Posted on 12/26/2008 10:59:52 AM PST by epow
Nairobi, Kenya —- There’s at least one job these days that’s recession-proof, if you can handle shark-infested seas, outrun some of the world’s most powerful navies and keep your cool when your hostages get antsy.
A pirate’s life in Somalia isn’t for everyone. However, nothing comes easily in one of the poorest and most unstable countries on Earth, and when you consider the dearth of career options for Somalis on land, a pirate’s life starts to look more than cushy by comparison.
“Is there any Somali who can earn a million dollars for any business? We get millions of dollars easily for one attack,” bragged Salah Ali Samatar, a 32-year-old pirate who spoke by phone from Eyl, a pirate den on Somalia’s desolate northern coast.
Hundreds of pirates such as Samatar —- zipping around in simple fiberglass speedboats and usually armed with nothing more sophisticated than automatic rifles —- have turned the waters off East Africa into a terrifying gantlet for cargo vessels, oil tankers and even cruise ships sailing between Europe and Asia. The International Maritime Bureau says more than 40 ships have been hijacked off Somalia this year, and experts in neighboring Kenya estimate Somali pirates have pocketed $30 million in ransoms.
While their countrymen suffer through another political crisis and the l
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
These people need to be...[feel free to add your suggestion here]
Option #1
Designate shipping lanes closed to all but designated shipping.
Provide all disignated ships transponders.
Patrol the shipping lanes with P3 Orion’s.
Sink any unauthorized boats, no questions asked.
Option #2.
In conjuction with India, GB, China and who ever else wants in on the action, go into Sololia, burn every villiage affiliated with the pirates.
A little more blunt but either would be effective.
“I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king...”
The UN General Assembly has given permission for anti-pirate forces to follow the pirates home and take care of business. The game is over.
The General Motors CEO was overheard saying “if we lose a cargo shipment of our auto’s we can just go to the American people and cry, it’s the best insurance, really ....”
All a large ship needs to defend itself is a bucket brigade. As soon as one of the small craft pull alongside and toss the grappling hooks, A few deck hands armed with bucketfulls of gasoline-styrofoam mixture poured blindly overboard in the direction of the ropes followed by a burning rag should dissuade unlawful boarders.
Question: What happens with captured pirates these days since sending them to a place like GITMO is supposedly bad...bad...bad? When will the Red Cross, Amnesty International, etc step in and claim their “rights” are being denied? Will they just send them back to Somalia so they can resume their pirate trade?
The fact that the west is still talking about “chasing the pirates on land” instead of blasting them out of the water shows how stupid, weak and pitiful we truly are.
'A Pirate’s life is Flashy in Somalia'
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As an old sailor, I can tell you that fire on a boat scares the he!! out of a crew, especially if you are an oil tanker.
If the fire gets hot enough, the metal starts burning then you are completely screwed.
Loosing an entire shipment of insured vehicles would have to go into the positive column for GM right now.
A liberal retired teacher I know and I actually agreed on something: blow the pirates out of the water.
Another guy we know (very liberal and against the Iraq war) said, “That won't work. We know where the pirates live. They live in Somalia in $10 million homes. We should just go to Somalia and take them out in their homes.”
I said: “Are you kidding me? First, if potential victims continued to kill pirates, eventually, if nothing else, all pirates would be killed. So, piracy would be ended. Most likely, though, after some photographs of burning debris floating where pirates once boated made the rounds, the rest of them would think twice about trying to approach an armed ship. Secondly, there's quite a difference between defending yourself with force in international waters and trespassing on the soil of a sovereign nation to kill some bad guys. Isn't that exactly what you objected to in our invasion of Iraq?”
It is interesting that as far as I have seen, no news media has ever explicitly mentioned the fact these pirates are blacks. They are just ‘somalis’. The gangsta mentality seems to be alive and well in the motherland. As if we didn’t know from countless other examples.
But the Somali pirates in Africa are nothing more than the bloods and crypts and home invasion squads here. Least we can fight back with comparable weapons here (for now).
I’m with you- why can’t they just drop a large rock overboard and sink them when they get close enough?
How do you let a bunch or morons in a tiny boat get onto your ship?
Why are valuable cargow ships and cruise ships sailing around with no security - not even a gun
Hopefully it's a really, really bright flash followed by a large fireball.
L
My point was that it was hypocritical to advocate going into Somalia to kill Islamofascist pirates while criticizing Bush and the US for doing the same in Iraq.
You’ll never defeat pirates at sea. The security cop idea is a loss leader. You have crews working for minimum taking boring voyages across gigantic seas and there’s no way in heck the shipping companies are adding the cost of a full time garrison and that’s what each ship would need to fend off a fearless pirate attack. The pirates don’t play by the rules. They would most likely come up in the dead of night and subdue the garrison anyway.
No, the only way you stop pirating is to put pain into the pirate’s life back home. He’s got family somewhere, most likely in the shanties that have sprung up along the coast to greet the pirates and give them a place to blow their money when back on land.
Burn those places to the ground is the first step. Kill a bunch of the people hanging on to the pirate culture at and near these shanties. Of course that takes political will so nevermind.
None of this is news. The original marine corp did just this with the help of competing tribes back when Jefferson approved an expedition to Tripoli. They tried fighting the pirates at sea and found it to be costly and inefficient. Then they landed in Lebanon, stocked up on local fighters and sailed to Tripoli where they went about sacking the place. Pirating abated after that.
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