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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 6:00 pm Post subject: Re: British tanker siezed by Somali Pirates |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
[q
The primitive form of socialism (more like tribal communism) practiced by American Indians was the cause of their glacially slow rate of development. They had no property rights and did not allow the ownership of land, nor did they allow any other form of wealth accumulation which means advancement was impossible.
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Completely untrue. Indian chiefs/shamen had far more wealth (as they measured it back then) then some ordinary tribe member.
And as for the ownership of land many many bloody battles were fought with other tribes over prime hunting or fishing grounds.
To deny this is to deny reality. |
Ontheway isn't in the business of facts. He has to deny that the Native Americans were extremely Libertarian because, if he doesn't, his entire world view crashes down. Suddenly Libertarianism isn't a recipie for a perfect utopia, but instead becomes a total social dead-end. But he a priori knows Libertarianism is a perfect form of society. QED, the Native Americans weren't Libertarian. His talk of land ownership is pure justification; anyone can see the reason most Native tribes didn't bother with things like deeds for specific plots of land is because land was in such ridiculous abundance that it was meaningless. |
This post is needlessly ad hominem and uncalled for. |
No, it's not. Ad hominem argumentation is saying someone's argument is wrong because of some irrelevent, (usually negative) fact about them. That's not what I'm doing here. Rather, I'm pointing out the reason for ontheway's behavior while reinforcing how baseless his assertions (and I use assertions rather than arguments quite deliberatively here) are. And there's no insults in my post at all (although the truth about his behavior certainly isn't flattering, I give you that).
I know you feel compelled out of extreme dedication to cheerlead and stand up for ontheway, bacasper, but this is a bit ridiculous. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
What will change is policies about merchant vessels being armed. It will take time, but if the Somalis keep at it long enough, it will change.
Of course, then you'll blame westerners for defending themselves from kidnapping and robbery with force. |
| Caniff wrote: |
| Allow merchant vessels passing thru the area to carry surface-to-surface missiles (or whatever ) with the soldiers required to operate them. Blow up the punks that approach without authorization. |
| UrbanMyth wrote: |
| this living is going to get them killed if they keep on provoking the international community. |
I'm afraid your fantasies of mowing down incoming pirates can never be realised.
I know this is torturing your arrogant western mindsets, but you are at the mercy of the pirates I'm afraid.
| Quote: |
Crews on oil tankers aren't allowed to smoke above deck, much less carry guns, for fear of igniting the ship's payload.
While some ships traveling in the region have been outfitted with high-pressure water guns and piercing noisemakers to repel pirates, even this is shunned on oil tankers for fear of triggering a response from pirates armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
There is also the threat that an accident or gunfight could lead to a leak that would devastate thousands of miles of ocean or coastline. |
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_13896911#ixzz0bOaO6vQ1
When will you Americans (Fox et al) realise that not all your problems can be solved by throwing more bullets at the situation? These aren't the days of Butch Cassidy anymore.
I've got a better solution, although I think it might be too hard for you to grasp:
| Quote: |
| the piracy problem in Somali cannot be solved through military means, as the pirates are driven by poverty after their waters were depleted by illegal fishing and toxic dumping. To end piracy, the world should sit down with the influential clan elders and Islamists instead of wasting money on military build-ups at sea and holding expensive conferences on piracy |
Andrew Mwangura, head of the East African Seafarers� Assistance Program, Dec.10, 2008.
http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/somalis-speak-out-why-we-don%E2%80%99t-condemn-our-pirates/ |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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Humans are incentive based. Arming our trade vessels would create a strong incentive for them to cease their inane, criminal activity. You're correct that all problems cannot be solved by bullets. Most problems I would even say cannot be solved by bullets. The problem of piracy can, though. If pirates begin experiencing a 0% success rate coupled with significant casualities, they'll stop pirating. In fact, this would have a strong impact on piracy on a global scale (remember, there are pirates in other areas of the world too).
