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U.S. Is Now Openly at War With Houthis in Yemen (Video)
U.S. Is Now Openly at War With Houthis in Yemen (Video)
The US Navy in the Red Sea fired Tomahawk missiles into Yemen early Thursday morning, taking out three radar stations. Those facilities had allowed the Houthi rebels who control North Yemen to target US destroyers in the Red Sea on several occasions in recent days (they missed each time).The Obama administration has backed the Saudi-led war on the Houthi government of north Yemen since it began in March of 2015, offering logistical support and even help in choosing targets for airstrikes. Presumably the Houthis were firing at US destroyers in an attempt to take revenge on the US for its involvement in the war on them.The US Navy said that the Tomahawk missile strikes were defensive, without noting that the US has been deeply involved in helping plan the bombing of Yemen for a year and a half.Last Saturday a Saudi airstrike hit a funeral, killing some 160 civilians and wounding over 500.The Saudis and their partners in the war have often bombed urban areas indiscriminately, destroying some of historic downtown Sanaa. Even when advised by the US military against striking some bridges and other key infrastructure (because they are needed to get staples to civilian populations), the Saudis and their allies have nevertheless struck them. The US has on several occasions announced that it is becoming uncomfortable with the war on Yemen, but continues to be deeply involved behind the scenes.
The war has killed 4,125 civilians and left 7,207 wounded, and made over a million Yemenis out of 24 million food insecure.The US is concerned with Yemen for geostrategic reasons, since about 10 percent of world trade goes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and Yemen is in a position to disrupt that ship traffic. Also, some southern provinces of Yemen are bases for the radical al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is stalking the United States.
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Turkey-Russia Tensions Spike as Russia Moves Into Northern Syria
Turkey-Russia Tensions Spike as Russia Moves Into Northern Syria
Russian air strikes in Syria are coming closer and closer to the Turkish border in Latakia in the northwest, and there are rumors that Russia is looking at establishing an airbase at Qamishli in the largely Kurdish northeast of Syria. Turkey risks having Russia as a neighbor all along the Syrian border to Turkey’s south, as well as beyond the Black Sea to its north.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference, “We have said this from the beginning: we won’t tolerate such formations (in northern Syria) along the area stretching from the Iraqi border up to the Mediterranean. . .”
Over on the Mediterranean side, Russian air strikes have enabled the Syrian Arab Army of the Bashar al-Assad regime to move back into northern Latakia Province, taking a large number of villages in the far northern areas of Turkmen Mountain and Kurd Mountain.
The strategic city of Rabia was surrounded on three sides by government troops.
Syrian government sources maintained that 150 rebels had been killed in the fighting, including guerrillas of the Nusra Front, while others had fled across the border into Turkey.
It was to protect the anti-regime Turkmen fighters of Turkmen mountain that last fall the Turkish air force shot a Russian fighter jet out of the air.
The SAA has also retaken Salma in the east of Latakia Province. Salma had been in rebel hands for 3 years and is in higher land and so was a useful way for the rebels to dominate the surrounding area.
This post originally ran on Truthdig contributor Juan Cole’s website.Russian strategy since last October has been to intervene from the air to give courage to the Syrian troops and allow them to push back the rebels from the key port city of Latakia in the province of the same name.
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“To Dirty it!” On how For-Profit News Obscured William Shatner’s Climate Emergency Warning after Suborbital Flight
October 17, 2021
“To Dirty it!” On how For-Profit News Obscured William Shatner’s Climate Emergency Warning after Suborbital Flight
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Wednesday, pop culture icon William Shatner, Star Trek‘s Captain James Tiberius Kirk, explained the enormity of seeing the earth from a suborbital flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepherd space craft. Part of what he said when he returned from 66 miles up got lost in all of the news reports I’ve seen, and it is the most important part.
Here’s a portion of what CNBC printed in what they alleged was the complete transcript of Shatner’s remarks:
“I mean, the little things, the weightlessness, and to see the blue color whip by and now you’re staring into blackness. That’s the thing. This covering of blue is this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue around that we have around us. We think ‘oh, that’s blue sky’ and suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, like you whip a sheet off you when you’re asleep, and you’re looking into blackness – into black ugliness. And you look down, there’s the blue down there, and the black up there, and there is Mother Earth and comfort and – is there death? Is that the way death is?”
But here’s the crucial takeaway, the last phrase of which is omitted by CNBC:
“What I would love to do is communicate as much as possible the jeopardy, the moment you see how vuln– the vulnerability of everything. It so small. This air which is keeping us alive is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver. It’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. It’s negligible, this air. Mars doesn’t have it. It’s so thin. And to dirty it…”
“The jeopardy . . . And to dirty it!” To fill this precious atmosphere, unique in our solar system, with clouds of burned coal dust and with greenhouse gases, Shatner says, is . . . what? Despicable. Unthinkable.
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