Red Sea crisis from Houthi attacks hits world trade as cost of shipping soars by 170%

boem@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 311 points –
Red Sea crisis from Houthi attacks hits world trade as cost of shipping soars by 170%
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Another convenient excuse for the hand of the free market to limit supply and jack up prices even further...

I mean, if buttholes are shooting missiles at boats, I think we're beyond "convenient excuses." Do you want to captain a ship through there by chance?

Any legitimate situation will be taken to gouge prices far beyond their actual additional costs. So yes, it is a convenient excuse.

This is the truth. We're now in a place where prices only ratchet up... All they need is a global event, and like beats of a drum, all of the megacorps raise prices in sync

No collusion, no competition, only prices go up

Did they sink any?

Did literally one person die?

People have died in pirate attacks before.

Recently, ships have been hit with missiles.

A lot more people could die if the attacks are not stopped or avoided.

sounds like they need to put some pep in their step stopping the ongoing genocide then

You realize it's just an excuse for them to attack, right?

man i wish there were some way to test that theory

maybe we could do sort of a 'stopping the ongoing genocide' test run, see how they respond

and then keep it going indefinitely because genocide is bad

They flew in with a Palestinian flag on their helicopter. Their own flag say's death to Israel and America; the nations doing the genocide and sponsoring the genocide. And all of this is after they just survived a genocide at the hands of the Saudi's with US bombs and went on to win the war.

Maybe, just maybe, they mean what they say.

Why would they attack international shipping if not to stop genocide?

There is no reason for them to do this aside from being the only people with enough morals to step up against Genocide Joe.

They are being directed to attack ships indiscriminately by Iran. If they wanted to fight genocide for real, a naval blockade without weapons would do the trick. This is just terrorism.

Edit: jfc, I don't just pull this shit out of my ass.

  • Yemen: I'm blockading the Red Sea to stop the genocide in Gaza.
  • US: Iran, please tell Yemen to stop.
  • Iran: lol no, this is righteous.

Somehow this makes them Iran's puppets. Oh well, guess we'll have to do "Operation Enduring Freedom part 2: Prosperity Guardian". Can't just tell Bibi to stop.

The ships have already received warnings not to pass through and they decide to ignore them.

Also there are tunnels and a command center beneath the ships so Yemen has the right to defend themselves.

"a naval blockade without weapons", also known as 'asking nicely to pwease stop'

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They're firing fucking rockets at them, isn't that bad enough?

To nearly double international shipping costs?

No, it's not.

Lmao.

Insurance costs for sailing through the red sea are a verifiable metric, and it actually costs at least an order of magnitude more than it used to.

Are you saying the insurers are part of an international cabal of deep state global elites who actually provide lower rates to transportation companies than they state, or somehow hand over those profits freely to Wal-Mart so they can double-dip on the price gouging......???

Like bruh you can criticize price gouging without falling head-over-heels into insane crackpot conspiracy theories. Missiles are being fired, ships have to divert south around Africa, shipping gets expensive, simple as.

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And corporations will certainly not use this convenient excuse to jack up their prices immediately, then keep them there after the crisis passes, right? Right?

They're real good at raising prices. Not good at lowering them. Also good at claiming record profits every year while cutting workforces.

While blaming everything else for why they are cutting the workforce to increase profits even higher

The actual cost hit due to the Houthis was 1.7%

Yeah this isn't gonna go on much longer without a military response, which I am guessing is the plan. Keep spreading the US and allied countries' military attention thinner and thinner.

the other option is to comply with the Houthi demands that the starvation of the people of Gaza be ended and supplies be allowed in accordance with the International Laws

Even if America succeeds in mobilising the entire world, our military operations will not stop … no matter the sacrifices it costs us,” Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, said...

Some of you will die but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

I mean, I think they'd call that an honorable death in some circles.

Don't they see the US as basically the Empire?

George Lucas certainly did. The Vietnam War was part of the inspiration for Star Wars.

I see the level of political discourse in this sub has risen to the level of :checks notes: Star Wars references.

No doubt that is why there have been muted responses to attacks - it would look really bad to the world.

They also demand a grab bag of other random extremist taking points like that the Quran should be how countries are run, and that the prophets descendents have an absolute right to rule.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_movement https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2017/12/21/the-houthis-endgame-in-yemen/

Thats just their general movement. Not their explicit demands for the blockade.

Because they're so trustworthy? There's no clear connection from ships being targeted to Israel like they claim.

Did you somehow miss the video Ansar Allah released of seizing the glalxy leader? Did you miss the big Palestinian flag on the back of the helicopter? Did you miss the Yemeni operator announcing why they are seizing the ship?

