Discuss: Tankers “Attacked” in Gulf of Oman
It’s being reported that two tankers have been “attacked” in the Gulf of Oman.
As yet, the reported “attack” is purely theoretical, media releases are just photographs of tankers on fire. There’s no concrete evidence, so far, that the fires were caused by an “attack”.
None of this has stopped the US from attributing blame, of course. A “defence official” told CBS News that Iran is “likely behind the attack”.
The attack – if it is an attack – is the second such on oil tankers, in that area, in less than a month.
On May 12th there was an alleged “sabotage attack” on Saudi Arabian oil tankers docked in the United Arab Emirates. The US attributed that “attack” to Iran as well.
Obviously this is pretty suspicious, especially since the US has form when it comes to inventing an “attack” as an excuse to escalate hostility or even start a war. (The Gulf of Tonkin incident being the obvious example, there many others).
Adding to this suspicion is the fact the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet was in the area already and was quickly on hand to assist.
Further, the ships are apparently carrying “Japan-related cargo”, according to Japan’s Trade Ministry. Which makes the timing even more bizarre, since Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is in Tehran today, for the first official visit of a Japanese head of state to Iran in over forty years.
These suspicions were shared by the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif:
Reported attacks on Japan-related tankers occurred while PM @AbeShinzo was meeting with Ayatollah @khamenei_ir for extensive and friendly talks.
Suspicious doesn't begin to describe what likely transpired this morning.
Iran's proposed Regional Dialogue Forum is imperative.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) 13 June 2019
Honestly, Iran deciding to attack two “Japan-related” tankers while the Japanese head of state is in their country would push the Iranian government straight through “stupid” and out the other side into “suicidally insane”.
That said, if it is a “false flag” – by the US or anyone else – it’s so blatant as to be borderline useless. Are the Deep State operatives of the US/UK/Israel or whoever, really that stupid?
At this point it is genuinely hard to figure out what’s going on.
While we’re discussing the whats, hows and whys…the price of oil has surged. So someone has made some money at least.
As always, discuss below.
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CHEWY BONO?
Closure of the Straits would lead to an immediate ramping up of the oil price to $100, $200 a barrel, and the unwinding of billions or trillions in derivatives. The economic and financial equivalent of nuclear missiles being launched. Even morons like Trump and Pompeo are aware of that. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. There are people who just don’t care, like the Chosen Folk who pull all the strings.
Abe was being used as an errand boy in Iran. He delivered a letter from Trump which the Iranian leader refused to take. They have concluded it is a waste of time even trying to negotiate with Trump. Any agreement with the US isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Trump and his cronies believe they can get their way by bluster and threats. That they can just dictate terms to Iran, Venezuela, DPRK, China, Russia, Germany, and anybody else, without making any concessions. But making threats is more realistically seen as a sign of weakness. Policy towards all those countries has been a failure. And it will remain so. All they can do now is back off and try to spin this as a success, without fooling anyone, or go for broke with military action, which will make things a thousand times worse.
There isn’t going to be regime change in any of those countries. They are not going to surrender to American dictates, and become obedient Washington satellites. There will be no further nuclear or other deals with DPRK or Iran. Germany will not give up Nordstream. It is too economically important. Russia will not cave in to sanctions. China will give as good as it gets in the trade war and inflict real pain on its own account. It may choose to do some real damage with rare earths and Treasury bonds. Politics trumps economics. No Chinese government could survive the humiliation of surrendering its sovereignty and caving in to American demands.
The stakes are being raised. It is a question of who blinks first. America is creating a critical mass of enemies against itself, like Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941. It could all escalate uncontrollably given the character of US leadership – arrogant, venal, corrupt, delusional, irredeemably ignorant and ideologically driven.
But in trying to predict what will happen, Murphy’s Law is as valuable a tool as Occam’s Razor. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Particularly with people like Trump around, you have to expect the worst.
Excellent comment mark, I suspect the US military will be pushing back on the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Trump, Pence, Bolton and Pompeo, they should all be in straight jackets.
We used to say that only the colonel and the sergeant major had a clue what was going on, and everybody above them were just politicians.
In 1942 there was a famous commando raid on Bordeaux. Half a dozen merchant ships carrying rubber and raw materials from the Far East were sunk using limpet mines. They were attached BELOW the waterline, several per ship, to magnify the force of the blast and flood watertight compartments. As per sabotage school 101.
But Captain Mustafa Raincoat, Ace Revolutionary Guard Saboteur Commander, seems to have adopted a different approach for this operation.
