Ecoterra Press Release 236 – The Somalia Chronicle June – December 2009, no 48
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
March 17, 2010
ECOTERRA Intl.
SMCM
Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor
ECOTERRA INTERNATIONAL - UPDATES & STATEMENTS, REVIEW & CLEARING-HOUSE
2009-09-01 TUE 22h52:23 UTC
Issue No. 236
A Voice from the Truth- & Justice-Seekers, who sit between all chairs, because they are not part of organized white-collar or no-collar-crime in Somalia or elsewhere, and who neither benefit from global naval militarization, from the illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters or the piracy of merchant vessels, nor from the booming insurance business or the exorbitant ransom-, risk-management- or security industry, while neither the protection of the sea, the development of fishing communities or the humanitarian assistance to abducted seafarers and their families is receiving the required adequate attention, care and funding.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell
EA ILLEGAL FISHING AND DUMPING HOTLINE: +254-714-747090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: somalia[at]ecoterra.net
EA Seafarers Assistance Programme EMERGENCY HELPLINE : SMS to +254-738-497979 or sms/call +254-733-633-733
"The pirates must not be allowed to destroy our dream !"
Cpt. Florent Lemaçon - F/Y Tanit - killed by French commandos - 10. April 2009 / Ras Hafun
NON A LA GUERRE - YES FOR PEACE
(Inscription on the sail of F/Y TANIT - shot down on day one of the French assault)
We have the obligation to fight oppression and cruelty wherever it appears, and believe that anybody who is degrading other people and peoples has to be fought against with whatever appropriate tools people have available.
Breaking:
Ukrainian crew of MV ARIANA needs now serious help
The Ukrainian crew of a cargo ship hijacked by pirates off Somalia have reportedly pleaded for speedy negotiations for their release after three months in captivity.
The urgent call on Sunday also sought help to ensure the immediate evacuation of a female hostage who is ill. The nature of the illness has not been made public.
"We are exhausted and desperate," the Ukrainian captain of the MV Ariana, Captain Voronov, told AFP by phone from the ship.
In a similar phone call to a Ukrainian doctor in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the sick female crewmember asked for medical help.
The pirates hijacked the ship and its 24 crew on May 2 north of Madagascar en route to the Middle East, according to an environmental watchdog. The ship was carrying 10,000 tones of soya beans.
The bandits, who are keeping the ship and the hostages against a ransom, have refused to free the woman separately.
So far this year, 114 merchant ships crossing the crucial but dangerous trade route have come under attack, 29 of which were successful. The pirates continue to defy an international naval anti-piracy presence in the region.
Important steps:
a) Ill-advised "overflying" by naval forces has to stop immediately in order not to endanger the crew further.
b) Ukrainian government to facilitate measures for medical evacuation of nearly dying female crew member and supply of food and water, using humanitarian organization.
c) Ukrainian government to take lead in supervision of negotiations
d) Streamlining the onion-layered ownership-conglomerate and identification of key responsible from the side of the shipowners.
e) Streamlining the multi-stakeholder interests on the side of the captors and link only with key-decision maker.
f) Ukrainian government to appoint mediator in case the negotiators from the two sides fail.
g) Information on the condition of crew and the ongoing negotiations must be given to next of kind of seafarer families.
h) Finalization of agreement
i) Execution of secured release operation
j) Naval assistance to provide immediate medical aid, supply the crew and vessel and escort the freed ship
The latest information from the ground reports that the vessel is now 50nm offshore from a point 25nm north of Hobyo and has run out of marine diesel oil. Also one of the pirates is said to have been shot and wounded on land last night.
Cleearing-House: Cut out the clutter - focus on facts !
(If you find this compilation too large or if you can't grasp the multitude and magnitude of important, inter-related and complex issues influencing the Horn of Africa - you better do not deal with Somalia or other man-made "conflict zones". We try to make it as easy and condensed as possibly.)
Indian Misconceptions
Crackpot figure of 150 mio doesn't go away
While it has been proven over and over again that the figure of usd 150mio allegedly earned by Somali pirates in 2008, which was claimed by the Kenyan foreign minister at a UN sponsered conference last year, is simply false, it is here to stay, since spindoctors now try to claim it for a changed period.
"A whopping $150 million has been paid by ship owners as ransom to pirates from Somalia, in the last 18 months, for the safe return of over a 1,000 seafarers a majority of them being Indians", reports Reuters again from an Indian conference in Mumbai.
Besides the simple fact that also the statement concerning the majority of seafarers being taken hostage would be Indian is simply false, the Reuters report quotes further, highly questionable statements:
"Mohit Kapoor, who organised the seminar, clubbed these stats with another report from The International Maritime Organisation (IMO), which estimates that only half of pirate attacks are reported due to fear of the ships´ reputation being marred, the chances of prolonged, time-consuming investigations and raising ships´ insurance premiums." This statement is certainly wrong for Somalia, where all sea-jacking events are very well recorded and monitored, though it had been observed that the IMO only reports cases where ships of larger nations or bigger companies are involved. But other statistics, incl. those of the East African Seafarers' Programme and ECOTERRA Intl. are freely available.
"Captain Navin Passey, the MD Wallems Shipmanagement, said the ransom amounts have risen from $5,000 in the mid-nineties, when smaller fishing boats were targeted, to a whopping $3 million, which was recently paid for a captured ship." While the trend is true and also reflects the development from defence against illegal fishing to piracy of merchant ships, the top amount is more likely $4,5 million.
"B N Prasad, MD, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, stated that a gunman on a pirate ship aged between 20-35 earned up to $30,000, which is a fortune in Somalia." To call gains from extortion-money an earning is a slap into the face of all honest earners, even those shipping MDs like Prasad, who earn that amount as a monthly salary - or was that a slip of tongue and highlights that also in the shipping industry many unfair gains are made, be it from insurance deals or holding cargo owners hostage like in the Hansa Stavanger case.
"Abdul Ghani Serang, General Secretary, NUSI, claimed, "Month after month, we keep getting news about Indians being taken hostage, but nothing substantial is being done." Well, that might be right at least concerning any hearts and mind operation to curb piracy by helping the local population on land to survive, where the money which the Indian Navy alone waisted to blow innocent ships and crews out of the water, to shoot and kill boarders and leave for dead survivors while achieving hardly anything else during the macho trips around the Horn of Africa, would have secured long stretches of coastline against any pirate-gang buildup.
Delhi concerned: Trained Pak men 'guiding' pirates off Somalia coast
By Pranab Dhal Samanta
Authorities have confirmed the first case of alleged Pakistani involvement with Somali pirates in a revelation that has raised concerns here about a possible link between piracy and suspected terrorist groups.
On April 28, a Russian warship apprehended 12 Pak nationals — along with Somali pirates — for attempting to attack a tanker off Somalia´s coast.
An investigation, sources said, pointed to Pak nationals having played a 'lead' role. Their nationality was confirmed through identity cards and "evidence" was handed over on May 8 to MSS Rehmat, a Pakistan Maritime Security Agency ship, 12 miles of Gwadar. It´s being examined by Pakistan´s Federal Investigation Agency.
Pak first claimed that these men were fishermen but three months on, there is no word on the probe.
India has two warships in the Gulf of Aden.
The incident occurred when Russian warship Admiral Panteleyev received a distress call 120 km east of Somalia´s coast from a tanker Bulwai Bank, registered in Antigua, en route to Singapore. The tanker was under attack from Somali pirates. Russian commandos intervened and foiled the attempt. They found that the pirates´ speedboats were being guided from another mother vessel.
Tracking its coordinates, the Russians apprehended this vessel 10 miles off the coast.
This was a captured Iranian trawler. Its captain was Mohammed Zamal, a Pak national, who was communicating with the pirates via a satphone he threw overboard when Russians boarded the vessel.
There were 29 people on board of whom 12 were Pakistanis, including the captain; 11 were Somalis while six were Iranians taken hostage.
Seven Kalashnikov guns and handguns were recovered. Sources said Russian investigators found that the Pak nationals were quite well-trained and familiar with military and naval tactics.
News from sea-jackings, abductions, newly attacked ships and vessels in distress
Sixteen drown in the Gulf of Aden as smuggling season resumed - YemenObserver
Sixteen people drowned in the Gulf of Aden in two separate incidents involving smuggling boats sailing from Somalia, stated a press release issued by Yemen UNHCR.
The passengers onboard the first boat reported that the vessel, reportedly carrying 44 Somalis capsized on early Saturday night when the smugglers started push the passengers off board in deep waters off the coast of Yemen´s Hadramout region, some 500 km east of Aden.
The boat which had been sailing for 24 hours prior to reaching the shore of Yemen, departed on Friday from the Somali village of Marera, east of the northern port of Bosasso. As smugglers began force people off board in deep sea off the coast of Yemen, the boat lost balance when the frightened passengers all moved at the same time causing the boat to overturn.
Thirty-four passengers made it to shore near Rujehma, some 150 east of Mayfa´a reception centre. Seven bodies were recovered and buried in a nearby cemetery by the Society for Humanitarian Solidarity, UNHCR´s partner agency. Another 3 African nationals are still missing and their status remains unknown so far.
The second boat, reportedly carrying 42 Somalis, reached the shore of Yemen on early Sunday morning after having sailed for almost one day. When still in deep sea off the coast of the Yemen´s Shabwa region, some 200 km east of Aden, the smugglers, fearing to be caught by the Yemeni authorities, forced passengers to jump in the sea as they noticed cars and people on the shore. As a result, 3 people drowned and 3 others are missing and presumed dead. Thirty people managed to swim ashore while 6 others are reported to have remained onboard with the smugglers.
"The smugglers shouted to get out of the boat" said one woman who survived the tragedy while adding: "they started to throw our men off board as a reason for us to jump in the water too".
All survivors were provided with biscuits, water and juice by SHS prior to being transferred to Mayfa´a reception centre for further assistance and registration.
"Considering the massive displacement within Somalia, we expect an upsurge in landings and incidents as soon as monsoon period comes to an end in few weeks" said Claire Bourgeois, UNHCR Representative in Yemen while adding "over the past three months smuggling boats hardly ventured across the Gulf of Aden due to hazardous sailing conditions".
In order to be able to respond to a potential massive influx of new arrivals, UNHCR has developed along with other UN agencies, partners and local authorities a contingency plan with to provide protection and assistance to an over-caseload of 20,000 new arrivals. Further, it improved the capacity and conditions of Ahwar and Mayfa´a reception centers, established a presence through its implementing partners in Bab al Mandab, on the Red Sea, and new transit centre in Mayfa´a Hajar, some 50 km west of Mukalla.
In the past 5 days, a total of 17 boats and 835 people arrived in Yemen after making the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa, a region harshly struck by ongoing conflict, political instability, famine and drought. Between January and August this year, some 36,000 Africans reached the shore of Yemen, an increase by 33% when compared to the same period in 2008. Last year, 50,091 people arrived in Yemen, 590 drowned and 359 others were missing at sea and presumed dead.
Somali migrants die after being forced into sea: U.N., Reuters confirmed
Sixteen Somalis drowned over the weekend after smugglers ferrying migrants to Yemen forced them overboard into the Gulf of Aden, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said Tuesday.
Another 64 passengers managed to swim to Yemen's shores after being ejected from the two ships involved in the latest deadly incidents along the busy migration route.
When the smugglers began to force people into the sea on the first boat, "frightened passengers moved toward one side of the vessel, causing it to collapse," UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told a Geneva news briefing.
On the second ship, Mahecic said that "fearing detection by the Yemeni authorities, the smugglers forced passengers to swim to shore." Ten bodies were recovered from the separate incidents and six people remain missing and presumed dead.
So far this year, some 36,000 Africans have reached Yemen by crossing by sea from northern Somalia, a jump of 33 percent over the first eight months of last year, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Another 20,000 people are expected to attempt the journey by year-end as the conflict deepens in Somalia, a Horn of Africa country where at least 50 people were killed and dozens wounded in fighting over the past week.
Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans have been making the voyage to escape violence, political unrest, famine and drought.
The UNHCR said that in the past five days alone, 17 boats carrying 835 people from East Africa arrived in Yemen, and signaled "a potential massive influx" could follow through the rest of 2009.
The Geneva-based agency has said that fighting in Mogadishu and central Somalia is causing more Somali civilians to risk their lives to reach Yemen, where they can seek asylum or move on to Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia.
Bahrani dhow attacked by pirates in Gulf
Pirates have attacked a Bahraini dhow on its way back from the UAE, raising fears that a problem usually associated with waters off Somalia has now moved to the Arabian Gulf, the local Gulf Daily News reported on Tuesday.
The Indian sailors on the dhow escaped with only minor injuries after four armed pirates, believed to be Iranian, stormed the boat and stole fish before escaping, the newspaper said.
The attack, which took place on Friday, is one of the first reported incidents of an attack on a Bahraini ship in the Arabian Gulf, but fishermen say attacks of this kind happen regularly, the paper said.
"It happens all the time and there is not much we can do," Fishermen's Protection Society General-Secretary Abdulameer al-Mughani was quoted as saying.
"We are very vulnerable when we are out there on the water and they can pick us out on motorboats very easily."
With the latest captures and releases now still at least 6 foreign vessels with a total of not less than 123 crew members are accounted for (of which 42 are confirmed to be Filipinos) and are held in Somali waters. They are monitored on our actual case-list, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed. MV JAIKUR 1 remains in Mogadishu harbor, but is an insurance and not a piracy case - all foreign crew was evacuated. MV INDIAN EXPLORER and S/Y SERENITY are allegedly dead ships. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) had been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases (for Somalia, incl. presently held ones) and the mistaken sinking of one vessel by a naval force. For 2009 the account stands at 159 attacks (incl. averted or abandoned attacks) with 47 sea-jackings on the Somali/Yemeni pirate side as well as at least six wrongful attacks (incl. one friendly fire incident) on the side of the naval forces. More than 116 Somalis are held in foreign prisons under charges of piracy. Mystery pirate mother-vessels Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean as well as not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (also not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail. In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures. Piracy incidents usually degrade during the monsoon season in winter and rise gradually by the end of the monsoon season starting from mid February and early April every year.
Present multi-factorial risk assessment code: GoA: YELLOW IO: BLUE (Red = Very much likely, high season; Orange = Reduced risk, but very likely, Yellow = significantly reduced risk, but still likely, Blue = possible, Green = unlikely). Allegedly still/again two groups from Puntland alone are out hunting on the Gulf of Aden and in the Indian Ocean, where also groups from Harardheere have set out again, despite the heavy seas and the rough weather.
Directly piracy or naval upsurge related reports
Bootylicious
By Caleb Crain
What do the pirates of yore tell us about their modern counterparts?
Pirates had strict but unconventional codes of behavior, and some historians claim them as early progressives—with democracy, economic fairness, racial tolerance, and even health care.
On the evening of April 1, 1719, an English slave ship came to anchor near the mouth of the Rokel River, off the coast of what is now Sierra Leone. In the hold were linen and woollen goods that could be traded for slaves, fava beans to feed them, and, for the officers, cheese, butter, sugar, and Westphalia ham, as well as live geese, turkeys, ducks, and a sow. The captain, a devout man named William Snelgrave, was apprehensive, because the west coast of Africa was rife with pirates, who prized slave ships, not only for their cargo but also for their size and sturdiness. At eight o´clock, a watchman heard a rowboat. Snelgrave called for lanterns and ordered twenty armed sailors on deck, and others down into the steerage, where they could fire out of the ship´s portholes. He then hailed the approaching boat, whose occupants replied that they had come from Barbados on a ship with the soothing name Two Friends. But they were invisible in the dark, and Snelgrave was mistrustful. Rightly so: soon after Snelgrave´s crew brought him light, the strangers opened fire.
None of Snelgrave´s armed men were on deck yet, and when he called out for those in the steerage to shoot, they didn´t. This was the first of several mysteries that Snelgrave encountered during his experience with the pirates. He went down to the steerage and found his men standing around, claiming that the chest in which they stored their muskets and cutlasses was missing. Unopposed, the pirates rushed aboard, firing guns and tossing primitive grenades. Reaching the steerage, they asked who the captain was, and Snelgrave admitted, as he later recalled in a memoir, that "I had been so till now." How dare he order his people to shoot, a pirate said, sticking a pistol into his chest. Snelgrave brushed it away just before it went off, and the pirate crashed the butt of it over his head. Climbing to the quarterdeck, Snelgrave was attacked by another pirate, this time with a sword. "To avoid it I stooped so low, that the Quarter-deck Rail received the Blow; and was cut in at least an inch deep," he wrote. This pirate, too, began pistol-whipping Snelgrave, until some of Snelgrave´s crew cried out, "For God´s sake don´t kill our Captain, for we never were with a better Man." At this, the pirate left Snelgrave alone, and the one who had tried to shoot him took his hand and promised that "my Life was safe provided none of my People complained against me." Here was a second mystery: among pirates, the fate of rulers was up to the ruled.
Snelgrave spent a month in the company of the pirates, as they looted his vessel, and he was able to solve at least one puzzle. The night the ship was taken, his first mate, keen to join a pirate ship, had quietly countermanded his orders, even telling the crew, a quarter of whom defected after the surrender, that Snelgrave himself wanted to join the pirates. New mysteries unfolded with the opportunity to study pirate character at first hand. The pirates indulged themselves immoderately—literally washing the decks with claret and brandy—yet they declined to take luxury seriously; one called Snelgrave´s gold watch "a pretty Foot-ball" and gave it a kick. They insisted that their true motive was not greed but justice. One pirate captain asserted that "their Reasons for going a pirating were to revenge themselves on base Merchants, and cruel Commanders of Ships." Moreover, the pirate captains had almost no special privileges, and slept on deck like their men, not in beds. Pirate life seemed a medley of indulgence and strict equity, mockery and idealism, anarchy and discipline. Snelgrave regretted that his observations of them were "not so coherent as I could wish," and could not decide what they added up to.
What if they added up to a picture of working-class heroes? In 1980, the Marxist historian Christopher Hill, wondering what became of the king-beheading spirit of the English Civil War, noted that when the monarchy was restored, in 1660, many radicals emigrated to the Caribbean. Their revolutionary idealism may have fallen like a lit match into the islands´ population of paupers, heretics, and transported felons. Elaborating Hill´s suggestion, the historian Marcus Rediker spent the following decades researching pirate life and came to believe that pirate society "built a better world"—one with vigorous democracy, economic fairness, considerable racial tolerance, and even health care—in many ways more praiseworthy than, say, the one that Snelgrave supported by slave trading. True, pirates were thieves and torturers, but there was something promising about their alternative to capitalism. Other scholars claimed pirates as precursors of gay liberation and feminism. But, as pirate scholarship flourished, so did dissent. In 1996, David Cordingly dismissed the idea of black equality aboard pirate ships, pointing out that a number of pirates owned black slaves, and warned against glamorizing criminals renowned among their contemporaries for "their casual brutality." Before long, the contending voices of pirate studies had become a "cacophony," according to one academic. Meanwhile, the idea that pirates are in some way dissident, rather than merely criminal, entered the mainstream. During the recent spate of pirate activity off the coast of Somalia, one pirate told the Times, "We don´t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas."
A brisk, clever new book, "The Invisible Hook" (Princeton; $24.95), by Peter T. Leeson, an economist who claims to have owned a pirate skull ring as a child and to have had supply-and-demand curves tattooed on his right biceps when he was seventeen, offers a different approach. Rather than directly challenging pirates´ leftist credentials, Leeson says that their apparent espousal of liberty, equality, and fraternity derived not from idealism but from a desire for profit. "Ignoble pirate motives generated ´enlightened´ outcomes," Leeson writes. Whether this should comfort politicians on the left or on the right turns out to be a subtle question.
There have probably been pirates for as long as people have travelled by water, and their anarchic sense of humor dates back at least to the ancient world. According to Plutarch, when pirates captured someone who declared himself to be Roman they apologized profusely, even offering him a toga so that other pirates wouldn´t make the same mistake. Once they got the Roman to believe in their contrition, the pirates let a ladder down into the sea. He was free to go, they told him, at which point "if he resisted they themselves threw him overboard, and drowned him."
Modern piracy has its origins in the wars that the great European powers fought over trade in the centuries following the discovery of the New World. Like Donald Rumsfeld, Renaissance monarchs seem to have believed in military outsourcing, and they cheaply and quickly acquired navies by granting private vessels, known as privateers, the right to raid enemy ships and pay themselves out of the plunder, a share of which they were to pass along to the government. If all went well—especially if the ships taken belonged to the Spanish, who hauled a fortune in American gold and silver across the Atlantic twice a year—the contracting government grew a little richer. So long as one of the nations involved considered it legal, privateering wasn´t technically piracy, but the Spanish liked to put the paperwork making this claim around the necks of privateers that they hanged. The privateers themselves, according to a 1724 account, tended to "make very little Distinction betwixt the Lawfulness of one, and the Unlawfulness of the other," especially when peace intermittently threatened to deprive them of an income. In December of 1670, for example, Henry Morgan ignored a letter telling him that England had signed a treaty with Spain in July and went on to sack the Spanish-owned city of Panama. Morgan had scored princely sums elsewhere, however, so when he was eventually arrested and sent to London, he was knighted and appointed deputy governor of Jamaica.
The men who sailed with Morgan were known as buccaneers. They were French and English men who had gone native on Hispaniola, the island now occupied by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and on Tortuga, a tiny island to the north. Their name came from a wooden frame, called a buccaneer by the Caribbean Indians, on which they smoked wild boar and cattle. They were the ones who developed the first pirate code of ethics, the Custom of the Coast, at the core of which was an explicit agreement about the sharing of booty, power, and responsibility called a chasse partie. Before attacking Panama, for instance, the buccaneers stipulated that Morgan was to get a hundredth part of the loot, with the rest divided into shares for the more than two thousand men in the expedition: each captain under Morgan was to get eight shares, and each man one share.
They also allocated set-asides for professionals (two hundred pesos for each surgeon, a hundred for each carpenter), incentive payments (fifty to anyone who captured a Spanish flag, five to anyone who threw a grenade into a fort), and compensations for injury (a hundred for a lost eye, fifteen hundred for two legs). Pirates usually further agreed to maroon pilferers, to give "good quarter" to any victim who asked, and to keep their weapons clean. Sometimes they went so far as to forbid gambling and onboard romance ("No Boy or Woman to be allowed amongst them," one such contract read) and to restrict late-night drinking to the deck.
Because criminal agreements have no legal force, it´s tempting to think of pirate articles as quaint—if not misguided, considering how often they showed up in court as evidence against their signatories. Leeson is at pains to show the articles as a rational choice, enabling pirates to create a voluntary association that was stable and orderly. By setting terms in advance, punishing embezzlement harshly, and keeping the pay gap between captain and men low, the articles reduced conflict over property claims. By limiting drinking and requiring clean weapons, they curbed individual behaviors that might otherwise have damaged the crew´s fighting ability. And by rewarding special achievements and providing health insurance they encouraged enthusiasm and risk-taking. The results were impressive. "As great robbers as they are to all besides," a sea cook observed in 1709, they "are precisely just among themselves." No one could join a pirate crew without swearing to the articles, which, Leeson explains, reduced what economists call the "external costs" of decision-making—in this case, the discontent of anyone who thought them unfair, a dangerous sentiment when betrayal meant hanging. Articles also made it harder for leaders to cheat, because their public nature enabled every pirate to tell if a rule had been broken. The only rules as tough and flexible, Leeson provocatively suggests, were the covenants that founded New England´s Puritan churches.
When Morgan campaigned against the Spanish in 1670 and 1671, he was both elected by the buccaneers and commissioned by the Jamaican governor. But when he returned to the Caribbean, in 1675, he had to choose sides. Planters now dominated Jamaican society, and thought the cost of disrupted shipping not worth the occasional benefits of poaching Spanish currency. Morgan turned planter himself, declared pirates "ravenous vermin," and began hanging them. When piracy next broke out, it was in another part of the world.
In May, 1694, a group of English sailors in a Spanish port grew tired of waiting for overdue wages. They cut their ship´s anchor, and the ringleader, Henry Every, slipped into the captain´s cabin. "I´ll let you into a Secret," Every said. "I am Captain of this Ship now." After sending ashore the captain and others unwilling to turn pirate, Every warned the world by letter that "my Men are hungry, Stout, and resolute," and then sailed for the Indian Ocean. There his crew took two rich prizes—a ship belonging to a wealthy Muslim merchant and another belonging to Aurangzeb, the Grand Moghul of India. The loot amounted to a thousand pounds per pirate, "the equivalent of twenty years´ wages aboard a merchant ship," Colin Woodard explains in his book "The Republic of Pirates." The Indians, furious, held England´s East India Company responsible, and imprisoned its officers for almost a year. The success inspired imitators, including William Kidd, whose seizure, in 1698, of a cargo belonging to the Moghul´s secretary of state exasperated the Indians even further; they threatened to flay an English administrator alive. Though England turned a blind eye to the pirates´ activities for a while, it couldn´t afford to imperil trade with India, and so, at the end of the seventeenth century, it sent men-of-war to suppress the Indian Ocean pirates. Still, the dynamics of geography and trade that attracted men like Every to the Horn of Africa remain, and the opening of the Suez Canal has probably made the pickings even richer. Somali pirates prowl the same waters today.
A decade and a half after Every and Kidd, piracy rose once more, incited by a 1713 peace that made killing Spaniards illegal again and by a 1715 hurricane that spilled Spanish gold off the coast of Florida, like so much blood into a shark tank. >From 1716 to 1726, between one and two thousand pirates, based mainly in the Bahamas and operating in the Caribbean and off the coasts of North America and West Africa, took nearly two and a half thousand merchant vessels.
For more than a decade, English shipping stopped growing. An eighteenth-century historian estimated the damage as equal to that caused by Spain and France during the thirteen-year War of Spanish Succession. These are the pirates that everyone remembers: Edward Teach, called Blackbeard, on account of "that large Quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet"; plump, incompetent Stede Bonnet, the gentleman pirate who spent his inheritance on a pirate sloop and went to sea with his library and his dressing gown; irascible Samuel Bellamy, who considered himself one of "Robbin Hoods Men" and damned "all those who will submit to be governed by Laws which rich Men have made"; the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who fought in men´s clothes and escaped hanging thanks to their pregnancies; and Bartholomew Roberts, who looted more than four hundred ships and defended the pirate life as one of "Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power" well worth the risk of "a sower Look or two at choaking" at the end. Their personalities were immortalized in "A General History of the Pyrates," long thought to have been by Daniel Defoe but more probably the work of Nathaniel Mist, a sailor turned journalist who often drew his words "from the Mouths of the Pyrates themselves." Almost every other scrap of print about them has recently been republished in the four facsimile volumes of "British Piracy in the Golden Age" (Pickering & Chatto; $625).
