In the entertainment-starved Persian Gulf, telling a U.S. Navy vessel that you're coming after it and the ship will explode in a few minutes is apparently what passes for humor.
It turns out that the voice that passed that spurious warning to three Navy ships as they were being approached by Iranian speedboats is a notorious maritime heckler who has come to be known as the Filipino Monkey after his racist insults to Filipinos.
The Monkey could be one person but more likely a band of nuisances who orally harass ships and aircraft in the Gulf going back to the tanker wars of the early '80s.
The radio transmissions, said The Washington Post, are "alternately obscene, nonsensical, racist, infantile, misogynistic and menacing." Sometimes the voice just babbles all night in a falsetto. The Monkey is said to be especially vile toward female American helicopter pilots. Clearly these are seriously bored individuals.
The Monkey broadcasts on an open channel used for ship-to-ship communications and his origin, it appears, is impossible to trace. It could be anywhere in a 60-mile radius on board a ship, on land or even an aircraft.
The heckler began broadcasting about seven minutes after the Iranian speedboats first appeared. It could have been coincidence or he could have overheard the U.S. Navy ships and the Iranians trying to identify each other.
It was a terribly inopportune time because the Navy ships were about to fire when the Iranians veered off. A tense situation that resolved itself could instead have turned bloody. Even in the suffocating heat and boredom of traversing the Gulf, that wouldn't have been at all funny.
27 thoughts on “A joke that could have turned deadly”
Hi Sandra Price…
Evidently dear lady you just don’t cotton to the idea that our government has become a blatant enemy of “we the people”…! The people from your generation weren’t the totally corrupt, money-hungry, nation-state destroying monsters along with their minions that have taken over most world governments in current times.
I posted some information concerning the USS Cole a few posts back on this running commentary and the fact that even it too is a mainstream media sponsored story that doesn’t wash out, no differently than 9/11.
I urge you and others to spend the time to watch the content of this link. Study the clean 45 degree angle cuts on the supporting Twin Tower I-beams. Watch the clip a number of times and then let that ol’ sick feeling wash over your consciousness as to what kind of monsters have taken over of this once great nation; ie., Bushco and PNAC neocon scamsters.
https://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2007/080307thermite.htm
The above link is probably one of the best ever demonstrating that something is gravely amiss with the idea that the two planes that struck the towers had the kinetic energy and fuel to destroy these two huge structures. They fell allright, but with the aid of some explosive thermite-based “hamburger helper” … 😐
Americans have now become victims of serial “false flag” ops, but they keep wedging their heads ever more deeply into the sand regardless of the glaring inconsistencies in the public stories concerning these attacks…?!
Bushco even tried to use this hokey incident on the high seas to attack Iran. These running dogs for the NWO agenda are incorrigible to say the least!
Carl Nemo **==
p.s. Also a Bush linked company was in charge of the security for the buildings when 911 occurred…?! Coincidence, I think not, based on what’s unfolded for this nation concerning the Bush regime during the past 7 years.
https://www.commondreams.org/views03/0204-06.htm
T.J. I sat in front of my television watching 4 airplanes crash into American buildings and not a damn NORAD jet was even watching. No control tower was watching and 3000 people perished while our CIC was reading a book about a goat. SOP was not inacted on 9/11.
I followed every possible action of our armed services during WW2 and saw how well trained Americans acted. My husband was a WW2 Naval pilot. What I saw on 9/11 and the USS Cole was not America on guard! My family has been involved in every war on this planet and all are journalists from the Revolutionary war until Vietnam.
Our government is obviously in “park” gear waiting for….what? Waiting for Bush to pray us out of the mess he made?
I fear for the life of our good president. What is he thinking, galavanting all over the Middle East? Some terrorist might take a shot at him. If he was killed over there, it would be horrible. We’d have to listen to crappy dirge music on all the radio stations for a week.
— Kent Shaw
Bush grinding his teeth
No doubt. His administration actually tried to use this non-incident to bolster support for an attack on Iran and Americans, to their credit, didn’t take the bait.
That’s the punishment of a liar – no one believes him even when he tells the truth (which he didn’t in this case either)
I get the feeling the RNC sent Bush to the middle east to get him out of the U.S. during the opening primary coverage. The less he’s in the news, the better the GOP looks. How else can you explain the fact that every article about Bush’s trip basically says he wasted his time. Donnat
As a former ham and also holder of an
FCC First Class Radiotelephone Operator Permit I find it difficult to believe that a rogue transmitter on a normal VHF channel cannot be easily located.
The FCC routinely makes use of much older technology to hunt down pirate broadcasters, unlicensed business radio users and just plain good old RF interference sources.
