No Chinese vessels. One is Thai, one is Japanese, and one is Marshall Islands.
War with...Iran?
- Thread starter Technarch
- Start date
US Navy tells shipping industry Hormuz escorts not possible for now
Guess that problem's not going to get better anytime soon. I vaguely recall that we once had USCG ships escorting tankers during the first Gulf Wars, but those were against Iraq which was not perfectly situated to block shipping.
Guess that problem's not going to get better anytime soon. I vaguely recall that we once had USCG ships escorting tankers during the first Gulf Wars, but those were against Iraq which was not perfectly situated to block shipping.
NewNinetyNine
Ars Centurion
Of course; all armies exist to inflict violence on foreign entities. This is neither novel nor scandalous. The justifications and outcomes are what cause disillusionment, and those are much more sanitized in an era of sympathetic media and massive combatant risk disparities.
Just because information exists does not mean that it is contextualized as representative or disseminated widely. As an example, the 'Box is hyper plugged in and acknowledgement of Biden's decline was heavily resisted pre-debate (and even somewhat post-debate). There is no consensus that use of military power has been generally negative or unwarranted, and the prevalence of malfeasance by soldiers and armies or in wars is disputed.
The US government and media rarely attribute military operations to imperial ambition as opposed to terrorism, removing rogue actors, etc. Dumping agency on random enlisted soldiers that is predicted on both seeking out dissenting views and adopting them is unrealistic.
I don't understand how the self-proclaimed expert on everything can keep getting away with the Sgt. Schultz routine.
Trump says he doesn’t know about investigation that found US struck Iranian girls school
The Guardian's Jennifer Rankin writes a damning roundup of the EU's various and tepid responses to the US/Israel illegal war on Iran. No unity, no message, no courage except for Spain's Sánchez:
She goes on looking at the statements given this week across the EU and from analysts who are a bit more honest about what is and is not going on in the Union. Rankin calls von der Leyen's speech this week "blunt" where she says
other action from France and the UK are mute. Only Sánchez appears to be speaking truth to the powers.
“The Iranian elementary school building where scores of children were killed as the U.S. and Israel began their massive aerial campaign was on a U.S. target list and may have been mistaken for a military site, multiple people familiar with the strike told The Washington Post.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...strike-iran-elementary-school-ai-target-list/
At least enough progress has been made that there’s an admission that it was specifically targeted by the US, even if they haven’t determined why it was targeted.
The most powerful nation on the face of the planet, combined with a local nation that brags about its pinpoint weapon accuracy, both comprehensively failed to update their intel on a location that had been operating as a girls school for about a decade.
No excuses are possible. If they didn’t know, it’s because they didn’t care enough to find out. They have the ability but chose not to use it.
Civilians are targets, and these two regimes literally do not care about those lives.
Something which might have been caught, except....
There was an office in the military whose purpose was to reduce civilian causalities, until it was cut by Hegseth.
One might imagine someone in said office demanding targeting information be kept up to date. But that is not what the administration wanted.
Wasn't there some reporting earlier about the US using AI to help identify targets? When the school bombing happened, AI hallucinations about what was located there (or being wrong about where a presumably legitimate target was located) came to mind pretty quickly.
It appears the Spanish are waking up. If polling trends continue, the 2027 election is going to see Sánchez's PSOE weakened. The mild-right PP is static or in a slight decline, but far-right Vox is on the rise at the expense of others, including and mainly the left/progressive Sumar.
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It's just old data. The girls' school building was part of an IRGC compound ten years ago. Since then it's been separated from that compound by a wall.
It's the kind of thing that wouldn't have happened with competent people and more than a few days to prepare. I have no doubt Hegseth will blame Anthropic for the mistake, though.
Nitpick: 13 years ago.
I don't think that rules out an AI making a bad target suggestion, the AI could have more heavily weighted the old data in the training set, after all. But that wouldn't let anyone off the hook. If it was the AI which suggested the target, then it was a human who asked the AI for a target list in the first place, and a human who failed to validate the target list despite the extreme consequences of error. If anything, that level of incompetence is even worse in my mind.
