Wednesday - September 26, 2012

say hello to the latest new headline.

Yesterday’s headline.  Brits happy to be rid of the filthy rotten rat bastard. This smelly lice ridden bag of shit.

a european court rules in favor of deporting hamza to america

But ....  That was yesterday.

Both Drew and Lyndon had some choice words on the subject in their comments.

Well .... here’s the newest headline.

H/T BBC News

Abu Hamza: High Court judge halts extradition to the US

A High Court judge has halted the extradition of Abu Hamza al-Masri to the US on terror charges after the cleric launched a last-ditch appeal.

An injunction temporarily stops the removal of the radical cleric and another suspect from the UK and is the latest move in a long legal battle.

The European Court of Human Rights had earlier rejected attempts to block them being sent for trial in the US.

The pair will outline their appeals at a hearing next Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Monday, the European court ruled that the men and three other suspects should stand trial in the US.

The Judicial Office confirmed Abu Hamza and Khaled Al-Fawwaz were “seeking injunctions preventing their removal from the UK”.

A spokesperson said: “A High Court judge has considered the applications on the papers and adjourned the cases to a hearing in open court.

“The judge has issued interim injunctions preventing their removal prior to those hearings. The judge has directed the hearings be fixed urgently.”

You know, it occurs to me that since the west isn’t capable of defending itself, do you need even more proof?  Maybe somehow, someway our attitudes need to change with regard to suicide bombings.  Look, if you’re old and ill anyway, what’s to lose?  I suppose it really isn’t a part of our thinking. Not in our DNA you might say.  But there has to be a way to pull the kind of verminous lawyers who work for someone like this Hamza creep, into line.  Maybe deleting members of their family?  Whatever it takes.  I am not suggesting that we adopt the very same sort of targets.  But selectively with the understanding that there could be unwanted collateral damage.  For example, if his lawyers had to be taken out and suicide was the only way, their bodyguards if they had any would of course suffer as well.  That isn’t wanted but .... if you come up with a better way to rid us of the traitors, the enablers, the 5th column, I’d sure like to know.
Vermin like Hamza and his ilk do NOT operate without help and money.  And lots of both.  There has to be an end to this crap.
I’d treat illegal immigrants in the same manner.  Immediate deletion and that would include any member of their family.
Just sick of all this BS. 

Posted by peiper     on 09/26/2012 at 11:57 AM   
Filed Under: • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •  
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good for a laff

Caught this one a few days ago. It’s novel.  Hope it catches on.
What the world needs. A good laugh now and then.

THE CAR PARK

Posted by peiper     on 09/26/2012 at 06:01 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor • UK •  
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   Tuesday - September 25, 2012

Happy Birthday Buttzville

Your bridge is 110 years old.

Built in 1902. And she never looked better.

Well done.

The bridge on Mill Street in Buttzville in Warren County NJ is the kind of somewhat rare truss called a Double Intersection Warren through truss, because it’s a triangular Warren truss with another triangular Warren truss superimposed on top of it, offset half a length, and it’s the kind of bridge that goes up high and is connected over your head, so it’s a through type, not a pony type. A Double (intersection) Warren is very easy to confuse with a Howe truss, which were common at the time, although Howes always have all the verticals. The bridge in the picture only has hip verticals under the end end posts. Unfortunately, none of the variations of the Warren truss have any special names, so this one isn’t a Parker, or a Camel, or a Petite, or a Baltimore, or any of the nice names that the variations of Pratt truss have (if it were a Pratt it would be a Whipple). Lame, but I don’t set the rules.

This one is almost completely original, save for a few dozen rivets replaced with nuts and bolts over the past 110 years.  The floor of the bridge is 6” timber, and that is brand new. An inch or so of asphalt goes over that as a wearing surface for you to drive on. The floor beams may be original; if not, then at least they are proper I beams and not the wide flange H beams used today.

Barely a block away is where the north-south road to Princeton (Route 31) meets the west-east road to New York City (Route 46). Thousands and thousands of cars and trucks hammering down the highway every single day, just behind the white house in the back of this picture. But one block back, here on Mill Street, time stopped long ago.

