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Writing about his visit to the world’s largest arms Bazaar, which took place in London in October, Arron Merath describes reading this slogan emblazoned above a Raytheon stall: “a Blow to creativity.” Raytheon produces Paveway laser-guided bombs, fragments of which have been found in the rubble of schools, hospitals and markets across Yemen. How can a weapons manufacturer that causes such death, bloodshed and suffering claim to be creative?

Greta Thunberg, sitting alone outside her school as she initiated the climate strike movement, can properly refer to the words ” Strike with creativity.” It inspired Friday class walkouts, around the world, young people protesting the destruction and death caused by the climate disaster. Her remarkable goal is to save the planet by encouraging such strikes.

Consider that Raytheon’s weapons are currently destroying Yemen. Fragments of Raytheon and other American-made weapons point blast sites where Yemeni survivors struggle to collect body parts and scattered bits of clothing that are needed to compile death lists.

In September, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) struck a detention center in Dhamar governorate, in Yemen’s Northern highlands, in seven airstrikes that killed at least 100 people and “sprayed” the area, Bethan Mckernan reported, according to the Guardian. “It took five days to remove all the bodies punctured on the metalwork, ripped from the walls by the explosions,” she wrote.

After the attack, Mckernan interviewed Adel, a 22-year-old security guard working at the facility. Among those killed was his brother Ahmed, also a security guard. Adele pointed to a blanket visible on the second floor of the building where the guards slept. “You can see Ahmed’s blue blanket there,” Adel said. “There were 200 people here, but now they’re just ghosts.”

Saudi Arabia and other countries, the Saudi-led coalition bombing and blocking Yemen, have killed tens of thousands of people, destroying the country’s already weakened infrastructure and putting Yemen on the brink of a famine that could kill millions. President trump signaled additional support for Saudi Arabia on October 11, when the U.S. military announced that it would send thousands more troops to the Kingdom, bringing the number of U.S. troops there to 14,000.

Just as Greta Thunberg insists adults must become intensely aware of details and possible solutions regarding the climate catastrophe, people in the U.S. should learn about ways to end economic as well as military war waged against Yemen. For us to understand why Yemenis would link together in the loose coalition of fighters called Huthis requires deepening awareness of how financial institutions, in attempting to gain control of valuable resources, have pushed farmers and villagers across Yemen into debt and desperation. Isa Blumi writes about this sordid history in his 2018 book, Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia Tells Us about the World.

Blumi details how Yemeni society, largely independent and agrarian, has become a Guinea pig for the International monetary Fund (IMF)” development projects “that, based on strikingly colonialist modernization theories, have trashed grassroots institutions and”cost-effective ways to wrest Yemeni wealth from the hands of their peoples.”

Local development associations, for example, were formed in the 70s to help people hold onto their land, jointly determine what crops they would grow, and decide how they would use the profits. But” experts ” at the US Agency for international development pressured these groups to instead produce “cash crops strictly for export.”

“In the end,” Blumey writes , ” with the right kind of cash crop and the use of American labor-saving technologies, pesticides and fertilizers, among others, Yemeni villagers were no longer needed in the fields. In addition, they could work in cities in sweatshops, producing clothes for the global market or soon boom oil and gas projects.”

Yemenis have resisted U. N. and IMF prescriptions for global integration and debt growth. When cash-strapped farmers went to work, for example in Saudi Arabia, “they were constantly sending remittances home to families who were saving cash and investing in local projects using local Bank transfers.” Imams and village leaders urged people to resist imperialist projects of “modernization”, knowing that their preferred “modern” role of the West is that they are slaves, not vkotoryhivaemymi in a better future.

The “Huthi” movement began when Husayn al-Huthi, an opponent of Yemen’s dictatorial (and Western-allied) Saleh regime, tried to defend the water and land rights of locals in the Sa’adah province in northwestern Yemen. Sharing what was then a porous and informal border with the KSA, they often found themselves in disputes with Saudi border patrols. They also resisted ‘structural adjustment’ demands by the IMF to privatize some of Yemen’s best farming and grazing land. When the dictator Saleh made criminal concessions to the KSA, al-Huthi and his followers persisted with protests. Each new confrontation won over thousands of people, eventually spreading beyond Sa’adah.

Blumey cites numerous instances where Yemen’s economic assets have been looted, with Saleh’s approval, by “well-imposed global financial interests” who now call Saleh’s successor Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi an” internationally recognized government ” of Yemenis. Hadi rules from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia because of a staggering lack of Yemeni support.

In 2008, an extremely wealthy member of bin Laden’s family set out to build a bridge across the mouth of the red sea from Yemen to Djibouti. The project could generate hundreds of billions for investors and accelerate the process of exploitative modernization; but it would also require the construction of Railways and roads where there are only villages at present. People living along the red sea coastline will be on the way.

Since 2015, fighting has been concentrated in the area called Tihama. Control of the coastline will also allow the financial capture of potentially lucrative Yemeni fisheries. Blamy says billions of dollars in annual revenue are at stake, noting with irony that the war causing famine is being waged, in part, to gain control of food assets.

A recent United Nations report said Yemen is now “on track to become the poorest country in the world,” with 79 percent of the population living below the poverty line and 65 percent classified as “extremely poor.” The Yemen data project estimates that 600 civilian structures have been destroyed each month in the Yemeni region, mainly as a result of airstrikes.

“Staple foods are now on average 150 percent higher than before the crisis escalated,” the Norwegian refugee Council said in its 2019 report. “Teachers, health workers and civil servants in the Northern parts of the country have not been paid for years,” the same report said.

Mainstream media reports may convince worried viewers that Yemenis are particularly vulnerable to violence and war because they are socially and economically backward, having failed to modernize. Blumey insists that we recognize the guilt of financial elites from several Gulf countries and beyond, as well as the institutions of the world Bank, the IMF and the United Nations. It is wrong to blame ” eighty percent of the country’s population, currently starving to death.”

Here in the United States, commentators discussing the story of trump’s impeachment compared the events to ” bomb after bomb.” Real and horrific modern bombs made in the United States kill and maim Yemeni civilians, including children, on a daily basis.

Greta Thunberg continues to urge us to join her on an unfamiliar, unprecedented and difficult path to change course as our world takes care of terrible destruction. We are given a chance to confront the destructive, if “modern” means of exploiting the planet’s resources. A genuine blow to creativity, necessarily challenging militarism and greed, will help prevent the hellish work of destroying the Yemeni state.