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Substantial parts of the insurance and shipping businesses disagree with you, they think the Houthis attacks are not indiscriminate. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...rce=reddit_wall https://www.reuters.com/business/maersk-introduces-surcharge-israel-shipments-cover-insurance-2023-12-07/ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-16/insurers-seek-to-exclude-us-uk-ships-from-red-sea-cover?leadSource=reddit_wall There's a reason ships were putting "ALL CHINESE CREW" or "NO ISRAEL" in their AIS, and it's not that they think the Houthis are doing random piracy or don't care who they attack. V. Illych L. posted:what case were you hoping to make with this statement? "I am bleeding, making me the victor". (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 10, 2024 12:22
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Do I really have to spell out that when insurance companies are raising rates or entirely excluding coverage for US, British and Israeli (affiliated) ships, it's because the insurers think the Houthis are not attacking indiscriminately?https://www.reuters.com/business/us-uk-ship-investors-hit-by-soaring-red-sea-insurance-sources-2024-02-07/ posted:Ships with a link to the U.S., Britain or Israel are now paying 25-50% more in war risk premium than other ships to navigate the Red Sea, said David Smith, head of hull and marine liabilities at insurance broker McGill and Partners. I guess the people being interviewed are just being imprecise, and they actually mean that Chinese vessels and nobody else will get cheaper rates? Esran fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Feb 10, 2024 |
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Feb 10, 2024 17:13
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So it is your view that the actuaries working for these insurance companies are simply wrong, and you know better?
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Feb 10, 2024 18:08
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Kchama posted:I did some actual reading, and it seems like everyone has been hit with the war premium increase, not just the US and UK. There's only singling out of US/UK is "we expect there to be more attacks on US/UK ships because they are going to war with the Houthis." I would expect actuaries working for an insurance company insuring maritime shipping to have more insight (special or otherwise) into the thing they're evaluating risk for, than random posters on a dead message board, yes. If insurers believed the Houthis were not at least attempting to target US/UK/Israeli vessels over others, it would make no sense for them to impose special costs for just US/UK/Israeli vessels, or for the insurers to want to forego that business entirely.
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Feb 10, 2024 18:48
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Kchama posted:They clearly didn't have more insight, considering just as many non-affiliated ships were hit than affiliated. But like, just because they thought that's how it'd shake out because the Houthis pledged to only go after affiliated ships doesn't mean that is how it actually went down. There's a reason why I looked into the attacked ships and their affiliation. Because that is a hell of a lot stronger evidence than insurers, who certainly aren't known for their reputation to use any excuse they have to increase insurance premiums, and who basically were just going off the Houthis word. And who also said, and I quote, The Reuters article I posted regarding insurers wanting to put special language into contracts and/or denying coverage specifically for US/UK/Israeli vessels is 3 days old. I don't see a reason to think the insurers have changed their minds in the last 3 days. 3 days ago, they already had months of data to draw from, there's no way they're just blindly trusting the Houthis. Insurers have no incentive to deny coverage for certain shipping if they don't believe that category of shipping is more likely to be attacked than the other ships they're insuring. It literally loses them money. Also unless they're totally incompetent, they will have picked an existing price point for insurance that maximizes profit. Raising the price for no reason should also lose them money, assuming a modicum of competence. You're reaching into conspiracy territory at this point. Esran fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Feb 10, 2024 |
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Feb 10, 2024 19:12
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It's conspiracy theory because I'm pointing out that within the last 3 days some insurers say they want to either raise costs or deny coverage specifically for US/UK/Israeli vessels, and your response is to tell me that maybe the actuaries are wrong, maybe they were just going off the Houthis' statements, maybe the insurance companies just want to raise rates because insurance companies love to raise rates. You're implying that the insurers are some combination of incompetent, gullible or lying about their motives when they raise rates or deny coverage. How would anyone provide evidence to the contrary? Regarding the Reuters article, I'm not saying all insurers are doing this. I'm saying some of the major players in that space are. I don't think the article is vague at all, it provides an example of how US/UK/Israeli ships may be affected: quote:Two insurance industry sources said ships with U.S., UK or Israeli links would be quoted a higher rate, even above 50% I don't think it makes any sense for Reuters to cover a story about shipping insurance this way, if what's actually going on (which I understood you to be implying) is that insurance premiums are just going up for any ship not receiving a military escort.
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Feb 10, 2024 19:46
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Kchama posted:That's not a conspiracy theory, and also not what I said. A conspiracy theory involves a conspiracy, which is not any of those things. I mean, gently caress, I even gave an example of what a conspiracy theory about the situation would be! "Insurance company has an excuse, good or not, to raise premiums and thus does so" wouldn't even make someone bat their eyelashes in any conversation. Okay, let me try to be precise about what I'm claiming, and why what you said reads as conspiracy theory to me: I am claiming that actuaries at some major insurance companies disagree with the thread's assessment that the Houthis are attacking random targets of opportunity. I am claiming this because I think what the people who are paid to assess risk believe is likely to be more accurate than the opinions of random posters in this thread. I try to show that the actuaries likely believe this, by pointing out that some of the insurance companies are making public noises about raising rates or denying coverage for US/UK/Israeli vessels. Raising rates or denying coverage are both acts that the companies believe will lose them money, unless US/UK/Israeli vessels are actually being attacked more than other vessels. Denying coverage loses the company business entirely. Raising rates means the loss of some customers and a reduction in overall profit. You might argue that this won't happen, but the company certainly believes it will, otherwise they would have already raised rates. Not raising rates when you believe raising rates leads to more profit is just leaving money on the table for no reason, and companies don't do this knowingly. So, the company is doing something that they believe will lose them money in pure income terms. This must be because the actuaries think US/UK/Israeli vessels are more likely to be attacked than others, and so a higher rate is needed to cover that risk for the company. The insurance companies have no other incentive to raise the rates on these specific vessels otherwise. I think this chain of reasoning is solid. You seemed to disagree, and your reasons were: quote:They clearly didn't have more insight, considering just as many non-affiliated ships were hit than affiliated. But like, just because they thought that's how it'd shake out because the Houthis pledged to only go after affiliated ships doesn't mean that is how it actually went down. There's a reason why I looked into the attacked ships and their affiliation. My takeaway from this is that you think the actuaries either are currently or were previously just trusting the Houthis, but that now we should know better. I think that take is bad, because the article I posted is only 3 days old, I don't think it's likely the actuaries blindly trusted the Houthis then, and I don't think they're likely to have changed their views much in the last 3 days. quote:Because that is a hell of a lot stronger evidence than insurers, who certainly aren't known for their reputation to use any excuse they have to increase insurance premiums, and who basically were just going off the Houthis word. What I understand you to be saying here is that the insurers are using an excuse to raise interest rates, and again claiming that they were just trusting the Houthis. The conspiracy theory part is this explanation requires multiple sources in the insurance industry to lie to Reuters about their motives for raising rates. Recall that one of them says outright that he feels "The ships that have so far had problems, almost all of them have got some element of Israeli or U.S. or UK ownership in there somewhere", in the context of raising rates on these ships. The other justification you gave boils down to the actuaries being very bad at their jobs. Which is totally fine for you to believe, I just don't see a reason to think posters in this thread know better than the people who are paid to predict which ships are likely to be attacked. Kchama posted:My previous posts even stated outright I thought they were raising premiums because the Houthis claiming they're going to focus on the US/UK gives them good reason to focus the premium raises on the US/UK. The Houthis claiming they're going to attack certain ships is not a good reason to increase premiums on those ships specifically, unless you believe them. If premiums are being raised more on US/UK/Israeli ships than on other ships, that means someone thinks those ships are more likely to be targeted. That premiums went up for everyone would happen even if the Houthis were targeting exactly the people they claimed. If you're sailing through an area where someone is trying to shoot at specific ships, that's riskier than sailing through peaceful waters, even if you're not being deliberately targeted. I understood what you meant about exclusionary clauses, but they're not going to put a section of legalese into a Reuters article. I think what they meant is clarified by the rest of the article: Raising rates in some cases, denying coverage in others. The exact criteria may be unclear, but the guy Reuters is talking to clearly explains that the goal is to exclude ships they believe the Houthis are more likely to target, which the insurance people think are ships that are in some way affiliated with the US, UK or Israel. The exact criteria for what "affiliated" means is irrelevant, the point is that it's not "all ships without military guard".
