Somali pirates hijack Saudi oil tanker

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Elspode

When we talk about how underprivileged they are, we are being humane, but those who are engaged in wanton antisocial and lawless behaviors such as piracy would gladly take our money and our lives if we gave them a sliver of a chance.

I hold my sympathies back for those who aren't trying to steal and kill their ways out of their plights. If some underprivileged thug comes and steals my shit and threatens my family, my response is *not* going to be to go donate to the Save the Thugs fund.

The point of being humane is not necessarily to stop previously violent individuals from being violent in the future but to prevent others from following the same violent path. There is most likely nothing that can be done to stop many of those people from killing and stealing but the goal of any humane work should be lowering the numbers that will start killing and stealing.

The reality of humanitarian aid actually working and whether it should be used is another story.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

The point of being humane is not necessarily to stop previously violent individuals from being violent in the future but to prevent others from following the same violent path.

Mine the path.

[Trilby]

gah! I can't find today's article from (/coughdouchecough/) Gwynne Dyer, but he feels it is the US's responsibility (perhaps along with France and India or other similar nations who "show some backbone") to keep the Somali waters free of pirates. He feels, after all, the US is the nation that spawned them in the first place (ah, yes...this is starting to feel familiar...)

I wish I could find the article - it's not on his site yet and my daily paper site isn't co-operating...but the gist is, the US should do it. This attitude is simply toooo rich coming from Dr. Dyer. He is the very definition of the Ugly European: He wants the US to leave everything alone and take it on the chin until the pirates start coming home to roost and bother the international community...then we're supposed to take on the world and be Police...but not one second before Gwynne Dyer tells us to.

[classicman]

I agree - Other Nations seem to want the U.S. out of their business till the proverbial "shit hits the fan" then they want us to come and clean up the mess.

Unfortunately ....

The US Navy announced this week that it will head a new anti-piracy task force after more than 100 ships were attacked last year.

[classicman]

Somali pirates drown with ransom
A $3m ransom is believed to have been parachuted onto the tanker

Six members of a group of Somali pirates who hijacked and later released a Saudi-owned oil tanker are reported to have drowned along with their share of a $3m ransom.

The pirates were among eight men whose boat overturned off the coast of Kenya in a storm as they left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff that ended on Friday, a pirate and a relative of one of the dead men said.

"Six of our boys perished at the sea while coming from the released Saudi supertanker," Mohamed Said told the AFP news agency.

"The small boat that was carrying those killed and eight who survived was overloaded and at high speed, we have been told by the survivors.

"They were afraid of a chase from outsiders [foreign naval forces] who invaded Somalia waters," he said.

The group's $300,000 share of the ransom was also lost, he said.

"There has been human and monetary loss but what makes us feel sad is that we don't still have the dead bodies of our relatives. Four are still missing and one washed up on the shore," Abukar Haji, the uncle of one of the dead men, said.

Well they actual pirates get 10% eh?

Undeterred Somali pirates hijack 3 more ships

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Somali pirates brazenly hijacked three more ships in the Gulf of Aden, the waterway that's become the focal point of the world's fight against piracy.

The Irene was attacked and seized in the middle of the night Tuesday — a rare tactic for the pirates.

U.S. Navy Lt. Nathan Christensen, spokesman for the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said the Irene was flagged in the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and carried 23 Filipino crew. Choong reported a crew of 21, and there was no immediate way to reconcile the figures.

A maritime security contractor, said the ship put out a distress signal "to say they had a suspicious vessel approaching. That rapidly turned into an attack and then a hijacking."

"They tried to call in support on the emergency channels, but they never got any response," the contractor said.

On Monday, Somali pirates also seized two Egyptian fishing boats in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's northern coast, according to Egypt's Foreign Ministry, which said the boats carried 18 to 24 Egyptians total.

A flotilla of warships from nearly a dozen countries has patrolled the Gulf of Aden and nearby Indian Ocean waters for months. They have halted several attacks on ships this year, but say the area is so vast they can't stop all hijackings.

Choong said pirate attacks this year had risen to 77, with 18 of those ships hijacked and 16 vessels with 285 crew still in pirates' hands. Each boat carries the potential of a million-dollar ransom.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by classicman

I agree - Other Nations seem to want the U.S. out of their business till the proverbial "shit hits the fan" then they want us to come and clean up the mess.

Something you should know.
Did you know that other nations try to work in their own best interest as well? Did you know that our best interest sometimes works against theirs? Did you know that sometimes we screw up and work against our own best interests?
Something you should know.

The bottom line is still the same, the shippers should arm themselves.

[classicman]

Yes Griff, thanks for that. The shippers cannot arm themselves because if they do they cannot dock in ports. Therefore, an alternative still needs to be formulated. Any ideas on that? I do not think we should bear the main burden of policing this area.

[Griff]

Private security can be off-loaded before docking or encroaching on territorial waters. Like you, I think the actual customers should pay for security. If a country won't adjust its laws for armed ships then it should pay a premium for shipping.

[classicman]

That would work for me too. It was discounted though. The other option would be to have a smaller "security support" ship available. That too was rejected.

