- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- world@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- world@lemmy.world
An oil tanker is on fire in the Gulf of Aden, its operator says, after Houthis said they hit it with a missile.
US officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS the tanker was hit by an anti-ship ballistic missile and a naval ship was responding to its distress signal.
There were no injuries reported, the US officials said.
Houthi military spokesman Yaha Sarea said the group used “a number of appropriate naval missiles” and Friday’s strike was “direct”.
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Since November, the Iran-backed Houthis have launched dozens of attacks on commercial vessels travelling through the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza
Is that really the whole reason behind the recent attacks on ships? Seems like it’s not serving any purpose aside from risking a direct military intervention in Yemen.
The Houthi’s stated purpose is to attack the ships of any nation sending support to Israel (most of which are western or American aligned) as a show of force not specifically for Palestine, but anti Israel and pro Islam/hamas. At one point IIRC they said they were only attacking ships en route to Israel proper but that’s clearly long gone.
Realistically it’s Iran, maybe Russia, and likely SA providing the resources and “gentle direction” to a puppet because they want, and NEED, the oil markets to go haywire again. They’re suddenly missing that sweet hit of wartime profiteering from insane price gouging, it’s like heroin to their flailing economies.
Saudi Arabia seems the least likely to be puppeteering the launch of Iranian anti-ship missiles from Houthi territory of those three countries. There’s easier ways for them to raise oil prices, and they aren’t exactly allies with the Houthis.
Are they the least likely, though? SA-loaded cargos on Chinese and other non-Western ships are being explicitly allowed by the Houthis, despite many those cargoes being destined for Europe and America (the countries being tagged due to their support of Israel). SA has even come out as saying they have zero shipping restraints currently because the Houthis are effectively supporting them.
They stand to gain a huge profit from having their competitor’s oil flows through the only optimal shipping channel restricted. So even if they are not directly selling weapons or supplies to the Houthis, they’re sure as shit facilitating it by, at a minimum, turning a blind eye to however the Houthis are getting said supplies.
At one point IIRC they said they were only attacking ships en route to Israel proper but that’s clearly long gone.
They did at the start. Ships attacked all had israeli ownership or stops planned in israel. Then America and Britain decided to put together a cool group with a cool name to bomb Yemen with and now British and American ships are barred from passing too so that’s going great.
Realistically it’s Iran, maybe Russia, and likely SA providing the resources and “gentle direction” to a puppet because they want, and NEED, the oil markets to go haywire again. They’re suddenly missing that sweet hit of wartime profiteering from insane price gouging, it’s like heroin to their economies.
You think there’s a genocide going on somewhere maybe? Or is Iran just making that one up too?
You think there’s a genocide going on somewhere maybe? Or is Iran just making that one up too?
I didn’t say that there’s not a genocide, thanks for putting those words in my mouth for me. Fuck Netanyahu. I’m saying that the region’s usual suspects aren’t letting a good crisis go to waste to line their own pockets by promoting and funding further escalation. Iran et al. thrive on the dark markets, and the dark markets thrive during times of instability.
If it was really about stopping genocide then the anti Ukrainian Russians and the anti Uygur Chinese wouldn’t be allowed through either.
It’s about stopping one particular genocide.
By striking a Marshall Islands ship going from Greece to Singapore, owned by an MNC.
Are you really going to try and sell that as somehow stopping Israel?
I’m not generally saying the Houthis actions are 100% correct, they absolutely should be exercising more discretion, but this is a British oil tanker, and British and American ships have been on the no-go list since they started bombing Yemen. Again they should be exercising more discretion, but they absolutely have the right to tell the UK to fuck off.
I’m sorry. But where on that list is the UK? You don’t get to just make shit up.
So just regular old race warriors then
What does that even mean? Palestine has been occupied for 70 years. And these recent events have greatly increased death and destruction with Gaza / the Palestinian population.
Of course people would care more about people in their region.
shut up at this level everything is money. anything else is a tool to win and get money.
if it’s about race that’s simply convenient for those who actually can change it. they want money
Israel has killed 2.5 times as many civilians as Russia in 1/4 the time on a population 25 times smaller.
