Enough of the warning shots and this ludicrous releasing of the pirates; shoot to sink and kill the bastards: NATO Warships Thwart Pirate Attack
From The Wall Street Journal:
NATO warships and helicopters pursued Somali pirates for seven hours after they attacked a Norwegian tanker, NATO spokesmen said Sunday, and the high-speed chase only ended when warning shots were fired at the pirates' skiff.
Both ships deployed helicopters, and naval officers hailed the pirates over loudspeakers and finally fired warning shots to stop them, Cmdr. Fernandes said, but not before the pirates had dumped most of their weapons overboard. NATO forces boarded the skiff, where they found a rocket-propelled grenade, and interrogated, disarmed and released the pirates.
The pirates can't be prosecuted under Canadian law because they didn't attack Canadian citizens or interests and the crime wasn't committed on Canadian territory.
"When a ship is part of NATO, the detention of person is a matter for the national authorities," Cmdr. Fernandes said. "It stops being a NATO issue and starts being a national issue."
The pirates' release underscores the difficulties navies have in fighting rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia. Most of the time foreign navies simply disarm and release the pirates they catch due to legal complications and logistical difficulties in transporting pirates and witnesses to court.
Pirates have attacked more than 80 boats this year alone, four times the number assaulted in 2003, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau. They now hold at least 18 ships -- including a Belgian tanker seized Saturday with 10 crew aboard -- and over 310 crew hostage, according to an Associated Press count.
NATO warships and helicopters pursued Somali pirates for seven hours after they attacked a Norwegian tanker, NATO spokesmen said Sunday, and the high-speed chase only ended when warning shots were fired at the pirates' skiff.
Both ships deployed helicopters, and naval officers hailed the pirates over loudspeakers and finally fired warning shots to stop them, Cmdr. Fernandes said, but not before the pirates had dumped most of their weapons overboard. NATO forces boarded the skiff, where they found a rocket-propelled grenade, and interrogated, disarmed and released the pirates.
The pirates can't be prosecuted under Canadian law because they didn't attack Canadian citizens or interests and the crime wasn't committed on Canadian territory.
"When a ship is part of NATO, the detention of person is a matter for the national authorities," Cmdr. Fernandes said. "It stops being a NATO issue and starts being a national issue."
The pirates' release underscores the difficulties navies have in fighting rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia. Most of the time foreign navies simply disarm and release the pirates they catch due to legal complications and logistical difficulties in transporting pirates and witnesses to court.
Pirates have attacked more than 80 boats this year alone, four times the number assaulted in 2003, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau. They now hold at least 18 ships -- including a Belgian tanker seized Saturday with 10 crew aboard -- and over 310 crew hostage, according to an Associated Press count.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 9:09 AM
1 Comments:
There's actually something quite heartening, even inspiring, about a bunch of ragtag, unemployed fishermen playing Robin Hood And His Merry Men off the east coast of Africa.
It hasn't happened without cause.
First, these fishermen had to watch impotently while the Americans and Ethiopians destroyed their government because it worshipped the wrong god.
Then enormous foreign factory ships illegally scooped up most of their fish.
Finally - irony of ironies - other foreigners dumped nuclear waste on their beaches and in their waters, thus poisoning whatever was still crawling or swimming.
One has to ask, therefore, if it isn't entirely logical that these same unemployed fishermen then look around for other work so they can feed their families, and notice all those big, fat, foreign ships cruising past their villages like Spanish treasure galleons piled high with the wealth of the first world? And setting up a toll system just like the fabled outlaws of Sherwood Forest, to hold some of those big, fat, foreign galleons until appropriate ransom is paid?
It's called stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
All this piracy, meantime, has given Barack Obama the chance to prove that he's read both history and Rudyard Kipling.
Kipling's poem Dane-geld (Dane tax) tells of a time in eleventh-century England when visiting Vikings were paid to stop ravishing and pillaging the English and go do it to the French instead.
It reads in part:
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:-
"Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
Seems a dead white male can be a lot of use to a live, black male these days.
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