“Okay, lads, no more than two limpet mines per supertanker. And remember to put them well above the waterline. That way they’ll show up nicely on the CNN videos.”
Nordstream2 was being constructed at a pace last i looked. A bit like how the Kerch Straight bridge went up.
The gnashing and wailing of the US oil conglomerates, and the rabid foaming and running around of their banker houndog, Macron, trying to wreck the EU and its inevitable Russian alliance, has failed.
It failed the day they failed to get rid of Merkel, who was able to form a stable coalition – it took months and I was worried that we were to be frogmarched into a war in Syria and Ukraine by the sulky boy king.
The alt-right neo groups, Billionaire backed, Breitbart and Bannon led, (curious how all the ‘B’ names are in some crazy ways connected aren’t they?) FAILED.
Nordstream 2, going live means cheap and secure gas for all of Europe for decades. No more vagaries of control by the Ukrainian nazis or destabilisation of Syria, or tanker loads of nasty American fracked energy prisoning gas.
And Muttis slappind down ain’t fully done yet!
The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation that Russia just took the presidency of will no doubt be looking at better ties with the EU.
https://www.brasscheck.com/video/marched-into-war/?omhide=true
What amazes me is that our local paper and the media in general are even trying to peddle the whole “Iran attacks tankers” line. We in the US have been down this road before — many times — and we know from bitter experience what kinds of setups and lies are fed to us whip up a bit of war fever. The problem this time is that we’re just a bit wary; the whole setup seems too convenient and the timing too fortunate to be true. Since the administration in general and the President in particular are known for bald faced lies — nothing they say can be trusted — having people like Pompero running around trying to sound convincing just underscores the ludicrousness of the situation.
The only thing missing from this scenario are some White Helmets….
How many people would rip a probably unstable unexploded bomb from the side of a ship which could kill himself and all his shipmates? Maybe a “Fucking moron” like Trump.
No, no, this had a label attached to it, saying “limpet mine for blowing up Jap tanker.” Elliot Higgins at Bell End has videos of it. Conclusive proof.
As already stated above, its a clear message to the Japanese from the evil empire not to contemplate any sanction busting vis-a-vis Iranian oil. The ships are Japanese, the Japanese PM is in Iran, whatever it is, its a message for the Nips. It can’t be intended for the general consumption of the masses vis-a-vis s an immediate war beat-up. There’s no clear ‘evidence’ to lay the blame on the designated bad guy.
To carry out an attack like this you have to be pretty goddamn sure that you wont get caught. So you have to have huge confidence in your operatives. You have to have local dominance to react if something goes wrong. And you need huge propaganda resources. Fit any bills?
Actually, I find that the oil markets are pretty good at knowing what’s real and what is not real. After all, they have big money at stake. In this case, the price of oil bumped up by a tiny amount on the first day. Tiny because a buck a barrel is very little since people talk about much larger jumps should the straits really be closed. New stories about the oil markets indicated that worries of world demand dropping were more important than this. That is not a sign of a market that is expecting oil to quickly jump to $100 a barrel or more in a crisis. Remember, its the first-movers that get an advantage in the markets, so if the markets thought this was real (and not theater) one would have expected to see much more of people trying to buy cheap before the price soars. And on day two, with the US releasing their bad, low-quality, should-have-bought-Huawei-videos and trying hard to beat the drums on this with all their clown journalists from the Guardian onwards joining in, the price of oil barely went up a quarter. I noticed this back during the fake coup in Venezuela, that the markets quickly figured out it was fake and reacted accordingly. After all, these are people with big bucks and good connections and resources who need to know what is going on. On Guido Day, the price of oil jumped on the news, then quickly fell as their sources told them it wasn’t real. Likewise, today, the market reacted as if they knew this was all fake.
So it could be a ruse to maintain the price of oil in the face of global recession?
Gold price behaved exactly the same.
Whatever else it was; it is an Act of War!
Indeed. The US military and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia just declared war on Japan. Remember Pearl Harbor!
