Yemen, Big Pharma, Tar Sands

U.S. Complicit with Saudi Arabia in 10,000 Yemen War Deaths
Interview with Shireen Al-Adeimi, Harvard Graduate School student originally from Yemen, conducted by Scott Harris

The war in Yemen between Shiite Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen’s President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi began in 2014 after rebels seized control of the capital city of Sanaa. Saudi Arabia and allied Gulf nations launched a brutal bombing campaign targeting the Houthis in March 2015. Human rights groups have condemned the non-stop Saudi airstrikes for repeatedly targeting civilians and civil infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and markets.

It’s estimated that more than 10,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 2014. However, a larger humanitarian crisis has developed due to a prolonged air and sea blockade preventing food and medicine from entering the country. As many as 7 million people in Yemen already face “famine-like” conditions and rely completely on food aid to survive. An outbreak of cholera, caused by the destruction of water and sanitation systems by Saudi airstrikes, has already killed more than 2,000 people.

The Saudi government grounded all humanitarian aid flights into Yemen after a missile was fired into Saudi Arabia from Yemen on Nov. 4. The Saudis blamed the Houthi rebels, charging that the missile was supplied by Iran, which they assert may be considered an “act of war.” The U.S. has aided the Saudi bombing campaign with intelligence, in-air refueling, and weapons sales. In a rare bipartisan challenge to U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad, the House of Representatives passed a resolution on Nov. 13 which states that U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen has not been authorized by Congress. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Shireen Al-Adeimi, a Harvard graduate School Student originally from Yemen, who discusses the humanitarian crisis which the conflict has triggered, and U.S. complicity with Saudi Arabia in the ongoing war.

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: The Saudis have been bombing indiscriminately. They have not left anything unbombed. So, houses, schools, hospitals, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), so they had in one year, four of their hospitals were bombed. And this was after they were providing exact coordinates to the Saudi (unintelligible), saying “Hey, don’t bomb us, we’re a hospital.” And that didn’t seem to help either. Saudi and Yemen have been known for committing double-tap strikes, which means that they bomb an area, and then when rescue operations are underway, they come and they bomb the rescuers one more time. We’ve had double-tap and triple-tap attacks in Yemen consistently. In October of last year, they bombed a funeral home, killing 140 or 150 people. And so they have crossed ever boundary. Nobody has been let unscathed by their bombing campaign.

And they’re using the blockade as a form of control as well. They are starving people to death in Yemen and that’s another one of those violations that they continue to commit with inpunity.

Unfortunately, the United States has been helping them right from the beginning, under the Obama administration, continuing through the Trump administration. The United States, of course, has huge weapons deals with Saudi Arabians. So do a lot of other countries. But we go further, we provide mid-air support while the jets are flying and they’re bombing civilians or targeting whatever they’re targeting. The U.S. provides mid-air refueling for the Saudi jets, and they provide logistics and training and all sorts of things, so it’s really difficult to justify why we’re in Yemen, and that’s part of the reason why nobody’s really talking about the conflict in Yemen.

BETWEEN THE LINES: I’ve read that up to seven million people in Yemen face starvation because of the air and sea blockade. And we also have a situation there where thousands of people are dying from cholera, primarily children.

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: The world’s worst outbreak of cholera is happening in Yemen right now. Haiti, at the peak of their cholera outbreak, which took five years, there were 700,000 cases. Yemen has already passed 900,000 cases in just a few months. The treatment for cholera is clean water and people don’t have clean water to drink. And so the most vulnerable are those who are very young children and the elderly, people who have been compromised by hunger and their bodies have been weakened by starvation and what-not. Over 2,000 have already died. The blockade means that people aren’t getting food or very little food and medicine is coming into the country. Prior to the war, Yemen used to import 90 percent of its food. And so, there’s nothing really growing in the country. We have a water crisis and so people are starving and whatever little food remains, people can’t afford any more because civil servants haven’t been paid in a year, and those who are being paid, prices have skyrocketed. The country is set to run out of fuel in one month and vaccines in one month.

