Gulf of Oman: International Context
Despite much egg on Pompeo’s and Bolton’s faces, US expansion of its Cold War II continues regardless
Tony Kevin
It is now clear that the US has manufactured a false case against Iran for the two-tanker sabotage incident in the Gulf of Oman on 13 June. Evidence of Iranian guilt so far offered by the US is flimsy and contestable: but Mike Pompeo does not seem to care, continuing to press for alliance solidarity no matter what.
Of this solidarity there has been remarkably little, even five days later.
The general refrain of ‘we would like to see more of the evidence’ is polite dipspeak for ‘we think you are lying’.
Trump has reluctantly backed the false US story, but with evident lack of enthusiasm. He would no doubt like to sack his irresponsible lieutenants Pompeo and Bolton, but they currently seem invulnerable, with the power of the military-industrial –national security Deep State at their backs.
Trump, a helpless passenger President, will have little room to move towards detente with Xi or Putin at Kyoto G20 (28-29 June).
Both leaders have pretty much written the US off as a serious negotiating partner for now.
Already, US Cold Warriors are flexing their muscles, with reports of US testing cyberwarfare attacks on the Russian power grid; more sanctions imposed on US allies who dare to trade with Iran; and military preparations to attack Iran reportedly moving forward
Australia is trying to lie low but pressure is mounting from official Washington to declare where we stand on the Oman Gulf incident.
First US claims were that these were torpedo or mine attacks. This was soon disproven, as damage holes were well above the waterline: torpedoes or mines do not bounce into the air before exploding.
Also, the captain and crew of the Japanese-owned tanker Kokuda Courageous reported seeing approaching ‘flying objects’, (i.e. missiles or attack drones), and the CEO of their company Kokuda Sangyo backed their story.
Holes to both tanker hulls were reported on the southwest open-sea side, away from the nearby Iran coast.
First rescuers were small Iran coastguard vessels who took both ships’ crews to the closest Iranian port of Bandar, as maritime rescue law requires
Pompeo shifted his story, claiming that a US-released blurry intelligence video showed Iranian saboteurs attempting to place (or remove) a limpet mine on the side of a tanker’s hull:
This false narrative was soon contradicted by a far more probable explanation: that this was a video of one of the crew rescue operations: many people are seen in the small boat wearing orange life jackets – with an electromagnetic mooring device having been attached by cable to the tanker hull. This is a normal crew rescue technology.
The list of countries and organisations calling for further independent investigation, more evidence, or more dialogue, quickly grew: EU, France, Germany, Russia, China and Japan, the UN Secretary-General and even Democratic senior Congress leader Nancy Pelosi.
Even Britain’s Foreign Secretary, after initial full support for US, hedged to Iran being ‘almost certainly’ responsible, while Opposition Leader Corbyn questioned whether the UK has ‘credible evidence’ of Iranian responsibility for the attacks.
But Pompeo seemed not to care, ploughing on demanding allied solidarity. He has been making phone calls, no doubt including to Australia. Australia has so far offered no public reaction.
Australian mainstream media quickly downgraded the story, sensing its implausibility, and reflecting the increasingly common practice in Australia of censorship by omission of embarrassing news or news topics.
The US has mounted new diversions: first, a remarkable story planted in the New York Times that US is already waging experimental cyberwarfare against Russia, to prove to the Russians that it could take out the Russian power network, crippling the country’s economy; and that knowledge of this activity may be being kept from Trump.
The message is that Pompeo and Bolton are in charge of US national security policy, and Trump is too weak to sack them now.
Russiagate continues its malevolent hold over the US liberal media. On this fraught subject, objective truth no longer matters: two and two make five. Both Xi and Putin know that Trump is now flotsam, floating helplessly on the sea of American Sinophobia and Russophobia. Neither leader currently sees him as a serious negotiating partner.
I agree with UK former ambassador Craig Murray that over the past two weeks the international security system has taken a sharp turn towards more dangerous instability.