In the half hour I took to photograph this bridge, which is only 10 minutes up the road from where I bowl every week, not even one vehicle crossed the bridge. A couple of crows flew by, and I swear the trout in the stream were watching me when my shadow fell on them. But that’s it.  Just like in my county, the modern world exists mostly on the main roads. A block or two back and it’s whatever year you want it to be, except you’ve got HDTV and internet and modern stuff whenever you want.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/25/2012 at 09:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Bridges • History •  
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The names bond. james bond

You won’t know this woman. No reason you should.  If you ever saw a James Bond movie though, you heard her voice.

Her name is Nikki van der Zyl.  And you never heard that either I’d bet. No reason you should have unless you’re one of those seriously into movies and all the behind the scenes stuff.  But most of us aren’t and just enjoyed whatever we saw and went on to the next thing.

OK .... here’s some more photos of ladies you did see if you saw any Bond films.  Remember Goldfinger?

This was Shirley Eaton in those younger days.

Hey ... do you recognize Jane Seymour on the right?

Now I know you recognize that photo on the left. Even if you never saw a Bond film you may well have seen Ursula Andress.

But not the woman to her right.  Well fellow bmewsers.  You didn’t actually HEAR ANY of the other pretty ladies either. But you did hear instead,
a woman named Nikki van der Zyl.  Because Miss van der Zyl VOICED all their parts. You saw them but heard Nikki.
Ain’t movies great? 

A bit of a sour end to this tale.

The secret Bond girl: Unknown artist dubbed the voices of 007’s best-known beauties - but now she’s banned from the movies spy’s 50th birthday party!

By Stephen Wright and Claire Ellicott

AND IF YOU WANT THE WHOLE STORY YOU’LL HAVE TO LINK TO THE MAIL HERE

Cos it’s damn late, I’ve been up since forever and turned the heat on upstairs where I am now headed.

Have a nice evening.

Posted by peiper     on 09/25/2012 at 04:50 PM   
Filed Under: • MOVIES •  
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immigration blues

I can’t imagine many mainstream writers being able to tell this sort of truth in print back home. Not in any major paper I’ve seen in the past anyway.  But Littlejohn pulls no punches and he’s much maligned by the left for his views. 

Well, what brought this to being posted was, in the hard copy edition of the Daily Mail on Saturday, there was a very much enlarged photo of the crowd waiting for the Apple store to open.  The very first thing I noticed about the pix, which you’d be blind to miss the photo was so large, was that the majority of the people in the London photo were foreign looking.

Anyway, the photo they published on line and which I present here, was cropped a lot by the Mail and so I don’t see the blonde Littlejohn refers to in this small blurb. His take on immigration is spot on.  She stands out a lot in the hard copy, simply because she seems to be the only white face among them all.  Just one more reason ppl refer to the city as Londonistan.  And that is not funny.  But it is accurate.

Littlejohn also refers to Sangatte, which most Americans won’t be aware of. So here’s the explanation, much edited but all you need to understand the problem.  Keeping it up and running for the benefit of all the vermin who manage to get to France cost millions. Most of those folks were there and waiting for the opportunity to get here to the UK by any means. That usually means sneaking in as illegals.  The camp closed in 2002, which didn’t mean the scum weren’t still getting here.
Sangatte was just half a mile from the entrance to the Channel Tunnel and many of the refugees were prepared to pay traffickers to show them how to breach security measures.

The British government and railway executives accused France of inadequate policing of their side of the tunnel, while France pleaded it was unable to cope with the vast numbers of refugees crossing its borders.  It never occurred to the authorities that shooting them all dead would have solved the problem for all time.  Saved lots of money too. 

Now then, that bring us to here.

Fears of new ‘Sangatte’ as French propose law change on arresting illegal immigrants.

The new legislation will mean that police can no longer detain illegal immigrants indefinitely and means they must be released after six hours.
That means they are free to make repeated attempts to enter Britain – and less likely to be deported.

The new French government is to change the law making it harder for police to arrest UK-bound illegal immigrants in Calais.

Just what the Brits need right now. As if they don’t have enough headaches with home grown problems. Now this. And to think.  The Brits helped liberate France from it’s rightful owner in ’44-45.  Ha. I make joke. Maybe. Not too sure sometimes.
So that’s the background to his Sangatte remark. Things are bleak.

Has Apple opened a Sangatte?

