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Kupandamingi
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 19, 2008 - 01:47pm PT
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Somali pirates now number in the thousands - all with little or nothing to lose and everything to gain. Kill 20, 20 more will come. As the leader of the group that is holding the Ukranian ship put it "you only die once".
I think its hard for us to fully wrap our heads around their circumstance and willingness to take on what appear to be extreme risks. That's pretty ironic given that much the same could be said about the general public's view of climbers
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Chris2
Trad climber
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Nov 19, 2008 - 02:01pm PT
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Thanks Kupandamingi, an intelligent post from someone who has seen the region, very informative.
MOO F, I highly doubt a sniper rifle would work in a small boat going up and down in the seas.
And if Blackwater has any involvement, I hope the Pirates "win."
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Jim E
climber
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Nov 19, 2008 - 02:11pm PT
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Thanks, Kupandamingi.
With events like this people tend to jump to conclusions and fail to see the full picture.
Just as with recruiting for Al Queda, it's easy to get people to join when they have essentially nothing to lose.
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Brunosafari
Boulder climber
Redmond, OR
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Nov 19, 2008 - 02:52pm PT
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extremely interesting Kup! Thank you! -Bruce
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Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Nov 19, 2008 - 02:54pm PT
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Why the f#ck are the tankers UN-armed?
I just ate lunch at a taco stand in San Bernardino, and IT had an armed guard.
Why not the tankers?
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Nov 19, 2008 - 03:21pm PT
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"Why the f#ck are the tankers UN-armed? "
Bet that changes in about a minute from now.
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Bart Fay
Social climber
Redlands, CA
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Nov 19, 2008 - 03:49pm PT
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Mk-15 Block 1 Phalanx costs about $5.6 million.
Sirius Star valued at $150 million.
Plus $ 100 million in crude.
Versus an estimated $20 million ransom.
How does the math look ?
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
sorry, just posting out loud.
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Nov 19, 2008 - 03:57pm PT
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true acts of piracy!!
borrowed pic from a friend.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 19, 2008 - 04:08pm PT
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Mk-15 Block 1 Phalanx costs about $5.6 million.
Sirius Star valued at $150 million.
Plus $ 100 million in crude.
Versus an estimated $20 million ransom.
How does the math look ?
Considering the ship would run the risk of hijacking every time it passed through the Gulf of Aden or the strait of Malacca, I'd call that a bargain.
Where do I sign?
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Chaz
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Nov 19, 2008 - 04:10pm PT
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The guy at Rico Taco had the entire joint under control just packing a .357 on his hip.
I doubt it cost him $200.
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boognish
Trad climber
SF
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Nov 19, 2008 - 04:57pm PT
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The guy at Rio Taco wasn't standing on a 2 million barrel molotov cocktail. Super tankers have vents on the deck to let vapors from the cargo escape the hold. One unlucky spark and you lose the boat, the cargo, the crew and have the worlds biggest oil slick.
Its riskier for the crew to fire a gun or fight back than to wait for the ransom to be paid.
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Chris2
Trad climber
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Nov 19, 2008 - 05:05pm PT
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This is an interesting thread. Educated post, like above, interspersed with macho bullsh#t. Fun reading.
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Moof
Big Wall climber
A cube at my soul sucking job in Oregon
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Nov 19, 2008 - 05:21pm PT
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Boognish,
Modern tankers do not allow volative gases to build up or vent. The dead spaces above the crude are nitrogen purged to prevent just the sort of calamity you are talking about (and that has indeed occurred in the past). That said, I don't think the tankers would take an RPG in the side gracefully.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker
About halfway down is "Intert Gas System" with an OK explanation.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 19, 2008 - 05:59pm PT
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Since Kupandimingi paints such a nice picture of how the U.S. destroyed Somalia (not mentioning that Italy and Britain were the original colonists) I thought I'd look into the history. It looks like he got his info from Wiki, so I thought I'd check at Infoplease. Here's the relevant excerpts;
In 1977, Somalia openly backed rebels in the easternmost area of Ethiopia, the Ogaden Desert, which had been seized by Ethiopia at the turn of the century. Somalia acknowledged defeat in an eight-month war against the Ethiopians that year, having lost much of its 32,000-man army and most of its tanks and planes. President Siad Barre fled the country in late Jan. 1991. His departure left Somalia in the hands of a number of clan-based guerrilla groups, none of which trusted each other.
Africa's worst drought of the century occurred in 1992, and, coupled with the devastation of civil war, Somalia was plunged into a severe famine that killed 300,000. U.S. troops were sent in to protect the delivery of food in Dec. 1992, and in May 1993 the UN took control of the relief efforts from the U.S. The warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid ambushed UN troops and dragged American bodies through the streets, causing an about-face in U.S. willingness to involve itself in the fate of this lawless country. The last of the U.S. troops departed in late March, leaving 19,000 UN troops behind.
Since 1991 Somalia has been engulfed in anarchy. Years of peace negotiations between the various factions were fruitless, and warlords and militias ruled over individual swaths of land. In 1991, a breakaway nation, the Somaliland Republic, proclaimed its independence. Since then several warlords have set up their own ministates in Puntland and Jubaland. Although internationally unrecognized, these states have been peaceful and stable.
