July 3, 2018 2:44 PM EST
As I arrived in Sana’a city late at night on June 6, the few working street lights cast a glow over the closed doors of shops, trash on the streets, and the earthen color of the buildings. All so familiar. Driving past the enormous Saleh Mosque — a major landmark in the capital — the sign now read “the people’s mosque” in Arabic. Yemen’s former, long-time dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, had turned against the Houthi rebels occupying this city in December and paid with his life. All visible reminders of him have been removed.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/reporting-in-yemen-the-city-that-has-fallen-off-a-cliff
Jane Ferguson is risking her life right now to report the news from Yemen for PBS
Yesterday, at risk to her life, Jane Ferguson reported on the PBS’ excellent News Hour from the only open port in Yemen from which food and medicine can still be shipped to provide relief to millions of civilians . A fragile cease-fire the UN negotiated in Sweden may bring a modicum of hope in a country where tragedy prevails.
Meanwhile, also on the PBS network, Washington Week—once the premier weekly opinion program in the US—exemplifies the dominant isolationism of,the White House Corps. On Friday night Washington Week continued to ignore ( as it has for years) the humanitarian tragedy in Yemen and President Trump’s complicity in Saudi genocide.
PBS should immediately appoint Jane Ferguson Washington Week’s peermant moderator,replacing Robert Costa who covers the White House for The Washington Post. If Ferguson is not available, Reporters without Borders has many brave reporters on the front lines of the world’s humanitarian crises. American politicians tell the public we are the leading power in the world. If that power is to mean anything, it must be used to resolve crises— not hide from them and pretend they do not exist.
Reporters such as CNN’s Arwa Damon bring the news of US complicity or indifference to the millions of children and their parents dying . Meanwhile, their coverage of life and death issues do not receive priority coverage. Instead, the majority of the well-tailored White House Press Corps seems to focus exclusively on the Presudent’s soap opera machinations.
Remember, if the public had to rely on the White House Press Corps during Watergate, Richard Nixon would have completed his second term in office. Woodward and Bernstein were not a part of the White House Press Corps. They were low-level reporters covering night court.
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Friday night should cause Bob Costa and his Washington Week panelists shame for failing even make mention of the two Senate resolutions on Yemen
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Take note Washington Week, this is the kind of reporter your panelists should emulate
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“Once inside, there is an unnerving quiet to the children’s ward. The healthier babies cry, but many just stare blankly. It’s not immediately clear if their eyes look too big or their faces too small.
“Malnourishment can have very few tell-tale signs to an untrained eye — perhaps just a paleness, a smallness. As the scale continues, some children have lost hair or had their hair turn orange, some have swollen bellies, or no belly to speak of, or bones sticking out through wilted skin. Some of them have aged faces, with skin that wrinkles when they cry.
Their parents have exhausted all “coping mechanisms” as the aid organizations would say. To you or I, that’s anything we would turn to if a salary suddenly stopped: savings, relatives, a cow or some chickens in the backyard, a line of credit at the local grocery store. After three years of war, most people have exhausted all of those. Sweet tea and bread is keeping an untold number of people here alive, barely. It’s especially tough on the babies as mother’s cannot produce enough high nutrient milk when they themselves are not eating nearly enough.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/reporting-in-yemen-the-city-that-has-fallen-off-a-cliff
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After years of effort— of driving his Senate colleagues crazy by insisting every time he rose to speak—that the Senate ratify the genocide treaty, it is now a matter of law that the kind of genocide the US participates in today ( right now) must result in the US being tried in the World Court if our country does not stop it.
Last week, when the Senate took initial steps to end this the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, this— to its shame—is what the trendy news organizations ignore. CNN, MSNBC, and nearly everyone else on US television have been flogging to death for the previous two days, the same old same old Washington Week’s host decided to repeat yet again on Friday night.
No one at Washington Week saw fit to even mention Yemen. How many more infants have to die in Yemen before Robert Costa decides it worthy of even ten percent of his show’s time?
Shame on you, Washington Week;shame on you.
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