By Richard Littlejohn
Daily Mail

If you want a graphic illustration of how unfettered immigration has changed the demographic make-up of Britain, look no further than the picture in Saturday’s Mail of the crowd waiting for the Apple store in London to open.

It looks like the queue for the lorries at Sangatte. There’s even a bloke wrapped in a blanket. I shan’t speculate as to how they can all afford £599 for a new iPhone, although apparently some of them were paid by others to queue up.

Plenty of readers did a double-take, even those who live in our multi-culti capital city.

No doubt the usual suspects will howl ‘racism’, but it is remarkable that the only white face belongs to a blonde bird in a hi-viz jacket.
And she’s probably Polish.

Posted by peiper     on 09/25/2012 at 03:51 PM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • DIVERSITY BS • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration • UK •  
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France set to ban the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from official documents.

See?  This is what liberalism and political correctness leads to.
So okay.  I’m not a dad and never likely to be one.  Always preferred cats and dogs to kids.  But still.  Even if it doesn’t happen in La Belle France’s happy new socialist state, that anyone could even conceive of this doesn’t say anything good about the state of western thinking. Or at least in this case, of French thinkers who must come from the left to dream up this.

Now then, having said that.  There is a good question as to whether only male and female marriage produces better parents.  What I mean is, there has been ample proof here in the UK with screaming headlines about the torture and sexual abuse of children, by their hetro but drug and drink influenced parents.  Baby P comes to mind. The poor tyke was only 17 months old and had fifty injuries and broken bones. A horrible example of a death that could have been avoided.  And I believe his mother and boyfriend are out and free now. But that’s an aside.
While I don’t personally believe a child should be brought up by two daddies or mommies, I can’t say they would be any less loving then straight folks.  And judging by the papers, there are way too many of those rearing kids who if there was any justice, should have been sterilized long ago. But hey, banning words like mom and dad?  What next?

France set to ban the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from official documents

France is set to ban the words “mother” and “father” from all official documents under controversial plans to legalise gay marriage.

The move, which has outraged Catholics, means only the word “parents” would be used in identical marriage ceremonies for all heterosexual and same-sex couples.
The draft law states that “marriage is a union of two people, of different or the same gender”.
It says all references to “mothers and fathers” in the civil code – which enshrines French law – will be swapped for simply “parents”.
The law would also give equal adoption rights to homosexual and heterosexual couples.

Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told France’s Catholic newspaper La Croix: “Who is to say that a heterosexual couple will bring a child up better than a homosexual couple, that they will guarantee the best conditions for the child’s development?”
“What is certain is that the interest of the child is a major preoccupation for the government.”
The head of the French Catholic Church Cardinal Philippe Barbarin warned followers last week that gay marriage could lead to legalised incest and polygamy in society.

President Francois Hollande pledged in his manifesto to legalise gay marriage. The draft law will be presented to his cabinet for approval on October 31.

source

Posted by peiper     on 09/25/2012 at 01:38 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • FRANCE • Gay Gay Gay! •  
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E5: Capablanca-Rossolimo, Paris 1938

Posted by Christopher     on 09/25/2012 at 01:55 PM   
Filed Under: • CHESS •  
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a european court rules in favor of deporting hamza to america

The ECHR first ruled in April this year that Hamza and the others could be deported to America because “prisons there are more comfortable than those in Europe.”

It unanimously dismissed claims that conditions in American “supermax” jails were degrading, instead ruling that facilities such as televisions, telephones and arts and crafts actually “went beyond” what was provided in most European prisons.

ECHR is the European Court of Human Rights.  Rights. Even for those who aren’t actually human at all. Like this creep.

So, I take it it’s okay to deport him to America because; our prisons are more comfortable then those in Europe? 

This low form of life has sucked millions of dollars from the Brit purse yet refers to England as, “a toilet.” Some toilet.  Brits have supported this animal and his family since he got here. 

What worries me a lot is that now with deportation the cost to the USA will I’m sure run into more millions from our purse.  Apparently he doesn’t have the money to hire lawyers to argue his case.  But the tax base does and that’s where his legal support has come from while fighting deportation to America on charges of terrorism and murder all these years.

Here you see a perfect example of what I rag on about so often when I claim, with truth, that the west is lost because the west will just not defend itself with enough force. Make that deadly force.  He and his crew of vermin have been responsible for the murder of hundreds of folks whose major crime is, they weren’t approved muslims or were muslims friendly to the west or were satins helpers which is a euphemism for Americans and or Brits. 