Israel is like 10000% more genocidal than Russia.
And no Russia is not good, and Ukraine has the right to defend itself.
Pretty sure that’s what they want, destabilise the region with big wars and their brand of hate can have the victory it’s currently having in Afghanistan and Iran where girls can’t go to school and where they get beaten to death for showing their hair.
They’re putting a huge amount of pressure on the international community. Until the Houthi’s started throwing a wrench into the economy nobody seemed to care about Gaza. Now that money is at risk suddenly everyone is really concerned about the issue.
Oh fuck off there was coverage literally the second they started bombing hospitals, evacuation routes, and safe zones. This isn’t doing anything but taking up air in the coverage that could be detailing more Israeli crimes.
Yeah coverage. Demonstrations. Western governments don’t care until they are losing money.
It’s like this place is filled with people that thought Jim Crow laws got ended because Rosa Parker sat on the back of a bus and MLK gave a cool speech.
There were demonstrations too. Western governments don’t give a shit about losing money. Look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They care about getting re-elected. And right now the Houthis are giving them a bloody rag to wave at the electorate.
The only way this is helping is if you want to see the entire global economy crash.
Iraq was one of the least popular wars. America invaded Iraq to steal their oil. Because that made money. They didn’t care about any reelecton.
Any time farmers start blocking highways or people go on mass strike the government changes their tone.
Monetary shipping blocks like the Houthi’s are doing right now are probably the least violent and most effective way to go about it. Their alternative is blowing up Saudi’s oil and start a mass regional war.
This isn’t a protest it’s piracy. And this isn’t a commuter highway it’s the logistical route for transferring goods from Asia to Europe.
Nobody is listening to the people trying to take the entire world hostage. You have the shittiest take on piracy I’ve ever seen.
Go open a history book and find out how the Apartheid in South Africa ended.
Seems to be a British oil tanker:
Shipping data suggests the vessel sails under the flag of the Marshall Islands. The British government has yet to comment on the claims but commodities group Trafigura said the vessel was operated on its behalf.’
Trafiguera has offices all over the world. This is beyond insane.
I mean it does seem like the UK is very mad about it.
Yeah the country that wants to police the shipping lanes and is dependent on oil shipping is mad an oil tanker got hit. Surprise.
The article says that the tanker had links to the UK.
Of course Trafiguera has offices all over the world. Every shipping company registers their ship in some weird place like Panama or the Bahamas.
The question is who actually owns it.
Trafiguera actually owns it. They’re listed as the owner on the registry. Calling Trafiguera a British company because it has an office in London is ridiculous. That would make 99 percent of the worlds shipping US/UK/CN simultaneously.
The operator of the Marlin Luanda is registered as being Oceonix Services Ltd, a UK registered company.
So they attacked a third country ship purely to get at the British civilians on board?
Yeah I get why Rishi is talking war now. That’s fucking ridiculous.
Mate Britain bombed Yemen first and actually killed people.
Sunak’s family owns Infosys which is heavily involved in the gas deal to steal Gaza’s Marine field. It’s pretty clear why Sunak is helping Israel here.
Right. They bombed Yemen for no reason. Couldn’t have anything to do with them firing at civilian ships.
Were you born yesterday? Because the rest of us have a functioning memory. The ships sole connection was the employer of the crew. It isn’t owned by the UK and it isn’t servicing either the UK or Israel. That makes this a terrorist attack. You went after civilians for your political cause.
Well done Houthis.
En Route from Greece to Singapore. Flagged in the Marshall Islands and owned by a MNC with no offices in Israel.
Any terrorist apologists wanna take a run at this one with your blockading Israel rhetoric? It wasn’t even going the right way.
Sure, imperialism is the major cause of suffering in this world. Trading routes of the west symbolise it. If being righteous is defined as supremacy based on military might… then there’s no greater terrorism in the world than that of Rich Oil Barrons and the Imperial nations that enable and protect it.
