I’m at war. I declared it on Thursday night and I’ve already bombed the shit out of half of Yemen. Even though I’m not at war with Yemen, but with the Houthis. Who? Hou??? Houthis. That band of warrior fighter/religious zealotish, rebel-type dudes from Northern Yemen. They look a bit like the Taliban, same dentists, I think, but it’s all a bit samey out there among the different groups of goat-shaggers in the all the different mountain ranges, different countries, just the same guns.

But the Taliban they ain’t. Because Houthis are Shia Muslims. And in any Sunni majority country, the Shias are second class citizens. Whereas in Shia nations, the Sunnis get treated like shit. Its a big divide in the Muslim world and growing all the time as the two massive ‘power houses’, (Sunni) Saudi Arabia and (Shia) Iran pull further and further apart and get closer to warring themselves. Rather than setting up proxy wars all over the place, like in Yemen.

Sunni and Shia are different interpretations of the Quran. A ‘minor detail’. But if ‘God is in the details’, when those details are actually about God, it tends to get a bit heated. Protestants and Catholics generally get along ok, but it wasn’t always the case. The Spanish Inquisition may not have been Catholicism’s greatest moment but it demonstrates how religious passions turn to virtual fucking insanity, in which torture and death are perfectly ok in God’s eyes to further His cause. Really? What kind’a God would that be, then?

Jews have this too. THIS is the correct way to pray; anything else is just NOT JEWISH. You want women rabbis; call yourself something else. You want to contemporise the rules, become some third rate offshoot with a different name. ‘Progressive’ or ‘Reform’ or ‘Jews for Jesus’, but we disown you. Jews just do it without violence. We don’t do pain very well.

But Muslims take things further. You can’t have a simple religious debate without beheadings. God wouldn’t approve. He demands blood. Again: really?

Iran will fund any Shia movement. Particularly those who stand against Israel. Hence all the rockets fired every day (as Hamas’s part of the ‘ceasefire’) from Gaza. And Hezbollah’s massive cache of weaponry and rockets. The Houthis can’t afford belts and tie their trousers with string, but they have guns, artillery, rockets, helicopters, all bearing ‘made in Iran’ logos.

And the Houthis, allegedly ‘in support of the Palestinians in Gaza’, have been attacking shipping the Red Sea. ‘To stop goods going to Israel’. Whereas in fact they’ve been engaged in mass piracy of shipping which has nothing to do with Israel. And in doing so have frightened freight ships out of the Red Sea altogether, forcing them to circumnavigate the whole of Africa to avoid the Suez Canal.

So that’s why I’m at war with them. Because they attacked ‘my’ ships.

And before the inevitable rabble of ‘ceasefire-mavens’ start saying how we should all ‘be sitting round a table, negotiating’, just a small point. YOU CAN’T NEGOTIATE WITH EXTREMISTS. Not the Houthis, not Hamas, not ISIS, not the Spanish Inquisition.

I tend to judge any group or race by the quality of its comedy clubs. That may not be scientific but it’s my measure of civilisation. And, without visiting northern Yemen to get proper evidence, I’m gonna guess the Houthis fall way short.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx