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Captain escaped- Navy Seals shot pirates


Skeezix

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OK, figured that whole raftload of neocon bullshit was headed this way for that post; Skeezix was right. But notice that neither I nor the NPR commentator (a Belgian diplomat) I referred to, said a single word about WHO or what, should try to do something about piracy from the standpoint of alleviating the conditions that are causing it. Obama was not even mentioned.

 

No where was it said, or even implied, that the US or any US ally was supposed to be the main mover, policeman, or instigator of any effort of that kind. Nobody said or hinted that we're supposed to fix everything for everybody, nobody said the UN should do anything. No one said or hinted that the US was actually the real pirate or the real terrorist.

 

Oh, but now I get it; I DID say that it was heard on NPR, so yeah, obviously anyone who listens to THAT is automatically a libtard, automatically has one, and only one, liberal orientation to any issue. Yeah, case fuckin' closed.

 

So you tell me, smart guys; is piracy a liberal, or conservative issue? What about poverty, starvation, disease, rape, warlord brutality, slavery, drug trafficking; liberal or conservative? Just because this incident with the Maersk Alabama was a US flagged ship and crew, a directly involved US military affair, you can't see past that to the larger situation that is driving this whole piracy upswing. No one who takes even a cursory look at what's been happening in Somalia and the entire Horn of Africa since the Clinton administration can deny the facts.

 

The so-called Somali government controls about a two or three block radius around their office buildings. The rest of the country is a lawless wasteland, it's The Road Warriors and Thunderdome right here, right now, without the cool haircuts or creative metal sculpture. Hundreds of thousands are at the verge of, or well into starvation, with no public services of any kind, no water or utilities or sanitation, no medical care, no stable economy of any kind ,except what's dependent on piracy.

 

The bordering countries of Ethiopia and Kenya are impacted by the spillover of refugees,disease, economic overload, and Sudan is a long-running genocidal holocaust. It's as desperate as it gets, so people are doing whatever they can to survive, and if possible, prosper. Like John Dillinger said during the depression, when asked why he robbed banks,"because that's where the money is.", so Somali pirates see millions of dollars in commerce floating by and go out to grab it.

 

I see frequent references in this forum to "libtards". May I hasten to assure you that there are lots of 'em, all you have to do is tune in "Air America", the callers there are every bit as badly educated, myopically fanatic,rambling and inarticulate as the slapshot fuckwad knuckle-draggers on Limbaugh and Savage. No political persuasion has a monopoly on confusion and stupidity.

 

And from what I can see just on this forum, there are plenty of "conservatards" as well, whose primary characteristic seems to be an inability to read anything accurately through the moronic filter of dittohead claptrap propaganda and half-baked ignoramus theories, the hell with any clear view of reality. And JesusXrist let's not bring up any idea that something besides brute force, military,economic or otherwise, might actually be an appropriate and effective way to deal with a problem that affects everyone, everywhere, regardless of country, creed, politics or income. Yeah, hell, just get a bigger fuckin' hammer. Where the fuck's my beer, bitch?

 

You wanta see piracy? Just keep on the way we're going right now, badgering and bashing around third world countries Bush-style, using the IMF and World Bank to exploit them for oil and other resources, making them one-sided usurious"loans" to develop. Then when they can't pay, do just what's been done to us by the banks, financial firms,corporations and our own government(all the same thing)which is to lay the debt on the populace in taxes.

 

Be sure you've installed some paid-off asshole tinpot thug as president or premier to keep things in order. Then act real surprised and blame Al Qaeda, terrorists in general, communists, socialists, etc., when the whole thing turns upside down and the people take matters into their own hands. Don't forget to throw shit at "libtards', Democrats, or anyone else who has so much as a shred of fairness or compassion somewhere in their shriveled stone of a heart for not being hard-assed enough with those backward, ungrateful little black-skinned bastards in the first place and allowing it all to happen.

 

You think you're seeing piracy? You ain't seen shit yet.

