Extremist Rebels 1 Islamic Terrorists 0

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I heard a new term today on public radio which is not public radio of course but we all know that.  It described the situation in Yemen as getting worse with the presence of al Qaeda and "extremist rebels".  Who are the these new guys, the  "Extremists rebels" I asked myself? Now, the term rebels and extremist are not usually used together in the highly controlled US media. The bad guys are either "Islamic extremists" or "Islamic terrorists", "Insurgents" "Militants" but "rebels" is usually reserved for good guys. The guys the US support in Syria are called “rebels” minus the extremist label.

But now we have "extremist rebels". Could this be because the "extremist rebels" they are referring to are the Houthis and the Houthis are Shia somewhat close to Iran? This presents the warmongers at the Pentagon with a dilemma?

So far the US flunkies in the region, the Saudi thugs, bombed Yemen but they were killing too many civilians and doing too much structural damage to this nation and people and they were turning against them and supporting the Houthis.

The US and UN had the Saudi’s stop while the US and western media gets things straight.  The US is fighting alongside Iran against the Pentagon’s old friends ISIS so it looks bad them blowing up ally’s of Iran in Yemen.  The new enemy, along with al Qaeda, are the “extremist rebels”, not Houthis, Houthis just doesn't have the same ring to it and most Americans aren't very up on foreign issues anyway. that’s a good way of spinning it.

What a mess US imperialism has made of the region.  The “extremists” we all need to be worried about are in the Pentagon and Washington.  The damage these extremists have wreaked on the globe the last 25 years, the human suffering and loss of life, the destruction of whole societies, far exceeds anything the paltry Taleban, Bin Laden or any other force has managed so far.

Remember after the collapse of the Soviet Union when we were all celebrating getting our share of the “peace dividend”;  money for education, roads, housing etc.  How could anyone have believed that?  Peace is not possible under capitalism, in a world of competing nations states, and it’s  not profitable.

Keep your noses to the grindstone fellow Americans, there’s more belt tightening to come until that point where we get rid the unelected clique that runs the country and the system they propagate.