French Yacht - 4 Crew Seized by Somali Pirates

[DavidGC]

Originally Posted by Southern Star

. . .

If you live in a country where it is difficult to feed, let alone educate and provide health care for your young; a country where no legitimate chance of getting ahead exists and life (particularly your own) is indeed cheap, then the decision to engage in acts of piracy (or theft, or robbery) is frequently a pragmatic one. . . .

Brad

Logically speaking, this is where the train comes off the rails. Reality disproves it.

If this were true, then the majority of impoverished people would be out committing crimes. They are not. It is the lawless who turn to crime to solve their problems. I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for these pirates. I don't care where theyt come from or what they come from -- holding people at gunpoint for millions of dollars is NOT the solution, and they cannot blame their poverty for their CHOICE to become outlaws.

DGC

[brownoarsman]

Hi all,

This is my first post to the forum, but I've been lurking around for a few months taking advantage of all the accumulated knowledge and know-how on this forum and have found it to be an invaluable resource in slowly crafting my dream of blue water cruising. I've looked through the other threads on fire arms on the site, but haven't yet found an answer to a question that's been nagging at me since the piracy issue was thrust once again into the media spotlight.

If you carry weapons on board (one member in this thread mentioned that it would be good strategy to take out the helmsman), at what point are you legally allowed to use them assuming that you're outside of a country's territorial waters and thus outside local laws? Is it when you see a dinghy full of armed men who may look like pirates coming at you? Or is it when they unlawfully board your boat? Or are you required to wait until they shoot first? Was wondering if anyone knew the answer to this question, as it seems that the only real solution for anyone on a cruising yacht would be to have to try to fire first at a distance, as it would be likely that you'd be overpowered up close and just risk angering your attackers. This question seems especially pertinent now that the pirates have vowed to kill outright any American sailors they encounter.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Southern Star / Brad has deciphered my post very well, and more clearly than I managed Cheers

Originally Posted by TaoJones

Very well put, Brad. Clearly, member BS - excuse me, Blue Stocking (oops, I mean Blue Sovereign) - hasn't been here long enough to get to know DOJ, one of CF's real treasures, I think.

And, DOJ, how are you going to explain to other card-carrying National Socialists that you've been called a "tree hugger" who engages in "intellectual masturbation?" Oh, the scandal!

TaoJones

A tree hugger???? Ouch - that one hurt LOL .......but not half as much as being called a "real treasure" - which I take as CF.com polite code for "spends too much time in front of a PC posting stuff from "Planet David", rather than ever cruising anywhere" especially as it is true - but this year............???

But, FWIW, just to clarify my position - before I go off and blow my mind over pictures of Kofi Anan and Ban Ki Moon - although I may claim a certain understanding that folk around the world can think and approach certain matters differently to my own world it does not mean that I always object to the hang 'em from the yard arm approach (litterally - with a few heads on spikes thrown in ).

Sometimes might is right - or at least the pragmatic solution. And when in Rome (or Timbuctoo?) do (and think) as the locals do. Many parts of the world ain't Kansas. nor (Old) Jersey........but New Jersey on the other hand does sound a bit like downtown Mogadishu


Finally, for the sake of good form (and for our newer / younger readers ) I will clarify that I am not actually a card carrying National Socialist (never been one for joining groups. or large crowds. nor much time for facists - no matter what they are called nowadays) - but I did once win a fancy dress competition dressed as Adolf Hitler. It was Xmas and if that is not a time for shaving one's beard down to a Hitler moustache and donning a Nazi Uniform then what time is?



PS - anyone else thought that in the greatest downturn in the shipping industry for a generation that it might not always be a great disaster for a ship to be hijacked? (apart from for the poor b#ggers onboard) - or am I just a sceptic?

[fullafrisky]

The answer to avoiding confrontation or battle with the pirates of Somalia would seem to be "Don't cruise in their pond"! It is not life and death and surely is not about commerce that drives recreational sailors to risk their lives and the lives of their crews by going in harms way. I don't walk down dark alleys at 2 am in high crime areas and I don't sail in dark seas in high crime areas. I did not go to an expensive ivy league school, but my "street learning" taught me to try to avoid danger if at all possible.