 

Well, I thought we warned you about using too many words? :lmao: Seriously, I read every one of them. Whats your point? What should be done? We may actually agree on this, but I'm not sure. My thoughts are this: we tried to provide food aid to the Somalis and they kicked us in the balls when our "Peacekeeping" troops were attacked. There was a movie out of it called "Blackhawk Down". The most notable thing about the movie is that when Somali people saw it, they cheered at what we perceived as all of the wrong places. They are in the middle of some serious internal violence involving religions, resources and tribes. Why TF should we run in there and get involved again when most of them do not want our assistance and don't trust us either? The UN sends food and some asshole warlord immediately hijacks it and distributes it as a political statement in support of himself. Perhaps killing every damn thug who attacks a US flagged vessel is the best we can do right now? Somehow, they fuck up their country and we get blamed for it doesn't work for me. There's plenty of poor country's that do not turn to illegal activity's that no one should give these asswipes a pass just because they've trashed their country and can't get their shit together to pull it out.

 

The hourly cost to run a Navy vessel is huge. Would we be better served putting Seal crews for rides on US flagged vessels who could then call in the calvery in the event of an attack larger than they wanted to deal with. We (the US) would send a cease and desist order via this method. If any Panamanian, Liberian or non- US flagged vessel needed help, the owners can call us in and pay us up front.

 

ps, NPR is just another tool of the US government.

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OK, figured that whole raftload of neocon bullshit was headed this way for that post; Skeezix was right. But notice that neither I nor the NPR commentator (a Belgian diplomat) I referred to, said a single word about WHO or what, should try to do something about piracy from the standpoint of alleviating the conditions that are causing it. Obama was not even mentioned.

 

No where was it said, or even implied, that the US or any US ally was supposed to be the main mover, policeman, or instigator of any effort of that kind. Nobody said or hinted that we're supposed to fix everything for everybody, nobody said the UN should do anything. No one said or hinted that the US was actually the real pirate or the real terrorist.

 

Oh, but now I get it; I DID say that it was heard on NPR, so yeah, obviously anyone who listens to THAT is automatically a libtard, automatically has one, and only one, liberal orientation to any issue. Yeah, case fuckin' closed.

 

So you tell me, smart guys; is piracy a liberal, or conservative issue? What about poverty, starvation, disease, rape, warlord brutality, slavery, drug trafficking; liberal or conservative? Just because this incident with the Maersk Alabama was a US flagged ship and crew, a directly involved US military affair, you can't see past that to the larger situation that is driving this whole piracy upswing. No one who takes even a cursory look at what's been happening in Somalia and the entire Horn of Africa since the Clinton administration can deny the facts.

 

The so-called Somali government controls about a two or three block radius around their office buildings. The rest of the country is a lawless wasteland, it's The Road Warriors and Thunderdome right here, right now, without the cool haircuts or creative metal sculpture. Hundreds of thousands are at the verge of, or well into starvation, with no public services of any kind, no water or utilities or sanitation, no medical care, no stable economy of any kind ,except what's dependent on piracy.

 

The bordering countries of Ethiopia and Kenya are impacted by the spillover of refugees,disease, economic overload, and Sudan is a long-running genocidal holocaust. It's as desperate as it gets, so people are doing whatever they can to survive, and if possible, prosper. Like John Dillinger said during the depression, when asked why he robbed banks,"because that's where the money is.", so Somali pirates see millions of dollars in commerce floating by and go out to grab it.

 

I see frequent references in this forum to "libtards". May I hasten to assure you that there are lots of 'em, all you have to do is tune in "Air America", the callers there are every bit as badly educated, myopically fanatic,rambling and inarticulate as the slapshot fuckwad knuckle-draggers on Limbaugh and Savage. No political persuasion has a monopoly on confusion and stupidity.

 

And from what I can see just on this forum, there are plenty of "conservatards" as well, whose primary characteristic seems to be an inability to read anything accurately through the moronic filter of dittohead claptrap propaganda and half-baked ignoramus theories, the hell with any clear view of reality. And JesusXrist let's not bring up any idea that something besides brute force, military,economic or otherwise, might actually be an appropriate and effective way to deal with a problem that affects everyone, everywhere, regardless of country, creed, politics or income. Yeah, hell, just get a bigger fuckin' hammer. Where the fuck's my beer, bitch?

