Coming from a town where dozens of seal catchers were home ported until into the 1980’s, this hysteria over seal hunting just gets me mad.
What is wrong with hunting seals? Is it any different from hunting deers, or slaughtering any domestic animals to feed the craving for meat of the same people who are protesting against seal hunting? (Hamburger in hand)
We had a thing going about the wreck of the Maud in some thread here, but cannot remember where.
In any case, they are getting ready to tow her across the Atlantic as soon as the ice situation in and around Cambridge Bay allows. Meanwhile it is time for a party: https://www.budstikka.no/lars-bjerke/maud/nyheter/reiser-til-maud-land/s/5-55-520305
Will they reflag her? Still not totally clear on whether the new CETA protects the old Canadian rules about flags and crew’s nationality. I think it does?
Sorry about the derail but it’s only a short sidetrack.
“Rescue” is a euphemism for human trafficking. Those “rescue” vessels are a large part of the people smuggler’s business plan. If not for them the number of “refugees” would be insignificant.
Siem Pilot was part of the European Boarder Security Force (Frontex) and not chartered by an NGO.
Actually the charterer was the Norwegian Government.
I agree that the traffickers are now using the do gooders as part of their business plan, but what is the solution here? Should you let thousands more drown, or try to stop the flow of migrants from sub-saharan Africa from feeling the need to escape from their mismanaged countries?
If 1% of what is spent on arms and defense in the rich world was used to create better living conditions in the source countries there would be a far fewer fleeing from poverty and hunger.
I don’t mean by giving money to corrupt regimes, but by investing in local production and opening up markets for their trade. Reducing tariffs on import of goods from those countries and stop subsidizing farmers who produce too much produce, which is then dumped on their markets would be a easy first step.
If western powers stopped propping up corrupt regimes because they pay lip service to “democracy” and suites their political needs at the time would also be a good beginning.
As long as there are minerals under the soil that will never, ever, happen so yes, let the idiots drown until the word gets out that paying a human trafficker is no different than trying to swim to Florida. Maybe then they will turn their efforts toward overthrowing their corrupt “leaders.”
Depopulating some African wasteland plays right into the hands of the kleptocrats and arms merchants in DC, London, Paris, Bejing, and Moscow. Maybe letting the world watch them rot in the fields and on the streets outside government palaces is what it will take to stop “developed” nations from feeding this insanity. But as long as they vanish at sea or end up selling umbrellas and trinkets at Europeann tourist traps the trafficker market will bloom, with the help of those NGO’s and GO’s with a guilty conscience.
What the actual. whut. why. how is Alaska even. I can’t. Greenland is. Svalbard is. Franz Flippin Josef Land is. Where is… UT Dallas: you really pooched this one. This aggression will not stand, man. Where did you get this damn thing? Where are the Tums? I’m on to you, sirs: “no one can claim land if its not on the map. mwahahaha!” Get hooped.
