What is this world coming to... cargo ship outruns pirates off Tanzania coast

[carlyhippy]

Americans and British all put together cannot do anything?!?! hmmmmmmm........

(CNN) -- A Dutch-operated container ship outran pirates off the coast of Tanzania this weekend, an official with the International Maritime Bureau said Sunday.


French soldiers, who have joined British, Indian, Russian and American patrols off Somalia, during an exercise.

The incident took place "very far out to sea," showing that Somali-based pirates are extending their reach further and further, Noel Choong of the IMB's Piracy Reporting Center told CNN.

"Earlier attacks were on ships off the coast of Somalia, then off the coast of Kenya, and now this was 450 nautical miles off Dar es Salaam," he said, tracing the southward expansion of the pirates' area of operations.

The ship, which Choong declined to name, came under attack from rocket-propelled grenades, starting a fire on board, he said. The crew was able to put out the fire and escape by increasing speed.

The ship and crew are now out of danger, he said, following the incident at 11:42 GMT Saturday.

Piracy has become increasingly common in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean this year. So far, pirates have attacked almost 100 vessels off Somalia's coast and successfully hijacked nearly 40, according to the center.


Those hijacked vessels include an enormous oil tanker, a chemical tanker, and a ship laden with Soviet-era arms including tanks. The pirates normally hold the ships for ransom.

A luxury cruise ship carrying more than 1,000 passengers and crew successfully outran pirates off the coast of Yemen last weekend.

The IMB has tracked at least 11 incidents of actual or attempted piracy near the Tanzanian coast this year.

A multinational fleet, including vessels from the U.S., NATO member states, Russia and India, has been patrolling the Indian Ocean waters near the Gulf of Aden, which connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. Around 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels pass along the crucial shipping route each year. Watch anti-piracy vessels patrol the region. »


In a recent interview provided to CNN, a pirate leader claimed attacks on shipping would continue as long as life in Somalia remained desperate.

"The pirates are living between life and death," said the pirate leader, identified by only one name, Boyah. "Who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

[Trajan]

1. Piracy is a very old profession ....

The Somali version is a rather recent development ...

In any case: The major powers justify naval expenditures by insisting they are 'securing the oceans', at least partly for the safe shipment of goods ..... And so now we might ask : Where the hell are ya ?

ALL the money spent on fancy streamlined ships and state of the art, self targeting weaponry ... And we have yet to see a significant effort to reduce the range of the pirates, or to stymie their activities ....

What are they/we waiting for ?

[T Wolf]

2. The private owners of the corporate-owned ships should take care of their own security.

Instead, we are forced to with our tax-dollar-paid-for navy.

Also - what kind of weak-ass pirate raider is OUT-RUN by a container ship? Have they no pride?

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. What's the legality of this?

I was just saying that the most direct solution would be to outfit these ships with weaponry that would be able to overpower the pirates, but I'm guessing that There Are Rules against that sort of thing.

[carlyhippy]

5. I wondered the same thing....and they say the US and Britain can't stop them?

The shipping companies should have to pay for their own security, but I imagine that opens doors to vigilantism and other problems, giving private folks big weaponry and free reign, someone could end up starting WWIII

[Ex Lurker]

22. there's apparently some international compact preventing the arming of

merchant ships, including small arms for self defense. I don't know the particulars, but I've read a little about it. Obviously exceptions need to be made.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. I think it's about time...

...to outfit merchant ships operating in those waters with heavy weaponry.

[JackRiddler]

6. Origins of the Somali pirates: Western chemical dumping on the shore?

http://counterpunch.org/whitney12032008.html

There's an interesting subtext to the pirate story which appeared in a recent copy of the Socialist Worker. According to author Simon Assaf: "Many European, US and Asian shipping firms – notably Switzerland's Achair Partners and Italy's Progresso – signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with Somalia's politicians and militia leaders. This meant they could use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became widespread as the country descended into civil war.

Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Programme said, "European companies found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste." When the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2005 washed ashore on the east coast of Africa, it uncovered a great scandal. Tons of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals drifted onto the beaches after the giant wave dislodged them from the sea bed off Somalia. Tens of thousands of Somalis fell ill after coming into contact with this cocktail. They complained to the United Nations (UN), which began an investigation. "There are reports from villagers of a wide range of medical problems such as mouth bleeds, abdominal hemorrhages, unusual skin disorders and breathing difficulties," the UN noted.

Some 300 people are believed to have died from the poisonous chemicals.

In 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the UN that foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks. These foreign fleets often recruited Somali militias to intimidate local fishermen. Despite repeated requests, the UN refused to act. Meanwhile the warships of global powers that patrol the strategically important Gulf of Aden did not sink or seize any vessels dumping toxic chemicals off the coast. So angry Somalis, whose waters were being poisoned and whose livelihoods were threatened, took matters into their own hands. Fishermen began to arm themselves and attempted to act as unofficial coastguards." (Socialist Worker)

The origins of piracy in Somalia is considerably different than the narrative in the media which perpetuates the stereotype of scary black men pillaging on the high seas. In fact, it is the pirates who are the victims of attacks on their territorial waters by corporate polluters. Because there is no functioning central government, there's no one to defend the health and safety of the Somali people from foreign intruders who choose to use their country as a dumping ground.

---

MORE at link, including on the failure of US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia.

