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Collapsing Empire: Yemen shatters the illusion of US air power, yet again

By Kit Klarenberg | Press TV | April 7, 2025

Since March 15, Washington has repeatedly barraged Yemen from the sky, killing and injuring countless innocent civilians while destroying vital infrastructure.

For example, on April 2, US jets targeted a reservoir in western Yemen, cutting off access to water for over 50,000 people.

Only three days later, US President Donald Trump gloatingly posted a horrific video on social media of a tribal gathering being incinerated in a US airstrike. He falsely claimed the individuals were “Houthis gathered for instructions on an attack.”

In a chilling coincidence, the bloodcurdling clip was published on the 15th anniversary of the release of “Collateral Murder” by WikiLeaks, a notorious video filmed three years earlier of US Apache helicopter pilots firing indiscriminately at a group of Iraqi civilians and journalists while sickly cackling at the carnage they were inflicting.

While that disclosure contemporaneously caused international outcry and scandal and made WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an internationally wanted man, openly advertising unconscionable war crimes is now apparently a formal US government policy.

US officials have pledged that renewed hostilities against Yemen will continue “indefinitely”, while Trump has bragged how “relentless strikes” have “decimated” the Ansarullah resistance movement.

Yet, on April 4, the New York Times reported Pentagon officials are “privately” briefing that while the current bombing campaign on Yemen “is consistently heavier than strikes conducted by the Biden administration”, the effort has achieved “only limited success in destroying the Houthis’ vast, largely underground arsenal of missiles, drones and launchers.”

Yemen’s anti-genocide Red Sea blockade thus endures untrammelled.

Moreover, “in just three weeks, the Pentagon has used $200 million worth of munitions, in addition to the immense operational and personnel costs to deploy two aircraft carriers, additional B-2 bombers and fighter jets, as well as Patriot and THAAD air defenses” to West Asia.

The total cost of the military adventure to date could exceed “well over $1 billion by next week.” This not only means “supplemental funds” for the operation need to be sought from US Congress, but there are grave anxieties about ammunition availability:

“So many precision munitions are being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners are growing concerned about overall Navy stocks and implications for any situation in which the United States would have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.”

The New York Times also observed that the White House hasn’t indicated “why it thinks its campaign against the group will succeed”, after the Biden administration’s long-running Operation Prosperity Guardian embarrassingly failed to break the Red Sea’s blockade.

The answer is simple – for three decades, the Empire has been consumed by a dangerously self-deluded belief in the primacy of air power over all other forms of warfare. Ergo, the Trump administration believes that if only they intensify Yemen’s bombardment, Ansarullah will crumble.

‘Significantly damaged’

In April 1996, then USAF Chief of Staff Ronald R Fogleman boldly declared that a “new American way of war” was emerging.

While traditionally the Empire had “relied on large forces employing mass, concentration, and firepower to attrit enemy forces and defeat them,” now technological advances and “unique military advantages” – specifically in the field of air power – could be used “to compel an adversary to do our will at the least cost to the US in lives and resources.”

At the time, the Empire was riding high on the perceived success of NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force, an 11-day saturation bombing of Bosnia conducted the previous August/September.

Multiple US officials eagerly attributed the campaign to ending the three-year-long civil war in the former Yugoslav republic by precipitating negotiations. They omitted to mention that the airstrikes’ predominant military utility was allowing US-armed, trained, and directed Bosniak and Croat proxy forces to overrun Bosnian Serb positions without significant opposition, or their brazen sabotage of prior peace settlements.

Nonetheless, the narrative that wars could be won via airpower alone, and the US and its allies should invest in and structure their military machines accordingly, palpably percolated thereafter. The illegal March – June 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia provided the Empire with an opportunity to put this theory to the test. For 78 straight days, NATO relentlessly blitzed civilian, government, and industrial infrastructure throughout the country, killing untold numbers of innocent people – including children – and disrupting daily life for millions.

The purported purpose of this onslaught was to prevent a planned genocide of Kosovo’s Albanian population by Yugoslav forces. As a May 2000 British parliamentary committee concluded, however, it was only after the bombing began that Belgrade began assaulting the province.

Moreover, this effort was explicitly concerned with neutralising the CIA and MI6-backed Kosovo Liberation Army, an Al Qaeda-linked extremist group, not attacking [ethnic] Albanian citizens [of Yugoslavia]. Meanwhile, in September 2001, a UN court determined that Yugoslavia’s actions in Kosovo were not genocidal in nature or intent.

On June 3, 1999, Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic folded under Russian pressure, agreeing to withdraw Belgrade’s forces from Kosovo. While Western officials celebrated a resounding victory for NATO and airpower more generally, the mainstream media – at least initially – told a very different story.

The LA Times observed that the Yugoslav army “still has 80% to 90% of its tanks, 75% of its most sophisticated surface-to-air missiles and 60% of its MIG fighter planes.” Meanwhile, its key barracks and ammunition depots weren’t damaged at all.

The New York Times reported that post-war Kosovo was bereft “of the scorched carcasses of tanks or other military equipment NATO officials had expected to find.”

While NATO and Pentagon apparatchiks stood “by their claims to have significantly damaged” Yugoslav forces, the outlet admitted Belgrade’s units withdrawing from Kosovo “seemed spirited and defiant rather than beaten.”

They took with them hundreds of tanks, personnel carriers, artillery batteries, vehicles, and “military equipment loaded on trucks” completely unscathed by the bombing campaign.

