Pirates gave crew $600 at release- walking around money

Pirates demanded $250,000 ransom, gave crew $600 at release . Such nice people.

Kosovo: Now it's Kosovar Albanians against...Kosovar Albanians

The Strategy Page notes in military news about Balkans that it's "Albanians versus Albanians" in Kosovo and warns, as some of us have been saying for some time:

Kosovo may well continue to be a UN protectorate for several more years.

Oh boy.

Republic of the Philippines "Sea Marshals" draw interest

The Philippines has a "sea marshal" program which has drawn the attention of some Southeast Asia neighbors like Australia and New Zealand:

THE COUNTRY'S year-old Task Force Sea Marshals, which was put in place after the SuperFerry14 bombing last year, has attracted international attention.

Representatives from the uniformed services of Australia and New Zealand expressed interest in the sea marshal system that the Philippine Coast Guard had implemented to prevent terrorist attacks in port areas, terminals and ships, according to Commodore Wilfredo Tamayo of the PCG's National Capital Region-Central Luzon office.

Tamayo said the representatives met with him last month to inquire about the system and to discuss a possible joint or cross-training of the countries' Coast Guard personnel.

"They saw the relevance of the sea marshals in maritime security," he told the Inquirer. "They wanted to pick whatever is applicable to them. They also offered assistance. (The discussion) was more on the cooperation in the fight against terrorism."

Good to see some international cooperation in this area. The Philippines has a lot of ferries to cover its many islands.

Antipiracy watchdog calls for more security in Malacca Strait - Everyone talks about the weather, too, but...

Antipiracy watchdog calls for more security in Malacca Strait. Now that the hostages from the recent pirate attacks have been freed (with or without ransom), the International Maritime Bureau says something should be done about piracy in the Strait of Malacca. But, as Mark Twain once said, "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it."

We'll see...

Update: By the way, the cynic in me says "follow the money" to figure out why it's so hard to get a handle on this problem. It would not be the first time that pirates paid a little "protection" to have local authorities look the other direction. When all the nations adjoining the Strait begin effective patrols, then I certainly will be proved wrong and will happily admit it.

"Why we fight" from the front lines

Great read here from a soldier who gets it and who can help it make sense to the rest of us.

Hat tip: Black Five

Baseball has steroids, cricket has a 15 degree rule

Controversy in sport here.

It's a "doosra!"

Surviving for another week (at least)

Good job Heels!

Pirates release 3 kidnapped Asian sailors

Pirates release 3 kidnapped Asian sailors

The boat's Japanese captain, Nobuo Inoue, 56, spoke by phone with the shipping company's president and confirmed that he and his two abducted crew members were safely released, according to Japanese Foreign Ministry official Masahiro Takagi.

Takagi declined to comment further until he was able to meet with Inoue, Kuroda and the Filipino sailor, Edgardo Sadang, 41. The ministry official declined to say whether ransom was paid.

Japan's public broadcaster NHK said the sailors were released early Monday in the southern Thai province of Satun. Thai authorities plucked the three from a small boat in the waters about 12 miles off the coast, NHK said.

A Fantasy-tic Press Conference

From The American Thinker, Tim McNabb engages in a little daydream here.

I wish.

Yes, I think we got that idea

Pirates who abducted three of the Japanese tugboat Idaten's 14-member crew in last Monday's attack in the Malacca Strait were after hostages, not money, the ship's owner said Saturday.

Source: Daily Yomiuri On-Line

Airliner Anti-Missile Defense

Interesting and timely idea for airliner protection:Britening.

Hope we never need to find out if it works.

Indiana bill would require photo ID at vote

Ind. bill would require photo ID at vote. Seems like a good idea to me. Of course the Democrats feel differently:

But Democrats have said the law would make voting difficult for low-income and elderly people who don't have state or federal IDs or driver's licenses.

An amendment to the bill passed Thursday to allow residents in state-licensed nursing homes to be exempt from the requirement. The bill also would offer free state-issued photo IDs to those who can't afford the $9 charge. The state would also have to mail out notices alerting citizens to the requirement.

Go Indiana!

Lack of new refining capacity hurts oil supplies

Oil - Lack of new refining capacity hurts oil supplies

( $) Oil companies' failure to add new refining capacity to keep up with global demand for petroleum products is exacerbating already tight oil supply conditions and fuelling the rise in oil prices to nominal record highs.

Stricter environmental laws in the US, Europe, China and India are compounding the lack of excess refinery capacity as companies invest in new equipment to reduce sulphur content at the expense of adding new capacity...
Western governments have blamed the high prices on the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), which is to hold a meeting in Iran next Wednesday.