What tools the military has at its disposal is most likely a mystery but I suspect they have a much nicer toolbox than even the FCC could begin to dream of.
Triangulating someone who transmits for more than a few minutes is something a novice ham can do with one hand tied behind their back.
Perhaps you do not know enough about how the Navy operates to appreciate what is going on?
So the destroyer would simply wait until the boat blew it up?
Absolutely not! There is a series of responses based on the situation, and these are implemented as the threat changes. There are no “Love Boat” cruise environments in the PG. If the situation deteriorates, then the alert status will ratchet up until a General Quarters sends all hands to battle stations. The commanders will have a set of rules of engagement that determine the conditions under which they may initiate force in order to protect themselves and any other ships near them.
Are the reflexes that slow?
By no means! If they are following their SOP, then each ship will be at its proper alert status for the situation and watching for any thing that indicates danger. A “weapons free” state will be reached once it is determined that a threat is imminent, and firing may/will begin at the first hint of an attack or if some threshold is reached.
Was there no air cover watching?
While I see no mention of it, you can bet your sweet bippy that it was nearby. The PG task forces are built around a carrier battle-group that maintains air cover 24/7; that means AWACS that look up, look down, look all around as well as a CAP of fighter/attack aircraft that can shoot it out of the sky or blow it out of the water.
At Midway, in June of 1942, the Japanese were caught with their pants down after repelling a series of US attacks – without air cover above them! – and more Navy dive bomber squadrons swooped down and fatally damaged three of Nagumo’s four carriers within a 15 minute window. Our Navy does not want something like that to happen to it.
Are we really sitting ducks in that area?
Only if we practice to be sitting ducks. In July of 2006, an Israel naval vessel attacking Hezbollah positions on the Lebanese coast was hit by a Chinese C-802 antiship missile in part because the captain forgot to turn on the antimissile system.
Things are worse than even I could imagine.
If you do not have a lot of military training, then you may imagine things to be worse than they really are.
Most sincerely,
T. J. Flapsaddle
You mean the same folks
…that brought us 9/11?
…and they wonder why we are skeptics – and that is on a good day –
LFTL
Whoa Sandra…
Breathe deeply counting to ten backward! Everything will be OK… 🙂
Rest assured our navy is on top of the situation. The only thing that happened conerning this incident is that Bushco used it as an opportunity to puff the situation while visiting the Middle East.
Our naval battle groups command an area for several hundred miles out from carrier central. Everything in that greater area is being tracked and “identified” realtime. Unfortunately the Iranians do have ocean-skimming Silkworm missiles that could send one of our carriers to the bottom in a NY minute. Hopefully they won’t get through our defense batteries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkworm_missile
This second link will allow people to get access to information concerning China-Gate on how Bill and Hillary Clinton sold our national defense to the “Red Chinese” for a buck or two… 😐
https://www.softwar.net/clinton.html
It’s tragic that our navy, the ground forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places have to endure this ongoing jingoistic nonsense sponsored by Bushco.
I even have empathy for the Iranians in that they have to suffer this continual b.s. too…!
With so many evidently braindead voters enamoured with “Billary”, John McPain and ol’ Mitt they are assured of many more years of this continuing deadly nonsense too.
Carl Nemo **==
p.s. Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in the Chinagate for a charge downloads.
p.p.s. A free link concerning Chinagate; ie., “The Idiots Guide to Chinagate for those that don’t want to pay for “intelligence” concerning our duplicit leaders both past and present. Elect “Billary” and you’ll have more of the same all the way to our national “finish” line…! 😐
https://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/5/26/214938.shtml
You have to look at this logically and try to figure out who has something to gain by starting an “incident” – the Iranians have nothing to gain, when you come right down to it, they already have control of thier part of the straights, and the patrols are a normal part of their military responsibility. They cannot, as a people, want to get anything started with the US – especially seeing how unstable Bush is!
Bush, on the other hand, along with his oil and war material buddies, has much to gain by fanning the flames and making Iran seem like the aggressor state. By keeping the region unstable oil prices go ever higher, and by further vilifying Iran he can help build his case for taking direct action against them.
Perhaps I’m just a bit jaded, but after years of Bush lies and war but at this late date I’m far more likely to believe any other government engaged in a difference of opinion with ours. Show me the WMD’s and explain, using FACTS the “danger” we were in from Iraq prior to the invasion and I MIGHT start to believe again, but in the absence of that proof, I remain a skeptic at best.
Peace
Steve
So the destroyer would simply wait until the boat blew it up? Are the reflexes that slow? Was there no air cover watching? Are we really sitting ducks in that area? Things are worse than even I could imagine.
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