Category Archives: Piracy

Islamic Jihad on the High Seas

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“We never kill people. We are Muslims. We are marines, coastguards  — not pirates.” For reasons we can only guess at, the main stream media is unwilling to report the fact that the ongoing pirate attacks are being perpetrated by Muslims and that large parts of their ransom are passed on to Islamic extremist groups either through protection pay or through the purchase of weapons. Either way the end result is that the ransoms being paid are financing the Islamic extremists war on the west.

Pentagon looks to move battle against pirates ashore-CNN

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From Reuters

Ships held by Somali pirates

(Reuters) – Somali pirates hijacked two more cargo vessels and opened fire on a third on Tuesday in attacks that showed their determination to continue striking shipping in the area’s strategic waterways.

 Pirates attacked at least 15 vessels off the coast of Somalia last month after only two in January and February.

Below are facts about the ships believed to be under pirate control and about the increase in piracy:

 STOLT STRENGTH: Seized November 10. The chemical tanker had 23 Filipino crew aboard. It was carrying nearly 24,000 tons of oil products.

 CHEMSTAR VENUS: Seized November 15. The tanker was traveling from Dumai, Indonesia, to Ukraine. It had 18 Filipino and five South Korean crew.

 NAMES UNKNOWN: Seized on December 10. Pirates hijacked two Yemeni fishing vessels with a total of 22 crew in coastal waters in the Gulf of Aden. Five crew reportedly escaped.

 NAMES UNKNOWN: Seized on December 16. A yacht with two on board, an Indonesian tugboat used by French oil company Total.

 LONGCHAMP: Seized on January 29, 2009. The liquefied petroleum gas tanker, built in 1990, had 13 crew on board, 12 Filipinos and one Indonesian. The tanker has a capacity of 3,415 tons. Continue Reading →

Why the issue of piracy matters

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It should be noted that the great nations and civilizations of the classical world ended and the dark ages began largely if not entirely because the Romans lost the will or ability to continue to safeguard the roads which allowed trade rule of law and new ideas to spread to the known world at the time. Brigands once they saw there was no opportunity cost, began to hold travelers to ransom and ended the very system that made travel and trade lucrative even for them. Today the oceans of course are the roads and the US is the dominant force maintaining the very veins and arteries of civilization growth and peace by keeping the cost of piracy high and the value of trade high as a consequence.

In this spirit I offer you this most excellent essay from what appears at first read to be quite an exceptional blog. May take a bit of time to read, but well worth it and plenty of ammo lies within for those looking for points for understanding and arguing the dynamics of the modern and ancient systems which allowed civilization order and even the enforcement of anything like human rights to exist.

Eeyore for Vlad

A comment on piracy recieved in email

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A comment on the pirate situation i felt was worthy of publication. From “A Citizen of the Republic”

Piracy always appears when the rule of law is on the wane… from the downturn at the late Bronze Age, the end of Western Roman power, the conflicts between the great powers over the new world and employing those who would turn pirate and need to be hunted down… from the South Asian sea to Malay to the Carribean to Western Med. to Aegean… each era has its time when these would be places for piracy and we never have done a decent job in the South China Sea and Oceania which has had piracy going on all through the 20th century save for a few short years in WWII.  Their compatriots on land are no different and we now have Somalia, TBA in South America, parts of the Balkans, central Asia, all having lands without law.

Civilization isn’t about being nice.

It is enforcing the law and ensuring that the law of nations is upheld.

Just like it says in the Constitution – to punish offences against the law of nations.

Strange we don’t do that anymore… and that allows civilization to crumble.

Captain freed. Pirates dead.

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national-flag-of-somalia2What is needed now is a little retribution for the Somali communities that reap the benefits of pirate plunder

from Fox News

Navy Made Split-Second Decision to Open Fire in Captain Rescue

 

MOMBASA, Kenya —  U.S. forces freed an American ship captain and killed three of his captors Sunday in a daring rescue that ended a five-day standoff between the world’s most powerful navy and Somali pirates in a lifeboat far off the Horn of Africa.

Capt. Richard Phillips was in “imminent danger” of being killed before a Navy commander made a split second decision to shoot the pirates in an operation authorized by President Barack Obama, Vice Adm. Bill Gortney said.

He said the pirates were armed with AK-47s and small-caliber pistols and were pointing the rifles at the captain when the commander of the nearby USS Bainbridge gave the order to open fire.

Gortney, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, said the White House had given “very clear guidance and authority” to take action if Phillips’ life was in danger.

Phillips’ crew, who said they had escaped after he offered himself as a hostage, erupted in cheers aboard their ship docked in Mombasa, Kenya. Some waved an American flag and fired flares in celebration.

Phillips, 53, of Underhill, Vermont, was not hurt in several minutes of gunfire and the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet said he was resting comfortably on a U.S. warship after receiving a medical exam.

Seals, those who have brought me home,” Phillips said by phone to Maersk Line Limited President and CEO John Reinhart, the company head told reporters. A photo released by the Navy showed Phillips unharmed and shaking hands with the commanding officer of the Bainbridge

Obama said Phillips had courage that was “a model for all Americans” and he was pleased about the rescue, adding that the United States needs help from other countries to deal with the threat of piracy and to hold pirates accountable. Continue Reading →

April Fools! It’s a German gun boat.

