Somali pirates receive record ransom for ships' release

Source: BBC News

Somali pirates are reported to have received a total of $12.3m (£7.6m) in ransom money to release two ships.

They are believed to have been paid a record $9.5m (£5.8m) for Samho Dream, a South Korean oil tanker, and nearly $2.8m (£1.7m) for the Golden Blessing, a Singaporean flagged ship.

"We are now counting our cash," a pirate who gave his name as Hussein told Reuters news agency. "Soon we shall get down from the ship."

All crew are believed to be unharmed.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11704306

but when they found out that Bernanke had cranked the U.S. Fed's printing presses one more time, with a new injection of US$ 600 billion , they thought they'd better up it to compensate for the likely reduction in the value of the US$.

There'd be no need to turn to piracy.

Go Pirates! Fuck the transnationals!

I'm a murderous thug, but I only take these $12m paychecks because the fishing sucks.

They're pirates and they should be shot on sight. They don't kill because they need to, they kill for profit.

So it is inaccurate to call them murderous thugs. And I don't see why you would make light of the fact that illegal fishing trowlers from foreign countries rob Somalia of its fish--when they are not dumping nuclear waste on its coasts.

or you wouldn't write their plight off to pollution.

for toxic waste; where foreign governments don't dump their sh*t they overfish. Pollution, overfishing, and abuse of natural resources of a place that has no government to advocate for its interests are certainly a part of how "piracy" in Somalia started; of course by now it is more complicated, but ignoring the way the fishing communities on the Somalian coast have been disenfranchised means ignoring important historical context for what Somalian "pirates" are.

I was in Mogadishu (92-93) shark fishing would have been easy since they were conditioned to come feed on bodies being dumped in the sea. It's so easy to call the Somalis victims of everyone else without acknowledging their own part in the disintegration of their society, but it's just not accurate.

European firms violate the Basel convention up and down the Somali coastline. Violating international treaties cannot be excused as a "result" of an unstable or failed state, regardless of who was responsible for its disintegration--that's an IR equivalent of saying a rape victim was "asking for it" because she was wearing a short skirt.

Gasoline Prices in Central Michigan Rose past the $3 per gallon mark.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4604025

Live at the end of the petroleum age...

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

so that they will continue being motivated to seize ships and buy even more weapons. great idea.

Source: Al Jazeera English

Somali pirates have received their highest ransom payment yet - $9.5m for the release of Samho Dream, a South Korean oil supertanker they hijacked in the Indian Ocean in early April this year.

Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme (SAP-NET), confirmed on Saturday that the supertanker was free, and that a Singapore-registered ship with 19 Chinese sailors on board hijacked in June in the Gulf of Aden had also been released.

"I can confirm Samho Dream is now free, but still in Somali waters," said Mwangura, who is based in the Kenyan Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. "It is a large ship and it's unlikely that it can dock in Mombasa, maybe it will dock somewhere along South Africa's coast or elsewhere to replenish its supplies."

He said the pirates had initially demanded $20m.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2010/11/2010116231624431468.html

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The world can have as many pirates as it is willing to sponsor.
The response of the international community is totally pathetic!

:nuke:

The world economy depends on intranational trade and we NEED energy to survive. This sort of piracy can not, under any circumstances, appear profitable enough to encourage others around the world from joining in.