Sunday, April 13, 2008

Anti-Piracy Measures - Then And Now

Eighteenth century :

You say this cruise is bungled. Ah! by gum, if you could understand how bad it's bungled, you would see! We're that near the gibbet that my neck's stiff with thinking on it. You've seen 'em, maybe, hanged in chains, birds about 'em, seamen p'inting 'em out as as they go down with the tide. 'Who's that?' says one. That! Why, that's John Silver. I knowed him well,' says another. And you can hear the chains a-jangle as you go about and reach for the other buoy ...



Twenty-first century :


The Royal Navy, once the scourge of brigands on the high seas, has been told by the Foreign Office not to detain pirates because doing so may breach their human rights.

Warships patrolling pirate-infested waters, such as those off Somalia, have been warned that there is also a risk that captured pirates could claim asylum in Britain.
The Foreign Office has advised that pirates sent back to Somalia could have their human rights breached because, under Islamic law, they face beheading for murder or having a hand chopped off for theft.

In 2005 there were almost 40 attacks by pirates and 16 vessels were hijacked and held for ransom. Employing high-tech weaponry, they kill, steal and hold ships’ crews to ransom. This year alone pirates killed three people near the Philippines.

Britain is part of a coalition force that patrols piracy stricken areas and the guidance has troubled navy officers who believe they should have more freedom to intervene.

The guidance was sharply criticised by Julian Brazier MP, the Conservative shipping spokesman, who said: “These people commit horrendous offences. The solution is not to turn a blind eye but to turn them over to the local authorities. The convention on human rights quite rightly doesn’t cover the high seas. It’s a pathetic indictment of what our legal system has come to.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “There are issues about human rights and what might happen in these circumstances. The main thing is to ensure any incident is resolved peacefully.”

The guidance is the latest blow to the robust image of the navy. Last year 15 of its sailors were taken prisoner by the Iranians and publicly humiliated.

In the 19th century, British warships largely eradicated piracy when they policed the oceans. The death penalty for piracy on the high seas remained on the statute books until 1998. Modern piracy ranges from maritime mugging to stealing from merchant ships with the crew held at gunpoint.


(via the Dumb One)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a missive I posted earlier on the Torygraph site as per the mentalist scum Broon's populist grovelling regarding the proposal to establish an "Armed Forces day"


"One should be exceedingly suspicious of this vile government's motives in sidling up to pretty much the only institution in the country they haven't completely corrupted and hollowed out.

It is well known that Broon, "the tiny dot", has no love for the forces and has demonstrated continual parsimony towards them, which has cost a number of men their lives.

Blair and Broon's government have humiliated our forces by their stupid ill-found war in Iraq. The Army was kicked out of the centre of Basra by Islamist militias - lack of numbers, of correct operational principles, and of moral legitimacy in being there in the first place led to this fiasco. Only the other day the Iraqi PM, trying to retake Basra with his forces, left the British commander kicking his heels outside the PM's accomodation. A humiliating snub for the hypocritical Brown fiasco that is "overwatch".

The shameful capture of our naval personnel in the Gulf is painful to recall, they were put in an impossible position through wholly inadequate equipment.

Today we learn(Times) that the RN, what's left of it, is not allowed to arrest and detain Somali pirates in Woolwich(sorry I meant off the Somali coast - freudian slip). Detention would mean that they get delivered to the Somali local authorities who might chop off their heads/hands - a clear breach of their "human rights". Or alternatively they might claim asylum in Britain. On no account, obviously, must they be fired upon. These are the depths of drooling imbecility to which this bunch of human rights lawyers and clowns have reduced us.

It is a black, black farce"

Broon should be hanged from the yardarm with liberals to the left of him, and liberals to the right of him - especially liberal economic City bastards.

Anonymous said...

Shocking, if belated, intelligence about the closure of the former munitions factory at Puriton, nr Bridgewater. If we cannot manufacture shells and bullets at home then how can we possibly defend ourselves? These traitors have gutted us! Here’s a worthy candidate for THE NOOSE: Adam Ingram, MOD minister, supposedly:

“We have worked closely with the contractor and we are satisfied with the assurances provided by that company that the supply of material will be safeguarded. I do not have time to go into all the details, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman and to my hon. Friend at length and set out the various bilateral relationships that we have with our allies on supply security—the memorandums of understanding that exist. I will place a copy of the letter in the Library.”

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/cm200607/cmhansrd/cm070417/halltext/70417h0008.htm

I note that this bastard drivels on about commercial interest which he has the treacherous insolence to set above the vital national interest of the defence of the realm. These "assurances" are merely bits of paper, utterly worthless. Damn him! Damn him! The noose is too soft a penalty for him.

Once in England we had good laws. Traitors would be dragged along on a sled to a place of execution to the jeering and mockery of the crowd. Thence they would be half-hanged and then set down, their "privy members" cut off and displayed before their false eyes, their bellies slashed open and their entrails pulled out. When their deserved agonies were at an end their carcasses' would be quartered and set upon spikes on London Bidge and at the farthermost extremities of the realm. What more fitting end for foul traitors who would remove the basic means of defence of our people?

