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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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?
I could be wrong, but I don't think the Somali pirates know from cultural....though I do seriously think they have something in common with the first two groups you mentioned.....they just use bigger hardware....;-)
Lookin' for a way to get paid off of someone else's work regards,
Avast, ye matey!
Shiver me timbers.
Maybe, it’s time we turned pirate ourselves!
Show the world what pirates can really do . . .
There is historical precedent.
Remember our roots!
Pass me some grog.
This has been going on for a while but is just now coming to everyone's attention because of the ship full of Russian tanks and now the supertanker. There are other places in the world that have piracy problems, as well.
Several years ago, the ship I was on was operating in the area and we were sent to shadow and observe a pirated vessel but were not allowed to engage in any way. This happens all the time. If we have a ship in the area, we'll send them over to check it out, but the insurance and shipping companies prefer to simply pay them off and go on their way rather than risk damage to their assets or injury to thier crewmembers. Of course that policy has led to the increase in frequency and the boldness of attacks that we are seeing today. Some shipping companies are simply taking the south route and avoiding the Gulf of Aden altogether. I suspect that eventually the problem will get big enough that someone will chose to take more direct action. I doubt it will be the US, but the Russians, Indians and Chinese are in the area, and they don't care about PR like we do. We'll see.
Well at least the Indian Navy had the stones to do something about these Somali thugs. Here's the last glow of a pirate mother ship they owned recently.
Send in the Jar Heads and make the area a free fire zone. Like their Anthem says "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli" Tripoli referring to the decimation of the Barbary Pirates.
I'm not sure the countries with ships in the area would appreciate a "free fire" zone.
Don't tell me with all of the satellite technology that exists that a few well-placed Predator drones couldn't be deployed somehow with intel gathered from satellites.
Where there's a will there's a tactical way regards, ;-)
The poor people are just trying to make a better life for themselves. I"d rather they stay over there and hijack a few ships, then come over here and move in next door. They are all over the twin cities making use of the system in every way possible. http://www.startribune.com/16404541.html
I think this must be the population growth Henry V was putting a positive spin on in an earlier post. This is what you get with a welfare magnet state.
We also have the largest population of Hmong in the US. Whats nice about them is they have extremely large families most having around 10 kids per couple. The system is getting over burdened to the point of breaking, and they just want more. The spin that gets put on is Minnesota is so great everyone wants to move here. But in actuality the welfare system standard of living is so high, we are pulling welfare people from other states and countries. Think about it if you have 10 kids and make $100,000 a year you can still get government assistance
A bid by Somali pirates to hijack a luxury cruise ship was foiled by an international taskforce, officials said, as ransom negotiations for a Saudi super-tanker stretched into overtime. On September 15, Denmark took command of the multinational naval force Task Force 150, aimed at combatting acts of piracy and weapons smuggling in the northern part of the Indian Ocean. A spokesman for the Danish navy, the current lead nation in the NATO taskforce, confirmed the operation had stopped a group of pirates from boarding a civilian vessel which reports said was carrying some 400 passengers and 200 crew. A French navy warship, alerted by the Danish Navy, scrambled a helicopter to the scene, which sent the pirates fleeing, TV2 News said.
Now it's a new administration, the attempted hijack was on a U.S. ship and the pirates are holding a U.S. ship captain hostage.
Those poor hungry starving Somalis, the ship they tried to hijack and are now trying to ransom the captain, was full of humanitarian aid relief for Africans: Food, staples, medical supplies, etc. from several different charitable organizations.
I've maintained all along a few boats of southern duck hunters could take care of the problem and probably get that captain back safe and sound, too....
Aw come on Julie
You know its my fault and many of us here,including you,,, that these ships were jacked.
We should be on our hands and knees appologising to them. Americans just don't appreciate the great contributions to this country by the somalians. They deserve 2 ships.
It is obvious that they are more than our political system can handle.
What a great and deturmined people.
I think that any 500,000,000 ton ship that is overtaken by 3 toothless fisherman in a dingy probably deserves to get a new captain. They would probably be able to protect the ship with a somalian captain,,,,would,t one think. I got it. hire all somalian captains in the cargo industry,,,,genious. I beat our potus to the punch
We need to send some "bait" ships into that area, civilian ship equipped with military technology, manned by military personnel in civilian clothes and torch those rogue sob's. Just light 'em up and make sure there are no survivors so you can keep using the same ship over and over without having your cover blown.
If it was my call I would do this as soon as we get the American hostage(s) back.
And just when you think you could NOT be more outraged by these SomaliThugs holding one of our captains hostage...after you clap your hand to your head at the sheer stupidity of them trying to jack a boat full of humanitarian food and supplies; along comes a libtard to remind us that, poor things, it's not their fault, it's ALL our fault.
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 - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.
The reason they don't have armed security on these ships is that it is against Maritime laws in International waters for a merchant ship to be armed in any way. If they are armed they are now either military or pirate themselves. You may see that change, but for now their hands are tied. If you have read the news accounts most of these ships know they will be hijacked its just a matter of when.
Waste of time- navy ships etc- give them what they want and then get guy back- shoot them and every other jerk that wants a piece of action- go to land and nukeem all- then take those in MPLS and send them home on our ships and give them to Pirates--
They don't even need to give em a trial, just cuffem and stuff em and when you have a dozen or so keel haul the low lifes.
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