--Shipping companies and insurers tend to regard occasional ransoms basically as the cost of doing business.
--lots of practical problems with arming the crews or with military escorts.
--Smattering of comments that collecting ransoms is basically the only thing happening as far as economy in Somalia.
--Kind of annoying actually to hear Diane Roehm, whom I sometimes find more sane than this, banging the drums for some kind of military action despite being repeatedly told including I think by someone with military credentials that sending drones to bomb things on land will be even less effective and less popular than doing this in "Af-Pak."
--Big issues about how hard to find a legal forum and venue to try pirates and invoke punishment that would be meaningful.
--At least no one frothing at the mouth about Al Qaeda Sanity?
DC
On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Andy <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> > I think this is the guy we saw on the Maddow show the other week, who
> said
> > that the Somali pirates are desperate people who used to be fishermen,
> but
> > that commercial vessels have trawled their waters empty, so they turned
> to
> > piracy to stay alive.
>
> Earlier I posted this interview with similarly sympathetic head of a
> private security [!] firm:
>
> <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/12/03/pirates/index.html>
>
>
>
> --
> Andy
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>