Pirates....again.....

[svHyLyte]

Actually SoStar, after further consideration, disregard my previous enquiry. This discourse is pointless and has gone on for two long. The BS coefficient on this web-site is rapidly approaching 50% which, at least for me, is a cut-off point, so I prefer not adding to it any further.

[GordMay]

As of July 31, 2008, the United States owed the United Nations more than $2.2 billion in outstanding dues payments, including current year assessments.

[Southern Star]

HyLyte, calling something 'BS' without even attempting to refute it is hardly helpful.
I am sorry if you find it offensive that someone might suggest that the UN is doing its best in the circumstances and/or that its efforts have increased safety and security for many, including cruisers. I am sorry if you find it offensive that some consider the efforts of European nations to assist in the fight against piracy to be laudable.

I should thank Gord for providing corroboration (and the latest figures) concerning the US refusal to pay its dues to the UN - some would say that if you don't participate in the UN, you probably shouldn't criticize their efforts.

Kosovo is one example of a war-torn area where for several years the UN was able to keep a lid on an explosive situation. There are also war-crimes prosecutions being orchestrated against those who were, in part, responsible for ethnic cleansing/genocide in the same area.

The UN was also instrumental in reducing the bloodbath that was occuring in Haiti to the extent that elections, however flawed, were able to proceed. It is not only the people in those countries who have been the beneficiaries - cruisers in the Baltic and the Caribbean should also be thankful.

Brad

[bastonjock]

Originally Posted by roverhi

So we should stop using the Suez Canal and and go around the Cape of Good Hope. Only adds thousands of miles to the voyage along a not so interesting coast which all the passengers would love to take the time not to see.

If corporate greed is about staying in business, more power to the Cruise ship company. They cannot increase the tarriff to compensate for the additional miles of a Cape passage. A typical cruise ship has the speed to outrun any mother ship the pirates might have and make it extremely dangerous to board if one of the small boats caught up with them. There are thousands of ships passing through the canal for the few that get hijacked. The risks are low for this type of ship.

The question is why is Europe and Gulf States putting up with this crap. Stationing a couple of helocopter carriers off the Somali coast to discover, monitor anard destroy pirate craft would discourage the pirates in a hurry. The only reason the pirates are active is none of the countries effected have the backbone to stop it. BTW, don't think it's our responsibility to take the lead in this. We've got enough on our plate. It's about time Europe takes some responsibility for their own safety instead of crying to us to be the heavies.

Aloha
Peter O.

what about the Brits? our service personnell are being killed every week,we are deployed in Afganistan,Iraq and the balkans,the RN is patrolling the gulf of Aden hunting pirates and killing them.

[svHyLyte]

Your right SoStar those hefty UN Resolutions concerning Kosavo really did wonders for the Serbs, particularly in Srebrenica in '95, for example (abstracted from Wikipedia for your convenience as to citations):

The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as the Srebrenica Genocide,[1][2][3][4] was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić during the Bosnian War. In addition to the VRS, a paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions participated in the massacre.[5][6] The United Nations had declared Srebrenica a UN-protected "safe area", but that did not prevent the massacre, even though 400 armed [UN] Dutchpeacekeepers were present at the time.[7] After reviewing a comprehensive report, the Dutch government resigned over this matter in 2002.
The Srebrenica massacre is the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II.[8] In 2004, in a unanimous ruling on the "Prosecutor v. Krstić" case, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) located in The Hague ruled that the Srebrenica massacre was genocide,[9] the Presiding Judge Theodor Meron stating:
By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks], the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.[10]

Silly me, for all this time I thought it was NATO that settled matters in Kosevo

And you're right, the UN has done a wonderful job in Haiti as reported in UN in Haiti accused of second massacre in Cité Soleil - January 21, 2007 .

Yep..that UN is just a paramount of virtue Reporting on UN Corruption .

Yep, we should definately support the UN's efforts in the World, such as its plans to organize, fund, and host a Durban II conference in 2009 that Libya, Iran, Cuba, and Pakistan hope will be a reprise of the “Death to Israel! Death to America” spectacle of the 2001 Durban conference (how silly of then–Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to order the U.S. delegation to walk out).