Not all these pirates were British, but most were. The average age was twenty-eight, and only four female pirates have ever been discovered, so the ambience on board was, Leeson writes, "energetic and testosterone filled, probably similar to a college fraternity only with peglegs, fewer teeth, and pistol dueling." A pirate crew numbered on average eighty, whereas it took only sixteen to staff a merchantman, so pirates shouldered a much lighter share of work, a fortunate state of affairs because, as a contemporary observed, "they mortally hate it."
Friendships and working relationships linked pirate society across ships. Most captains knew one another personally, and many hunted together for a spell. Through their shared culture, they refined shipboard democracy. The supreme power aboard a pirate ship was the common council, which Marcus Rediker calls a "floating town meeting." Whoever had sworn to the articles could vote. Captains were elected, and ate the same food as their men. Only when the ship was fighting or fleeing could a captain make decisions on his own, and he could be deposed if the crew thought him cowardly or his treatment of prisoners too cruel or too kind. In daily matters, his power was checked by that of another elected official, the quartermaster, who distributed food and booty and administered minor punishments.
In Leeson´s opinion, there was a sound economic basis for all this democracy. Most businesses suffer from what economists call the "principal-agent problem": the owner doesn´t work, and the workers, not being stakeholders, lack incentives; so a certain amount of surveillance and coercion is necessary to persuade Ishmael to hunt whales instead of spending all day in his hammock with Queequeg. Pirates, by contrast, having stolen the ships they sailed, were both principals and agents; they still needed a captain but, Leeson explains, "they didn´t require autocratic captains because there were no absentee owners to align the crew´s interests with." The insight suggests more than Leeson seems to want it to—does inequity always entail political repression?—and late in the book he backtracks, cautioning that the pirate example "doesn´t mean democratic management makes sense for all firms," only that management style should be adjusted to the underlying ownership structure. But a certain kind of reader is likely to ignore the hedging, and note that the pirates, two centuries before Lenin, had seized the means of production.
Leeson´s analysis unriddles a number of Snelgrave´s mysteries. Merchant sailors quietly gave in to pirate attacks because of a principal-agent problem—it wasn´t their cargo—and because doing so enabled them to adopt a way of life that was a hundred to a thousand times more lucrative. Snelgrave may have been under the impression that pirates forced men to join, but this was for the most part a myth, devised for the sake of a legal defense if caught. Until their final, desperate days, pirates took few conscripts, because so many sailors begged to enlist and because conscripts had the unpleasant habit of absconding and testifying against pirates in court. As for the death-defying attitude—"a merry Life and a short one" was Bartholomew Roberts´s motto—pirates cultivated it to convince people that they had what economists call a high discount rate. If future punishments meant so little, their wildest threats were credible.
For a similar reason, they tortured and let it be known that they tortured. The reputation made their work easier, as most prisoners tended to follow the example of the captain who explained that he revealed his stash because "hearing their Design was to torture me with lighted Matches betwixt my Fingers, I thought the Loss of the Use of my Hands would be but poorly compensated with the saving 100 Ounces of Gold." Blackbeard´s reputation was so daunting that he seems not to have had to torture or even kill anyone until his final battle. Just as useful was a reputation for treating captives well if they coöperated—thus the solicitude toward Snelgrave. As pirates explained to a captive in 1722, they "valued themselves upon this very Thing of being civil to their Prisoners, and not abusing their Persons." To communicate these intentions from afar, pirates developed a special signal, a sort of trademark for the pirate brand: a black flag "in the Middle of which is a large white Skeleton, with a Dart in one Hand, striking a Bleeding Heart, and in the other an Hour Glass," as one captain described it. While Jolly Roger flew, there was still time to ask for quarter, but once the pirates struck this black flag and raised a red one it was too late.
There were several variations, including "a White Death´s Head and Crossed Bones." The flag´s threat was credible, Leeson explains, because everyone knew that authorities hanged anyone caught flying it. And a good thing, too, the pirate Mary Read declared. Any lighter punishment, "and the Ocean would be crowded with Rogues." Maybe she had supply-and-demand curves tattooed on her biceps, too.
Though some pirates kept slaves and others traded in them, blacks composed a quarter to a third of some pirate crews, and on some ships they bore arms, had voting rights, and shared the booty. Leeson proposes that pirates had an economic incentive to treat blacks as equals instead of keeping them as slaves. Prejudice needlessly deprives a business of skilled labor, he points out. Also, while the benefit of a slave would be diluted among a pirate crew, the potential cost would not be: an embittered slave who betrayed a pirate ship could cost every pirate his whole neck.
Were pirates liberal about sexual orientation as well? In 1983, a scholar of gay history noted that pirates lived exclusively with men for long periods, much like modern prisoners, and suggested that they must have had the same kind of sex. Though it sounds plausible, there´s little evidence, aside from a buccaneer´s servant who once confessed "that his Master had oft times Buggered him," and a semi-formal institution of buccaneer partnership known as matelotage, in which two men agreed that whoever died first would leave his goods to the other, after giving "part to the dead man´s friends or to his wife." Unromantically, but probably correctly, Leeson labels matelotage an insurance policy. Pirates were probably no more sodomitic than the average British sailor.
Some pirate characteristics resist cost-benefit analysis. None is really adequate for the pirate custom of interviewing sailors about their captain´s character. Leeson suggests that punishing abusive captains might have won pirates good will from the rank and file, but surely the profit motive was stronger in the impatient pirate captain who exclaimed, "What have we to do to turn Reformers, ´tis Money we want." Nor can economics give a satisfying explanation of why Kidd´s sailors decided to "clapp their Backsides" as they sailed past a royal yacht, or why another crew whiled away a day mock-trying one another for piracy:
Attorney General: Here is a Fellow before you that is a sad Dog, a sad sad Dog; and I humbly hope your Lordship will order him to be hang´d out of the Way immediately. . . .
Prisoner: But, I hope, your Lordship will hear some Reason.
Judge: D´ye hear how the Scoundrel prates?—What have we to do with Reason?—I´d have you to know, Raskal, we don´t sit here to hear Reason;—we go according to Law.—Is our Dinner ready?
Sometimes, it´s hard not to feel that psychology might be as useful an explanatory tool as economics. There is an element of repetition, even compulsion, in pirate life: first we stole; then we killed and raped; then we squandered our loot on whores and drink. Lather, rinse, repeat. And, in the pirate habit of punishing disobedience with torture, the combination of pettiness and authoritarianism can bring to mind a vindictive junior-high-school principal. But the insult they offered to the status quo remains galvanizing, as our continued fascination with them attests. "Yes," one declared on the gallows, "I do heartily repent. I repent I had not done more Mischief."
In the second decade of the eighteenth century, Britain saw a growth opportunity in the slave trade, and pirates stood in the way. In 1717, George I offered amnesty to pirates who retired, and, in 1721, Parliament wrote a new law that sentenced to death those who traded with pirates and imprisoned for six months sailors who failed to defend their ships. In 1718, a new governor hanged eight pirates in the Bahamas, flying Jolly Roger over the gallows, and in 1722 a British naval captain hanged fifty-two at a slave traders´ fortress in present-day Ghana, displaying their corpses in chains along the shore. By 1724, pirates were in steep decline.
Piracy seems to thrive when capitalism is advancing—when it has put enough wealth in motion to tempt criminals to kill for it but not yet enough for sailors to die in its defense—and perhaps, as in Somalia, when government is retreating. In several ways, Somalia´s contemporary pirates resemble those of three centuries ago. Violent and dangerous, they nonetheless are careful not to hurt coöperative hostages; they look to piracy to take them from poverty to a life of leisure; they have been known to regulate their own behavior with written rules; and they believe that their cause is just. The timing of their end, too, will probably be similar, coming whenever a major power decides that a crackdown costs less than the nuisance.
Are pirates socialists or capitalists? Lately, it´s become hard to tell the categories apart. Toward the end of his book, Leeson suggests that pirate self-governance proves that companies can regulate themselves better than governments can, as if he sees the pirate ship as a prototype of the modern corporation, sailing through treacherously liberal waters. Such arguments haven´t aged well over the past year, but even in piracy´s golden age people were aware that an unregulated marketplace invites predators. During the South Sea Bubble of 1720, speculators claiming to be able to make wealth out of debt fleeced British investors and ruined many banks. Pirates who spent that year killing and plundering, Nathaniel Mist grumpily wrote, could salve their guilty consciences, if they had any: "Whatever Robberies they had committed, they might be pretty sure they were not the greatest Villains then living in the World."
Ecosystems, marine environment, IUU fishing and dumping, ecology
Ill-fated bottom-trawler not welcome in Somalia
His Atlantic Adventure Ends Short Of Goal
By Joe Wojtas
Stonington fisherman home after Suez Canal delay kept him from Somalia
After a 6,000-mile odyssey in which he was mugged in Spain, interrogated by Libyan officials and propositioned by topless women on a Moroccan beach, Frankie Serrano's journey ended Sunday as he flew home from Egypt.
The 42-year-old Town Dock captain, who was sailing the fishing boat Rainmaker to its new home in Djibouti, was 1,200 miles short of his goal when he faced another long delay at the start of the Suez Canal.
A frustrated Serrano told the Somali boat owner, Moce Said, that he was leaving the crew because mechanical breakdowns and other delays had made the voyage much longer than expected and were now jeopardizing a commitment he had made to work aboard a New London boat this month.
Since his flight landed late Sunday night, people have been asking Serrano about the trip.
"I hope I didn't let anyone down (by not finishing the trip). But I tried as hard as I could for the guy. I got them through the toughest part and I left him with an able crew," he said Monday standing on the Town Dock. "We all shook hands when I left. I told Moce to call me with any problems."
While Serrano admitted he occasionally became angry with Said for trying to make the trip on a shoestring budget, he said he wants to see the owner of the Rainmaker be successful in his fishing venture off the Somalian coast.
"He's a good guy with a good heart and he has a big dream," he said about Said, who drove a cab in Seattle for a decade before buying the boat. "People talk about having a dream, but he has the (guts) to make it happen."
Taking over as captain was first mate Jay Peterson of New Bedford while Kevin Round of Westerly, who serves a the boat's mechanic, also stayed aboard.
"If I didn't think they could do the last 1,000 miles themselves I would not have left them," Serrano said.
On Monday, Round sent out the latest e-mail update from the boat, saying Serrano left because he was missing some good opportunities back home and he wished him the best.
He said the crew had solved an anchor problem and removed equipment from the deck to please Egyptian canal pilots.
"Our morale is very high and the 'J' and I feel we can finish the last leg of our journey with Moses, safely. As Moses says, Insha-Allah, (God willing)," wrote Round, referring to Said.
Serrano estimated that the Rainmaker has another seven to nine days left to travel once it starts its passage through the Suez Canal. Serrano's stay at home may be short-lived, as his emergency port stop in Libya, which marked the first time in 40 years that an American-flagged vessel landed there, may result in a new job opportunity.
Serrano said Libyan port agents would like him to move to their country to help them sell and deliver boats to local fishermen that he would acquire from a broker in Texas. Serrano said the business venture could be very lucrative.
During the stop in Spain, Serrano said, he had his camera stolen when he was jumped by a group of youths while he walked back to the boat at night. A few weeks later he was not upset.
"They were probably just hungry. If they had asked I would have given them some money or even my camera. I just wanted the photos that were inside," he said.
It was also in Spain that he befriended members of a Spanish special forces unit who had returned from Iraq. They warned him not to go to Somalia, where Said plans to fish with the boat.
"My friend, they will kill you there," the soldiers told Serrano.
The visit to Libya, which prompted FBI agents here to visit Serrano's friends and relatives to see why he was in the country, was one of the highlights of the trip.
Serrano said he had not planned to stop in Libya but ongoing problems with fuel injectors meant the boat was running low on fuel. The next port was Tripoli, and he called ahead for permission to land. Serrano was told no, even though he was adamant that it was an emergency. He then contacted the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, which secured an agent to help him pilot the boat into the dock. All the while, the Rainmaker flew an American flag.
At first he said Libyan officials had all sorts of questions and demanded various documentation for the boat. But after a few days he said everyone became friendly, and they were excited to meet the Americans.
"The Libyans were the nicest people," he said, asking the crew if it needed food, water or milk. In return, the crew handed out Jolly Rancher candies.
It was also in Libya that the crew saw a boatload of Somali refugees, who had been crammed into a hold, brought ashore. He said one young girl died right in front of the crew. Said was called in to translate and as the refugees were taken away past the Rainmaker they cheered when they saw the American flag. They cheered more when the crew told them to trust in Allah.
Wherever they landed, Serrano said the crew found that port and customs agents were always looking for payoffs and bribes of cases of cigarettes to avoid delays. He said this was especially true in Egypt where failure to do so caused repeated delays for the boat.
He said people there told him the agents invent requirements and fees so they get larger payoffs and if that fails they seize the boat for nonpayment of fees.