‘Campaign analysis’

Contemporary declassified British Ministry of Defence files amply underline the catastrophic failure of NATO’s blitzkrieg of Yugoslavia. Once Milosevic finally capitulated and NATO and UN ‘peacekeepers’ were granted unimpeded access to Kosovo, they struggled to find a single “burnt out tank” or other indications of vehicle or equipment losses on the ground.

A June 7 “campaign analysis” noted, “NATO took a lot longer, required a lot more effort and damaged less than perhaps we believed we could achieve at the start of the air campaign.”

It added that the Yugoslav “war-fighting doctrine” placed “great emphasis on dispersal, the use of camouflage, dummy targets, concealment and bunkers” to avoid detection, and “early assessments indicate that they appear to have applied this doctrine very successfully.”

Adverse weather conditions were also routinely exploited as cover for anti-KLA operations. The memo further recorded “there was no evidence… of disintegration of Serb forces in Kosovo,” with Yugoslav military operations continuing apace until Milosevic agreed to withdraw from the province, “and beyond”.

Yet, these damning observations remained secret. At a June 11, 1999 press conference, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Henry Shelton proudly displayed a variety of colourful charts, boasting how hundreds of Yugoslav tanks, personnel carriers, and artillery pieces had been decimated by NATO, without the alliance suffering a single casualty.

His crooked accounting of the bombing remained universal mainstream gospel until a May 2000 Newsweek investigation exposed the wide-ranging “coverup” via which the Pentagon had spun the “ineffective” assault as a resounding success.

When NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, who oversaw the bombing, learned of the pronounced lack of damage to the Yugoslav military on the ground in Kosovo, he dispatched a dedicated team of USAF investigators to the province.

They “spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot” and turned up evidence of just 14 destroyed tanks. Meanwhile, of the 744 strikes on Yugoslav military equipment and installations claimed by Pentagon officials, just 58 were confirmed.

By contrast, USAF identified ample evidence of the Yugoslav military’s skill at deception. They found a key bridge had been protected from NATO bombers “by constructing, 300 yards upstream, a fake bridge made of polyethylene sheeting stretched over the river” – the military alliance “destroyed” the “phony bridge” many times.

Additionally, “artillery pieces were faked out of long black logs stuck on old truck wheels, and an anti-aircraft missile launcher was fabricated from the metal-lined paper used to make European milk cartons.”

Flummoxed, “Clark insisted that the Serbs had hidden their damaged equipment and that the team hadn’t looked hard enough.” So a new report was fabricated wholecloth, validating the fiction that NATO’s destruction of Yugoslav forces had been extensive. Newsweek noted its findings were “so devoid of hard data that Pentagon officials jokingly called it ‘fiber-free’.”

An official Department of Defense “After-Action Report to Congress” on the bombing campaign cited the report’s figures, although stressed no supporting evidence was forthcoming. With eerie prescience, Newsweek concluded:

“[This] distortion could badly mislead future policymakers… After the November 2000 presidential election, the Pentagon will go through one of its quadrennial reviews, assigning spending priorities. The Air Force will claim the lion’s share… The risk is policymakers and politicians will become even more wedded to myths like ‘surgical strikes’.”

“The lesson of Kosovo is civilian bombing works, though it raises moral qualms… Against military targets, high-altitude bombing is overrated. Any commander in chief who does not face up to those hard realities will be fooling himself.”

‘Incredibly different’

The “distortion” that NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia was a military triumph has endured ever since. Not only has it served as justification for multiple subsequent calamitous Western “interventions”, such as the 2011 destruction of Libya, but USAF continues to claim “the lion’s share” of US defence spending.

According to 2024 figures, over a quarter of Washington’s total defence budget – $216.1 billion – is earmarked for the Air Force. Additionally, $202.6 billion is spent on the Navy, which typically operates in close tandem with USAF.

However large these figures may appear on paper, they do not translate into serious war-fighting capability, as Operation Prosperity Guardian in Yemen amply underscored.

A little-noticed July 2024 Associated Press report on the return home of US fighter pilots after nine months of failing to thwart Yemen’s Red Sea blockade noted that battling an enemy capable of fighting back “in the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II” had been deeply psychologically ravaging for all concerned.

As a result, Pentagon officials were investigating how to tend to thousands of pilots and sailors adversely affected by their involvement in the bruising effort, “including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.”

One pilot told Associated Press, “most of [us]… weren’t used to being fired on given the nation’s previous military engagements in recent decades.” He described the experience of Ansarullah’s retaliation as “incredibly different” and “traumatizing”, as getting shot at is “something that we don’t think about a lot.”

A new experience it may be – but it’s one that Washington needs to adapt to urgently. As a July 2024 RAND Corporation report found the US military was woefully ill-equipped sustain a major conflict with “peer-level competitors” such as China for any length of time, and faced significant threats from “relatively unsophisticated actors” such as Ansarullah, who have been “able to obtain and use modern technology (e.g., drones) to strategic effect.”

As Axios has reported, Pentagon weapons procurer Bill LaPlante – a journeyman engineer and physicist – has been awed by Yemen’s use of “increasingly sophisticated weapons,” including missiles that “can do things that are just amazing.”

He claims that Yemeni capabilities are “getting scary”. Once the US has exhausted itself yet again, failing to crush the Yemeni resistance, we could see yet more of its arsenal in play – and in turn, another historic defeat of the Empire, as inflicted over the course of Operation Prosperity Guardian.

