Rid The Sea Lanes Of Piracy.

Rid The Sea Lanes Of Piracy.

 

I reside just minutes from the Atlantic Ocean and the coast of North Carolina and those barrier Islands along our coast which made for wonderful hiding places for the pirates of yesteryear.  The Coast of North Carolina is drenched in folklore about pirates.  The infamous Blackbeard was captured here and decapitated. The sports teams of at least one noted university here are named “The Pirates.”  So, we Tar Heels have a colorful history of interaction with pirates as does our sister state to the south. .

 

That was then.  This is now.

 

Again the high seas are infested with pirates.  Their aim is the same… to rob and steal. But now, they have added ransom. 

 

Recently we heard of an Ocean Liner being attacked, but managing to speed away.  A few days later, in the same waters, a freighter was attacked.  It, too, managed to get away.  As I write, at least one of the largest vessels afloat, an oil tanker, is being held for ransom by a handful of modern day blackhearts in full view of the world, and the world’s navies, including warships of the US Navy.

 

Our own Caribbean is littered with modern day pirates.  Yachts disappear to show up at some other location, with a different registration, and different name. Sometimes passengers disappear, too.

 

On at least two different occasions in our history, under two Presidents, Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt, the US Navy, and Marines, had to rid the coast of Africa of pirates.  The Barbary Coast Pirates.

 

I bring up these particular pirates because they were based along the African coast, mainly the North African coast.  The pirates we seem to be having the most trouble with today are also on the African coast, but the east African coast…the coast of Somalia to be more exact.  So far this year, alone, those pirates have attacked over 90 ships.  They have managed to hijack 39 freighters, tankers, and fishing vessels. At least 14 of them are currently anchored, under heavy guard, off pirate villages along the coast of Somalia.  Estimates run as high as 30 million dollars paid in ransom money. 

 

Turns out it is not as easy today as it used to be to take on the pirates.  All sorts of national and international laws tie the hands of governments and makes them less than eager to take on a couple of dozen men with small arms and two or three rubber boats. But there is an outfit, based here in North Carolina, eager to do what the governments of the world sea powers are reluctant to do.  I speak, of course, of Blackwater Worldwide.

 

Equipped with their own warship, the McArthur, Blackwater is looking to provide a new service to the merchant navies of the world.  Blackwater offers to escort paying customer’s ships through the pirate infested waters, safely.  Their plan is simple:  Issue verbal warnings to approaching vessels which appear to have piracy in mind, followed by a few shots in the air, and if that fails… then the sharpshooters aboard a couple of helicopters, flown from the deck of the McArthur, will do their job by taking out as many barefooted pirates as it takes to discourage the attack.

 

Already Blackwater is receiving inquiries from dozens of shipping companies and shipping insurance companies concerning Backwater’s services in escorting their ships through the world’s most dangerous waters. 

 

There is an excellent article on all of this at:

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,592433,00.html 

 

The country of Somalia still has no functioning government and it is a breeding ground for this type of activity.

 

Teddy Roosevelt, the last President of the United States to deal with Barbary Pirates, had the opportunity to use the big stick he carried and, he did just that.  He sent seven battleships from the Atlantic Fleet to the North African Coast. It worked and the pirates backed down.

 

This blight on the oceans will not go away if we turn a blind eye.  It will get worse.  Eventually they will manage to stop and board a passenger liner and death and destruction will be the result.  Or, terrorists will seize an oil tanker, sail her into the harbor of one of the world’s great cities, and blow it up with unbelievable death and devastation as the result.

 

Now is the time to hunt them down and destroy them… even if that means following them to their center of operations in the seacoast villages of the country, or countries, providing them safe haven.

 

J. D. Longstreet

 

The Obama/Osama October Surprises?

Obama’s October Surprise & Osama’s October Surprise!

By:  J. D. Longstreet

You might want t read the title to this piece again.  Yep!  It’s a double whammy!  At least one of these “surprises” is a little difficult to believe.  That would be the Obama October surprise.

 

See, there is this e-mail flitting around, out on the ether, that Obama has an October surprise up his sleeve.  The rumor has it that sometime in the first week, or so, of October, Joe Biden, Obama’s Vice-Presidential candidate, will announce that he is stepping down, due to health reasons, and the rumor has it that Obama will immediately replace Biden with Hillary.  For obvious reasons that has a lot of people concerned.

 

I don’t put much stock in it, though.  I mean, step back and look closely at it and it looks awfully, well… dumb!  But, then again, dumb things have been known to happen in political campaigns.  The manipulation of voters would be just SO obvious, don’t you think?