About the best outcome one can hope for now is a peaceful gradual decoupling of the US-centric economy from China, Russia and much of the world. There seems now no alternative to an increasingly bifurcated world economy. The US system does not have a reverse button: it continues to compound its bullying with more bullying, of adversaries and allies alike.
Australia cannot go on delaying difficult but necessary choices. We need to start to downscale our dependence on this increasingly unstable and aggressive partner nation before it is too late. We need to turn off the electromagnetic device mooring Australia to this dangerous ally.
We need an independent foreign and national security policy: a conclusion towards which the continental EU is also reluctantly moving.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian senior diplomat, independent writer and author of Return to Moscow, University of Western Australia Publishing, March 2017.
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The USA is a dying defunct aged old ‘superpower’ that lost world hegemon status when the fourth largest investment bank in the world went under due to the ministrations of Richard ‘the gorilla of Wall Street’ Fuld and his lack of understanding of the leverage limits that he was flirting with in a casino banking environment. Trump is merely a last ditch public relations attempt to resituate the failing USA corporate state as a perceived still powerful world hegemon but only Trump’s acolytes are drinking the Kool-Aid offered up by the Republican Party.
The Democrats are missing in action and America is now just a beached fish out of water that is dying in the sunlight with dead flies stuck to a rotting carcass.
When a fish is beached and out of water it has a tendency to flail around in the false hope that autonomic function alone will foist the fish back into water.
MOU
Some people who were around then said there was almost a strange feeling of relief when war eventually broke out in 1939.
It had been on the cards for several years, with one crisis after another.
War about to start, somebody pulling back at the last minute.
A temporary respite, then back to square one.
On again, off again, on again, off again, for several years.
Austria, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Poland, one thing after another.
We have had the same thing for much longer now.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Niger, God knows where.
Military confrontation and simultaneous threats against Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea.
Economic warfare and economic strangulation against most of the planet now, an ever expanding list of countries, even including India, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Japan.
A constant state of tension, anxiety, and uncertainty.
Relentless campaigns of propaganda and vilification.
Sooner or later (and probably sooner), something’s got to give.
It would have been a relief in a way if the Orange Baboon had quit shooting off his fat ugly mouth and just started The Big One a couple of days ago.
Okay, Big Boy, now you’ve done it. Let’s see what you’ve got.
Let’s see how much you and all the strutting little sawdust caesars and CNN mouthpieces w**king themselves off over missiles being fired off like a real war.
Let’s see how good you are at taking it as well as dishing it out.
HaHaHa! Has anyone else seen this nonsense in today’s (Sunday) graun.
The first para:
“The US military launched a cyber-attack on Iranian weapons systems on Thursday, according to sources, as President Donald Trump backed away from plans for a more conventional strike in response to Iran’s downing of a US surveillance drone.
The hack disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers, two officials told the Associated Press, and were conducted with approval from Trump”
kinda begs the question – if the seppos really had the ability to do this and pull it off, wasn’t it really f+++ing stupid to wait until after yer drone had been shot down before using it?
The entire story reeks of seppo tosh, an attempt at face saving when you’ve been revealed to be a genuine A1 chrome-plated screw up.
I wouldn’t waste much too time on Trump’s highly dubious, very improbable, self serving twittering on this incident.
He wants to portray himself as a great statesman, showing restraint out of concern to avoid loss of life.
All very commendable.
But the picture painted of him pulling back attacking aircraft with minutes to spare is designed to impress the simple minded and play well in the MSM.
An entirely more plausible sequence of events is set out in The Duran.
The two Alexes, Mercouris and Christoforou, are very shrewd commentators. Their take on events is usually well worth listening to.
It is reported that after the drone shoot down, Trump was trying to get out of the hole he had dug for himself by demanding via a third party that he be allowed symbolically to bomb 2 or 3 sites in Iran, without doing any real damage, to save face.
The Iranians told him to go f**k himself, that if he so much as bombed an empty beach in Iran, WW3 would start five minutes later.