The underlying reason for the ramp up in piracy is that all the media coverage creates the necessity to "do something" and the Somalia government sees the need to "do something" by the US and its allies as meaning "payola". We have found, in our experience in Iraq, that it is cheaper to pay off the rulers and lords than to fight the peasants. The Somali government knows that, and they will condone and support the piracy until the US comes up with mucho cash deposited in Swiss accounts.

It is a whole lot more acceptable to a media public that seeing body bags coming ashore.

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by David_Old_Jersey

<snip>And when in Rome (or Timbuctoo?) do (and think) as the locals do.<snip>

Here, let me just massage that a bit . . . there . . .

When in Rome,
Or Timbuktu,
Do (and Think)
As the locals do.

David Old Jersey, 2009

See, the man's a Cruisers Forum treasure, I tell ya!

TaoJones

[Pblais]

If you carry weapons on board (one member in this thread mentioned that it would be good strategy to take out the helmsman), at what point are you legally allowed to use them assuming that you're outside of a country's territorial waters and thus outside local laws?

Sort of depnds if you make them really mad and they blow you up just because they know you don't have much money and they are on the way to catch the Super tanker. You can't fight automatic weapons from a slow moving sail boat.

I'm more in the David_Old_Jersey group on this one too. As we used to say in south Minneapolis - "If you don't want to go to Chicago - don't get on the bus!"

I think we might best back into this with making a list of all the fun ports of call in Somalia. The idea being there just is no reason to go there. It's not like you go "oops we are in Somalia".

[MarkJ]

Killing the Golden Goose


The Somalis had a fine thing going: Hijack a ship and be paid $20 Million.
Till they got greedier and did it too many times.
They could just have done one per year and the international community wouldnt have done anything.

But they did more and more till the European navys sent a few patrol boats.

Instead of laying low for a while the greedy Somalis wanted more... so they took more and even the Indian Navy showed up... and the Froggies sent more ships and everyone took it a bit more seriously.

Still an escalation. More greed,

But then when things went bad and hijackings went wrong the didn't just let it go, they pushed too hard in the negotiations and the killings started.

STILL they didn't take a break for a while. Still their greed pushed for more and more hijackings. If they had stopped for a year the rest of the world would have though: "Problem solved! Lets go home".

Now every navy in the world (apart from the cockleshell navys of the antipodes) is involved.

Now the pirates bring Islam into it and are threatening to kill all Americans.

The response?

The United States seeks to work with the international community to "explore ways to track and freeze pirate assets", Clinton told reporters, adding Washington was determined to make sure "states take responsibility for prosecuting and imprisoning captured pirates.
Clinton dismissed suggestions that it would be difficult to track the ill-gotten gain of pirates operating out of Somalia, where state institutions collapsed in the last two decades.
"We track and freeze and try to disrupt the assets of many stateless groups," including Islamist terrorists, Clinton said.

The stupid greedy Somalis may have got a $20M ransom or 2 but now they and their whole country will suffer:
1) No ship will go anywhere near it i.e. No trade. Their people will suffer.
2) No aid as all aid will stop. Their people will suffer.
3) Any entrepreneurial size amount of money will be frozen. Their people will suffer.
4) They will lose their sons in a futile 'war' of greed. Their people will suffer.
5) They will hate the West and move to Islam.


They will blame us but its their fault. Where they could have just hijacked one ship per year and no one would have 'noticed'.


Mark

[DeepFrz]

Mark, I think you have been sniffing to many empty red bottles.

Part of Clinton's news release talked about increased aid for Somalia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8001102.stm

You need to read the BBC online...<gr>

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by DeepFrz

You need to read the BBC online...<gr>

What are you doing reading the BBC? Talk about breaking stereotypes!

Our cut and thrust newspapers neglected to mention the diplomacy... they rely only on the...... cut and thrust....

[DeepFrz]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Our cut and thrust newspapers neglected to mention the diplomacy.

Yeah, they probably get their feed from CNN.