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April 1. SMH Australia

  • April 1, 2009

  • net photo of generic German supply vessel

    net photo of generic German supply vessel

Seven pirates opened fire on a German naval supply ship in the Gulf of Aden but were chased down and captured by an international anti-piracy task force, the US Navy and European officials said Monday.

Meanwhile, Yemen reported that pirates killed a Yemeni fisherman and wounded two others in an attack on a fishing boat Saturday, also in the Gulf of Aden.

The expanse between Somalia and Yemen is one of the world’s busiest waterways and the thousands of ships passing through each year have been plagued by pirate attacks.

In the attack on the German ship, pirates apparently mistook German FGS Spessart supply vessel for a commercial ship when they opened fire on it on Sunday afternoon, US Navy 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Nate Christensen said.

The German sailors returned fire and pursued the skiff while also calling in for support. Several naval ships – including a Greek and a Dutch frigate, a Spanish warship and the USS Boxer – sped to the area while a Spanish marine aircraft and two U.S. Marine Cobra helicopters joined the pursuit.

Five hours later, Greek sailors reached the pirate skiff, boarded it and seized the seven suspects and their weapons, including assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the Greek navy said. The suspects were disarmed and transferred for questioning to the German frigate Rheinland-Pfalz where they remain Monday, pending a decision on whether they will be legally prosecuted, Christensen said.

Germany’s Ministry spokesman Christian Dienst said no one was injured in the attack, the first on a German naval ship in this area.

Christensen said that while the casualty-free operation “showcased the incredible international naval capabilities” it also “highlighted the complexity of counter-piracy operations.” Apart from the Gulf of Aden, where the international anti-piracy efforts have been increasingly successful, pirates have also stepped up attacks further south off the eastern Somali coast.

The two areas combined equal more than 1.1 million square miles, or roughly four times the size of Texas, said Christensen. “We can’t be everywhere at once,” he said, adding that merchant mariners must often serve as the first line of defence against pirates.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based militias overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991 and then turned on each other.

Pirate attacks off its coastline hit unprecedented levels in 2008, when pirates made 111 attacks and seized 42 vessels, mostly in the Gulf of Aden. Seven ships have been seized so far this year, although there were roughly 10 times as many attacks in January and February 2009 as there were over the same period last year. There have been almost daily attacks in March.
Continue Reading →

Chris Hitchens on the Barbary Pirates, Jefferson and John Adams

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This is a bit of history that all of us urgently need to know. Chris Hitchens is no slouch. He does his research well. Get a coffee and enjoy. From Townhall

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When I first began to plan my short biography of Thomas Jefferson, I found it difficult to research the chapter concerning the so-called Barbary Wars: an event or series of events that had seemingly receded over the lost horizon of American history. Henry Adams, in his discussion of our third president, had some boyhood reminiscences of the widespread hero-worship of naval officer Stephen Decatur, and other fragments and shards showed up in other quarries, but a sound general history of the subject was hard to come by. When I asked a professional military historian—a man with direct access to Defense Department archives—if there was any book that he could recommend, he came back with a slight shrug.

But now the curious reader may choose from a freshet of writing on the subject. Added to my own shelf in the recent past have been The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World, by Frank Lambert (2005); Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror 1801–1805, by Joseph Wheelan (2003); To the Shores of Tripoli: The Birth of the U.S. Navy and Marines, by A. B. C. Whipple (1991, republished 2001); and Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation, by Joshua E. London (2005). Most recently, in his new general history, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, the Israeli scholar Michael Oren opens with a long chapter on the Barbary conflict. As some of the subtitles—and some of the dates of publication—make plain, this new interest is largely occasioned by America’s latest round of confrontation in the Middle East, or the Arab sphere or Muslim world, if you prefer those expressions.

In a way, I am glad that I did not have the initial benefit of all this research. My quest sent me to some less obvious secondary sources, in particular to Linda Colley’s excellent book Captives, which shows the reaction of the English and American publics to a slave trade of which they were victims rather than perpetrators. How many know that perhaps 1.5 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved in Islamic North Africa between 1530 and 1780? We dimly recall that Miguel de Cervantes was briefly in the galleys. But what of the people of the town of Baltimore in Ireland, all carried off by “corsair” raiders in a single night?

Some of this activity was hostage trading and ransom farming rather than the more labor-intensive horror of the Atlantic trade and the Middle Passage, but it exerted a huge effect on the imagination of the time—and probably on no one more than on Thomas Jefferson. Peering at the paragraph denouncing the American slave trade in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, later excised, I noticed for the first time that it sarcastically condemned “the Christian King of Great Britain” for engaging in “this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” The allusion to Barbary practice seemed inescapable.

One immediate effect of the American Revolution, however, was to strengthen the hand of those very same North African potentates: roughly speaking, the Maghrebian provinces of the Ottoman Empire that conform to today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Deprived of Royal Navy protection, American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. The infant United States had therefore to decide not just upon a question of national honor but upon whether it would stand or fall by free navigation of the seas.

One of the historians of the Barbary conflict, Frank Lambert, argues that the imperative of free trade drove America much more than did any quarrel with Islam or “tyranny,” let alone “terrorism.” He resists any comparison with today’s tormenting confrontations. “The Barbary Wars were primarily about trade, not theology,” he writes. “Rather than being holy wars, they were an extension of America’s War of Independence.”

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