking place, and the wonderful things you have recently submitted for publication. Kathy: You're right. It is unbelievable. Twenty million people could die from starvation and disease. Seventeen million people are facing a high risk of starvation, and of that number, seven million face severe acute malnutrition and a cholera epidemic. When you imagine the Horn of Africa, and the proximity of the countries of Somalia and Nigeria and South Sudan, where people also face conflict-driven famines, and the weapons keep pouring in and humanitarian assistance is nowhere in sight. People are fleeing from Somalia

2 and going to Yemen of all places, and there they discover that they can walk for miles and miles and miles hoping to reach a place where there might be food and water, only to discover that there is none of either. People have been seen eating trees in their desperation. This is the worst possible time to slash the budgets, as Trump suggests doing. And their neighbors to the north in Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen indiscriminately for the last two years. Roadways and transportation, including busses, public gatherings, including weddings; four hospitals, so far. Doctors without Borders hospitals. And 70 have been attacked by hostile forces. This civil war has raged, but it's escalated since the Saudis became involved a little over two years ago, and they got involved with tens of billions of dollars of US weapons that were sold to them by the US - which enabled them to use patriot missile systems, bunker busting bombs, cluster bombs that had been in storage; the UK has also been selling them weapons. Now the quid pro quo is that the Saudis are talking about investing 40 billion (I first heard) and Max Blumenthal is reporting 200 billion dollar investments in US infrastructure. Then the US will sell another hundred billion dollars worth of weapons, which could reach 300 billion in the next tens years, all of which can be used against the poorest country in the Arab world. Blase: We're are being turned into a third world country because of this - one that can't deliver healthcare or education to its own people. it can't meet the most basic needs of our people. We've become an international pariah. You quote Jan Angland, who heads the Norweigian Refugee Council. "I'm shocked to my bones," he said after his trip to Yemen.This is a catastrophe committed by men with guns and power, and this stuff that is being purchased has no legitimate value. The arms that are purchased are basically counter productive junk that makes it impossible for our students to go to college. To get healthcare. That's the domestic cost; the international cost is the millions who have died during this 27 years of uninterrupted war. This I see as an ongoing obstruction of justice. You quote the High Commissioner for Human Rights in your work, describing the present situation since the Saudi airstrikes began. One of the observers of the violent deaths of refugees fleeing yet another war - a fisherman, families in marketplaces. "This is what the conflict in Yemen looks like two years after it began, utterly terrible, with little apparent regard for civilian lives and infrastructure. That could not be taking place without our assistance. Who is refueling those bombers in the air? Who is responsible for the weapons? Your thoughts on that? Kathy: The United States has been saying through President Trump as recently as today that Iran is the country that has been meddling in the region and exacerbating conflict. It could be true that the Houthi rebels who have been

3 fighting the outsted government in Yemen are getting weapons from Iran. We haven't seen picture or other evidence, no intercepted phone calls - but still can't deny that it could be true. But the countries that have been pouring lavishly weapons on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are the United States and the United Kingdom. And most notably the United States. So how do the Saudis use those weapons? Well, as you mention, indiscriminate mass bombings against civilians, and they also have imposed a naval blockade of Yemen. The only way that Yemen could get 90 percent of its imports was through these major ports, especially to Port of Hodeidah. And those ports are now blocked. There's a long line of ships waiting to get in. It reminds me of the long lines of trucks trying to get into Gaza. And of course in Iraq they were blocked for 13 years in a cruel siege that killed hundreds of thousands of children. Well, that's what we're looking at now. The five major cranes in the Port of Hodeidah have been wiped out. Replacement cranes are ready to be imported; they're very nearby, but the Saudis have said no. And these Janjaweed fighters from South Sudan are being used as mercenaries by the Saudis, and they're fighting their way up the west coast. It's sort of a monster just waiting to stomp a paw down on Yemen, and the Saudis are just waiting to begin an airstrike once those ground troops get closer to the port of Bodega. They even leafleted people. The leaflets were distributed by a Saudi jet plane saying this is coming, this is imminent. So you can imagine the terror that people are experiencing as they await an imminent cruel bombing and ground troops. They're coping already with 45 percent of their healthcare system nationwide not functioning, and they have a cholera outbreak in near famine conditions. Blase: This is hellish. I know you mention in your writing the shame of killing innocent people. The United States has decidedly taken the side of the Saudiled coalition. Consider this Reuters report after Defense Secretary Mattis met with Saudi officials. According to the report, Mattis believes that Iran's destablizing influence in the Middle East will have to end before the conflict in Yemen can end. Well, Iran has not attacked another country in two hundred years. It was at war with Iraq, but Iraq started the war and they defended themselves. They may have supplied weapons to the Houthi rebels, but the support the US has given to the Saudi-led coalition is extremely high and they could not be doing what they're doing without the support of the United States. The weapons sales continue to go up at our peril - and this is really a danger to the United States as well as an international menace that is taking place at this time. I do hope people will read your writings. The shame of killing innocent people - that's one of many things you written recently. Would you care to

