Pirates

bluelabel said:

There is a lot of talk in the media around the world about pirates off the coast of Somalia. I thought I would do a bit of poking around the net and see what I could find. This is what I came up with "You are being lied to about pirates."

Apparently the Somali’s are "coast guarding" their waters to prevent over fishing and dumping of toxic waste. Since the fall of the government in Somalia, there has been no law or protection for the waters in the Gulf of Aden so allegedly some people have been taking advantage of this.

Check out this story by CBC Canada presenting the other side to the story.

Adding this up means that the seas are being over fished of toxic fish.

Coming soon to a French restaurant.

But in all seriousness, i hope this isn't happening.

:bier:

blue

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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. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.

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The Maersk Alabama, which originally had 21 American sailors on board, shows how much potential there is for major disaster. US television networks are treating it as a tale of all-American heroism, focusing on how the ship's crew managed first to take one of their attackers prisoner, and how Capt Phillips then selflessly volunteered for a hostage-swap. They could so easily, however, be reporting a tale of all-American tragedy. Had the pirates got the sailors onto the Somali mainland, it could have been the worst US hostage crisis since the storming of the American Embassy in 1979. There are, after all, plenty of Somalis who'd have been willing to pay the pirates good money for their catch - not least the hardline al shebab Islamist movement, whose alleged links to al Qaeda have seen them targeted by US missiles.

Such a crisis might, however, have proved a timely wake-up call, just as 9-11 was about Afghanistan. Somalia has now been 18 years without a government, and has slipped into warlordism and criminal violence unheard of anywhere else. As a bitter Somali joke puts it, the warlords only went into robbing foreigners at sea because there was nothing left to rob from their own people on land.

Indeed, many pirate recruits have literally nothing left to lose in life. For them, being arrested and caught by the international piracy force is little deterrent. At least they will get three square meals a day. If really lucky, they may get taken to a European jail, where they will have a chance of applying for asylum upon release. One of my own captors told me once how he'd tried to flee to Europe after his parents had been murdered, travelling thousands of miles to Libya and then in an overladen people smuggling boat to Greece, only to then be deported home again. As long as Somalia is a nation where people are tempted to resort to such desperate measures, buccaneering is likely to remain a promising career option.

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Beenjammin said:

Somalia desparatley needs the UN to step in and impose a caretaker government to stop the humanitarin disaster. Pirates a but the tip of the iceberg here, and the one good thing they are doing is exposing this part of the world to the global community.

I do not want to live in a world where this kind of thing is ignored by the global community.

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22-08-05 Somalia's fledgling government welcomes approaches by firms keen to hunt for oil or gas on its territory but has yet to open any such discussions, President Abdullahi Yusuf said.
Somalia's oil and gas potential attracted attention from Western major oil producers before the country collapsed in chaos in 1991, and diplomats say Asian firms have shown recent interest amid efforts to stabilise the Horn of Africa country. Somalia lies across the Gulf of Aden from the Arabian peninsula and next to Ethiopia's Ogaden region, which has proven reserves of natural gas.

Yusuf, trying to build an effective central government following his election by lawmakers at peace talks last year, told: "Any company that is interested in the natural resources of Somalia can come (to talk) to the government, no matter from which country."
"After all, we will look after our interest. Let them compete, and the best company will win," he said during a visit to Nairobi en route to Saudi Arabia to discuss possible aid for Somalia.

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Julia said:

Why don't the crew of the cargo ship just fire a few shots in the appropriate direction?

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Julia said:

I don't think any of us feel OK about it, but don't be holding your breath expecting the UN to do something. Consider Zimbabwe for just one example.

Re the pirates, perhaps I'm missing something, but how is it that a large cargo ship can be dictated to by a few blokes in a runabout? Why don't the crew of the cargo ship just fire a few shots in the appropriate direction?
Do they just meekly drop down a boarding ladder and submit to being taken over? Why would they??? Maybe someone can explain what I'm obviously missing in this situation, including why the considerable resources of the US Navy are being used to protect said cargo ships?

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Agentm said:

julia,

piracy has been a long term problem, not solely occurring in the waters off somalia.

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Happy said:

Maybe time to do something radical or at least different to what was done in Somalia waters for all those years and maybe what US did is what should be done long time ago.
..

