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Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

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Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#371

Post by JumpCrisscross »

maxglute wrote: post #358
mlrtime wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, wouldn't China be just as interested as us in keeping these lanes open? Why aren't they also engaging? Or do they not have assets here?

Because US protecting global shipping is overexaggeration. US protects US flagged shipping - non US flagged vessels got hit without US intervention during tanker wars for years without US lifting finger. MENA oil exporters had to reflag under US flag (pay US taxes/protection fees) to be eligible for defense. US didn't step up to end tanker wars until bunch of US sailers killed with USS Stark was hit. Prosperity Guard…

> US protects US flagged shipping

Not true. FON protects non-US flagged ships; most ships aren’t U.S. flagged.

> non US flagged vessels got hit without US intervention during tanker wars for years

America doesn’t protect all ships all the time. Sure. We’re selective about which FON issues we exert influence over. But when we get there, we protect everyone.

> because Maersk and other civilian shippers that DoD depends on sealift was threatening not to transit through area

Source? Bab el-Mandeb is a strait America has invested a lot into for geostrategic reasons.

> reason they have Djibouti base for antipiracy deployment is because they know US can't be relied on for protecting shipping

As they should. This is geopolitics. America shouldn’t be doing this for free. That said, and as you acknowledge, China is doing jack shit other than collecting intelligence on U.S. assets.

> Houthi has been largely discriminary, leaving PRC shipping alone

“Largely” does heavy lifting. It isn’t simple to discriminate shipping, as the Houthis’ non-Israeli targets have shown. In addition, China gets badly hurt if the conflict escalates and both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb are closed.

Broadly agree that China is winning by America continuing to protect her for free.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#372

Post by pvaldes »

Aeolun wrote: post #181
bawolff wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like all things - wars are a combination of rational self-interest, emotions and random chance. The action itself matters less than the consequence. The typical example is that USA gets away with shit other countries can't because nobody wants to invade usa. My understanding is that in this particular situation - yemen is a humanitarian disaster after their civil war. Any country that invades is going to be seen as r…

> Any country that invades is going to be seen as responsible for fixing that mess Unless the invading country is Israel.

The hit to its international tourism, and the public image damage has been devastating.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#373

Post by s1artibartfast »

throwup238 wrote: post #353
s1artibartfast wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

similar to math, just because you dont know all the variable to solve an equation, doesnt mean it is useless. It is a tool to study the interactions and possible solutions, inferring some and ruling out others. Just because cows aren't spherical doesn't mean it is useful to act as though the world is devoid of physics, random and inscrutable. A spherical cow is still useful, if not perfect.

We're not talking about an extra variable here or there, we're talking about the equivalent to string theory which is famously intractable. It's an n-body problem where n = ?????? and you don't know any of the boundary conditions. It's not random and inscrutable, but it sure isn't conducive to naive academic analyses like game theory. Just because you can model something simple, doesn't mean you can predict something…

maybe there is a disconnect on what we call prediction. There is more than enough information to predict if China would be in favor or against US building a military base in Taiwan. There isn't enough information to predict what Xi Jinping will have for breakfast.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#374

Post by johnnyworker »

badpun wrote: post #320
johnnyworker wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide > acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group When they all live in refugees in other countries, they are destroyed as a national group. With this level of hair splitting you might as well say it's not genocide as long as even one member of the group survives, why not go there, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing > Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide, where the perpetrator's goal is the destruction of the targeted group. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the attempt to destroy part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. Wh…

How is displaying a national group elsewhere not destroying it as a national group? That's why I say genocide. And at best you could say they don't care if the Palestinians live or die as long as they go away, by bombs, starvation or fleeing, and then can take the land.

https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1741347524693127398

> "If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk is about the day after will be different. They want to leave, they have been living in the ghetto for 75 years and are in need"

Admitting Gaza is a ghetto and the desire to ethnically cleanse it in one fell swoop.

> Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal believes that Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.

-- https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-ex...

So, at the very least, some of the people literally studying genocide are agreeing it is genocide. And many people who deny it is have political motivations. So fuck their nuance. If people can commit genocide or rub shoulders with people who do, they'll survive being called genocidal. It's not about their feelings or the face they think they can save, it's about the people who are getting murdered and driven away by colonialists.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#375

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pydry wrote: post #323
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We were promised a victory many times thanks to the overwhelming power and sophistication western weapons By whom?! The American establishment has been repeatedly forecasting doom and gloom for Ukraine.

Western media, representing an ebullient american establishment, which was replete with articles like this around the beginning of may 2023: https://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-counteroffensive-begun-expe... If you can find an article from may 2023 that accurately predicts that ukraine could end the offensive with less land than it started off with Id like to see it. There's more doom and gloom now of course. The failur…

> an article from may 2023 that accurately predicts that ukraine could end the offensive with less land than it started off with

Everyone I read made predictions conditional on aid, specifically, long-range strike capability and air defence.

Here is Phillips O’Brien on 28 May: “Ukraine has had to fight this war under a series of great handicaps. Its aid has been often technologically limited and always politically limited by NATO countries, primarily the US, with the goal of preventing Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil. By compelling Ukraine to fight almost exclusively on its own soil, Russia has been handled a major asymetric advantage…Ukraine has has to fight this war with one hand tied behind its back while Russia has been given a major advantage in not having to use many resources to defend its own border with Ukraine.”

Which makes sense. That is the operating variable. We didn’t provide that aid in time. So Ukraine mostly held ground. (Breaching the Dnipr and pushing Russia so far back from Sevastopol that its blockade enforcement is now poorer than the Houthis’ should not be understated.)

If you’re seriously following this issue, stay clear of Yahoo! News and ad-funded sources. They’re mostly mouthpieces for influencing domestic aid deliberations. At any given time, you can find sources confidently predicting imminent success and imminent defeat.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#376

Post by pvaldes »

elromulous wrote: post #59
IAmGraydon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is not a superpower or even remotely close to such a status. No country besides the US is currently considered a superpower.

Any country with the ability to completely erase entire countries (i.e. has an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons) is a superpower.

would be a weekend superpower, for a very short amount of time

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#377

Post by TMWNN »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #246
TMWNN wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I strongly suspect I'm about to learn I'm wrong about part of the above: No, you are correct. The US is the developed country that is by far the least-dependent on foreign trade. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?location... > Ignore people like dash2 who say that the US would be "much, much poorer without it"; they're like the Canadians and their American sympathizers who, when the Trump administr…

> Ignore people like dash2 who say that the US would be "much, much poorer without it" On what planet is losing a quarter of one’s GDP not “much, much poorer”? That’s the GDP of 33 U.S. states and territories [1], through Indiana. It’s more than the GDP of Germany, the world’s third-largest economy [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_terr... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou…

Did you even bother to look at the figures for the rest of the world? During the Great Depression, even if one got a salary cut, that was far better off than losing the job. If the US is "much, much poorer", every other country (developed or not) has been evicted and moving in with the parents if lucky; homeless and on the streets if not.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#378

Post by pvaldes »

justinclift wrote: post #223
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seems to have some highly suicidal tendencies and really don’t mind massive casualties these days (e.g. 5x more Russian died in Ukraine in just 2 years than during the entire 10 year long Soviet war in Afghanistan). So one has to double whether they live in the same reality as most people in the west which makes them pretty scary and unpredictable

Bear in mind that the population of Russia is ~140-150M people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia Whereas Ukraine's is ~35M people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine So the approach of just overwhelming Ukraine with relentless numbers could be effective, even if callous/unsophisticated. Kind of like that old saying "if it's dumb, but works... it's not dumb". As unfortunate as that is.

> the approach of just overwhelming Ukraine with relentless numbers could be effective

Is unclear at this moment. It only matters how much of this 34M/150M people are in an accurate age/sex to fight. Putin wouldn't survive a move to force massively women to enlist in the army, and Russia had yet a demographics problem. One million of youngsters exiled and are unavailable to became hamburgers.

Also Russia is trying to kill anybody in that 35M of people but Ukraine mostly fight only the Russian soldiers. I bet that each Ukrainian soldier had killed yet more than five Russian soldiers at the current meatwave ratio.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#379

Post by asylteltine »

ceejayoz wrote: post #316
adolph wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see how the slogans of the Houthis make them a less than sympathetic set of missileers. For example, it might be awkward for a person supportive of the Palestinian cause to be in goal alignment with a well funded group stating uncloseted hatred of Jews.

No more awkward than supporters of Israel having to cope with Israeli ministers suggesting nuking Gaza, or having to deal with the ACLU defending Nazis in court. Every cause, even (sometimes especially ) the righteous ones, has shitty people attached to it.

That’s not the same thing at all. Hamas and the like have an official, publicly available creed which explicitly calls for the extermination of Jews. You sure you want to put that on the same level as one minister suggesting something stupid? By that logic, you absolutely must put all of congress in one group because trump suggested something similar.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#380

Post by mrtksn »

edanm wrote: post #367
mrtksn wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work like that, you can't transfer the blame of a mass murder to another mass murderer. Anyway, I would suggest you to research the anti-American movements all over the world and you will see that Americans(the state) are actually treated as evil by many people who are affected by the American atrocities or sympathetic with those affected. Americans lost most of their credibility even in UK and Europe. It'…

> Anyway, I would suggest you to research the anti-American movements all over the world and you will see that Americans(the state) are actually treated as evil by many people who are affected by the American atrocities or sympathetic with those affected. Americans lost most of their credibility even in UK and Europe. I'm well aware. And for sure much of the Muslim world hates the US as much as Israel ("Big Satan to…

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