Landing the Big One

Landing the Big One

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Somali Pirates




NY Times "The Lede" blog does the Somali pirates and some others in Pirate Whack-a-Mole on the High Seas. Comments are fun, too.

Some people seem to not understand that acts of piracy within another nation's territorial waters is not "high seas" piracy but rather a local law enforcement problem - sea robbery or simple kidnapping. Somalia, since it lacks a real government presents a special case in how local pirates, who are carrying out their predatory acts on the high seas and then running for protection of Somali sovereign waters, where there is no threat from local police or military. Certainly the French had no problem with the concept of "hot pursuit" into those waters and the adjacent land and can argue, based on comments of various local "officials" that they had permission to take the action they did.

Imagine the uproar if the U.S. had done the same thing...

More video of pirate capture here.

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