A fellow blogger over at Fool on the Hill Recently posted his take on the new age of Piracy I thought the piece so clever that I had to ask if I could use part of it here at Screaming, he kindly allowed me to do so.
So without further adieu;
Fool on the Hill
Original Post: November 20, 2008: I blame Johnny Depp
"The current surge in piracy off the coast of Africa is surely partly the fault of Johnny Depp making pirates appear sexy. With his pursed feminine mouth and saucy good looks, Depp has changed the image of the pirate from a bloodthirsty, murderous rogue, often with a leg [Long John Silver] or arm [Captain Hook] missing, in other words, a bad guy, into a cheeky scamp and a good guy, making it a more attractive career choice for anyone, including Somalians looking for a way to make a living, with their country a failed state without a government. Having apparently got away with capturing a cargo vessel, The Faina, packed with guns and ammunition a few weeks ago [and still not released], they went on to take an oil tanker, the Sirius Star in the Gulf of Aden, the 9th ship captured in 12 days, and have demanded $25M. They even thought they'd grab an Indian Navy warship wanting to search them, but warships tend to have guns unlike cargo vessels, and they were blown out of the water and sunk."
SCREAMING Update: Naval forces in the Horn of Africa Region are growing all the time. There is already a small flotilla of warships from the US, UK, Canada, France, Turkey, Germany, Russia and India, among others. The warships have established a safe shipping lane and escort food aid ships into Somalia. Now isn't that ironic? Warships are protecting the shipping lanes leading in to Somalia... from Somalian Pirates.
The British Navy recently shot and killed two pirates, the French have captured pirates who had taken over a yacht, the Indian navy has thwarted two attempted hijacks and has sunk a pirate ship which refused to stop.
In 1815 the American Commander Stephen Decatur was deployed to stop the pirates in the Mediterranean. He simply captured the flagship of the Algerian Dey. When the Dey later repudiated the agreement, the British and Dutch bombarded Algiers. Guess what may be about to happen...
There is UN Resolution 1838 that passed in October and authorizes the use of "necessary means" to stop piracy in international waters and UN Resolution (1816) which allows anti-pirate operations within Somali waters. UN Res. 1816 may be a bit trickier to enact as it requires the agreement of the Somali transitional government.
And with this, I will close with a few more words from the "Fool on the Hill":
"I say call in Steven Segal and Bruce Willis, that's bound to scare the shit out of them. All in all, Hollywood's got a lot to answer for."
You have been given a voice, use it. Go out and SCREAM! about something you care about.
Piracy,
Johnny Depp,
Depp,
Africa,
Pirate,
Pirates,
Long John Silver,
Somalians,
Gulf of Aden,
Horn of Africa,
Somalia,
UN Resolution,
Politics,
Humanitarian,
Society
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment