Inside Stories

The numbers have long been a matter of dispute but, generally, experts believe that the United Nations’ blockade of Iraq between April of 1990 and August of 2003 was responsible for the deaths of more than a million Iraqis, roughly 567,000 of them children. This was no accident. Designed by the United States and the British for the ostensible reason of frustrating Saddam Hussein’s imperial ambitions, the UN committee charged with managing the sanctions seemed to focus an inordinate amount of attention on inflicting maximum damage to Iraq’s civilian population.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA — As the Maryland lawyer remembers it, the call came from his mother a few years back. After a few financial setbacks, the lawyer’s younger, adult brother had moved back in with his mother but he hadn’t been himself of late. He slept away much of the day, and when he was awake, he was unusually lethargic and sullen, refusing to eat or shower most days.

SANA’A, YEMEN — “My mom said we don’t have enough money to buy new clothes this Eid because of the war,” proclaims Nassem, a young Yemeni girl. Instead, her hands are adorned with hena’a — a black liquid applied to form intricate designs to the skin. “I want dad to see my hands, he’ll like it, Nassem says.

BELLINGHAM, WA – While Donald Trump’s stepped-up repression of unauthorized migrants has been touted as a “get tough” policy meant to stem a flood of “animals” affiliated with transnational criminal groups, his draconian policies remain unlikely to deter desperate asylum-seekers from seeking entry to the United States. Instead, family separations and arbitrary prosecution and incarcerations are upping the scale of trauma suffered by refugees while asylum claims and border-crossings continue to increase.

MEXICO CITY — Leon Fierro spent 20 days in a Mexican jail on trumped-up attempted-homicide charges he says came on orders from the government. Upon his release, the human rights activist returned to organizing Mexicans against efforts to privatize their water, visiting Mexico City to speak out against the government’s efforts to intimidate him and derail the movement he leads.
Fierro told MintPress News:

SANA’A, YEMEN — When his wife’s vomiting and diarrhea simply wouldn’t stop, 40-year-old Ali Sherwaid, an English teacher, did a quick accounting in his head, calibrating the catastrophe that had befallen him. With cholera ravaging his wife, 28 years-old and nine-months pregnant with the couple’s first child, Sherwaid needed to get her medical treatment.

WASHINGTON — The Trump Administration and the media were positively giddy at the news: the U.S. had added 223,000 jobs in May, representing a record 92nd consecutive month of jobs growth, and reducing the unemployment rate to 3.8 percent, its lowest level since the height of the dotcom boom in 2000.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – It has often been said that Israel, since its establishment in 1948, has presided over the “miracle” of making the country’s “desert bloom.” That heavily promoted narrative — which asserts that the Palestinians have long lacked the capacity, knowledge or desire to properly develop agriculture in the region — has often been used as a legitimizing factor in Israel’s establish

HODEIDAH, YEMEN – In defiance of pleas from the United Nations, aid groups and others, the Saudi-led coalition has begun its offensive on the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, an offensive that is likely to result in mass civilian casualties and gravely worsen the country’s humanitarian crisis.

GAZA — Gaza is in urgent need of opening spaces on many levels. The geophysical space — incarcerated by Israel’s illegal blockade on Gaza and its construction of barriers to “protect Israel’s citizens with power and sophistication,” according to Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, which are fast becoming normalized and barely worthy of mention in diplomatic circles.