Just as a reminder to Americans in case you’ve lost track of this scum.
Hamza tried to set up a jihad training camp in the state of Oregon. He was known as the preacher of hate, advocating the taking of western hostages.  The list is a long one and you can Google the bastard.

There are four other vermin who are expected to be deported to the USA within weeks.

That may prove to be one maddening yet interesting trial.  The purpose of which escapes me.  The bastard and his scummy friends are guilty and our guys have them dead to rights.  I hope we won’t waste too much more money on them.  Of course you do realize that they won’t get the death penalty no matter what they did, because the Euro-peons would never have approved deportation to a country where there was a chance of the death penalty. 

Then as well, don’t you find it interesting as well as anger inducing, that although the Brits duly arrested this guy, it had to go through a European high court.  And they in turn say to the Brits, okay. You have our permission to deport a wanted terrorist to the USA.

For more on the subject go to the Daily Mail UK. or The Telegraph. I’m sure it must be in the news already in the USA. ??

Posted by peiper     on 09/25/2012 at 12:17 PM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • muslims • Terrorists •  
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A full day shot to heck

Had to bring the MIL home from the hospital yesterday. Again. We’re at that point where she’s in just about every week. We know the nurses and aids on that wing of the hospital on a first name basis.

Still, it took up the whole damn day. Or I should say the entire day was spent on her and her needs. 

From 5:30am, when the wifey was up shopping online for a bariatric bedside commode, because ... um, because it’s needed. And even that shopping has been hell for her, because the medical supply market is even more vulturine than the funeral products market. Sure, it’s all online, but the same product that you can create an account as “DR. yourname” and get it for $89 wholesale sells online for a variety of increasing price points from $127 (a, b, c, d) up to nearly $300. Vultures. And that makes it hard for her to decide, and wastes HOURS, because she doesn’t want to get some cheap POS for her mother, etc. So after 6 days of her shopping onlin every morning, I took over and found the best product and price in about 8 minutes.

I went to the factory website, found out that they only make the one model that looks like this, and that the variations on it are merely color codes. -1, -2, etc. One is gray, one is white, one is unpainted steel. As if anyone gives a damn, for a poop chair for a dying woman. Now order the damn thing please. Oh no, I’ll do it this evening ... yeah uh huh, when I’m at bowling league, and she’ll be able to run through the hundreds of models available, AGAIN, for the 154th time, and waste another 4 effing hours on this nonsense. And then resent how much time she’s spending on her mother’s care. WTF? WTFFF?

Yeah, Ok, whatever.  You guys don’t want to hear this. It’s just one example of the circle jerk inefficiency built in to a “caregiver” situation when such care is done by close family: they aren’t even half a step removed from things, so they can’t be objective to anything. Ever. But days get consumed this way. Weeks. And yesterday too. We could have gone bowling, or shopping, or out for a nice fall walk, or done a whole lot of things together ... because this is at least the 5th time the MIL has been released from this hospital, and we know it never happens before 3pm. NEVER.

But then we had to wait around at home because of this and that and you never know what will happen or when the doctor will stop by her room at the hospital and ... crivens. Before I knew it, it was 3:30pm, so now we go and get her. And then when we got her home and hauled her up the stairs into the house, we had to stick around a few more hours until the sister could get in from work to cover for the overnight shift ... and by the time we stopped in at the grocery store for a quick bit of shopping and then whacked together some pasta for dinner, it was after 8. A whole day spent on a single 90 minute task. And the phone is ringing, it’s the MIL, trying to rag me because now her cellphone is receiving text messages. I’d put both daughter’s numbers on speed dial for her at her request; the numbers were already in the phone’s memory, but she’s never bothered to even look at the phone to figure out how the contact list works. She just dials. So now she’s getting a text message and it’s my fault. So MIL, what is the message? What’s it say? “How should I know” she says, “I can’t be bothered to look at it.” Miss Queen High and Mighty. But she can call me up, interrupt my dinner after sucking dry my entire day, to try and give me a ration of shit about it? I don’t think so.