This certainly rings true. He was forced into symbolically attacking Syria after the recent Gas Attack Hoax. The target was given well in advance. Syria played along with this charade. They left a few old unserviceable aircraft out to be destroyed, and their air force resumed operations from the airfield a couple of days later.
Iran won’t just sit back and allow itself to be strangled, Iraq style.
Trump is trying to go through the motions of keeping his campaign promises, through the liberal use of smoke and mirrors.
He promised to pull out of Afghanistan.
He promised to pull out of Syria.
But he hasn’t. They are still there, nearly 20 years later.
He is hoping that if he puts his hands in his pockets and whistles loudly, nobody will notice.
The same as his empty Build The Wall and Infrastructure promises. Well over 100,000 illegal “Beaners” pouring over the southern border every month.
The re election campaign has started and his Base are asking awkward questions.
Even Ann Coulter has long since given up on him. Tucker Carlson will probably be next.
There were more promises to force Iran to surrender on the nuclear and other issues, restoring it to its desires status as an obedient little satellite.
But the Iranians have refused even to meet Trump or his negotiators. They realise this is pointless. Any agreement with America isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. All he has succeeded in doing in complying with Zionist intrigues is to destroy Iran is to cement Iranian intransigence. They will not play along with the Power Point presentation. They have started inflicting some pain on their own account.
And the spineless EU jellyfish are worried.
Trump has two options.
He can either wind his neck in, retreat and declare victory, convincing nobody, and enraging his AIPAC paymasters, Adelson and Nuttyyahoo in the process.
Or he can go for broke and start WW3. He will try to prevaricate and avoid a decision. But events are now generating their own momentum, and events are largely beyond his control.
We could now have been in the middle of an all out war, the whole region from Iran to the Mediterranean set alight, global recession imminent.
It is probably only by the grace of God that we have avoided WW3 thus far. Must remember to say another prayer tonight.
This has great potential to set the whole region ablaze.
It will be the final nail in the coffin of the AngloZionist Empire.
The complete destruction of US influence in the area
One very minor outcome is that Trump can kiss goodbye to his re election prospects.
The Gulf Dictatorships will be swept away, gone with the wind.
All the Quisling stooges protecting the Zionist Regime will disappear.
No oil or gas will be exported from the region for years.
Oil will immediately rise to $200 a barrel.
Global recession to follow virtually immediately.
Humpty Dumpty pushed off the wall, never to be put back together again.
This is just for starters, without taking into consideration Russia and China.
They won’t be too pleased over a major war being waged in a neighbouring country.
China losing its major energy suppliers.
Huge refugee flows into Europe, dwarfing those of 2015, destabilising the continent and collapsing the EU.
Upsetting the whole apple cart.
Existing political and financial structures being swept away like a house of cards.
It’s almost tempting to say bring it on.
Go for it, Donny! Go bomb them sand nigg*rs!! Kill all them Ay-rabs in Eye-ran!!!
Maybe this is what it will take to teach some manners to the Exceptional And Indispensable People.
Maybe the millions of dead can’t be avoided.
Maybe this is just the creative destruction the Neocohens want so much.
Only this time it won’t be just other people being destroyed.
Trump has changed his mind apparently on airstrikes. Maybe someone talked him out of it. Maybe he’s not as ruthless and blood thirst as some. Maybe having him elected was a lot better than Hilary.
I wouldn’t set too much store by this. He’s the world’s No.1 Shabbos Goy. He’ll do what Adelson and Nuttyyahoo tell him to.
You are both incorrect in that Trump is functionary to the Council of Thirty and not Israel or Adelson. Trump is mere sideshow theatrics & Kabuki Theater for the real arbiters in the Council of Thirty that actually decide if the USA or Israel go to war or not. I can assure all that the Council of Thirty in Washington D.C. do not want America going into any costly conflagrations anywhere given USA Debt-to-GDP and already amassed undeclared liabilities on the order of hundreds of trillions of US denominated dollars.
Like Charles Foster Kane said in Citizen Kane…’ I can assure everyone that there will be no war’.
MOU
There is so much wrong with this article.
Iranian boats only took the crew of one ship, not both.
Trump has not reluctantly done anything, he is just as much to blame as the evil crazies he appoints.
The Iranians say they took both crews to safety onshore in Iran – and have now released them to other countries.
Latest news is that Trump pulled back from the attack Bolton and Pompeo urged on him.
I think my article had the balance about right, but you have a nice day sir.
Australia of censorship by omission of embarrassing news or news topics.
today over at the fraudian penal colony edition of the lead 14 ‘stories’ not a single one is open for comment
no need for them pesky censor ‘mods’; thereby reducing labour costs?
yep stuff about dutton lambie and bernardi but fraudian serfs ain’t allowed to chime in bout any of that!!!
There is an Iranian Government in Exile, just like there was an Iraqi and Libyan government in exile. They stir and would rather destroy a country like Libya than accept a phase in history which is not as profitable for them as they think it should be.
The Neocohens have relatives of the Shah in waiting to impose on the country as pliable puppets, 1953 Mossadeq/ Gweedo style. There is a regime change budget of $600 million to foment unrest inside Iran, together with their MEK pet terrorist catspaw. Bolton has announced that he will bring about regime change inside Iran by the end of the year. The Zionazi Crazies who rule the roost in the Jew Ess Ayy and pull Trump’s strings, like Adelson, Saban and Singer, have called for nuclear weapons to be dropped on Iran.
Be careful what you say about these “Zionazi Crazies”(Adelson, Saban, and Singer), or you’ll be called an “Anti-Semite”, despite the fact that “Zionazi’s is exactly what they are……
The Orange Baboon will have to answer to Adelson, Singer and Marcus for his failure to bomb those Eye-ranians.
They have just put $259 million into Donny’s reelection campaign. Mainly Adelson again, but Singer and Marcus have chipped in big time as well.
“Oy vey! You have to earn those shekels, Goy!!”
For anyone who still requires a lesson in amerikan mendacity, the spruik outta murdoch’s fox news on the Iranian justified destruction of a $130 million US ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’ gives us a close up illustration of amerikan lies and obfuscations at work.
The crux of the amerikan defense appears to be that this ‘drone’ was flying above ‘international water’ to which anyone even slightly versed in the so-called laws of the sea will respond with “So what? That has nothing to do with it”.
Put simply, even where the oceans have been declared to be international waters, navigable by ships of any flag, the airspace above the international waters may still be the sovereign territory of a particular nation state who is completely entitled to take whatever action against an uninvited intruder the sovereign state deems necessary.
International/ freely navigable waters are determined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), whereas sovereign airspace is determined to be a function of the distance parallel to the planet, which that airspace is from the land of a particular sovereign nation. In most cases this is deemed to be 12 nautical miles. This has nothing to do with economic zones, fishing ‘rights’ etc.
If you cast yer eyes over the map at right here you will see exactly how complicated that issue gets at the highest point of the straits of Hormuz where the southern peninsular tipped by Oman points up towards Iran. Both ‘sea lanes’ and an agreed upon maritime boundary are drawn on this map, but there is no reference to sovereign territorial boundaries – most likely because the publisher of “maps of asia” is located in the US and the US disputes the sovereign border of Iran, just as it does Syria’s and Palestine’s borders.
There is no basis for these disputes other than “this is what we say, mush”.
Now some may recall that a couple of months back all the players, aka owners of territory in and around the straits and the gulf of Oman, reached agreement at UNCLOS.
The US tried & failed to force a couple of things through at the negotiation such as 3 nautical mile territorial waters not 12 nautical miles.
No one paid any heed to the yank (hereafter called septic tank) whining because among other things the seppos had no standing at UNCLOS.
amerika has never ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea see here preferring the same game they play with other international treaties eg jcpoa or war crimes.