Terrorism is the label given to people who use violence for their political goals… by people who use state-sponsored violence to maintain their version of “peace”, the one in which they are righteous and thus can control others or commit the same atrocities… only their terrorism is accepted by a totally corrupt process such as voting. (Actually voting does nothing as all the important stuff is several layers removed from public office holders)
Which of those countries is the imperialist power again? Marshall Islands? Singapore? I suppose we’re holding grudges against Greece from a couple thousand years ago?
Those countries do not own the ships. They are just registered there to dodge taxes and evade sanctions among other things.
Owned by a multinational, registered at a flag of convenience, trading between two non-involved small countries m, yet y’all are trying to claim this is a legit strike back against “imperialism”or “Zionism”. BS it’s classic attention-seeking. They’re striking out at random passersby at the instigation of Iran trying to benefit from Chaos
It’s linked with the UK. It’s right there in the Article. And UK ships got blocked after they started bombing Yemen.
If Yemen bombed UK soil directly, do you think the UK should also let ships of Yemen pass through their waters?
Dropping the world economy into the pot isn’t going to make imperialism better. It just brings back colonialism, mercantilism, and trade wars with actual fighting. You can feel smug all day long in the rubble.
Countries selling stuff to each other is imperialism? Care to check the logic on that?
Do you think France cares about Democracy in Africa? These countries just use democracy as a dogwhistle and steal natural resources. Don’t think that these westerners care more about you than some religious dictators.>
Globalization is just some rich industrialists trying to cut costs and rip off people in rich countries. The fact that it uplifted people in other countries from poverty is a side effect and an instrument to make people believe that capitalism is the best way of life and convince people to ditch their simple life. Whereas in reality it’s just that extracting untold amounts of stuff from the ground is going to inevitably lead to material gain, regardless of whether some giant corporation struck a deal with a poor country or not.
Rampant consumerism is destroying the planet and keeping the masses from acting against rich people. Global trade is just exacerbating the problem.
You don’t NEED something from across the globe. People used to not consime anything that wasnt available locally. Manufacturing used to be local. But some asshole decided that it saved $5/hr in labour costs to ship some part half way across the globe and reship the finished product back to their country for assembly. Now we have untold amounts of garbage being dumped and floating around in all of our water bodies.
Yah, actually, blowing up oil tankers is based as fuck. Bring back the Somali pirates too.
Sure buddy, you go celebrate the end of modern medicine.
I dunno about that other guy, but humans have driven 70% of species to extinction. The faster we get this collapse over with, the better the earth will be in the long run.
Fair enough. I’m still hoping to pull out of it but at least that’s a logical position.
Different strokes 🤷
First line in the article:
A tanker with links to the UK
Eeryone and their moms have ships registered on tax havens. The Houthi’s are looking at actual ownership and/or destination.
After America and UK have started bombing Yemen they have been banned from passing. This is a direct consequence of UK’s support for war crimes. The UK fucked around and are now the ones finding out.
There isn’t a shipping MNC in the world without links to the US or UK. That’s like saying humans with a link to Oxygen.
The operator of the Marlin Luanda is registered as being Oceonix Services Ltd, a UK registered company.
So the crew on board was British. They thought it was somehow okay to attack a third country’s ship because the civilians on board were British. Maybe.
That’s not a blockade. That’s a war crime.
a blockade without willingness to follow up on the threat to shoot, is not a blockade
That idea of a blockade is a war crime unless you can prove it’s carrying war material directly to the blockaded country or it’s a military ship. Modern blockades thus generally require boarding the ship. Just shooting at cargo ships is a war crime and/or terrorism.
You are completely right, a blockade is a war crime when part of a war of aggression or against civilian vessels.
Now remind me, who is blockading Gaza, and has for over a decade now?
By no means are Iran and their proxies the good guys. But anyone supporting what Israel is doing to Palestine has orders of magnitude more innocent blood on their hands.
The more attacks on oil infrastructure the better
Not while they’re out on the open water thank you very much, I’d rather avoid massive oil spills.
Couldn’t this produce an oil spill?
They are going to cause an environmental disaster and screw themselves once all the fish start dying off their coast.
It’s what I was thinking about.
I see Yemen is still fucking around, more finding out is required.
How about instead of violence we give the people a comfortable life so they don’t feel compelled to do dumb shit like this?
No, let’s just keep killing. This time will be different!
All (but one?) of the 9/11 hijackers came from comfortable, middleclass, Saudi families. The vast majority of 01/06 insurrections came from at least middleclass incomes, and often higher.
You’re insulting these people acting like they’re just too poor and uneducated to know better.
As a planet, we cannot allow a major disruption of a major trade route. This is both terrorism and piracy. It cannot stand.
OTOH, I have no idea how to fight terrorists embedded in the civilian population.
I’m not saying give these individuals money. I’m saying maybe we build some social structures that elevate the population out of poverty?
50 million in bombs but not 50 million in schools, why?
I’m not saying give these individuals money. I’m saying maybe we build some social structures that elevate the population out of poverty?
But as the above commenter pointed out, poverty is no cure to the kind of ideological terrorism pursued by these people - the middle class is just as vulnerable to the madness as the poor.
You mean like in Afghanistan? Where they proceeded to close these schools and sell the infrastructure the second the military left?
What compels those people to act is America fucking around in the middle east. They didn’t wake up and think “Oh let’s bomb some people today”.
What compels those people to act is America fucking around in the middle east.
Yep, definitely. Before us the Middle East was a harmonious paradise.
Ugh these people again. Yes, it was about as good of a place as anywhere else outside of Europe and America.
Ugh these people again.
People who know history and don’t have the racist presumption that only Westerners have moral agency?
Yes, it was about as good of a place as anywhere else outside of Europe and America.
Alright, I’m going to have to challenge that. Would you care to elaborate on how the Middle East, before American meddling, was as good as anywhere else outside of Europe and America?
America started meddling in The Middle East in the 50s, almost exactly after colonialism ended (using the term “ended” liberally). The pre-colonialism Middle East was mostly ruled by the Ottoman empire, which aside from their last years were bad but normal rulers. I seriously doubt the Middle East was a worse place to be than Russia, China.
This is kinda racist, as much as you might not want to admit it the people in this world with darker skin are actually real whole people - they have emotions and feel pain and yes sometimes they have a bloodthirsty hunger for power no matter the human expense. They’re people and sometimes people are like that.
Your knowledge of history might only involve things from the European perspective so yes nothing happened before we got there and everything that does happen there we’re at the center of - that’s not actual reality though, read history from their perspective and often we’re just not that important.
The middle East conflicts are painfully complicated, different factions of Islam with different factions in those factions all with their own power struggles and conspiracies and political needs… Just like everywhere else,
Your knowledge of history might only involve things from the European perspective so yes nothing happened before we got there and everything that does happen there we’re at the center of - that’s not actual reality though, read history from their perspective and often we’re just not that important.
I know history from both perspectives (I’m from the Middle East), and I know that the motivation for organizations like Al-Qaeda is usually the state of places like Palestine, Iraq and Syria. That’s why they target the West; they look at places where the West came in, killed a few hundred thousand people, damaged the place beyond repair and left and want some kind of justice.
You say the West isn’t that important in Middle Eastern history, but that’s wrong in many ways. Let me tell you as someone who lives here: When it comes to politics, America is basically a synonym for evil over here (could be different in Gulf countries).
Well, yeah they did actually. They probably didn’t see it in their 5 year plan though
Why would rewarding people who are blowing up civilian vessels make it stop? Rewarding a behavior simply encourages more of it.
Surprising as it seems, not all problems can be fixed with bombs.
The saudis have been lobbing american weapons at the houthis on an off for a decade or more and still the capital and almost every population center fell. Yet more brutal urban ground-fighting is in no-one’s interests. It’s only getting easier, cheaper and safer to threaten soft targets, and more expensive to defend against.
It could equally be argued that our empire is in the finding out stage of our decades of fucking around. There are no ‘goodies’ here.
But I suppose when our country is a giant gun factory every problem looks like a target.
Surprising as it seems, not all problems can be fixed with bombs.
Yes and other problems cannot be solved through bargaining or appeasement, sometimes such an approach only exacerbates the situation.
Appeasement? They’re not demanding Poland. There are no real demands to appease.
The closest thing to a ‘demand’ is for Israel to stop killing Palestinians. I doubt that’s really the issue, but if stopping war crimes in Gaza is appeasement, let’s try appeasement!
Jokes aside, we know bombing won’t solve this. Maybe bargaining won’t, maybe diplomacy won’t, maybe developing new regional security arrangements won’t, maybe exerting pressure on regional allies won’t.
But as painful as it may be for our arms manufacturers, we’re going to have to try something other than more bombing.
How about we give our own people a comfortable life before worrying about the feelings of fascist Islamist terrorists half way across the world?
Like, did we not just spent the last 20 years “nation building” in Afghanistan to the tune of >$2 trillion, including not only military training but also building schools and other civilian infrastructure, only to have them just piss it away and let the Taliban walk back in and impose strict theocratic law upon their society in the span of just a few months. Now Afghani girls aren’t even allowed to attend the schools that we built.
Contrary to what white guilt might have one believe, there is plenty of money in the Middle East. Unfortunately it’s all in the hands of royals, oligarchs and warlords. There are powerful Houthi’s at the top of the chain of command who have a lot more spending money than any of us. We aren’t the world police, nor are we Santa Claus. It’s not our responsibility to improve their lives, just as they wouldn’t ever consider doing anything for us if roles were reversed.
If the Houthis want to attack international trade ships, even after a month of warnings and wrist-slaps, they should expect nothing more than counter-attacks from the nations who are interested in preserving global order. We aren’t going to fix them no matter how much money we give them, and so the best we can hope for is that they eventually learn not to fuck with us or our allies.
If we should stop anything, it should be the military support we give to Israel. We are literally fueling their ethnic cleansing. If we cared less about them then we would be doing more good.
Agreed
How about instead of violence we give the people a comfortable life so they don’t feel compelled to do dumb shit like this?
Okay. So where does Yemen, which is currently in a civil war, start? And what is our proposed role in helping achieve their comfortable life in the next few months?
No, let’s just keep killing. This time will be different!
Laying down and putting a gun to our head and saying “Please, pull the trigger if you feel so inclined” isn’t an alternative.
When you’re shot at, it is generally accepted that you’re allowed to shoot back.
A good start would be to stop selling weapons to the Saudis that then use them to commit genocide in Yemen.
And that will lead to Yemen having a comfortable life where they don’t feel compelled to do ‘dumb shit’ like this?
For the record, I am completely in support of cutting off the Saudis entirely from US arms sales. But it’s not a solution to the immediate, or, for that matter, the long-term problem here. Though arguably the long-term problem isn’t our concern, considering the amount of vitriol the US gets for ‘meddling’ in the affairs of foreign countries.
It’s hard to have a good life getting bombed to shit
Okay. Now the Saudis aren’t sold any more US weapons. The Yemeni civil war continues, with sectarian groups funded by the Saudis and Iranians bombing each other to shit.
What next?
We invade Iraq
The Yemeni civil war continues, with sectarian groups funded by the Saudis and Iranians bombing each other to shit.
Is the US not selling weapons to the Saudis? I’d love to see evidence of that.
they don’t feel compelled
Yep, I’m sure they’re dirt poor, starving, lacking clean water and medicine, but compelled to take pot shots at random shops passing by. If it weren’t for “donations” from Iran to “the peace loving poor folk ….” How would they even afford the missiles to shoot?
This is like bringing up arguments of the US civil war and claiming it’s about states rights
That would be an option, if they weren’t fucking with global food and energy supply lines.
Yemen has suffered enough, the Houthis should be crushed like the rest of the Iranian proxys so the people who deserve freedom can get it.
