‘New phone. Houthis?’

By Nancy Ford ––

Get it? No? Try saying it out loud, phonetically: “New phone. Houthis?”

There ya go. Ha! Funny stuff, right?

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this little joke, corny as it is, because it’s the only joke that will appear in this particular “What a World”. If you want to bail out now, go for it. Please come back for some chuckles next month.

There’s not been much to laugh about given the constant barrage of bad news in these first few months of Trump2: The Wrath of Con.

Cutbacks to Social Security and Medicaid. The gutting of the Veterans Administration. The elimination of USAID. The Oval Office’s televised attack on Ukraine’s embattled president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The eradication of the Department of Education. Fricking Measles!

Undeniably, the overabundance of crap inflicted by 47 and his malevolent minions is making America far less great than what was promised. Could it get worse?

Yup.

America and the world are still recoiling from last month’s scorchingly stupid and dangerous security breach outlining the United States’ real-time bombing of Yemen’s Houthi terrorists.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff texted with 18 or more top officials, describing the March 15 deadly offensive in elaborate detail — on an open, unsecure chat line. Even more alarming, someone on that chat looped in The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

Oops.

Ever hesitant to admit a mistake, the White House called Goldberg’s inclusion in the text group “a glitch.”

A glitch is when you tap the wrong passcode on the keypad to unlock your house. A glitch is when your TV blinks off and reboots during a storm. A careless, bombastic text that even accidently puts millions of America’s military in danger isn’t a glitch. It’s a potentially catastrophic disaster. Maybe a traitorous offense. Possibly impeachable?

In response, Trump adopted his typical “What, me worry?” stance and excoriated Goldberg for reporting on his administration’s slapstick-like approach to national security. After calling The Atlantic ’s reporting “fake news,” Trump said he was not concerned about the incident, insisting, “There was no harm done, because the attack was unbelievably successful.”

The New York Times noted the attack dropped bombs not only on military targets, but also on residential areas and buildings in Sana, Yemen’s capital. We still don’t know the number of casualties, civilian or otherwise.

There’s no argument that these extreme Islamic Houthi rebels are among the worst of the worst terrorists humanity has to offer. Of Yemen’s 28.5 million-person population, about 100,000 are Houthis who bastardize the true credo of Islam. They cloak themselves in robes of righteousness while murderously contradicting the ideals of peace, hope and redemption professed by both Islam and Christianity.

The list of the Houthis’ atrocities is, to say the least, abhorrent. Kidnapping, torture, rape — you name it, they commit it. Per the U.S. Department of State 2023 Report on Human Rights Practices, here are just a few more of the cruelties they, as well as the Yemeni government itself, inflict upon their own people:

  • Arbitrary arrest or detention
  • Torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
  • Harsh and life-threatening prison conditions
  • Serious problems with the independence of the judiciary
  • Political prisoners and detainees
  • Arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy
  • Enforced disappearances or abductions, torture, physical abuses and conflict-related sexual violence
  • Serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, censorship, and the enforcement or threats of enforcement of laws that limit expression
  • Serious restrictions on internet freedom
  • Substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association
  • Restrictions on religious freedom • Restrictions on freedom of movement within the territory of a state and on the right to leave the country
  • Inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections
  • Serious and unreasonable restrictions on political participation
  • Serious government corruption
  • Serious government restrictions on and harassment of international human rights organizations
  • Violence that targets migrants
  • Violence motivated by anti-Semitism
  • Extensive gender-based violence
  • Criminalizing consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults
  • Crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting LGBTQI persons.

What kind of government adopts such a dark, dehumanizing agenda of suppression and discrimination against its own people? What kind of country allows its leaders to trample freedom and basic human rights, threatening and punishing its own citizens based on their gender, sexuality, religion, national origin or political beliefs?

Seriously. What kind of country?

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