April 7, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

SABA source refutes Trump claim of killing Yemeni operatives in strike

Saba – April 5, 2025

Sana’a – A private source to the Yemeni news agency, Saba, on Saturday denied the allegations made by the criminal US President Trump regarding what he described as the targeting of a secret meeting of military leaders preparing to carry out naval operations.

The source explained that the video clip published by the criminal Trump, claiming that it was a gathering of military leaders, was merely an event for a social Eid visit in Hodeida province. Similar events are held in various provinces on all holidays and occasions, and this is well known to all Yemeni people.

He emphasized that those present at that gathering had no connection to the operations carried out by the Yemeni Armed Forces, which are implementing the decision to ban navigation on ships linked to the American and Israeli enemy, as the criminal Trump claimed.

The source stated that this heinous American crime, which left dozens of martyrs and wounded, reflects the extent of America’s bankruptcy and failure in its aggression against Yemen, and that it is an extension of the genocide committed by the Israeli-American aggression in Gaza.

He stressed that this heinous crime will not be forgotten, and that the Yemeni armed forces, which stood up for the people of Gaza, will not let the blood of the Yemeni people go in vain.

April 6, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Bombing the Houthis is like Swatting at Buzzing Insects

By Seth Ferris – New Eastern Outlook – April 5, 2025

The U.S. bombing campaign against the Houthis is less about securing shipping routes and more about advancing broader geopolitical strategies tied to Israel, Iran, and U.S. domestic politics.

This headline is more than provocative, as it enshrines a critical analysis of what is going on, and this has little to do with the defense of shipping in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, or how Houthis are trying to stand against the continuous genocide of Palestine. It has more to do with the Greater Israel project, keeping Netanyahu out of jail, and for Trump and Republicans to pay the piper for the campaign chest that secured the US election for Trump and his minions.

Attacking the Houthis is the preliminary step of a larger, interconnected geopolitical strategy that includes Greater Israel, shifting the focus from the disaster in Ukraine, and keeping the arms manufacturers as happy as hogs rolling in fresh crap.

On March 15th, too much fanfare from Trump, who promised to use “overwhelming lethal force” the US resumed bombing Houthi controlled Yemen, trying to defeat a movement that has been bombed by either the US or its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states since 2014 when the Yemeni civil war broke out, with little real effect to date.

The ostensible cause of the attacks appears to have been the Houthi decision to reinstate its blockade of Red Sea traffic heading to Israel, in response to Israel reneging on its ceasefire commitments and blockading, and now, as of Tuesday, 18th March, bombing and invading the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of civilians in the process.

American attacks on Yemen by the aircraft of the US Navy’s 5th fleet have certainly been spectacular, but their usefulness is seriously in doubt. Despite claims by the USN of strikes on military targets, the majority of casualties are seen to be civilians. US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz says that the Houthi blockade of Israel is causing 75% of US flagged ships to take the much longer route around Africa, and said about the US strikes:

“We’ve hit their headquarters,” Waltz said. “We’ve hit communications nodes, weapons factories and even some of their over-the-water drone production facilities.”

The Houthi leadership has strongly refuted these claims, with a spokesman saying:

“The pictures, scenes, evidence, types of victims, and testimonies of survivors from the targeted sites confirm that it is targeting residential neighbourhoods and innocent civilians, and provide conclusive evidence that the US is deliberately taking the lives of defenceless civilians and destroying the capabilities of our people.”

Given the horrendous rhetoric used by Trump in his posts on his Truthsocial site, where he accused the Houthis of being “barbarians” and went on to say:

“Watch how it will get progressively worse — It’s not even a fair fight, and never will be,” Trump added. “They will be completely annihilated!”

It seems pretty clear that the Houthis are right, and that the US is hitting civilian targets in frustration at not being able to identify legitimate military targets. Trump went on to threaten Iran, saying:

“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”

Given Trump’s promises on the election campaign to stop wars, and bring peace, particularly to Ukraine, this rhetoric is rather an about-face. One can only come to the conclusion that Trump is trying to escape from the debacle in Ukraine by distracting the public with another war, this time against Yemen and, one fears, Iran, which also will benefit the real ruler of the US, Benjamin Netanyahu.

But how effective is this likely to be? I believe that in his hubris, egged on by the new Defense Secretary Pete Hesgith, a US Evangelical Christian and rabid Zionist, Trump is repeating the disastrous mistakes of a well-trodden US path of intervention and inevitable failure.

Firing drones and missiles at cargo ships bound for Israel, even without sinking any ships, is a victory for the Houthis, as it forces ships to take the long way around the Cape of Good Hope, and shows the world what the US can do in terms of air superiority is not enough, as to stop these attacks, you would need to send in ground troops, something the US administration would have to be mad to do, as the British could well attest to given their occupation of Yemen in the 19th and 20th centuries.

With regard to the intensity of US air attacks, as with any force of national liberation, like the Algerians, Vietnamese, Angolans, and many others in the 20th century, just surviving is already a form of victory for the Houthis. Every day they hold their ground, they rewrite the script a little. They’re showing that even without matching the U.S. or Saudi Arabia in terms of high-tech weaponry, they can still have massive strategic impact — like forcing global trade routes to detour thousands of miles. That’s asymmetrical warfare in full force.

As the US and its allies know only too well, U.S. air power, while impressive for breaking regular military formations, has a limit. It can punish, but it can’t control the terrain or win hearts and minds from 30,000 feet. Boots on the ground? That’s a whole different ballgame. Politically and militarily, there’s little appetite for another drawn-out Middle East quagmire. The U.S. knows how that ends, Israel knows too!