[Pelagic]

I am quite surprised that this thread is still going and has not descended into cutlass anarchy.

I found this article: The Republic of East Vancouver - Your completely biased news source since 2000 that takes quite a different perspective on piracy and gives one pause to consider our collective origins. Excerpted below…


……“Pirates are bad, everybody knows it. But history is irony’s attic trunk, and sure enough, there is a gem of irony in the reappearance of piracy off Africa, after a very lengthy hiatus. Specifically, the irony is found in exactly where piracy is reappearing, who is doing it, and to whom it is being done.

Three hundred years ago (come on, a mere blink of an eye!), pirates sailing out of safe harbours in lawless lands attacked and robbed with impunity state-flagged vessels of modern nations carrying the goods and money necessary to the smooth functioning of international commerce and tourism.

Only in this case, they were pirates who called New York home, and it was Muslim cargo and passenger ships in and around the Red Sea that were mercilessly attacked, their crews hacked to pieces, their passengers raped, murdered and enslaved, and their merchant goods and gold stolen—to be auctioned at pennies to the dollar on wharfs in the harbours of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and other North American seaboard colonies.

Nobody in nascent America much minded, either. The victims were only heathens, usually well-heeled tourists on their way to and from Mecca for the Haj pilgrimage.

Popular movies and books have created the popular impression that the hey-day of piracy took place in the Caribbean and was run by outlaws unwelcome in the civilized world.

The truth is quite different, according to the foremost expert on historical piracy, Douglass R Burgess Jr, in his 2008 book, The Pirates’ Pact: The secret alliances between history’s most notorious buccaneers and colonial America.

Caribbean piracy was nothing compared to what was going on in and around the Red Sea. The Muslim nations in the 17th Century were by far richer than anything European or in the growing European colonial occupations around the world. The Red Sea contained far more floating prizes to steal among the more advanced and more highly developed Muslim countries than anything to be found between newly emergent European countries and their barely functioning colonial enterprises. Most of these colonies were anyway established merely as land-piracy operations themselves, interested only in ripping out raw resources and gold for shipping back home, with piratical murder and mayhem brought to anyone who stood in the way.

We also have come to believe pirates then and now are outlaws. This would also be wrong. The most avaricious, and vicious, pirates not only operated in the full knowledge of British-appointed governors and the elite of the new business world in the American colonies, they operated with direct state and business sponsorship, support, and collusion.

Burgess makes clear in his book that the actual highwater mark for piracy—that which flowed out of American east coast cities like New York and attacked international shipping in the Red Sea—was integral to the growth and establishment of those ports as the teeming successful and wealthy cities they are today. Piracy in the years 1680 to 1720 or thereabouts was so openly encouraged and financed by leaders in the business and political world of the American north east that it would be accurate to say that in their early decades, at least, they were largely pirate economies, living and growing off the delivery, sale, and distribution of pirate booty.”…

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by DeepFrz

Mark, I think you have been sniffing to many empty red bottles.

Part of Clinton's news release talked about increased aid for Somalia.

BBC NEWS | Americas | US unveils plan to tackle piracy

You need to read the BBC online...<gr>

If Clinton said that it proves to me he is an idiot.
We (the US) provide aid and "help" control "crime" and provide food and safe water and schools and we will only be blamed for trying to "control" them and take advantage of them.

Screw it.

Let someone else do it this time. Maybe India needs a new colony. Ask them.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

I am quite surprised that this thread is still going and has not descended into cutlass anarchy.

I found this article: The Republic of East Vancouver - Your completely biased news source since 2000 that takes quite a different perspective on piracy and gives one pause to consider our collective origins. Excerpted below…

Cool!

Can you get that on a Kindle?

[DeepFrz]

If Clinton said that it proves to me he is an idiot.

Hahahaha...in case you haven't noticed the Clinton making the news release is a she.

[Therapy]

Originally Posted by DeepFrz

Hahahaha...in case you haven't noticed the Clinton making the news release is a she.

OOPS!

Anyway, it is well know she has the ba11s in the family, soooooo............