This game goes :
(1) Don’t sign up to anything. That way you cannot be held accountable
(2) always whine loudly about anyone who refuses to tug their forelock to yankland, stating you reckon blah ‘irredeemable reprobate’ is in breach of whatever the treaty you are too slimy to ratify yerself says.
So seppoland try to fool all and sundry by asserting that the drone was flying above international waters even as they know full well the international waters thing is 100% irrelevant.
Please do not allow fishwraps and talking heads to assert this nonsense without pushing back at it.
Call the propagandists out by all means available, this is just about the only tool available, so when we use it, it does pay to remember that these media whores absolutely hate being parodied and humiliated.
oops the fox news link is here
https://www.globalresearch.ca/jackboots-coming-mass-arrests-power-grabs-politics-fear/5681173
Ron Paul, a man whose heart is clearly in the right place and who is not afraid to criticize his own country for its sickening foreign policy, also appealed today to the US’s so-called allies to grow a spine and to urge Washington to put the brakes on its warmongering, despite the fact that the US is accustomed to dictate their foreign policy too . . .
Whatever people might think of Paul, it is always heartening to see a glimmer of reality peeking through the utter chaos which Washington is currently inflicting upon all of us.
Pompeo will never care about anything.
He simply doesn’t have the brain capacity to do that, and a military and sports education completed the job of ensuring that he would never know anything but how to throw his not-inconsiderable weight around.
I was brought up to sympathise with, and, where possible, help the disadvantaged.
But this specimen is dangerous.
So I’m going to leave him alone for now; but if I am ever, by some awful mistake, promoted to high military office and put in charge of a considerable number of competent soldiers, I will probably arrange to have him physically removed from his office, pending investigation into charges of having caused unimaginable suffering to thousands and thousands of innocent inhabitants of this planet.
(Of course he is only the latest in a long line of Washington Warmongers to do that)
I’m glad you have mentioned something about Pompeo’s brain. The mental characteristics of the elites’ brains seem never to have developed beyond the reptilian/limbic brain into a fully functioning human brain. A fully human brain is one that experiences empathy with its kind and is capable of feeling the pull of morality and what is and what is not acceptable as human behaviour. The Reptillian/limbic brown however is a characteristic shared by the entirety of the whole intelligence deep-state- community as well as the political and media elites.
The gaff was initially blown by Albright and her endorsement of the mass murder of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of US sanctions. It was apparently ‘worth it’, according Dame Madeleine. It seems axiomatic, however, that these sentiments could not have either been uttered or felt by a normal human being. But of course Albright, Pompeo, and, above all Bolton are not normal human beings. The same type of off the cuff inhumanity is apparently when zionist leaders think that the mass murder of Palestinians is like ‘Mowing the grass’ and that Palestinians are, in Begin’s description, ‘animals walking on two legs.’
David Icke reckons that these are alien beings – reptillian creatures – moving among us and adopting our forms and personnas. I can’t say that I agree with this, but I do think that these persons are – like children – stuck in an static and retarded emotional level that accounts for their inhumanity and power worship.
…reptilians..or plain and simple Psychopaths…no empathy, no remorse, amoral…simpler, no need to go(come) to a different planet…
It is up to us to simply, once and for all, accept that these guys are totally f*** up..and they are seriously trying to f**** us all…starting by f**** our minds….
My apologies for so much f**** shit…but that’s probably more “illustrative” of reality
“Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us”….for a light (but revealing) reading.
I actually think all your f**** is perfectly justified given our situation. Fully agree with the use of the word ‘pyschopaths’ with news overnight that an aerial attack on Iran was underway, then Trump changed his mind at the last minute and ordered a stand down (for now?).
“Pompeo will never care about anything. He simply doesn’t have the brain capacity to do that, and a military and sports education completed the job…”
Pompeo? Sports? Wot, championship level hot dog eating?
Yeah, his college days involved some heavy sports stuff.
Iran has just shot down a US drone snooping around in its airspace.
Apparently it was the GTI De Luxe model with a price tag of $130 million.