4 comment on that piece? Kathy: I was thinking of Howard Zinn's line at the time, "there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people." This is a time when people can take part in worthwhile legislative activity. There is some move in the US Senate, I could cite for example Senator Durbin. He has not signed on to a letter that some senators were getting ready to send to Prince Salman in Saudi Arabia saying that you can't continue this kind of indiscriminate bombing and blockade and cutoff of humanitarian relief to the people of Yemen. He read a Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times after Robert Naiman called his attention to the column, Durbin said he want not part of it and would sign the letter. The letter had already been sent, but Durbin is now part of the group of 27 senators who are saying to the Trump Administration that they want a bill to go forward, Senate Resolution 40, which would prevent further weapons going to Saudi Arabia until the ensure they will stop the cutoff of humanitarian access and restore the cranes that have been destroyed, as well as other things that they would be called upon to do. It's not a bill that is adequate, but at least it's a foot in the door. There are also 55 congresspeople who have signed on saying that the congress should be consulted before the United States could continue to be complicit in this war that the Saudis are waging against Yemen. My concern is that the congress will authorize it, but at least we have a foothold for some kind of education. You know, at this point there are no commercial flights being allowed into Sanaa (Yemen's capital). It's not possible to get a tourist's visa to get into Sanna. Blase: Peace groups will be attempting to get into Yemen in the near future? Kathy: Well, I can tell you that it's something that every single day we've been trying to better understand. What the possibilities are. I think the United Nations is very trapped in a sense. There are United Nations workers from various agencies who have sounded the alarm loud and clear and who've told us - it's not as if we'd be able to say, oh, we didn't know. The statistics are chilling and alarming. But on the matter of resolutions being passed, so far two UN resolutions have been passed by the security council, and both fail to mention Saudi Arabia as one of the parties to the conflict. It's almost as if they're suggesting Saudi Arabia, the aggressor, is an impartial arbitrator. That's kind of unthinkable when you've got a country that has waged so many airstrikes against civilian populations within Yemen over the past two years. At least President Obama's administration, after approving all those weapons sales, did

5 say "okay, this is it - no more sales because your targeting is so faulty and you've attacked civilian groups so frequently." Now Trump has rescinded that refusal to sell more arms, and is making huge deals. You know, on his trip to Saudi Arabia Trump was accompanied by the CEOs of major corporations that are all just chomping at the bit to make more money. I think the Pope has got it right. He said it to the US congress, and he just said it again to a group of teenagers the other day. He said: "Why would anyone give weapons to people who use them for war? The answer is simple. The answer is money. And the money is drenched in blood." In the United States, we just don't have much sense of what war means to people who are trapped in these nightmarish situations. We don't understand fear of cholera. We don't understand mothers cradling children dying from starvation. We don't understand people who are so desperate that the only way they can get money to their families is to pick up a gun and join an armed group. Blase: You know, Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. Now they took in 117,000 new refugees and migrants in 2016, and they're hosting more than 255,000 refugees from Somalia. Yemen is now beginning to host the world's worst humanitarian crisis. To compare, the US took in 84,000 refugees, far less that Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world which is not being attacked by the two richest countries in the world. And you and others started a week of fast and action related to Yemen, and found that it was a place where Somalis were escaping from the horn of Africa, and this is something that I have never seen in the press. Here they are helping other people at the same time they're having starvation imposed on them - which is of course a war crime. We know that they import 90 percent of their food, and that is always tragic for any country. UNICEF estimates that more the 460,000 children in Yemen face severe malnutrition, and 3.3 million children and lactating women face acute malnutrition. This is...truly unacceptable, but we go along day after day talking about the absurdities of Mr. Trump while the policy is killing people on a daily basis and has been doing so for going on three decades. It's almost as if Trump is being used as a cover for our behavior. Kathy: He doesn't have much of a mask to cover his own interest in unbridled militarism when it's useful to corporate interests. We have to acknowledge that the cruel policies were adopted and enacted and followed by every single administration - and as you say, going back decades. The United States has been a warlord nation. One of the things that sticks in my mind in a very troubling way is that it's frequent, it's standard practice, when presidents

6 address both houses of congress, they make sure there's someone in the gallery who will evoke emotions to support whatever policy the president wants to pursue at the time. We certainly saw that when young teenager Nayira who tearfully talked about Kuwaiti's being victimized by Iraqi soldiers who broke into a hospital and stole incubators. It turned out later that the story was a hoax. The youngster had never witnessed what she said she saw. Well, when Trump addressed both houses of congress earlier this year, the bereaved widow of a navy seal who was killed - and of course this woman's children, and she herself, are aching for a loved one who will never return - it's a story that deserves empathy and consolation. But democrats and republicans stood up and applauded for four solid minutes while the woman was trying to maintain her composure. Trump was assuring her that her husband was above and was hearing her words and that he would be remembered forever and God was on her side. At no point ever did they mention in what country chief petty officer Ryan Wilson was killed. He was killed in Yemen. He was part of a navy seal raid that ostensibly was going to roust an Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula group in a small village called Al Rayal. When the raid began, other villagers thought that this was a rival tribe, and they came running. They weren't going to just put their weapons down, they were going to fight to defend their homes and families. A huge firefight ensured, and then the US troops called in air support. So these little tiny hovels inhabited by women and children were destroyed. There was a woman in her 30s with her newborn infant and a toddler, and all of a sudden projectiles ripped through her home and she was in total terror in the dark. She decided she just couldn't stay there, and tried to make a run for it. When the military talks about the people who try to run away, and those people appear on the screens of people doing surveillance up above, the word they use is squirters. And so this woman trying to run away was killed. Her toddler and her infant survived, but on that night, in that village, there were ten children under age 13 killed. Six women were killed. But only chief petty officer Ryan Wilson is going to be mentioned to the American public. Blase: In the meantime, our weapons makers - General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin - are profiting. Why in the world should any industry allowed to profit off arms? There should be no profit whatsoever for making this trash. Where do we get the idea they should get a profit? There is no value in them getting a profit except that they continue in search of more war and they bribe people to search for more wars and the intelligence people are searching for more war. Searching for war is their business, and we are literally committing suicide in the process. This is the trap we're in right now.

7 You have a website, vcnv.org. That Voices for Creative Non-Violence. The information you have at your site will help people understand what you're doing and have been doing, which is so much appreciated by the world that is seeking peace. We are very grateful to you for doing that work.