Like what are you trying to suggest Ansar Allah's alternative motives are? Simple piracy? They've only captured one ship and are mostly scaring others off. Seems like bad tactics for piracy but good blockade tactics.

Galaxy Leader is owned by a company co-owned by an Israeli. They said any connection to Israel will get you attacked. I'm sure theres more tenous connections. But I also dont really care. They can shut down the Red Sea entirely for all I care. Getting all nitpicky on how someone is trying to stop a genocide is in service of the genocide. If you dont like what Ansar Allah is doing you can call your rep and tell them to stop sponsoring genocide. Have some fucking priorities.

Every major country is affected by this. India and China have as much interest in free passage through the Red See as the US or the EU.

And yet China, who has a naval base in Djibouti, seems to just be sitting back and letting everyone else tackle this

Bingo. They know that someone else will do something eventually is my guess.

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Operation Prosperity Guardian is already underway. Unfourtuantly, modern drone technology tilts the scales in favor of the attacker in this sort of situation relative to where it was a decade ago; and commercial shipping companies are not in the bussiness of shipping through active combat zones.

NATO has so many resources, it's the entire purpose of NATO.

Saying the resources are being spread thinner is a undebatable fact but I would say not every military/country in NATO had even CLOSE to 100% of people working on Ukraine before Israel piped up.

NATO can handle a lot more of this shit

Navy helicopter shot down a couple of boats a few days ago, but the response will probably grow.

Yeah I mean more of an attack on land actually in Yemen situation or even potentially boots on the ground and not just some sort of cruise missile or air strike.

They did a good job of spreading themselves thin. Gotta justify that $800+ billion spending.

Guaranteeing free movement is one of the reasons we have a large military.

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I wonder if ships will face issue caused by Cape Horn since they'll have to go by that route.

Things are starting to sound like the book

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_World_Is_Just_the_Beginning

which goes into a speculated deglobalization timeline with pretty detailed rhetoric.

Care to elaborate why is this relevant?

The book goes into some detail why and how the deteriorating global situation will start affecting global shipping and cascading into an array of economic crap scenarios.

Doomer nonsense.

The book is about the US backing off from protecting global trade and what happens afterword. Such is the core thing holding up our current globalized trading system.

It isn’t about everyone dying or some shit (“Doomerism”), it is about geopolitics.

You should read it. Pretty much no one understands how the current state of international affairs has been maintained by global trade. The U.S. Navy protects all global trade. Not just trade to and from the U.S., but obviously it’s not a popular domestic position and it doesn’t make much sense for the U.S. to continue anyway. There’s winners and losers, but mostly losers

What a dumb take. American interventionism exists to rob countries of oil, destabilize them, and make sure they cannot surpass Americ in power.

The entire reason the middle east is chaos right now is because of America. israel is a prime example. A Nazi state that only exists because of America so they can control the region, and it creates chaos and wars.

America isn't doing jack shit for stability. If they wanted stability they would stop the Genocide instead of trying to pick fights with everyone to protect israel.

The US is now a net exporter of crude, petrochemicals and LNG. We don’t need the Middle East, in fact they are just competitors. But our allies desperately need those energy sources.

The US is currently in the middle of the largest industrial build out in history in N.A. At the end of it we will produce most of what we need locally. Because of our demographics N.A. has the largest consumer market in the world. Most of what we produce is consumed locally. We export food staples and high end technical products. We don’t need foreign markets… but they need us.

With all of the disruptions that global climate change is going to bring in ten to fifteen years, when N.A. is even more self sufficient than it is now, do you think the US will continue to subsidize the world’s economy? Why would we continue guaranteeing freedom of the seas in areas where we have no interest?

America wants to couple oil to the collar and in the past forced everyone to do so. Any leader that wanted to be paid in gold got killed.

Because everyone needs energy, everyone is forced to trade in dollars. And you know what America can do? Print those dollarydoos.

So they are not just making sure their monopoly is stable but also that they have an infinite money hack by devaluing the global currency that everyone is forced to trade in.

Israel only exists because of Nazis, but you can go ahead and call them Nazis. The irony is clearly not lost on you.

There has not been a world war since the U.S. has been upholding the international order that has seen countries like China, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and many others experience massive economic gains.

The times America has been engaged in conflict since WW2 ended have so much propaganda draped over them that people forget who invaded who first. The North Koreans invaded South Korea to begin the Korean War. The North Vietnamese invaded South Vietnam to begin the Vietnam war. The Iraqis invaded Kuwait to begin Operation Desert Storm. The Serbs tried to genocide the Albanians in Kosovo to begin NATO intervention in the Balkans. The one time the U.S. was totally in the wrong was when Bush lied about Iraq being involved in 9/11, which was completely untrue.

You can have your opinions, but it doesn’t reflect reality. And when the U.S. Navy stops ensuring the free flow of goods, the countries that the U.S. is hurting according to you will be begging us to return the world to the previous order.

Of course, idiots Ike yourself will find a way to blame the CIA for whatever happens because it’s just gotta always be the US’s fault.

The world is literally a mess right now. How you define "stable" is literally in terms of your own day to day affairs.

Lmao. Just give it ten years and we can have that conversation.

Bush lied about WMD's in Iraq not 9/11. The rest of your comments are all bullshit too but when you claim that israeli Nazis have been defending themselves into stealing all Palestinian land and murdering little children I guess you need some insane alternate history book for your world view to make sense.

Nope, you’re wrong. He started it all with a connection to 9/11. Then they shifted to 9/11 because US intelligence refused to corroborate his lies. But he made those statements as facts. Dude just wanted to finish what his dad didn’t back in the early 90s

Actually you're right. My bad. I didn't know that he lied about "Iraq doing 9/11 too" . And afterwards he lied about the WMD's too. He was just making up tonnes of lies and finding any reason to invade Iraq and overthrow their government to steal oil.

And America got away with it of course.

I'm not entirely sure how this helps your point of America not being the bad actor destabilizing the region though. If anything it makes it even worse. They're just lying about everything and killing everyone to steal all their things.

Well it’s the exception as opposed to the rule lol. Look, I grew up thinking the same thing. The truth is there’s a growing faction of folks who want the US to be total isolationists. It’s growing and it’s becoming what’s best for America’s interests. My whole point is that this isn’t what is best for the world’s interests, as hard as that is to believe. We don’t really have to argue back and forth when we can just look at what’s gonna happen in the next decade. But the world will be more dangerous, not more safe without the US spearheading global security. Time will tell

Vietnam was justified

The absolute historical ignorance Americans put themselves through to preserve the patriotism. You really gotta shove your head deep into the sand to have never gotten a history lesson on Vietnam.

Who invaded who in Vietnam? South Vietnam was invaded first. Thats kind what spurred US involvement. Your head is so far up some Russian trolls ass that you forgot history

The US was had troops in South Vietnam since it was founded. It was a rump French puppet state with incredibly corrupt catholic government that was persecuting the Buddhist minorities. The north was made up of the national forces that kicked the French out. They had every right to overthrow the southern government.

This isnt russian troll position. Americans were saying this enmasse the start of the Vietnam war. American protestors died to stop that war. Draftees killed their officers frequently over it. Read anything about it.

Like do you think the Confederates were justified because the Union invaded them?

It’s not the same. The north and south didn’t sign an agreement a year before saying that the south was free to leave and be its own country before being invaded. It just illegally left because it wanted to own humans. Sovereignty was granted to both the north and south of Vietnam and that still wasn’t enough.

North Vietnam only recognized south Vietnam under international threat. Besides, if Buchanan had signed such a treaty before Lincoln entered office would you then have sided with the south? Are treaties really the moral arbiter in this situation?

Point is you can't really "invade" your own country. They're both Vietnam. The north had a moral duty to support their oppressed brethren in the south. If that means sending troops to support then so be it. Claiming moral outrage over this because they "invaded" their own country is a childish form of morality that strips all historical context.

For how oppressed they all were, why do they suddenly have such great opinions of their so-called oppressors? Vietnam has a very high opinion of the U.S.

Buddy we weren't ruling southern Vietnam. But we were propping up a wildly corrupt puppet government in the south. Once we gave up on that, they found us useful to play off China and still do. They dont really care about us.

Vietnamese independence is a long saga. First fighting against the French, then with the Japanese against the French, then against the Japanese, then against the French again, then against the US, then against China.

What parts did you find unconvincing?

You read it, right?

They linked a Wikipedia article for a whole book. We can read the summary section, but presumably it would be better to have read the whole book.

Wouldn't a comment where they mention what applies in this specific situation make more sense than just a link for a book with a title that's meant to rile people up?

Those that have read it would know there’s a whole section on the US’ protection of world trade and what could happen if it stopped.

Those that have read it would know exactly what it meant to link that book in a thread like this one.

People are down voting you due to the link name without actually reading it, in the future if you have links like that, it may be helpful to use a hidden link/named link like this to weed out the people who didn't actually click on it. They just see a "end of the world" link and down vote. The link you posted summerises the overall preface quite well, The issue is a global issue, more then just the US is effected by this embargo. I'm against military involvement but, I also think that's the only way to preserve the routes due to neither side being willing to even talk.