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2008-11-19 Africa Horn

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Posted by Steve White 2008-11-19 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 Hmm, seems to me the UN should provide a perpetual mandate for any warship at sea to render assistance in the case of piracy. It should be a crime NOT to intercept a vessel in such a case.

Posted by crosspatch 2008-11-19 00:20|| 2008-11-19 00:20|| Front Page Top

#2 Any pirate threatening U.S. shipping should be the walking dead.

I see no reason to risk any American lives or incur any costs or risks on behalf of the Saudis. In fact, there are very few countries we should help.

Posted by DoDo 2008-11-19 00:33|| 2008-11-19 00:33|| Front Page Top

#3 No mandate to do what you need to do. NATO is teats on a boar hog useless.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2008-11-19 00:50|| 2008-11-19 00:50|| Front Page Top

#4 "Any pirate threatening U.S. shipping should be the walking dead."

Well, there is the option of putting all shipping in the area under the US flag. We have done that before in the Persian Gulf during the Iran/Iraq war when Iran was threatening oil shipping to Kuwait.

Posted by crosspatch 2008-11-19 01:09|| 2008-11-19 01:09|| Front Page Top

#5 From the Times:

Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank, said that the capture was a crucial escalation. Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You wont fix this without a political solution.

The inmates are truly in charge.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-11-19 04:15|| 2008-11-19 04:15|| Front Page Top

#6 It's because they've been in charge for a while that the situation has escalated, NS.

Posted by lotp 2008-11-19 06:04|| 2008-11-19 06:04|| Front Page Top

#7 South Africa has a navy. Why has the "international community" told them to get off their sorry arss and lend a hand?

Posted by Besoeker 2008-11-19 07:40|| 2008-11-19 07:40|| Front Page Top

#8 you hit the nail on the head with sorry arss, they're still celebrating Mandelas release

Posted by chris 2008-11-19 08:02|| 2008-11-19 08:02|| Front Page Top

#9 don't worry we have the Indian navy out there not afraid to shoot

Posted by chris 2008-11-19 08:05|| 2008-11-19 08:05|| Front Page Top

#10 I believe the SA Navy is critically short of technically qualified people and getting worse. So much so that all their subs have been tied to the pier.

Posted by ed 2008-11-19 08:14|| 2008-11-19 08:14|| Front Page Top

#11 The US has its own shipping? Not since every shipping company went Panamanian or Liberian. Re-flagging the flag-of-convenience clowns sounds like it might be in the wind.

But don't be surprised if the flag is Indian.

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2008-11-19 08:44|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2008-11-19 08:44|| Front Page Top

#12 The proposed solution of a perpetual mandate is as frightening as the pirates:

The U.N.'s Big Power Grab
By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times | 10/3/2007

If Americans have learned anything about the United Nations over the last 50 years, it is that this "world body" is, at best, riddled with corruption and incompetence. At worst, its bureaucracy, agencies and members are overwhelmingly hostile to the United States and other freedom-loving nations, most especially Israel.

So why on earth would the United States Senate possibly consider putting the U.N. on steroids by assenting to its control of seven-tenths of the world's surface?....Nonetheless, the predictable effect of U.S. accession to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea better known as the Law of the Sea Treaty (or LOST) would be to transform the U.N. from a nuisance and laughingstock into a world government: The United States would confer upon a U.N. agency called the International Seabed Authority (IA) the right to dictate what is done on, in and under the world's oceans. Doing so, America would become party to surrender of immense resources of the seas and what lies beneath them to the dictates of unaccountable, nontransparent multinational organizations, tribunals and bureaucrats.

LOST's most determined proponents have always been the one-worlders members of the World Federalists Association (now dubbed Citizens for Global Solutions) and like-minded advocates of supranational government. They have made no secret of their ambition to use the Law of the Sea Treaty as a kind of "constitution of the oceans" and prototype for what they want to do on land, as well.

Specifically, the transnationalists (or Transies) understand LOST would set a precedent for diminishing, and ultimately eliminating, sovereign nations. It would establish the superiority of international mechanisms for managing not just "the common heritage of mankind," but everything that could affect it.

In the case of LOST, such a supranational arrangement is particularly enabled by the treaty's sweeping environmental obligations. State parties promise to "protect and preserve the marine environment." Since ashore activities from air pollution to runoff that makes its way into a given nation's internal waters can ultimately affect the oceans, however, the U.N.'s big power grab would also allow it to exercise authority over land-based actions of heretofore sovereign nations....Scarcely more appetizing is LOST's empowering of a U.N. agency to impose what amount to international taxes. To provide such an entity with a self-financing mechanism and the authority to distribute the ocean's wealth in ways that suit the majority of its members and its international bureaucracy is a formula for unaccountability and corruption on an unprecedented scale.

To date, the full malevolent potential of the Law of the Sea Treaty has been more in prospect than in evidence. If the United States accedes to LOST, however, it is predictable that the treaty's agencies will: wield their powers in ways that will prove very harmful to American interests; intensify the web of sovereignty-sapping obligations and regulations promulgated by this and other U.N. entities; and advance inexorably the emergence of supranational world government.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the founder, president, and CEO of The Center for Security Policy. During the Reagan administration, Gaffney was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy, and a Professional Staff Member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Texas). He is a columnist for The Washington Times, Jewish World Review, and Townhall.com and has also contributed to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and Newsday.

Posted by Thealing Borgia 122 2008-11-19 15:04|| 2008-11-19 15:04|| Front Page Top

#13 Screw that, let the oil ticks rescue their own damn ship.

Posted by mojo">mojo 2008-11-19 15:16|| 2008-11-19 15:16|| Front Page Top

#14 No expert here, but there's no need for a special UN mandate or anything of the sort for a naval vessel to take action against piracy directed against any ship on the high seas, is there? I'ma thinking this is probably the oldest, most settled, and among the most practical examples of what people breezily refer to as "international law".

Again, I don't know, but I can't imagine any UN or NATO authorization is required to take action against pirates in international waters. Seems to me a broad and very heavy offensive against these dipshits is in order. Hit them hard, on land and sea, kill as many as possible. Funny, that always seems to work, yet must "re-discovered" every time good guys confront bad guys.

Posted by Verlaine 2008-11-19 23:11|| 2008-11-19 23:11|| Front Page Top

23:36 SteveS
23:15 Hammerhead
23:14 Alaska Paul
23:11 Verlaine
23:08 JosephMendiola
22:57 JosephMendiola
22:52 Zhang Fei
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22:26 Frank G
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20:38 Zenobia Ebbomose aka Broadhead6
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