[glatt]

I think it's one of those things where nobody is going to do anything about the problem until they have to. The percentage of ships who make it through unscathed is still high enough that the shipping and insurance companies consider the few who get seized to be the cost of doing business. With this recent US military intervention (which I support) I predict things will escalate and that will force the issue to be resolved. Either by the military or by the private sector. I think I'd prefer to see a private sector solution to this.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by Brianna

gah! I can't find today's article from (/coughdouchecough/) Gwynne Dyer, but he feels it is the US's responsibility (perhaps along with France and India or other similar nations who "show some backbone") to keep the Somali waters free of pirates. He feels, after all, the US is the nation that spawned them in the first place (ah, yes...this is starting to feel familiar...)

I wish I could find the article - it's not on his site yet and my daily paper site isn't co-operating...but the gist is, the US should do it. This attitude is simply toooo rich coming from Dr. Dyer. He is the very definition of the Ugly European: He wants the US to leave everything alone and take it on the chin until the pirates start coming home to roost and bother the international community...then we're supposed to take on the world and be Police...but not one second before Gwynne Dyer tells us to.

huh? How is it our fault?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Because Somalia is the armpit of the world and that, like everything else that's wrong in the world, is definitely our fault.

Now sit... stay... look ashamed.

[Trilby]

@ sugarpop, according to Dyer, we destabilized the country by encouraging Ethiopia to invade (? I am recalling the article here) (and as you know, countries do NOT invade other countries unless the US tells them to) so, voila, the destabliziation is our fault, the pirates are our fault and we probably made your quiche fall in the oven. And your cows give bad milk. And the moon turn to blood. You know the drill.

[Trilby]

Here's the part of the article I was referring to:


"The world has consistently failed Somalia for almost two decades while it has languished in violent anarchy. The United States bears a special responsibility, because it was behind the 2007 Ethiopian invasion that destroyed the country’s best chance of stabilizing itself since the collapse in 1991. But letting the piracy continue doesn’t help Somalia in any way, so the U.S. Navy might as well get on with the job of suppressing it.

Is this actually going to happen? It could, and it should, but it remains to be seen if it will."


Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. E-mail address:
76312.1476@compuserve.com.

[Trilby]

Entire article here:

The U.S. Navy has more than half the major warships in the world, and there is a pirate threat off the Somali coast. Now that the Navy has killed three of those pirates in order to free Richard Phillips, the kidnapped captain of an American ship, these two facts are coming together in a promising way.

Just to utter that phrase — “a pirate threat off the Somali coast” — is to plumb the depths of absurdity. What combination of incompetence and cowardice could have allowed piracy to become a threat to a major shipping route in the early 21st century? What are all those warships with their guns and missiles and radars and helicopters actually for?

So the abortive Somali attack on the U.S.-registered ship Maersk Alabama last week may have a silver lining. It may get the U.S. Navy to take over the job of fighting the pirates.

The biggest problem other navies have faced in dealing with the pirates is the pitiful state of current international law. The old rules on piracy were simple: pirates were the “enemies of all mankind,” and there was a right of “universal jurisdiction” against them. Any country could arrest pirates from anywhere, regardless of nationality, and try them for their crimes. If they were captured in battle, they were even liable to summary execution.

The new rules, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, require a warship to send a boarding party led by an officer onto any suspected pirate vessel to confirm its criminal intent. Until that has been done, the warship may not open fire. It is unlikely that the lawyers consulted with practical seamen before they wrote this clause.

But the United States has not ratified the Law of the Sea convention. This was not foresight, just the Senate’s customary reluctance to ratify any treaty that limits U.S. freedom of action in any way, but it is useful in this case. Normally, the U.S. government acts as if it were bound by international treaties that it has signed even when the Senate is being obstinate, but it doesn’t actually have to.

So the U.S. Navy, perhaps acting in cooperation with the French and Indian navies and anybody else who has a bit of backbone, could be deployed to deal with the pirates. For a start, they could declare an exclusion zone beginning 12 nautical miles off the Somali coast that can only be traversed by vessels that have been cleared by U.S. naval authorities. All legitimate commercial ships and pleasure-craft would be waved through automatically; all other vessels in the zone would be sunk without warning.

There would still be a need for warships scattered throughout the zone to deal with pirates that slipped across the 12-mile line, but this sort of exclusion zone would allow most of the naval forces to concentrate on containing them within Somalia’s territorial waters.

Would enforcing the exclusion zone mean that some of the pirates get killed? Yes, of course, but there was a reason why pirates were defined as “enemies of all mankind.” The sea is an alien environment, a place where people die very quickly if things go wrong. Those who prey on other people in this environment have very little call on our sympathy.

Would the dead also include a few Somali fishermen who enter the exclusion zone by accident or in desperation? Probably. You try to avoid it, but some innocent people almost always die when you use military force. So let the fishermen put pressure on the local warlords to end their collusion with the pirates. It is not everybody else’s duty to put up with piracy so that Somalis can go on fishing.

The world has consistently failed Somalia for almost two decades while it has languished in violent anarchy. The United States bears a special responsibility, because it was behind the 2007 Ethiopian invasion that destroyed the country’s best chance of stabilizing itself since the collapse in 1991. But letting the piracy continue doesn’t help Somalia in any way, so the U.S. Navy might as well get on with the job of suppressing it.

Is this actually going to happen? It could, and it should, but it remains to be seen if it will.

IMHO, Dr. Dyer would be the first to decry any loss of innocent life in the practice of the US patrolling the pirate-sea. He is so obvious I don't know why I even read his drivel. Old habits die hard, I guess.

He states that it is "not everybody else's duty to put up with piracy" but infers that it is the US's duty to put it down. Then we pay, in blood and money, and the world benefits. Nothing really new there.