With a jet engine, not the crappy predator type with a fixed undercarriage and a pusher propeller. I think they hijacked one of these things a few years ago electronically when Obongo was around. He demanded it back, but it was put on display in Tehran and Chinese and Russian technicians were invited to crawl all over it.
They claim to have reverse engineered it.
Good news on this drone Iran was able to get parts of it;-)
The drone the Iranians hijacked back then was a small tactical plane. The Global Hawk that they shot down is much larger. It carries a lot of sensors and is designed to collect tactical information about an area that the US military is interested in attacking. Having one cruising around on your doorstep is provocative because it would have been collecting tactical information about Iranian defenses. The track has been published, it started off from its base going west, looped around, crossed the Gulf and then flew up the Iranian coast. It then turned around and flew the same track back, getting about two thirds of the way back before being shot down. The Americans obviously didn’t expect it to be tracked or intercepted — or even detected — because flying the same track back and forth over potentially hostile terrain is asking for trouble. They have been surprised to discover that despite the plane being relatively stealthy and flying at a very high altitude (60,000 feet) and having its transponders &tc. turned off the Iranians had absolutely no trouble tracking it and shooting it down.
We in the US will claim it was in “international waters” (which actually don’t exist in this area — look at the map) and it was a provocative act by the Iranians but realistically the provocation is by the Americans — you just don’t go around collecting tactical information on people unless you’re interested in attacking them. I’d guess the decision was taken to intercept the plane because they didn’t want it returning to base with a whole lot of mapping information.
Incidentally, it doesn’t do much for the discussion to refer to our previous President as “Obongo”. He was a normal American President. Trump — or as many of us call him, “The Orange One” — is a bit of a problem because he’s completely out of his depth and he’s being led around by the nose by a couple of very dangerous warmongers. (IMHO). I regard our global military posture as ridiculous, its rooted in the Cold War and now acting as a drag on both our economy and our society, but as Eisenhower warned us 60 years ago once you’re into this state its the very devil to get out of it.
Martin U, thank you. That is one of the best and most succint comments on the subject(s).
I wonder who the crazy ‘general’ was on the US side, who got one of their most advanced Drones deployed to the region than take off and travel in ‘stealth mode’ at altitudes , above and near civilian airlines and recklessly endangering another tragedy. Maybe it was an Admiral, or was it Pompeo himself who went to tell Centcom what to do causing the sudden departure of the sec of defence… MoA has done a great article, including basic trigonometry, on the folly.
So not only is the stealth tech not as stealthy as they thought, but the defence capacity of Iran (and its allies the -Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) is working effectively.
Potus has made sure that ALL his country folk, and ALL the world can see that the US has no alternative but to take their tanks of tge ME lawns. There can be no escalation without severe loses. There can be NO defence of the Idlib pocket and their proxy head choppers. The rapture vultures and second coming rabbis can take a running jump…
Trump may well have sealed his second term bymaking the forthcoming summit as important as the Yalta one.
Fingers crossed.
Yes, you’re quite right. Obongo was a “normal” American president. Bombing Libya back to the Stone Age, waging war in half the countries on the planet, ticking off the victims on his Killer Robot Kill List, bankrolling racism and apartheid in Palestine, propping up the Gulf Dictatorships, expanding the War Machine, all in a day’s work for a normal American president.
….yeah….but he knew how to smile 😁
When you say Obama “was a normal American president” oddly you are right; in that he said one thing and did another, destroying Libya, causing a never ending stream of refugees into Europe. Massive amounts of weapons found the way into the hands of terrorists, open slave markets exist in that failed state, once the most prosperous in Africa. Despite campaigning to end wars he sent more troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Instead of prosecuting bankers he bailed them out. Obama relentlessly pursued whistle blowers, deported more aliens than ever before. Then as a final betrayal he for a certainty is up to his neck in the Russiagate scam, misusing FISA warrants to spy on Americans.
Obongo?
Really?
Yes, you know, Nobel Peace Prize Obomber Qbongo.
Bombing 7 countries with a new $2 trillion programme for more WMD.
