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Soriek  5mo ago (text post)   1778 thread views

Transnational Thanksgiving (comes one day early)

Posting this a day early because I won’t be around tomorrow.

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Yemen

The Houthis, who recently declared war on Israel and started by firing rockets at them, have now also seized a “British-owned and Japanese-operated cargo ship in the southern Red Sea”.

This raises questions both about whether the Houthis are going to actually manage to make themselves a nuisance, and also if the world community needs to be concerned about free movement of shipping in the Red Sea as well as the Persian Gulf. Jury is out on Iranian involvement:

While Tehran has denied aiding the Yemen rebel group in launching their attack Sunday, the targeted ship before the assault passed by an American-sanctioned Iranian cargo vessel suspected as serving as a forward spying base in the Red Sea…

While their body-camera footage serves as a propaganda coup to bolster their own position in Yemen amid some protests against their rule, it also signals a new maritime front has opened in a region long focused on the Persian Gulf and its narrow mouth at the Strait of Hormuz. It also puts new pressure on commercial shippers traveling through those waters, threatens to increase insurance costs that will get passed onto consumers and likely further stretches the U.S. Navy as it tries to serve as the region’s security guarantor.

Tragically, no one could have seen this coming:

The attack off the coast of Yemen comes just days after the Houthis issued a graphic with captions in Hebrew, Arabic and English that said, “We will sink your ships.” The graphic showed an Israeli commercial ship on fire.

Tragically, no one could have seen this coming:

The attack off the coast of Yemen comes just days after the Houthis issued a graphic with captions in Hebrew, Arabic and English that said, “We will sink your ships.” The graphic showed an Israeli commercial ship on fire.

Well, the ship hasn't sunk quite yet!

I, like many others, was quite taken aback by how organized the Houthis are. I was under the impression they were a rag-tag bunch of rebels with the odd ATGM, but no, they've got a fucking airforce! And a halal equivalent of the Navy Seals to boot.

Fact of the day: seals aren't halal.

Assuming you mean "muslims aren't allowed to eat seal meat", I don't think that's true- all water-dwelling animals are halal.

Responding to you and @orthoxerox It looks like, from wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_halal_and_kosher_fish#Halal Sunni regard all sea game as halal while Shia permit scaled fish and some crustaceans, but largely call other sea creatures haram. The Houthis in question are overwhelmingly a variety of Shia.

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