This whole horse and pony show is becoming a test of global logistics and willpower — not just firepower. The Houthis have leveraged a relatively small amount of resources to cause ripple effects across oil markets, insurance premiums, and shipping delays — even reshaping how the world thinks about “secure” sea lanes. Their damage to the economies of their enemy Israel, and its backers in the US and EU, is out of all proportion to the money spent by themselves.

This is also reflected in the weaponry used, with relatively cheap drones and ballistic missiles needing to be countered by vastly more expensive US air defense missiles and extremely expensive guided bombs. The previous, spectacularly unsuccessful, campaign “Operation Prosperity Guardian” to bring the Houthis to heel after they put a blockade on Israel in response to the genocidal campaign in Gaza, saw vast expenditure of hideously expensive US missiles which were used to shoot down drones that cost around US$ 20,000 per shot:

According to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (as of 2022), the SM-2 costs $2.1 million per unit; the SM-6 costs $4.3 million; and the ESSM Sea Sparrows costs $1.7 million. The destroyers are also fitted with the Rolling Airframe missile, which cost $905,000 in 2022

Nothing of any note has been achieved in cost reduction since then, and the Houthis are repeatedly striking back, with at least four attacks on the USS Harry S Truman and its escorting vessels, forcing rapid expenditure of these expensive weapons, as well as disrupting US strikes. It is no surprise that their resistance is being downplayed by the US, but the reality is that the US is being forced to send a second carrier group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, to support the 5th Fleet strikes.

This does not bode well, with escalation looming, with a joint US strike on Iran likely. One can only think that, drunk with success regarding their overthrow of Assad in Syria, and forgetting their obvious failure to subdue either Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, the US and Israel want to play the same game with Iran, using Yemen as the trigger, which is almost certainly a major miscalculation.

It as if they are the drunk guy in the casino, who rather than accept his losses, has taken one small win after a series of losses, and bet the house on the result. Iran is a major regional power, with a well-organized, equipped, and trained armed forces, backed by a much greater population than Iraq and Syria combined, and with its own fully developed and capable defense industry.

As for the Houthis, like all guerilla and national liberation forces, the case is that “If they are not losing, they are winning” but are they playing the smart long-term game, or are they at risk of overplaying their hand if this drags out too long? It might only take one incident of them attacking the wrong ship, hitting a neutral vessel and inflicting casualties, and the worldwide support they have garnered by their principled stand in support of the Palestinians, and their bravery in their David vs Goliath battle with Israel and the US, could disappear.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs

April 5, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | 8 Comments

Five martyrs, wounded in US aggression in past hours: Yemen

Al Mayadeen | April 3, 2025

Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in Yemen reported that the number of US airstrikes on Saada Governorate has increased to 27 in the past 12 hours.

Today, reconnaissance aircraft from the US-led coalition targeted a civilian car in the Majz district of Saada governorate, following two airstrikes by warplanes on the same district.

Overnight Wednesday, US aircraft struck the Kitaf district and the Kahlan area, east of Saada governorate.

Alongside the ongoing aggression in Taiz, southern Yemen, Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that US aircraft also targeted the communications network in Jabal Namah, located in the Jablah district of Ibb Governorate in central Yemen.

In an interview with Al Mayadeen, Yemeni Health Ministry spokesperson Anis al-Asbahi reported that five people were killed, five others were injured, and one person went missing in airstrikes on Yemen over the past 24 hours. He emphasized that Yemenis are fully aware of the challenges they face and are prepared to confront them.

Yemen MoH reports 61 martyrs from US aggression

Al-Asbahi has confirmed to Al Mayadeen that the death toll from the US-led aggression on Sanaa and other governorates since mid-March has reached 61 martyrs and 139 wounded.

He also stated that since Yemen began its support operation for Gaza, the US-British-Israeli aggression has left 964 civilian casualties, including 250 martyrs.

This toll reflects data recorded up until April 1.

Since Yemen resumed its operations at sea and against occupied territories in response to the renewed Israeli aggression on Gaza, the United States has intensified its attacks on Yemen, conducting airstrikes on various governorates.

April 3, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

From JFK to Donald Trump: How the USA Became Wedded to Zionist Israel

By Rick Sterling | Global Research | March 28, 2025

There are many contrasts between the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, and the 45th and 47th president, Donald J. Trump. One extreme example is regarding U.S. policy toward Israel.

JFK and Israel/Palestine

Unknown to many people today, JFK supported Palestinian rights and sought a sustainable peace in the region.

In 1960, when JFK was campaigning to be president, he spoke at the convention of the Zionists of America. In his speech, Kennedy was complimentary about Israel but frankly said,

“I cannot believe that Israel has any real desire to remain indefinitely a garrison state surrounded by fear and hate.”

That warning, issued when Israel had only existed for 12 years, was ignored. Israel continued to act in an aggressive zionist fashion. 

Kennedy did not just issue warnings. To the chagrin of the Israelis, JFK established friendly relations with Egypt’s President Nasser. The Kennedy administration provided loans and aid to Egypt.

The JFK administration supported UN resolution 194 which called for the right of return for Palestinian refugees driven out of their homeland. Although Israel committed to abide by UN resolutions when it was admitted to the United Nations in 1949, the Israelis reneged on this commitment and were hostile to the resolution. The day before JFK was assassinated, the New York Times reported (p 19), “Israel Dissents as U.N. Group Backs U.S. on Arab Refugees” and “U.S. Stand Angers Israel.” The second item begins, “Premier Levi Eshkol expressed extreme distaste today for the United States’ position in the Palestinian-refugee debate.” 

