Somali pirates

Calm down!
I have no desire to go to Somalia or anywhere close to it ,just pointing out to you that these so called pirates go a bit further than just feeding their familys,

They seem to live in big houses and drive the latest 4x4s,if the news coverage is anything to go by.

Ok they treat their hostages well,but how long will that last?
 
I've got an idea. Why don't we just seal off the Somali boarders. Stop all aid and any other imports and any exports going in and out of the country. Then, have a massive blockade to seal off their international waters, again not letting anything in or out.

Then we leave 'em alone for as long as it takes for them to sort themselves out.
 
Just has a skim down the thread. All very amusing and, how to put this politely, a little naive.

But I do know where large amounts of ransom money goes and yes it does go into the banking system. The Kenya-Somalia border is very porous. And I imagine its other borders are worse. There is a part of E. Nairobi known as little Mogadishu which is totally Somali dominated. It is incidentally totally safe, unlike the rest of the city. There are tales from people I trust of assorted Somali religious leaders walking into banks at regular intervals carrying suitcases full of cash. There are no money laundering laws here (how could there be? But that's another story) and the banks take the money without batting an eyelid (all are members of the big international banking groups). It appears that the imams are used as trusted go-betweens to carry huge quantities of cash and put it into the banking system in neighboring countries.
 
Some 'interesting' thoughts and comments above.

Just saw this article on Marinelink about another couple of ships that the pirates tried to hijack, but their attempts were foiled.

The article is at http://marinelink.com/en-US/News/Article/332395.aspx

In the afternoon of November 2 some 360 nautical miles east of Mombasa, Kenya, pirates attempted to hijack MV Harriette and MV Jo Cedar.

MV Harriette, a U.S. flagged Cargo vessel was attacked by two small skiffs. The pirates opened fire with automatic weapons. Rocket Propelled grenades were also seen by the crew of the Harriette. The pirates tried to get onboard the vessel with a ladder but the master of Harriette made evasive maneuvers and succeeded in keeping the pirates off his ships. Nobody was reported injured on board.

Some hours later, MV Jo Cedar, a Dutch flagged Tanker, reported being under attack in roughly the same position. The vessel was under attack by three fast attack skiffs. The pirates fired their automatic weapons damaging the bridge wing. Rocket Propelled grenades were sighted but not fired. With evasive maneuvers and speed this vessel also escaped the clutches of the pirates. Nobody was reported injured on board.

An EU NAVFOR Maritime Patrol Aircraft based in Seychelles was tasked to investigate the area and EU NAVFOR German warship FGS Karlsruhe was ordered immediately to search and neutralize the pirate attack group.
 
Solution

orbister said:
However we should also if possible work towards giving the employees something else to do.

Some parallels with Afghanistan and Columbia where in both cases the west have been trying physical eradication of the only really profitable cash crops - opium and coca respectively. It just doesn't work unless you/we make sure that there is an alternative way for the farmers to make money.
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Maybe we should take several hundred young Somalis and train them to be skippers and crew of large tankers etc, then give them the routes that pass their own country? Then at least if Somali pirates were to take their ships, the crew would just be going home! That would then eliminate the problem of hostages from other countries being held and it would simply be a case of aguing with the insurance companies.
 
Rough Justice

I am happy to recognise Algol and others' views on justice. We do live now in a different age and different cultures obtain.
The question is not whether we, 60 years ago, were right or wrong because we did what our consciences told us would be best overall.
If you want to replace the rather brusque way of doing things 60 years ago, and that is your privilege, then you must find methods that achieve a valid result.
I was discussing the prison population with a governor. The UK prison population in 1949 was approx 15,000. Today it is approx 85,000 and about one third more on parole.
Is there something wrong with our present day "war on crime"?
Let me add something else: Grendon prison re-offence rate is only 2% differentt from the rest of the prisons.
(Grendon takes carefully chosen prisoners and trains them carefully to avoid re-offending.It costs a fortune to run.)
 
orbister said:
But it doesn't carry the death penalty, and we cannot - any more - swan round the world executing people who annoy us, no matter how great the provocation.



I find it interesting that you chose to write "pro-Somali" and not "pro-pirate" in that little bit of Daily Mailism. Not all Somalis are pirates, you know, and there is a word for people who assume otherwise.
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you know fine well that the topic is somali piracy, and do I take that you are going to decline offering yourself up in exchange for the chandlers...hmm thought so..and theres also a word for people like that as well.

you are wrong about piracy not carrying the death penalty, in fact it does!