Serrano said he could not afford to sit around in Egypt for a few more weeks while the bills piled up back home.
Despite some of the setbacks, Serrano said a lot of good came out of the trip.
"I got experience in international travel and even though I got my ass handed to me a few times, it was a good learning experience," he said. "Even knowing what I do now, I would definitely do it again."
N.B.: Meanwhile Somali authorities as well as local sea-defenders have vowed to put the vessel, which is a dreadful bottom-trawler ruled out to operate in most parts of the world, on a chain or sink it - if it appears on the Somali coast-, because it only would destroy the marine environment and could not comply with the new fisheries regulations of Somalia. Owner Said was advised to change the vessel into a coastal merchant ship or assist local fishing communities to collect and deliver their catch, whereby he could do good business and not destroy the fragile marine ecosystems by trying to engage in bottom-trawling.]
New treaty will leave fish pirates without safe haven (mp)
91 FAO Members have agreed on an international agreement to implement "port state measures" to combat illegal fishing.
The final text of a new treaty that aims to close fishing ports to vessels involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has been agreed upon by a group of 91 countries during talks brokered by FAO, the UN agency announced today.
The "Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing" will be the first ever global treaty focused specifically on the problem of IUU fishing. It is hoped that the agreement will help block IUU-caught fish from entering international markets, thereby removing an important incentive for some fishermen to engage in illicit fishing.
In the Agreement, countries agree to take a number of steps to harden their ports against IUU fishers.
Key points of the treaty include:
Foreign fishing vessels wishing to dock will be required to request permission from specially designated ports ahead of time, transmitting information on their activities and the fish they have on board -- this will give authorities an opportunity to spot red flags in advance.
The treaty commits countries to regular inspections and outlines a set of standards that will be used during those inspections. Reviews of ship papers, surveys of fishing gear, examining catches and checking a ship's records can often reveal if it has engaged in IUU fishing.
Signatories must ensure that ports and inspectors are adequately equipped and trained;
When a vessel is denied access, port states must communicate that information publicly and national authorities from the country whose flag the vessel is flying must take follow-up action;
The treaty calls for the creation of information-sharing networks to let countries share details on IUU-associated vessels, and also contains provisions intended to assist resource-strapped developing countries meet their treaty obligations.
These measures apply to foreign fishing vessels not flying the flag of port states (see definitions at right), however countries can apply them to their own fishing fleets as well should they choose.
"By frustrating responsible management, IUU fishing damages the productivity of fisheries — or leads to their collapse. That's a serious problem for the people who depend on them for food and income," said FAO Assistant-Director General for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Ichiro Nomura.
"This treaty represents a real, palpable advance in the ongoing effort to stamp it out."
Ratification process
The Agreement falls under Article XIV of the FAO Constitution, with FAO's Director-General acting as legal depository for countries' ratifications.
As such, it next will be reviewed by FAO's Committee on Constitutional and Legal Matters at its next meeting (23-25 September 2009) and from there it will go to FAO's Council in September and the FAO Conference in November for final review and formal adoption. The substantive work on the treaty may be considered as having been finalized, however.
In order to enter into force the Agreement must then be OK'd at the national level. Once 25 States have done so, it will enter into force after 30 days.
Regular monitoring of compliance will take place, with a major review scheduled to occur four years after the Agreement takes effect.
Strategic bottleneck
So-called "Port state measures" like those prescribed in the new treaty are widely considered as one of the most effective and cost-effective weapons in the fight against illicit fishing.
"Of course, the effectiveness of port state measures depends in large part on how well countries implement them," said David Doulman, an expert on the issue at FAO. "So the focus now is to make sure that countries and other involved parties have the means and know-how to enforce it and are living up to their commitments. Importantly, the Agreement provides for assistance and support to developing countries to help them with implementation."
FAO Members involved in the talks included: Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Canada, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Cyprus, Congo DR, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, European Community, Fiji, France, Gabon, Gambia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malaysia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, USA, Uruguay, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Zambia and FAO Associate Member, Faeroe Islands.
See: - FAO: Legally-binding instrument on State Port measures approved
FAO defines port restrictions to deter illegal fishing
By Analia Murias
A group of 91 Member States of the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have concurred on the final text of a new treaty intended to seal off fishing ports to vessels involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
The "Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing" is the first international treaty to specifically eye in on the IUU fishing matter.
"It is hoped that the agreement will help block IUU-caught fish from entering international markets, thereby removing an important incentive for some fishermen to engage in illicit fishing," indicates the official FAO press release.
Delegates from the 91 countries committed to defining and implementeing various measures to restrict the entry of different ports to fishers engaged in IUU fishing activities.
The main points agreed upon are:
Foreign fishing vessels looking to dock will be required to request permission ahead of time from a series of specially designated ports, by transmitting data on their activities and the catch they carry on board. In so doing, authorities will have the possibility of detecting illegal activities in advance;
The treaty obliges countries to submit to routine inspections and establish a series of norms for use during the same. Whether or not a vessel has engaged in illicit fishing activities can often be surmised upon examination of the ship's papers, its fishing gear, the catches made and log records;
Signatory countries must guarantee that the ports and inspectors are adequately equipped and trained;
Port states must publish reports when a vessel is denied access, and the national authorities of the country whose flag the vessel is flying must take retaliatory measures;
The treaty calls for the creation of information-sharing networks that allow countries access to data on IUU-fishing-associated vessels, as well as sets forth aid so that resource-strapped developing nations can comply with their treaty obligations.
"By frustrating responsible management, IUU fishing damages the productivity of fisheries — or leads to their collapse. That's a serious problem for the people who depend on them for food and income," said FAO Assistant-Director General for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Ichiro Nomura.
"This treaty represents a real, palpable advance in the ongoing effort to stamp it out," Nomura added, referring to poaching.
The treaty will now have to be reviewed by FAO's Committee on Constitutional and Legal Matters at its next meeting, set for 23 and 25 September 2009.
From there it will be submitted to FAO's Council, and then to FAO´s Conference in November for its final review and formal adoption.
The Agreement must be ratified at the national level to go into effect: Thirty days after 25 States have OK´d its contents, it will enter into force.
"Of course, the effectiveness of port state measures depends in large part on how well countries implement them," said David Doulman, a FAO expert.
"So the focus now is to make sure that countries and other involved parties have the means and know-how to enforce it and are living up to their commitments. Importantly, the Agreement provides for assistance and support to developing countries to help them with implementation," he added.
Somali Continental Shelf Filing Rejected by Parliament Has Norway "Embarrassed," UN Admits
By Matthew Russell Lee
The Somali parliament recently voted over 90% against a deal cut by UN envoy Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, using Norwegian assistance, to make a joint Kenya - Somali filing about the Somali people's rights to the continental shelf and its natural resources. Even before the vote, Inner City Press had repeatedly asked the UN by what right Ould Abdallah had coordinated the filing, without getting a straight answer.
Now, with meetings about the Continental Shelf and the Law of the Sea taking place in the basement of the UN's headquarters in New York, Inner City Press finally got at least some answers.
In a meeting on "The Regular Process of Marine Assessments" held by the UN's Office of Legal Affairs, Inner City Press asked a group of UN experts how they deal with a now-contested filing like the one about Somalia. At first, an expert tried to evade the question, saying it could only be asked and answered at another meeting down the hall about the Limits of the Continental Shelf. But those meetings are all closed.
The master of ceremonies Peter Gilruth, director of the UN Environment Program's Division of Early Warning and Assessment, said he would try to answer, although he felt it might put his "head in a difficult spot." He said that Norway paid for the filings of some 10 African countries but that in Somalia, some "other elements.... may have tried to take the information in a different direction, causing the difficulty you refer to." Gilruth that moved the proceedings forward, asking if there were "any questions easier than that one."
Afterwards, Inner City Press approached Mr. Gilruth, who said that the whole Somali filing snafu "involved embarrassment to the government of Norway."
Next to him Patricio Bernal, UNESCO Assistant Director-General and Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, said that he had been working on this for ten years, he had coordinated with the Somali "government in exile" in Nairobi, and he could not understand the stink made in Somalia itself. He emphasized that the decisions in Continental Shelf meetings -- behind closed doors, mind you -- are "unappealable."
Perhaps the ongoing snafu reflects that to deal with the Somali government in exile, or the TFG, or Ould Abdallah, is not to deal with the Somali people, and is no guarantee of support or legitimacy. Ould Abdallah, meanwhile, is reported trying to invite into the TFG process a notorious war lord. Inner City Press asked about this last week at the UN's noon briefing, and the Spokesperson said an answer would be sought from Ould Abdallah. But still none has been received. Watch this site.
As first brought up by ECOTERRA Intl. and then reported by Inner City Press, the filing states that Ould Abdallah
"initiated the preparation of preliminary information indicative of the outer limits of the continental shelf of Somalia beyond 200 nautical miles... In the preparation of this material the SRSG accepted an offer of assistance from the Government of Norway... Both the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate have been involved in the preparation...
Inner City Press wrote about this and asked the UN and Ould's spokesperson Suzie Price, but never received an answer.
On May, the question was put to Ould Abdallah and he said he is "no specialist," that he was unfamiliar with the filing that states that he prepared it. "Ask Norway," he said. Video here, from Minute 12:30.
UN's Somali Envoy Says Press Is Accomplice to Genocide, No Info on Norway's Role
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
United Nations, May 29 -- Testifying about Somalia to the U.S. Senate on May 21, a representative of Oxfam said that "the United Nations Development Program gave direct financial support for police salaries and some of these police were implicated in serious human rights abuses." On May 29, Inner City Press asked the Somali Transitional Federal Government's foreign minister Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar to respond. "I'm appreciat[ive] of that worry," he said, saying that the "concern.. speaks on behalf of the Somalia individuals who suffer." Video here, from Minute 21:36.
But when Inner City Press less than an hour later posed the same human rights question to the UN's envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, he called the question "irresponsible," the questioner an "accomplice to.... genocide" and told Inner City Press that "there will be more killing and anarchy [and] you will be responsible." Video here, from Minute 19:44.
Inner City Press pointed about that it was Oxfam's testimony, and that is seemed fair to ask how the UN is making sure the funding it gives in Somalia supports and does not contravene human rights principles. Ould Abdallah, who previously said that the press should not report on the killing of civilians by African Union peacekeepers, disagrees. He said the Somali police should be paid even if some "stole money money" or committed "abuse." This is not the UN policy. But the UN has become so out of control that no one dares to reign Ould Abdallah in, or even tries.
When Ould Abdallah attacked the media who reported on African Union peacekeepers firing into a crowd of civilians in Mogadishu, and compared these media outlets to Radio Milles Colines which stoked genocide in Rwanda, both Human Rights Watch and press freedom groups demanded he issue a retraction. Inner City Press asked about it at the UN in New York, and was later told by senior UN officials that Ould Abdallah had been told to retract it by headquarters, but had not do so. So much for accountability.
Emblematic is the lack of answers on how Ould Abdallah, according to a joint Somali - Kenyan filing under the Law of Sea's Continental shelf process, arranged for assistance from Norway and its Petroleum Directorate. Inner City Press wrote about this and asked the UN and Ould's spokesperson Suzie Price, but never received an answer.
On Friday, the question was put to Ould Abdallah and he said he is "no specialist," that he was unfamiliar with the filing that states that he prepared it. "Ask Norway," he said. Video here, from Minute 12:30. Inner City Press already has -- click here -- but Ould Abdallah's non answers on May 29 only raise more questions.
In Somalia, this has become a controversy. All of the expenses related to the preparation of the present submission have been covered by the Government of Norway."
Norway, of course, is a major oil producer. Absent safeguards that do not appear to be in place, it is viewed as a conflict of interest for Norway to pay for and prepare a filing about drilling rights for an African country described as having no government. And yet little has been said, and the UN has accepted the filing. Call them pirates of the pen.
Inner City Press asked the UN spokesperson's office, which begrudgingly sent the question to Ould Abdallah's spokeswoman, who never answered. She was in the room Friday, and did not purport to answer. Nor would they answer which countries are funding Somalia's armed forces. The UN told Inner City Press
Subj: Question on Somalia at Tuesday's Noon Briefing
From: unspokesperson-donotreply [at] un.org
To: Inner City Press
Sent: 5/27/2009 10:20:50 A.M. Eastern Standard Time
Find below the response to your question at yesterday's Noon Briefing on UN support for police personnel of the Transitional Federal Government, (TFG): The UN Development Programme has provided training to civilian police officers in Somalia, under internationally approved guidelines with emphasis on community-based policing practices.
So far, 2,775 police personnel have undergone this internationally approved training by UNDP for the TFG. These are the only police personnel who are eligible for the payment of stipends which is paid according to strict human rights and financial accountability standards.
Some donors are supporting payment of stipends to UNDP-trained police.
So who are the donors? It appears that Ould Abdallah, whenever he doesn't like or doesn't want to answer a question, particularly a financial questions, calls the questioner an accomplice to genocide. And so it goes at the UN.
Seychelles Claim Another Area As Extended Continental Shelf Beyond the EEZ Limit
On Monday 31st August 2009 in New York, Seychelles has taken yet another step in its quest to claim areas beyond its 200 nautical miles Exclusive Economic Zone limit as an extended continental shelf. On this occasion Seychelles has formally presented a second Submission to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UN-CLCS), for an area of 22,143 sq. kilometers in extent, and this time located in the Northern Plateau Region; Geographical position on the Equator (0 Degrees) and 52 Degrees East of the Meridian of Greenwich; 350 nautical miles North West of Mahé Island.