Anonymous said...

Truly, we are now beyond satire.

Snafu said...

Perhaps the death penalty combined with the high risk of being caught by the Royal Navy reduced levels of piracy in the 19th Century!

Anonymous said...

It's a little known fact that the Royal Navy's surrender to the Iranians last year was only because the onboard Diversity unit (about 1/4 of the ship's company) decided that to retaliate would be Islamophobic, and that in surrender was the only culturally sensitive thing to do.

Anonymous said...

Sgt Troy I am yours to command. My only concern is could we find enough rope?

Anonymous said...

I'd be kind of impressed if the commentators who desire the hanging of liberal scum actually went out and did it. Otherwise it just exposes the lack of imagination of finding some practical way to actually reverse some of the cultural changes that they decry.

Let's be frank. That kind of talk amounts to public wanking. Ooh look how angry I am.

At least pause before you do. Can you think of a better way that avoids discrediting Laban.

Anonymous said...

"The main thing is to ensure any incident is resolved peacefully"

No it isn't.

The main thing is to shoot the bastards.

Anonymous said...

"Sgt Troy I am yours to command. My only concern is could we find enough rope?"

I thank you, if musketry and cannonade fail for want of powder then it must needs come to sword play.

Anonymous said...

"I'd be kind of impressed if the commentators who desire the hanging of liberal scum actually went out and did it."

Don't be so ridiculous, anon

"Otherwise it just exposes the lack of imagination of finding some practical way to actually reverse some of the cultural changes that they decry."

The way is eminently practical, the vile liberal dispensation collapses economically - well under way. The BNP bodges a sufficient hole in the political system, which has all the characteristics of an Ancien Regime anyway. The Army lends a hand. A new and firm order emerges to lead our people out of the hell the liberal traitors and swine are busily creating. With a bit of luck we can restore normal service after the necessary correctives have been applied. It is vital to appreciate that nothing but direness can be expected from lib-lab-con

"At least pause before you do. Can you think of a better way that avoids discrediting Laban."

What precisely is discreditable about wanting traitors to be extirpated? In the example I gave above what else are swine who wreck the national defence but traitors?

Laban seems to think there is some nice way out of this, that somehow somebody on a white charger is going to ride to the rescue. It isn't going to happen, life isn't like that.

Anonymous said...

It is essential to at least try to grasp the singular and vitally important point that WE ARE NOT THE AGGRESSORS here.

What liberal malignants purport is the creation of a "civic nationalism" so-called. The details are, as one would expect from this crew are, hazy. The corrupt ancien regime courtier Goldsmith, justly famed for the impartiality of his "legal advice", has suggested the formation of a grand focus group, some 500 strong selected at random, to determine what constitutes "British values". "Experts" will guide, naturally, and the 500 will colour in between the lines. Utterly insane of course, and quite beyond satire, what it will come down to is gated communities for the rich, and a hellish liberal dystopia beyond the fences. Houellebecq, a writer I like very much, has forseen this horror in "the possibility of an Island".

In any event those indigenous people who don't accept this liberal dispensation aren't going to have any future. The influential malignant Buiter, latterly on the BOE MPC, says that patriots should be internally exiled to the Outer Hebrides, if it is not practicable to kick them out of the country altogether:

"I reject that view. The wellbeing of the existing resident population is no more, and no less, relevant than the wellbeing of any potential immigrant to the UK, wherever in the world he or she may be. I recognise private property rights. My home is my castle and I can deny entry into it to anybody at any time. I don’t recognise national property rights. A country is not like a private home. A country is an open club."

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2008/04/imagine-theres-no-country/#more-178

Liberalism he says must develop "sharp teeth".

This is a declaration of war. tHEY OPENLY ADVOCATE TAKING OUR COUNTRY AWAY FROM US. In considering the response to this one should bear in mind the words of Admiral Lord Fisher(who oversaw the introduction of Dreadnought battleships into the RN) "moderation in war is imbecility".

Anonymous said...

"Time now to watch real birds in my garden, where native robins coexist peacefully with immigrant African Ringneck Parakeets, and where occasionally a heron from nearby Manor House Gardens dives into our small pond - I call it our puddle; my wife calls it our water feature - and catches a fat frog."

This Buiterism came from the Torygraph yesterday, he obviously doesn't live in Peckham any more than the Burton Bradstock Cockney resides in Barking.

I know that most Dutch people are sound and terribly worried about the Islamisation of their country but it is nevertheless galling to read Buiter's malignant musing, and to gather that he has seen fit to grace us with his uplifting presence since 1965.

10000 men of the 1st Airborne division parachuted and landed by glider near Arnhem, only 2000 came out. They were picked men, chosen men, the very best of our nation. What did they give their all for? I damned if I know now.

Tragically Alex Henshaw(Chief Spitfire Test Pilot) asked the same question before his death, that is the measure of the liberal betrayal:

"I feel extreme emotional sadness for the young men I knew that gave their lives willingly for a cause in which we all believed. And I often say to myself now if those young boys would come down now and walk through the villages, through the towns and through the cities and look around and see what is happening to us, they would say somewhere along the line we have been betrayed."