9/11 was quickly declared an “Act of War” ( for example the front cover of USA Today on 10th Sept 2001 had the words “Act of War” as the headline). Chris Bollyn argues this is is a legal term which conveniently for the perpertrators meant that 9/11 did not need to be treated as a crime and that declaring it as such shifted responsibility for justice for 9/11 to the military, as opposed to the Justice Department and the FBI etc. This made the business of sewing up the official fairytale based on nothing but a team of Neocon plants spreading lies in the media a lot easier to achieve. How convenient! Covered in this great presentation:
Christopher Bollyn – “The War on Terror among Truth Seekers”
“This made the business of sewing up the official fairytale based on nothing but a team of Neocon plants spreading lies in the media a lot easier to achieve.”……not only this of course, as Bollyn explains, the whole point of 9/11 was to kickstart the “War on Terror”, to make it “operational”, and declaring 9/11 as an “Act of War” paves the way for the pre-planned invasions of the Middle Eastern nations perfectly. All scripted.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was the first to publicly declare a new, “operational”, “War on Terror”, and was conveniently placed to do so in this very important interview in the BBC studios just a few hours after the attacks took place. Here he announced the official fairytale for the first time to the hypnotised masses, as a fresh, extremely high dose of manipulation and mindfuckery was being administered in real time by these occultists. His appearance was preceded by an obvious dose of programming to soften up the listener to the lies, clear as daylight, in this very telling interview.
Ehud Barak September 11 interview London UK 2001
And speaking of Israel. The Canadian billionaire Uber-Zionist Larry Tanenbaum, co-owner of NBA champions, The Toronto Raptors, has announced he is taking the team on a visit to Israel. Trudeau’s Canada is very pro-Israel and very anti-Iran. Please sign/forward this petition against Raptors ‘sportwashing’ Apartheid Israel…
http://chng.it/vBK6WMhN
‘Let’s Go Toronto Raptors’ best wishes from the IDF:
https://twitter.com/HumHum83/status/1138998942547488768
“Do they cheer the Toronto Raptors as they shoot the children at the Gaza fence?”
My bets on Al’CIAda.
Follow the money. Just like on 9/11 someone, somewhere is always making a killing on some known event in the future happening.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
No, it’s another false flag by the Chosen Folk!
Ships hit simultaneously by limpet mines/ “flying projectiles” / torpedoes / seagulls with suicide belts.
Written from your bunker, no doubt….
Don’t let me disturb you while you’re counting the shekels and tucking in to the salt beef bagels down the hasbara factory.
the hasbara factory
https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-million-dollar-troll-army/27566
Jeremy Hunt has already come out to say that he believes the US when they say Iran was behind this.
I am finding it increasingly more difficult to believe anything our politicians say anymore.
The World is on a knife edge and a war with Iran would make the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan look like skirmishes.
…. But you implicitly trust Iranian politicians….
One might respect a distrust of all politicians, but a mere expression of Khameni/Putin/Assad admiration is cretinous.
Oh come on William. This latest op is so cretinous, so transparent even a lot of the MSM aren’t buying it. It’s not about believing Iran, it’s about having the basic grasp of common sense required to see not even the most gratuitously Evil Baddies in the cosmos would decide to blow up a Japanese tanker while the Japanese PM is sitting down for tea and a chat about easing sanctions.
Your sarcasm belongs to a different debate, when at least a fragment of coherence and plausibility could be attached to the ‘official’ narrative.
It isn’t flagged Japan, is it?
Jezza is already a “traitor” for failing to salute smartly and jump into line behind the latest false flag from the Chosen Folk.
Who needs any of that evidence or investigation shit?
Some one (thanks, medium giraffe) at zero hedge posted a comment with a link that allows you to follow the movements of the two ships Front Altair & Kokuka Courageous over the last five days.
Oddly he comments that the two ships around the time of the attacks were going round in circles & here it is for all to see, them sailing in circles!
My ship tracking free
I dunno if this is the ships going round in circles because they were attacked or waiting to be attacked? Its odd no other ship in this area circles for no apparent reason, guess they weren’t the chosen ones & didn’t have to slow down to allow the attacks to take place.
In other credible news:
Mike Pompeo has been arrested for raping Donald Trump’s wife. It is alleged that a hooker jerked him off then smeared the semen all over Mrs Trump’s bush to provide ‘credible evidence of unconsented sex’, but Washington rumours are always a question of who is knifing whom….
Mark Zuckerberg will attend a CIA wilderness training course this summer to gen up on every illegal snooping mechanism available to billionaires, but his wife put her foot down when he asked to attend Bohemian Grove. She was not worried about paedophilia, she was terrified all the raving nancy boys might turn her husband into a butch. And no child of hers will be brought up by a bender….
The son of the Israeli Prime Minister has been arrested for daubing racist slogans about Arabs and Palestinians all over some railway embankment in Tel Aviv. Apparently asking Jews to obey the law is antisemitic, but those bumchum murdering f**king paedophile Arab c**ts are fair game. The police officer who arrested him, a female dominatrice caught whipping Ariel Sharon fifteen years ago at a dodgy Jerusalem bordello and promoted rapidly ever since, has told daddy that his boy can be exposed for ten times worse than this, so best pay up like a good boy and forget about a respectable career pronto.
The son of Roman Abramovitch is about to be decorated by Putin for mugging $10bn out of some Ukrainian oligarchs. He may have to spend $2bn of it on personal protection as everyone knows Ukrainian oligarchs murder two dozen rivals before breakfast as befits anti-Putin freedom fighters who know the US will never lift a finger against them. But Putin is said to have been in a stupendously good mood ever since hearing the rumours. He does not believe any of them, but what he thinks about those oligarchs is probably Unpresidential….
King-Jong Un is in huge trouble for knocking up a relative of the Chinese Premier. Apparently he was seduced by some randy hottie at Macau on a weekend gambling tryst but little rich chinese girls bear no responsibility in the bedroom. Bolton set it up as a scam to get China to agree to bomb the little shit into submission…whereas most normal people withold judgement on the character of a man they have never met….but the Chinese Premier has simply bunged his nephew enough to get the silly filly a termination….
David Beckham got his Internazionale Miami idea from a skit submitted to the BBC in 2005. Wannabe Billionaires do not pay for access to things like that and BBC groupies just want some freebie tickets and flights to the Sunshine State in years to come.
Tony Blair has joined the Freemasons. But not the same Lodge as Gordon Brown.
James Murdoch is being blackmailed by Harvard to donate them $250m. To fund academic research on submissive rich boys. His brother Lachlan would have told them to f**k off…..which is why they did not ask him.
Chase Carey has been told to shave his moustache off if he ever wants to get laid at Silverstone. Now there are no grid girls, the place is swarming with unlicensed hookers looking for business….
Oh, and Oprah Winfrey and Rush Limbaugh were caught in flagrante fifteen years ago but everyone agreed to keep it secret to keep the gravy train flowing. It just shows that democrats and Republicans can sctew each in private, but can only hurl abuse at each other in public.
GIMMME A JOB! RUPERT!! YA KNOW YA WANT TO!!!!
You’ll regret this post when you’re sober.
I’ve posted this before.
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
Hellooooo Israel.
Scene opens.
Bolton, donning his yamuka and opening his jacket to show his holster – holding an Israeli passport and a big Magnum 45.
“Oi Tojo you ain’t making no oil deals with the Eyeryenians unless we tell you too and even then ONLY in our $$ – got it rube? I mean Abe?’
‘Need more rope to hang yourself, Johnny?’ Asks Donald.
Close scene.
The USA needs higher Oil prices desperately for a number of things, not least the Petrodollar, but also the shail oil frackers who are now struggling with oil at $50 a barrel. The fracking companies have borrowed big but are slipping into the BBB ratings. Investors are now demanding that they get first dibs on the profits before the fracking companies themselves. Trouble is that for every $1 they put into extracting the oil that they get back $1’s worth of oil, can you spot the problem. These failing fracking companies could take out the US economy.
The bankgsters require not quite a war but near enough because an outright war with Iran would be suicidally stupid. Think of this as more like the military version of quantitative easing or near zero interest rates which is in actual fact kicking the economic can further down the road postponing the inevitable collapse of the global economy.
As the Bill Clinton campaign memorably put it “Its the economy stupid”.
The reason it always continues? USA is never bombed to get its just desserts.
Now if a nuke or Operation Reciprocity hit Washington DC, downtown Manhattan and the Greater San Fransisco Bay Area, with a promise that any retaliation sees thirty more US cities wiped out in one day, maybe one day the murdering impunity would stop.
Problem is that that sacrifices millions of innocent non-US citizens in response.
So on it goes, war after war, crime after crime, because the world refuses to unite and put global economic sanctions on the USA. European States refuse to go to war, tearing up NATO treaty en masse, thus freeing themselves of war obligations when US commits false flags.
It will take expelling every single US foreign national from every foreign country of note allied to total economic sanctions to break the US warmongering economy.
The only question is whether the world will unite in the 21st century to make it happen.
This is by far is the most intelligent comment I’ve seen to date.
Great post Rhys.
I have often wondered about global sanctions on the US, but the only way to achieve that would be to first remove the UN headquarters from New York.
Americans will never oppose the American Empire–unless they are compelled to pay an enormous economic price for failing to do so.
Indeed, America loves to slap sanctions on manifold nations around the planet, as part of its siege warfare tactics.
So it is long overdue to give the Americans a taste of their own economic medicine–including global deDollarization.
Most governments and political elites around the world simply are too cowardly or too allied to America to broach these issues, so these ideas must be raised at the grassroots at the level of global public opinion and civil society.