It will be recalled that Seychelles formally presented its first claim which was a Joint Submission with Mauritius in the Mascarene Plateau Region to the United Nations CLCS in New York on 26th March 2009.
The present claim in the Northern Plateau Region was developed unilaterally by Seychelles, by its Technical Team on Maritime Boundary Delimitation, with advisers sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation (CFTC).
The Submission has been developed in compliance with the United Nations Convention (1982) on the Law of the Sea, a treaty which Seychelles signed in Montego Bay, Jamaica in December 1982 and later ratified in 1991; and also in accordance with the Scientific and Technical Guidelines of the UN-CLCS and its Rules of Procedure.
This Submission has been made within the time limit specified in this treaty. Failure to have lodged a Submission would have resulted in the loss of an extended continental shelf in this area and the potential for resources living or non living.
Jurisdiction over an extended continental shelf is important for a country to be entitled to explore and exploit resources that lie therein and also to preserve the environment apart from other matters associated to an extended continental shelf.
The Seychelles Delegation in New York was led by Ambassador Ronny Jumeau, Seychelles Permanent Representative there, and the technical team was made up of:
Mr Raymond F. Chang-Tave – International Boundaries, Special Adviser, Ministry of National Development;
Mr Patrick Joseph, Geophysicist, Exploration Manager, SEYPEC Exploration;
Mr Patrick Samson, Senior Geologist, SEYPEC Exploration;
Mr Francis Coeur de Lion, Director General (GIS and IT), Ministry of National Development
The presentation of Seychelles´ second Submission was made yesterday afternoon to the United Nations CLCS at the UN Headquarters in New York.
Toxic chemicals blamed for the disappearance of Arctic boys
By Daniel Howden in Nuuk, Greenland
Twice as many girls as boys are being born in remote communities north of the Arctic Circle. Across much of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the US and Japan, the gender ratio has skewed towards girls for the first time.
Now scientists working with Inuit villages in Arctic Russia and Greenland have found the first direct evidence that this trend is linked to widespread chemical pollutants. Despite the Arctic's pristine environment, the area functions as a pollution sink for much of the industrialised world. Winds and rivers deliver a toxic tide from the northern hemisphere into the polar food chain.
Scientists have traced flame-retardant chemicals used in everything from industrial products to furniture, phones and laptops to the food chain, finding high levels of these pollutants in seabirds, seals and polar bears. The Inuit have traditionally relied on a hunter- gatherer's diet almost exclusively made up of marine animals, making them especially vulnerable to toxic pollutants.
Historically in large populations, it is considered normal for the number of baby boys slightly to outnumber girls in a trend believed to compensate naturally for greater male mortality rates.
But a peer-reviewed US study found an unexpected drop in the proportion of boys born in much of the northern hemisphere. The missing boys would number more than 250,000 in the US and Japan, using the gender ratio at the levels recorded up until 1970.
The researchers suspect-ed that this linked widespread exposure among pregnant women to hormone-mimicking pollutants. But Danish scientists examined 480 families in the Russian Arctic and found high levels of the hormone-mimicking pollutants in the blood of pregnant women, and twice as many girls being born as boys.
They are now studying similar communities in Greenland and Canada and although full results will be published next year, their initial findings exactly match those in Russia.
Lars Otto Riersen, a marine biologist, pollution expert and an executive with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap), says: "When you see such things happening in the Arctic, it may happen here first, in the same way as climate change did."
Although the nature of the Inuit diet is believed to have triggered the disturbing ratios in the Arctic, a similar pattern may be emerging further south. Until now, the only evidence of the impact of these toxins was circumstantial. The most skewed ratio had been in Canada, where a First Nation community in Sarnia lives amid Ontario's petrochemical industry, and the number of boys born has plunged since the 1990s. The fallout from the toxic cloud in Seveso in Italy in 1976 allowed scientists to monitor dramatic impacts on both the gender ratios and numbers of babies born.
Every year in the industrialised world, household fires cause billions of pounds worth of damage, and chemical flame retardants designed to curb this are big business. They contain a host of chemicals some of which mimic human hormones. These chemicals became notorious in the 1960s and a worldwide ban on one category, PCBs, was introduced after tests showed they had entered the food chain with potentially lethal consequences for humans and animals. But the chemicals industry continues to produce variations of the retardants, which scientists claim are not subject to the long-range testing required.
Dr Jens Hansen, leader of Amap research, said they were finding incredibly high levels of banned PCBs among a cocktail of other hormone-mimicking chemicals in pre-natal mothers. Pregnant mothers, he said were ingesting these hormone-mimicking chemicals in their diet and passing them through the placenta where they influenced the gender of the fetus or killed male fetuses.
Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's Foreign Minister, says: "We heard from scientists four years ago that our heavy metal consumption is dangerous." She adds wryly: "If you ate me, you would die."
Aqqaluk Lynge, head of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, said they were trying to raise the alarm internationally but nobody was listening. "People don't want to talk about such a critical question. We are talking about our people's survival which is very alarming."
Greenland, the world's largest island and still a dependency of Denmark, now has the highest proportion of women in the world.
Anti-piracy measures
Somali hard-line Islamists are former warlords-analysis
By Anab Mohamed Noh
Following the collapse of the central government in Somalia in 1991, USC [the rebel group that ousted former Somali president,
Siad Barre] has raised the curtain on a new front in the clan fighting in Somali capital. Other than killing innocent civilians, the USC has failed to utilise the arms it captured from the central Somalia government in taking over the rest of the country.
The reason for this is said to be because the fighting was mainly based on clan rivalry and lacked a proper vision and as expected such mentality has never led to any positive steps forward.
Following the failure by the USC in Mogadishu, individual groups with intense animosity to each other have subdivided parts of the capital and set up road blocks in order to rob the civilian population. History has since left all clans that were part of the then USC with an indelible mark of shame as the rest of Somalis no longer trust any of their Shaykhs or Sharifs.
Somali leaders were individuals of high integrity, peace loving and religious in their daily dealings.
However since 1991 those appointed for positions of leadership have been tirelessly working to see that there is no peace in Somalia having been taught a good lesson by their masters in USC.
This is true to the extent that even if they are appointed as presidents themselves, they will still not allow the attainment of peace in the country. Somali leaders were within reason before they got a taste of the forbidden blood of fellow Somalis, before they ordered the rape and killing of innocent civilians. The day they did that, they opened a new chapter in their dealings, a monstrous one in which they were even unable to even recognize themselves.
The evil chains of conflict and corruption which have been left behind by the USC cannot be broken and remains with me through this journey in which I intend to write lots of books about everything that has transpired. There isn't any line separating total blindness to reason with openness and consideration towards mankind.
Why have our brothers in Mogadishu been condemned to endless problems when they can easily choose to worship God in peace, spread the religion and be good Muslims?
It is a question that needs to be answered by Mogadishu residents or those who claimed to have taken ownership of Mogadishu after the outbreak of civil war in 1991 by declaring the capital "a Hawiye City".
The warlords in Mogadishu did not spare anyone; they slit the throats of women and children. They took with them anything that had the slightest hint of value. They embarked on mass looting and rape and as expected, God has taken away their sense of justice and belief.
Many Somalis welcomed the ousting of warlords from Mogadishu and embraced the Islamic Court era which was warmly received by all Somalis without division. I was particularly glad that they were ousted from the capital but have always been unable to bring myself to the possibility that some of those who have always commanded their clansmen to go loot, kill and rape could one day be reformed and become good Muslims. That, I was unable to force down my throat. The men who took part in these atrocities against the Somali people started being referred to as religious scholars. When and where did they learn about religion?
Some of the Hisb al-Islam officials among them Indha Adde, Muse Abdi Arale [Hisb al-Islam's Defence Secretary], Ma'alin Hashi [Hisb al-Islam' head of Banaadir Region] and others are examples of these "religious scholars" who have been reformed overnight. Indha Adde has since joined the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia [TFG] led by Sheikh Sharif after he was chased away by the opposition groups.
How do they expect to convince the fellow Somalis of religion when they have been robbing them of their land, farms and other belongings over the years? How do they expect to convince the public of religion when they are known to be nothing other than self serving ruthless militias? The truth of the matter is that regaining the trust of the Somali people will never happen as long as these men are around to run the show. No one is dumb enough to identify the neighbour who has been taking part in looting their own house. For such a person to turn around and publicly claim that the country will be ruled according to Shari'ah law can only be said to be ludicrous.
Shouldn't the implementation of Shari'ah law start with them since they are the ones that robbed many Somalis of their wealth and property? If we are to stick to the truth as far as our religion is concerned, Indha Adde and the men I have earlier on mentioned who are currently in Hisb al-Islam should be the first ones that are to be charged according the Shari'ah law that they claim to be fighting for instead of using it to sentence innocent civilians when indeed they are the ones that are evil ridden.
There has been public outcry about the suffering being inflicted upon Mogadishu residents during the fighting in capital.
Yes it is true many innocent people have been caught up in the struggle, however, coming to think of it, perhaps those deliberately supporting the same thieves that have been subjecting them to suffering by claiming that they are their sheikhs do actually deserve it. It is the height of hypocrisy to support a known thief and refer to him as a "Sheikh".
I can almost guarantee that as long as these famous criminals in Hisb al-Islam and other religious groups are Mogadishu, the situation in the capital will not change. The fruits of the support given to them will continue to be reaped. To the men who refer to fellow Muslims engaged in prayer and good deeds as infidels and disbelievers and even go ahead and threaten to "redouble" the fighting during the holy month of Ramadan, to you I say SUBHANALLAH! [Glory to God].
Muse Abdi Arale and Ma'alin Hashi who used to operate illegal road blocks should reflect back on the kind of "Jihad" that they have been engaged in and use that as a reality check as far as their public standing is concerned.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, Hizbul Islam leader recently announced that its nice for his fighters to fire mortars in the markets and the reaction mortars are no problem but ''Jihad'' He also recently started of ordering his fighters to carry out hit and run attacks on the journalists and the other effective educaters.
Greek Crap for Somalia ?
Cyprus donates to Somalia
A ceremony to donate military material which will be Cyprus` contribution to the EU initiative to train members of the security forces of the Somali Transitional Federal Government was held on Monday, at the Army Recruitment Centre in Limassol.
During the ceremony, Minister of Defence Costas Papacostas handed over the material to the French Embassy Charge d` Affaires Emmanuelle Blatmann, whose country is leading the EU initiative.
The decision was taken following a proposal by the French Ministry of Defence, according to Security Council Resolution 1863/2009, which urged UN members to contribute to the training and armament of the Security Forces of Somalia, in cooperation with the UN, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and the Authorities in Somalia.
Well, the United Nations might have asked the world to help Somalia, but not Cyprus to "donate" expiring, used military material to Somalia in order to safe the decommissioning costs and get resupplied with new stuff from European taxpayers money via France and Greece.
Somali Pirates Getting Shot?
By Alain St. Ange, eTN
European Union commits to helping the Seychelles to fight piracy
The European Union´s Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) has now confirmed that it will station two Swearingam Merlin 3 aircraft in Mahe, in the Seychelles, to help combat the region´s ongoing piracy problem.
The Swearingam Merlin 3 aircraft are provided by the Luxembourg government from CAE Aviation, a company specializing in airborne observation work. The two aircraft will conduct anti-piracy patrols supporting the EU´s "Operation ATALANTA" and will deploy to the Seychelles this month in time for passing of the South East monsoon when calmer seas are expected.
The two aircraft are equipped with a search radar and an Electro Optic Turret, which will give them the ability to detect and image pirate craft by day and night. With the ability to cruise at a higher speed to the search area and loiter there for prolonged periods (3-4 hours) the aircraft will prove a valuable tool in the fight against piracy. A team of aircrew and technicians will deploy with the aircraft.
The Air Wing of the Seychelles Coast Guard has said it will continue to patrol Seychelles EEZ and will work closely with the EU NAVFOR team. During the deployment, the company will also carry out some training of Coast Guard personnel in the operation of the Electro Optic systems. It is hoped that the Seychelles Coast Guard personnel will also, on an occasional basis, conduct flights with the EU aircraft, thus improving the working relationship between the EU and the Seychelles Coast guard still further.
"Operation ATALANTA" is the first ever EU commanded naval force and was deployed in Nov 08 to counter piracy off the coast of Somalia.
The agreement to station the EU aircraft in the Seychelles comes following ongoing talks between the British High Commission and French Embassy representing the EU and the Seychelles High Level Committee on Piracy. Talks about further cooperation are continuing.
British High Commissioner Matthew Forbes said: "The risk of further piracy attacks close to the Seychelles is real and the use of maritime patrol aircraft is an important tool to counter this threat. This deployment is an important signal of the European Union´s commitment to working with the Seychelles government to deter pirates from threatening our joint interests."
Japanese Protect Ships near Somalia
By Hisane Masaki
Anti-piracy mission expands Japan Self Defense Force operations
Japanese naval vessels escorted a total of 81 commercial ships in the waters of the Gulf of Aden off Somalia to protect them against pirate attacks under a new law that took effect in late July, the Japanese government said on Tuesday.
