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Showing posts with the label "War in Yemen"

Imperialist violence

"European organizations working on arms control—such as Amnesty International; Action, Sécurité, Ethique Républicaines (ASER); Action des Chrétiens pour l’Abolition de la Torture (ACAT); Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT); and Human Rights Watch—have highlighted that the United States and Europe are supplying arms. Saudi Arabia and the UAE regularly top the table of arms purchases from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, and Sweden. Several NGOs have unilaterally initiated legal proceedings in national courts and the International Criminal Court, hoping to demonstrate the exporting country’s criminal responsibility, but the law remains hard to interpret." The arms industry is not only part of a maximising profit system, but it is also an arm to protect partners and allies. In his 9th proposition of criticisms of capitalism in Envisioning Real Utopias , Erik Olin Wright states that capitalism "in a world of nationa states, fuels militarism an
Imperialist values "Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, through the crucial decades of state formation as the Gulf monarchs entrenched their rule, Washington and London provided the regimes with security guarantees, arms and training for their security forces. This empowered the Saudis and their fellow royals to jail and torture dissidents, crush all challengers and shut down any possibility of political change, most recently in  Bahrain in 2011 . Such violence has always been central to western power in the world. The Gulf monarchs have merely acted as our subcontractors."  —David Wearing Support from the UK has enabled the world's worst humanitarian disaster