Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 6/3/22 Aisha Jumaan on How You can Help End the War Against Yemen

Episode Date: June 13, 2022

Aisha Jumaan from the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation joined Scott on Antiwar Radio to discuss the war in Yemen. Despite little to no media coverage, which Jumaan recently wrote about, the war in Yemen as well as the consequences of that war is the worst catastrophe happening in the world today. Even though progress has been made with a ceasefire, Jumaan reports on how the humanitarian crisis is getting worse. Together, they explain how you can help the grassroots effort to end U.S. support for the brutal war.  Discussed on the show: “Corporate Media Fail to Cover War in Yemen Due to US Support for Saudi Arabia” (Truthout) “Gulf funded think tank turns pro-Saudi, UAE messaging up to 11” (Responsible Statecraft) Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation  1-833-STOPWAR “Yemeni Civil War Unleashes a Plague of Locusts” (Antiwar.com) Friends Committee On National Legislation Dr. Aisha Jumaan is an epidemiologist and the founder and president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. Find her on Twitter @AishaJumaan. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For Pacifica Radio, June 12th, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all welcome to the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of Anti-War.com and author of the book in Nuffalo. already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,700 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right, introducing Aisha Jumann, and she has this great piece at Truthout. Corporate media

failed to cover war in Yemen due to U.S. support for Saudi Arabia. and she is, of course, the president of the Yemen Relief and Construction Foundation. Welcome back to the show, Aisha. How are you doing? Thank you very much for the invite. I'm doing very well, and I'm happy to be with you. Great. Very happy to have you here on the show with us again. Now, this may not be the most covered story in the world. In fact, quite the opposite. But it is the most important story in the world. It's the worst war in the world. America's war in Yemen. It's at least as bad as...

Iraq War II, with already civilian casualties counted at more than half a million. And it's been going on for seven years here. And yet, we actually now have an advantage to press to try to force an end to the thing. So let's start at the end there. Can you talk a little bit about the new war powers resolution and the efforts that people like yourself and other activists are making in order to really try to push this thing through and make a difference now? Yes, actually, we've had a lot of support from activists and grassroots organizations that have pushed our lawmakers to introduce Yemen war power resolution. It was headed by Representative Jaya Pal and Ephasio, and also Schiff joined the ranks on this.

And basically, it says that the U.S. needs to end all your support to the Saudi-led war on Yemen, a specifically offensive targeting inside Yemen. And so this is something that we are very excited about. We are, again, without the grassroots, without anti-war activists, this legislation would not have been introduced. So we encourage everybody to reach out to their representatives and senators to ensure that this passes. We've had one that was passed in 2019. However, it was vetoed when it got to President Trump's office. So this time we're very hopeful that we will finally end you as complicity in the slaughter, actually, of the Yemeni people.

Scotty talked about about half a million civilians having been killed. This is a huge underestimate because in Yemen we don't have people, you know, issuing death certificates. So a lot of people die in their homes and nobody knows that they even die. So I would say, and you're absolutely right, despite all the horrors that are going on in the world today, Yemen is considered the worst humanitarian. crisis in the world, man-made humanitarian crisis in the world. And without the U.S. support, this war would not have started and would not have continued. So it's time for us to end it. Absolutely. All right. Now, so a few things here. First of all, the war powers resolution of 1973, it really gives the president too much authority constitutionally. But there's enough

restrictions on there that Nixon vetoed it and the Congress passed it with supermajorities over Nixon's veto. And it says that after 60 days, not that the Constitution gives the president the right to start a war at all, but at least after 60 days, the Congress can force a president to end a war. And when the Congress

passed, I guess just the House passed it in 2018, then as you write here, both houses of Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 2019 to try to force an end of this war. But Trump vetoed it. And ironically, this is a war that Obama started to

placate the Saudis, his government told the New York Times to placate the Saudis because we're doing the nuclear deal with Iran. Well, Trump tears up the nuclear deal, but he keeps the war. But anyway, it's just absolutely world historical, incredible, something that nobody thought would ever happen, that the Congress would ever actually invoke the war powers resolution to try to force an into a war. And here they're doing it again. And as you said, you have powerful allies of President Biden, like Representative Schiff, who are co-sponsoring this, supporting this. And, you know, two years ago when he was running for president, Biden said he was going to end this war.