John Kennedy’s brother Robert was Attorney General and headed the Department of Justice. For two years, up until the end of 1963, the DOJ made increasingly strict demands that the American Zionist Council (AZC)  register as agents of a foreign country. In response, the AZC stalled, delayed, and created the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The most intense disagreement between Tel Aviv and Washington was regarding the nuclear site under construction at Dimona. JFK was intent on stopping the expansion of countries which possessed nuclear weapons. Although IsraeliPrime Minister Ben-Gurion said the nuclear site was for peaceful purposes, JFK insisted that the US needed to inspect and confirm this. The inspection deadline was December 1963. 

In each of these four areas of contention, US policy changed dramatically after JFK was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson became president. Dimona was never properly inspected, and LBJ did not object to Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons. The demand that the American Zionist Council register as an agent of a foreign country was dropped. Over time, the US withdrew their support of UN resolution 194, and LBJ was hostile to Nasser and ended US loans and support. Details of this process are described in this article and this book. 

Israel Policy Since JFK and Today

With few exceptions, US policy has been subservient to Israel’s wants ever since JFK.  An extreme low point was the treachery of President Johnson in covering up the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty during the June 1967 “Six Day War”. News about the Israeli killing and injuring of over 200 US sailors was suppressed for decades.   

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Damaged USS Liberty on 9 June 1967, one day after attack (Public Domain)

Now we are in a new extreme low point. In his first presidency, Trump flouted international law and longstanding US policy by moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The significant move was driven by mega donor Sheldon Adelson who wanted it announced on Trump’s first day in office. Another prime concern of Adelson was to torpedo the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Trump responded as expected and withdrew the US from the agreement, effectively killing it.

Now President Trump’s administration is trampling on the right to free speech and aggressively suppressing critics of Israel. This repression on behalf of Israel was taking place under Biden but has escalated dramatically. Authorities have imprisoned a perfectly legal resident, Mahmoud Khalil. They have forced Columbia University to punish students without just cause and to impose obvious restrictions and prohibitions on speech and opinion. Why did they do this? It appears to follow the wishes of megadonor Miriam Adelson. She is president and chief funder of the Maccabee Task Force, which has campaigned on these issues for months.

As reported at Responsible Statecraft,

“Adelson’s support for the administration’s campaign to stifle criticism of Israel on college campuses isn’t a new focus but her alignment with the levers of state powers to implement her vision are unprecedented. In fact, tax documents reveal that she is directly overseeing a social media campaign targeting Khalil and Columbia University.” 

In addition to suppressing free speech and punishing critics of Israel, the Trump administration has bombed and attacked an independent country (Yemen) in the service of Israel. They are doing this despite the fact that Yemen did NOT threaten U.S. ships in the region. The Houthi government only threatened Israeli ships after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire and prevented food and other necessary humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. Israel, with U.S. support, is blatantly defying the International Court of Justice which ordered Israel to “maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Israel is in violation of this order and the US is complicit by providing most of the weapons. 

President Trump, who campaigned and won election on the pledge to STOP needless wars, has started a new war with Yemen which is of no benefit to the US but serves the interests of Netanyahu’s Israel. Will he authorize attacks on Iran, in further subservience to Bibi? 

Corruption of the Political Process 

When Jewish donors to JFK’s 1960 campaign suggested they should determine his Mideast policy, JFK was shocked and definitively said NO. As reported by Seymour Hersh in “The Samson Option”, Kennedy talked with a friend who described what happened: “As an American citizen he (JFK) was outraged to have a zionist group come to him and say, ‘We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you’ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.” At that time, JFK vowed to change the US electoral system to prevent this corruption if he got elected. As president, he tried, but faced big hurdles and did not succeed.  

Ever since JFK’s death, pro-Israel forces have had undue influence on U.S. policy. If the International Court of Justice decides that Israel is committing genocide, as seems likely, the U.S. will be the primary collaborator in the war crimes. The US is increasingly alone in supporting the zionist state as it practices apartheid within Israel, theft of land in the West Bank, and massacres in Gaza including attacks on hospitals, schools, and UN facilities. Fourteen countries now support South Africa’s charges of genocide against Israel.  

Under Democratic President Joe Biden, U.S. policy to Israel was unwaveringly obsequious. Despite 70% of Democratic Party voters wanting the U.S. to get a ceasefire in Gaza, the Biden/Blinken team refused to do this. The Democratic Party leaders’ zionist ideology combined with zionist financial influence superseded their party members’ wishes. Netanyahu ignored Biden’s “red lines” with impunity.

Republican President Trump has taken this to a new level. His zionist donors determine his Israel policy. To protect Israel, Trump issued an executive order which weaponizes antisemitism. Universities are being compelled to implement a new definition of antisemitism which conflates criticism of Israel with ethnic discrimination. Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” has evolved into “Miriam Adelson Gets All”. 

It is a remarkable descent from the days when JFK did what was best for the U.S. as well as being best for Palestinians and non-zionist Jews. 

Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.

March 28, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

Trump Revolution? Diplomacy Toward Yemen, Iran, Russia & China

Larry Johnson with Glenn Diesen
Glenn Diesen | March 26, 2025

Larry Johnson, a former CIA Intelligence Analyst, argues that Trump’s international diplomacy may be derailing. JD Vance recognised in private messages that bombing Yemen was a mistake and contradicted the America First platform, although the attacks nonetheless took place. Is America returning to its forever wars?

March 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why did Jeffrey Goldberg leave the ‘bomb Yemen’ Signal chat?

By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | March 25, 2025

Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg has won the admiration of his Beltway peers for the conduct he displayed after being accidentally invited into a smoke-filled “bomb Yemen” Signal chat with Trump’s national security honchos and top advisors. “Props to Jeffrey Goldberg for his high standards as a professional journalist,” declared Ian Bremmer, the trans-Atlanticist foreign policy pundit on his Bank of America-sponsored GZero podcast. “When he realized the conversation was authentic he immediately left, informed the relevant senior official, and made the public aware without disclosing intelligence that could damage the United States.”

But what exactly did Goldberg do to deserve such high praise?

With a once in a lifetime opportunity to view and report on high level discussions on the US launching an illegal war on Yemen, Goldberg chose to avert his gaze and leave the scene as soon as he could, apparently because maintaining such unparalleled access would have compelled him to report on discussions that might have complicated a war being waged on behalf of the Israeli apartheid state to which he emigrated as a young man. Instead of exploiting his front row seat to the Trump admin’s war planning – a vantage point that would have yielded countless scoops and a bestselling book for any adversarial journalist – Goldberg bolted and dutifully informed the White House about the unfortunate situation.

From there, the story became a palace intrigue over an embarrassing failure of “opsec,” or operational security, and not one about the policy itself, which entails a gargantuan empire bombarding a poor, besieged country because it is controlled by a popular movement that is currently the only force on the planet taking up arms to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

In the fourth paragraph of Goldberg’s Atlantic article about the principals’ Signal group, he strongly implied that he supports the war’s objectives, describing Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, as an “Iran-backed terrorist organization” which upholds a belief system that is (what else?) antisemitic. Given Goldberg’s admission that Waltz first reached out to him at least two days prior to mistakenly adding him to the Signal group, it appears the NSC director had been leaking to the Atlantic editor on behalf of the neocon faction in the Trump White House. And it seems clear why Waltz would have sought to cultivate Goldberg.

During the run-up to to the Iraq war, then-Vice President Dick Cheney cited Goldberg’s bunk reporting alleging deep ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda during multiple media appearances hyping up the coming invasion. Under Obama, Goldberg served as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s errand boy, churning out tall tales about Tel Aviv’s imminent plan to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – unless the US did it first. Since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the once-failing Atlantic has suddenly turned a profit, as Goldberg unleashed a firehose of propaganda against the keffiyeh-clad enemies of the magazine’s Upper East Side donor base. This month, with momentum for a strike on Iran building within the Trump White House, Goldberg was summoned once again to move the neocon message, and wound up with more access than he bargained for.

When asked in a March 24 interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins why he left the Trump principals’ Signal group voluntarily, Goldberg ducked the question. But as Ian Bremmer suggested, he did so out of deference to power and an abiding belief in a US empire hellbent on protecting Israel. And in the culture of Beltway access journalism, that’s considered a laudable trait.

March 25, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Scorch Marks in the Sand

Yemeni Warrior Rejoicing over a Slain MQ-9 Reaper
By William Schryver – imetatronink – March 22, 2025

Javelin, Stinger, M-777 howitzer, HIMARS, Excalibur, Switchblade, all manner of electronic warfare gizmos and counter-battery radars, Bradley IFVs, Stryker, Leopard, Challenger, Abrams, Patriot, JDAMs, HARMS, Storm Shadow, ATACMS … I’m sure I’m forgetting some.

Oh, yeah … remember in early 2022 when the unveiling of the Bayraktar strike drones was hailed with great fanfare? They were predicted to be the bane of the Russian army. Instead, it was a major embarrassment for the Turks.

Turkish Bayraktar TB2 Surveillance and Attack Drone

That said, over the past year or so, those “savage barbarians” down in Yemen have shot-down a baker’s dozen of the once-vaunted US MQ-9 Reaper drones – supposedly vastly superior to the Bayraktar TB2.

US MQ-9 Reaper Surveillance and Attack Drone

In any case, all of these things represent top-shelf front-line US/NATO war stuff that has been objectively proven inferior in the crucible of protracted high-intensity warfare. Many are simply ill-suited for the current state-of-play in the military realm, as it has been revealed over the course of the war in Ukraine.

Before this war began, the almost-universal belief was that US/NATO weaponry and equipment were far and away superior to anything the Russians could put on the battlefield.

That unfounded faith in the unrivaled supremacy of western arms has now been shattered — although we already see the think-tank apologists fashioning their strained rationalizations.

Nevertheless, when one examines in aggregate the implements of war the US/NATO have provided to Ukraine, the overwhelming majority consists of the very stuff every military in NATO would field in a war against Russia, or anyone else, for that matter.

Here is a sobering truth: if the Armed Forces of Ukraine could make one wish, it would be to respawn as the army and abundant quantities of effective and durable Soviet equipment they had in February 2022. That was, all things considered, the strongest army they would ever have. And it was, in great measure, squandered on the altar of a misguided commitment to NATO field doctrines that repeatedly proved misconceived and ill-adaptive to the war that actually ensued, as well as the war as it has subsequently evolved.

So, in the case of the Ukraine War, we see attested two now-indisputable facts:

1) US/NATO weaponry and equipment is FAR LESS FEARSOME than was previously believed by the supposed “military experts” in the world. It has either failed abysmally or vastly underperformed in virtually every case.

