When Idiocy Can Be Distraction

A sneaky preparation for wars is worse than insecure phones

Americans have a naive nice streak that could end up killing a lot of people. Most of the people attached to and paying for DT's clown car administration are people with a LOT of money and some very freaking weird ideas. One of those weird ideas has to do with the Christian Zionists who have pushed support for Israel, not because they think that the Jews got a bad deal (which they assuredly have over the centuries) but because they want to see Armageddon, that ultimate battle between good and evil that will take place right next door to my home. It's funny how every now and then media starts talking about the Christian Zionists and then it suddenly stops. No one is talking about them now, are they?

According to the playbook for The Rapture, the Jews have to be in Jerusalem to start stuff off...hence setting up Israel in the first place and supporting the Zionist state. There is nothing to say that the initial immigrants to Palestine couldn't have been good and shared power and still ended up in Jerusalem, but that apparently wouldn't have been as much fun. Besides that, recent history has shown us that they only people that white Europeans dislike as much or more than Jews are Arabs and Africans. Okay, maybe Asians fall into this category as well, but no one set up the end of days according to a European religion based on their participation... so far.

So why Yemen? Yemen is annoying the clown car, but even more important strategically they are annoying Israel who is also annoyed by Iran, who so far is not really doing anything to Israel although they have the capability of doing so. To get their Rapture, the CZ clown car folks have to get some real live fireworks going around Jerusalem. The IDF are doing their best to clear the space for the clown car even if they think that they are doing it for Israel. But then Bibi has plenty of clowns in his car as well and a very strong motivation not to take up residence in prison, much like DT and a few others of his crew who are about as religious as traffic cones. So picking on Yemen to piss off Iran, who will then hopefully start a convenient war with Israel is a pretty easy plan, one even a bunch of clown cars could pull off.

But there is another piece to the puzzle. While everyone has been paying attention to the fact that the clowns either did not realise that they were letting cats out of bags on Signal or they were using this as a diversion, the US has been moving large quantities of stealth B52 bombers and other support staff into Diego Garcia which is in a good flying distance for both Yemen and Iran, as it was for Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is for other places in the eastern Mediterranean. Just what we all in this neighbourhood are delighted to hear. No one sane is going to argue that the particular political persons involved in this fiasco are any kind of geniuses. They aren't, but most of the ground work was done for them along with the cult takeovers of many churches and political parties close to 100 years ago. This has been a long time cooking and personally I suspect that people were more subtle and devious then.

So remember the first rule of the carnival magician. Distraction.

"Washington continues to reel this week after The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg published a stunning report detailing his experience being accidentally added to a group chat of Trump administration officials. Using the messaging app Signal, they were coordinating a military strike on Houthi targets in Yemen. Goldberg's story, the second half of which was released after the White House insisted there had been no breach of top secret protocols, has become a major scandal for President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday demanded in a letter to the White House that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth be "fired immediately" for the breach, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) raised the possibility of a congressional investigation into the episode. While the political ramifications of this "Signalgate" scandal remain to be fully seen, the incident has brought public attention to a broader and perhaps more materially pressing question: Why is the United States bombing Yemen at all?

Clearing global shipping lanes

The White House has said that strikes against the Houthi group, which have played a key role in Yemen's ongoing civil war, are "due to attacks on Navy ships and shipping" in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Islamist group, said Military.com. The bombardment will end the "minute the Houthis say 'we'll stop shooting at your ships, we'll stop shooting at your drones,'" said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo before The Atlantic's story was published. The campaign is about "freedom of navigation" and "restoring deterrence," Hegseth said.

The Houthis had "pledged to restart their attacks on Israeli-linked vessels" in the wake of Israel's renewed bombardment of Gaza this month, said Responsible Statecraft. The group's previous attacks, which intensified during the conflict between Israel and Hamas last year, led to "economic disruption," with predominantly European-based commerce being "rerouted away from the region." During those assaults, the group used a "loose definition of what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning other vessels could be targeted as well," said The Associated Press.

Saber-rattling in Iran's direction

The U.S. attacks are also "meant to send a warning signal to Iran," with whom the president wants to "broker a deal" over nuclear weaponry, said The New York Times. Vice President J.D. Vance seemed, at least in part, to acknowledge this facet of the administration's strategy in the Signal conversation detailed by Goldberg. Given that the majority of the disrupted trade in the region was European, the "strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message," Vance said on Signal.

Iranian backing of the Houthis is "central" to the group's operational capacity, said Andrew Borene, a member of the Atlantic Council's Counterterrorism Project, in a council analysis. With the Houthis having "positioned themselves within Iran's 'Axis of Resistance,'" the U.S. needs a "more comprehensive allied approach" as "airstrikes alone won't be enough to push the Houthis out of Yemen or restore stability to one of the world's most vital trade routes."

Perhaps I’m worrying too much, I really hope so.