And then a year and a half ago, when he became the president, he announced he was ending American support for the war. But then he just didn't. It was in, I think, May of 2021, the very end of April, 2021, when Admiral Kirby at the Pentagon admitted that, actually, no, we're continuing all the support. never mind all that stuff we said about how we were ending it um but in other words though to get to my point here this is supposedly president biden's policy he said he wanted to end this war anyway so all we are doing is trying to hold him you know unlike donald trump we're holding him to his promise of what he said

he was going to do and what he said his policy was going to be and so i think that means too that when people call their Democratic congressmen, if they live in Democratic districts, that they can frame this as President Biden needs our support in the Congress, right? He needs the Congress to say that they agree with him that it's time to end this war. Try to frame it in a way where they're not going against their president. They're giving him the ammo he needs to do the right thing, that kind of deal, you know? You're absolutely right. I mean, he said a lot of things and he also He also said that he's going to make Saudi Arabia and then Muhammad bin Salman the Paya that it is. So it is time for him to deliver on the promises and for Congress to empower him to do so.

Especially because the Saudis have been playing hardball. As you know, we, based on reports, President Biden is due to travel Saudi Arabia and his trip had been postponed. So if you're reading the national government-owned media in Saudi Arabia right now, they're saying the postponement was due to the fact that President Biden had not honored the demands of Saudi Arabia. So I'm not even sure what these demands are that they're requiring of him. And the other thing they said also, which was quite fascinating, they said he needs Saudi Arabia to be re-elected.

And that's why he's visiting Saudi Arabia. And I just have no idea how a dictatorship and war criminals like Mohammed bin Salman thinks that he can dictate who our president is going to be. And, you know, what strange thinking, an absurd thinking that he thinks the president of the most powerful nation in the world needs his support to be reelected. Well, I mean, there is something there where, and this actually goes back to the 1990s, if you look at bin Laden's declarations of war against America from 96 and 98, he talks about American pressure on especially Saudi Arabia, but the rest of the Gulf states to ramp up production

to lower the price of oil to subsidize our economy at their expense. Look at Bush and Clinton and Bush and Obama and Trump all have openly put pressure on Saudi Arabia. Please ramp up production to drop the price of oil because I have an election coming up. But, you know, obviously with price inflation, monetary and price inflation the way it is now in America and around the world, they could produce every last drop in the ground they've got. It's only going to drop the price a very little bit at this point. And supply of oil around the world is so diversified now that even if Saudi really cranked up production, it probably would only make the most marginal difference anyway. But then you're right, though, that this is the

kind of thing. We'll trade a war for this, right? A politician will trade, and not even a war, a genocide, a completely one-sided slaughter of a civilian population for just, you know, public choice theory. For Biden's own personal political interests, he would continue this war. And bin Salman knows that. So I think there really is something to that, unfortunately. And I actually want to push against that. The reason for that, I think probably in the 70s and 80s, this argument of we need their oil was accurate. I don't think it's accurate anymore. We know now that the U.S. is sufficient, and we also know that the U.S. now is one of the largest oil producers in the world. So that assumption that existed, especially in the 70s, is no longer

true. And even, like you said, and I agree with your second statement, even if they crank up the production, it's going to have extremely low effect on world economy and also on the U.S. economy. If you just read recently, J.P. Morgan just published an article on the suggested production increased by OPEC, by the way, including Russian oil also, more Russian oils coming into the market, that it will have negligible effect on the economy. and he actually compared it to going to a war with rubber bullets. So this concept that we need their oil, you know, for our presidents to be elected, is no longer valid.

Right. Yeah, somebody tell the presidents. But yeah, I totally agree. And it really, like, it's just the lie. If you turn it to any of the business channels on TV, you know, the lie is that I guess all of a sudden there's a giant contraction in supply of everything, right? Oranges and cars. and oil and everything. But that's not true.

What happened was they printed a bunch of money and they devalued the money. So prices in everything are going up. No increase in the supply of production of oil around the world. I shouldn't say no, but it would be an absolute drastic, a doubling of oil production around the world or something to bring prices back down again. Because the problem isn't a restriction in the supply of oil. The problem is too much money, created by national governments around the world. the world in the name of the lockdowns.

So it just says what it is. There's no way around that. And the other thing I also want to mention here related to the economy, like you said, we've had a lot of reasons for why we have where we are, but also you just mentioned also big companies or not just media companies, but also think tanks that are hired by these dictators to shape public opinion in the U.S. So we have a lot of publications that have come out in support of Saudi Arabia, in support of the UAE,

in support of all these countries. But these are paid lobbyists. These are paid think tank individuals. So they flood our media with information of how we are dependent on them. And without them, you know, our economy is going to collapse when in fact, if they declare a conflict of interest, we will see that they are just paid agents.

And, you know, we see now in the news that the CEO of the Brookings Institute has just been, you know, his office search by the FBI because he was serving as an agent for Qatar without declaring that. And I wish that, you know, every time somebody writes an article in support of a dictator and a war criminal, that they declare where their money is coming from for them to write such an article. Yeah. You know, the great Ben Freeman had a piece at the Quincy Institute recently about

the Middle East Institute and how they are just absolutely thoroughly bankrupted to, I think, they're tens of millions of dollars by Saudi Arabia. And then I just did, while we were talking, search site Middle East Institute for Yemen. And the first thing that came up is why we shouldn't end the war in Yemen too soon here. You know, there's just no question about that and how that works. Yeah. And so it really is, it's Iraq. In fact, someone years ago described to me as the United States of America is just a fiction. America is essentially where potentates from around the world come here to hire our mercenary forces to dominate and control their tyrannies back in their own home countries. You could just essentially look at the entire USA as just a front for Israel and

Saudi and Britain, for that matter. Everybody but the American people. And it's partly because American people don't know what's going on. And again, we tend to believe our media in the U.S., especially the big names like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, not recognizing that these media outlets actually represents their owners. They don't represent that. They don't represent the constituents of, you know, of the U.S. And I actually have an interesting story were somebody who, you know, out of college was hired to be an editor in one of the big, in the newspapers. And he said he was very happy he wrote his first editorial and the owner of the organization

called him and said, I hired you to write my opinions, not yours. And I think it's very important for us in the U.S. to be very critical of the media and understand why they write and who owns them and what's their politics. because they're pushing their politics on us. Yeah, absolutely right. Hang on just one second. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model

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Scott Horton.org. Tom Woods' Liberty Classroom. Real history, real economics, real education. Okay, it's anti-war radio. I'm Scott Horton. I'm talking with Asha Juman, and she's the head of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. I actually have a donor who emailed me out of the blue and said, you know, he likes to donate to different non-profits, but he does his due diligence, and he looked very deeply into the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. And he was happy to report to me it was, you know, ratio-wise, numbers-wise, above 98% of their spending going directly to providing food aid and medical aid and whatever to people in Yemen and essentially Asia and her receptionist or whoever, taking nothing.

I'm taking, taking virtually nothing off the top, unlike every other charity you've ever heard of. So, you know, I'm very happy to report that to you, that if there's, if you're looking for a way that you can help the people of Yemen, and know that your dollar is going where you want it to go, it's the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation at YemenFoundation.org. That's YemenFoundation.org. And as long as I'm raising money, it's fun drive time here at KPFK again. and sorry to interrupt the show, but this is how it goes. We don't do commercials. We don't have corporate sponsors.

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That's 818985-5735 or KPFK.org to help support KPFK Pacifica Radio in southern California. All right, now back to anti-war radio, talking with Aisha Juman about the war in Yemen. Three major points. This war is the worst war in the world. despite the lack of media coverage. Two, there's a ceasefire now. At a possible real end of the war, the Saudis have even given up their major goal

of reinstalling the last dictator. So that is huge. And then three, there is currently, as of last week, a war powers resolution in the House of Representatives, an advantage for us to press. And we have to. And this is the time.

So give them the call to action. Let the people know Asia. important it is for each and every person listening to call 833 Stop War, which will connect right to your representatives, to let them know how they feel about this, whether their congressman is supporting this, whether he's co-sponsoring this, he or she, co-sponsoring this, or what have you, please. Thank you. So this war has been going on for over seven years.

It is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. are 16 million people in Yemen who are at the risk of famine. By the end of this year, this number is going to be 24 million people. That's, you know, Yemen has two-third of the people in Yemen. Yemen has a population of 30 million people. We are counting on you to end the war, the Saudi-led war on Yemen, that would not happen without the U.S. support. This is prime time.

We have now over 62 representatives. who are supporting the Warpower Resolution to endure support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen, please call your representative and ask that they support the Yemen Warpower Resolution. We also have an accompanying resolution that's going to be introduced in the Senate by Senator Bernie Sanders.

So also start calling your senators asking them to support Bernie Sanders introduction and be early co-sponsors of the Yemen War Power Resolution. war power resolution. We're counting on you. We're counting on the American public because we know you're not aware about what's going on and how the U.S. is complicit in the war crimes that are committed in Yemen. Washington Post article just published showing over 90 air strikes that are considered war crimes. And it says very specifically that the U.S. is complicit in these war crimes. please we need you we need your support this is time especially with the truth that has been

extended everybody is ready for this to happen enable our president enable our representative to support our president to end the support of the Saudi led war on Yemen absolutely all right thank you so much for that and again everyone it's hj res 87 you can just say it's the war powers resolution on yemen you know the one i mean but it's It's H.J. Res. 87. It's literally from the Nixon years. The war powers resolution in 1973 being invoked to force Biden's hand to force Saudi's hand to stop this war. And look, we're the superpower. They're the client state. It's the American-led coalition. Those are our F-15s, our bombs, our mercenaries and spies and military men over there coordinating, doing all the intelligence and the logistics. our navy enforcing the blockade. It's our war. And just because MSNBC went literally 365 days without uttering the word Yemen once doesn't make it not true. But back to what Asia was saying

just now. You know, this transmitter, KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. is the most powerful FM transmitter west of the Mississippi River. You know that? Cover it with all the repeaters we got. We go down to San Diego. up to Santa Barbara, way out in the desert, almost to Palm Springs. There are potentially tens of thousands of people this Sunday morning, who could be convinced, obviously it's Sunday, just jot it down, type it in your phone, email it to yourself, text it to your mama, 833, stop war. And then tomorrow morning, first thing, this is what we all do together. is we call Congress and let them know how much we care about this.

It'll make a difference. It's just the margin, but that's where all the action is. So Aisha tell me, what are the latest reports of the humanitarian crisis out of Yemen? Because we always have heard from the very beginning about the numbers of people on the brink of starvation. But seven years of the brink of starvation is pretty hungry. But I wonder just if, you know, you mentioned, mentioned the Washington Post latest report, like on the airstrikes and that kind of thing. Are there any major new reports about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen that people can read?

Yes, actually. The UN publishes weekly and also monthly reports on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. If you look at Relief Web slash Yemen, you'll have that information there. Basically, again, now with food crisis because of the war in Ukraine and with the fuel prices increasing, you have a vulnerable population in Yemen that was expected by the end of this year to those who are at brink of starvation to go from 16 to 20 million people. So that number is going to be much higher. The World Food Programme that supports Yemeni with food rations have had to reduce their food rations to 8 million people in Yemen.

So the situation is getting worse. A lot more people, if you look at the 800, you know, half a million people that were reported to have died in Yemen, 70% of them died from indirect causes that is famine, that is infectious diseases due to the lack of medicine and water, because a lot of these services have been destroyed. And as you mentioned, there's a blockade on Yemen, which may. things getting into Yemen extremely difficult. So, yes, the situation has worsened and is expected actually to be much worse than what we anticipated at the beginning of this year.

Yeah, you know, you think about Iraq War II in that occupation and that massive civil war where during that occupation, there was no blockade. They're still bringing in food and everything. Supposedly the war was one in the first few weeks. Remember, here we've had this country under a seed for seven years.