Spain has a long and complicated history with Islam (go look it up) -- a bit more nuanced than "eww eww keep them away, icky icky icky".
Edit: Technically, I should probably have said "the Iberian peninsula" instead of "Spain", but y'all know what I mean.
You're STILL assuming that they'd give a flying fuck either way, and I see absolutely zero proof of that.
Um, it's the US blowing kids up, and supporting Israel who's been doing that as a matter of course for several years now. I'm pretty sure we, the west including Israel, are the 'savages', especially in the middle east; anyone moderate who wants to you know, serve their own country rather than western oil interests gets overthrown and dictator installed who will co-operate.
Savage is a very apt word for western influence in the region.
In my opinion, if they just focused on reality instead of fantasy, it would have been so much more effective.
The Epstein files, followed by the US wanting to renegotiate and then bomb during negotiations. Attacking the warship during its return from a military exercise. Then the school being bombed. The forever war to distract from the troubles of both the US president and Israel prime minister. The US market going ballistic over the price of oil but shrugging off kids being murdered, and so on.
It’s criminally stupid. This breeds antagonism towards the US, who are quickly turning away from any stated goals and into “We just wanted to kill a bunch of people.”
The US is creating generations of terrorists who have a justified hatred of it. They need only point to events like this.
If a school is blown up in the US, or a terrorism attack kills thousands in a major US city, will anyone be surprised? Or will people shrug, while first responders fill the body bags with unrecognisable parts?
Part of the problem is that US society is extremely violent to start with; mass shootings at school already exist as an almost weekly occurrence from domestic terrorist threats, and the rise of MAGA means there are proper effed in the head nutbags willing to do super crazy shit because of the FOX echo chamber.
The pedophile President's henchmen and propaganda machine actively portray empathy as a weakness. MAGA is a death cult.
The US has already shrugged while first responders fill body bags with unrecognizable body parts. Multiple times. School shootings are commonplace now and Republicans don't give a fuck. If the Iranians blow up a school the only thing they'll be upset about is that the Iranians did it, not that kids were killed.
There's plenty of evidence that we'll just shrug, but maybe it'll be different if brown people are doing the school shootings.
The ships that were hit were reportedly attacked with "projectiles" sounding like they were fired from small fast boats - unless if the projectiles in question were the boats. I saw a report on another one that said a ship was hit by a speedboat loaded with explosives.
While Ukraine had been getting headlines for their successes against the Russian Black Sea fleet with their drone speedboats, Iran pretty much invented using speedboats to attack large surface ships back in the 80s.
I think it is giving some really bad people a really huge benefit of the doubt to say the school bombing was a mistake.
If Middle Easterners shoot Americans it's terrorism, and you need to buy more guns.
If Americans shoot Americans, that's a crazy person, and you need to buy more guns.
Not entirely accurate. If the American shooter isn't a white, cis-het, right-wing male then it's also terrorism.
From what I've read when that Russian ship was hit, the risk of a huge detonation is not very big. LNG is pretty hard to light on fire by virtue of being liquid and freezing cold. You're not putting the fire out or saving the ship, but it won't go off like a ship full of explosives. The LNG boils and burns off until the tank is mostly empty, at which point enough gas might mix with enough oxygen to explode, but nothing like the whole ship instantaneously releasing all of the energy in all of the LNG.
In fact, for local environmental damage an LNG tanker is probably the better option, all of the cargo will safely burn off or evaporate. And the engines usually also run mainly off the LNG, so probably even less bunker fuel than something like a container ship.
Seeing this kind of mixed response to an easy chance for a unified repudiation does not really inspire confidence in any power bloc to assert enough influence to affect any sort of outcome...honestly feels like anywhere at this point.
First 6 days of Iran war cost US taxpayers at least $11.3 billion
It doesn’t include the build up to the war so probably an undercount. We could do a lot with $11bn at home. Instead we’re just lighting it on fire.
Link
…like whatever the hell we’re doing here.
(seeing some unconfirmed chatter about the potential use of a MOAB, something we last used in Afghanistan for no reason under Trump’s first term, but…not confirmed, pure speculation).
