21 Comments on Somali Pirates Release Ukrainian Hostages
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Can someone explain why it is so hard to catch pirates in these modern times. Granted, the ocean is a really big place but radar can pick these boats up fairly easily and an F-16 can fly pretty darn fast.
Sigh.
Actually $3 million for 33 tanks is a steal. :D
(am I really first at 9:45 Eastern?)
“the ocean is a really big place” when nuclear subs are crashing into each other with all their zooty radar! right, go find a pirate!
HA HA HA… good point. :-)
Be patient. I am sure governments will have cleared air strikes on something as small as a little ol’ hooch exchange soon enough–leastwise, your gps enabled vehicle as you drive away.
However, so long as you stay 200 nautical miles off everyone’s coastal baseline and/or off their continental shelf, you could take matters into your own hands. I understand that real drones are widely available to private citizens. Arming it might get a little sticky. Then again, you could probably purchase and install the arms in international waters too.
I would suggest looking into discrete payments from interested parties.
Good luck and have fun!
I have been wondering the same question. Maybe you actually got right to it: $3M is less expensive than an F-16 job and the rest of the support, risk & hassle.
The Somalis are exploiting the fact that many cargo shipments, like this one, are often affairs arranged by shady people who find it a lot easier to pay up than to get the U.N. involved, which might involve answering a bunch of questions like the ones raised by Ruud. It’s kinda like cops shaking down dealers.
Note to video bloggers: Ruud does not introduce this story with a shot of his own face. That ios because he is A: an old-school jouirnalist and B: keeply aware that he is not the focal point of the story. In fact, this is the first time I can remember seeing him on-camera at all.
Hippo-tatoes one day, pirates and tanks the next. Yee-ha.
Looking at the stories linked to the episode these pirates are keeping quite busy. $3 mil here, $6 mil there. Seems like a good business. So taking the above comments into consideration; a one time $3 mil vs an F-16 strike could be a cost factor but the pirates carry on pilfering. If they were to be terminated then future hijackings and ransom demands are quelled … until another band starts up but with a tighter watch on marine activities they would hopefully be deterred.
Maritime law apparently prohibits growing private security forces from bringing weapons on board a ship! HELLO!! How about amending that law if pirating is such a concern? These hired, gun-less guards are left to use technological deterrents and McGyver-esque type weapons. No wonder they jumped overboard to save their asses.
Also why does it take several days to unload 33 tanks? In the video they came flying out of the hold like nobody’s business.
Ruud, nice to see you in one of your rare camera appearances! Excellent work as usual. Groet!
Maritime law apparently prohibits growing private security forces from bringing weapons on board a ship!
I am interested in where you find that. I haven’t heard of that.
I am aware of a number of incidents of discharging weapons from private boats, both inside and outside coastal boundaries, that were quite public and would have gotten people in big trouble had they been on land.
Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
I’ve encountered that statement elsewhere but most recently here. Maybe not the best resource but it merits further research if one is interested.
It does say that. Maybe things happen differently in less newsworthy situations–although I have watched firearms discharged from boats on deep sea fishing shows along with not just one shark hunt news story.
There was a famous news story off the California coast of a guy target practicing from his boat. A round skipped the surface nearly three miles to the temple of a woman driving a coastal highway. Luckily it had little velocity left and lost most of that going through the window.
He read about her in the paper and visited her in the hospital to offer apologies and recompense.
Anyway, this simplifies things exponentially. It is quasi legal for large countries to interdict vessels in situations like this. Pirates aren’t exactly low profile. So continually bust them on weapons. Much less cat and mouse.
Really, it is an insurance game. These vessels could easily drive outside the range of pirate boats. (As per a Dutch commander right hear in a Rocketboom segment of some months back.) It is cost of fuel vs. insurance premium. For the insurance companies, it is a risk exposure equation. Evidently they don’t feel exposed enough.
