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End U.S./Saudi Genocide in Yemen

Graphic by Emory Douglas

Genocide is being waged on the Yemeni people by the Saudi monarchy and the US government. On January 27, the US/Saudi coalition dropped US-made bombs on a camp for displaced people in Yemen’s northwestern Hajjah, killing at least 8 civilians and wounding many more. The bombing of refugee camps is a crime against humanity. In an attack on the Yemeni people of Hodeida just 2 days prior, the Red Sea Silos which house 51,000 metric tons of wheat were struck with mortar shells laying waste to critical food supplies while Yemen is facing “the worse famine in 100 years,” according to U.N. officials.

We, the workers and oppressed of New Orleans, must show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Yemen. We must speak out against these atrocities and demand that the US government withdraw all military aid and cancel all arms sales to the murderous Saudi regime.

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US Senate Resolution Not Enough to Save Millions Of Yemenis From Being Killed by U.S./Saudi War Against the People

TOTAL WITHDRAWAL, IMMEDIATE HUMANITARIAN AID NOW!

Yemen is home to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The U.S. Saudi Arabia-led intervention in the civil war between the Yemeni government and the Houthi militia has ravaged the country and has left 80% of the country starving. An estimated 500,000 people along the secondary fronts south of Hudaydah have taken shelter in refugee camps. 1.8 million children in Yemen suffer from malnutrition. Even United Nations projections warn that 14 million people may die if this continues.

The United States has been providing the fascist royal Saudi government with bombs, planes, surveillance, drones, military intelligence and personnel.  This is not secret information but known to all members of Congress who have ignored the genocide.

The deaths of Yemenis mattered nothing to Congress until the Saudi royalty murdered a journalist. Only then was a resolution introduced in the Senate that even mentioned the US role in the war. When the US Senate (but not the House) drafted and passed Senate Joint Resolution 54, the world hoped strong measures would be taken to bring an end to this genocidal war. But the resolution only minimally scales back U.S. involvement leaving loopholes for continued total involvement.

What we need is an act of Congress (not a resolution) that immediately withdraws all U.S. involvement, cancels the sales of military weaponry and military aid to Saudi Arabia, lifts all humanitarian blockades, and allows emergency medical and food aid in without conditions. Anything less and the deaths of millions will be on their hands.

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U.S./Israel Out of Syria!

By Quest Riggs

As Syria fights the last battles of its over 7-year war against U.S. and Israeli-backed terrorist insurgency, it still faces many challenges and a rough road ahead. This long, dirty war which has been fueled by the US and its allies, has cost 500,000 Syrian lives and an estimated $400 billion in damages. The war has driven 10 million Syrians to flee their homes, creating one of the worst refugee crises in the world today. Needless to say, despite their celebrating their victories against terrorism and invasion, the people in Syria will live with the trauma of this war for generations.

However, western imperialism and its puppets in the middle east are still aggressively harassing the Syrian people and the Syrian army. In the past 18 months Israel has shot over 200 missiles into Syria. The U.S. still maintains its illegal invasion of Syrian territory, with 12 military bases and up to 2,000 special operations soldiers. U.S. Generals (Trump’s best friends) continue to regularly threaten Syria with further bombing and invasion.

Syria is now openly engaged in the early stages of what could be the last major battle of the war. Most of the western-backed terrorist forces, Al Queada, ISIS, al-NUSRA, which the U.S. has branded as terrorists are the so called “rebels” receiving support from the U.S. and Israel. They are concentrated in the northwestern city of Idlib, and the Syrian Army is preparing for an offensive with the support if its allies. They have had to make these preparations and conduct negotiations in the face of the aforementioned bombings and constant threats of intervention from imperialist politicians.

But why are the imperialists being so aggressive and threatening when Syria is close to ending its war? The answer is clear if you look at the history of U.S. war-mongering in the middle east: the imperialists make money off of wars and stealing natural resources, so they’ll only allow peace if they can hold a dominant, colonizer position.

