Yargh! Somali pirates take 4 more

MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
MOMBASA, Kenya - Somali pirates captured four more ships and took more than 60 crew members hostage in a brazen hijacking spree, while the American captain who escaped their grip planned to reunite with his crew and fly home Wednesday to the Unites States.

Pirates have vowed to retaliate for deaths of their colleagues — and the top U.S. military officer said Tuesday he takes those comments seriously. But Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that "we're very well prepared to deal with anything like that."
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MSNBC



Looks like the re-taking of the last ship through force wasn't enough to deter other pirates from continuing their rich enterprising.
 
chcr

chcr

Too cute for words
Read this at lunch on my Blackberry™. I'll say the same thing I always say about the terrorists. We (collectively) need to deal with these criminals swiftly and harshly without legitimizing them as "combatants" or some kind bullshit of political unit.
 
spike

spike

New Member
chcr said:
Read this at lunch on my Blackberry™. I'll say the same thing I always say about the terrorists. We (collectively) need to deal with these criminals swiftly and harshly without legitimizing them as "combatants" or some kind bullshit of political unit.
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Seems the challenge is how exactly to deal with them. We could mass our navy over there but then it would take a large chuck of our ships to do that effectively.

Arming random amounts of boats with .50 caliber machine guns and a navy seal was another idea but hat would take some changes in the rules for merchant marine vessels.
 
Altron

Altron

Well-Known Member
What I don't understand is how they're actually getting on the boats... I mean, the sides of those things are like 25 feet high. I guess maybe grappling hooks around the railing? They'd be very exposed during the climb, though.

Not sure why they don't just start carrying guns and keeping watch... the Somalian boats might be fast, but that means they're light and unarmored, and that means a burst of .50 cal probably is enough to destroy it.

In the 1700s, most merchant ships carried small cannon, so I don't see why they would run into legal issues to have a machine gun on a boat, as long as it's in international waters.
 
MrBishop

MrBishop

Well-Known Member
It depends on the ship... a couple of guys with machine guns or an RPG is more than enough to threaten the hull integrity of your average tanker.

These are merchants with millions of dollars of goods on-board... yeah...they're going to drop the ladder down and make a business deal with the pirates in order to save their goods.
 
chcr

chcr

Too cute for words
spike said:
Seems the challenge is how exactly to deal with them. We could mass our navy over there but then it would take a large chuck of our ships to do that effectively.

Arming random amounts of boats with .50 caliber machine guns and a navy seal was another idea but hat would take some changes in the rules for merchant marine vessels.
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Seems easy enough to me. Multinational forces escorting convoys of ships. This shit hurts everyone. If you're ship's home country doesn't want to contribute ships or forces, pony up cash or materiel. The real issue at hand is that the Somalis see this as easy income. Make it hard.
 
Mirlyn

Mirlyn

Well-Known Member
Altron said:
Not sure why they don't just start carrying guns and keeping watch... the Somalian boats might be fast, but that means they're light and unarmored, and that means a burst of .50 cal probably is enough to destroy it.

In the 1700s, most merchant ships carried small cannon, so I don't see why they would run into legal issues to have a machine gun on a boat, as long as it's in international waters.
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From what little I've heard, the reason is ironically related to insurance.

I don't get it either, but, there you go.
 
V

valkyrie

Well-Known Member
Winky said:
similarity?
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The difference between a pirate and a privateer is a piece of paper, a war/enemy, and who get's boarded and pillaged.

Somalia is not at war with Germany, France, Russia, China, the US... they just have an anarchy state on their hands. The government did not give the pirates permission (official or unofficial) to take any of these vessels. Therefore, the Somali pirates are pirates by the definition.

Many historians view Captain William Kidd as a privateer unjustly prosecuted for piracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Kidd
I read a book on him and I think he skirted the boundaries of privateer but I believe he was not a pirate.
He was actually hanged for murder of one of his crew, not piracy. He hit the man in the head with a bucket when the man was rousing the crew to mutiny.
 
BlurOfSerenity

BlurOfSerenity

New Member
i read this yesterday, i don't know how true it is, but it kind of made me go "huh..."

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes.

-“You are Being Lied to About Pirates” by Johan Hari
 
Professur

Professur

Well-Known Member
Um, why would the people who dumped toxic waste into the waters there choose to steal fish from those same waters? And I haven't heard of them boarding and holding hostage many fishing vessels, mostly freighters with small crews for the size of the ship, and large valuable cargoes.

