This day in history:
1801 - Washington, DC is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. (Bad idea)
1900 - The British Labour Party is founded. (Beginning of the end for Britain)
1933 - Reichstag fire
1942 - World War II: Allies lose the Battle of the Java Sea
1951 - The Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, limiting Presidents to two terms, is ratified. (Thank God)
1991 - Gulf War: Kuwait is liberated.
A Danish naval warship on Thursday thwarted an attack by armed pirates on a Chinese vessel in the Gulf of Aden, the US Naval Forces Central Command said. The Bahrain-based command said that Danish support ship HDMS Absalon had "successfully deterred an attempted pirate attack on the Chinese M/V Yandanghai."
The crew of the distressed ship had managed to prevent the attackers from climbing on board by using fire hoses against them.
"Absalon closed on the coordinates given by the Chinese ship following their distress call and spotted a skiff matching the description given by the captain of the motor vessel," it said in a statement. Several weapons, including a rocket-propelled grenade, four AK-47 assault rifles, two grenades and a knife were found after a team boarded the skiff. The crew of the distressed ship had managed to prevent the attackers from climbing on board by using fire hoses against them, the statement said. Two crewmembers sustained minor wounds in the attack, it added. No arrests were reported.
Chinese state media earlier reported that Chinese naval forces had thwarted a pirate attack on a Liberian-flagged Italian merchant ship on Tuesday in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia. It was the second time that a Chinese naval convoy, sent to the region on a landmark mission to protect the country's shipping from pirates, has come to the aid of foreign ships, according to Xinhua. The force's mission marked China's first potential combat mission beyond its territorial waters in centuries.
US and European ships have also been sent to the waters off Somalia, where pirates attacked more than 100 vessels last year.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Pirates
#1
No arrests were reported. Argh!
Feeble, useless dicking around the problem.
#2
Not necessarily. The point of the exercise is to change the equation for the pirates without getting overly bloodthirsty (that's not quite how I'd do it but Pappy has a better handle on this than I do). Capture them, harass them, keep them looking over their shoulders and scanning the horizon when at sea, get the merchant ship captains and crews to be a little smarter, and after a while piracy doesn't pay as well.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/27/2009 0:30 Comments ||
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#3
How will a good soaking prevent them from coming back for a shot at a $1M prize? Make 'em pay by sinking their boat and having to swim back to shore. That ought to get them to thinking.
#7
The ones I'd like to see hang are the ones outside Somalia who are the organization behind the pirates.
what is your guess/knowledge about that? I'd think there is a yemeni angle, given the links over and over, but the only transnational african organized crime (as opposed to crooked governements or para-governements) I can think of is from nigeria, with its ramification into Europe.
#8
Based on news and a few tother things, my guess is a smallish (numbers-wise) but extensive syndicate ranging from Egypt to Kenya, Yemen, and UAE. Perhaps Pakistan as well. Links/contacts/bought-and paid-for people in other countries.
My guess would be the Gazans, they seem to have unlimited cash for weapons, and have a seaport.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/27/2009 19:29 Comments ||
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#10
what is your guess/knowledge about that?
Gazans? There hasn't been much, if any, piracy in the western Med. Maybe they'd be lower/mid-echelon, or ship-traffic observers. I don't think they'd sully themselves to attack and board ships as long as there are 'blacks' do do the scut-work.
One thing to remember is that the Gulf of Aden (and the Straits of Hormuz) have long had smuggling, slave trading, and piracy. It wouldn't take much for some of the more enterprising criminals to branch out. And it's amazing how well money buys access, information and cooperation.
#11
Gazan pirates? Combine tunneling genes with water surface warfare, sounds like drowned rodents
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2009 22:46 Comments ||
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#12
My guess would be the Gazans, they seem to have unlimited cash for weapons, and have a seaport.
The Israeli Navy patrols the Gazan part of the sea pretty closely, although mostly looking for weapons smuggling, I believe. Not much opportunity to go a-pirating unobserved in that neighborhood.
Suspected Taliban stopped a security forces convoy from entering Mingora by planting a roadside bomb in Balogram area on Thursday. The incident had been reported to Sufi Muhammad, the chief of Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM), sources said. They said the Malakand division commissioner, Sufi and representatives of the Taliban had started talks to sort out the matter. A source said "a secret hand" was planning to sabotage the recent peace deal. Sufi Muhammad said the government should withdraw all cases against people in Malakand and Kohistan districts. Talking to reporters, he said the security forces should inform them in advance to avoid repetition of such incidents in future. Over 700 policemen have resumed their duties in Swat.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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The security forces will move from Khar to Mamoond tomorrow Saturday, Bajaur Agency Political Agent Safirullah Khan said on Thursday. Addressing a representative jirga of Mamoond tribes, Khan said the troops and local elders would jointly retaliate in case of any resistance. He said the government would extend the ceasefire in case the convoy reached its destination peacefully.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Aswat al-Iraq: Iraqi army forces defused three improvised explosive devices and arrested a wanted man in operations in different areas of eastern Mosul city on Thursday, a military source said. "A force from the Iraqi army's 3rd Brigade's 2nd Contingent defused an IED in al-Zahraa neighborhood without incident and another one of a 120 mm. mortar in the area of Sumer," the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
"Another Iraqi army force defused an IED in al-Jazaer neighborhood without incident," the source added. "A man wanted by Iraqi security authorities was arrested in al-Intissar neighborhood. The man, who is named Saddam Hussein Khalaf al-Issawi, is suspected of aiding gunmen," the source added.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Iraq
Aswat al-Iraq: The Thi-Qar federal court handed down death sentences against 28 members of the Yamani group, 19 others to life terms and acquitted six who had been charged with affiliation to the outlawed organization, a lawyer for one of the defendants said on Thursady.