The Piracy Act 1837 (c.88) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It abolished the death penalty for most offences of piracy, but created a new offence often known as piracy with violence, which is punishable with death. This offence still exists today!

and if for one minute you think that a group of armed men boarding your boat, shoving several guns in your face and threatning to kill you if you dont comply, is not an act of violence, then you realy do need educating in the ways of the world.
 
binch said:
I was discussing the prison population with a governor. The UK prison population in 1949 was approx 15,000. Today it is approx 85,000 and about one third more on parole.
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Fascinating figures. It'd be interesting to see what the crimes they were imprisoned for were in the two time periods, how the social and employment background of those imprisoned compares.

binch said:
Let me add something else: Grendon prison re-offence rate is only 2% differentt from the rest of the prisons.
(Grendon takes carefully chosen prisoners and trains them carefully to avoid re-offending.It costs a fortune to run.)
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The rate is only 2%, or 2% different from the rest? It's ambiguous
 
Algol said:
Fascinating figures. It'd be interesting to see what the crimes they were imprisoned for were in the two time periods, how the social and employment background of those imprisoned compares.

The rate is only 2%, or 2% different from the rest? It's ambiguous
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2% ???
The info was obtained in a conversation. As the re-offence rate at the prison governed by my informant was apparently 83%, I assumed he meant that Grendon, where he had been deputy governor, was 83 - 2 = 81%.
As an actuary (as well as a Master Mariner) I should have known better than to be so vague with numbers. Sorry to confuse. Comes of writing after dinner. Hic!
 
Crime and Disorder Act 1998

(5) In section 2 of the [1837 c. 88.] Piracy Act 1837 (punishment of piracy when murder is attempted), for the words “and being convicted thereof shall suffer death” there shall be substituted the words “and being convicted thereof shall be liable to imprisonment for life”.
 
binch said:
2% ???
The info was obtained in a conversation. As the re-offence rate at the prison governed by my informant was apparently 83%, I assumed he meant that Grendon, where he had been deputy governor, was 83 - 2 = 81%.
As an actuary (as well as a Master Mariner) I should have known better than to be so vague with numbers. Sorry to confuse. Comes of writing after dinner. Hic!
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My take is that those numbers show 2 things a) the right people are in prison and b) we let them out too early.

I am all for providing assistance to Prisoners to stop re-offending, but the primary purpose of prison should be to keep criminals off the streets. Not retribution or even punishment.........respite for society.
 
Sandyman said:
Could well be in some secret CIA bank account owned/run by a previous American Defense Secretary. Cant quite remember his name. The chap that runs the company supplying arms, oil refinement, food, private security services, weapons, banking services, arms & ammunition to anyone who can afford it & will swear in all honesty to support the American way of life.
Without taking the pi**
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Bechtel?
 
binch said:
I thought that my posting about 1950 would flush out the woolly pink softies.
Unless you have had to immerse yourself for a longish period in the Africa of 60 years ago, you can have no idea what it is like trying to bring people who are not much past stone age into the modern world.
How do YOU, Mr bleeding heart, cope with cannibalism? We had to. Evidently, you would rather close your eyes to that bit of the past.
To people whose reasoning powers have not got much past black and white, solutions and civic discipline have to be that simple to be understood.
No doubt Africa in general has made advances in the last 60 years, but their rate of change is slower than Europe and so they fall further behind.
One aspect of the anti-piracy patrol's effectiveness lies in not having a secure base in the middle of the area. We had Mogadiscio, and it is there the slavers and pirates we captured were put on trial.
Oh and by the way, if we were nasty to the slavers (whose methods included throwing their slaves overboard to the sharks in an attempt to evade justice--- if you didn't catch them with slaves on board they could only be charged with murder or manslaughter which are not international crimes) would that nastiness be also evidence of the wickedness of our administration?
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Tell e m how it is/was!
I was in Angola in 76 till 92 on and off, 76 and I was were Callans lot were, his translator worked with me, hair raising stories. It was all camarada when we first went there then it changed as the conditions worsened for the workers ( Ive told the stroy of the white unflagged ship in Luanda with goodies for the bent ministers from SA)
My workers used to talk to me, (I learnd to speak portuguese) in the end they used to say life was better when the Porks were there. Pedro Kanga, learned to speak english froma dictionary I gave him, used to say to me as we uncrated cases of spares, pumps, mbikes etc etc "why arent these invented/manufactured in Africa Maister Stu?" (they had a lovely polite way of life, I was maistre (blue collar boss), an engineer was doctor, etc etc.
Stu
PS
loved the minister and his bumboys!! the guardianistas missed that one!
 
David_Jersey said:
I am all for providing assistance to Prisoners to stop re-offending, but the primary purpose of prison should be to keep criminals off the streets. Not retribution or even punishment.........respite for society.
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It's certainly an important point of prison, and there are certainly people who need kept securely locked up for the benefit of the rest of us. However, I think I'd put reform just as high on my list of priorities. After all, it's an awful lot more expensive to stop a burglar burgling for thirty years by locking him up for thirty years than it is by locking him up for two years and having him out on the streets as a reformed ex-burglar for the next 28.
 
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