Mr Currie pointed out however that the refining problem was outside Opec's control even though some of its members, such as Iran, Iraq and Nigeria, have to import petroleum products because they lack sufficient domestic refining capacity. Mr Currie expects refinery capacity growth to lag behind oil demand for the rest of the decade.

Goldman Sachs estimates a total of 2.575m b/d of refinery capacity added by the end of 2010, but global oil demand growth is expected to average about 1.5m b/d for the rest of the decade.

Most of the new refineries are to be built in Asia, particularly China, but no new ones are planned for the US and western Europe, which have built none for three decades. This has led the US to import an ever increasing volume of oil products, and may force Europe to become a net importer of oil products.

Sat Roopra, analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said the tightness in global refinery capacity followed a period of substantial surplus capacity following a massive expansion by Asian refiners during the mid-1990s. This turned to idle capacity following the region's currency crisis in 1997-8.

Graham Sharp, head of energy trading at Trafigura, the commodities trading group, said the quick swing from massive surplus to thin spare capacity has caught off-guard most of the international oil companies that own a sizeable share of the world's refining capacity.

Despite the attractive margins offered by the industry, listed oil companies are reluctant to spend billions of dollars on a new refinery at a time when investors are more concerned about their replacement of reserves.

(complete article here for free.

And this:

NACS Tells Congress to Encourage New Refining Capacity
July 16, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC -- "This subcommittee and this Congress must investigate ways to encourage, rather than discourage, the expansion of our nation's domestic capacity to make gasoline and diesel fuel," NACS Vice Chairman Bill Douglass told Congress on July 15.


Douglass, CEO of Douglass Distributing Co., testified before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality on behalf of NACS and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA) at a hearing titled, "The Status of the U.S. Refining Industry." At the hearing, he called upon Congress to take action to promote the expansion of domestic-refining capacity and to place a moratorium on the adoption of new boutique fuels.

"You may question why I am testifying today and what message independent motor-fuel marketers have to offer with respect to domestic-refining capacity," Douglass acknowledged. "Collectively, NACS and SIGMA members sell approximately 80 percent of the gasoline and diesel fuel in the United States each year. I feel strongly, as do my colleagues within NACS and SIGMA, that this nation needs additional domestic-refining capacity."

Subcommittee Chairman Ralph Hall (R-TX) called the hearing to learn more about the refining industry's ability to satisfy consumer demand and impediments to capacity expansion. Also called to testify were representatives of the refining industry, consumer-advocacy groups and environmental advocates.

"Our message to this subcommittee today is simple," said Douglass. "Our nation's domestic-refining industry is shrinking at a time when consumer demand continues to rise. Unless we collectively change course, domestic-refining capacity will be unable to keep pace with demand, gasoline and diesel-fuel price spikes will become the norm rather than the exception, and our nation will become more reliant on imports of gasoline and diesel fuel."

(source:here)

It's good to seek more oil, but we need refining capacity to process it.

From 2003 An oldie but still relevant article on sea-going terror

W O R L D T H R E A T S - The Next Threat: Terror At Sea

IN JUNE (2003), Greek authorities seized a suspicious ship, the Baltic Sky, in the Mediterranean Sea and found it packed with 8,000 detonators and 680 tonnes of explosives, mainly Anfo, a commercially manufactured ammonia nitrate-based explosive usually used in mining.

Ammonium nitrate is widely used as a fertiliser in Asia and elsewhere. The United States and other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries imported more than 1.6 million tonnes of ammonium nitrate in 2000, mostly by sea.

With some manipulation, ammonium nitrate can be made into a powerful explosive. It was used in the van bombings in Bali in October last year, and outside the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in August. Those bombings killed and injured several hundred people.

Ammonium nitrate was also the main explosive in the truck bombings in Nairobi, Mombasa and Oklahoma City as well as the first terrorist attempt to bomb the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

Greek Shipping Minister George Anomeritis said that the Baltic Sky's manifest showed that the cargo was supposedly bound for a company in Sudan with 'a post office box in Khartoum that did not exist'. He described the ship's potential explosive power as akin to 'an atomic bomb'.

This was an exaggeration but it certainly would have wreaked havoc had it been detonated near a port city.

CNN story from the time here



Interesting take on Turkish-Greek cooperation in the affair here and an unpleasant scenario:

In June 2003, the 2,000-ton coastal freighter named Baltic Sky picked up 750 tons of ammonium nitrate and about 8,000 detonators in Tunisia for delivery to Sudan. Instead of heading south, it traveled north through the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits into the Black Sea, came back through the Turkish straits into the Aegean Sea, and then entered the Ionian Sea, west of Greece, where Greek commandos seized it.