I suggested to my wife that she find a commode with a really extra wide opening. I got the look.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/25/2012 at 07:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Family • Health-Medicine •  
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   Sunday - September 23, 2012

Pat Will Not Submit

plenty of links at the source on YouTube, along with 20,000 or so utterly stupid comments.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/23/2012 at 09:52 PM   
Filed Under: • PAT CONDELL • RoPMA •  
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smoking and tumors and long needles

Well as long as Drew has brought up a health issue in a post ....

I received an interesting email from Drew tonight and part of it got me remembering the past.  Happy to say Drew is doing well with his campaign to end the habit of the deadly weed.  Campaign is a good word as for me it denotes war and quitting smoking is a war.  Of sorts.  Now then, this isn’t a rant against tobacco and as an ex smoker myself I do not agree with the health Nazis who try and make smokers criminals.  Or at least act as if they were criminals.  Good grief.  Smokers are banned from buildings the high taxes they pay, help to pay for the buildings they are banned from smoking in.  Well this post isn’t about that anyway.
It’s more to do with dying, having foreign objects shoved into very private parts
and a caution that bad things can happen to anyone.

I lost people very close to me who were smokers and one who was a chain smoker and drank way, way too much. He was a Nashville songwriter/publisher and all around great guy, gone at 55.  My brother, lung cancer and dead at 46. Six years younger then me.  I recall one very dear friend who was you might say, a smoking buddy.  I say that because in the early years we used to joke about it while we puffed our lives away.  Now he was some years older then myself so when he went (Emphysema) I kind of figured well he was older and so I still had some years ahead and anyway.  I was doing fine.  I remember calling his wife, this was before his death but while he was in the hospital, and called to see if she needed anything the wife and I could get or do for her.  You feel so helpless. Well she told me to call him at the hospital, there was a phone in his room and she gave me the number. She said he’d love to hear from me and it was a matter now of weeks.  So I did, and wish I had not.  There wasn’t much of a conversation to be had and he really didn’t want to hear from anyone. He didn’t say that but you could tell.  And that last call has remained with me all these years later.  And these are only a few examples of people I knew personally. There were others a well. 

Which brings me to the public service part of my …. is this a lecture?  It isn’t a rant.
Lets call it a cautionary tale and a true one based on personal and very unpleasant experience.

I musta been feeling ill or why else visit a doctor? I can no longer remember who I saw or why, but I do recall having an x-ray as part of a check up.  I believe I had an MRI.  A couple of weeks later the doctor’s office called to say there wasn’t anything wrong with heart or lungs (in fact I had and still do, the beginnings of Emphysema but that wasn’t found till later).  But they did see something that called for further examination, and wanted me to see a specialist.  They saw what looked like a shadow on the bladder.  I was referred to a urologist.  I think that’s what he was.
He was also humourless and unsmiling and altogether quite cold but quite competent.

He told me there was this shadow on the x-ray taken, but until he went into the bladder itself, there was no way of knowing what it was.  He also said it could be and most probably was, a tumor.  But unless he went in there, he would not be able to tell if it was malignant or not.  So a date was set for an exam a week away, and I went home happily smoking my non filter Lucky Strikes. 

Hey guys, ever had a needle stuck into your more sensitive part?  OUCH does NOT cover it.  And the FEAR makes it even worse.  I had no idea what I let myself in for.
You’re on this table with your legs open and up in stirrups, there’s lots of cloth of some kind with an opening for your limp and angry friend to peek through. You never imagined it could get that small.  Of course, it had never been that frightened before either, so it was a new experience for both of us. 
Trust me guys, you do NOT want this. But wait, there’s more.

They tell you they are going to numb the passage with painkiller so you won’t feel the examination probe.  Probe?  Hey wait.  Too late. 
Someone has this needle, a real one, not a movie prop, and they gonna put that looooong thing, maybe about three feet long, into your frightened lifelong partner who is now demanding a divorce.  They say you will experience a slight sting which will be the numbing agent.  Wait a minute.  You’re gonna hurt me to make it all better so I won’t feel the next step? It’s maybe no longer then a half inch to an inch but from where you’re viewing it, it’s a yard long needle.  Where’s the damn exit?  But it’s too late and Doctor Frankenstein’s assistant is there with the instrument of torture, and you’re on this damn table trying to back away with no place to go and in goes that thing and you will scream cause it not only stings but feels like the inside of your ex-friend is being torn. 