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Feb 10, 2024 20:44
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Kchama posted:I still don’t know why you are harping on about actuaries when you can just like… look at the ships that were attacked and damaged and find out which ones were US/UK/Israel linked and which ones weren’t. I feel like that sort of information would trump what some actuaries believe. It's because I think those actuaries most likely have access to better and more accurate information than whatever posters in this thread can find on Wikipedia. I wanted to establish that at some of the major players in the insurance space think the Houthis are not targeting ships randomly. I think I've done so, and I thought you disagreed. But it seems that what you disagree with is the idea that the insurance companies are likely to know better.
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Feb 10, 2024 22:25
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Discendo Vox posted:This is not an escalation, it's just them succeeding at what they've been attempting to do for years- demand the ship dock at a port they control so they can strip it, and attempt to destroy the ship if they refuse. Source your claim that they were demanding the ship dock at a port they control, and that the crew refused. How is shooting a missile at a ship, likely causing it to sink, "them succeeding" at the piracy for profit you think they're attempting? Sunk cargo is not actually profitable.
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Feb 19, 2024 23:24
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Saladman posted:For that exact ship? Who knows. They had been demanding to some / many ships passing through that they dock at Hodeidah so their crew can be imprisoned and their goods confiscated, for several months. https://www.voanews.com/amp/missile-fired-from-rebel-controlled-yemen-misses-container-ship-/7399124.html for example from back in December. I don't think "Who knows" is the source I was looking for. Thank you for supplying a source that the Houthis have at some points ordered ships to dock in Yemen though. But it sounds like you're saying the Houthis are really terrible at for-profit piracy, because they're not managing to actually capture ships this way, since no one is willing to surrender. The one they did capture, they got by helicopter raid. It doesn't make you question your read on the situation when your explanation of what the Houthis are doing requires assuming they're dumb? TheDeadlyShoe posted:For real? Check the quote boxes in posts you've already made, or perhaps follow the 'Don't bomb innocent people' chain of logic to its obvious conclusion. Is the obvious conclusion you want us to reach that you condemn the terrorist government of Israel, and their American backers, for their months of bombing of innocent people? Because that's where "Don't bomb innocent people" takes me. Applying that thinking fairly, you might also conclude that it would be good if the Houthis didn't shoot missiles at lightly crewed giant floating warehouses, because they might eventually hit a person, but that would be pretty far down the wishlist. Esran fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 00:48
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:So the lives of sailors in this region have less value to you, is what you're saying. This post is transparent trolling. The hypothetical death of sailors in the region (there have been zero so far, and this has been happening for months) should not be given the same weight as the actual real tens of thousands of corpses created by the Israeli terrorist regime, no. I would think that was obvious. Also why did you quote two completely unrelated sentences from my post? Esran fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 16:50
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:If human life is precious, then it is precious, regardless of who and where it is, and any kind of violence against it should (in any internally consistent ideology) be considered abhorrent. This is very cute, but someone who actually believed this would focus on the much greater crime of the genocide which has actually resulted in more than 25000 deaths and which is still going on right now, and not spend all their time wringing their hands about the death of a sailor that might occur at some point in the future, if bad luck strikes. When this kind of pacifist absolutism is deployed only to condemn the enemies of the West, and curiously absent when it's the West doing the murdering, it's obviously not worth engaging with. To put this in terms you should understand: If someone breaks into a discussion about WW2 to condemn the British for bombing German cities because violence is wrong, but they have nothing to say on the Holocaust, then I don't consider their moral reasoning to be sound. Esran fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 17:51
