UN serving to protect war criminals: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ken O'Keefe, a peace activist and former US Marine, about the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights saying it is deeply concerned over Saudi Arabia’s increasing attacks against civilians in Yemen.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: How valuable is any concern expressed by the United Nations when it comes to civilian casualties at the hands of Saudi-led forces?

O'Keefe: Well let’s just get back to the beginning of formation of United Nations in a time where everybody around the world realized that we have had two World Wars but we are not going to survive a third.

The whole point of United Nations was to resolve conflict without war, without violence and pretty much the first act of the United Nations was to facilitate the formation of Israel on the back of the theft of Palestinian land.

So from the beginning the United Nations has actually served to protect the worst criminals in human kind and they have been doing so ever since the World War II era. So there really would be no reason to think that the UN would be effective in stopping these types of mass murders, these war crimes and crimes against humanity. I would argue that the whole point of the UN unless it is just to be considered an absolute abject failure is actually to protect these war criminals.

So the UN comes out and says some pretty words but in truth it really does nothing. It provides cover at the end of the day. So I think the real issue here is that we are operating in a world with total impunity. If you are in the favor of the Empire as is Saudi Arabia, the last arms deal, major arms deal with Saudi Arabia, we all know it was an excess of 60 billion. Just yesterday another 1.5 billion was approved so the Saudis can rearm and slaughter more innocent, largely defenseless people in many civilian parts of Yemen and all of this can happen because we are operating under impunity.

We look to Israel as well and we see Israel as well and we see that Israel, another favored nation under this imperial system, is completely free to do whatever it wants even attack US sailors on the USS Liberty back in 1967 and get away with it completely.

As long as we have this type of impunity, not only are we going to be having Yemenis and Syrians and Libyans and Afghanis slaughtered but we are going to be tempting a Third World War. Either we decide we are going to operate under international law and seriously demand as people around the world that these things are enforced or we are certainly going to continue tempting a Third World War and I think that is a very big issue that we need to address directly.

Press TV: An optimist would say that there was a time when the war on Yemen was not even spoken about even in hushed tones, it was simply not covered by the media, it was simply not covered by any government around the world with the exception of a very few including Iran obviously but I am wondering does this at the very least show some progress that there is some minute pressure being put on the Saudi kingdom to maybe clean up its act?

O'Keefe: Well I have no doubt whatsoever that Saudi Arabia is living on borrowed time. It is the most disgusting, despicable nation on the planet … We all know that billions and billions and billions, untold billions is pouring into so-called ISIS (Daesh) and this Wahhabi Takfiri ideology that is mostly coming from Saudi Arabia under the cover and protection of the Empire. The United States, Britain and others continue to do arm deals with this nation. Saudi Arabia will not be much longer, I have no doubt of this. It will be a sacrificial land that will be sacrificed in due course when it becomes too problematic and of course as people learn the truth about this grotesque nation, how could they not be completely disgusted by the reality of it? You name it, cutting off heads in public, this whole thing with people being stampeded and many high level Iranians going missing and almost assuredly being killed, this is the kind of thing that Saudi Arabia is involved in and the fact that we do business with it so favorably says a lot about us in the West and our hypocrisy, that is for sure.

There is some good work that the UN does. Do not get me wrong, there are some good things but overall as an institution it is an abject failure in terms of facilitating the resolution of conflict without violence and a total failure and I would argue it is actually designed to be that way.

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