 

You wanta see piracy? Just keep on the way we're going right now, badgering and bashing around third world countries Bush-style, using the IMF and World Bank to exploit them for oil and other resources, making them one-sided usurious"loans" to develop. Then when they can't pay, do just what's been done to us by the banks, financial firms,corporations and our own government(all the same thing)which is to lay the debt on the populace in taxes.

 

Be sure you've installed some paid-off asshole tinpot thug as president or premier to keep things in order. Then act real surprised and blame Al Qaeda, terrorists in general, communists, socialists, etc., when the whole thing turns upside down and the people take matters into their own hands. Don't forget to throw shit at "libtards', Democrats, or anyone else who has so much as a shred of fairness or compassion somewhere in their shriveled stone of a heart for not being hard-assed enough with those backward, ungrateful little black-skinned bastards in the first place and allowing it all to happen.

 

You think you're seeing piracy? You ain't seen shit yet.

 

Well, I thought we warned you about using too many words? :lmao: Seriously, I read every one of them. Whats your point? What should be done? We may actually agree on this, but I'm not sure. My thoughts are this: we tried to provide food to the Somalis and they kicked us in the balls when our "Peacekeeping" troops were attacked. They made a movie out of it called "Blackhawk Down". The most notable thing about the movie is that when Somali people saw it, they cheered at what we perceived as all of the wrong places. They are in the middle of some serious internal violence involving religions, resources and tribes. Why TF should we run in there and get involved? The UN sends food and some asshole warlord immediately hijacks it and distributes it as a political statement. Perhaps kill every damn thug who attacks a US flagged vessel is the best we can do right now? Somehow, they fuck up there country and we get blamed for it doesn't work for me. There's plenty of poor country's that do not turn to illegal activity's that no one should give these asswipes a pass.

 

The hourly cost to run a Navy vessel is huge. We would be better served putting Seal crews for rides on US flagged vessels who could then call in the calvery in the event of an attack larger than they wanted to deal with. We (the US) would send a cease and desist order via this method. If any Panamanian, Liberian or non- US flagged vessel needed help, the owners can call us in and pay us up front.

 

ps, NPR is just another tool of the US government.

 

No, no, no, Billcoe! Blame America First! Get with the f-in program! We are to blame for everything, and we have to fix all the world's problems because we are the cause. :rolleyes:

 

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You obviously read it wrong.

Republicans are the problem. George Bush is their evil leader and Democrats are about to conduct a witch hunt to weed out the treasonist, right-wing, Christians who stand in the way of what God ordained.

It's called "Intelligent design".

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the 2 parts to every story version here.

 

 

"We're Being Lied to About Pirates

By Johann Hari, Independent UK

Posted on April 13, 2009, Printed on April 13, 2009

 

 

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.

 

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

 

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

 

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century".

 

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy." This is why they were romantic heroes, despite being unproductive thieves.

 

The words of one pirate from that lost age, a young British man called William Scott, should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

 

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

 

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Mr Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

 

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

 

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".

 

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand.

 

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

 

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail – but who is the robber?

© 2009 Independent UK All rights reserved.

http://www.alternet.org/story/136288/

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The wars in Europe played the central role in creating the pirates of the Spanish Main. Pirating against the enemy was encouraged by all participating countries; when peace came, a flotilla of former privateers found themselves adrift, so to speak, and so continued the life they'd known and enjoyed...this time against ships of all flags. Merchantmen joined pirate ranks in droves to both to escape their dreary exploitation as an alternative to walking the plank. Former Royal Navy types, castoffs from the shrunken ranks, began to dip their beaks. And finally, the boucaneers; creole hillbillies from Hispanola, often former slaves, who made a subsistence living both on land and at sea filled out the ranks.

 

Amnesty ended the Age of Pirates more than any other single event. Most pirates took the King's deal, including Black Beard, who married a noblewoman, bought a plantation, and became a man of stature in the colonies afterwards...only to continue his sea going recreation on the sly with the governor on the take, and eventually meet his famous end at the hands of a young British Lt and his crew.

Edited by tvashtarkatena
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