I’ll get those Somali pirates. Hope there are a few cute ones. Like my new crime fighting costume? No sunglasses?
Sorry, the clashed with my outfit.
Pirates are where earrings come from. The culture was, you got an earring for ever ship wreck you survived.
Good luck and have fun!
It is a ladder game. You take a ship nobody cares about. Now you have hostages. Hostages are valuable leverage. Meanwhile, you take something a little more valuable. You are covered by leverage so long as you don’t move up too far too fast. They have been at it for decades.
Gunners gunning it for guns risking getting gunned, all for a delusive promise of living a lavish life with its accompanying illusory prestige: the peccable pirate’s phantasmal dream (almost like going to Cold Stone Creamery and ordering the gigantic ‘Gotta Have It’ with all the toppings while the crew behind the counter sings ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ because you dropped a fifty into the tip jar).
This is what happens in ghettos municipal, rural and national. I don’t really bemoan it. That ghettos are high crime areas. It is a small price for avoiding the real cost of disposable people and maybe for getting some cheap production in the deal.
The argument is whether ghettos get an even break and whether people without an even break should act that way.
What a ruse. By responding, the argument is validated! The ghetto exists because there is an argument in the first place that it might be OK. Even as we experience again the questionable behavior of some of our wealthiest, we are willing to entertain the idea that a ghetto is its own just reward.
We are so afraid of loosing what we have. But there is no gain without work, investment and risk. Do we really want to gain peace and justice if we are willing to tolerate or be suckered into an argument about the legitimacy of a ghetto or the people it spits out at us?
I had to come out of seclusion in order to relay this very important story. I hope Rudd does a report on this topic in the very near future.
In the Wheat Fields of Kenya, a Budding Epidemic
Stem Rust, Vanquished by Science Five Decades Ago, Has Returned in a Destructive New Form
GREAT RIFT VALLEY, Kenya — A virulent new version of a deadly fungus is ravaging wheat in Kenya’s most fertile fields and spreading beyond Africa to threaten one of the world’s principal food crops, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
read the rest here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021703174.html?hpid=topnews
See, the real Joanne returns, the mosquitoes vanish. (Or is it just that the twitter link to comments is turned off?) Everything is back to normal. Except I’m putting up all these posts.
The mosquitoes are seasonal; they’ll be back I’m sure. Actually I’ve noticed that the bugs are not about when there is an “intellectual” report and then all of a sudden they swarm back for the regular episodes. Maybe just a coincidence ;)
Things are not quite normal however; as you stated YOU are posting an above average number of posts and our friend b-man has left the RB comment section. I am glad he made a surprise, albeit an emergency, post today. Dude, we miss you. Come on back. Some of us don’t like it either and have voiced our opinions. That said, I still watch and chime in on good days like today - no mosquitoes as Ook said.
Have you ever done a Google Earth search of the Somali villages where these newly wealthy pirates come from?
Just wait until a few more McMansions go up and the new Mercede’s are tooling around the ex slums and send in a few Predators to destroy the fruits of their ill gotten labor. I think they will get the message.
Plus being mostly muslims, you willl be doing them a favor helping them get to heaven instead of just having to wait around on their newly created heaven on earth.
I think I am trying to reorient myself, having “returned” from my attempts to escape time. Time is part of my humanity and I now embrace it. Every moment is oportunity for, actually is, the distillation of something special about life.
No lingering desire to revisit those unpleasant, as it turns out, experiemces. I may have had more success than I care for.
Something seems irrevocably changed. Not my sanity I have decided. Concern for one’s sanity is symptomatic of sanity. Hopefully it will impart wisdom.
In person, the general concensus seems to be that my disposition has improved.
BTW, It us not a dying economy. It is a rebirthing economy. Ecobomics is the study of valuing resources, the business of existence. The current fuss is the distribution struggle reaching cresendo, as with every turning point in every economy.
Forgive thumbpad issues!