Ammonium nitrate, used primarily as agricultural fertilizer, is easily converted into explosives. Al Qaeda terrorists used ammonium nitrate to bomb the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and in a hotel bombing in Jakarta in August 2003.

The Irish Republican Army used ammonium nitrate to turn vehicles into bombs, and it was the main explosive in the 1995 Oklahoma City truck bombing by U.S. anti-government militants, as well as in the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Turkish police claim that ammonium nitrate explosives were used in the truck bombings in Istanbul in November 2003.

If the explosives aboard the Baltic Sky had been detonated under Istanbul�s Bosporus bridge, the bridge would have collapsed into one of the world�s busiest shipping channels, blocking the passage of oil tankers and cargo vessels for many months, costing the international economic system hundreds of billions of dollars, and killing vast numbers of Turkish civilians.

Instead, the vessel was spotted by Turkish officials near the Dardanelles, and Greek authorities � probably tipped off through NATO channels � began tracking it several days later. Shortly after seizure of the ship, NATO officials stated that they were actively seeking about 20 more �suspect� vessels in the Mediterranean they believed could be used by terrorists.

20 more?!

Also a reminder of what was going on at the time:

The ship which belongs to an Irish company is flying under the Camorra Island flag with Ukrainian and Azerbaijani sailors. As the �Baltic Sky� was moving in Greek waters while 25 of the world�s leaders were attending a �Summit� in Halkidiki (Greece presently holding the EE Presidency), there was no room for delay. The Greek government, the Ministry of Merchant Marine and the Coast Guard took immediate action. The suspicious ship was impounded, the crew was brought before the district attorney and the cargo confiscated! As can be seen, the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers has brought about a common American � European anti-terrorist front.

(source)

Thought it makes a nice reminder.

Writing of ships exploding (not my favorite topic) reminded me of three such explosions, The first in 1917 was the result of a collision in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 2,000 people died. Good site here. The second was the Port Chicago blast:

Just before
10:20 p.m. on July 17th, 1944, the worst home front disaster of WWII, occurred at a Naval pier in the San Francisco Bay Area. Five thousand tons of ammunition in ships being loaded by black sailors exploded, sending a blast more than 12,000 feet into the sky. The explosion destroyed the pier, a train, and both ships, instantly killing everyone aboard (some 320 men).

Site here. The third was the Texas City explosion:

When someone in Texas City mentions "The Explosion," no explanation is necessary. Everybody in the city knows what happened on April 16, 1947. Many remember it firsthand. That cool spring morning when a ship blew up in the port on Galveston Bay. The blast took nearly 600 lives and millions of dollars in property, and it scarred the town. A half-century later, people in Texas City celebrate their recovery, but still mourn their loss.

(source here)

By STEVE OLAFSON
Houston Chronicle

TEXAS CITY - On the morning of April 16, 1947, shortly after 8 a.m., the hatch on the No. 4 hold of the French ship the S.S. Grandcamp was opened so that stevedores could resume loading a shipment of fertilizer bound for Europe.

It was the beginning of a beautiful, cool day, a breeze was coming out of the north, and Texas City was at work again.

Much of the rest of the country, still in the grip of a postwar recession, couldn't say that, but Texas City was different.

Along the waterfront, there was plenty of work for the town's longshoremen, and next to the wharf stood a hissing, steaming landscape of chemical plants and oil refineries that provided steady, good-paying jobs for much of the town.

With a population of 18,000, Texas City was nothing less than a boomtown, a place the hometown newspaper declared with every edition to be "the port of opportunity - the heart of the greatest industrial development of the South."

If anyone complained about the smell, they were told it was the smell of money and that they'd soon grow accustomed to it.

Occasional fires and explosions were part of the equation. They had, in effect, come to be treated by the townspeople as a source of public theater. If lightning struck an oil storage tank to spark a fire, a crowd would gather to watch it burn. It was like going to the picture show.

The ship fire on April 16, 1947, was much the same, only better. No one in town had seen one quite like it. It was the color of the smoke that caught their eyes. Some called it a peach color, some called it reddish orange. Many said it was pretty.

The fire was coming from the Grandcamp.

Berthed at Pier O, the ship already was loaded with oil-field machinery, drill stems, peanuts, sisal twine and small-arms ammunition. At Texas City, it was to be loaded primarily with ammonium nitrate, a crystalline powder that in peacetime was an excellent source of nitrogen for crops. In wartime, the substance was combined with TNT to make a bursting charge in demolition bombs.

When the small fire inside the Grandcamp could not be doused with jugs of drinking water or a portable extinguisher, an order was given to batten down the ship's hatches and cover them with tarpaulins.