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From Nine MSN, 16 Feb. 09
By Lachlan Carmichael

US SEEKS TO FREEZE PIRATE ASSETS

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a plan on Wednesday to fight piracy, calling for prosecution and freezing pirates' assets with the support of Washington's international partners.
She vowed to call for "immediate" meetings of the Contact Group on Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) to discuss the four-point plan that also calls for strategies to secure the release of ships and crews held by pirates.
The chief US diplomat added that she was also sending an envoy to the April 23 Somali donors conference in Brussels to improve the situation in lawless Somalia and help implement the plan.
"These pirates are criminals, they are armed gangs on the sea," Clinton told reporters. "And those plotting attacks must be stopped, and those who have carried them out must be brought to justice."
She also dismissed suggestions that international efforts to end the poverty and lawlessness in Somalia - the root cause of the piracy - were now being ignored to fight the symptom.
"So it's not that they have been forgotten or even separated," Clinton said.
"You've got to put out the fire before you can rebuild the house. And, right now, we have a fire raging," Clinton said.
"The critical mass of hijackings and kidnappings has risen dramatically, in part because the pirates got better vessels and could go further out to sea, and they began to use mother ships," she said, adding they are "more sophisticated."
Clinton also dismissed suggestions that it would be difficult to track the ill-gotten gain of pirates operating out of Somalia, where state institutions collapsed in the last two decades.
"We track and freeze and try to disrupt the assets of many stateless groups," including Islamist terrorists, Clinton said.
"We notice pirates are buying more and more sophisticated equipment... buying faster and more capable vessels," the chief US diplomat said.
With the outlaws "clearly using ransom money for both their personal benefit and for piracy, she added there are "ways to crack down on companies that do business with pirates."
Clinton expressed alarm at the continuing attacks.
Late on Tuesday Somali pirates attacked an American freighter with rockets to "destroy" the ship in revenge for an operation that freed a US captain last weekend, one of their commanders said Wednesday.
The freighter escaped the attack late on Tuesday, but more vessels have fallen into the hands of marauding Somali bandits. A French warship meanwhile intercepted a pirate "mother ship" and arrested 11 gunmen, the French defence ministry said.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is to study ways of combating pirates terrorising seas off the coast of Somalia, spokesman Bryan Whitman said on Wednesday, stressing a military solution was not the only one.
A US-led task force is already operating in the region in a bid to halt a spate of attacks by pirates.
Whitman said the problem had to be addressed "on a multitude of levels, one of them is maritime operations to discourage that activity, others are the evasive actions of the crew to prevent their ship from being hijacked."
The contact group on piracy was established under a UN Security Council Resolution on January 14 to coordinate actions among states and organisations to suppress piracy off the coast of Somalia.
Participating include Australia, China, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, South Korea, The Netherlands, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia TFG, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Yemen.

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Agentm said:

julia,

piracy has been a long term problem, not solely occurring in the waters off somalia.

these blokes are now using ships in the waters ,sailing around amongst the shipping and playing cat and mouse with the naval vessels.

they board with fast inflatables, and speed boats.. and are heavily armed.

most ships will try and use water cannon, but you cant duck bullets. its very dangerous.

i have been on ship boarded by looters, who would come on board, and open up containers and hope to get lucky. but pirates want the entire vessel........

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GumbyLearner said:

Ron Paul has a suggestion about combating Piracy.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21245.html

A little-known congressional power could help the federal government keep the Somali pirates in check ”” and possibly do it for a discount price.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and a growing number of national security experts are calling on Congress to consider using letters of marque and reprisal, a power written into the Constitution that allows the United States to hire private citizens to keep international waters safe.

Used heavily during the Revolution and the War of 1812, letters of marque serve as official warrants from the government, allowing privateers to seize or destroy enemies, their loot and their vessels in exchange for bounty money.

The letters also require would-be thrill seekers to post a bond promising to abide by international rules of war.

In a YouTube video earlier this week, Paul suggested lawmakers consider issuing letters, which could relieve American naval ships from being the nation’s primary pirate responders ”” a free-market solution to make the high seas safer for cargo ships.

“I think if every potential pirate knew this would be the case, they would have second thoughts because they could probably be blown out of the water rather easily if those were the conditions,” Paul said.

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He was taken aboard a US Navy ship shortly before Navy SEAL snipers on the guided-missile destroyer USS Bainbridge killed three of his colleagues who had held Captain Richard Phillips hostage.

US officials said the teenager was brought to New York to face trial in part because the city's FBI office has history of handling cases in Africa involving major crimes against Americans, such as the al-Qaeda bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Ron Kuby, a New York-based civil rights lawyer, said he has been in discussions about forming a legal team to represent the Somali.

"I think in this particular case, there's a grave question as to whether America was in violation of principles of truce in warfare on the high seas," said Mr Kuby.

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Julia said:

I don't think any of us feel OK about it, but don't be holding your breath expecting the UN to do something. Consider Zimbabwe for just one example.

Re the pirates, perhaps I'm missing something, but how is it that a large cargo ship can be dictated to by a few blokes in a runabout? Why don't the crew of the cargo ship just fire a few shots in the appropriate direction?

Click to expand...

Do they just meekly drop down a boarding ladder and submit to being taken over? Why would they???

Click to expand...

Maybe someone can explain what I'm obviously missing in this situation, including why the considerable resources of the US Navy are being used to protect said cargo ships?

Click to expand...