So, when the UN says it’s the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, it’s not an exaggeration. Millions and millions of people are already at risk of starvation. People are already dying of starvation and it’s just going to get worst if societies don’t lift the blockade.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What can you tell us about any actions that have taken place within the U.S. Congress and to address the U.S. involvement in this bloody war in Yemen, given the fact we provided intelligence, air refueling and the sale of large amounts of weapons that are being used by the Saudis in this war?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: Right, Congressman Ro Khanna from California introduced H.CON.RES.81, and it says, “Directing the president pursuant to section 5c of the war powers resolution to remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Republic of Yemen.” And under the War Powers Resolution, this would have been a privileged bill, which meant that they had to vote on it and debate it in the House and then vote on this U.S. involvement in Yemen. But, unfortunately it was stripped of its privileged status and what we learn from Ro Khanna is negotiating an alternate resolution, which is House Resolution 599, which is nonbinding. It just basically says “We need to have an urgent political solution in Yemen; we denounce the activities of all parties in Yemen – it repeats a lot of the Saudi rhetoric on Yemeni involvement and it was passed in the House overwhelmingly. But this isn’t the resolution that Yemenis were hoping for.

This isn’t the resolution that people in Yemen were hoping for that would extricate the United States from involvement in Yemen, because without the United States’ support, the Saudis cannot sustain this war.They rely very heavily on U.S. support and Yemen intelligence, which is the school training all of those things, besides the weapons, of course. And so, it’s really disappointing that there is this one chance, this hope for the United States finally after two-and-a-half years, to get out of Yemen, not be involved in these war crimes they’ve decided committing. But nothing concrete so far.

Learn more about the conflict in Yemen and the humanitarian crisis there by visiting the Middle East Research and Information Project at merip.org and the Yemen Peace Project at yemenpeaceproject.org.

Trump Nominates Big Pharma CEO for Health and Human Services Secretary
Interview with Wendell Potter, author and former health insurance industry executive, conducted by Scott Harris

President Trump has nominated Alex Azar, a former top pharmaceutical executive to be named Secretary of Health and Human Services. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Azar would replace Tom Price, who resigned as HHS Secretary in September after it was disclosed that his questionable trips on private jets had cost taxpayers more than $1 million. Azar served as president of the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company’s U.S. division for five years, and prior to that was HHS general counsel in the George W. Bush administration.

Azar has condemned the Affordable Care Act, supports converting Medicaid from an entitlement program to state block grants and opposes Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to working families meeting income guidelines. Healthcare advocacy groups and Senate Democrats are doubtful that Azar will pursue policies to rein in the run-away price of prescription drugs, although during his campaign Trump favored negotiations to lower drug prices. The National Nurses United union condemned Azar’s nomination saying, “It’s like employing a lion to herd your sheep”.

While Azar led Lilly USA, the company’s Humalog brand of insulin more than doubled in price. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Wendell Potter, a former health insurance industry executive turned whistleblower and author, who’s just launched a new investigative news platform, Tarbell.org. Here Potter explains why he believes that Azar, if confirmed as HHS Secretary, will be a disaster for millions of consumers who already are unable to afford critical prescription medicines.

WENDELL POTTER: Well, not only is he truly representing the pharmaceutical industry, I think he’ll be representing the special interest broadly in health care. He was also serving as treasurer of this organization called “The Healthcare Leadership Council” which sounds like a useful organization and one that might have some benefit to consumers and patients. But what it is, is an organization that represents the interests of pharmaceutical and insurance companies and big hospitals, and medical device manufacturers. When I was in my old corporate job, I used to work that organization and it often was the place that would send out press releases in a space in Washington, create campaigns to benefit the industry. So, bottom line here, we have an individual who is very deeply in his career in supporting private enterprise in the health care business – the whole reason for the existence of the Healthcare Leadership Council is to fend off any kinds of government regulation out of the fear that any kind of regulations would hinder profits.

So he’s very much a company man and I just don’t think that we’ll see much in terms of any attention being paid to reducing the cost of medications.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What I’ve read about Alex Azar since his nomination by President Trump is that he is a firm opponent of any form of price controls on pharmaceutical drugs, which of course seems normal for a former CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies. But Wendell, what do we know about his position on some of the proposals to constrain prices for people who really depend on these drugs to maintain their health?

WENDELL POTTER: What we know about his time at Lilly, the company increased its prices of some of its medications significantly. We also know that he is on the record as saying that he thinks that rather than the government being involved to control costs, that it should be done at the private level. He has suggested that insurers and pharmaceutical companies should work more closely together to do that. My response to that is, “My gosh, they’ve had decades to do that. What does he think is going to give them the incentive to do that now? How is he going to do that?” Because reality is that neither health insurers nor pharmaceutical companies want to make less money.

