Posted on 11/19/2008 3:03:26 PM PST by Lorianne
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women - even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.
And in an impoverished country where every public institution has crumbled, they have become heroes in the steamy coastal dens they operate from because they are the only real business in town.
"The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them," said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Haradhere, the nearest village to where a hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude was anchored Wednesday.
These boomtowns are all the more shocking in light of Somalia's violence and poverty: Radical Islamists control most of the country's south, meting out lashings and stonings for accused criminals. There has been no effective central government in nearly 20 years, plunging this arid African country into chaos.
Life expectancy is just 46 years; a quarter of children die before they reach 5.
But in northern coastal towns like Haradhere, Eyl and Bossaso, the pirate economy is thriving thanks to the money pouring in from pirate ransoms that have reached $30 million this year alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailybreeze.com ...
Would it not be cheaper to put some 50 cals along the deck and man them?
Completely illegal. Only criminals can have guns.
Time to make a big BOOM over their “boomtowns”...
“Somalia’s increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women”
Yah, I’ll bet there are some real babes in Somalia!!!!
One other thing I forgot to mention: jurisdiction.
Once you’re beyond th 12-mile territorial boundary, no one has jurisdiction in punishing the pirates. No one knows where to take them or what to do with them.
Actually, there are some pretty Somali women. But when you just got yourself a $mil, you can import some Eastern European sex slaves.
No kidding. It seems a terrible waste to use the Iowa-class ships as museums. This sort of mission calls for some old-school shore bombardment, nine-gun broadside style.
And if a Navy ship just blows the pirates out of the water, the Navy captain is now a war criminal.
Hell, a dinky little destroyer's single big gun would be enough to reduce these villages to rubble. It's not the firepower, it's the will to USE the firepower.
Don't forget the obligatory "fair trial" first.
The Indian stealth ship blew the pirate mothership to Davy Jones’ Locker just yesterday. No one has said “boo”.
Or does the rule only apply to American captains?
I don’t know if my 401 K keeps heading south I was thinking of joining them.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before the MSM apologists started playing up the great “social services” that the Pirates were providing for their community. Its their MO. They did the same for Hezbollah and Hamas. They think any behavior is justified as long as it results in impoverished people being taken care of.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; born Ayaan Hirsi Magan 13 November 1969 in Mogadishu, Somalia)[1] is a Dutch feminist, writer, and politician. She is the estranged daughter of the Somali scholar, politician, and revolutionary opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse. She is a prominent critic of Islam, and her screenplay for Theo Van Gogh’s movie Submission led to death threats. Since van Gogh’s murder by a Muslim in 2004, she has lived in seclusion under the protection of Dutch authorities.
When she was eight, her family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the center of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the Tweede Kamer (the Lower House of the Dutch parliament), representing the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet.
She is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank linked to neoconservatism, working from an unknown location in the Netherlands.[2][3] In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[4] She has also received several awards for her work, including Norway’s Human Rights Service’s Bellwether of the Year Award, the Danish Freedom Prize, the Swedish Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship.[5]
Rule of the Sea. In which case, it is completely up to the captain.
Walk the Plank.
They've only been doing it for about 200 years.
Another problem is the train wreck of local and international laws regarding weapons on board. A lot of the shipping companies take the standard “we believe that armed crew members would only make the situation more dangerous” (where have we heard that before*) a lot of the companies feel that from a legal standpoint it is easier to deal with crew members killed by pirates than the ramifications of dealing with crew members making pirates dead.
*There are however valid concerns about gunfire and volatile cargo and fuel, munitions, etc on the vessel.
I had somebody tell we a few years back that there was a study on piracy and ship takeovers and found that when the pirates were met with small arms fire or crew served weapons during the attempted boarding or preparations for the boarding, the number of successful takeovers dwindled down to almost zero. (lol I think this report was “disappeared”)
Problems with Piracy:
Laws, laws and more laws. International and others, it’s just a mess.
What do to with detained pirates- more of a mess.
Hot pursuit, coastal navies and other issues.
THE DAMN RANSOM MONEY! Piracy is very lucrative and the sad fact is that a nitwit caught with weed will see more jail time than the majority of these jerks (for a variety of reasons).
Expense: Private security dudes are expensive (well worth it imo) and you still have the problems of local and other laws with these guys.
Foreign policy: Enough said.
Local complicity- Sometimes the pirates are actually members of local coast guard/riverine outfits and brown or blue water navies in the areas in question.
Bunch of other stuff I forgot to add into this mess of a post.
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