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posted by martyb on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-popularity-at-home-lags,-start-a-war dept.

Iran says it's 'completely ready for war' after US official confirms it shot down American drone

In a major provocation, Iran shot down an unarmed and unmanned U.S. Navy MQ-4C Triton drone while it was flying in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz Thursday, a U.S. official told ABC News.

The incident is sure to trigger serious discussions within the Trump administration about how to respond to a direct attack on a U.S. military asset that goes beyond recent attacks in the Middle East that the U.S. has blamed on Iran.

Gulf crisis: US confirms drone was shot down by Iranian missile

A US military surveillance drone has been shot down by Iranian forces while flying over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said the drone had violated Iranian airspace. But US military said it had been over international waters. IRGC commander-in-chief Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said the downing of the drone sent a "clear message to America" that Iran's borders were its "red line".

It comes at a time of escalating tension between the US and Iran. On Monday, the US defence department said it was deploying 1,000 extra troops to the region in response to "hostile behaviour" by Iranian forces. The US has also accused Iran of attacking two oil tankers with mines last Thursday just outside the Strait of Hormuz, in the Gulf of Oman. Iran rejects the allegation.

Previously: Two Oil Tankers Attacked, US Blames Iran


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:32PM (14 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:32PM (#857971) Homepage Journal

    Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Pakistan. Now it's Iran - not that any of the other wars are finished.

    Granted, most of the above were started by The Shrub and Peace-Prize Obama. Guess Trump has decided to join the party, and get his name associated with a war or two...

    Back in Vietnam days, the general population managed to apply enough political pressure to stop the war. Any chance of that happening again?

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:30PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:30PM (#858029)

    No, most of the above were started by the Bush duo, father and son.

    God... some people really do live in their own little version of reality.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:46PM

      by Hartree (195) on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:46PM (#858045)

      "God... some people really do live in their own little version of reality."

      Indeed they do.

      Since the first Libyan Civil War started in 2011 it's about as much a stretch to blame it on the Bushes as it is to exonerate Johnson by blaming Vietnam on Eisenhower. There's a kernel of reality there, but it's pretty small.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Hartree on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:40PM

    by Hartree (195) on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:40PM (#858037)

    "Any chance of that happening again?"

    No.

    Much of that concern about peace love and humanity during Vietnam was motivated by not wanting to get drafted/not wanting your boyfriend/brother/whatnot drafted.
    Now it's a volunteer army and so the level of self interest... I mean "love and caring" isn't so high.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @04:44PM (#858043)

    Back in Vietnam days, the general population managed to apply enough political pressure to stop the war. Any chance of that happening again?

    Unlikely. We don't have the draft anymore, so middle class children are not being put at risk anymore. If I can be so crass, it is the poor and dumb that are enlisted and available as cannon fodder.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Freeman on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:10PM (3 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:10PM (#858063) Journal

    Maybe Trump will be in the running for a Peace-Prize too, now.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:19PM (2 children)

      by Hartree (195) on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:19PM (#858074)

      Well, the Nobel Peace Prize, after all, memorializes an arms manufacturer.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:11PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:11PM (#858187)

        Creator of dynamite (TNT in convenient stick form), actually.

        • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Thursday June 20 2019, @09:24PM

          by Hartree (195) on Thursday June 20 2019, @09:24PM (#858224)

          Founder and owner of Nobel Company, later, one of the principle people of Dynamit Nobel LLC both of which were huge armaments manufacturers.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:27PM (#858081)

    No, the system has repeatedly beaten down all protests and the control over mass media has marginalized every protest that actually gets some traction. I've heard about soooo many large protests only after they've been done for a while.

    Vietnam broke the US in more ways than one. Even after MLK was assassinated the black community still tried to keep going, but the corrupt feds did them in. The lesson was clear, stand up to the powers-that-be and get murdered or imprisoned. Best case? Have your life and reputation ruined.

    It will only stretch so far before the system breaks down and people are so desperate that the threatened consequences no longer matter. I really really hope we can fix the country before we get to the truly nasty parts, but as this site amply proves we have not reached a level of unification where we can get cohesive action.

    I'm pretty sure there are some users around here that think the current immigrant concentration camps are totally fine cause "they're illegals!" as if that justifies human rights violations. The wheel of history is turning round again and there is nothing the average person is able to do about it. Get a big enough group to protest? It won't make the news and the officials fall back on "just following the legally issued orders" and the wheel keeps grinding. We have no mechanism for popular discontent, simply a very lengthy and easily subverted voting process.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:34PM (1 child)

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday June 20 2019, @05:34PM (#858085)

    The problem is that the MIC and their servants (the politicians on both sides of the aisle) learned some stuff from Vietnam, but the anti-war hippies mostly didn't. What the MIC learned:
    1. Hide as much as you possibly can about what you are doing from the American public. Things you saw in Vietnam that turned public opinion that they went to great lengths to hide in subsequent wars: Images of killed or wounded US soldiers, killed or wounded Iraqi civilians, indeed any video footage where the military hasn't either provided the film or staged events for pliant reporters, total number of KIA and WIA and POW on both sides, and of course the total cost in money. If there are reporters in-country that aren't doing what you want them to be doing, kill them [wikileaks.org].
    2. Don't draft people, because some of those people you draft and their parents are going to be educated and smart and rich enough to be able to organize effectively and start social movements. Instead, recruit people who are poor, non-white or white-trash rural folks, just out of high school, ambitious, and naive enough.
    3. Make sure to have an ongoing propaganda campaign about how awesome the military is. Among the implementations of this policy are the NFL and the Captain America films. In short, any time you see US military equipment or personnel in popular media, you're viewing government propaganda.
    4. Never let the anti-war people get on TV, or call them wimps or crazy if they somehow manage to get in front of the cameras. Congresscritters included. For instance, back in 2004, my thoroughly anti-war congressman was in a national debate and was asked not about policy but about his experiences with UFOs. This is also why the freedom of assembly basically no longer exists.

    The hippies learned basically nothing from what worked and didn't work against the Vietnam War, and in particular didn't understand and still largely don't understand how to use popular media to tell the story they want to tell.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @08:02PM (#858181)
      If you mean generally anti-war people and not just (specifically) hippies I don't think that is a fair assessment. Because there is money (and generally, resources) involved, lone voices in opposition to resource grabs can never hope to achieve the same kind of organizing power.

      For context, see for example https://medium.com/@barrettbrown/we-exposed-hbgary-hbgary-came-after-us-the-intercepts-sam-biddle-helped-85d8060b92c8 [medium.com]. From point 2 in the letter:

      [...] They did discover (I think) that the firm that won this contract for CENTCOM — which involves deploying fake online people with highly developed backgrounds, software that allows a single person to easily control ten such avatars (usually called personas back then)  [...]

      More context is the bibliography of Edward Bernays, marketing psychology, data mining and so on. The point being that immeasurable quantities of time and moneys have been spent on trying to figure out how to shape the direction that society should take, in the presence of adverse conditions (e.g. dissenting voices). From this point of view, it is almost a miracle that there still are dissenters. At the very least, the ownership class certainly seems to want the society we live in (i.e. resource grabs for feedstock), and the worker class is too inundated with work to achieve the level of organization that is necessary to effect change -- which doesn't even raise the question of whether they really want change.

      Disclaimer: I am not a US or Iranian citizen. On a side note, I think globalism is an effort to pass imperialism over into legitimacy by unifying everyone, new-world-order style. Maybe people in power who think imperialism is a necessary evil -- and really a terrible thing -- find in globalism the next best thing. Unfinished thought, kind of.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @06:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @06:19PM (#858109)

    Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Syria. Pakistan. Now it's Iran - not that any of the other wars are finished.

    and it's nothing new, as the eminent philosopher noted [youtube.com].

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday June 20 2019, @09:28PM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday June 20 2019, @09:28PM (#858228)
    You know, given the layout of the area and deployments of US forces to it over the last few decades, the only safe conclusion to draw from this is that US Presidents would *suck* at playing Risk.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by realDonaldTrump on Friday June 21 2019, @05:53AM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday June 21 2019, @05:53AM (#858456) Homepage Journal

    You forgot Somalia. And, Yemen. I inherited an ABSOLUTE MESS!!!!