Only one of the ships is Japanese-registered, but 37 others are actually operated by Japanese shipping firms, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. Two of the ships are operated by U.S. shipping firms.
Japanese law had previously allowed the navy to escort only Japan-related ships and to use weapons only in self-defense. The Anti-Piracy Law enacted in June allows the navy to escort foreign commercial ships and fire at pirate boats if they ignore warning signals and approach merchant ships.
The Japan Self Defense Force's activities abroad have been strictly constrained by the post-World War II pacifist constitution. It remains to be seen, however, whether Japan will be able to continue the SDF's anti-piracy mission.
The Democratic Party of Japan, led by Yukio Hatoyama, won a landslide victory in a general election on August 30, ousting the coalition led by Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party. The conservative LDP has ruled the country almost uninterrupted for more than half a century.
Although the DPJ is expected to approve the anti-piracy mission off Somalia, the leftist Social Democratic Party remains vehemently opposed to the mission, calling it a flagrant violation of the constitution.
Philippine president warns of surge in pirate attacks, offers training for Somali coast guard
Philippines offers training for Somali coast guard
The Philippine president offered her country´s help in training the Somali coast guard, saying Tuesday she fears another surge in pirate attacks off Somalia that have targeted ships with hundreds of Filipino crew.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was attending the African Union summit in Libya, expressed fear that pirate attacks will pick up as the East African monsoon was about to end.
"This is one issue where it is crucial for Africa to work together to bring peace and order in the affected areas off the coast of Somalia," she said in a speech to Filipino workers in Libya, a copy of which was released in Manila.
The Philippines supplies about 30 percent of the world´s 1.2 million merchant sailors, and 42 Filipino seafarers remain in the hands of Somali pirates. Another 347 have been freed by pirates since 2006, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
In her meeting with Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed on the sidelines of the summit, Arroyo said the Philippines has expertise in human resources development and offered to help train Somalia´s coast guard and government officials.
She said the building of strong institutions was one way to help Somalia fight piracy.
Piracy has increased in the Gulf of Aden — a crucial shipping route in and out of the Suez Canal — and elsewhere off the coast of Somalia. Attacks have more than doubled in the first half of 2009 compared to the same period a year ago, the International Maritime Bureau said.
Out of 240 pirate attacks worldwide, 130 took place off Somalia, it said.
Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, and the country´s interim government has been embroiled in a struggle with Islamist extremists with suspected al-Qaida links.
Special feature
Déjà vu in Somalia or the re-emerging of the disaster-monster to pave way for invasion By John Bamau
When after the orchestrated fall of the Siad Barre government on 6th January 1991, those foreign countries, who had been eagerly involved in the plot and had lured their local stringers to go ahead, did not immediately deliver the promised proceeds, it became obvious that there was a larger plan at work.
While the actual crisis was withheld from the public eye of the international media for almost two years, during which plans were made, the public media spin was catapulted into full gear by the UN representative declaring in Nairobi "I come out of the land of death!"
He was right, since a specific segment of the population of Somalia had been earmarked to serve the purpose to provoke an international response by sealing these areas off and letting the people therein starve to death – for the cameras which finally arrived and thereby for the plan of legitimized interference to succeed.
Is this part of the Somali history already forgotten because in those days when that headline appeared - first in Nairobi newspapers and then the world over - it was not yet the time of the internet memory?
Almost forgotten
Actually the plan by the war-mongering state-governments - led by the United States of America, was since long to turn Somalia into a mega-sandcastle for the games of the military-industrial complex, a gigantic training area with little political interference to be feared, in order to lure other states and peoples into the almighty army of those who plot the haves against the have-nots.
Somalia was the first of the soon following events with stepping stones called Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Kuwait and Iraq leading to the new Vietnam-like disaster in Afghanistan today. The only difference is that in Vietnam it were the US-Americans alone who carried out their horrible plan, while the guilt for the Afghanistan atrocities will have to be carried by many nations - coerced into the vortex of US-lead violence to uphold global hegemony against the will of the majority of their own people.
In Somalia the US-American-led plan failed, because Somalis learned quickly what master-and-slave settings were in the offing for them and successfully countered the attempts of a hostile takeover by various means of defence – from luring the foreign forces to pitch camp in what was known soon as Hamburger-hill to the Black-hawk-dawn incident and up to the ultimate means, the means of self-destruction.
In this final process of defence - by means of self-destruction - the Somalis are still held, including the piracy posture and the al-Qaeda crap-trap installing fear and thereby incapacitating now even the Somali Diaspora - but all in all and obviously not achieving the masterminded goal: A neo-colonized Somalia.
The scramble for Africa – and the worlds last untapped natural resources held deep in the seven black bellies of the African cow – seem to make it necessary to wipe out the Somali threat, which otherwise could cause that Kenya would soon no longer be able to serve as the udder for the anticipated streams of blood-diamonds, blood-gold, blood-oil, blood-coltan, blood-timber and bloody slaves facilitating all this.
New total invasion ?
Therefore in Somalia already new events of the old scam - sealing off whole areas and the population from any food supplies - are reported.
So is this in preparation for a new invasion of troops from the taker-societies coming into Somalia ?
Not directly that is for sure –the western powers keep the necessary distance, but their vassals serving in the UN - including Ethiopia-, keep on longing for the dirty job, since the AU contingents will have soon either burned out or will be whistled back by wiser leaders.
No real peace in sight yet
Puntland leader receives EU delegation in Galkayo amid serious question marks
The president of Somalia's Puntland State government received a delegation from the European Union on Tuesday, Radio Garowe reported.
Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed "Farole", the Puntland leader, and senior officials of the Puntland government met with the five-member delegation led by the EU Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa region, Ms. Marika Fahlen, at Taar City Hotel in the outskirts of Galkayo, the provincial capital of Mudug region and Puntland's second-largest city.
Mr. Abdigani Yusuf Adde, Puntland's minister for the Environment, told reporters after the meeting that the two sides agreed on a number of key issues.
He noted that the two parties agreed on strengthening cooperation in the fight against piracy and human trafficking, advancing EU development projects in Puntland State, and assisting displaced Somalis who fled conflict in the country's south-central regions to the relative safety of Puntland.
The delegation included EU officials in the humanitarian and security sectors, the Environment Minister added.
In August, Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmake signed a 15-point cooperation agreement with Puntland's government, including a clause stating that the anti-piracy campaign be headquartered in Puntland. That clause, however, has been disputed by many members of the TFG parliament in the meantime.
The EU delegation flew back to Nairobi, Kenya, later Tuesday, where Swedish Marika Fahlen had tried to gain some knowledge about Somalia before the trip and during a UN-paid meeting called for by the UN Drug and Crime Office.
Local observers remarked that the visit - especially by members belonging to the European Concilium - was a similar event like the visit of former Commissioner Emma Bonino many years ago. Back then the Italian was the European Commissioner for Fisheries as well as the boss of ECHO, the European Commission's Humanitarian Office, and she had tried to secure fishing licences for European fleets from the hungry Somalis. Mrs. Bonino was relieved of her duties after an inquiry.
There are no legally valid bi-lateral agreements existing between the European Union or any of its member states with the TFG of Somalia or any of the regional governances - and not even the EU rendition treaty with Kenya concerning alleged Somali pirates involved the Somali government. The European parliament - being still in summer holidays - seems to not have the real oversight and control over the dealings of some officials of Europe or the naval conglomerate EUNAVFOR.
Key Somali commander drops govt. support
A powerful commander in western Somalia has stepped down from his governmental post, saying Ethiopia has renewed military involvement in his country.
Sheikh Abdirahman Ibrahim Ma'ow, the de facto governor of Hiraan province and an influential member of the ruling Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), announced on Monday that he would no longer back the transitional federal government (TFG).
"As of today, we clearly state that we are withdrawing our backing and can no longer be considered pro-government," Sheikh Ma'ow told reporters at a press conference in the town of Beledweyn, the provincial capital of the Hiran region.
The top commander called the TFG "weak", adding that it was incapable of implementing "Shari'ah law" across the war-torn Horn of Africa country.
Sheikh Ma'ow made no secret of his irritation over the deployment of Ethiopian troop in Somalia.
"I am not happy with the intervention of foreign forces, particularly Ethiopian forces in Somalia," he said.
Hundreds of Ethiopian forces poured into Beledweyn over the weekend, with more than 20 military trucks, driving west towards the Somalia-Ethiopia international border, Radio Garowe reported.
The deployment follows a joint military effort by pro-government forces and Ethiopian troops to retake southwestern Somalia form al-Shabaab militants.
According to Somali officials, the Ethiopian soldiers have now retreated from bases around Beletwein. However, unconfirmed reports say some Ethiopian army units have not yet withdrawn.
Addis Ababa has repeatedly rejected the presence of its forces on Somali soil.
Ethiopian troops move to another Somali town
Ethiopian troops have moved toward another town in western part of Somalia after they successfully dislodged the Islamist insurgents from Beledweyne where they entered on Saturday, report Ethiopian media and the Sudan Tribune.
Ethiopian army for the first time since January returned to Beledweyn, a town near the Ethiopian border, after the fighters of Al-Shebab group had taken control of some parts the town on August 20.
Hundreds of Ethiopian troops in heavily armoured vehicles left Beledweyne, the capital of western region of Hiraan heading to Bulobarde town in the same region.
The hard-line militants had resisted an attack by the government forces last week on Bulobarde. Their attack on Beledweyn was in retaliation for an offensive by pro-government fighters on their strongholds.
Pro-government fighters recently launched a raid against Al-Shebab, an Al Qaeda-inspired militia group which alongside the more political Hizb Al-Islam control several town in the region since the pullout of the Ethiopian army from western Somalia.
Last June, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said Ethiopia could send troops to Somalia if the situation there deteriorates. His statement came after call by Somalia´s speaker on neighboring countries and international community to intervene militarily in Somalia to prop up the UN backed transitional federal government.
The Ethiopian Communications Minister, Bereket Simon at the time, said Ethiopia would only intervene militarily in Somali to support the besieged transitional government if it has a clear international mandate.
However, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, showed opposition to the intervention of Ethiopian troops in the neighboring Somalia. Such intervention could be "counterproductive" to the Somali government, he said. Adding he fears that this would increase the popularity of the Islamist insurgency.
Public gathering in Galmudug calls for co-operation against impact of drought
The officials of the autonomous regional state of Galmudug in central Somalia, chaired by the President of Galmudug state Colonel Mohammed Alin and joined by the vice president Abdi Samad Noor Khalif Guled, the speaker of the parliament, Abdi Dala, the council of elders, the traditional elders, and some individuals from the Diaspora discussed the current situation of the region. Topics on the agenda were the politics, the economy, the security, the drought, the needs of the population and the handling of social issues.
The meeting concluded in a joint statement of cooperation which highlighted the negative impact of the prolonged and severe drought on the livestock sector, which is the backbone of the local economy.
The officials set up a committee to tackle the drought-induced problems and urged all sides, including the religious clerics of Ahlu-Sunnah Waljama, the humanitarian organizations, local business people and the Diaspora to swiftly get involved in curbing the famine situation in the region.
African leaders wrap up special summit on regional conflicts amid Libyan revolution celebrations
By Li Qi, Zhu Lei and Luo Guofang for Xinhua
Consensus to strengthen the presence of AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
African Union (AU) leaders urged member states which have pledged to contribute to the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia to honor their promises at a special summit in Libya on Monday.
The African leader also agreed that the war plaguing the restive western Sudanese region of Darfur was over, local sources said, citing the final declaration issued at the end of the one-day summit.
The summit, the third for the AU this year, was aimed to tackle regional conflicts, especially situations in Somalia, Darfur and the Great Lakes region.
About 30 African leaders attended the special summit held in conjunction with celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the Libyan Revolution, which brought Libyan leader Muammar Ghaddafi to power after overthrowing Western-backed King Idriss on Sept. 1, 1969.
The leaders adopted the "Tripoli Declaration" and a plan of action to find urgent solutions to crises and conflicts in Africa, but they failed to submit any substantial proposals to resolve the conflicts.
The African countries approved Libya's proposal to make resolving the conflicts of Africa one of the regular topics of the AU summits of heads of state and government.
On Somalia which is witnessing rising conflicts between Islamist rebels and incumbent President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the African leaders reached consensus to strengthen the presence of AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
On Monday, AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping told reporters before the opening of the one-day summit that three African countries, namely Sierre Leone, Malawi and Nigeria, had agreed to contribute forces to reinforce the peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
The AU has planned to send 8,000 troops to support Somali government against the foreign-backed insurgency by Islamist rebels, but now only Uganda and Burundi are the only countries that have deployed 4,300 forces in the Horn of Africa country.
The African leaders also called for an international conference on the rising piracy off the Somali coast.
On the Darfur conflict, the declaration said Darfur is no longer at war, insisting that only criminal acts of some outlaws were taking place in Darfur at the present time.
In the declaration, African leaders appreciated the contribution of Rodolphe Adada, Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the African Union, in the settlement of the Darfur conflict.
The declaration reiterated the African leaders' refusal to deal with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in March this year.
Al-Bashir showed up at the AU summit, on his second visit to Libya since the arrest warrant issued against him for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The declaration also stressed the importance of post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization, with specific reference to the roles that could be played by AU member states and the regional mechanisms.
