Why is NZ complicit in Yemen ‘genocide’?

ONE of many recent airstrikes by Saudi Arabian forces targeted a bus in a Yemen market place, killing 51 civilians, 40 of whom were children, and injuring another 79, according to the Red Cross.

The planes in those attacks were United Statesmade F15s, the midair fuelling managed by US forces and the ‘‘targeting’’ was supplied by US intelligence.

It is likely many of the pilots were ‘‘exRAF’’ fighter pilots. The United Kingdom has funded the extremist Saudi regime with about £5 billion worth of arms since the war in Yemen began in March 2015, while the US has supplied the Saudis since 2009 with more than $100 billion worth of arms.

The United Nations is very clear that this war by the Saudis and its proxies is an act of genocide against the civilian population of Yemen.

Both the United Kingdom and the United States are kneedeep complicit in that genocide.

As an ally of both the United States and the United Kingdom, and a member of their ‘‘Five Eyes’’ global surveillance parody, has New Zealand said one word of censure to its ‘‘allies’’ about their complicity in this further act of genocide?

Why is that I wonder?

Paul Martin Northeast Valley

Nurturing free speech

IN his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer records (p 43) how the Nazi Sturmabteilung or ‘‘brownshirts’’ forcibly prevented any parties opposed to the Nazis from speaking:

‘‘These uniformed rowdies, not content to keep order at Nazi meetings, soon took to breaking up those of the other parties. Once in 1921 Hitler personally led his storm troopers in an attack on a meeting which was to be addressed by a Bavarian federalist by the name of Ballerstedt, who received a beating.

‘‘For this Hitler was sentenced to three months in jail, one of which he served. This was his first experience in jail and he emerged from it somewhat of a martyr and more popular than ever. ‘It’s all right,’ Hitler boasted to the police. ‘We got what we wanted. Ballerstedt did not speak.’

‘‘As Hitler had told an audience some months before: ‘The National Socialist Movement will in the future ruthlessly prevent — if necessary by force — all meetings or lectures that are likely to distract the minds of our fellow countrymen’.’’

Had there been robust protection for free speech in the 1920s, it is possible Hitler may not have become chancellor. Martin Hanson

Nelson

Trim your hedges

WHEN is the Dunedin City Council going to do something about the amount of vegetation which is reducing the width of most footpaths along Dunedin streets?

Most people pay rates towards the upkeep of the footpaths, not for people to extend their front gardens.

The council keeps putting this problem in the toohard basket and hopes it will go away.

Trying to pass prams, mobility scooters and other people walking or jogging, etc, means someone has to take to the roadside to pass.

At the moment we have to dodge hedges, shrubs, flax bushes and branches. All because council find it too hard to give property owners notice to remove this hazard coming from their property. S. Hayward

Kenmure

School reunion

St Leonards School, Dunedin:

A 150th anniversary reunion of St Leonards School will be held at Labour Weekend, October 19 and 20, 2018.

For registration forms see Facebook page, email 150thjub@gmail.com or post request to 129 St Leonards Dr, St Leonards, Dunedin 9022.

Registration closes August 31.