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Somali pirates attack French military flagship 
NAIROBI (AFP) – Somali pirates attempted to storm the French navy's 18,000 tonne flagship in the Indian Ocean after mistaking it for a cargo vessel, the French military said on Wednesday.

The crew of La Somme, a 160-metre (525-foot) command vessel and fuel tanker, easily saw off the brazen night-time assault by lightly armed fighters on two lightweight skiffs and captured five pirates, a spokesman said.

"The pirates, who because of the darkness took the French ship for a commercial vessel, were on board two vessels and opened fire with Kalashnikovs," Admiral Christophe Prazuck said in Paris... 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091007/wl_africa_afp/somaliapiracyshippingfrance_20091007151820 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091007/wl_africa_afp/somaliapiracyshippingfrance_20091007151820)

Should have hung all five of them.  Scum.

Apparently it is not the first time, either.  Here's hoping the pirates continue to make this same mistake: it should make clearing them out all that much easier.  Vermin.

Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world, the pirates are poor, desperate people doing what they need to survive, they're not vermin or scum, they're human beings with no other options.

There are other options: they have chosen to be criminals. Lots of people in dire straits survive without victimising other people.  If they have the resources to go after ships, they could be using those same resources to more constructive ends that *might* actually support them and their dependents - at least providing the necessities of life.  They are pirates because it is easy and pays off big; plain and simple.  The same reasons 90% of the rest of the world's criminals don't bother to make a living legitimately.

Well, whatever they're doing seems to be working. I read that in the three months between July and September, there was not one successful pirate attack. And there's been only one successful pirate attack so far during the month of October.

And the crews are fighting back as well. They're covering the ships in barbed wire, so it's harder to board. They're getting out the fire hoses to repel boarders. And they're stockpiling Molotov cocktails. The only problem with the Molotove cocktails idea, is if a bullet should hit them, there's going to be one heck of a shipboard fire aboard the ship.
And the fire hoses will really be needed.

I don't think it's that simple, just look at their country:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1072592.stm

Their situation is so incomprehensible to us that it is unfair to judge them, and really they don't have the resources we have in the west like social assistance, they haven't had a government since 1991 for christ's sake!

Are you saying that *all* the people are dependent upon piracy as the industrial base of the country?  What are the rest of the population doing?  Sitting there waiting for a welfare state to spontaneously spring up and save the day?  Does anyone really believe 'social assistance' is the ONLY way out?   :buggedout: I don't think it is *that* simple!
 
They have boats; they have manpower; they have the means to *buy* fuel, weapons and ammunition.  I bet they even have 'leaders' of a sort.  Surely they could use those boats to better purpose, and apply the money (however meager) and their efforts to that purpose as well?  Fishing; farming; gathering.  Any one would *feed* their families.  What do they need a government for?  To protect them from lawlessness?  What is a 'government' but a collection of people gathered to discuss and act on the common good?  They have the resources and means to 'make' a government: people.  That's how other countries did/do it.

Maybe in parts of North America *today* it is incomprehensible to start from scratch with your own labours and build a country from the ground up.  How sad is that?  That one can justify criminal behaviour as the only choice of action, rather than advocating the course your (presumably) own 'forefathers' took?

They would certainly get far more sympathy, aid and support from the rich Western world if they were at least *trying* to make a go of it legitimately.  That would be more effective in the long run.  As it is, they are cutting themselves off from any of that.

I guess your right, never really looked at it that way.  :cheers: