Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence

FOR DAYS NOW, American cable news has broadcast non-stop coverage of the horrific attack in Brussels. Viewers repeatedly heard from witnesses and from the wounded. Video was shown in a loop of the terror and panic when the bombs exploded. Networks dispatched their TV stars to Brussels, where they remain. NPR profiled the lives of several of the airport victims. CNN showed a moving interview with a wounded, bandage-wrapped Mormon American teenager speaking from his Belgium hospital bed.

All of that is how it should be: That’s news. And it’s important to understand on a visceral level the human cost from this type of violence. But that’s also the same reason it’s so unjustifiable, and so propagandistic, that this type of coverage is accorded only to Western victims of violence, but almost never to the non-Western victims of the West’s own violence.

A little more than a week ago, as Mohammed Ali Kalfood reported in The Intercept, “Fighter jets from a Saudi-led [U.S.– and U.K.-supported] coalition bombed a market in Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah. The latest count indicates that about 120 people were killed, including more than 20 children, and 80 were wounded in the strikes.” Kalfood interviewed 21-year-old Yemeni Khaled Hassan Mohammadi, who said, “We saw airstrikes on a market last Ramadan, not far from here, but this attack was the deadliest.” Over the past several years, the U.S. has launched hideous civilian-slaughtering strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, and Iraq. Last July, The Intercept published a photo essay by Alex Potter of Yemeni victims of one of 2015’s deadliest Saudi-led, U.S.- and U.K.-armed strikes.




Footage from airstrikes hit market in Hajja too graphic, so I blurred the civilians & children killed in pic. #Yemen
- Hisham Al-Omeisy

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25...s-while-ignoring-victims-of-western-violence/

US-made bombs are dropping from made in the USA jets. It makes no difference to the people on the ground who led or flew the mission. This kind of action is the best recruiting tool Al Qaeda and ISIS ever had. Home made bombs in Europe make headlines with much wringing of hands and calls for revenge; hundreds die in a market from US bombs and nobody says squat.

Amnesty International said on Monday that the kingdom has led a “devastating” campaign of “unlawful” air strikes and bombardment of civilian targets in Yemen. “Thousands have died. Many more have been injured and displaced. Yemen is now in a humanitarian crisis,” they added.

The group also urged US President Barack Obama to cancel ‘one billion dollar’ arms sale the oil-rich kingdom. “President Obama has authorized the sale of over 18,000 bombs and 1,500 warheads to Saudi Arabia. These bombs have not yet been delivered.

“Amnesty International has found both unexploded U.S. bombs and fragments of exploded U.S. bombs in the ruins of Yemeni homes and other civilian objects.”

In this era of smart bombs and GPS, I don't see how they can accidentally miss the military target in the area that was six miles away from the marketplace where 120 civilians died. Who knows what purpose the Saudis had but it wasn't an accident.

Any government that holds its power via involuntary and forcible membership has no remorse over acts of Imperialism or Domestic tyranny.

Replacing the baker of a cake that has shit in the recipe won't make the cake taste like there's no shit in it.

that's not sasquatch, that's pedobear in a disguise trying to dodge law enforcement.