"Members of the group had been arrested last year on charges of murder, terrorism and affiliation to a banned organization," the lawyer, who asked that his name not be mentioned, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
Clashes that erupted in the Muslim Hegira month of Muharram last year between Ansar (Supporters) Ahmed ibn al-Hassan al-Yamani operatives and Iraqi security authorities left more than 20 people, nine of them civilians and the 11 others, including security commanders in the city of Thi-Qar, killed.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
Four bodyguards of two Iraqi MPs linked to a fugitive Sunni Arab deputy accused of ordering an April 2007 bombing of Parliament have been arrested, a top security official said on Thursday.
"The investigating magistrate ordered the arrest of four bodyguards of MPs Ahmad Radhi and Ali al-Sajri," the spokesman for Baghdad's military security command, General Qassem Atta, told AFP.
"They are accused of having taken fugitive Deputy Mohammad al-Daini to an undisclosed location." Iraqi authorities started a manhunt for Daini Wednesday after his immunity was lifted and he was prevented from fleeing the country on a Royal Jordanian flight to Amman.
The MP, an ex-member of an elite Saddamist force, was accused Sunday of ordering the bombing two years ago in the Parliament's canteen, an attack which killed eight people including a fellow parliamentarian of the same party.
As part of a non-sectarian law and order campaign, the authorities on Monday arrested 11 Shiite policemen over a spate of killings and kidnappings of Sunnis, including the murder of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi's sister.
Atta said the judge questioned the MPs' bodyguards "and decided to arrest them for complicity. They took Daini to the airport so he could leave the country, and when he was prevented from doing so they took him to an unknown destination." MPs voted to lift Daini's parliamentary immunity just hours after he was barred from flying out from Baghdad airport, where he was refused an exit stamp at passport control.
Daini, who has insisted on his innocence, was not arrested at the airport as he still had parliamentary immunity at the time.
On Sunday, reporters were shown taped confessions - also broadcast on television - by a nephew and a security guard of Daini who said they had carried out several attacks for him. "The suicide bomber entered with an authorization paper from Mohammad al-Daini and blew himself up at the parliament," nephew Riad Ibrahim al-Daini said on the video, adding that he had taken the assailant to the scene.
The MP has dismissed the charges as politically motivated "fabrication" due to his party's defense of human rights. "Mohammad al-Daini is on the run but we are after him because the arrest warrant is now valid," Atta told AFP Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
#1
Under their law the bodyguards are innocent,at the time he was a sitting parliamentary member, only later was his diplomatic immunity lifted.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
02/27/2009 16:22 Comments ||
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Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continued their rocket attacks against Israel on Thursday, launching a Kassam rocket in the evening which struck an open field in the Eshkol Region. No casualties or damage were reported. This recent attack joins the two rockets fired early in the morning which struck Sderot and the Sha'ar Hanegev region.
In Sderot, tragedy was averted as one rocket landed close to two houses, damaging both but causing no injuries. A number of Sderot residents were treated for shock. No one was wounded and no damage was reported in the Sha'ar Hanegev attack.
IAF aircraft on Thursday afternoon hit smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip in response to a Kassam attack earlier in the day that damaged two Sderot houses. Palestinian sources were quoted by Israel Radio as saying that there were no wounded in the attack, during which at least three missiles were fired.
Rocket attacks and Israeli counterstrikes have persisted despite efforts to secure a cease-fire through Egyptian mediation.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Hamas
#1
is no open field safe?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/27/2009 10:54 Comments ||
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Sri Lankan troops have killed at least 11 Tamil Tiger rebels in the battle for the last urban area still in the hands of the guerrillas, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
The deaths occurred on Wednesday when soldiers pushed toward Puthukkudiriruppu, a town on a narrow strip of land in the northeast controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the ministry said. "Ground troops have positioned for a final thrust towards the remaining LTTE foothold," the ministry said.
It did not say if security forces suffered any casualties. The LTTE did not comment on the fighting.
Separately, a Tamil newspaper editor was arrested in Colombo on Thursday, police said, after colleagues and family members complained that he had been abducted while attending a funeral. Police spokesman Senior Superintendent Ranjith Gunasekara said N Vidyatharan was taken in for questioning by the police crime division in connection with activities linked to LTTE. However, the state-run Daily News had earlier quoted Gunasekara as saying that the editor had been "abducted" by unidentified persons driving an unmarked white van.
Family members said three armed men dressed in police uniforms grabbed Vidyatharan, chief editor of the Sudaroli and Uthayan newspapers, while he attended the funeral of a relative in Mount Lavinia, a suburb of the capital. "The three men in uniform tried to grab Vidyatharan. He resisted and the other mourners at the funeral started shouting, but they dragged him on the floor and took him away in a van," the relative said.
Vidyatharan's newspapers have been staunchly critical of the military campaign against Tamil Tiger rebels, who are cornered in the northeast of the island. There have been several armed attacks on Vidyatharan's newspaper offices and his arrest came seven weeks after another senior editor was gunned down execution-style by unidentified attackers in the same area.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/27/2009 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A Danish naval warship on Thursday thwarted an attack by armed pirates on a Chinese vessel in the Gulf of Aden, the US Naval Forces Central Command said. The Bahrain-based command said that Danish support ship HDMS Absalon had "successfully deterred an attempted pirate attack on the Chinese M/V Yandanghai."
Suspected Taliban stopped a security forces convoy from entering 
Four bodyguards of two Iraqi MPs linked to a fugitive Sunni Arab deputy accused of ordering an April 2007 bombing of Parliament have been arrested, a top security official said on Thursday.
Sri Lankan troops have killed at least 11 Tamil Tiger rebels in the battle for the last urban area still in the hands of the guerrillas, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