2) US/NATO war doctrine has been demonstrated to be something quite a bit less than the greatest expression of the martial arts since Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. The disastrous NATO/AFU “counteroffensive” in Zaporozhye in summer 2023 and the catastrophic blunder of the Kursk Kamikaze Incursion in summer 2024 have laid waste to the mythology of US/NATO military prowess.

Napoleon at Austerlitz Accepting the Surrender of Francis II

Now, here in the early spring of 2025, we see the United States, with Donald Trump again at the helm, trying to soothe the sting and obfuscate the reality of the resounding defeat its strategic designs and battlefield arms have suffered against Russia.

And, after weighing all options and considerations in the balance, the Masters of Declining Empire have decided beating up on Iran is the right medicine for what ails them.

I mean, after all, the Russians never had to face them, and the Iranians certainly cannot pose a credible threat to our decades-old F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, F-22s, F-35s, B-52s, B-1s, B-2s, Tomahawks, etc., not to mention the almighty US Navy.

Everybody KNOWS this to be true. Right?

And even though the Iranians have already proven to be able to defeat all manner of US and Israeli air defenses with their upper-tiers of ballistic missiles … well, if we just have Pete Hegseth give them a proper pep-talk, those interceptors that failed during the reign of the imbecile Joe Biden will strike down every single Muslim Missile they see. American air defense interceptors will be made great again. Hail to the Chief!

As for the Iranian air defenses … well, everyone also knows the Israelis already destroyed them. Right? They told us all about it – how the heroic Israeli F-35s and F-15s stormed across the Tigris into the heart of Iran and blew to smithereens all those S-300s and missile factories. They even showed pictures of scorch marks in the sand to prove it.

Anyway, the point is that America needs to go to war again in an attempt to erase the stain of having lost to the Russians, just as going to war against the Russians was meant to erase the stain of having lost to the Afghanis, just as going to war against Iraq and Afghanistan was meant to erase the stain of having lost to the Vietnamese. And … well, you know the drill by now.

You should also know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. Nothing ever goes as planned. And I strongly suspect the next war of American redemption will not be a reversal of the prevailing trend.

March 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Geography

The Middle East
By William Schryver – imetatronink – March 21, 2025

So the US is sending Carrier Strike Group One (CVN-70 USS Carl Vinson) to the Middle East, leaving CSG-5 (CVN-73 USS George Washington) to “hold the fort” in the western Pacific from the semi-safe environs of its quasi-permanent berth in Yokosuka, Japan.

All the Washington does is sail back and forth between San Diego and Yokosuka every so often to give the impression it’s doing something meaningful. Otherwise I’ve seen no indication for several years that it is anything more than a training and parade vessel.

In any case, the Vinson is headed to the Arabian Sea, and perhaps points beyond. (That remains to be seen.)

Meanwhile the deployment of CSG-8 (CVN-75 USS Trembling Puppy) has been extended, even as it remains bottled up in the northern reaches of the Red Sea, launching air strikes on Yemen from ~1000 km away, with USAF refueling tankers at the ready as needed.

The Yemeni have launched a few modest packages of antiquated drones and antiship cruise missiles in the general direction of the Trembling Puppy – all of which have been relatively easy pickings for the cruiser and destroyers and combat air patrol.

But, keep in mind, even though these old and slow Yemeni drones and missiles have little chance of scoring a hit from 1000 km away, the carrier strike group ships and planes still have to shoot at every one of them!

So every Yemeni strike package of a couple dozen missiles will deplete CSG-8’s munitions magazines by AT LEAST a corresponding number of air defense missiles, and quite possibly TWICE as many, according to standard practice of firing two interceptors at each threat.

CSG-8’s magazine depth has already been substantially depleted over the course of the past two weeks — and remember, the US Navy cannot replenish its vertical launch systems at sea.

And, of course, if military operations against Iran are the ultimate objective, then at some point the Trembling Puppy and its entourage are going to have to leave the cozy waters between Jeddah and the Gulf of Suez, and run the gauntlet of the Gate of Lamentation (Bab el-Mandeb).

The Gate of Lamentation (Bab el-Mandeb)

That’s when things could get more interesting. Because it’s a pretty tight squeeze to pass through. A big deep-draft aircraft carrier can’t just run at full speed, zig-zagging back and forth. It has to stick to the navigable channel.

Navigable Shipping Channels in the Bab el-Mandeb

In the relatively open waters north of Jeddah, there is quite a bit of room for maneuver. But in the straits, you’re restricted to a narrow band — and most significantly, potential Yemeni missile launching sites are only ~200 km away. A more substantial strike package of 50 or so drones, antiship cruise missiles, antiship ballistic missiles, and fast boat and surface drone attacks will get there a whole lot faster, and with a much better chance of actually hitting something.

So, even though CSG-8’s odds of passing through unscathed still probably remain pretty good, there is unquestionably a considerably elevated risk compared to hiding out at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez.

But let’s suppose they sail right through the Bab el-Mandeb with minimal difficulties … then what? You join up with CSG-1 in the Arabian Sea and attempt long-distance strikes into southern Iran — strikes that would still require air-refueling to have any meaningful reach?

Because you sure as hell aren’t going to sail a couple carrier strike groups into the Persian Gulf. And anyone who believes otherwise is drowning in delusion. I mean, just look at the damn map! The Iranians have potent fire control over the passage from the Gulf of Oman, through the Strait of Hormuz, and throughout the entire Persian Gulf.