So now you have to wait about 20 minutes for the numbing stuff to work. And by now your back hurts too.  In comes Dr. Death or at least looking like it to you, and he starts to insert that awful probe.  But guess what?

THE NUMBING AGENT ISN’T WORKING !!!

Now your very limp and ex very angry friend is threatening a law suit at the least or maybe a firing squad. You are hurting and so …..  another jab in the sore part and another wait for that to work.

Result …. doc says it’s a girl.  Haha.  Actually, my doctor would never have thought to say that. I did cos it’s sounds funny.

What he actually said was, it’s a tumor, it’s malignant. It’s large.  It has to be removed and soon.  Wanna guess what part of you is used for the tumor’s exit?  He said these tumors are not painful until just at the end, and I had a month to go.

Ain’t it odd.  I wasn’t having any bladder problems. No blockage, no pain in the bathroom, no bleeding.  Nothing to suggest what was growing there.  But I was assured I’d have been dead in a short time.

After the surgery, and I don’t suppose you folks wanna hear about my hospital stay.
Or the catheter shoved inside me minus any pain killer of any kind.

Well after the surgery as I was saying when I interrupted myself, I was told I had to have an exam in six months time, to see if the tumor had returned. If all clear, another exam in another six months. After that, I was to have an exam every two or three years. I had the first two exams, the pain wasn’t any less let me tell you.  I decided the pain of the exam was not worth the life that might be saved and stopped having them. 

The Emphysema is stable and not expected to get any worse unless I start smoking again.  Fat chance of that.
And please make no mistake.  My experience was directly related to smoking.  I guess it just hits different ppl in different ways.  And NO. I did not sue American Tobacco. Or anyone else.

I have NOT had any further exams even though warned of what the consequences could be.  Well no thanks.  I do not ever want to revisit that experience. 
My ex-friend isn’t on speaking terms with me, and as I told the doctor who gave me the warning re future exams; What? Me Worry?

After death, there is no pain, and no taxes.

Posted by peiper     on 09/23/2012 at 02:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Personal •  
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What the BLANK could possibly go wrong?

via Western Center for Journalism.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/23/2012 at 10:06 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine • Humor •  
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   Saturday - September 22, 2012

E4: Zavyalov-Apartsev, Moscow 1985

Fourth exercise from Your Move by Yakov Neishtadt.

UPDATE: Samoore gets partial credit for finding the first move for both sides. Wes got the winning movel

1. Qf6 Qe5
2. Rxa5! resigns

Posted by Christopher     on 09/22/2012 at 04:50 PM   
Filed Under: • CHESS •  
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Down For Now, But Soon To Return Thanks To UN Aid?

News: Six month drop in world piracy, IMB report shows

The number of pirate attacks have fallen sharply in the first half of 2012, led by a drop in Somali piracy, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Maritime Bureau’s (IMB) global piracy report revealed today, but warned that these numbers were offset by a worrying increase of attacks in the Gulf of Guinea.

Overall, 177 incidents were reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre (PRC) in the first six months of 2012, compared to 266 incidents for the corresponding period in 2011.

The report showed that 20 vessels were hijacked worldwide, with a total number of 334 crew members taken hostage. There were a further 80 vessels boarded, 25 vessels fired upon and 52 reported attempted attacks. At least four crew members were killed.

The decrease in the overall number is primarily due to the decline in the incidents of Somali piracy activity, dropping from 163 in the first six months of 2011 to 69 in 2012. Somali pirates also hijacked fewer vessels, down from 21 to 13. Nonetheless, Somali piracy continues to remain a serious threat.

A quick look at the stats shows the current worldwide annual total to be at 223, and none of the last 10 actions was Somali driven.

So, it seems all well and good; the vast multi-national naval effort, combined with the huge land based undertaking in Puntland, has put a genuine kibosh on pirate activities in the western Indian Ocean. Right?

Wrong. Via Eaglespeak, here comes a report that some dimwit program at the UN might bring it all back again.

Hijacked
How the U.N. saved the Somali pirates from the brink of extinction.

...

My week and a half at sea plotting the vast distances and measuring the response time of the designated naval escorts made it clear to me that piracy would never be defeated at sea. But I had plenty of time with my new South African friend who worked for a security company named Sterling Corporate Services to understand a new program—how exactly how pirates could be defeated very quickly, on land.