This is absolutely in violation of every part of the letter and spirit of the Geneva conventions and just modern civilization. The only way that they've gotten away with it is just by hiding it. It's every bit as bad as a record, too. And I'm afraid that, you know, when the war finally does end and they do the excess death rate comparisons, it's going to be more than a million people have died in this thing. Absolutely, Scott. I am an epidemiologist working with numbers.

something that I do. And I am 100% sure the number of that in Yemen has already exceeded 1 million people. All right. It couldn't be otherwise after everything this whole time. And look, I want to add this. I don't know if we've ever talked about this before, but almost nobody knows this. There's this wonderful article by Morgan Hunter at anti-war.com about how the locust plague that decimated East Africa is because of this war at the university. in Sana'a, the graduate students had a program where they went out there and annihilated the grasshoppers every spring. But because of the war, that whole thing was canceled. And so those grasshoppers turned into a locust plague and crossed the Red Sea and decimated crops

throughout eastern Africa when they're in the middle of this horrible drought anyway. So you want to talk about excess death rate there. You can go ahead and throw on another million people died. from the locust plague unleashed by the United States of America. I would like, yeah, thank you for pointing the article. I haven't seen it yet. This is extremely important. Just to wrap up here, we're almost out of time,

but let's just talk about that activism one more time. We have the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker Lobby, indefatigable anti-war activists there in Washington, D.C., and that's fcnl.org. all the information that people need there. We'll have blog entries. In fact, I'm going to write one right now at anti-war.com. And the phone number is 1833, stop war, and they will connect you directly to your congressman's office or your, your, um, congressman or woman. And if you're a liberal Democrat, if you live in a liberal Democrat district, attack the left from the left. If you live

in a conservative Republican district, attack the right from the right, make the arguments they want to hear. Don't ask them to change who they are. Just ask them to be a decent version of who they claim to be. That's all, right? And if they're a Democrat, ask them, we need to support Biden by passing this resolution. That's how they need to hear it, okay? Frame it that way.

Keep that in mind, be creative, and tell them, you vote, and this really matters, and really can make a difference. It's 833 stop war. And you know what, Aisha, too, I think people don't really realize, but you can look up on your Congress person's website there, and they usually have two or three offices back home, too. So there are, you know, you're only talking to a staffer, but been in the year of three or four staffers from one congressman's office,

if that's everybody involved in this, all doing the same thing. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of calls to Congress, and that will ensure it's passing. It would be virtually unstoppable at that point if we could turn out those numbers, don't you think? I agree. Our elected people should be responsive to our request. We're the one who put them in office. And I know and I believe that American public would not want to be part of this war that has created famine and a lot of death and misery in Yemen. And it's their voices that should be represented by our elected officials. So the more we call them, the more likely they're are going to listen to us. And I understand that a call is considered like 2,000 people have written to the congressperson. So one call apparently represents 2,000 people.

So we need those calls moving on. We have right now over 100 organizations who signed on to ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen. We need every single voice out there to call in and ask that their representatives support the Yemen War Power Resolution. And that's another great point, especially anyone if you can claim to represent a group of any kind.

Any group of 10 or more people, of any description whatsoever, whatever it is, and all of us agree about this, and we're serious about it. That kind of force multiplier is so important. And of course, veterans invoke that status too, that you've been there and back, and that's how you know better, that kind of thing.

These are the arguments that really can help win people over. And that's it. We're all out of time. Everybody, please donate and support. support KPFK. There's no anti-war radio without KPFK. So it's 8189-985-5735, 81855 or KPFK.org. $75 a more. Get you copy of my book enough already. And thank you so much for that. And thank you, Aisha Juman, so much for all of your efforts and your time on the show today. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you very much for all that you're doing for Yemen and for the rest of the world to make sure that we live in a peaceful world. Thank you, Scott.

All right, you guys, that's Aisha Juman, Yemenfoundation.org. And this great piece is that truth out. Corporate media fail to cover war in Yemen due to U.S. support for Saudi Arabia. And again, it's 833. Stop war. Call them first thing tomorrow morning. Thank you. And that's it for anti-war radio for this morning.

I'm Scott Horton. Find me at Scott Horton.org. And on Twitter at Scott Horton's show, the book is enough already. And I'll be back here for my new time, 9 to 9.30. on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. See you. That's right. Hey, Richard.

Great to speak to you. Yeah. That moment right there, that's what it feels like to step into a bureau booth. Our soundproof office pods bring deep focus to even the last. to even the loudest offices. In the Bureau booth, no construction, no distractions, just clarity. Search Bureau office booths or visit withburo.com.