Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

On Jan 3, 11:44 pm, "Peter Duncanson (BrE)" <m...@peterduncanson.net>
wrote:

Personally, I'd be very suspicious of any speedboat a thousand miles
from shore in the Arabian Sea or south of it, especially when manned
by a gang of JDs wearing little but Ray-Bans, AK-47s and RPGs. And to
firmly prevent terrorism, I'd ask to see their ID cards, after which
they'd be powerless.
--
franzi

In addition, the pirates can dart out from Somalia's long coastline
when passing freighters come close to shore, which they often do. I
can't remember why they do, but they do.

But do they talk like pirates?

Don't leave out the the power of a grudge in Julie's treatment of
pirates; he was a pirate's captive in his earlier years.

It is possibly kept as cash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_pirates#Weaponry_and_funding

   Pirates say ransom money is paid in large denomination US dollar
   bills. It is delivered to them in burlap sacks which are either
   dropped from helicopters or cased in waterproof suitcases loaded
   onto tiny skiffs. Ransom money has also been delivered to pirates
   via parachute, as happened in January 2009 when an orange container
   with $3 million cash inside it was dropped onto the deck of the
   supertanker MV Sirius Star to secure the release of ship and
   crew. To authenticate the banknotes, pirates use currency-counting
   machines, the same technology used at foreign exchange bureaus
   worldwide. According to one pirate, these machines are, in turn,
   purchased from business connections in Dubai, Djibouti, and other
   areas. Hostages seized by the pirates usually have to wait 45 days
   or more for the ships' owners to pay the ransom and secure their
   release, but the pirates' treatment of the hostages is relatively
   humane, and their reputation for turning over the ship, cargo and
   reason for their continued success in having their demands met.
   
   Somali pirates allegedly get help from the Somali diaspora. Somali
   expatriates, including reputedly some among the 200,000 Somalis
   living in Canada, offer funds, equipment and information.

In the introductory section of the article is:

   There are discussions under way to begin an aggressive covert
   operation against the pirates. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
   has been publicly warning of this potential threat for months. In a
   Harpers Magazine article, a CIA official stated, "We need to deal
   with this problem from the beach side, in concert with the ocean
   side, but we don't have an embassy in Somalia and limited,
   ineffective intelligence operations. We need to work in Somalia and
   in Lebanon, where a lot of the ransom money has changed hands. But
   our operations in Lebanon are a joke, and we have no presence at all
   in Somalia."

Then:

   ... the lucrative success of many hijacking operations have drawn a
   number of young men toward gangs of pirates, whose wealth and
   strength often make them part of the local social and economic
   elite. Abdi Farah Juha who lives in Garoowe (100 miles from the sea)
   told the BBC, "They have money; they have power and they are getting
   stronger by the day. [...] They wed the most beautiful girls; they
   are building big houses; they have new cars; new guns."

And:

   Most pirates are aged 20–35 years old and come from the region of
   Puntland, in northeastern Somalia. The East African Seafarers'
   Association estimates that there are at least five pirate gangs and
   a total of 1,000 armed men. According to a BBC report, the pirates
   can be divided into three main categories:
   
   * Local Somali fishermen, considered the brains of the pirates'
     operations due to their skill and knowledge of the sea. Most think
     that foreign boats have no rights to cruise next to the shore and
     destroy their boats.
   * Ex-militiamen who used to fight for the local clan warlords, used
     as the muscle.
   * Technical experts who operate equipment such as GPS devices.

The Johnny Depp one is nearly impossible to avoid when watching TV
over here.

The hostages might disagree.

That's not nearly as great as the distance from US territorial waters to
Baghdad.

Somali war lords are generally not nice people -- no nicer than George Bush,
anyway.

Well, you can call it reparations or compensation or whatever, but no matter
what you call it, it's still a zero-sum game.

The way it works is that when someone damages, destroys or steals something of
yours, you go and damage, destroy or steal something belonging to someone
else, whether it's a passing ship or a country on the other side of the
planet.

There was an article in the Independent (London, UK) a year ago. It is
an opinion piece that recites some facts:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-ar
e-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

   Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates
   
   Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop
   illegal dumping and trawling    
   Monday, 5 January 2009
   ....
   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."
   ....

Enough to piss off quite a number of Somalis.

See e.g.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-ar
e-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html