In June of this year, my bow-hunting friend, a group of four dozen South African mentors,and 500 newly trained Somali recruits pointed their armada of 70 shiny Toyota Land cruisers, a small fleet of high-powered rigid inflatable boats, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft towards the coast of Somalia—the heart of pirate country.

This once-motley group, the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF), had been trained by African, British, South African, and U.S. foreign contractors for two years; in May 2011, they began setting up forward operating bases in remote coastal areas of Eyl, Hafun, Bargal, and Qaw. By June 2012, they were ready for the full invasion wave.

Their target was pirate leader Isse Yulux, a former roadhouse owner turned militia leader, who found grabbing ships at sea much easier than fighting clan wars on land. Yulux had a long track record of successful, and sometimes vicious, hauls—including a Danish family he had kidnapped from their luxury yacht. His brazen capture on May 15, 2012, of a brand new Suezmax tanker loaded with over $100 million of Dubai sweet crude made him Puntland’s Public Enemy No. 1. But the other mission of the PMPF was to push back the rapidly growing numbers of al-Shabab and al Qaeda members fleeing north from the south of Somalia.

Although the anti-piracy program was briefed to the U.S. embassy in Nairobi (which coordinates U.S. policy in Somalia), officials held a dim view of Puntland’s attempt to bolster its own security. Not surprisingly, the West still sees Somalia in its shiny new colonial clothes—one nation under one government. But for all intents and purposes, Somalia was only unified between 1949 and 1991—and most of that time under a Marxist dictator. Somaliland, the former British colony, Puntland, Galmudug, and southern Somalia has always been governed and delineated within clan boundaries, rather than foreign-engineered fantasies. A legacy of poor governance—from the 19th century sultanate deal-making with Europeans, to the colonial carve-ups of the 1885 Berlin Conference to the post-war protectorates—spawned major uprisings. If that weren’t enough, the last 20 years of being the U.N.’s favorite custodial state has resulted in a randomly selected viceroy bullying and cajoling Somalis towards that same colonial goal of a unified, democratic nation.

In early 2010, frustrated by America’s cold shoulder and the U.N.’s obsession with a Mogadishu-centric Somalia run by the incompetent Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Puntland’s President Abdirahman Farole sought help from his biggest trading partner: The United Arab Emirates. The tiny, but oil-rich maritime trading nation had a vested interest in keeping the growing legions of al-Shabab fighters funneling into Puntland away from their ships and shoreline. Within weeks, not years, millions of dollars began to flow to build Puntland’s security force.

In June 2012, two years after its creation, the UAE-funded PMPF—now with helicopters, ocean-going ships, construction battalions, and a massive base—was under pressure from Farole to become operational. He wanted the pirates cleared out by July. Coastal communities like Bargal, Bander Bayla, and Eyl were also pressuring Farole to support their homegrown efforts to expel pirates. The timing for the offensive was perfect: the monsoons that keep the pirates off the seas were about to set in; pirate crews would soon be coming off the oceans. This meant they would be much easier to reach as they chewed qat and consulted mystics about next season’s catch.

But the program had another, more-formidable enemy, the U.N.—specifically, the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea (SEMG), a group that was created to document violations of the 20-year-old arms embargo in 2002 by warlord-run militias. The original SEMG reports were hampered by a lack of access on the ground and resulted in a dry accounting of militias and weapons. But with the hiring of Canadian/Somalilander and former International Crisis Group senior analyst Matthew Bryden in 2008, (a period that coincided with the growth of piracy and al-Shabab’s arrival in the north) the reports took on a bizarre and voluminous tone accusing both friend and foe of serious violations.

For example, in 2008 the SEMG accused the United States of violating the arms embargo by launching missile attacks against terrorist groups. Characterizing one such incident, Bryden’s team wrote: “The Monitoring Group considers all weapons delivered to Somalia a violation of the embargo, irrespective of the manner in which they were delivered.”

There’s a lot more to read, in a nice readable story format, so follow the link. And then somebody can tell me why I’m surprised that the UN is only making the situation worse?

PS - you’ll love this: AQ in Somalia with heat seeking anti-aircraft missiles. Wonderful.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/22/2012 at 02:54 PM   
Filed Under: • Pirates, aarrgh! • United-Nations •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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