A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
Related communities:
Yeah, just to be clear. One of the targets hit was a residential high rise building. Local authorities are reporting over 50 people killed.
The target was one, alleged, terrorist and the building, according to the Houthi PC small group message log, was the building of the target's girlfriend.
So, the US just killed at least 50 civilians in order to kill a single target. Just to give you a rough idea of the kind of 'collateral damage' that is acceptable.
Apparently the USA considers this legally acceptable "Proportionality" according to the wording of the Geneva Conventions, and therefore not a war crime. It is a highly bullshit interpretation according to many lawyers, but they have not been dragged to the Hague over it yet and probably never will be for many reasons. For one because nobody ever takes a swing at the USA in the ICC over anything due to political fallout, 2 because most other countriea are guilty of similar crimes and 3 because it is just too gosh darned convenient for the world power nations to be able to bomb apartments to hopefully kill one guy who they're pretty sure is a terrorist to keep their shipping lanes open for business. I actually wonder if there is any real legal line of Proportionality that could be crossed, one terrorist in a fully-booked children's hospital: still OK?
https://casebook.icrc.org/a_to_z/glossary/proportionality
Personally I think any extrajudicial executions are unacceptable. If the guy is a terrorist then arrest, try and convict him. If that's "too hard" then the answer is not to send a drone strike at an apartment building, or a wedding, or a hospital.
Oh, the IDF style of surgical precision bombing. How apt.
Kids were killed but the chat leak was funny and that's what has been the people talk about instead.
Imagine being the poor family, who is stuck living in Yemen because they cannot afford to relocate, whose kid has died by Trump's bombing. Then all you see in the news about how they joked with emojis in chat killing your kid. "Oh your kid was killed in that emoji airstrike." Tell me why the fuck you would grow up anything but radicalized.
My dude this war in Yemen has been going on for like 10 years. If the idea of bombing Yemen sounds out of left field to you, then you are woefully uninformed.
I had the opportunity to live in Berlin for a year. I made friends with a group of Yemen students. All of these people had friends, family or relatives bombed to death. Over the course of 2 weeks, one person lost 3 relatives to the bombings...
These people were sent to Germany to study and be as far away as possible from the horrors at home. Away from friends, family, everyone.
I was told that after flying to somewhere near Yemen, it would have taken another 16 hours to travel by road to get home. Their parents refused them coming to visit because it was just too dangerous.
I don't know how they managed to hold their shit together and carry on even as their families were getting bombed back home.
It broke my heart and I felt powerless to even attempt to comfort them. I'm sure they felt a sense of powerlessness that's beyond anything I could understand at that time.
It's crazy when you realize, "oh, shit, they're just people." I don't mean it in an insulting way. I had that experience, too. Travel certainly helps. It's not even necessarily that you don't believe that before, just maybe that you didn't know or hadn't even thought about it, because who can know everything. But then what was previously vague/unfamiliar words in sporadic headlines in the background is suddenly very real and personal, standing in front of you. It's a gut punch.
Sounds par for the course in the USA.
People are literally surprised when somebody reads out actual policy which was signed into law and who voted for it.
That's because anyone who has been paying attention to geopolitics over the last two years knows why the US is bombing Yemen...
No one is surprised by America indiscriminately bombing and leaving 150 casualties.
Houthis are the only international actor acting in open military opposition to the genocide in Gaza. They are doing their best to enforce a shipping blockade pending a cessation of Israeli war crimes. The US obviously wants the genocide to continue, as well as all shipping trade through the area.
Are you actually asking?
The Houthi's are an Iranian controlled terrorist organization that have been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea since November 2023.
The Houthis have sunk two vessels and killed four crew members, forcing a lot of shipping to Europe to be diverted around the South of Africa.
The US and allies have been fighting the Iranian-backed Houthis for over a decade, this is just a recent resurgence following the war in Israel.
You know, I don't question what you have said; however, this group chat has put many asterisks on this whole situation. I believe one person in that chat has said something to the effect of: "remember the narrative, Biden's fault and Iran backed." Makes me less sure about the whole story and motivations.
I mean I'm sure the Trump admin has alternate motives, since they lie about everything, but the US has definitely been bombing the Houthis in Yeman since at least 2016.
Here's an article from the Guardian dated in late 2016 announcing the US first strike on the rebel group.
Sure bro.
That justified blowing up the apartment building the target's girlfriend lived in.
Because it doesn't just make more Houthis every time.
They’re bombing the Houthi’s in Yemen because the Houthis have been launching Iranian missiles at ships in the Red Sea since 2023? Including the US navy (don’t touch the boats) and Israel. The houthis are currently holding hostage a number of crews of merchant ships
Both are really serious problems in their own right, one's just a little closer to home
The amount of times Republicans said “we killed terrorists” during the congressional hearing, without even once considering that the 53 fatalities from an indiscriminate air strike likely included innocent civilians, is revolting.
With US track record a majority if not all of those 53 people were civilians
This is why the US and Israel get along so famously 👍
They leveled a building to hit 1 target
The MAGA movement have no care about what the administration does, especially when it comes to non-americans in a country literally none of them coudl identify on a map. But if you show them "look how poorly this bombing was planned and carried out" then maybe they will listen.