Aka The Magic Ni**er.
Something that has received virtually zero publicity is a series of recent attacks on Iranian shipping and ports. About 5-6 ships and installations at 2 ports were damaged in a series of mysterious explosions, and some of the damage was apparently quite extensive. The details are sketchy. I don’t know if anyone has more information on this. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The recent tanker attacks have false flag written all over them, and are probably the handiwork of America and/ or Israel, acting independently or in concert. The Saudis would have bungled the job, Khashoggi style.
Hi Mark, Hope you find these links useful??
12th May 2019 United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Norway ships were attacked near the Fujairah port. – submitted an initial report to the United Nations Security Council on June 6
13th May 2019 Saudi Arabia said Monday two of its oil tankers were sabotaged off the coast of the United Arab Emirates near Fujairah in attacks that caused “significant damage” to the vessels, one of them as it was en route to pick up Saudi oil to take to the United States.
Gulf officials declined to say who they suspected was responsible, but the incident came after a pro-Iran satellite channel in Lebanon and Iranian media earlier falsely claimed Fujairah’s port had been hit by mysterious explosions.
https://apnews.com/3884ea5ef0084d7a9e8a7d48c03fb69e
A U.S. official in Washington, ”without offering any evidence”, told The Associated Press that an American military team’s initial assessment ”indicated Iran or Iranian allies” used explosives to blow holes in the ships, including two Saudi, one Norwegian and one Emirati oil tanker. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation, agreed to reveal the findings only if not quoted by name. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which patrols the Mideast and operates from a base in Fujairah, has repeatedly declined to comment on the incident.
The U.S. already had warned ships that “Iran or its proxies” could be targeting maritime traffic in the region. America is deploying an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf to counter alleged, still-unspecified threats from Tehran.
7th June 2019
https://jcpa.org/mysterious-blazes-on-six-iranian-ships-in-iranian-ports/#_edn8
As the strategic port of Shahid Rajaee, north of the Strait of Hormuz, was still dealing with the effects of a huge fire that caused serious destruction, Iranian media reported that six Iranian ships were ablaze in ”several ports” in the southern part of the country.
13th June 2019
Gulf tankers attacked – oil prices surge???
https://www.onenewspage.com.au/n/Front+Page/1zkidwj7h6/Gulf-tankers-attacked-global-oil-prices-surge-What.htm
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?D=2019-06-13&ID=5432
Complete CIA plot from A – Z
Yes, thanks for that. The attacks on Iranian ships and ports seem to have been airbrushed out.
https://iranprimer.usip.org/blog
Predictable Mark: the Israelis have done it (anything) and the Sunni oilers are too inexperienced or plan innocent. Aggressive Judaism has concurred the World and Islam is just some powerless backwater peaceful state of mind ; just look at world history and the map today – NOT.
No, you have to keep an open mind. There is about a 1% chance they were not involved. You never know. We’d know if the Shadies had done it. It would have been another Khashoggi type fiasco. Maybe they just paid Nuttyyahoo to do it, like they were pimping themselves out for him to bomb Iran.
The American military’s “readiness crisis”: why war won’t be waged on Iran
http://www.frombehindenemylines.org.uk/2019/05/the-american-militarys-readiness-crisis-why-war-wont-be-waged-on-iran/
Gough Whitlam tried that, an independent foreign policy and he was replaced in a boodless coup: the CIA in cahoots with the Murdoch monstrocity. Australia lost its finest Prime Minister by a long way. May he rest in peace.
Maybe the same thing will happen in Britain soon. The Queen, or the Privy Council, will just depose a victorious Prime Minister Jezza, send in its secret police goon squad into Downing Street and drag him off Assange style, and freight him off to the Tower.
Why not? There have already been proposals to dissolve Parliament, Charles I/ Oliver Cromwell style, to get Brexit through. Nice to see these old traditions being upheld.