Couldn’t possibly be those fun loving party animals, the Iranians…
It’ll be a joint Saudi/Israeli conspiracy, bound to be.
try harder, spook.
Nice username, fan of war criminals, are you?
You mean American war criminals like Bill Clinton, the humanitarian bomber of Serbia; George “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq” Bush; or supporters of Libyan and Syrian moderate jihadist terror groups like Barack Obama and Donald Trump?
America is by far the world’s leading war criminal nation.
Outside the American Matrix that most Anglo American sheeple live in, the USA’s deceptions about “defending freedom and democracy” can longer hide this reality.
It is not just the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US/Spanish war started with a false flag in Havanna. WWII started with a false flag in Gleiwitz.
When the warehouses of military production are full to bursting point, they need to carve out a war to use the stuff or new production must be halted. I believe Pompeo, Bolton & Co are baiting Trump to start a new war.
Ah, the art of the deal.. another Trump Mexican Standoff in the middle east??? One senses desperation in American geo-political strategy, which as always is driven by oil. This analysis by Tom Luongo at The Strategic Culture Foundation sums up the current crisis there driven from the perspective of the failing fracking ponzi in the US:
…”from a foreign policy perspective Trump is betting on restricting the supply of oil from ‘competitors’ to make US oil more attractive. There are two problems with this.
First, other countries with lower costs of production can keep the market in relative equilibrium, living on small profits, but profits nonetheless.
Second, and more importantly, US shale oil has an upper limit on demand since it’s too light for most refineries and requires blending with heavier feedstock. This is why, for example, US imports of Russian oil are rising rapidly to feed Gulf coast refineries starved of Venezuelan oil thanks to Trump trying to take it off the market.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/13/trump-thinks-us-oil-is-his-strength-when-its-his-achilles-heel/
So put simply it’s a storm of Amerika’s own making. We just have to hope it doesn’t spiral out of control with the TPB’s* at the helm of USS Fracked
*Trump, Pompeo & Bolton
Wow just like when Syria on the verge of victory against the terrorists used chemical weapons so that the US/NATO terrorists could have an excuse to bomb Syria, now after the US has boosted up it’s warmongering against Iran and put a naval fleet in the Gulf oil tankers have started catching fire.
Nothing suspicious about that eh ?
I think it’s about time the USA stopped recycling their recycled false flag operations as we are becoming weary of their pathetic stunts that are so patently false they are more obvious than Trumps red hair .
Wow!! Fantastic summary of most important facts!!
USA and Israel know all that really matters is perception—and that they can “win” by pounding baseless headlines down the public’s throat. RINSE, SPIN and REPEAT with more FRAUDULENT HEADLINES daily until 3/4 of the imbeciles in the USA buy the lies.
Not hard to do when the MSM is a horde of CIA/DOD sycophants willing to publish unattributed inflammatory articles.
I don’t think we’re imbeciles. I think we are deprived of information about what’s going on.
I think the paymasters of the media are imbeciles to think they can get away with it forever.
A bloke down the pub told me that Sir Eliot Ward Higgins of Leicester has already solved this mystery.
Using nothing more than open source data freely available on the sea bed , Belin$cat have obtained some extraordinary images of a piece of shrapnel. Clearly inscribed on it are the words ‘THE ROUHANI LIMPET MINE CO. TEHRAN.
Prior to release a team of Sir Eliots’ digital fantasists are adding some enhancements to make sure even love islanders get the message .
As Sir Eliot always says. “Be alert .. your country needs lerts”
Isn’t it time that cat was belled? Although I think castration might be more effective.
Skinned.
Apparently there is more than one way to do that. Sounds fun.
A fellow Captain Beefheart fan, I see.
The US abandoning the JCPOA has nothing to do with any concerns about nuclear weapons development, but everything to do with Iran’s legal pursuit and development of precision ballistic
missiles, together with their newly acquired anti aircraft system the Khordad 15. Its other home built missile systems are also perfectly legal according to the UNSC Resolution since they are not designed for, nor capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The aim of all these sanctions is to make Iran defenceless and therefore incapable of being a military force in the region, opening the way for Israel/Saudi and US hegemony ipso facto another US vassal.
The US threat to bring Iranian oil sales to zero is a clear act of war, if they were successful [unlikely] Iran’s population would starve and die in their millions, just as in Yemen. In those circumstances Iran does have the right to say ‘if we can’t sell oil, our putative enemies Saudi Arabia, UAE et al will not be allowed to either.