For me at this point it's just a matter of surprise.
I expect the US to bomb everywhere that isn't Japan, North America, European Union, or Israel
Hell I'm shocked they aren't throwing bombs at Australia because Elon Musk sent a vaguely worded email that implied it.
The reason why I SEEM to care more about the phones than the bombs, is because "US bombing innocent people? Sounds like a Tuesday... but damn how did we elect someone so incompetent that I find out about the specifics?"
The Houthis, is a Zaydi Shia Islamist political and military organization that emerged from Yemen in the 1990s. It is predominantly made up of Zaydi Shias, with their namesake leadership being drawn largely from the Houthi tribe. The group has been a central player in Yemen's civil war, drawing widespread international condemnation for its human rights abuses, including targeting civilians and using child soldiers. The Houthis are backed by Iran. The Houthis emerged as an opposition movement to Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh, whom they accused of corruption and being backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Political context courtesy of the Arab Center in Washington DC:
TL;DR: The Houthis are backed by Iran, in direct regional competition to Saudi Arabian (and subsequently US) interests, and the war in Yemen is a direct result of 10 years worth of failed intervention by the Saudis.
Excerpt:
Exactly a decade ago, Saudi Arabia announced the launch of a military intervention in Yemen, promising to lead a coalition of more than 10 nations—although some would later end their participation—against the Houthi armed group, officially known as Ansar Allah, that had taken over power from President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. Backed by the United States, Britain, and other Western states with arms and shared intelligence, on March 26, 2015, the Saudi coalition commenced airstrikes on Houthi-controlled areas, initiating a conflict that would drag on for years. Riyadh’s initial expectation of a swift, six-week military operation to defeat the Houthis became a prolonged and costly entanglement that has tested Saudi Arabia’s ability to impose its will on its neighbor and to force the Houthis to give up their control over a large part of Yemen. Intervention Inception
Saudi Arabia’s rationale for intervention shifted over time as the conflict unfolded. At the outset, it cast the intervention as a direct response to President Hadi’s urgent appeal to the Gulf states and their international allies that he conveyed in a letter to the UN Security Council in March 2015. Hadi called for states “to provide immediate support in every form and take the necessary measures, including military intervention, to protect Yemen and its people from the ongoing Houthi aggression.” The Saudis initially conceived of the intervention as a decisive effort to reinstate Yemen’s legitimate government in the capital Sanaa. As the situation progressed, Saudi Arabia reframed its objective as restoring Yemen’s political process within the framework of the Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative, which in 2011-2012 facilitated the transfer of power from former President Ali Abdullah Saleh to Hadi.
The core rationale behind Saudi Arabia’s intervention, however, stemmed from its perception of the Houthis as an Iranian proxy on the kingdom’s border. Riyadh feared that Iran’s influence through the Houthis posed a direct threat to the kingdom’s regional dominance and interests. The kingdom saw the Houthi takeover of Sanaa not just as a challenge to Yemen’s stability but as a potential game changer in the broader Middle East power dynamics. In this context, Saudi Arabia framed its military intervention as a necessary response to protect its own security and regional influence.
Riyadh feared that the Houthis posed a direct threat to the kingdom’s regional dominance and interests.
But while Saudi Arabia believed Iran to be the principal force behind the Houthi takeover, the extent of Iranian influence over the group at the time was, in fact, relatively limited. Although the Houthis depended on Iranian military and logistical support, particularly for weaponry and strategic advice, they were not fully under Iran’s control. Iran, while capable of advising the Houthis on strategic and policy matters, lacked the leverage to dictate their actions. Rather, local factors such as longstanding tribal rivalries in Yemen, the Houthis’ longtime opposition to the central government, and their pursuit of greater political power, were more influential in shaping the Houthis’ behavior. The Houthi alliances with former President Saleh and certain factions of the Yemeni military also played a crucial role in the group’s rise. In other words, Iran’s influence was significant, but it was not all-encompassing, as the Houthis had their own political and strategic goals. Nonetheless, Riyadh persisted in portraying the Houthis as a tool of Iranian expansionism. Paradoxically, Saudi Arabia’s prolonged antagonism may have ultimately strengthened Iran’s influence, as it pushed the Houthi armed group to deepen its reliance on Iranian military and logistical support.
Because the houthis are raiding merchant ships
Who are the ships supplying? And why are they firing on them? What's the stated reason for the blockade?
The answers to these questions demonstrate why the Signal story is so important.
This guy says that like "bombing Yemen" isn't a de facto tradition for U.S. presidents. I'm pretty sure every president since Clinton has bombed Yemen at some point during their term. It's old hat. It's not news. It was Tuesday.
Like, sure, it's terrible and no one will deny that, but we've been doing it for 20+ years. This? This clownfuckery? This was new.
Bush and Obama did it too. Historically, it's been a targeted killing thing against Al-Qaeda (or so they have said), with whatever government they have, giving their blessing. If other sites are correct, Trump did it more, but it's kinda hard to pick nits there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Yemen
That's why a lot people are more upset over the lack of operational security than the action itself. They're not conducting themselves in a way that keeps our country safe, They skirting monitoring and can't even get that right.
Because they couldn't fight back
They're brown and poor and our country is deep in the arms trade.