Not to mention the mysterious disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt in the late ’60’s as the War in Vietnam was really hotting up. Holt ‘supposedly drowned in heavy seas and was said to have been abducted by a “Chinese submarine”(Given the CIA’s expertise in “replacing” heads of State particularly in Sth America), it’s not too hard to surmise that THEY were behind Holts ‘fate’, with Murdoch providing the “Chinese Submarine” explanation……..
“…the CIA in cahoots with the Murdoch monstrocity.”
Along with Kerr and (disputed) HM Queenie…
The reality. The warmongering military industrial complex. (Reality not available in the lying, greedy MSM.) Go well, Tony.
.
Nice Summary of events regarding rescue boats. But you can keep the evidence-free-poor-old-good-guy-Trump-singlehandedly-battling-the-deep-state-Qtard-stuff to yourself. Or present evidence for it
For all his bluster, the Orange Baboon is probably the weakest of all US Presidents. He’s just a trained monkey rattling its little tin cup for its organ grinder, the Global Power Elite, mainly but not exclusively the Chosen Folk.
This is true of all governments, presidents, politicians, with very few exceptions. And these are the ones targeted for destruction by figurative and literal assassinations, smear and vilification campaigns, economic strangulation and financial manipulation, regime change, terrorism and war.
People like Trump, May, Merkel, the EU, get their instructions from an interlocking network of globalist power institutions. Bilderberg, Davos, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, Bank for International Settlements, and lesser organisations like the Atlantic Council. These represent the big moneyed and powerful vested interests. Just 17 investment groups like Blackrock control assets of $50 trillion. They physically own the global media.
These organisations formulate general policy objectives which are communicated down to governments to implement. Recently it was decided to destroy Venezuela, and this was immediately put into operation by their trained monkeys in Canada, America, the EU, UK, France, Germany. There was a similar policy decision to confront China which is now being put into practice.
Trump and his ilk are of no importance. They are like the ornamental figureheads on the bows of old sailing ships, or a mechanic’s oily rag. However personally loathsome and contemptible they may be, reacting to them with excessive emotion is a waste of time, a distraction and a diversion. They don’t matter. They are just expendable flunkeys. When they are no longer of use to the Power Elite, they are found lucrative sinecures if they have been good little boys and girls, like Clinton, Gore, Bush, Blair. You have to focus on the people behind the curtain.
Nail on the head as always Mark… brilliant.
I believe that Trump was totally aware of what was to happen, and knew that if he played his cards right, when all the chickens have hatched, he would be set to make a massive killing.
I don’t think he would have gone into this bear pit without being completely certain that his business was going to flourish after. EXACTLY like Clinton, Gore, Bush and Blair who were simply there for our distraction and entertainment while the real Power Elites pulled the strings and got on with business as usual….
Trump has had problems servicing the debt on his property empire. About 98% of it is borrowed money. He has used bankruptcy to strong arm banks and creditors, but it’s all so opaque you can’t give any useful figures. Most of his dealings are fraudulent, though this is normal in New York. He has routinely used fraudulent loans, putting up buildings as security which are misrepresented. Like if a building is 1 million square feet, he will say it’s two million. Profits are turned into losses by sleight of hand to avoid tax. Though everybody does the same there.
Crown Prince Jared is simply pretty thick. He knows nothing about any subject except Israel. He bought 666 (appropriate!) Fifth Avenue on borrowed money at the height of the property boom, just before the 2007/ 8 crash. He was basically skint, but having married the boss’s daughter, the Arabs bailed him out on sweetheart terms. Normal rules of business don’t apply in these circumstances. Money is just thrown at people in that position, like Blair and his £100 million empire.
None of this really matters. It’s like obsessing over the celebrities in Hello! They may have some comic value, but that’s about it. Trump is well known for cheating at golf, Goldfinger style. He always tees off first, then takes off in a souped up golf cart. He kicks his balls back on to the green if he’s in the rough, and does the opposite to other players. The sort of complete bounder who gets drummed out of the Club, unless of course you own the club.
I guess Trump pulling back the planned attack today on Iran might be evidence, #Basher?