I think it's time to begin arming sea vessels. There is no good reason to disallow it, and self-defense on the ocean is a good reason to allow it. As Junior says, right now these people are at the mercy of pirates, because we disallow them to defend themselves. It's a shame anytime force is required against our fellow human beings, but as soon as someone points a gun at you, they've left you no choice.
| Quote: |
| To end piracy, the world should sit down with the influential clan elders and Islamists instead of wasting money on military build-ups at sea and holding expensive conferences on piracy. |
Sit down with them and say what? "Please ask the pirates to stop stealing from us?" Even if these nameless influential clan elders could simply order the pirates to stop (a fairly questionable notion), they assurely wouldn't unless they received more in the bargain than is all ready being handed out to the pirates. No, extortion is unacceptable, and theft is unacceptable. Charity is a good thing, but we owe these people nothing, and if they are going to try to take from us by force, then paying them back in their own coin is totally reasonable.
The funny thing is I can envison a situation where we do sit down with those leaders, do hand them over the unearned wealth they ask for, and then the pirates keep attacking anyway. And I can see you smugly sitting here applauding the pirates, writing off the agreement with the clan elders in question as, "A deal with criminal warlords, which the noble pirates are by no means obliged to respect."
The solution to ending their poverty is forming an effective national government. Only they can do this for themselves, and it's their failure to do so that is responsible for their poverty. Western nations aren't the parents of the world, and African nations aren't in some state of perpetual minority. These nations are ultimately responsible for themselves, and they are failing themselves. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 9:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
I think it's time to begin arming sea vessels. There is no good reason to disallow it. |
Obviously you didn't read my post. let me repeat it:
"Crews on oil tankers aren't allowed to smoke above deck, much less carry guns, for fear of igniting the ship's payload.
While some ships traveling in the region have been outfitted with high-pressure water guns and piercing noisemakers to repel pirates, even this is shunned on oil tankers for fear of triggering a response from pirates armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
There is also the threat that an accident or gunfight could lead to a leak that would devastate thousands of miles of ocean or coastline. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Junior, do you have a little thing going on for pirates? I'm getting the feeling that your position has less to do with illegal fishing and nuclear waste dumping and more to do with you jumping around on your bed pretending you're Captain Hook. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
"Crews on oil tankers aren't allowed to smoke above deck, much less carry guns, for fear of igniting the ship's payload.
While some ships traveling in the region have been outfitted with high-pressure water guns and piercing noisemakers to repel pirates, even this is shunned on oil tankers for fear of triggering a response from pirates armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
There is also the threat that an accident or gunfight could lead to a leak that would devastate thousands of miles of ocean or coastline. |
You're talking about one very specific type of ship here, first of all. Pirates haven't exclusively and only targetted oil vessels. Second, safety training can alieviate the majority of those concerns, especially since it's not as if crew members are going to be carrying around guns randomly shooting them off during transit. Only in the very rare incident of a pirate attack would they utilize them. Finally, yes, a gunfight could lead to a leak that would devestate thousands of miles of coastline, so if the Somalis really care about their ocean, they will stop pirating to avoid that risk, because it's their coast that's at stake.
Time to arm merchant vessels. If Somalis care about their ocean, they'll stop pirating in order to avoid the potential risks to it. But they don't care about it, and never did; they pirate for easy money in large quantities. They pirate so they can eat in restaurants and drive Mercedes Benz cars. They don't pirate to clean up the ocean, nor to protect the ocean. If they did, they would never have tried to pirate tankers in the first place for fear of the very things you're talking about. Piracy -- and I'm talking about world wide, not just outside Somalia -- is a concern that trumps the hypothetical hazzards you're discussing.
Let's face it, you've got nothing. The pirates utilize criminal, unethical means like kidnapping, robbery, and at least occasionally no doubt murder. They clearly and obviously are in it for the money rather than based on any concern for illegal fishing or waste dumping, as they use the money they get on unearned luxuries instead of things like waste clean up, and they do not limit themselves to vessels engaged in illegal fishing or nuclear waste dumping. Their inability to form an effective government is the ultimate source of the problem in question, so they really can't even blame outsiders for this mess; they caused the problem, and only they can solve it by uniting around an effective national government and policing their waters legimately. Finally, negotiations with them are totally useless (which you at heart recognize, as you didn't even attempt to try to respond to my rebuttal of your suggestion that we use diplomacy to resolve this problem).