Strait of Hormuz / Persian Gulf

So I ask, in all seriousness, what exactly are two US Navy carrier strike groups going to do in the context of a no-holds-barred war against Iran?

To me, the entire concept screams of hubris running blindly into catastrophe.

If the US is foolish enough to start a big war against Iran, then 2025 is likely to demonstrate yet again that, combined with firepower, geography is the indomitable god of war.

March 22, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

Seyed Marandi: America Attacks Yemen – Has Trump Set Himself Up For Failure?

Glenn Diesen | March 19, 2025

Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a professor, analyst and advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team

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March 20, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Yemen being bombed by US, UK for fulfilling ICJ, UNGA ‘obligations’: Legal expert

Press TV – March 17, 2025

A prominent legal expert says Yemen is being bombed by the United States and the United Kingdom for fulfilling obligations set by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Craig Mokhiber, a US-based human rights lawyer and former United Nations official, took to his X handle, formerly Twitter, on Monday to condemn the latest American-British aggression on Yemen.

He said both the ICJ and the UNGA have found that all countries are “legally obliged” to cease any kind of support for the Israeli occupation regime amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The obligations, he elaborated, include banning any products from the illegal settlements, to cut off all military, diplomatic, economic, commercial, financial, investment, and trade relations with the Israeli occupation, to respect the provisional orders of the ICJ in the Israel genocide case, and to respect their third-state obligations under the Genocide Convention to act to prevent and stop Genocide.

“Yemen is being bombed for respecting these obligations,” he remarked.

Mokhiber, who previously served as the director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, resigned from his position in October 2023 in protest against the UN’s “failure” to prevent the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

He described the US, the UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault.”

American and British warplanes attacked Yemen on Saturday night after US President Donald Trump vowed to use “overwhelming lethal force” against the poorest country in the Arab world that had recently resumed a ban on Israeli ships from crossing key maritime regions after the Tel Aviv regime reimposed crippling blockade on the besieged Palestinian territory.

Yemeni health ministry condemned the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, describing it as a “full-fledged war crime and a blatant violation of international laws and conventions.”

The US-UK military coalition launched another attack on Sunday night, with Yemeni authorities now putting the death toll at more than 50, including women and children.

According to Yemeni reports, American and British warplanes launched at least 47 airstrikes on several sites in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a as well as areas in the northern province of Sa’ada, the central province of al-Bayda, and the southwestern province of Dhamar.

The leader of the Ansarullah resistance movement in a speech on Sunday night warned the United States that the aggression against the Arab country will be met with escalation.

“The aircraft carrier and American warships will be targets for us, and the navigation ban will include the Americans as long as they persist in their aggression,” Abdul Malik al-Houthi said.

“We will respond to escalation with escalation, and we will strike at the American enemy by targeting its aircraft carrier, warships, and imposing a blockade on its vessels.”

March 17, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

President Trump: Stop Bombing Yemen and Exit the Middle East!

By Ron Paul | March 17, 2025

Over the weekend President Trump ordered a massive military operation against the small country of Yemen. Was Yemen in the process of attacking the United States? No. Did the President in that case go to Congress and seek a declaration of war against the country? No. The fact is, Yemen hadn’t even threatened the United States before the bombs started falling.

Last year, candidate Trump strongly criticized the Biden Administration’s obsession with foreign interventionism to the detriment of our problems at home. In an interview at the Libertarian National Convention, he criticized Biden’s warmongering to podcaster Tim Pool, saying, “You can solve problems over a telephone. Instead they start dropping bombs. Recently, they’re dropping bombs all over Yemen. You don’t have to do that.”

Yet once in office, Trump turned to military force as his first option. Since the Israel/Hamas ceasefire plan negotiated by President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, Yemen has left Red Sea shipping alone. However, after Israel implemented a total blockade of humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza last week, Houthi leaders threatened to again begin blocking Israel’s Red Sea shipping activities.

That was enough for President Trump to drop bombs and launch missiles for hours, killing several dozen Yemeni civilians – including women and children – in the process.

After the attack, Trump not only threatened much more force to be used against Yemen, but he also threatened Iran. His National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added that the US may start bombing Iranian ships in the area, a move that would certainly lead to a major Middle East war.

Like recent Presidents Bush and Obama, candidate Trump promised peace after four years of Joe Biden’s warmongering and World War III brinkmanship. There is little doubt that with our war-weary population this proved the margin of his victory. Unfortunately, as with Bush and Obama, now that he is President, he appears to be heading down a different path.

The Republican Party is gradually becoming a pro-peace, America first party, but the warmongers and neocons of the old line in the Party are not going to let go so easily. Unfortunately many of these dead-enders have found their way to senior positions in Trump’s Administration, with voices of restraint and non-intervention nearly nowhere in sight among his top tier of advisors.

To solve the Yemen problem we must understand it: Russian and Chinese ships, for example, are not being threatened because they are not enabling the Israeli demolition of Gaza. The slaughter there has been facilitated with US money and US weapons. It is the US doing Israel’s bidding both in Gaza and in the Red Sea that is painting a target on us and unnecessarily putting our troops at risk of retaliation.

The US government, starting with Biden and continuing now with Trump, seems eager to make this our war even though, as Rep. Thomas Massie pointed out over the weekend, Red Sea shipping is of minor importance to the US economy.

In a real “America first” foreign policy we would be following the Russian and Chinese lead and staying out of the conflict. It’s not our war. End US military involvement in the Middle East and our troubles disappear. It really is that simple.

March 17, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 3 Comments

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