It's a nice story, Ash ... and it might even be true. But don't forget that the nazis blamed WWII on the jews. Who knows ... they might have been telling the truth as well. But it's hard to put much faith in a story told by someone trying to justify the gun he's holding to your head.
 
spike

spike

New Member
Looks like there may be some truth to that story.

A United Nations' report released this week says nuclear and hazardous wastes dumped on Somalia's shores had been scattered by the recent Asian tsunami and are now infecting Somalis in coastal areas.

A spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Nick Nuttall, told VOA that for the past 15 years or so, European companies and others have used Somalia as a dumping ground for a wide array of nuclear and hazardous wastes.

"There's uranium radioactive waste, there's leads, there's heavy metals like cadmium and mercury, there's industrial wastes, and there's hospital wastes, chemical wastes, you name it,” he said. “It's not rocket science to know why they're doing it because of the instability there."

Mr. Nuttall said, on average, it cost European companies $2.50 per ton to dump the wastes on Somalia's beaches rather than $250 a ton to dispose of the wastes in Europe.

He said the Asian tsunami dislodged and smashed open the drums, barrels, and other containers, spreading the contaminants as far away as 10 or more kilometers inland.

Mr. Nuttall said it is impossible to know the exact tonnage or number of containers of wastes on Somalia's shores, but that the problem, in his words, "is very serious."

The results of the contamination on coastal populations, Mr. Nuttall says, have been disastrous.

"These problems range from acute respiratory infections to dry, heavy coughing, mouth bleedings, abdominal hemorrhages, what they described as unusual skin chemical reactions,” he noted. “So there's a whole variety of ailments that people are reporting from these villages where we had a chance to look. We need to go much further and farther in finding out the real scale of this problem."

The tsunami's effects on Somalia were detailed in a report the United Nations Environment Program released this week at its governing council meeting in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The report described the effects of the late-December tsunami, which killed up to 300,000 people in 11 countries. It says the massive waves dislodged hazardous materials in countries throughout the region and recommended that governments preserve natural resources and restrict or ban development in vulnerable areas.

According to the report, hazardous wastes in Somalia have also contaminated some groundwater areas there.

The dumping of hazardous and nuclear wastes onto Somalia's coastline is a long-running concern. In a media report last year, Somali fisherman said they saw foreign vessels dropping containers onto the beach and pollution into the waters.

Somali officials said the country was vulnerable to illegal dumping, as Africa's longest coastline is not patrolled and the country has no coast guards, or health officials and facilities to test whatever is inside the containers.

Until late last year, Somalia had been without an effective central government since 1991, when then-leader Siad Barre was ousted. The new transitional government is in the process of moving to the capital Mogadishu from its current base in Kenya.
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http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-02/2005-02-23-voa23.cfm
 
Professur

Professur

Well-Known Member
Understand, Spike, that I abhore dumping at least as much as you, probably more ... but I tend to take any report coming out of the UN as only slightly more credible than the National Inquirer headlines. Lord knows, it's cheaper to buy a UN commitee than an inquirer headling. That said, .... was there dumping? Entirely likely. Was it as widespread as is made out? Not quite so much. But the question remains why would anyone be stealing fish from a known polluted area?

And if there's a UN commitee on it, why aren't we hearing more than "European ... and others". Indeed, why would European nations go all the way to Somalia to dump it? Wouldn't it be far smarter to just head out to deep ocean ... well away from the spying eyes of fishermen .. to do the dumping?

Don't forget, Bush and congress were convinced that Iraq had WMDs hidden. The UN can be convinced of this all it wants ... that doesn't make it true. The same UN is throwing it's weight around about carbon emissions .... but I've still yet to hear any evidence of tests proving carbon's effect on global warming.
 
spike

spike

New Member
Lord knows, it's cheaper to buy a UN commitee than an inquirer headling.
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Evidence?

Don't forget, Bush and congress were convinced that Iraq had WMDs hidden.
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Right, and yet the UN was only convinced there should be inspections.

That said, do you have some guess on who would pay a lot of money to convince the UN that there was dumping? Seems like a lot of countries might have an interest in covering up the dumping and less interest in exposing it.
 
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