Who'd be a pirate?

[andy at handiwork]

As satisfying as the result of the stand off between the US navy and the Somali pirates might be, it does raise issues for the future. For a start, future hostage-holding pirates are likely to be rather more trigger happy with their captives, both during the initial attack and during the subsequent ransom negotiations. As far as I recall no hostages have been killed during these hijackings over the past year or two, prior to the French man last week, and he was probably killed during the cross fire rather than as a deliberate murder. These pirates' main purpose is to gain ransom not kill crews. That may change now. Were the ship owners forced to spend a fraction of the ship and crew's worth on defensive measures it would go a long way to preventing the hijackings in the first place.
The deadly outcome for the pirates in this case is also unlikely to deter other young men from the hell hole that is Somalia from being hired by the pirate bosses who remain safe on shore. The high body count that comes with the international drugs trade ,(look at the savage turf-war going on in Mexico at present) doesn't seem to hinder recruitment to the ranks of the drug barons 'armies'. For as long as it is seen as a practical means of escaping the poverty they face, there will be a lot of pirates in the Gulf. Killing them as we go along will not in itself solve the problem, and will now probably result in a lot more collateral deaths amongst ships' crews.

[Jacques]

Is it any wonder that they want money?


In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since ? and 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 UN 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 Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

[jj]

The only solution is to divert traffic through safer waters and
to convoy those who can't/won't. You can't police International
waters effectively- there's just too much of it.

If the shipping companies are made to bear the cost that will
simply put prices up- and the nations broadly held responsible
[e.g. Somalia] clearly haven't got enough dough even for a
medium-honest and effective police force, let alone an effective
maritime outfit. The UN? They're loaded, to judge by the
stratospheric salaries they pay their inompetents......

[colonel]

He's like to be a pirate:

[andy at handiwork]

Not one of the Fab 4 could act, could they?

[beutelwolf]

andy at handiwork wrote:

> As satisfying as the result of the stand off between the US
> navy and the Somali pirates might be, it does raise issues for
> the future. For a start, future hostage-holding pirates are
> likely to be rather more trigger happy with their captives,
> both during the initial attack and during the subsequent ransom
> negotiations.

Yes, but this escalation was always going to happen. The big nations would never accept piracy rasom as some kind of unavoidable tax for Somali waters, epsecially when the frequency of these attacks was going up.

Regarding the impact on the trigger-happiness of the pirates I'm less sure: for the pirates the captured crew is a valuable commodity; decreasing the likelihood of a safe return decreases the value of that commodity.

[Deano!]

If Holly Valance had been there, she would have used her cunt to cunt them into a cunt-bucket. Then she would have tipped the cunt-bucket into a volcano.

Arrrrr Arrrr me Hearties. Splice the main brace. Swab the deck yer scurvy dog.

[Sam Slater]

[quote]The UN? They're loaded, to judge by the
stratospheric salaries they pay their inompetents......[/quote]


And cunts too. Darfur springs to mind. Plenty of condemnation but no action.

And now it's being dictated to by rich Arabs who want to censor criticism of religion (now I wonder why that is?) and make it an international crime.

http://www.iheu.org/uncampaign/subcom1

http://europenews.dk/en/node/13092

[jj]

Those who fail to condemn murder are accessories. But of
course these insane people don't see it as murder.

The UN is a failure; it's time to abandon it. Not that I don't
believe in 'jaw jaw', but we need a new supranational forum-
and if it excludes totalitarian regimes of any stripe, then fine.

[andy at handiwork]

They do say its best to have those you dont like with you on the inside pissing out than on the outside pissing in. An international club that includes only those we like will never have any effect on those outside it.