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:You may as well condemn me if I criticise Stalin and fail to say that Nazis are bad. If someone criticizes Stalin but becomes all evasive when the subject turns to the Nazis, then I definitely will condemn them. quote:The fact that I criticize the Houthis is not related to whatever my opinions may or may not be on Israel, believe it or not. Oh hey, would you look at that. Plastic_Gargoyle posted:E:and if I recall, the criticism of those Allied bombing operations frequently comes from the political left, weirdly enough. Imagine that. Leftists are not generally silent on the Nazis, is the difference there. People contemporaneously condemning the bombings, while refusing to take a strong stance against the Nazis, are not generally remembered as principled pacifists. Plastic_Gargoyle posted:So you won't trust criticism of one side unless that person also explicitly criticises the other side. If you refuse to criticise the side that is responsible for 100% of the murders that have actually been committed, and are mainly interested in discussing the fact that the other side might potentially also commit a murder some day, and your justification is "all life is sacred", then yeah. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Esran fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Feb 20, 2024 |
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Feb 20, 2024 18:41
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Neurolimal posted:- So instead they're taking the tact of attempting to make them an international pariah, pointing out that the attacks cause trouble for other countries and themselves, perhaps bring up Sudan a lot? If the State Department thinks anyone would believe that American concerns for the people of Yemen or Sudan is genuine, they really are brainless.
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Feb 24, 2024 00:45
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Grip it and rip it posted:Is any of this new information or a new topic for discussion? The only real interesting part of that article was the 60-day window in which the DoD can operate without further authorization from congress. Their post is good and adds lots of new information, they even summarized it in in bullet form. Some State Department officials believe Ansar Allah would stop the attacks if the genocide stopped, and the US is deliberately minimizing the connection between the genocide and the attacks as a propaganda strategy. The article also outlines the Houthi motivation for why they might stop the attacks: It's extremely popular domestically to be seen taking action to end the genocide (successful or not), and the Houthis care about domestic support. It goes on to provide evidence supporting this belief: Ansar Allah stopped their attacks during the ceasefire in November. There is also confirmation that the US is adopting a strategy of whataboutism, trying to discredit the Houthis in the eyes of others in the region by faking concern about the environment or the welfare of the people of Yemen. If you don't see how this is both new information and relevant to some of the arguments being made in this thread, I don't know what to say. Esran fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Feb 24, 2024 |
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Feb 24, 2024 10:10
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The Houthis offer to allow towing of the Rubymar in exchange for allowing aid into Gaza https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/houthis-demand-entry-of-relief-into-gaza-in-exchange-for-salvaging-sunken-british-ship/3147247 The position that the Houthis are doing stochastic piracy to steal goods, and only using the genocide as an excuse, is becoming increasingly untenable. Esran fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 19:50
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quote:Sheba Intelligence is an Open - Source Intelligence Platform Offering Precise Investigations & Reports. The site is run by dorks like Brown Moses, yeah I'd say that's a little bit sus. What I quoted is the full extent of what that site has to say about who they are. The Houthis deny this. https://shebaintelligence.uk/yemens-houthis-confirm-talks-with-eu-deny-receiving-money-from-ships-in-red-sea So the sourcing on this is "A Western diplomatic source", "Informed sources" and "a source in the Yemeni government" (this is presumably the Yemeni government currently at war with the Houthis), posted anonymously by an OSINT guy (i.e. "citizen journalist") Might want to hold off on running with this until the story becomes more than a rumour. Esran fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Feb 25, 2024 |
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Feb 25, 2024 20:16
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Grip it and rip it posted:On what planet would Israel give a single poo poo about a sunken British vessel off the coast of Yemen? In what way is this relevant to what I posted?
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Feb 26, 2024 02:14
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Grip it and rip it posted:They're the ones who decide whether aid trucks go into Gaza? I guess the UK had better start pressuring Israel to let in aid then, if they want their boat back? The Houthis obviously aren't expecting Israel to care about ships that don't belong to them, because that would be dumb.
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Feb 26, 2024 17:38
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Grip it and rip it posted:Why would they want a sunk boat back? It's cargo is spilling into the Red Sea. It's only value would be for scrap, and that would have to be towed all the way back to a friendly port to be harvested. These attacks have no chance of inspiring the kind of response that you are hoping for. That's why they're counter productive. It's a sideshow that is actively harming people in the region undertaken to try and claim legitimacy through violence. Condemning acts of resistance as counterproductive because they don't lead to immediate victory and are disruptive is loser mentality. Of course no individual act will stop the genocide. But the Houthi blockade hurts Israel economically, and puts pressure on them and their Western backers to end the genocide. It won't stop the genocide, but no individual act will. Your predictions about how the Houthi attacks would mean nothing, and that the US would just bomb them into submission haven't panned out so far. In fact the US looks weaker than ever. I hope you will continue to be wrong. By the way, "try and claim legitimacy through violence" is a hilarious way to describe "doing a thing that their population wants them to do, in order to become popular".
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Feb 26, 2024 23:04
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:I really don't understand posts like this. The post you quoted is opinionated but almost everything in it is a statement of fact or at least an attempt to grapple with objective reality. What point in the post do you actually disagree with? Do you think the attacks aren't harming people? Or that the attacks aren't an attempt to gain legitimacy by violence? I doubt anyone posting in this thread is unwilling to criticize George Washington; but by the same token, the Houthis should not be immune to criticism for these actions even if you think they're on the right side of history. It's this bit there's disagreement over. Grip it obviously does not think the Houthis are on the right side of history. They're not saying "The Houthis are trying to stop the genocide, which is laudable, but they could do better in these ways". They're much closer to saying "The Houthis are uselessly attacking shipping, it won't work, and it hurts innocent people and the environment, in fact it's counter productive to stopping the genocide, the Houthis are bad and should stop what they're doing". You can see how those aren't remotely the same standpoint, which should help you understand posts like that.
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Mar 3, 2024 11:41
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Grip it and rip it posted:They're actually both very similar standpoints. The primary difference is that one absolves the Houthi for their purported efforts towards a legitimate goal, and the other holds them responsible for their actual conduct and the consequences of those actions. They are not similar standpoints. One considers what the Houthis are doing to be justified in the name of stopping a genocide. The blockade is viewed as one step in the right direction (harming the economy of Israel), with many more steps necessary to actually stop the genocide. The attempt to stop or slow the genocide is considered more important than the disruptions to trade that may affect countries that aren't Israel or its backers. In this view, the Houthis are "on the right side of history". The other condemns the Houthis for disrupting trade, and considers the effects of this action on states that aren't Israel to be unacceptable. The blockade is viewed as counterproductive. The disruption to trade is considered more important than the attempt to stop or slow the genocide. The Houthis are not "on the right side of history". When you say "holds them responsible for the consequences of their actions" what you actually seem to mean is "I consider those consequences to not be worth attempting to stop or slow the genocide, because it won't work". Which is fine, but that's not "a similar standpoint". Josef bugman posted:If we are discussing "actual conduct" are we allowed to look at the actions of other belligerents such as the USA and UK? We are not. Every action must be viewed in isolation, otherwise you're doing a "whataboutism".
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Mar 3, 2024 20:34
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I like how you completely missed the point of that post, which wasquote:it appears as if that responsibility is reserved for only some actors in this situation (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 5, 2024 18:59
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Rust Martialis posted:I prefer not to engage in debating the merits of whataboutism. Of course you do. Sure, I would like the attacks to end. Since the Houthis have said they're going to continue the attacks until the genocide ends, and the Americans have shown their impotence at discouraging AA with military force, it seems to me that forcing an end to the genocide is the best option to stop these attacks, which is something the US (and maybe the EU) could absolutely do. A different option if the western powers would like to keep the genocide going is to approach AA diplomatically, and see if they can make a deal on getting the specific ships destined for Sudan safe passage. Esran fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Mar 5, 2024 |
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Mar 5, 2024 23:22
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