Trump is tapping the oil reserve. https://thehill.com/policy/energy-e...elease-oil-from-strategic-reserve-trump-says/
"how are we going to pay for it"
"how are we going to pay for it"
A US intelligence assessment prepared very recently has concluded that after a couple of weeks of bombings, the Iranian regime is largely intact, despite some leadership being killed. Israelis said there's no certainty that the Iranian regime will collapse.
Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/AIvB7sINMRwm6LzFSMKgxMA
Quelle surprise! A regime which had iron-fist control over a nation of 90 million for half a century wasn't going to be toppled by a couple of weeks of airstrikes.
They have millions of supporters and maybe hundreds of thousands of IRGC and other armed loyalists. The intelligence report says that the Kurds don't have the numbers or arms to take on the regime.
But this was all known and air strikes alone doesn't overthrow governments. Israel doesn't have a big enough army and Trump isn't putting boots on the ground.
He also probably doesn't care if they overthrow the regime. He just wants to be able to claim an achievement badge, probably award himself a fake prize over doing something serious. The way he talked about Iran being at war with the US for 47 years, he probably got snookered into believing he could have a historic victory and it will be very easy, don't have to risk too many American lives, which he doesn't care about only if there are many casualties which erode his support.
I heard a podcast discussion that they might have a special forces ops and Trump wouldn't consider it putting boots on the ground because it would be a small number to go and retrieve the 900 pounds of enriched material. But the problem is, they'd need all kinds of special equipment and a staging area within Iran because digging out that material isn't going to be a trivial undertaking, especially if they encounter hostile forces.
A small number is the surest way to make them vulnerable. It's one thing if they fly in and get out in a couple of hours as they did in Venezuela. They aren't retrieving 900-pounds of radioactive material in a couple of hours.
Read in Reuters: https://apple.news/AIvB7sINMRwm6LzFSMKgxMA
Quelle surprise! A regime which had iron-fist control over a nation of 90 million for half a century wasn't going to be toppled by a couple of weeks of airstrikes.
They have millions of supporters and maybe hundreds of thousands of IRGC and other armed loyalists. The intelligence report says that the Kurds don't have the numbers or arms to take on the regime.
But this was all known and air strikes alone doesn't overthrow governments. Israel doesn't have a big enough army and Trump isn't putting boots on the ground.
He also probably doesn't care if they overthrow the regime. He just wants to be able to claim an achievement badge, probably award himself a fake prize over doing something serious. The way he talked about Iran being at war with the US for 47 years, he probably got snookered into believing he could have a historic victory and it will be very easy, don't have to risk too many American lives, which he doesn't care about only if there are many casualties which erode his support.
I heard a podcast discussion that they might have a special forces ops and Trump wouldn't consider it putting boots on the ground because it would be a small number to go and retrieve the 900 pounds of enriched material. But the problem is, they'd need all kinds of special equipment and a staging area within Iran because digging out that material isn't going to be a trivial undertaking, especially if they encounter hostile forces.
A small number is the surest way to make them vulnerable. It's one thing if they fly in and get out in a couple of hours as they did in Venezuela. They aren't retrieving 900-pounds of radioactive material in a couple of hours.
Some things are priceless, like creating a new generation of terrorists so taxpayer money can keep being funneled to MIC oligarchs and Republicans can point to the deficit they created as a reason to kill healthcare and education.
Trump spokeswoman blamed Biden for letting it be drawn down.
It's been over a year since Trump took office. Why didn't he re-fill it?
You'd think some reporter would have followed up with that kind of question.
It's down to 34% of capacity, the lowest in a long time, maybe ever.
Which in itself is inexcusable, negligent, and a perfect example of "depraved indifference," i.e., a war crime.
Isn't it great that we dispensed with those "stupid rules of engagement!"
You're mispronouncing "plausible deniability."
Our intelligence gathering is the best ever. Except we don't really know anything anytime we blow up a bunch of civilians.
And ships continue to be hit and burn.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/tendar.bsky.social/post/3mgtpbf4u4225
View: https://bsky.app/profile/tendar.bsky.social/post/3mgtpbf4u4225