Affirming the importance of rehabilitation of the conflict-hit areas in Africa, the declaration announced that the year 2010 would be dedicated to peace and security on the world's poorest continent.
Leaders of the AU states emphasized at the summit that for the continent, security and stability are the most important. They also demonstrated their determination to solve conflicts of the continent by themselves.
In his opening speech, Ghaddafi stressed the importance of solving the conflicts facing Africa as they threaten the peace and security of the whole world.
He said, "We should find solutions to conflicts among the African brothers and move forward to stop the superpowers pillaging Africa's resources," according to Libya's official Jamahiriya News Agency.
Other African leaders also expressed their hope that AU could play a bigger role in the resolution of regional conflicts, even in the world stage.
"Our continent, thanks to the immense natural resources and human energies it possesses, is capable of forging ahead with complementarity integration in order to occupy the position it deserves within major regional groupings in the world," said Tunisia President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
"Security and stability are indeed two formidable wagers that we must absolutely win in order to stop the bleeding of our resources and to enable our states to devote all their efforts to providing the basic factors of decent life for their peoples," he added.
The summit also took up the issue of climatic changes before the Copenhagen summit which is due to be held in December.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said at the summit that Africa's carbon dioxide emission is less than 4 percent of the world's total volume, so it bears little responsibility for the deterioration of the global climate.
"Africa has made great contribution to the environment thanks to its environmental organizations and its vast forests, but unfortunately, it has been the biggest victim of the environmental deterioration," Bouteflika said.
The AU, established in 2002 to replace the Organization of African Unity that was founded in 1963, aims at preserving and promoting peace and stability in the African continent, carrying out the strategy of reform and poverty reduction and realizing the development and renewal of Africa.
Impacting reports from the global village
AU holds Israel responsible for Africa woes
The president of the African Union (AU) holds Israel responsible for all the woes facing Africa, calling on member-states to cut diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv.
Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts," Muammar Gaddafi said on Monday and demanded the closure of all Israeli embassies across Africa.
The Libyan leader, who holds the rotating AU presidency described Israel as a "gang" which uses the "protection of minorities as an excuse to launch conflicts."
Gaddafi made the remarks at a meeting of 30 African leaders, who had convened in Tripoli for a one-day summit on the continent's trouble spots, including Sudan's Darfur and Somalia.
Israel has acknowledged operating what it called a forward policy in Africa between the 1960s and 1980s, intervening in wars from Ethiopia to Uganda and Sudan, he stressed.
"As African brothers, we must find solutions to stop the superpowers who are pillaging our continent," the president of the AU added.
The one-day meeting ended without any agreement on concrete steps. The leaders merely adopted a 'Tripoli Declaration' and a plan of action 'to find urgent solutions to crises and conflicts' in Africa.
That plan urges member-states who have pledged to contribute troops to reinforce the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia (AMISOM) to honor their promises "rapidly".
Gadhafi leads Africans in anti-Israel crusade
African Union chairman and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has told participants of an African group that Israel´s presence in the region is one of its greatest threats.
Libya is hosting a special session of the African Union Assembly, ostensibly to resolve conflicts on the continent.
Colonel Gadhafi opened the session by saying conflicts such as that in Sudan's Darfur region are internal matters, and involve infighting over power.
The Libyan leader said the wars pose no real danger to the region as a whole.
But he warned the conflicts could pose a risk if they invite international intervention, as other powers were eager to get at Africa's wealth.
He said the small internal wars could be used as a pretext for other nations to intervene.
Colonel Gadhafi then repeated a call to oust all Israeli embassies from the continent, saying Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts."
He demanded the closure of all Israeli embassies across Africa, and described Israel as a gang using the "protection of minorities as an excuse to launch conflicts."
Israel has in the past acknowledged operating a policy in Africa between the 1960s and 1980s, intervening in incidents in Ethiopia, Uganda and Sudan.
Gaddafi claimed that Abdelwahid Mohammed Nur, the leader of a Darfur rebel group had opened an office in Tel Aviv while living in exile in Paris.
After Gadhafi´s inflamatory speech, attendees at the conference were asked to attend festivities marking 40 years since Colonel Gadhafi took power in a coup.
Al Gaddafi Calls on African Leaders to Expel Israel from the Continent
By Al Sammani Awadallah
Addressing the opening session of the AU summit that convened yesterday in Tripoli, the Libyan leader Muammer Al Gaddafi called on the African leaders to expel the Israeli intelligence from the continent.
Gaddafi said the Darfur problem is a small and internal one but the international interventions have escalated the situation in the region.
He attributed the problems of Sudan to the conflict between the superpowers of the world on Sudan's oil and other natural resources that abound in the Sudan.
Al Gaddafi said that some countries are running after the resources of Darfur and the continent as a whole and presented unacceptable reasons and taken the humanitarian issue there as a pretext to take over the said resources. He affirmed that the crisis could be resolved internally and that the AU should have resolved it by working seriously to settle the Sudanese- Chadian conflict.
AU Commission Chairperson Jean Binq who also addressed the opening session, indicated the negative impacts of the armed conflict in Africa particularly in the field of economic activities.
State Minister of Foreign Affairs Al-Sammani Al-Wasilla of Sudan said that the African Wise-Men Panel on Darfur has submitted its recommendations to the summit explaining that the said recommendations affirmed to the necessity of setting a timetable for the negotiations and work to support the joint forces.
AU summit ends in Libya
The African Union - AU summit on peace and security ended in Libya with the adoption of the Tripoli declaration and a plan of action to be implemented on the various troubled spots on the continent.
The meeting was from Africa´s growing concern over the security and persistence of conflict and crisis on the continent despite the many efforts to resolve them.
On the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the leaders have resolved that the companies fueling conflicts in that country should be put on sanctions.
The leaders suggested that the sanctions should include denial of operating licences on the companies by all African states.
On Madagascar, the leaders commended the mediation efforts underway in that country and urged the parties to restore legalities through credible, transparent and fair elections.
President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia condemned some African leaders who violate peace agreements by supporting rebel groups in other countries.
Turning to Somalia recommendations were made to strengthen the government and its institutions through training programmes for the civil service.
Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez and leader of the Dominican Republic, Mr Louis Fernando were also at the AU summit with a strong call for solidarity between Africa and South America.
President Chavez invited African leaders to the second African - South America summit next month to map out areas of cooperation between Africa and Latin America.
The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, President Robert Mugabe is in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where he joined other African Heads of State and Government at an extra-ordinary summit of the African Union.
Libya stood by Zimbabwe at the height of the fast track land reform programme by throwing a lifeline for the fuel sector when Zimbabwe´s petrol and diesel supply companies ran dry.
The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, also displayed his solidarity by visiting the country at that time.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joice Mujuru is the Acting President.
Preparations are underway for the celebrations of the Libyan revolution´s 40th anniversary.
AU special summit: Leaders storm Libya for solutions to conflicts in Africa
The Libyan capital, Tripoli, virtually transformed into the capital of Africa with African presidents and heads of government storming the city in their quest to find a lasting solution to the unending conflicts in Africa.
The special session of the African Union's Conference on the examination and resolution of conflicts in Africa opened on Monday in Tripoli, Libya.
This special session presided over by the chairman of the African Union, the Libyan Leader Mouammar Kadhafi, will examine the crisis and conflicts occurring in some parts of the continent, such as Somalia, Darfur and the Great Lakes region. Twenty-seven African heads of state attended the opening session.
It will also try to make sure that the decisions made by the political organs of the AU on these issues are fully applied.
For that purpose, the executive council which met on Sunday adopted a declaration which takes up again the principles of the continental organization and an action plan for the resolution of the conflicts. During the session, the heads of state and governments will not overlook issues related to the reconstruction and stabilization after conflicts, by referring specifically to the roles which the members states and regional mechanisms can play.
These issues are a real problem for some states with limited means, such as Guinea Bissau which has a very difficult security situation.
Guinea Bissau, which had been going through an era of turbulence, elected a new president last July with the responsibility of reforming the security sector and boosting the social and economic conditions.
The case of the Democratic Republic of Congo will also be tackled. The heads of state and governments will make decisions in a bid to help in its rebuilding stage.
The President of the African Union's Commission, Jean Ping, who thinks that "the African continent is disrupted security issues" told PANA that there were so many things which affect the future of Africa.
Mr. Ping said this special session on the conflict was important on the psychological, conceptual and practical fields.
This session on the examination and resolution of conflicts in Africa was decided during the 13th Summit of the African Union held in Sirte, Libya, from 1-3 of July.
The African leaders will also seize the opportunity of their presence in the Libyan capital to participate in Tuesday's 40th anniversary celebrations of the Libyan revolution.
Issues like the Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute and the problem in Darfur are on the agenda for discussion.
Below is the list of African leaders who had arrived at the summit as of 31tst August 2009
1. Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz (Mauritania),
2. Ahmed Abdallah Sambi (Comoros),
3. Blaise Compaore (Burkina Faso),
4. Denis Sassou Nguesso (Congo),
5. Abdelaziz Bo u teflika (Algeria),
6. Amadou Toumani Toure (Mali),
7. Mamadou Tandja (Niger),
8. Omar Hassen El Bechir (Sudan),
9. Yayi Bony (Benin)
10 The president of the Gui n ean National Assembly and acting Head of State, Raymondo Pierra,
11 Pedreo Pires (Cape Verde),
12 Fradique de Menzez (Sao Tome and Principe),
13 Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe),
14 Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania),
15 Lionel Bandera (Dominica),
16 François Bozize (Central African Republic),
17 Yahya Jameh (Gambia),
18 Mohamed Abdelaziz (Sahara),
19 Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi,
20 The Ghanaian Vice President, John Dramani Mohamed,
21 The Equatorial Guinea Prime Minister, Ignacio Milam Tang,
22 Nigerian Vice President, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan,
23 Gabonese Prime Minister, Paul Biyoghe Mba,
24 The Somali Prime Minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke,
25 The Lesotho Prime Minister, Pakilita Mosesili.
Besides the African leaders also other heads of states like Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez and the leader of the Dominican Republic, Mr Louis Fernando, as well as Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo attended the African Union summit in Libya.
AU Summit selects Ethiopia to represent Africa at Copenhagen Conference on climate change
Special Session of African Heads of State and Government being held in Tripoli, Libya has selected Ethiopia to represent Africa in the upcoming Copenhagen Global Conference on climate change due to be held in the coming December.
Ethiopia was selected among eight nominated countries for its outstanding role played in G20 and G8 Summits as well as in other international fora to ensure the interest and benefits of the continent.
Ethiopia is among the few countries that enshrined environment protection in their constitutions and strong position in mitigating climate change.
Earlier, the Special Session, the Executive Committee of Foreign Ministers of the African Union gathered in Libya's capital, Tripoli urged for immediate implementation of sanction on Eritrea.
In a resolution they issued after the meeting they said the ultimate solution to ensure durable peace and security in Somalia is the immediate imposition of sanction on Eritrea.
Hence, they called for concreted effort of the African Union and the international community for the effective implementation of the sanction .
The Special Session is also expected to review the various conflict crisis in Africa and look at ways and means of ensuring the effective implementation of the decisions adopted by the AU policy organs on the issues.
CRISIS WATCH: In Yemen, the ongoing conflict in the north escalated as the government launched an offensive against the Zaidi Shiite Houthi rebels in Saada and Amran provinces, backed by airstrikes and artillery fire. Proposals from both sides have failed to result in a ceasefire. Dozens are reported to have been killed including civilians, and the UN reported at least 35,000 displaced since early August.
The Anti-War Right Re-Emerges
Compiled by Chris Stirewalt
New York Times -- Groundwork Is Laid for New Troops in Afghanistan
The report on the condition on the newly expanded U.S. mission in Afghanistan is making its way to the president´s desk. But as writers Peter Baker and Dexter Filkins point out, sooner or later, President Obama is going to have to read it and the assessment that the 21,000 additional troops committed to the country are not sufficient to the nation-building job he has set out for them. Estimates for what the eventual ask will be hover around 35,000 more troops for the increasingly violent country.
The president took a bellicose line two weeks ago (calling it a "war of necessity") and accepted ownership of the war months before that when he increased troop levels and changed the mission, but on Tuesday his spokesman heaped blame on the Bush administration saying that the neglect of past years had caused deeper problems than expected.
That won´t wash with Democrats who have been abandoning the war effort in droves. Most Americans are pessimistic about the war and a majority thing the conflict is not worth fighting, but on both counts, the members of the president´s own party have the strongest feelings. Having 100,000 troops in Afghanistan while missing the mark on key domestic issues could invite an insurrection on the Left.
"An expanded American footprint would also increase Mr. Obama´s entanglement with an Afghan government widely viewed as corrupt and illegitimate. Multiplying allegations of fraud in the Aug. 20 presidential election have left Washington with little hope for a credible partner in the war once the results are final.
The latest tally, with nearly half of the polling stations counted, showed President Hamid Karzai leading with 45.9 percent against 33.3 percent for his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, Reuters reported."
George Will -- Time to Get Out of Afghanistan
President Obama´s political calculus on Afghanistan depends on keeping the Bush administration´s congressional war coalition together – almost all Republicans and some Democrats – in order to ensure funding.