The Grandcamp's fire-smothering steam system was activated to keep the cargo from being damaged by water. But instead of killing the fire, the heat and pressure started decomposition of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer and produced combustible gas. The ship's hatch covers eventually blew off, sending the smoke skyward.

By 8:45 a.m., 27 members of the Texas City Volunteer Fire Department were spraying water on the Grandcamp's deck. The ship was so hot that the water from the fire hoses vaporized.

Predictably, a crowd began gathering to watch the unusual smoke that formed above the port.

"Hey, let's go see it," someone said at a gym class at Central High School, the town's white high school.

Kids cut class and ran down to the wharves to watch.

In the southside neighborhoods closest to the city's industries, where Texas City's blacks and Mexican-Americans lived, people gathered along the edge of a fire wall to view the smoke.

The sight was no less enticing to the men and women who worked in the town's petrochemical industries. At the Republic Oil Co. refinery, the chief of security was taking carloads of people to the docks to watch the fire. The refinery manager, assistant manager, personnel director, laboratory manager and transportation director all ran outside to catch rides.

The decision to cease work along the waterfront was made after it became clear the fire inside the Grandcamp could not be controlled.

Ceary Johnson, a 37-year-old longshoreman who was unloading rail cars that day, didn't bother to stop and gawk when the call to quit working went out.

While his colleagues milled around nearby warehouses to watch the fire, Johnson decided to get a cup of coffee. As he walked to a nearby cafe, he passed Father William Roach, a well-known Catholic priest in town, and Mike Mikeska, the head of the Texas City Terminal Railway Co., which operated the port. The two men were speaking in earnest tones about towing the burning ship away from the docks if the fire grew worse.

Another longshoreman, George Sanders, also had stopped his work loading flour on the freighter Wilson B. Keene, moored in a slip just south of the burning Grandcamp.

Sanders, 21, had worked on the Grandcamp the day before, and instead of going home he stopped to watch the fire at the end of the slip. He stepped up on a small fence to get a better look over a barge that partially blocked his view. A boy he knew walked up to watch.

Nearby, in a building at the Monsanto Chemical Co., people kept walking into the drafting room that had a window which afforded an ideal view of the ship fire.

It seemed to Mary Hunter, a secretary to the head engineer at Monsanto, that the smoke billowing into the air was keeping everyone from settling down to work. Someone had brought doughnuts to the office, as a further distraction. Hunter, who had skipped breakfast, told a co-worker they should share a doughnut, and as she broke one in half, it happened. The fire on the ship, which had sent such pretty smoke into the sky moments before, exploded at 9:12 a.m....

(source here)

Both the Halifax and Texas City death tolls were raised by the duration of the events- crowds gathered to watch the fires. The Grandcamp was being loaded with ... ammonium nitrate. Just like the Baltic Sky....

Iraqi Vigilante Justice?

Is anyone surprised by this?7 al-Zarqawi insurgents executed

Pirates free Indonesia hostages

The BBC reports Pirates free Indonesia hostages.

An Indonesian navy spokesman said the men were the captain and engineer of the gas tanker Tri Samudra.

The spokesman said the hostage-takers had not been identified, and he did not know whether a ransom was paid.

Search-and-rescue teams are still looking for the captain and two crewmen of a Japanese tugboat, kidnapped in the Malacca Strait on Monday.

Paid off or not worth the heat?

Simon World fisks Thomas Friedman on China

Simon World is a blog based in Hong Kong and seems an appropriate place to start with a fisking of Thomas Friedman on China. Read it first.

I view China as a competitor for oil and other raw materials, and a great nation that is feeling its way along through nationalist zeal ("Let's claim every islet in the South China Sea as Chinese!"). Like all great nations, it is understandably developing ways to protect its supply lines and to be able to enforce its will on others (though I don't like the fact that they quite freely "borrow" advanced technology so as to skip generations of weapon development- such as reverse engineering the goodies found in the US Navy EP-3 they forced down, etc). They seem to have a good grasp of tying up necessary commodities via long-term contracts such as oil deals (though their choice of business partners is a little off-putting - Iran, Sudan, Venezuela - but, hey, the Europeans are there, too). Investing in US T-bills? Sure. Make it silly for them to destroy our economy in such a way that we'd never, ever pay off on those notes, wouldn't it?