In Aug. 2000, a parliament convened in nearby Djibouti and elected Somalia's first government in nearly a decade. After its first year in office, the government still controlled only 10% of the country, and in Aug. 2003, its mandate expired. In Oct. 2002, new talks to establish a government began; in Aug. 2004 a 275-member transitional parliament was inaugurated for a five-year term. Parliament selected a national president in September, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the president of the breakaway region of Puntland. The new government, however, spent its first year operating out of Kenya—Somalia remained too violent and unstable to enter—eventually settling in the provincial town of Baidoa.
In May 2006, the country's worst outbreak of violence in 10 years began, with Islamist militias, called the Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC), battling rival warlords. On June 6, the Islamist militia seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, and established control in much of the south. Somalia's transitional government, led by President Abdullahi Yusuf and situated in Baidoa, spent months engaged in unsuccessful peace negotiations with the Islamic Courts Council. In the meantime, neighboring Ethiopia, which has clashed in the past with Somalia's Islamists and considers them a threat to regional security, began amassing troops on the border. In mid-December, Ethiopia launched air strikes against the Islamists, and in a matter of days Ethiopian ground troops and Somali soldiers loyal to the transitional government regained control of Mogadishu. A week later most of the Islamists had been forced to flee the country. Ethiopia announced that its troops would remain in the country until stability was assured and a functional central government had been established, ending Somalia's 15 years of anarchy.
In Jan. 2007, the U.S. launched airstrikes on the retreating Islamists, who they believed included three members of al-Qaeda suspected of involvement in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The air strikes were strongly criticized in a number of Muslim countries, which accused the Americans of killing Somali civilians. Battles between the insurgents and Somali and Ethiopian troops intensified in March, leaving 300 civilians dead in what has been called the worst fighting in 15 years. The fighting created a humanitarian crisis, with more than 320,000 Somalis fleeing the fighting in Mogadishu in just two months. In July, a national reconciliation conference opened in Mogadishu but was quickly postponed when leading opposition figures failed to appear. The fighting intensified once again in October. The Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia, a coalition of moderate Islamist leaders, and the transitional government agreed to a cease-fire in June 2008 that called on Ethiopian troops that were propping up the fragile government to be replaced by UN troops. The future of the deal was tenuous from the start and was greeted by much skepticism. Indeed, it was unclear if the UN could assemble a force willing to be deployed to the troubled region, and several powerful Islamist groups did not participate in the negotiations.
Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Ghedi resigned in October 2007 after a protracted feud with President Yusuf. He was succeeded by Nur Hassan Hussein.
In October 2008, violence rocked what had been a peaceful region when at least 28 people were killed in five suicide-bombings in northern Somalia. Government officials cast blame on the militant Islamic group Shabab, which has been battling the transitional government. The highest death toll was in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway northern region of Somaliland.
Link here... http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107979.html
Seems to me we had very little to do with their chaos. In fact, we even tried to help feed the ungrateful bastards in a famine. Seems like it's always been a tribal warring country, except when occupied by Britain and Italy.
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Michael D
Big Wall climber
Napoli, Italy
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Nov 19, 2008 - 07:09pm PT
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The Somalian clans are fearsome, the only groups that will take on the Camorra in Italy.
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Kupandamingi
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 19, 2008 - 07:34pm PT
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Bluerig - your entitled to your own interpretation of the events, but just so you know - my information based primarily on work and research done in Somalia, not wikipedia. I certainly admit upfront to bias in that I've seen first hand what foreign intervention (primarily US) has done to undermine organic peace and state building processes in Somalia. Moreover, I don't assert that Somalis themselves don't share in the blame (they undoubtedly do). However, its also important to note that Somalia has been without a state for 17 years, but that piracy (although present since then) has spiked in the last 20 months and is immediately correlated with the US-backed ousting of the Islamic courts. Im not promoting the Islamic courts as a perfect solution, but their is no denying that they brought a level of peace and stability to Somalia that hadnt been seen in years and that from the perspective of Somali business and remittance executives I met with in 2007 "our best days were under them". You'll find many divergent takes on Somalia's enduring political impasse, I was simply offering mine.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Nov 19, 2008 - 07:47pm PT
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Brits from the Cumberland got some skalywags too, last week!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/12/pirates.attack.russia.britain/index.html
The problem is that NATO forces (not including India) cannot fire unless fired upon first which appears reasonable. The problem is these guys stash their guns unless really threatened by military boarding.
One Thai ship actually radioed for help, being chased by 2 pirate speedboats, but by the time their call was answered it was too late. It is also overrun.
There needs to be some kind of rotating patrol through there where ships are within reach by helicopter within minutes.
Security on board the ships is the best solution though. It's have to heavy firepower though like the CIWS system I posted earlier. It's a fairly automated system once you designate a target. It has Forward Looking Infrared Radar too!
Even with those there would have to a warning before firing, would isn't hard to do. Sound alarms, over the PA yell, "stop approaching, Halt, we will fire", then open up with warning shots in the water so they can see you're not firing blanks, then blow 'em out of the water.
This unchecked aggression must stop....dude.
Edit: Kupandimingi, fair enough. We'll agree to disagree, we have different philosophies on how to deal with nations like Somalia.
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MisterE
Trad climber
My Inner Nut
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Nov 19, 2008 - 07:49pm PT
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Says the guy in the safe place across the world.
Please.
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