GDG Somali Pirates

[Julie R.]

I hope it's OK to post this hilarious GDG here instead of on POTUS but wondered if anyone else has been following the adventures of the Somali pirates jacking all the ships in the Indian ocean.

It's really pretty incredible if you think about it--these people for the most part live in dung huts with no water, sewer, electricity, schools, etc. in bombed out villages in a lawless cesspool of a country that has had no functioning government in almost 20 years. Yet these young men are taking rowboats and converted fishing boats out to sea and jacking huge tankers and freighter ships as if they were Escalades in Detroit. They call themselves "the Somali Coast Guard".

These Somali captains of industry have transformed a ramshackle coastal slum town into a booming pirate port with new houses, stores and restaurants to service their needs aided by a provisional "government" (term used loosely) that looks the other way as the crimes are committed. There are no banks, so there's no problem laundering the booty (ransom money). Sounds like one big jolly party. The whole world knows where they are--they even have their biggest prize seized last week, the Saudi Arabia tanker Sirius Star, anchored right off the coast in plain sight. This megatanker was jacked on Nov. 15 and carries so much crude oil its capture actually caused oil to go up $1 a barrel briefly.

There are 14 ships and 268 crew still in captivity, including one that has on board 33 Russian battle tanks; no fewer than eight of the vessels have been seized in the past 14 days alone; urgent talks are going on between nations and international bodies over how best to defeat the hijackings; navies are on standby to put more vessels into the area; some of the world's leading carriers are having to reroute ships thousands of miles out of the pirates' way, and wartime-style convoys, the latest one of nine ships escorted by a Russian frigate, are now being formed. A quarter of the entire Indian Ocean has swiftly been turned into a marine badlands, and the law of the seas is, at present, powerless to stop it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...d-1031235.html

Translated: There are enough warships in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to sink the whole of Somalia and its neighbors, all swimming around doing nothing but hand wringing and saying, "Oh dear, what should we do, better call in the U.N., where is Kofi Annan, maybe he can negotiate a truce. Or say, how about Jimmy Carter, Oh no! He's busy trying to get in the Congo to help the situation there! Oh, no!!" LMAO. Although the Indian Navy did cannonball a Somali mothership and sink it a couple of days ago. Hell the U.S. never even ratified the U.N. Law of the Sea treaty!!

Here's a photo of one Somali looting party, aka the Central Regional Coast Guard, as it sets off from the coast of Somalia north of Mogadishu



Meet the swashbuckling Abdul Hassan, a 39 year old Somali pirate captain. That's a RPG he's holding, not a spear.


Hassan to Saudi Arabia: "Gimme 25 Million, beotch!"



And here's a photo of a looting party boarding a Ukrainian freighter vessel full of tanks and weapons jacked recently, the M/V Faina. They approach from the rear in the radar 'blind spot' and use grappling hooks to scramble aboard.

[Hoosier]

So is that what east Minneapolis will be like soon.

[caglatz]

Anyone else think a lightly armed security detail on one of those huge cargo ships could repel those guys? You put a squad of guys on the ship say from Blackwater and I highly doubt those refugees ("they call pirates") would be able to board. Heck give me my Xtrema2 and a couple of my hunting buddies and we'd hold our own against them. Surely for all those millions of dollars of cargo they can hire someone to protect them.

I also think I saw those guys in the boat duck hunting in Barnegat Bay last week.

[Bob Gutermuth]

Couple of SEAL teams could make very short work of these brigands

[K G]

Saw a news report on this BS the other day; I understand it's a big @ssed ocean and lot o' ships on it at any given time. Seems to me that the insurance companies would require the companies to provide some sort of armed protection before they'd extend coverage....

As for the brief $1 bump on a barrel, go back to July....when the DJIA was above 10k and gas was at $4/gallon..if this had happened then, gas would have gone up 20-30 cents a gallon overnight on the mere "threat" of piracy; an actual capture would have pushed it up 50 cents easily.

Don't mean to derail the thread, but between the oil companies' profit-grabbing and speculators pushing the price up, we know who REALLY controls the price of oil. The pirates, unchecked, are a MUCH bigger threat than BP shutting down a pipeline in Alaska, Hugo Chavez deciding to single-handedly embarrass President Bush, or some Nigerian nationalist deciding to use his monthly ration of C-4 to blow up a pipeline and shut down the flow for a month.

I sure hope that, if we grant some sort of cash relief with conditions to the auto companies, we require them to put energy-efficient cars at the forefront of all of their restructuring. If we let oil companies and speculators control out economy when it starts to recover, shame on us.

Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it regards,

kg

[Julie R.]

The Somali pirates scored again yesterday, nabbing a cargo ship from Yemen in the Bay of Aden off the Indian ocean. Gotta love it--with half the world navies motoring around off the coast of Somalia, these guys just keep on jacking.


Here's a link to the BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7747620.stm

meanwhile, the Shababs, a tribe of radical young Somali muslim souljas, wants in on the lucre and threatened the pirates with armed conflict. Gee, they're not scared of an international fleet of warships, wonder why they aren't worried about these kids? (Shababs translated means Lads) honestly, you can't make this stuff up!



Shabab souljas to Pirates: GIMME SOMMA DAT!


Let's dress up in olive drab fatigues so we can hide in the bushes but march down a white sandy beach wearing bright red keffiya on our heads so the pirates can see us from miles away

[Pete]

Bob GutermuthCouple of SEAL teams could make very short work of these brigands

Bob
1 crew member with a 50 caliber and a case of beer would do the trick.

On the flip side these people are hungry and impoverished. Shouldn't we just give it to them.

There covered both sides fair and balanced
Pete

[Bob Gutermuth]

Seems like a WWII Q boat with a few modern weapons is the order of the day to deal with these turkeys.

[Arturo]

........ Shouldn't we just give it to them. ..........
Pete

That would be the 1/21/09 strategy!

[Hoosier]

You had looting in New Orleans after Katrina, looting in LA with the Rodney King thing, looting in Watts. 9-11 on wall street no looting. Why is that? Is it just a cultural thing?