The aims of the US/Israel and Saudi Arabia are clear and have been articulated by Pompeo and Bolton, ‘regime change’ preferably through crippling economic sanctions or by bombing [Bolton’s preferred way] In those circumstances the Iranians should quietly arm any group wishing the Saudis harm, the Saudis are a bunch of US ass licking scumbags who deserve everything coming to them.
Is there anything more contemptible than Shady Wahabia pimping themselves out to the Chosen Folk and the Neocohens to destroy yet another Moslem country?
Apparently the crews of both oil tankers were rescued by the same Iranian rescue ship which brought them all to Jask, where the Iranian Navy has a base.
Whatever the individual crew members might say later on, we can be sure the Western MSM may claim they were told what to say by the Iranians.
It is kind of odd, isn’t it, that American pundits posit, “Iran might do this….” and just a few days later, they do it? Almost as if, I don’t know…as if the American media were preparing its audience for something that, if the Iranians did it, there would have to be consequences.
In fact, Washington loves war, but it always has to be seen as responding sorrowfully to a situation in which someone keeps challenging it and challenging it until it cannot just be patient any more. It always has to be the victim – we didn’t want to use violence, but by gosh, you just messed with us once too often.
True, but they’ve become lazy in the propaganda manufacturing department. The political regime of today is boastful in its hubris, blatant in racism and authoritarianism, naked in its aggression, vulgar in its deception, and cynical in its disregard for the masses who they regard as totally duped and under control. But perhaps these tendencies will eventually expose it for what it always really was, and hasten its demise as loss of sophistication in propaganda is a symptom of desperate brutes!!
Whats to discuss we all know who dunit, it would just be antisemitic to say it out loud. We know the motive & the outcome. The rest is just a conspiracy theory away.
Remember ‘credible deniability’ its not what you know, its what you can make the majority believe.
Yup…sure Iranian government is so damned stupid that precisely when everything is ready to attack them they decide to go out and start ‘sabotaging’ tankers to give the necessary excuse…yup..sure..
this is definitely madness!!
For those interested on a good, interesting analysis and historical perspective on Zionism and neoconservative this is a good read:
https://www.academia.edu/38426142/From_Yahweh_to_Zion_-_Three_Thousand_Years_of_Exile_Jealous_God_Chosen_People_Promised_Land_._._._Clash_of_Civilizations_by_Laurent_Guyénot_2018_PDF_VERSION
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-13/2-tankers-damaged-after-suspected-torpedo-attack-near-strait-hormuz-oil-soars?fbclid=IwAR0ZYMkV4wA9tdWkkQfjvbYurkUP07gzLIfhdIV0QYXC4IshdWBiLNuG2OY
I do like zero hedge, despite it being full of conservative capitalists, i just love the way the comments section insults each other & the thick skinned conservatives ignore it, no childish censorship.
I’m beginning to like you’re attitude. If our planet is being monitored by aliens, they are looking at the comments section for sure.
Sure, why wouldn’t the Iranians want to disrupt shipping in the Gulf so that they themselves are unable to move any of their product to customers abroad?
Makes as much sense as Assad gassing civilians in Douma, inviting global condemnation and western military attacks, because he has all but won the war against the western terrorist proxies.
Next thing we know the US will be wanting to bomb that Iranian Novichok plant (whose existence they just made up).
US mine-laying exercies:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bolton-alleges-iran-maritime-sabotage-evidence-points-elsewhere/258856/
That didn’t take long, did it?
Whenever the Guardian want to whip readers up into a fresh, pro-war frenzy they usually send for Chulov, especially if the potential bloodbath is likely to unfold in the Middle East.
In this, err, analysis, the empire-loving Chulov doesn’t go so far as to directly blame Iran, but instead makes endless references to them, despite a complete lack of evidence they would mount such a crazed operation, or have any motive for provoking a superpower that has a formidable reputation for murdering millions of people (while other western states either turn a blind eye, or lend them military or political support).
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/13/oil-tanker-attacks-will-inflame-conflict-between-the-us-its-allies-and-iran
This is Viner era Guardian in its purest form – the repetitive use of snide insinuation to create a drip, drip effect, eventually sowing in the mind of readers the idea our ‘superior’ western way of life is under threat from a sinister, external force – of course the Guardian’s faux liberals lap it up, mainly because they have become accustomed to a staple diet of MSM propaganda; an information stream that inevitably deprives them of any real insight into the worlds geopolitical or economic systems.
OK, it’s a new day – perhaps a final chance for the Guardian to prove it is more than just a pro-US cover operation that revels in regime change – so what are they saying now?