And they had this game going of pointing the finger of blame away from themselves and toward the other. But they have a very symbiotic relationship. So it’s just foolishness to think that the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry would ever do anything to bring costs down.

In fact, they worked very cooperatively – they did very cooperatively, as a matter of fact, when the Congress was considering the Medicare prescription drug benefit, and it was written by lobbyists for insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, so in that sense, they did collaborate with members of Congress and as a part of that, Medicare was prohibited from negotiating for lower prices. So the insurers and the pharmaceutical companies got a very sweet deal out of that. But not so much the taxpayers.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Wendell, you understand the games that go on in Washington and I’m wondering as you look at the nomination process for Alex Azar to be the next secretary of Health and Human Services, what are the prospects that he can be effectively challenged at least by the Democrats within the Senate?

WENDELL POTTER: And I do think that they need to challenge him and find out what he actually proposes to do about high drug costs and what his strategy would be, or at least what he would as a leader of that department, which of course, includes the Medicare and Medicaid programs. What are his plans for those programs? Would he continue to resist efforts to give Medicare the ability to have lower costs? What’s he going to do in many different areas that pertain to the Affordable Care Act? He’s looking very negatively of that law, which does certainly have its flaws, but has been a lifesaver for many people. It’s brought so many people into coverage.

So there are a lot of questions members of parties should be asking, the Democrats in particularly should be very concerned about what he likely would do with regard to both jurisdiction over pharmaceutical companies and the price of drugs as well as the Affordable Care Act.

Find more commentary on Alex Azar’s nomination to be the next Health and Human Services Secretary by visiting Wendell Potter’s website at wendellpotter.com and Tarbell Investigative News Platform at tarbell.org.

Tar Sands Oil Extraction Devastating Indigenous Communities
Posted Nov. 15, 2017

MP3 Excerpt of speech by Eriel Trchekwie Deranger, activist with Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, recorded and produced by Melinda Tuhus

tarsands
Just before the United Nations convened COP 23 in Bonn, Germany – the 23rd Conference of Parties to discuss and reach agreement to take action to halt climate change – the American Public Health Association launched its annual conference on in Atlanta on Nov. 4. The theme of the five-day gathering this year was Climate Change and Health, which was attended by 12,000 public health professionals and students, mostly from the U.S. but also from 40 other nations.

The conference keynote speaker was Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation of Northern Alberta, Canada. She’s a leader in the Indigenous Environmental Network Canadian (Indigenous) Tar Sands Campaign, which is working to stop construction of four different pipelines that would carry tar sands, the dirtiest, most energy intensive oil on the planet from Alberta to the U.S., other parts of Canada and beyond.

Deranger talked about the terrible health and climate impacts on her people due to fossil fuel contamination and the move away from traditional hunting and trapping to consumption of processed foods. Health consequences include lower life expectancies, increased levels of obesity and diabetes linked to diet; respiratory diseases caused by climate change and the drivers of climate change and increased cancer rates. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus attended the APH conference where she recorded and produced this excerpt of Deranger’s talk.

Learn more about the campaign by visiting Canadian Tar Sands Resistance at ienearth.org/what-we-do/tar-sands and IEN-Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign on FaceBook at facebook.com/groups/215875949026/.

This week’s summary of under-reported news

Compiled by Bob Nixon

After Apple CEO Tim Cook was called before the U.S. Senate to explain its use of overseas tax havens to shelter corporate profits, Apple searched for a new tax haven after Ireland raised its corporate tax rate. (“Apple Secretly Moved Parts of Empire to Jersey after Row Over Tax Affairs,” The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2017; “Leaked Documents Expose Secret Tale Of Apple’s Offshore Island Hop,”International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Nov. 6, 2017)
According to the Christian Science Monitor, tens of thousands of children who were indoctrinated in ISIS schools and traumatized by watching ISIS propaganda videos in Iraq and Syria, now suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, aggression, anxiety and depression. (“ISIS Has Planted a Ticking Bomb that Is Hard to Defuse: Traumatized Children,” Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 21, 2017)
As President Trump traveled to China and Vietnam, his administration announced a new crackdown on Cuba, which halts trade deals involving Cuba’s military and restricts American tourists visiting the island to group tours. (“What Trump’s Cuba Crackdown Will Look Like,” Miami Herald, Nov. 8, 2017)

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