So what is Freidman about? He's back to preaching about the environment again and using China as his strawman around which to build his arguments. He's worried North Slope or ANWR petroleum might go to China. Well, if the price is right (enough to allow us to replace the oil sold from other sources and make a little profit) who cares? Freidman's logic eludes me here when quotes a "noted" energy economist" who warns that ANWR oil "cannot easily or efficiently be shipped to our Gulf Coast refineries. The logical markets are on the West Coast of the United States and in Asia..." Last time I checked, we had both refineries and a lot of US consumers on the West Coast of the US. What's the problem - it doesn't flow to New York? Selling things to Asians is bad? What about our balance of trade- wouldn't selling oil to Asia help?

And raising the taxes on gasoline will help how? Oh, let's see - people will drive less and prices of goods will rise and people will buy less and the economy will suffer and people will lose their jobs and more business will go offshore... In any event,according to Friedman, tax driven increases in the price of gasoline will encourage many good things, from closing "the U.S. budget gap" and forcing "the U.S. auto industry to convert more of its fleet to hybrid and ethanol technology, thereby reducing the amount of money going to Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Iran for oil. It would also reduce U.S. dependence on China to finance its debt and the chances that America will end up in a global struggle with China for energy."

However, demand driven price increases will do none of these things? Despite the fact that the price consumers now pay at the pump is over 50% tax anyway (as crude prices rise, so do government tax revenues)? Why does Mr. Friedman lack faith in the market to solve this problem? Where will the greater incentive to manufacture energy efficient vehicles come from? The government or the marketplace? Friedman just makes no sense.

Good job Simon!

Update: What exactly does Friedman mean by the "US auto industry...fleet"? Last time I checked, the cars in my driveway belonged to me, not to the auto industry. When I bought each of them for my "fleet" I had a choice- high cost hybrid (gas savings would never recoup additional cost of purchase), good mileage small car (safety concerns) or a multitude of other choices. My purchases reflected a compromise of budget, safety, mileage and my assumptions of frequency of repair. The cars were not bought because of some government program or artificial limitation on my choice. I resent Mr. Friedman trying to restrict my freedom. Even to buy some huge SUV, if I wanted it, which I didn't.

Pirates use hijacked boat to assault Japanese tug

If you are a criminal, I would think that the first rule of not getting caught is not to use you own boat or car to commit your crime. Apparently the Malaccan Strait pirates who attacked the Japanese tug boat and kidnapped 3 crew members have read the same book, judging by this:

A fishing boat used to kidnap three crew members of a Japanese tugboat had also been hijacked by pirates, Malaysian police said.

Crew members of the boat who were questioned by police said they were released by the pirates on Thursday.

Their boat docked at a port at Hutan Melintang in Perak, adjacent to Penang.

According to police, the fishing boat was hijacked on Sunday, a day before pirates attacked the Japanese-registered tugboat Idaten in the Malacca Strait and abducted two Japanese and a Filipino.

The fishing boat crew told police the pirates threatened them with guns and stole 2,000 ringgit (about 55,000 yen), 2,000 liters of fuel and even the fish the crew had caught.

Nasty pirates.

Take the Free Speech Pledge

Patterico's Pontifications invites bloggers to
Take the Free Speech Pledge.

I'm in.

If the FEC makes rules that limit my First Amendment right to express my opinion on core political issues, I will not obey those rules.

DEBKAfile: The Ukranian to Iran Cruise Missile Mess

Here is DEBKAfile page that covers the "export" of Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran. An interesting read -

The Ukrainian prosecutor-general Svyatoslav Piksun created a major international flap Friday, March 18, when he admitted to the Financial Times that 18 X-55 strategic cruise missiles, also known as Kh-55, had been “exported” - 12 to Iran and 6 to China in 2001. He could not explain how the “significant leak” of technology from the former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal occurred, but said the missiles had been sold without nuclear warheads.

The X-55 has a ranged of 3,000 km and is capable of carrying 200 kiloton nuclear warheads. Launched from Su-24 long-range strike aircraft in the Iranian air force, it can put Japan, all of Russia and Israel within range. Piksun’s admission is the first official confirmation of the Ukrainian missile sale that was first made public last month by a Ukrainian parliament member.

Their acquisition heightens concerns about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The US embassy in Kiev is “closely monitoring” the investigation and demands the findings be made public in full. The Japanese embassy echoed the demand.

DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources reveal that the Ukrainian shipment to Iran included radioactive materials for making “dirty bombs.”

There's more grim news. Read the whole thing.

The Kh-55 strategic cruise missile is used for destroying targets whose coordinates are known. Its guidance system combines inertial-Doppler navigation and position correction based on comparison of terrain in the assigned regions with images stored in the memory of an on-board computer. The propulsion system is a dual-flow engine located underneath the missile's tail. The missile carries a 200 kt nuclear warhead.

Source

This is not, apparently, a new revelation, as MissileThreat had it in February
as seen here.