Tea at Trianon: The Pirates Of The Red Sea

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 4, 2026

The Pirates Of The Red Sea

From AND Magazine:

The Houthis are Yemeni rebels and allies of the Iranian regime. They recently entered the war with the United States and Israel and began to fire missiles at Israel. To date, however, they have refrained from shooting at shipping in the Red Sea. Right now, tankers filling up with oil at Yanbu, the Saudi port on the Red Sea, are in many ways the world’s lifeline. Thirty tankers at a time are docked there, taking on oil brought across Saudi Arabia in a pipeline. This allows oil to flow out of Saudi Arabia and bypass the Iranian stranglehold on the Straits of Hormuz.
Why? Why have these Iranian allies not closed the Red Sea to shipping? The answer tells you a great deal about how the Middle East works and what the word “ally” really means in the region.
In 2023, Saudi Arabia and Yemen entered into a Road Map deal to end fighting between the Houthis and Riyadh. Saudi Arabia now sends tens of millions of dollars to Yemen every few months. Ostensibly, this is support for the Yemeni government, but a big chunk of this money goes to the Houthis directly. The Saudis pay the salaries of the Houthi fighters.
We call this protection money.
The Houthis don’t make any serious effort to disguise it as anything else. Earlier this year, the Saudis were behind on their payments to the Houthis. Houthi fighters were not being paid. There were reports of famine in some Houthi-controlled areas. Acting de facto Prime Minister Mohammed Ahmed Muftaf, speaking in place of Houthi de facto President Mahdi Al Mashat, then delivered a strongly worded warning to Saudi Arabia. He urged Riyadh to release funds to pay Houthi salaries as a “basic right” and said that “time is running out and patience has limits.” (Read more.)