Just within my generation, the U.S. has invaded and devastated Iraq, Libya and Afganistan. These countries, home to some of the world most ancient civilizations, had long been victims of western intervention and aggression, but they remained relatively stable until the U.S. and its allies invaded. They all now lay in ruins.

In Libya, the U.S. invasion caused the growth of a domestic slave trade as well as terrible sectarian violence between warlord and fundamentalist groups. In Iraq, the U.S.-installed government is viciously repressing protests where everyday Iraq citizens are demanding basic necessities like food and water and jobs. Afganistan has never seen an end to violence since the U.S. invaded, and NATO today uses the war-torn country as a military training ground. Last year the U.S. even dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb in Afganistan. One thing is for sure: the military industrial complex and the oil executives are laughing to the bank every time workers and oppressed people in the U.S. believe the lies that they feed us on the corporate media to justify these wars.

We should express our support for Syria in in their struggle against imperialism and for their right to self determination. We also must voice our opposition to the threats that U.S. politicians and generals have been issuing and demand that the U.S. & Israel stop their attacks and pull their troops out of Syria. Only then can Syrian workers rebuild their communities and advance their struggles against capitalist and imperialist oppression.

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US Bomb Kills Children on Yemen School Bus

On August 9, the United States and their puppets in Saudi Arabia bombed a school bus full of children. Fifty civilians, mostly children, died and over 60 were injured in this airstrike. While the world cried in disgust at this massacre of children, the Saudi “royalty” and the US imperialists coldly either denied their responsibility or attempted to justify it as a “legitimate target”. The US military and profit making corporations who sold the bombs are just as responsible for the massacre as the Saudis who dropped them, especially because the US provides the intelligence and coordinates for such airstrikes. U.S. workers pay for this as money for needed social programs is stolen by Congress and the Trump administration and turned over to the war profiteers.

This is just the latest episode in the bloody war on the Yemeni people, especially children. The attacks are almost all directed at civilians, either through direct violence or by destroying their access to necessities like food, water and medicine. In Yemen, the imperialists and their puppets in the Middle East are responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. We cannot become complacent and we must expose all the politicians, generals, and war profiteering capitalists who are responsible for this war.

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Hands Off Syria!

In early April, there was hope that the years-long occupation of Syria by the US military might be coming to a close when Trump told media he was ready to “get out.” By mid-April, however, Trump and the entire establishment reversed their position, and they started moving towards a new all-out war on Syria.

On April 7 the entire corporate media reported on a chemical attack on Syrian civilians. Immediately, they suggested that the Syrian government was responsible, even though James Mattis reported months ago that they had no evidence that the Syrian government ever used chemical weapons. Trump and his military cabinet jumped on board and used this as a pretext to threaten Syria with total invasion.

The Syrian government denied any responsibility. They reminded the world that they have always allowed chemical weapons investigations from international organizations, which have always cleared them of using or having chemical weapons. They invited the inspectors to come back once again to try to find some proof for these serious allegations. However, without any evidence, the US, UK and France attacked Syria with over 100 missiles before the inspectors could even arrive.

Most of the missiles were from the US. The attack was ultimately useless, and the Syrian military claimed victory for their defenses, though infrastructure and private research facilities were destroyed. The attack wasted $100 million of our taxes and pushed the world closer to nuclear war.

The Syrian military has emphasized that they had no reason to use chemical weapons. They have only needed traditional warfare to almost completely retake the territories held by the foreign-backed terrorist groups that have ravaged their country for six years.

The US is refusing to accept defeat in Syria. Their goal has always been to overthrow the government to secure oil profits, like they did in Iraq and Libya. And just like in those catastrophic wars for profit, they will gladly lie to us to justify the destruction.

It is ridiculous to believe that the US,UK and France are concerned about the human rights of Syrians. Firing missiles on civilian populations will not bring about peace. And all of these countries are silent when it comes to the long and brutal war on the people of Yemen by their close ally Saudi Arabia. They also supported Israel’s terrible repression of Palestinian protesters in April, where dozens were killed and thousands more wounded, some by chemical weapons.

The hypocrisy is even more evident when you recognize that the US has consistently been the number one user of chemical warfare. From napalm in Vietnam to white phosphorous in Iraq and Syria, not to mention the chemicals used on US protesters from Ferguson to Standing Rock, the US has no moral authority to attack anyone on that basis.

We workers must stand with the people of the world to stop an invasion of Syria that would block peace in the country for years. We should speak out against the war mongering of both Republicans and Democrats, and we should call for the military to leave Syria. A war against Syria would not only devastate that country, but it would also be a war on workers and oppressed communities in the US.

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Ring the Alarm Bells of Global War!

CONDEMN DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLICAN COMPLICITY: BOTH PROFIT FROM WAR, TAKE MONEY FROM OUR CHILDREN! INDEPENDENT POLITICAL
ACTION IS NEEDED!

We hold the US presidents, generals and Wall Street responsible for the endless imperialist wars. After all, they make big money from it.
They carry out genocidal terror on people in other countries, creating millions of refugees and causing the starvation of more. They scapegoat immigrants and breed racism in this country. They lie to cover their deeds. They steal from the public treasury (our taxes) and cut our social programs to enrich themselves. Their bank vaults are overflowing with war profits, blood money. And whichever party is in the White house, Democrats or Republicans, both are parties of Wall Street who pursue profit above all else.

We expect more from progressives. Many people who should know better are following the Democratic Party in a blind stampede to hang their hats on anything that attacks Trump- including a dangerous and deceptive campaign of blaming everything on Russia.

There is no lack of REAL things to expose and attack Trump for (like his war mongering and his criminal budget-cuts that steal from the poor) that the masses of people can understand, as we are his victims. The Democrats have chosen this Russia-blaming path because it is a dead-end that will never lead to any real change.

Now a few Democrats are condemning Trump’s recent brutal bombing of Syria because of its illegality, but not the root-causes of the bombing. If Congress voted to approve the bombing (not done during Obama/Clinton bombings), would that make it OK?

These are all wars of U.S. aggression. Working people have no interest in them; only the rich do. The capitalists use them as an excuse to take away our rights of privacy and expression, in the name of a false “National Security”. Real security comes from having good healthcare, housing and education; all of which is threatened by increasing military spending. War is the greatest assault on the working class: THIS is what we must expose to the people of the U.S.

The U.S. capitalist ruling class has only one goal – maximizing profit at any cost. The system is standing on feet of clay only propped up by trillions of tax payer dollars to bailout banks, shamelessly looting the treasury to funnel profits to war corporations, and cutting taxes to the super-rich. Like a wounded beast it’s charging in every direction raining down destruction across the globe and at home. Congress is a millionaire’s club. Their campaign contributions are nothing but bribes. Some say go slow, others are for ripping the heart out of all benefits at once.

Many believe the hype that working class people are all for flag waving endless war. But if they were to stand on a street corner with a petition and talk to workers they would find there is no monolithic belief in any of it. If we ignore talking with, listening and organizing workers, putting faith instead in the other party of Wall Street and the Pentagon – the Democratic Party, we are doomed.

Even white workers who drank Trump’s Kool-Aid are mired in unpayable debt, low wages, and paying more for every basic need as well as education and health care and can be organized. Sitting in ivory towers and repeating wall street democratic party claptrap will not shake white workers from espousing racism, only organizing them against the capitalist system will.

Recently Trump signed the federal budget. The quick vote was solely for getting more billions to the military. With a few dissenters, Democrats voted for it eagerly as Republicans, (as they both have for decades which is the material basis for the rise of Trump and the right). Why? We all knew that following this would be amendments to the budget calling for sweeping cuts to Medicaid, social security and food stamps.

The government has declared war on the workers at home, seeking to extract every penny from us to put in their bank vaults. Workers can and will stop war and fascism. The Republican and Democratic Party politicians will do anything to prop up profits and their own personal gain. The working class has nothing to gain, and all to lose, from the rich mens imperialist wars.