RANDALL WHITE. GLOBAL VILLAGE NOTEBOOK. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2026. To start with (and very briefly), note the complex referendum in the staunch Canadian province of Alberta this coming Monday, October 19, 2026.

I will say only that if I were living in Edmonton (or Calgary) — as I am not at the moment but happily could be — I would vote exactly as, I take it, Ms Wenda Toews did recently by mail. (See the ballot posted at the end below.)

Now on to a more crucial global issue : Who are the Houthis and what is Yemen in the turbulent Middle East?

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According to the Hindustan Times : “It was the third attack on Riyadh’s airport in less than a week, and the deadliest. On October 10th the Houthis, an Iran-backed Shia militia, struck it with missiles. Witnesses said the missiles scored a direct hit on Terminal 3.” A day later the Yemeni rebels carried out a fresh attack on Terminal 4, causing a fire. Saudi Arabia looks increasingly under siege.

Or as Al Jazeera has wondered : “Why are the Houthis striking Saudi airports? … The attacks mark one of the most significant disruptions to Saudi civil aviation in years and the deadliest assault on Saudi soil in more than a decade.”

In response to queries within my own household, I have been recently exploring the related questions of just who are the Houthis and what is Yemen.

Starting with what is Yemen, just looking at a map you might wonder why there is any border between the two Arab countries of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Yet Yemen has a long separate history. More recently it was divided into the Yemen Arab Republic or North Yemen and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen or South Yemen.

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Very broadly, North Yemen was (very loosely) pro-capitalist and South Yemen was supported by the old communist Soviet Union. In the midst of the Soviet break-up in 1990 North and South Yemen joined together to form today’s Republic of Yemen. At the same time, even in the new Republic, “Zaydis remained a majority in the north and west of the country, and also in the capital city of Sanaa. However, in terms of the overall population, they became a minority.”

As an added complication the Zaydis were Shia Muslims while the majority in the new Republic were Sunni Muslims. The majority in Saudi Arabia were Sunni Muslims as well, and Saudi Arabia supported the Sunni-majority new Republic of Yemen government, against regional Shia Muslim rebels in the old North Yemen. Very broadly again, the Houthis arose as militia defenders of the rights of Shia Muslims in the old North Yemen. And regionally they were inevitably supported by the larger Shia Muslim regime in Iran.

For a time the United States of America tended to back up Saudi Arabian support for the Sunni majority Republic of Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthi Shia rebels. Most recently, Nicolas Niarchos has argued in The New York Review that this particular “‘Yemen Model’ of American foreign policy” has “proved a catastrophic failure, leaving brutal proxies better armed and ordinary Yemenis less safe.”

From this angle the latest Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia can be viewed as a new complicating ingredient in the Trump administration’s (and Israel’s) current Middle East war against Iran. And here as elsewhere the “Iran (and Shia Muslim) side” of the conflict has proved stronger than many American and related observers first imagined.

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The one thing I at least think I understand (which I did not before my latest troll through the online resources on my PC) is that the Houthis are standing up for the rights of the old Shia Muslim Zaydi majority in the north and west of today’s Republic of Yemen (much of which Houthi forces now effectively control).

How much of any of this Donald Trump cares to think about, in the midst of his plans for some upscale tourist dreamland in Gaza, I of course have no idea.

Concluding with a final note on this coming Monday’s Alberta referendum in Canada, I was struck by this recent post from the Scottish Greens : “BREAKING: A new poll shows a majority of people in Scotland would vote for independence!”

And, whatever else, no independence majority of any sort seems likely in the hardcore Canadian province of Alberta this coming Monday. (I think!)