“The US military has released video footage it says shows an Iranian military patrol boat approach one of two tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman, to support the Trump administration’s claims that Iran was responsible.
The blurry black and white footage, taken from the air, shows a small military boat alongside the Japanese-owned Kokuka Courageous, and someone standing up on the prow of the boat to remove an object from the tanker’s hull. The small boat then pulls away from the tanker.
US officials were quoted as saying the boat was an Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boat approaching the tanker after it was attacked on Thursday, and the object removed was an unexploded limpet mine. It was unclear whether it was being alleged the Iranian sailors were detaching the mine in order to remove evidence.”
Christ on a bike – is that passes for investigative journalism nowadays?
Never seen Chulov on any other platform answering any questions – who the fuck is he? Didn’t he write reviews about coffee in Lebanese cafes? Or am i thinking of someone else?
And as to the Groans cosiness with the DS and the militarists and Istaeli support Matt Kennard explains
https://mobile.twitter.com/DCKennard/status/1138493594728304640
First co-opt Paul Johnson to the DNotice committee than employ Harding and Cadwalladr to form a pincer movement with Freedland/Cohen while letting Viner and the moderators from the 77th mow down the commentators in a withering fire ….mwahahahaha.
This smells, very, very badly.
There was the incident last month when 2, or maybe 4, tankers, were supposedly “attacked” off the coast of the UAE.
The UAE denied anything happened.
There was no information forthcoming about the nature of this attack, aircraft, surface warships, whatever.
There was a marked lack of curiosity from the MSM. You’d expect Sid Scurvy, Ace Reporter for the Daily Bugle, to ask straight away, “What do you mean, attacked? What happened? Were they bombed by aircraft? Fired on by patrol boats? What was it?”
Eventually some footage emerged of a small hole in an external hull. Suggested cause “limpet mines.” There was no investigation to find an explanation. And a lack of the usual outrage from the US.
There seemed to be a general lack of interest and curiosity.
Just a bland assertion that “Iran probably did it.”
Now we have another incident, apparently more serious, with a tanker badly on fire. No explanation or detail about what happened. No interviews with the captain, ” at 0635 local time we were sailing at 10 knots when there was a loud explosion off the starboard hull,” or whatever. Just a vague suggestion that it was a torpedo, and “Iran probably did it.”
This has got Douma Gas Hoax or Skripal written all over it. The lack of outrage, synthetic or otherwise, suggests that more incidents are in the pipeline, and these are just the opening salvos in a false flag campaign. Nobody seems to have been hurt in these “attacks”, which may be significant. It would have been fairly easy to smuggle explosives aboard. The obvious suspects are Saudi Arabia and Israel, who want to provoke a war with Iran. Israel is more likely. Saudi Arabia by itself would probably have bungled the job. The US may or may not be directly involved. Their fairly muted reaction so far could reflect a suspicion they are being played.
I’m expecting further incidents, probably more serious, attacks on Americans or American ships.
Cheney, Vice President in the Bush Regime, wanted to stage an attack on a US warship in 2007, Tonkin Gulf style. He wanted to use US personnel dressed as Iranians in small vessels resembling Iranian patrol boats. There was another suggestion of attacking an Iranian warship to provoke a reaction.
Aid flotilla ships in Cyprus on their way to Gaza, have recently been attacked and disabled in port, obviously by Israel. That is probably what happened here. Egypt has given free passage to Israeli warships and Dolphin nuclear missile submarines through the Suez Canal.
Always pleasant to hear from the resident conspiracy theorist…
howz langley bot boy?
Not much to discuss to be frank.
Whodunnit? Israel or UAE or USA…
… Perhaps employing the services of the MEK:
These MEK folks have murdered and attempted to murder US military officers and diplomats on many occasions. When US diplomats were taken hostage at the Embassy in 1979, the MEK called for them to be executed.
Is there any, independent evidence, that anything actually happenned? I know for a fact, that a lot of the stuff purported to be news, has been completely made up, including the photography and the storyline. Today I came across a news item of no real importance, and a photograph illustrating it, and describing it as a current event. Yet the file information of the photograph, and even its visual content, very strongly indicated that the photograph had not been taken today, but had been taken at a completely different location, over 100 miles away, several years ago.
Don’t trust these people. They make it up, then they distribute it on a vast scale, for publication, by copy and pasters, who actually think they are journalists.
It is not news. It is propaganda, and in some cases a storybook for children, which unfortunately most adults actually believe.
