Another Somalia pirate has bagged another ship.
 

"ATHENS (AFP) – A Greek cargo ship has been seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, Greece's merchant marine ministry said Sunday.
The MV Saldanha was on its way to Slovenia to deliver its cargo of coal with 22 crew members on board, a ministry spokesman said, without giving further details.
According to a BBC report whose details were confirmed by the British defence ministry, the ship was boarded by pirates who warned the captain of a nearby British warship, the HMS Northumberland, to stay away.
The Saldanha was reportedly sailing under a Maltese flag. The British warship is in the area as part of a European Union taskforce to combat pirate attacks.
Pirates attacked over 130 merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden last year, more than double the 2007 total, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy and shipping security issues.
More than 150 suspected pirates were arrested by naval patrols in 2008."-Yahoo AFP





I think its time to take a page straight out of WWII and start putting deck guns on these freighters. And maybe start sending in destroyers to rake these small boats in port with cannon fire. Sink everything including the fishing boats! This situation is getting absurd and its time to draw a hard line. Bomb every port thay have into oblivion, Start a convoy system thru the gulf of Aiden, Lets make some Q ships! Lets eradicate this threat once and for all!:stare:

I agree; send in the Marines. It worked before.

Unfortunately there are lots of legal complications and owners and insurers don't like complications .

You mean like the Indian Navy did recently ?
That didn't turn out too well did it , killing the innocent seamen and letting the pirates escape .

There already is a convoy system in place , but even convoyed ships have been attcked .

Would make for nice TV but unfortunately this is how pirates became pirates in the first place.

Its all because they're poor, so bombing the only places that could possibly make them not poor is absurd.

Not really , the upsurge in piracy is mainly a result of the invasion which put the warlords with their money and their need for more money back in power

Which invasion? By invasion are you referring to the presence of foreign troops the Somali Govt asked for from the AU, who have currently around 5400 pairs of boots on the ground?

Or are you referring to the US presence that the illustrious Bill Clinton (dem) put there back in the early 1990s? If you're referring to that, I hope you can draw a direct and irrefutable link between the US presence there nearly 20 years ago and the rise in piracy which has come about over the past 5 or so years?

Ships with landing decks + a fleet or helicopters armed with FFAR. Shoot on sight with no early warning. Destroy every pirate boat, no matter type and size, getting identified. Air raids on coastal villages where pirate boats have been observed to operate from, start from, return to. Political and economical sanctions against states paying ransom for their hijacked vessels, isolating them.

Piracy will drop drastically within short time.

German Shipowner Paid Ransom to Somali Pirates, hope you don't mind eating cat food ;)

:timeout: Poor is no excuse. There are poor people all over the world, Not many of them are Pirates. And as far as law is concerned, Somalia has no government and no imposed laws. Its currently a nation of warlords who extort money from the west to buy more weapons and attack boats to increase their ability to extort money from the west. Its a cycle that needs to be crushed. They have made billions to buy weapons. This money isnt going to food or medical aid for the population. Its going to weapons pure and simple.

Its time to stop the excuses and start their destruction. It will sound like this, "Tomahawk cruise missle LOS!

Seriously start rigging up Q-ships and blast them into the depths of Neptune!

Well christ, what other nation has the entirety of its coastline next to a major shipping route? Indonesia has piracy problems too!

Good point, But Indonesia has a government who is making an effort to cull those forces. So at least we have something to work with. Somalia has no Government.
Nobody we can put pressure on politically. So bring out the cannons since I'm sure ours are much larger than there's!:arrgh!:

Might=Right in cases like this.

The presence of piracy at sea is a direct result of the lack of a government on the shore.

There are poor people all across Africa. Lots of African countries have long coastlines. But no other African countries have piracy problems like Somalia. Their governments, weak/corrupt/brutal as they may be, don't let it happen.

The solution to this problem has to come from inside Somalia. The outside world has been trying to set up a Somali government for the past 20 years, and every effort has failed despite bucketloads of aid. Meanwhile, the northern separatist region of Somaliland has managed to set up a functioning and reasonably democratic government in the area under their control, despite receiving absolutely nothing from the outside world.

In the meantime, as any sub skipper knows, escorted convoys are the best way to stop attacks on merchant shipping. One destroyer from an international force with a patrol chopper should be enough to deter any pirate attacks on a convoy. Unfortunately there's no political will to make that happen.

"Yo ho, Yo ho a pirates life for me...":arrgh!: :arrgh!: :arrgh!:

I still say its time to blow anything larger than a rowboat into bags of splinters. There's enough political correctness in this world. Let every vessal they got burn!