Somali Police Deny Pussy Footing

[PeteMorris]

" Taxi for Mr Clarkson ! ".

 

Hilarious, that did make me smile! :hihi::hihi:

[cressida]

Can't the international community have a few of those ' unmanned drones' that the US use? The pirates attempt to capture a boat/ship, drone spots it and zaps it on activation of an international command, nowt to do with any individual nation.

 

The jobs a good'un.

 

Good point, these pirates are getting tiresome now - so last year;)

[gnvqsos]

There is no government in the parts of Somalia where this is a problem.

 

Its amazing just how little some of the other posters know of current affairs.When I was in Djibouti recently I saw some pirates buying guns and mobile phones,using monies obtained from ransoms.

[Cavegirl]

The situation with the Somali piracy problem is far more complex than anyone on here seems to realise. Here's a bit of history for you:

 

...under the consummate Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan, America suddenly renewed its interest in the Horn of Africa. Henry Kissinger met personally with Barre (General Barre was the dictator ruler of Somalia from 1960-1995), and in 1981 the U.S. began supplying the dictator with arms and some $100 million per year.

 

In exchange, America was granted control of the deep-sea port of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden. Berbera was deemed of considerable strategic significance in countering Soviet designs in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It had the added advantage of overlooking a key oil route.

 

Fortifying his rule with American weapons and treasure, Barre managed to survive the Cold War. His nation was not so lucky.

 

Like most Third World pawns, Barre’s regime was fundamentally unsound, necessitating ever greater levels of financial aid. At the conclusion of the Cold War, American politicians downgraded Somalia’s importance, deeming it an unnecessary expenditure.

 

As American patronage waned, unrest turned to full-fledged civil war. Barre was ousted in 1991 and died of heart attack in 1995. In the intervening years, America attempted a ‘humanitarian invasion’ of Somalia. It ended in the humiliation of the ‘Black Hawk Down’ fiasco. By then, Somalia was overwhelmed by the anarchy with which its name is now synonymous.

 

Despite America’s loud talk of championing democracy and human rights abroad, we encouraged neither during Somalia’s crucial post-colonial years. Although our sponsorship of Barre afforded opportunities aplenty for promoting responsible governance, we instead enabled a tradition of illiberal rule-by-force.

 

Somalia entered the 1990s with an economy as nonexistent as its political institutions. This too was the fault of American and Western planners.

 

Over the years, its markets atrophied as its people grew accustomed to the foreign dole. Somalia’s agricultural industry was undermined by shipment after shipment of crops, which were sold at exaggeratedly low prices to the detriment of local farmers, who simply could not compete.

 

Without an organic market of indigenous producers, Somalis were forced into a cycle of dependency. How ironic: In the hopes of eliminating starvation in Somalia, we in fact eliminated the country’s ability to feed itself, making starvation all but inevitable.

 

From http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/04/14/somali-piracy-and-american-foreign-policy/

 

Here, Johann Hari speaks specifically about Somali piracy in an article titled 'You are being lied to about pirates' from The Independant:

 

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.

 

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

 

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

 

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas."

 

 

From http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

 

This is a grim grim situation brought about largely by the west and though it may have begun with the best of intentions it's turned into a humanitarian disaster. Yes we need to get rid of piracy in Somalia, but we do it by demanding that we STOP western fishing boats from invading their waters and we demand that western powers clean up the mess of nuclear waste they've made. Many would then go back to their preferred livelihood leaving just the few gangsters for the Navy's to pick up.

[VideoPro]

^^^You just ruined a few keyboard warrior's shooting spree fantasy.

[LeMaquis]

Can't the international community have a few of those ' unmanned drones' that the US use?

 

If you let the US use its drones they'll sink cargo ships, Royal Navy vessels, nuclear submarines, oil tankers, surfboards, HMS Victory, everything but a pirate ship.

[ronthenekred]

^^^You just ruined a few keyboard warrior's shooting spree fantasy.

 

I doubt it..you cant educate pork.

[ronthenekred]

If you let the US use its drones they'll sink cargo ships, Royal Navy vessels, nuclear submarines, oil tankers, surfboards, HMS Victory, everything but a pirate ship.

 

Thwack!! you bad boy you.

[Cyclone]

Dumping nuclear waste, it sounds like a rather far fetched conspiracy theory...

And sailing all that distance to catch fish, I'd be interested to know what the sailing time from spain on a trawler is and the cost of fuel. Is it even practical?

[Cavegirl]

Dumping nuclear waste, it sounds like a rather far fetched conspiracy theory...

And sailing all that distance to catch fish, I'd be interested to know what the sailing time from spain on a trawler is and the cost of fuel. Is it even practical?

 

Have any actual knowledge or experience of the situation on which to base your assumptions? In fact, do you have any new arguments or are we still stuck at calling everybody a conspiracy theorist even when they are quoting mainstream media sources? It's much easier than actually doing some research for yourself I realise, but it's getting very dull now.

 

Spain's fishing rights are protected by European law, the Somali's have no such protections because there's no real government in place to enforce them.