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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10211 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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That tweet is exactly what I'm talking about.

In the last 24 hours, UKMTO, which is sponsored by the British navy, has issued four reports of attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

From September 24-28, it issued no such reports despite the Iranian military's claim that it struck 19 vessels in the Strait of Hormuz from September 25-27.

He apparently thinks the UKMTO is fake and that Iran's propaganda is real? Iran said not too long ago that a VLCC hit two mines caught fire and stopped. Cool, what was the name of the ship? We have to discount Iran's pronouncements to near zero. The fact that this "serious" person isn't doing so shows that he's far from serious.

Ships are transiting the strait with impunity even if a few get dinged from time to time. I think there was an actual casualty event a week or two ago, so it's not completely nothing. But when an actual power like the US wants to attack a ship, they sink it, name it, and post the video.

We don’t really know if it’s “a few get dinged” though. The UKMTO number is the lowest number that US/UK are willing to release so that people continue taking the figure halfways seriously. If 20 vessels were struck, we might still find only 4 on the UKMTO. If we just added +38 sailor / marine casualties for September, either Iran hit one of our important military ships or Iran has hit a number of oil vessels being operated by sailors. Apparently there were 8 sailors on one oil vessel transiting that were injured, so perhaps Iran struck about five oil vessels sufficient to cause injury. Or perhaps even the +38 casualty number is lower than the true figure. The fact that we need our own soldiers operating oil vessels in yet another tell that it’s worse in the strait than Trump would like us to believe.

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