Tony
A lie can travel half the way round the world
while the truth is trying to put its’ trousers on
There was a lot of so-called “informed opinion” that planted the blame on Iran for the attacks a month ago.
In this case, there can be little doubt that it wasn’t Iran. There’s clearly a split in the US junta between those who want to attack Iran straight away and those who are more cautious. Are the former faction capable of carrying out such attacks and hiding them from the latter faction? I somehow doubt it.
Israel is capable of all manner of jiggery-pokery, technically and morally – and they have a motive. Very rarely do they leave their dabs at the crime scene. They have to be in the frame but may just be the beneficiaries of someone else’s actions.
The whole thing looks so ham-fisted as to be the product of the same school of diplomacy that garrotes its opponents inside one of its own embassies, carves up the body with a bone saw and dissolves the bits in acid.
If this is not an inside job, the big question is how do you successfully attack oil tankers with explosives and manage to kill no-one and cause relatively little damage to the ships, undetected by anybody, given that as anyone who has worked in a shipyard knows, whilst crude oil does not readily catch fire, introducing enough heat and air into the tanks, especially “empty” tanks could create an uncontrollable bomb.
Centcom has got an itchy trigger finger, just like the admiral of the naval group had back just before Lockerbie when he shot down a airliner at cruising altitude with hundreds of deaths – don’t recall that courts martial.
No, he got a medal for killing 290 people instead. The Iranians bided their time and returned the favour with Lockerbie.
There’s a barge — with barrels of John Bolton’s precious bodily fluids i.e. spent car-engine oil – on fire; on the starboard side of the tanker shown.
Bigtime that is a good spot. This has to be a joke right.
Yes… pure premature speculation on my part. 😉
I suppose the logical conclusion is not that the US is that stupid, but that it is that desperate. My main fear is that their desperation is as “exceptionalist” as the rest of their foreign policy, and they are quite prepared to drag the whole world down with them on their way to hell.
The whole thing is so transparent and amateurish that only satire can describe it. This false flag attack on the tankers brings to mind a Monty Python sketch where two mafia capos – played by Terry Jones and Michael Palin – enter a British Army base and introduce themselves to the Colonel – played by Graham Chapman. The dialogue went as follows: Michael Palin: ‘Morning Colonel, I’m Luigi and this is my brother Dino (Jones); nice army base you’ve got here Colonel. How many tanks you got here Colonel?’’ Dino (Jones) Wouldn’t want any of your tanks to get broke would we Colonel … And so it goes on.
Project that the Gulf of Hormuz and the present US/Iranian standoff. At the present time the Japanese prime minister, Shinzō Abe, held talks with the Iranian leadership in Tehran in an effort to find a basis for discussions between the US and Iran … Japan’s trade ministry said the two oil tankers involved in Thursday’s incidents carried “Japan-related” cargo.
Luigi: ‘Morning Mr Abe, how much oil do you buy from Iran?’ Dino. Hmmm? wouldn’t one of those ships carrying your oil to sink would we now? Abe: The US should not threaten Japan! Luigi: No, no, no, you’ve got us all wrong Abe. Whoops, one of your little boats has just hit a mine. You know it would be much better if you bought our lovely LNG. We don’t want any more little accidents do we Abe Baby? Think about it, we’ll be back.
I’m waiting for Western MSM to start blaming Iran (rather than we American’s) for starving the poor in Venezuela, I mean why waste a completely fabricated propaganda opportunity by letting something as insignificant as – “reality” – stand in the way. Amazing how completely blatant and transparent Western propaganda has become. Truly we in the West have become dumbed down to the point that our propaganda now operates at about a 12 year old’s level of reasoning and understanding of the world.
– “oh, wait, sorry, got to go, someone just ‘tweeted me!”
As always, it is useful to ask Cui bono? To whom might attacks on tankers in the Gulf be a benefit?
Iran? Well, only if they really really want the US to attack them, which hardly seems likely.
Or could it be someone else? Someone happy in the knowledge that the hawks in Washington have been itching to start a war with Iran for years and definitely happy to lend a helping hand to get things underway.
In other words, the culprits were those that would like the US to attack Iran.
Saudi and/or Israel.
It’s hardly rocket science.
Who might benefit from such an event?
One hit below, one above the waterline…..
Not carrying oil but naptha and methanol…
Perhaps a Tonkin-type event?
Insurance companies become wary, prices spike.
Then there is the element of negotiations between Japan and Iran. Who might want to torpedo those?
Maybe a pro-bono dolphin class sub in the area?
My money is on friends of bolton;-)
Isn’t that an oxymoron?
and mine, shaving brush with a wig