Given all the good works the UN performs its criminal that the US owes it money--why, after all, the US is only responsible for 25% of the UN's total operating budget and 31% of its "Peace Keeping" budget. Yep the US is really sticking it to the other 184 Members (over 60% of which are very democratic 3rd world countries). Yep, without our full contribution, how are the UN's 50,000+ bureaucrats supposed to get their tax free salaries (that are only on average of 200% the salaries for comparable "work [?]" in the private sector).

Yep, SoStar, you've convined me that I should simply ignor nasty rumors about the UN spread by people like Mark Steyn of that "ulta-conservative" London Telegraph on the UN:

It's a good basic axiom that if you take a quart of ice-cream and a quart of dog faeces and mix 'em together the result will taste more like the latter than the former. That's the problem with the UN. If you make the free nations and the thug states members of the same club, the danger isn't that they'll meet each other half-way but that the free world winds up going three-quarters, seven-eighths of the way. Thus the Oil-for-Fraud scandal: in the end, Saddam Hussein had a much shrewder understanding of the way the UN works than Bush and Blair did.

And, of course, corrupt organisations rarely stop at just one kind. If you don't want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food programme, don't worry, whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits - in West Africa, it's Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it's drug dealing; in Kenya, it's the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves.

But you get the general picture: on a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece. Didier Bourguet, a UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic, enjoyed the pleasures of 12-year-old girls, and as a result is now on trial in France. His lawyer has said he was part of a UN paedophile network that transcends national boundaries.

Yep SoStar, you've convinced me--

s/v HyLyte

Ah... Excuse me...Would someone please pass the Napalm?

(Or can we simply drop the subject as I suggested earlier)

[FrankZ]

This thread has really strayed off topic. Can we please move it back to the topic and drop the political discussions?

Thank you

[Amgine]

Talbot: it was a reference to the US Presidency situation. (As for containership piracy, if you go back and read the IMB reports you'll find about half happened while in port, and compared to their population representation are rather rare in the list of targets.)

svHyLyte: 60 years before UN witnessed three global-scale conflicts, 60 years since UN the largest event was Israel/Arab conflict. We won't discuss the disease/starvation issues, the harmonizing of legal standards, the fact there has been exactly one war of territorial aggression over the period.

[Southern Star]

I'm with Frankz - my initial point was in being tired of the UN and Europe bashing in this post. And Hylyte, a close friend of mine was in Kosovo until 2 years ago with the UN as a war-crimes prosecutor. He (and others with the UN) risked their lives for a valid purpose, whether or not you choose to see it that way. And using examples of the mistreatment of locals by the few (or the inability to prevent all attacks on locals) would be no different that castagating the entire US forces in Iraq for precisely the same thing.

Brad

[Bloodhound]

This thread has now strayed so far off the topic of Pirates perhaps it's time either to move it to its own topic (whatever that might be since currently it has nothing whatever to do with sailing/cruising), or turn it off altogether. This forum is certainly NOT the place for political bickering and other forms of political ********, and it generally detracts from the forum.

[Southern Star]

Probably best to let it die a natrual death - some will applaud the efforts of the Dutch and French navies in this instance, others will not. Some willl see it at as an international problem requiring an international solution (including the US), others will not.

Brad

[Soft Air]

I read hellosailor post and I must agree that he could have been part of the leaving US President´s committee when they make decisions to invade or attack countries and people without understanding the complex of economics and its systemic behavior.

The very smart president of the US used very similar "reasons" to take actions withouth seeing its real consequences with statements like this:

"Leave the nicety of complex economic justifications for asocial behavior for the bleeding hearts"

They did that too and look at Wall Street now, the world is NOT only the US and Europe, it is true that this nations consume 80% of the world´s resources but that does not shade the fact that the globe belongs to all 6.5 million people living on earth.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Bloodhound

This thread has now strayed so far off the topic of Pirates perhaps it's time either to move it to its own topic (whatever that might be since currently it has nothing whatever to do with sailing/cruising), or turn it off altogether. This forum is certainly NOT the place for political bickering and other forms of political ********, and it generally detracts from the forum.

Indeed. Thread closed.