AA....you are wrestling a Pig here.....you are only going to get all dirty and irritate the Pig.

Amazing things hand guns are....multi-lingual all of them!

My .45 Colt Combat Commander speaks Navajo!

Two Braves decided to relieve me of my money and car keys one afternoon out in the middle of nowhere on the their Reservation. I had given them some food, gasoline for their car....then they decided to take it a step further....and one pulled a knife and demanded money.

I pulled the ol' Colt from under my coat....informed them I was not a one man social welfare agency but was really interested in playing "Cowboy and Indians". As they had brung a knife to a gun fight....they elected to leave hastily.

SASless:

Sir, you denigrate the proud species of the Suidae family...

They are smarter, cleaner and better groomed than my esteemed foe KF... He may look like one, walk like one and grunt like one - but he is no pig. :E

When I was nine or ten years old the proud members of Lord Baden Powell's organization taught me to "Be Prepared"... A lesson sadly lost on the simpering, lily-livered, metrosexuals of today.

Anyway, back to the Pirates. The only certain solution is undoubtably economic, military means won't work all that well against Somalis. one of the most warlike people on the planet.

The solution is blindingly obvious. Stop bribing the pirates to continue being pirates with tens of Millions of dollars - that is simply criminally irresponsible insanity and is the sole and only cause of the problem. They only do it because we pay them to do it. End ransoms. End the piracy.
End of the problem.
And, incedentally, end voluntarily funding Al Shabab(?) a hideously unpleasant international terrorist organization because there is little doubt that they are behind this as a means of procuring the funds they need for their evil anti-western purposes.

Just how stupid can we be?:ugh:

And to pre-empt the inevitable hand-wringing dimwits, no I wouldn't like it if it were my family being held to ransom but you can't solve the problem any other way. Omelette = breaking eggs. Do we want to end the piracy or not? Your choice.

AB:

The problem is there's always one or two countries whose politicians still see the return of a few hostages and a boat full of oil as a vote getter.

What will happen when the pirates realize that they won't get money for the return of the oil? I know what I'd do... Find a bigger "hot button" and engage in environmental terrorism, "Pay me $10M or I'll dump the oil along your coastline". Job's a good 'un...

We can't beat them. We can't buy them out. We can't ask them to stop. We can eradicate them. Make piracy a certain death activity.

Plenty of the pirates are white christians: They are in it to make the money, period. They don't have any ideology. Cut off the money flow by putting all the current head pirates in prison, then cut off the money flow into Somalia....both by shutting down the money pipeline, and by stabilizing Somalia...that will stop the piracy.

cliff
GRB

Cliff,

"Plenty of the pirates are white Christians."

Whilst not disputing this, can you offer any evidence? I've only ever seen rather dishevelled 'ethnic' Somalis. Perhaps that looks better on BBC/Sky/CNN.

Duncs:ok:

There was a problem with piracy in the Carribbian in the sixties. Not highjacking but stop and rob mostly for V&A items like electronics, personal items and perfumes. This led to a lot of it being transported by air which gave a second lease of life to Constellations and DC6s converted to freighters.
In the harbour at Belize I saw a tramp freighter being unloaded. On its foredeck was what looked like a Bofors anti aircraft gun on a plinth with its barrel parked below the horizontal.
I do not think they had any trouble.

They only show the guys on the boats on the news. They are the pawns. The heads of the pirate organizations live in NBO, JNB, London and Canada. If their faces were on TV, then they would be arrested that day.

Interpol needs to find the money flow from the Pirate Heads into Somalia, track the Head Pirates down and put them in prison, and shut off the money flow.

It is similar to the Barbary Pirates. The money behind the scenes belonged to the Heads of the Ottoman Empire, and the governments along the Barbary Coast. They never went in the boats and did any physical pirating.

Ironically, a lot of the Barbary Pirates...the ones in the boats....came from England, The United Provinces (Netherlands today), Spain, etc.

cliff
KGRB

Cliff,

Roger. I see where you are coming from; I had assumed that you had information regarding the actual perpetrators, rather than those believed to be behind the scheme. That's why I asked!

Duncs:ok:

Blimey! I thought this thread was going to be a discussion about the usefulness of MPA and its turned into a dick dangling contest over who has the biggest gun! Well, my son has about 5 different Nerf guns, so beat that! :cool:

I'm still trying to get my around AA's claim of zero crime..... in DETROIT!!! :D

I don't live "downtown" but if I put the name of the township I live in you'd have no clue where I live. Just like if you tell me you live in Ash Vale I might not know where that is but if you said near Farnborough I might.

You should come here to Detroit and see for yourself though. It has a dismal reputation but I've lived in Washington DC and just north of Philadelphia. I can assure you that south east DC and the abutting areas of Prince Georges county Maryland are far worse than Detroit. Then there's north Philly. :sad: Both are very scary places to take a wrong interstate exit into.

I have lived and worked in Metropolitan Detroit since 1993 and have yet to witness any violence. I lived in DC and north of Philly for a total of 4 years and have seen numerous acts of violence there. You can't always judge a place by it's 40(?) year old reputation.

Just to keep it on topic. Ship the pirates to Philly and DC, they wouldn't last 5 minutes. ;)

You've never heard of English grammar then?

Thank you, M2. Quite right.

KF
"You've never heard of Google maps then?"

It might show you where he lives but not the level of crime.
Every town / city has it's bad spots.

Look at Las Vegas, if you only ever go to the hotel and stay on the
main part of the strip, you would think what a great, crime free place !


And what's with your question in post #63 ????

Detroit area crime map

Detroit, MI Crime Map - Showing Crimes in Detroit - Crime Statistics, Alerts and Reports - Crime Stops Here

Like all cities; you live in the right part of town you are OK. I would imagine the quiet parts are where the gun is in the drawer and the noisy parts are where the gun is in the street.

Property prices are good. You can buy something for the monthly rent in London.

Any chance of renaming this thread - the original one is misleading...

Milo:

Here's Philly.

And Prince George's County

You decide...

AA
I'm not comparing anything. If you're happy with where you live, thats all that matters.
All I was doing was pointing out that while Google maps don't have crime stats, other mapping sites do. So if anyone wants to get into a pissing contest of "your place is less scary than mine" then they've got something to use to find the facts