 

My friend, and fellow blogger, Texas Fred, has written a piece about it that we recommend to you.  You’ll find it at:

 

http://texasfred.net/archives/2318

 

If Senator Biden did, in fact, step down from the candidacy for Vice-President, due to health reasons, would he not also be compelled to step down from his candidacy as Senator from Delaware?  Wouldn’t he owe that to his party, especially in Delaware?  No, I’m just not buying into this one.

 

Now, on to the second October Surprise:  The Osama October surprise.  The New York Sun is running a story that Osama is planning a number of overseas operations timed to influence the November elections in the US.

 

It is reported that back during that weekend, which separated the Democratic and Republican conventions, our US military intelligence agencies, and civilian intelligence agencies, picked up a number of messages from Osama’s Al Qaeda leadership instructing local cells to be ready for “imminent instructions”.  These messages have been reported to have been intercepted from multiple channels… some from couriers and some electronic messages, and some other unidentified methods of communication. You can read the article By Eli Lake, a staff reporter of the Sun, at:

 

http://www.nysun.com/foreign/spies-warn-that-al-qaeda-aims-for-october-surprise/86326

 

You may recall that Al Qaeda did something very like this in 2004, in Spain, by blowing up Madrid commuter trains just three days before the elections there and the Socialists Workers Party was voted into power in Spain. You may also recall the recorded messages Osama released the week of the US elections, also in 2004, in which he warned of dire consequences if President Bush was re-elected.  And, of course, there is the suicide bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, just a few days ago, which would tend to lend credence to Al Qaeda’s threats.  The Sun reports that the lobby of that particular hotel has been used as a meeting place for CIA officers and Pakistanis who felt it not wise to be observed meeting at the US Embassy there in Islamabad.

 

My opinion on Al Qaeda’s threats is that should they carry them out, they will most certainly aid the McCain camp and not the Obama camp.  But, then again, those people live in holes in the ground in some remote god forsaken wasteland far removed from the reality of the certain backlash such actions by them would cause and the danger it would bring to their continued existence. 

 

That said… if I had to choose which of the two rumored October surprises to put my money on, it would be on the Osama October surprise.  I just don’t buy the rumor of Biden stepping down.  THAT would be a Godsend to the Republicans.

 

J. D. Longstreet

 

 

 

“L.O.S.T” Should stay LOST!!!

Oppose The Law of the Sea Treaty

By: J. D. Longstreet

 

I came across something alarming a few days ago and I wanted to pass it along to you. Actually a friend of mine in Ohio alerted me to this and as soon as I read it I fired off e-mails to both my US Senators asking them to oppose it. I am referring to the Law of the Sea Treaty better known, at least among those who actually KNOW about it, as “LOST”!

Here is a snippet for the article I read:

“The United States is inching closer toward ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). President Bush endorsed this treaty in May and has since urged the Senate to vote on ratification. Initial reports indicated that the Senate may have attempted to ratify LOST before adjourning for the August recess. Recent reports indicate that a vote to ratify the treaty could take place within the coming weeks. Former President Ronald Reagan originally rejected the ratification of LOST in 1982, but recent appeals from the Bush administration, some members of Congress, and the Council on Foreign Relations, have caused the treaty to resurface.”

At first I thought it was frightening enough that the Senate had possibly attempted to slip this horrible treaty through undetected but, as I read more about it, I truly became alarmed.

Here is another snippet:

“The Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) entered into force in 1994 and has been ratified by 153 countries (click here for a list of recent LOST developments). The treaty gives the UN complete jurisdiction over the oceans and everything in them, including the ocean floor with all its resources, along with the power to regulate 70 percent of the world’s surface.
The International Seabed Authority could require the United States to share intelligence, technology and even military information. LOST could impose restrictions on intelligence-gathering by U.S. submarines, activities that are essential to national defense.”

Lou Dobbs had this to say about this Treaty:

“The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently heard arguments on the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty, which President Ronald Reagan rejected but President Bill Clinton submitted to the Senate in 1994. A vote is likely in the weeks ahead, and this Democratic-controlled Senate is the same institution whose leadership sought passage of the disastrous comprehensive immigration overhaul legislation.”

If we have captured your attention, even a little bit, we’d like to direct you to the website from which the snippets of info on this page originally came. You’ll find it here:
http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=10443156

This is serious business. We have given away far too much of our freedom in this country in the last couple of decades, or so. We stand at the threshold of a one-world government, which would immediately place the United States, and it’s constitution, at heel behind that single globe spanning government. Do you want that? I certainly don’t. This treaty, which, when passed by the US Senate, will have the force of US Federal Law, is one of the ways your freedom and mine will be handed over to some other governing authority other than the one you and I voted for.

We Americans, who value what freedom we have left, cannot allow this monster “freedom killer” to survive! I will be urging my Senators and my Congressman to vote against this monstrosity.

J. D. Longstreet