Dog Buns, how dense do you have to be to believe that Conrad made a spelling mistake? After all these years - 12 of them as of this month - you ought to realise how much of a Spelling And Grammar Nazi I am. Art!
Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a review of Mark Knopfler's guitar style, especially as Conrad was never a fan, thou
ANYWAY let me refer to my 'Collins Concise Dictionary'. STRAIT: "A narrow channel of the sea linking two larger areas of sea". It's derived from the Old French 'Estreit', meaning 'narrow'. Art!
That's the Straits of Gibraltar, demonstrating how strategically important they are and why Great Britain/Perfidious Albion/The Nation Of Shopkeepers <delete where applicable> is in no hurry to ever cede that territory back to Spain.
Now, unlike today's title, we have not gotten straight to the point, partly because Conrad likes to ramble a bit, and I also had to locate both my notes and the vlog in question: Sal Mercogliano's 'What's Going On With Shipping'. Art!
Please bear in mind that this vlog is now 5 days old. At one point Sal citricly notes that the Iran-Israel Unpleasantness brought out a lot of Strait of Hormuz 'experts', who proceeded to show what little they knew and what lot they didn't.
Sal's overarching contention is that THE STRAIT WILL NOT BE CLOSED. Not merely because he says so; he listed reasons for this confident assertion. Art!
So, the various instant-expert-just-add-water worrywarting was that Iran would close the Strait, which would be a Big Thing, as 20% of all global oil passes through the SoH from the Persian Gulf.
SAL'S BUSTING OF MYTH: 'Closing' the Strait has never been done in living memory. The closest to this mythical status occurred during the Iran-Iraq Unpleasantness of 1981 - 1988, where the 'Tanker War' took place. Both sides targeted the other's oil cargoes, being carried in tankers flagged under different nations. Art!
450 tankers were attacked. They did not stop sailing. What happened is that the War Insurance Risk rates climbed to between 7 - 10% of the ship and cargo value. Commercial and capitalist reaction judged the risk and cost to be acceptable. For comparison, Sal quoted the War Insurance Risk rates for ships transiting the Red Sea and vulnerable to attack by the Houthis: an increase from 0.2% to 1%.
SAL'S BUSTING OF MYTH: Traffic in the Strait is way down. This is the worrywarts discovering marine traffic maps and not understanding what they see, which is fostered by images like this one. Art!
They claim tankers are turning around and staying out of the SoH. Indeed they are, which is perfectly normal. Sal explained that tankers will wait until their cargo is ready to load, before transiting the Strait, and companies will often have tankers loiter until the price of oil stabilises or, preferably, drops. Then they tootle off to load up.
He also quoted the UK's Joint Maritime Information and Co-ordination Centre (makes sense for an island to have such an entity). Art!
Their data analytics show about 3,000 transits of the SoH per month, before, during and after the snit between Israel and Iran.
SAL'S BUSTING OF MYTH: If the Iranians get hinky. What resources do they have that could close the Strait? Not many. Their Air Force has ceased to exist thanks to various bombs and missiles coming to say hello, and there are US Carrier Groups in the Red Sea, a single one of which would overwhelm Iran's air assets, such as they are. Art!
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| Nope, not going to buff out |
They do have ballistic and cruise missiles, except their stockpile has been halved by recent events, and trying to hit a moving vessel with a ballistic missile is difficult. Not only that, modern ship construction makes them hard to damage enough to sink them, as proven by the Houthis again: of 125 vessels attacked, a whole 2 were sunk.
The Iranian navy is so small and old as to be ineffective. The IDF didn't waste any bombs or missiles on them, to prove the point.
Mines are about the only effective method the Iranians have to try and close the SoH, and Surprise! both South Canada and Perfidious Albion have minesweepers in the Gulf, just in case. Sal mentioned an incident I recall from 1987. when the US tanker 'Bridgeton' hit an Iranian mine. Art!
It ruptured the hull, and slowed Bridgeton down, but it carried on to destination and offloaded the remaining oil cargo. Modern tankers are so large that they can withstand a mine detonation and keep on going, as evidenced by the South Canadian escort vessels sailing behind the tankers they were convoyed with. Sal gives the definition of a sardonic chuckle as he described a plaque adorning the Bridgeton: "World's largest minesweeper".0
SAL'S BUSTING OF MYTH: $$$ or £££. Most of Iran's oil exports go to East Asia, notably China. Closing the SoH would annoy the Chinese, not a very sensible thing to do when you have no international allies left - you can't count Ruffia in, and Jason Jay Smart has a whole vlog about that.
Also, and most pertinently, closing the SoH would cripple Iranian oil exports, a case of slicing one's throat to spite one's neck. Iran needs those petrodollars as their economy is even more one-dimensional than Mordorvia's, they've just been bombed extensively and need to rebuild, and have increased the amount of oil they're producing. Art!
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| The Iranian Navy stands ready. Kind of. |
I may come back to Straits, there's a subject with legs.
The Weretoad Quivers
I shall explicate. By 'Weretoad' I mean Viktor Orban, the apprentice dictator of Hungary, who clearly transforms into a Bufo when the moon is full. Art!
He is by now widely reviled and despised by the Magyar population, and is going to lose the next election if voting polls can be trusted. Part of his appeal has been to conservative elements, claiming to protect Christianity and family values, all the while stealing the economy into the red: Hungary is now officially the poorest country in the EU. Art!
The last Pride event drew 35,000 attendees. This one, which was as much about protesting Orbanazi as celebrating LGBTQ, drew possibly 150,000, and the police wisely did nothing to control or prevent it. Art!
Conrad likes the t-shirts a lot of the (overwhelmingly young) crowd were wearing. Art!
That'll get you ten years in the gulag in Mordorvia!
Up Next -
Here's Number Eight in the 'Metro's list of 10 zombie films you need to see before you die and rise as one of the walking undead. Art!
Never seen this one, nor even heard about it. Dates from 2014, if that makes a difference. It seems to be a horror-comedy, where the protagonist Zach has lost his girlfriend Beth, who passes away. Then she reanimates. Zach, who seems hard pressed for female companionship, tries to rekindle their relationship. This is always risky when your Significant Other has an overwhelming desire to eat your brains.
What Is This?
If you've been reading the blog for the required years and years FOR ONLY THIS WILL SAVE YOU WHEN i TAKE OVER then you know Conrad has a passing interest in the lithographic artists of yesteryon, especially GB Piranesi. Art!
So I was a tad baffled when an advert showed up on my Facebook page. I think it was originally animated, but haven't been able to locate any moving images, so you'll have to do with a still one. Art!
It doesn't feature any of his art on the cover. Is it, perhaps, a biography? Or about a completely different Piranesi, pronounced "Pir-ah-nay-zee" not "Pir-ah-nee-zee"?
Ah, I see, it's a novel from the author who wrote 'Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell", which I quite enjoyed but which was Dog Buns! long. Her second novel in 16 years. Agatha Christie she is not.
Finally -
I think a constitutional stroll into Lesser Sodom is called for, whilst it is still dry and cloudy.
Chin chin!
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