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Climate Scientists Ask For Help Fighting Somali Pirates
thebchuckster writes "Scientists are seeking the help of the Australian and US navies to repel Somali pirates who are threatening one of the world's key climate monitoring programs. They hope to deploy about 20 robotic instruments in a no-go area north of Mauritius. The instruments, which record ocean heat and salinity patterns, are programmed to submerge and eventually resurface to upload their data to satellites."
But global warming is caused by a lack of pirates!
Because they learned a long time ago they could take the money ... then act immorally anyway and win on both sides.
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Give it to whom precisely? Somalia has been in a civil war for the last 20 years, there isn't anybody that can take the money and make it happen. Most folks there are more concerned with starving or being killed to do anything about this.
The real issue is in how the global security is executed. When these pirates are caught, it is up to the country of the vessel's home port to pay for extradition and prosecution. You may be surprised but in the majotrity of cases, the pirates are arrested and then days later released as the government of the vessels home country decides not to extradite as they don't want the expense of shipping tham, then housing them in prison. A solution? Well, go back to how we used to deal with pirates. Tried by a captain on ship and walk the plank into the water 300 miles off shore. Done. Problem solved.
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Why doesn't the govt give Somalis money for acting morally?
Which government? The Somali government? It sounds like calling that a government is being charitable. Warlords might even be charitable. They just started allowing aid into the country for the worst drought in 60 years with 11 million people starving.
The US? We're not really big on spending money overseas except if it's Israel or bombing someone. And, truth be told, we have a terrible record of giving money and aid to bad people only to have to kill them later on after they've killed a lot of innocent people. Though again, the situation is pretty bad already. If there were a way to make the situation worse, the US would be hard-pressed to find it.
Anyone else? Not interested in Somalia or incapable of doing anything. Somalia has been a failed state for a while now.
'Letter of Marque and Reprisal'.
Given that the pirates are using any old junk to mount their attacks, I'm guessing that there would be no economic incentive to hunt them down under the historical mechanism of condemnation and sale. Some sort of bounty-based alternative, in addition to the cost, would amount to offering to pay anybody who can come up with a few rusty Kalashnikovs and a boat full of dead Somalis. What could possibly go wrong?
any pirates who would attack scientific intstruments are committing property crime. the death penalty seems a little harsh.
as for the pirates that attack people, well, somalia doesn't really have a government to speak of.
and if you think you can 'solve the problem' by intimidating a few of them, you might want to read about what motivates them in the first place. i.e. there is a massive drought in the region right now, millions of people are starving... as i write this.
if i were in their shoes, and you asked me if i wanted to be a pirate, and maybe eat, i dont know what i would say. you see, i've never been starving to death and watched my whole family die.
in my humble opinion, instead of starting a nother never ending 'war on piracy', we could instead try to stop the corruption and malfeasance that prevent the somalis from engaging in ordinary business activity. i.e. start enforcing international laws regarding the fisheries off of their coasts.
The US? We're not really big on spending money overseas except if it's Israel or bombing someone.
I'm guessing you're young. The US (under President Clinton) sent its military into Somalia in the early 1990s with the goal of stabilizing the situation enough to allow aid (both goverment-sponsored and that of private relief agencies) to help ameliorate an ongoing famine. Given the way it ended, I doubt the US government has much motivation to attempt helping Somalia again.
If you don't trust the slant of a military-published document, dig up some old newspaper archives. I think you'll learn why so many governments appear to be ignoring Somalia.
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Bah - forgot the link.
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The "civil war" is largely a creation of foreign and now AFRICOM interference.
http://webarchive.ssrc.org/Somalia_Hoehne_v10.pdf
"Thanks to half a century of pouring US arms stockpiles into Africa, the price of an assault rifle in Africa has for some time been cheaper than anyplace else on the planet."
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/africom-americas-military-foot-africas-doorway
Somali "piracy" is the outcome of the illegal, exhaustive, industrialised over-fishing of Somali waters, by foreign fleets - leaving the coastal towns without any livelihood.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/14/analysis_somalia_piracy_began_in_response
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892376,00.html
The US manufactures foreign wars and "terrorists" the same way it used to lead in the creation of Automobiles and heavy manufacturing. But remember your Gibbon: The decline of Rome was seeded from its very rise on world's stage.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Actually, it was Bush I who sent the military to Somalia to provide security so aid could be distributed. It was Clinton who decided to try "regime change"...........and that resulted in Black Hawk Down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
You've got the wrong idea entirely, frankly. Mercenaries are expensive. Tourism, however, is profitable. So, you make it like a safari. You know, for the chance to go send some pirates to Davy Jones' locker. The 'fishing license' just absolves prospective pirate hunters from prosecution.
So, you restore and or build a few PT style boats, strap a few twin-fifties, miniguns and grenade launchers on pintle mounts, and let any sociopath with ten thousand bucks to spare have some fun. You'd have a waiting list a mile long.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
And your point is? Regardless of how the nation came to be in the state that it's in, there isn't any functioning government there at the moment.
It makes me laugh when I hear neo-cons say "government isn't the solution, it IS the problem". If you want to see what not having a functioning government looks like, go to Somalia. It even has religious extremism.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Thats great and everything, but the US, French, British, South Africans aren't the only destabilizing influence, following decolonization in Africa the Soviets dumped thousands of tanks, thousands of aircraft, tens of thousands of large caliber weapons and millions of guns into Africa from 1960 through 1989.
For the region
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etheopia#Mengistu_Era
"In 1977, there was the Ogaden War, when Somalia captured the part of the Ogaden region, but Ethiopia was able to recapture the Ogaden after receiving military aid from the USSR, Cuba, South Yemen, East Germany and North Korea, including around 15,000 Cuban combat troops."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia#Communist_rule
"By 1978, the Somali troops were ultimately pushed out of the Ogaden. This shift in support by the Soviet Union motivated the Barre government to seek allies elsewhere. It eventually settled on Russia's Cold War arch-rival, the United States, which had been courting the Somali government for some time. All in all, Somalia's initial friendship with the Soviet Union and later partnership with the United States enabled it to build the largest army in Africa."
So the Soviets backed Somalia and loaded them with weapons, then Somalia starts to lose, the Soviets dump weapons into Ethiopia and the US back the Somalis, but all you care to cite are sources blaming it on the US.
Uh, no. The primary rifle used by militias in Africa is going to be the Kalashnikov because it's cheap, rugged, any idiot can use it, and it's light enough for a child to carry. Which is useful, of course, if you want to arm children. As you might guess from the name, the Kalashnikov is a Russian assault rifle that was sold off in vast quantities by Warsaw Pact countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.