Time Stamps:
The Great Kerfuffle Rant (0:00)
Background on Yemen and the Houthi Rebellion (2:48)
Placating the Saudis and Siding with Al Qaeda (6:46)
Iran Claims Antarctica (10:20)
The Russia Russia Song (16:19)
Closing Remarks (16:46)
The Great Kerfuffle Rant
Does "kerfuffle" belong on a tombstone?
I think not.
Listen for my rant.
Background on Yemen and the Houthi Rebellion
Guiding my introduction to the Yemeni conflict is Enough Already by Scott Horton.
Here are some essential highlights:
"The Houthis had formed... as a reaction against Saudi Arabia’s attempt to export radical Wahhabist Islam to their region."
"A major excuse for Saudi and American intervention against the Houthis in Yemen is that they are backed by Iran."
"For years, the Saudis have deliberately bombed the country’s infrastructure and other civilian targets such as the electricity, water and sewage works, schools, hospitals, factories, bridges, farms, markets, car and truck dealerships, fishermen in their boats, weddings, funerals, civilian apartment buildings, refugee camps and even near-ancient homes that had been passed down within families for centuries."
Placating the Saudis and Siding with Al Qaeda
The US government has reported of a missile attack on a cargo ship.
The BBC reports:
Two missiles have hit a ship off Yemen and caused a fire on board, authorities say, in another apparent attack by Yemen's rebel Houthi movement.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency said the unnamed vessel was in the Gulf of Aden when it was attacked and that US-led coalition forces had responded.
A maritime security firm identified it as a Palau-flagged cargo ship.
Dave DeCamp at Antiwar.com reports on findings from a recent investigation, linking former Al Qaeda members to the US-backed Yemini forces.
An investigation from BBC has revealed that the UAE recruited al-Qaeda members who now work for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a Yemeni southern separatist group that is part of the US and Saudi-backed Yemeni government.
The UAE joined Saudi Arabia in invading Yemen in 2015 to fight the Houthis, who are officially known as Ansar Allah. The US threw its weight behind the Saudi/UAE coalition, and previous reporting revealed the coalition had recruited al-Qaeda fighters to join its ranks over the years.
The new BBC investigation cited a document obtained by a whistleblower that revealed 11 former members of al-Qaeda now work in the STC, which wishes to separate north and south Yemen, restoring the borders before Yemen unified in 1990.
Yemeni sources told BBC that a former senior al-Qaeda official and suspect in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, Nasser al-Shiba, is now a commander in an STC military unit. The STC is part of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), which was formed in 2022 when the Saudis reached a ceasefire with the Houthis and gave up on reinstating former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Iran Claims Antarctica
The Hindustan Times reports that Iran has claimed Antarctica for "military and scientific work," according to Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani.
What are they going to do with it?
I suppose you can argue that technology, territory, and geography all have its advantages. But it's Iran. Even at their worst, are they going to have terrorist training camps where they figure out how not to melt like icicles? It's obviously not the climate they're used to at all.
According to Cool Antarctica:
There has never been any commercial mining in Antarctica, there are no current plans to mine Antarctica and mining is currently completely banned by the Antarctic Treaty until 2048. There are no known future plans by any of the Antarctic Treaty nations to reverse this decision.
But apparently, Russia has at least winged the idea around.
In 2022, PBS reported:
Supergiant oilfields are simmering below the Southern Ocean, the warming waters at the bottom of the Earth that wrap around the melting, icy Antarctic, a litany of Kremlin sources suggest.
Despite the 1998 Antarctic mining ban — ratified by Russia and 28 other states — some of the so-called loot in the Kremlin’s crosshairs appears cached within large marine sedimentary basins off East Antarctica’s Indian Ocean sector.
That supposed loot may equal a climate-busting 500 billion barrels of hydrocarbon “resources” — the building blocks for oil and gas — claims a bombshell statement released by the Kremlin’s mineral explorer, Rosgeo.
Issued February 2020 from the Antarctic gateway port of Cape Town, and first reported by S&P Global, the statement hardly cracked a nod in media swamped by pandemic news. Yet, its revelations were staggering — it did not say how much of those stocks were recoverable, but at 500 billion barrels such largesse would outstrip global annual oil consumption of 35 billion barrels by about 15 times.
So many measures are taken in the US to keep oil prices propped up, and overseas to keep adversaries from competing and supplying it.
I don't want to have to say the Nordstream pipelines were likely among them, but...
External Resources:
BOOK: Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism by Scott Horton
Ship on fire in Gulf of Aden after missile attack by BBC News
Investigation Reveals Former Al-Qaeda Members Are Part Of US-Backed Yemeni Government Forces by Dave DeCamp
Iran claims Antarctica; US State Department responds to safety challenge against global treaty by Ashima Grover
Human Impacts on Antarctica and Threats to the Environment - Mining and Oil by Cool Antarctica
‘Gentleman’s Agreement’: Despite Mining Ban, Russia Scours Antarctica for Massive Fossil Fuel Deposits by Tiara Walters
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