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9346. vonKreedon - 4/8/2009 8:31:49 PM Don't some, maybe cruise ships in particular, have non-lethal defense systems like focused sound and water cannons? 9347. wabbit - 4/9/2009 12:27:51 AM Wombat, the debate continues. Some want to arm all the ships and others think that will cause more problems than it will solve.
VK, I found an New Scientist from Dec. 2005 about those very tactics, and Salon did a piece a few months ago, but I don't know how well those will work long-term. Wired has also done some decent reporting on Somali piracy.
It seems the US crew has retaken the Maersk Alabama, but has lost their captain who is now a hostage. 9348. Wombat - 4/9/2009 3:29:45 AM The best resource for information on pirate attacks is probably the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). Not only that, but in the 1980s they sponsored a conference at which I gave two presentations, which became chapters in the published proceedings of the conference...! 9349. wabbit - 4/9/2009 1:53:38 PM IMB Piracy Reporting Centre
Their maps are interesting. 9350. alistairconnor - 4/10/2009 11:42:13 AM Interesting standoff :
Andrew Mwangura, the head of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, said the Alabama had left the scene and was sailing under armed guard towards Mombasa, Kenya - its original destination - where it was expected to dock on Saturday. None of the crew members were hurt in the attack.
"They will release the captain, I think, maybe today or tomorrow, but in exchange for something. Maybe some payment or compensation, and definitely free passage back home," Mwangura told Reuters. [...]
"Our friends are still holding the captain but they cannot move, they are afraid of the warships. We want a ransom and, of course, the captain is our shield. The warships might not destroy the boat as long as he is on board."
The Alabama was the sixth ship to be hijacked off Somalia's Indian Ocean coast in a week, and is believed to be the first American-flagged merchant vessel to be attacked by pirates anywhere since the early 19th century.
The "East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme" sounds like an intriguing outfit... Charity? Trade union? Crime syndicate?
I blame Johnny Depp. 9351. Wombat - 4/13/2009 2:53:13 AM Pirate hostage situation over. SEALS kill three pirates, ship captain safe. One pirate arrested. Well done. 9352. wabbit - 5/13/2009 2:02:25 PM A lawyer killed by gunmen over the weekend left behind a videotape saying that if anything happened to him it was at the behest of President Álvaro Colom. “If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Álvaro Colom with help from Gustavo Alejos,” the president’s private secretary, the lawyer says in the video. The lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, was shot while riding his bicycle on Sunday, the newspaper El Periódico de Guatemala said. In the tape, Mr. Rosenberg said officials might want to kill him because he represented a businessman who had refused to engage in acts of corruption sought by President Colom. The businessman was killed in March. Mr. Colom appeared Tuesday on national television to reject the accusation, and he called for a United Nations commission and the F.B.I. to investigate the case. I don't know who put the video up on YouTube, but that it is there prevented it from going missing. Whether this case will change anything in Guatemala remains to be seen. It's easy to get people worked up in the heat of the moment, but not as easy to keep them engaged in the long term.9353. vonKreedon - 6/15/2009 10:43:11 PM Hoping to lure Marj into this thread.
Any thoughts on what the recent Congress Party win in India means? In December The Economist said:
The Congress party, which leads India’s ruling coalition and runs Maharashtra, the state of which Mumbai is the capital, is likely to suffer for this...[the Mumbai terror attack]
Yet for most poor Indians terrorism remains a small part of their troubles. To deal with those, Sonia Gandhi, Congress’s leader, will reissue a lot of unkept promises when the election campaign begins: to bring everyone electricity, piped water, schools and jobs. She will say little about what this government has actually done: there hasn’t been much. ...
At home, often stymied by his coalition’s leftist allies, he has done much less well.
But now The Economist says:
REVERSING decades of decline, the Congress party has won India’s month-long general election by a bigger margin than its most optimistic followers had dared dream of.
What up? 9354. Wombat - 6/16/2009 3:28:46 AM Iran, anyone?? 9355. vonKreedon - 6/16/2009 7:41:44 AM Oy, interesting times in Iran right now. Hoping for a velvet revolution. Surprised at the persistence of the opposition. 9356. wabbit - 6/16/2009 1:44:34 PM I was in school with an Iranian student 12 years ago. She was very excited about what was happening then, especially for women. There were high hopes for Khatami.
So now we wait to see what the Guardian Council does about convincing people they just had a fair election. Not everyone thinks the election was stolen. 9357. Wombat - 6/16/2009 2:26:11 PM Leaving aside that the poll the authors took was three weeks before the election, had over 50% undecided or unresponsive, and predicted a narrow Ahmedinejad victory in the first round; nah, it wasn't stolen. 9358. wabbit - 6/16/2009 3:49:58 PM Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.
It seems unlikely (to me) that Ahmadinejad got twice as many votes as Mousavi, but I haven't seen any actual pre-election polls other than this one. I've read about them, I've heard about them, I just haven't seen them. Flawed and public doesn't make it reliable or accurate, but at least it was public.
I wonder if the votes in Tabriz will be recounted. Even Al Jazeera English seems curious about how normally ethnic voters failed to vote along ethnic lines. 9359. wabbit - 6/16/2009 4:03:02 PM btw, as I understand it, a major flaw with that poll is that, when it was taken, official campaigning had just begun. I wonder how many people polled knew the names and platforms of the opponent candidates. 9360. vonKreedon - 6/16/2009 4:08:18 PM I may be wrong, and am interested in hearing about it if so, but Al Jazeera has seemed like a pretty good source of information. 9361. wabbit - 6/16/2009 4:13:43 PM The other thing that strikes me as being odd is that Iran's population is so young and urban, and I would have thought they would vote against Ahmadinejad.
I'd love to hear PE's take on all this. 9362. vonKreedon - 6/16/2009 5:39:24 PM Yeah, I'd also love to hear from PE on both Iran and India.
Wretchard has an interesting take on how splitting the loot may have led to the split within Iran's ruling elite and opened the door to the reform movement. 9363. Wombat - 6/16/2009 7:25:45 PM Apparently Khameini is detested by Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani has been working very hard behind the scenes to support Moussavi, both during the election campaign and at present.
There are also unconfirmed reports of dissension in the Revolutionary Guards and the Army; both have been neutral so far. If they go, however, it will be Ceaucescu all over again.
VK's source is right about Moussavi. He didn't govern Iran throughout the Iran-Iraq War by being a nice liberal democrat. On the other hand, he is nowhere near as egregious as Ahmedinejad. It's like comparing Bush I with Bush II. 9364. alistairConnor - 6/16/2009 9:36:49 PM I will be bitterly disappointed if the regime allows Ahmedinnerjacket to get away with his coup d'état.
He might well have had a tough election against Moussavi, and he might well have won it anyway. But he clearly stole it, to avoid the risk of losing.
I am perhaps alone here in not regarding the Iran regime as a totalitarian system, up until now anyway. It has been a functioning constitutional democracy in many respects-- not entirely a pluralist one, but one in which progress was possible. It looks like the constitutional authorities initially put their duties as guardians of religion ahead of their duties as guardians of democracy. But it's by no means a monolithic regime, Moussavi himself is an insider and has a lot of support, and now they have ordered a recount... perhaps due process will win the day? 9365. vonKreedon - 6/16/2009 10:08:49 PM I agree that by the region's standards Iran has been a vibrant republic.
I don't think that Ahmedinejad can be fingered as the top guy in this bit of election chicanery; it can not have happened without Khameini's involvement.
What I've read regarding any recount severely constrains why a recount would happen and what would be recounted. Not near good enough.
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