Airstrike Kills 8 Suspected Militants in Yemen … Officials in Yemen say an airstrike has killed eight militants in the country’s south. The officials said Thursday’s strike targeted a position held by militants with suspected links to al-Qaida in Yemen. On Wednesday, clashes between Yemeni forces and militants near Zinjibar in southern Abyan province killed at least 30 militants and seven soldiers. Militants have taken control of several areas in southern Yemen during the six-month uprising pressing for PresidentAli Abdullah Saleh‘s resignation. – Voice of America
Dominant Social Theme: The US is helping its Yemeni allies fight back against the terror threat.
Free-Market Analysis: How many wars are too many? Unnoticed largely in the press of larger events and obviously downplayed by the controlled Western media, the US and its allies are pursuing yet ANOTHER aggressive, illegal war – this one in Yemen.
How aggressive is it? It is a full-on conflict that has reportedly seen SEALS come ashore on a regular basis at night to engage tribal fighters in Abyan province, this newspaper has learned from sources in Yemen itself that are in a position to know.
The US is now involved in almost innumerable wars in the Middle East, but most have been reported in one way or another. This one has not been fully vetted as it continues to expand. Unconstitutional, secretive and expanding in scope and violence, it includes the massive, violent projection of US naval, air and Special Forces into parts of Yemen.
It is no skirmish but a coordinated, daily attack against hostile forces that supposedly include a number of “al Qaeda” (whatever they are) protected by local tribesman in the south of Yemen who have rebelled against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime. It involves considerable military effort and expenditure of what must be a US task force that includes sea, air and land power.
Despite the new war’s massive scope, the major media and Congress remain culpably silent on this latest war (is there any other word for it?) even though such a massive military campaign must be well known to top power players in the media, in politics, in the intelligence community and obviously in the Pentagon itself.
This war is at least two months old, but its violence and aggressiveness have remained unreported until now. It has already resulted in the death of numerous civilians, including women and children. These deaths have gone unreported as well.
It is true that there have been a number of GENERAL reports on this new conflict but the scope and aggressiveness of this new war remain unstated. Those who live in Yemen – some 25 million people – are aware that the US is operating with impunity on Yemen’s Southern flank, but the rest of the world does not know. Those in positions of power are obviously too frightened or too careful to comment.
The evil of unrestrained violence projected from what was once a US republic continues to expand; the evil of secret wars, secret violence, secret civilian deaths is a corrosive acid that eats away at civil society until the citizens of the West themselves will be exposed to the ruin they are currently visiting on other countries. The danger is not just to “terrorists” overseas but also to anyone who wishes to retain what is left of Western civilization.
In fact, the rights of those who reside in the US republic continue to degrade as the US and the West continue to pursue a phony war on terror. It is no accident in our view, but seemingly a malicious policy pursued by the world’s top banking families – the power elite – in hopes of abrogating what remain of the rights of US citizens to understand and shape the military and political policies of their own country.
It is as well an abrogation of the US Constitution to regularly invade another country’s shores without Congress holding a debate and declaring war. This is not merely a skirmish or “fly over” but a full-on military confrontation and it is one that has larger ramifications economically.
If Yemen is destabilized, Bahrain and eventually Saudi Arabia itself could become embroiled in domestic turmoil, which many observers believe could eventually end the fragile Saudi regime – the House of Saud. The Saud monarchy recently passed a law making it illegal for anyone to criticize a member of the Saud ruling family. Jail is to be the result, up to five years or more.
A failed Saud regime would likely collapse the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The results would make the financial turmoil from the current downgrade of US Treasuries look minor, indeed. The failure of the US dollar reserve could create a world depression of the sort that has not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Nonetheless, a variety of forces are acting on the core of the Middle East to destabilize it. There are some, in fact, who suggest that President Saleh purposefully allowed the Southern tribes to rebel to pressure the West into supporting his failing government. But as is seemingly always the case, once the initial strategy has been implemented, the conflict spirals out of control.
What may have begun as a pressurizing strategy now threatens to destabilize the entire Southern area of Yemen and cause at the very least a schism between North and South. Perhaps this could result, as in the past, in disunion between North and South. Saleh himself came to power based on his ability to unify the North and South some 30 years ago. Now Yemen looks to be disintegrating.
The current round of military actions are being carried out in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, which increasingly serves as a proxy for US power in the region. Saudi aircraft are supposedly bombing in Abyan along with US planes. The Yemeni air force is not so involved as its pilots apparently proved ineffective in comparison with Saudi and American air power.
The secret war is being carried out in conjunction with the headless government of President Saleh who now resides in Saudi Arabia after having been blown up in a mosque in Yemen and undergoing at least six separate operations for burns and for lung and chest injuries.
Reports are rife in Yemen about the US’s newfound aggressiveness, which is over two months old but as yet unreported by a single mainstream media outlet. Not only are US “boots on the ground,” day and night a US carrier group pours missiles into the Abyan region, causing the abandonment of large parts of at least one major urban center there.
Planes are launching regular attacks from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Abyan, in addition to the unmanned drones flyover missions. This is a coordinated and massive military action and one of grave import that should have given rise to public debate in the US Congress. But there is only silence as the US military-industrial complex carries out its hostilities.
The gravity of such an engagement is obvious, given that wars once engaged can go on for years, even decades. The US is struggling with economic failure and social unrest. The addition of another apparently major war in the Middle East is a burden that citizens should willingly share if the need is great enough and the threat severe enough.
But there has been no discussion of adding yet another major war to the military actions now being conducted by the US and NATO in such countries Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria.
Elite elements of the West’s military, intelligence and political establishment are entirely out of control, it would seem. The determination to project power anywhere and at any time is eroding even the frailest of constraints on powerful men who operate at the behest of the global banking establishment.
Conclusion: The purposeful degradation of civilization itself is apparently the aim of the elites. The goal is world government. Out of chaos, order. With secret, illegal, unconstitutional wars like the one in Yemen, this goal is advanced. The gravity cannot be overstated. The mounting recklessness and lawlessness of these actions provide evidence that opposition to freedom and civil society – embedded in mainstream Western institutions themselves – grow ever more bold.
TIME magazine has published a five page spread on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign that hits newsstands today. While some are declaring this a lifting of the veil on media coverage of the Congressman, the reality is that the piece will go out of its way to convince readers that Paul is a fad and has no chance of winning.
Altman then takes a leap into Orwellian territory by suggesting that “Paul isn’t really running for President, at least not entirely.”