These aren't noble men, these aren't men pushed into desparate behavior by a bad situation. These are criminals taking advantage of the situation, and your applause for them is nothing more than poorly thought out, knee-jerk anti-Western rhetoric. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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| caniff wrote: |
| Junior, do you have a little thing going on for pirates? I'm getting the feeling that your position has less to do with illegal fishing and nuclear waste dumping and more to do with you jumping around on your bed pretending you're Captain Hook. |
Is that what you say when you lose a debate? 
| Fox wrote: |
| Second, safety training can alieviate the majority of those concerns, especially since it's not as if crew members are going to be carrying around guns randomly shooting them off during transit. |
You still don't get it.
Firing at pirates from the deck of your oil tanker will seem fun for about 2 seconds until they return fire and your massive floating container of flammable liquids blows sky high.
| Quote: |
| Time to arm merchant vessels. |
Genius! I think you better write to Maersk with this novel idea. I'm sure they haven't thought of or fully considered it until now.
Face it. You and the multi-billion dollar oil industry are helpless in the face of a few guys in wooden motorboats.  |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
You still don't get it.
Firing at pirates from the deck of your oil tanker will seem fun for about 2 seconds until they return fire and your massive floating container of flammable liquids blows sky high. |
It won't seem fun for 2 seconds. It won't seem fun at all. It's required to stop the inanity, however. And again, oil tankers are one type of sea vessel among many that pirates attempt to capture. Of course you want to focus specifically and only on them, because it's the only way you can make you inane point about, "Oh, maybe the ship will explode!" Yeah, it might explode, and the people blowing it up would be the Somali pirates you're so fond of.
If Somali pirates are really willing to go around attemping to blow up sea vessels for the Hell of it, any remote, hypothetical claim that theyre behaving at all ethically is gone. And yet, you don't seem to care. You're so immersed in your irrational anti-West rhetoric that you don't even see you're cheering for people you personally believe will fire at vessels full of oil, at great risk to the ocean around their own country.
| Junior wrote: |
| Face it. You and the multi-billion dollar oil industry are helpless in the face of a few guys in wooden motorboats. |
How am I helpless here? The pirates don't directly impact me in any way. They don't interact with my life. Saying I'm helpless before them is like saying I'm helpless before the searing fires of a solar flare. Sure, if I was standing right next to either it might have an immense impact on my life, but only an utterly retarded person would say either thing, because I'm not next to either, and almost assuredly never will be.
As I said, you've got nothing. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| And again, oil tankers are one type of sea vessel among many that pirates attempt to capture. Of course you want to focus specifically and only on them, because it's the only way you can make you inane point about, "Oh, maybe the ship will explode!" |
Its not an inane point. Its one held by every government and shipping company out there.
| Quote: |
| Yeah, it might explode, and the people blowing it up would be the Somali pirates you're so fond of. |
You're trying to demonise the Somali coastguard for hypothetically acting in self-defense in a hypothetical situation?
Until now they have been nothing more than gentlemen. There have been no rockets fired at your combustible floating bombs.
| Quote: |
| How am I helpless here? The pirates don't directly impact me in any way. |
Except to make your fossil-fuel lifestyle that much more costly and unsustainable and injure your arrogant sense of capitalist dominance? |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
| caniff wrote: |
| Junior, do you have a little thing going on for pirates? I'm getting the feeling that your position has less to do with illegal fishing and nuclear waste dumping and more to do with you jumping around on your bed pretending you're Captain Hook. |
Is that what you say when you lose a debate?
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I wasn't aware that we were debating, per se , I was just pointing out that you seem to enjoy romanticizing the Somali boat-criminals as if they were something that shouldn't be blown out of the water. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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| caniff wrote: |
I wasn't aware that we were debating, per se , I was just pointing out that you seem to enjoy romanticizing the Somali boat-criminals |
You made an ill-thought out point that was easily dismissed. Its no big deal Caniff. Just get over it. Move on...
| Caniff wrote: |
| Allow merchant vessels passing thru the area to carrysurface-to-surface missiles (or whatever ) with the soldiers required to operate them. Blow up the punks that approach without authorization. |
So you have a romantic fetish for men in uniform with surface-to-air missiles? |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:00 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| No, it's not the same decision anyone would make in their situation, because there's many other Somalis in their situation who didn't make the same choice. The pirates are in the decided minority. |
The pirates had the choice, others didn't. Maybe it's not cool to applaud it, but it's totally understandable. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 12:03 am Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
| caniff wrote: |
I wasn't aware that we were debating, per se , I was just pointing out that you seem to enjoy romanticizing the Somali boat-criminals |
You made an ill-thought out point that was easily dismissed. Its no big deal Caniff. Just get over it. Move on..
No, I still think first pointing and then perhaps shooting weapons at them is a viable option.
| Caniff wrote: |
| Allow merchant vessels passing thru the area to carrysurface-to-surface missiles (or whatever ) with the soldiers required to operate them. Blow up the punks that approach without authorization. |
So you have a romantic fetish for men in uniform with surface-to-air missiles? |
You're right, I'm a total homo - Ship Ahoy!! |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 1:00 am Post subject: |
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| Junior wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| And again, oil tankers are one type of sea vessel among many that pirates attempt to capture. Of course you want to focus specifically and only on them, because it's the only way you can make you inane point about, "Oh, maybe the ship will explode!" |
Its not an inane point. Its one held by every government and shipping company out there. |
Time for it to change.
| Junior wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Yeah, it might explode, and the people blowing it up would be the Somali pirates you're so fond of. |
You're trying to demonise the Somali coastguard for hypothetically acting in self-defense in a hypothetical situation? |
We're not talking about the Somali coastguard, we're talking about pirates. Shooting at someone who you are attempting to rob isn't self-defense. The cargo ships are acting in self defense, the pirates are the aggressors.
| Junior wrote: |
| Until now they have been nothing more than gentlemen. |
Gentlemen don't ride up to ships carrying weapons and hijack them. And of course they didn't fire on unarmed civilians; they made more money ransoming them.
| Junior wrote: |
| Quote: |
| How am I helpless here? The pirates don't directly impact me in any way. |
Except to make your fossil-fuel lifestyle that much more costly and unsustainable and injure your arrogant sense of capitalist dominance? |
These pirates have realistically zero impact on our (yes, you're part of the group on this one, and quite hypocritically so) fossil-fuel lifestyle; a few million spread out over an entire economy has no meaningful impact on me. As far as my arrogant sense of capitalist dominance, I have none to injure unfortunately. Squirm all you want, but it's ridiculous to insist these pirates affect me in any way. Honestly, the worst impact they actually have on me is making me feel pity that instead of acting constructively to improve their nation, they turned to crime. That pity doesn't cause me to condone their criminal actions, though, and unlike you I'm no hypocrite that's going to blame the West collectively for the willing actions of pirates who steal from the West so they can drive fancy cars and eat expensive food. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 1:05 am Post subject: |
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| RufusW wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| No, it's not the same decision anyone would make in their situation, because there's many other Somalis in their situation who didn't make the same choice. The pirates are in the decided minority. |
The pirates had the choice, others didn't. Maybe it's not cool to applaud it, but it's totally understandable. |
Sure, it's understandable. It's almost always understandable when people turn to violent crime. There's always some reason that can be understood. So what? They're still looking at a problem -- one that ultimately they've caused for themselves by failing to form an effective national government -- and instead of trying to work constructively to fix it, they're choosing to take advantage of the situation, become criminals, and rob innocents so they can enjoy luxuries.
Understandable? Yes. Laudable? No. Ethical? No. Constructive? No. These men -- who, remember, are part of the tiny minority that chose to turn to piracy in this situation -- are detrimental to human society. |
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