[carlyhippy]

7. again another mess this world is in

this isn't safe for the somalis and just think of glowing fish that is being caught and eaten throughout the world, and what this dumping is doing to the environment. The article failed to mention the other side of the story...geeze.

[JackRiddler]

8. When does CNN-CIA mention the other side of the story?

I mean, seriously, and in generally voiceless Africa even more so, when is it even implied that there is another side to the story than what the Western intel, states and corporations claim? When have you ever seen CNN talk about the significant role of non-African nations in creating the African problems, except for the occasional attack on China? The only thing Western actors are ever accused of is a lack of intervention, their actual interventions are never reported on.

[DonEBrook]

10. Makes sense. "Somebody dumped crap on our beach so let's become pirates."

Sounds like Grover Norquist reasoning.

[JackRiddler]

11. It's not about right or wrong.

I'm sure we both agree piracy is wrong.

But what happens shouldn't surprise you, when the country is invaded by a US-backed foreign power (Ethiopia) and used by the West as a dumping ground for toxic waste -- in itself a greater crime than the piracy, so why isn't it getting equal attention? It shouldn't surprise you, I say, that the people so treated develop a big fuck-you attitude to the world, and might seek to grab back whatever they can, including by crime.

If you're going to have an opinion, understanding the history of the issue should matter.

Did it make sense, when the US was hit by a small group of religious-extremist gangsters (according to official story of Sept. 11th), that the government responded by declaring a global war and invading at least one country that was in no way related to 9/11? And yet I bet you could, without condoning any of the US decisions, still understand the mentality and atmosphere that caused a majority of Americans (at first) to support these decisions. Now imagine that you were a Somali, possibly one who had lost relatives to US-armed invaders, or who was dying of toxic poisoning thanks to Swiss corporations... would you really think piracy was so horrible, compared to what had been done to you? Of course, this piracy might target someone innocent of wronging you, but maybe you're not too clear anymore on who's innocent, who's a legit target and who's not. Sort of like the Swiss and the Americans who fucked you.

[DonEBrook]

16. There is absolutely no doubt that criminals can invent any number of rationalizations.

That's hardly a new development. Whether someone chooses to accept them as legitimate depends entirely on the bias of the commentator.

[JackRiddler]

18. The relevant question for policy making isn't whether...

the rationalization for the pirates is right or wrong, but if there would have been pirates if Somalia were not for so many years plundered, destabilized, used as a toxic dumping ground, and most recently invaded by Ethiopia at US request. I think, clearly, not. Again, this isn't to excuse the pirates but to point out that piracy has its causes and history, and those complaining loudest now are denying their own countries' role in creating the conditions.

It's like increased poverty and street crime. There's no poverty excuse for the criminal, but the policymaker who acts in ways that will increase poverty knows the statistical relationship and bears responsibility for causing the rise.

Also, I'm wondering if you'll address this point: which is the greater crime? Dumping toxic waste on poor people in another country, or piracy? Engineering an invasion of that country, or piracy?

[JVS]

9. Damned slacker slowpoke pirates!

[Cleita]

12. Fifty years ago when Maureen O'Hara and Errol Flynn were making derring do

sword epics about pirates I would have laughed in the face of anyone who would have said that pirates could make a come back.

[JackRiddler]

13. The principle of piracy has never gone away.

I'm not arguing moral equivalency, I mean the idea of plundering what others made for one's own enrichment is the guiding principle not just of anarchic gangs but of a number of established institutions. There are state pirates, corporate pirates and freelance pirates. And a lot of fighting over who gets to define who's a pirate, who's a police force, and who's a business.

[Cleita]

14. That goes without a doubt. I was just talking about

sea going pirates though, who actually physically board ships to take them and their cargo over. It seemed really archaic at the time, but I guess not.

[JackRiddler]

15. Yes, it's very interesting stuff, I agree...

I once translated a book about Women Pirates (in fact that's the English title) from the German, and in the course of its telling it's also a history of piracy generally. Piracy has arisen, peaked and fallen at many different times, whenever there was wealth travelling through areas on the outer reaches of a state's power. You had the state-backed English and Dutch freebooters, then the Carribbean golden age of "real" (non-state) piracy was about 30 years in the late 17th and 18th C. You had it in the ancient Mediterranean and even to the modern age -- Barbary pirates, shores of Tripoli, first US overseas intervention, right? Also China in many periods and of course many centuries of the Vikings and assorted northerners.

[Cleita]

17. Wow, that's interesting. I was in the past tempted

to write a fictional story about Grace O'Malley. She seems like quite a gal.

[JackRiddler]

19. Grace O'Malley...

Right, the Irish one, I vaguely remember, she had a chapter in there too.

When I heard about Pirates of the Carribbean I was excited for five minutes before I realized it was about the fucking Disneyworld ride with talking squids and other such crap. (And this at a runtime longer than the Godfather! Sacrilege!) I can't believe the real Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Bartholomew Roberts and the rest aren't considered good enough stuff for a commercial blockbuster, but that shit and its sequels made like 3 billion dollars. A culture corrupted by its own triviality, bored even with the exciting parts of real history.

[Gold Metal Flake]

20. "You still owe me a 10 second cargo ship"

"My top end is unlimited!"

[NutmegYankee]

21. We need to go back to Q ships, treaties be damned.

Wait for them to attack and fire on the Q ship, then just open up with 900 round per second machine guns and 5 inch cannons and ensure there are no survivors or boat left. That is guaranteed to knock it down.