But Will, the dean of conservative columnists, has taken a strong stand against the more ambitious aims of the Obama administration as impossible to achieve. He favors reducing the American presence to what can be delivered from offshore or nearby bases and aimed at making sure al Qaeda or other terrorists don´t return.
Will is hugely influential with congressional Republicans and if his argument for less, not more, troops takes hold, President Obama could be in an untenable political position.
"´The U.S. strategy is ´clear, hold and build.´ Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- ´control´ is an elastic concept -- and ´ 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime.´ Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. … Afghanistan's $23 billion gross domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?...
Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a ´renewal of trust´ of the Afghan people in the government, but the Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so ´inept, corrupt and predatory´ that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, ´who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot.´"
Wall Street Journal -- Health-Care Anger Has Deeper Roots
With members of Congress sweating out their impending returns to Washington, writers Janet Adamy and Jonathan Weisman offer a handy guide for what went so wrong, so fast on health care. A great overview piece that reaches the inexorable conclusion that the president overreached panicked conservatives already worried about rowing government and worried moderates worried about the competency.
Meanwhile, the administration´s pet columnist, David Brooks, issues a dire warning for the president to reject the Left, refuse to support passing health care through the parliamentary trick of budget reconciliation, and return to the centrist nature that Brooks always saw in Obama so much more clearly than the rest of us. "Events," Brooks says, "have pushed Obama to the Left." Oh, David.
But back at the ranch, members of Congress are girding themselves for the final battle in which Democrats will be asked to make insanely risky votes in order to protect themselves against the appearance of weakness that leads to eventual defeat.
"August, typically a sleepy month, dealt Democrats a tough hand this year.
Snafus in the federal "cash for clunkers" program -- which gave people rebates to trade in gas-guzzling cars for more fuel-efficient new vehicles -- highlighted how disorganization can hamper government plans. It was the bloodiest month for U.S. troops so far in the war in Afghanistan. Attorney General Eric Holder poked a potential hornets' nest by appointing a prosecutor to investigate Central Intelligence Agency interrogators. And White House budget forecasters said they now project $9 trillion of additional federal debt over the next decade, adding $2 trillion to an earlier estimate.
Last year's election gave Democrats a mandate for big changes that they feel still applies. They won seats by arguing that Republicans had failed to act to keep the housing market and financial system from crumbling.
Washington Post -- Study Raises Questions About Cost Savings From Preventive Care
One of the initial articles of faith about health-care reform was that preventative care would save money in the long run thereby making spending $1 trillion or $1.6 trillion now pay for itself later.
Alas, every reputable study has said that while preventative care is better for patients, since it improves the quality of life, it offers no savings. The up front costs and greater longevity cancel out the savings from avoiding extraordinary care later on.
But writer Lori Montgomery has found a University of Chicago study that says that if you only go a little longer – say 25 years – investments in preventative care can be not revenue neutral, but less budget shattering… if you apply it only to young diabetics.
Montgomery found that the congressional delegate from the Virgin Islands would like the CBO to start scoring things on the quarter-century basis, rather than those mean old decades it has always used.
"But CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf said the agency already has the authority to look at costs over a longer term, though not in the context of official estimates. He called the new study, which has been reviewed by CBO staff, ´exactly the sort of research that we use in building our cost estimates. And we will consider these findings in future estimates we do in this area.´
In its own analysis of preventive care, CBO said earlier this month that the cost of making cancer screening, cholesterol management and other services broadly available is likely to far outweigh any savings ultimately generated. The new study looks at a more narrow population -- people already diagnosed with diabetes -- and projects the cost of providing them with a very specific regimen of frequent checkups and diagnostic tests that has produced predictable results in clinical trials. (Treatment for other forms of disease may vary in their costs.)"
New York Times -- Justice Dept. to Recharge Enforcement of Civil Rights
Attorney General Eric Holder either thinks that the only way he can help his boss succeed is by making the Obama administration into a liberal crusade or that Obama is a one-term president so he´d better get while the getting is good.
Otherwise, he might go just a bit slower.
Less than a week after loosing the FBI on the CIA to prosecute terrorist mistreatment, Holder was talking to the New York Times about his goal of fanning out 400 civil rights lawyers across the country to probe not just individual violations of civil rights but instances when outcomes suggest that unintentional bias exists – aka the quota police.
Holder told writer Charlie Savage that the expansion isn´t a shift, but a restoration of the department´s original role under the 1957 mandate of the agency.
"Now the changes that Mr. Holder is pushing through have led some conservatives, still stinging from accusations that the Bush appointees ´politicized´ the unit, to start throwing the same charge back at President Obama´s team.
The agency´s critics cite the downsizing of a voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party, an investigation into whether an Arizona sheriff´s enforcement of immigration laws has discriminated against Hispanics, and the recent blocking of a new rule requiring Georgia voters to prove their citizenship. (Under the Bush administration, the division had signed off on a similar law requiring Georgia voters to furnish photographic identification, rejecting criticism that legitimate minority voters are disproportionately more likely not to have driver´s licenses or passports.)
Among the critics, Hans von Spakovsky, a former key Bush-era official at the division, has accused the Obama team of ´nakedly political´ maneuvers."
Time to Get Out of Afghanistan
By George F. Will
"Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."
"I'm sorry about the drama," writes Allen, an enthusiastic infantryman willing to die "so that each of you may grow old." He says: "I put everything in God's hands." And: "Semper Fi!"
Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."
U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.
The U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.
Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.' "
Afghanistan's $23 billion gross domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?
Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean. Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but the Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."
Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?
U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.
So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.
Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.
George Will is wrong about Afghanistan
By Christian Brose
I have two quick thoughts in response to George Will's argument in today's Washington Post that the United States should pull out of Afghanistan and instead "do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small potent Special Forces units..."
First, the strategy Will proposes looks a lot closer to the one we've been following for the past few years -- to little effect -- as opposed to the one General McChrystal is now proposing. Yes, there has been much talk of counter-insurgency of late, but when you starve such a strategy of resources and rely on leaders who seem either unwilling or unable to implement it, you are largely left, by necessity, with whack-a-mole counterterrorism. And we've seen what that's gotten us: a reliance on airstrikes that have produced huge civilian casualties, the increasing loss of territory to the Taliban, a Karzai government that has grown less effective and more corrupt the weaker it has become -- in short, everything that Will is inveighing against at present. I find little reason to think that things in Afghanistan will improve to the benefit of our national interest if we do more of what clearly hasn't been working these past few years.
Second, I am happy that Will proposed an alternative strategy. Too often, especially as Afghanistan is concerned, critics criticize -- and there is certainly much to criticize in Afghanistan -- without stating what they'd do instead. That said, it seems to me that critics like Will -- or others, for that matter, like Steve Walt and Michael Cohen -- should also be willing to explain why their alternative policy is better given what would likely transpire as a result. To me, that would be some kind of a return to ethnic fighting or civil war a la the 1990s, the likely collapse or complete marginalization of the current Kabul government, the expansion of Taliban control over even more of the country, an even greater increase in civilian causalities as the United States and NATO "do what can be done from offshore," a return to backing whatever Afghan factions (read: warlords) are willing to take the fight to our enemies, a dangerous rise in regional instability, and the acceptance of all the misery that would ensue.
What's more, it seems that the burden of proof is on the critics as to why this flaming mess would not also be a threat to our interests, given recent history. The hardest of the hard core "Next-Gen Taliban" commanders seem even more violent, more radical, and more sympathetic to Al Qaeda's ideology than their elders, like Mullah Omar. So do we really think that these guys, if they gain a foothold in Afghanistan, will not then turn around and begin to press their advantage into Pakistan? Do we really think that they will not reopen Afghanistan as an Al Qaeda safe haven, considering how intermingled and intermarried and fellow-traveling the Taliban vanguard now is with Al Qaeda? All of these scenarios, and more, seem like pretty safe assumptions in the event of a U.S. withdrawal. And as for Will's point that there are other potential safe havens in the world where Al Qaeda could be (Somalia, Yemen, etc.) -- this is true, but that's not a reason to stop trying to deny Al Qaeda and its allies a safe haven where they are currently (which, admittedly, is more Pakistan than Afghanistan -- for now).
The problem in Afghanistan is not that a counterinsurgency strategy has failed, but that is hasn't really ever been tried. There are risks with either strategy, be it reinforcement or withdrawal, but I'd like to hear from the critics why their alternative is better in light of its likely implications, which to me seem pretty awful. Given how bad things would likely get in Afghanistan if we adopted Will's prescriptions, shouldn't we at least give McChrystal's plan a decent period of time to work before pulling the ripcord?
We do not send pictures with these reports, because of the volume, but picture this emetic scene with your inner eye:
A dying Somali child in the macerated arms of her mother besides their bombed shelter with Islamic graffiti looks at a fat trader, who discusses with a local militia chief and a UN representative at a harbour while USAID provided GM food from subsidised production is off-loaded by WFP into the hands of local "distributors" and dealers - and in the background a western warship and a foreign fishing trawler ply the waters of a once sovereign, prosper and proud nation, which was a role model for honesty and development in the Horn of Africa. (If you feel that this is overdrawn - come with us into Somalia and see the even more cruel reality yourself!)
There is no limit to what a person can do or how far one can go to help - if one doesn't mind who gets the credit !
ECOTERRA Intl. maintains a register for persons missing or abducted in the Somali seas (Foreign seafarers as well as Somalis). Inquiries by family member can be sent by e-mail to office[at]ecoterra-international.org
For families of presently captive seafarers - in order to advise and console their worries - ECOTERRA Intl. can establish contacts with professional seafarers, who had been abducted in Somalia, and their wives as well as of a Captain of a sea-jacked and released ship, who agreed to be addressed "with questions, and we will answer truthfully".
ECOTERRA - ALERTS and pending issues:
PIRATE ATTACK GULF OF ADEN: Advice on Who to Contact and What to Do http://www.noonsite.com/Members/sue/R2008-09-08-2
NATURAL RESOURCES & ARMED FISH POACHERS: Foreign navies entering the 200nm EEZ of Somalia and foreign helicopters and troops must respect the fact that especially all wildlife is protected by Somali national as well as by international laws and that the protection of the marine resources of Somalia from illegally fishing foreign vessels should be an integral part of the anti-piracy operations. Likewise the navies must adhere to international standards and not pollute the coastal waters with oil, ballast water or waste from their own ships but help Somalia to fight against any dumping of any waste (incl. diluted, toxic or nuclear waste). So far and though the AU as well as the UN has called since long on other nations to respect the 200 nm EEZ, only now the two countries (Spain and France) to which the most notorious vessels and fleets are linked have come up with a declaration that they will respect the 200 nm EEZ of Somalia but so far not any of the navies operating in the area pledged to stand against illegal fishing. So far not a single illegal fishing vessel has been detained by the naval forces, though they had been even informed about several actual cases, where an intervention would have been possible. Illegally operating Tuna fishing vessels (many from South Korea, some from Greece and China) carry now armed personnel and force their way into the Somali fishing grounds - uncontrolled or even protected by the naval forces mandated to guard the Somali waters against any criminal activity, which included arms carried by foreign fishing vessels in Somali waters.
LLWs / NLWs: According to recently leaked information the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden are also used as a cover-up for the live testing of recently developed arsenals of so called non-lethal as well as sub-lethal weapons systems. (Pls request details) Neither the Navies nor the UN has come up with any code of conduct in this respect, while the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program (JNLWP) is sponsoring several service-led acquisition programs, including the VLAD, Joint Integration Program, and Improved Flash Bang Grenade. Alredy in use in Somalia are so called Non-lethal optical distractors, which are visible laser devices that have reversible optical effects. These types of non-blinding laser devices use highly directional optical energy. Somalia is also a testing ground for the further developments of the Active Denial System (ADS) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD). If new developments using millimeter wave sources that will help minimize the size, weight, and system cost of an effective Active Denial System which provides "ADS-ACTD-like" repel effects, are used has not yet been revealed. Obviously not only the US is developing and using these kind of weapons as the case of MV MARATHON showed, where a Spanish naval vessel was using optical lasers - the stand-off was then broken by the killing of one of the hostage seafarers. Local observers also claim that HEMI devices, producing Human Electro-Muscular Incapacitation (HEMI) Bioeffects, have been used in the Gulf of Aden against Somalis. Exposure to HEMI devices, which can be understood as a stun-gun shot at an individual over a larger distance, causes muscle contractions that temporarily disable an individual. Research efforts are underway to develop a longer-duration of this effect than is currently available. The live tests are apparently done without that science understands yet the effects of HEMI electrical waveforms on a human body.
ECOTERRA Intl., whose work does focus on nature- and human-rights-protection and - as the last international environmental organization still working in Somalia - had alerted ship-owners since 1992, many of whom were fishing illegally in the 200 nm Exclusive Economic Zone, to stay away from Somali waters. The non-governmental organization had requested the international community many times for help to protect the coastal waters of the war-torn state, but now lawlessness has seriously increased and gone out of hand.
ECOTERRA members with marine and maritime expertise, joined by it's ECOP-marine group, are closely and continuously monitoring and advising on the Somali situation. (for previous information concerning the topics please google keywords ECOTERRA (and) SOMALIA)
The network of the SEAFARERS ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME helped significantly in most sea-jack cases. ECOTERRA Intl. is working in Somalia since 1986 on human-rights and nature protection, while ECOP-marine concentrates on illegal fishing and the protection of the marine ecosystems. Your support counts too.
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