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Der Spiegel reporter tells us the story of the guards for ships that sail through pirate-plagued waters – the Horn of Africa.
While the European naval mission Atalanta avoids definitive contact with the pirates who plague the waters around the Horn of Africa, shipping companies are protecting their vessels with armed private security personnel. SPIEGEL joined one such ship as it ran the pirate gauntlet on the world’s most important trade route.
A cardboard carton the size of a shoebox bobs about in the Red Sea waves. As James Roles observes it through a telescope, a shot rings out. “Not bad,” he says, “but you’re a little bit short. Go ahead and aim it a little higher.
Kevin McGregor sets his rifle’s telescopic sights on the box and pulls the trigger once again. Roles is satisfied. It’s a hit. He’s ready.
Roles and his British team arrived onboard two days ago. The GasChem Antarctic had just left the Suez Canal when a motorboat approached the ship carrying the men. They are four ex-Royal Marines who now work for the British security company Neptune Maritime Security. The men were sporting military-style close-cropped haircuts, wearing Bermuda shorts and polo shirts, and carrying large, black bags as they climbed the ladder onto the ship.
Roles and his colleagues fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Now their task is to protect the GasChem Antarctic on behalf of Hartmann, a shipping company based in Leer, in northwestern Germany. The gas tanker unloaded ethylene in Spain and is now en route to the United Arab Emirates, where it will be loaded up again with gas to deliver to Argentina. …
…Roles and his team load the magazines of their two semiautomatic weapons. They are 7.62 mm caliber, like the pirates’ AK-47s, but the British security forces use a more powerful propellant. “If you hit a shoulder, that’s an arm gone,” Roles comments dryly. Three shots are enough to sink a skiff, and they have 600 rounds. Merchant ships and pirates sometimes trade fire for several hours. The men unpack helmets and bulletproof vests reinforced with steel plates.
…McGregor retrieves the morphine that the captain keeps under lock and key. “If there are any injuries,” he says, “it will be on the bridge.” Pirates sometimes fire anti-tank missiles and AK-47 volleys at the bridge, and in some cases, the ship looks like a sieve by the time they’re finished. “This is war,” Köhler says.
It’s an absurd war, one in which a few Somalis in flip-flops and tiny boats manage to put to shame modern warships from the most powerful countries in the world. On his last voyage, Köhler’s ship was pursued by a pirate boat. The captain accelerated, sprayed water from the fire hoses and held up a homemade wooden weapon that looked like an AK-47 from afar. The pirates turned back. …
The legal rationale for Obama’s Libyan adventure gets a once over from Charles Krauthammer.
Is the Libya war legal? Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, it is not. President Obama has exceeded the 90-day period to receive retroactive authorization from Congress.
But things are not so simple. No president should accept — and no president from Nixon on has accepted — the constitutionality of the WPR, passed unilaterally by Congress over a presidential veto. On the other hand, every president should have the constitutional decency to get some congressional approval when he takes the country to war.
The model for such constitutional restraint is — yes, Sen. Obama — George W. Bush. Not once but twice (Afghanistan and then Iraq) did Bush seek and receive congressional authorization, as his father did for the Persian Gulf War. On Libya, Obama did nothing of the sort. He claimed exemption from the WPR on the grounds that America in Libya is not really engaged in “hostilities.”
To deploy an excuse so transparently ridiculous isn’t just a show of contempt for Congress and for the intelligence of the American people. It manages additionally to undermine the presidency’s own war-making prerogatives by implicitly conceding that if the Libya war really did involve hostilities, the president would indeed be subject to the WPR.
The worst of all possible worlds: Insult Congress, weaken the presidency. A neat trick.
But the question of war-making power is larger than one president’s blundering. We have a core constitutional problem. In balancing war-making power between Congress and the presidency, the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive right to declare war.
Problem is: No one declares war anymore….
In WaPo, Ruth Marcus comments on Obama going against convention to do what he wants regarding Libya.
…As The New York Times first reported, the administration jettisoned the ordinary process by which the executive branch determines the legality of its own actions. Normally, that decision would be made by the OLC after considering the views of other departments. The president has the undisputed power to overrule OLC, but that is an extremely rare occurrence.
Having the imprimatur of the OLC is the constitutional equivalent of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. For example, before the administration launched military operations in Libya, it obtained an OLC ruling that the president did not need to obtain prior congressional approval. The White House was happy to brandish the opinion to rebut any question about its authority.
In the current episode, the White House appears to have chosen to avoid a formal opinion — one that it knew it wasn’t going to like. The question involves the applicability of a provision of the War Powers Resolution that requires the president to terminate military operations within 90 days of commencing hostilities unless it obtains congressional approval. …
The WSJ editors do some extensive myth-busting about fracking. This will be an important battleground. The left can’t abide this procedure which well help us with abundant and inexpensive energy. They prefer we be weak and dependent on others.
…Most drilling operations—including fracking—have long been regulated by the states. Operators need permits to drill and are subject to inspections and reporting requirements. Many resource-rich states like Texas have detailed fracking rules, while states newer to drilling are developing these regulations.
As a regulatory model, consider Pennsylvania. Recently departed Governor Ed Rendell is a Democrat, and as the shale boom progressed he worked with industry and regulators to develop a flexible regulatory environment that could keep pace with a rapidly growing industry. As questions arose about well casings, for instance, Pennsylvania imposed new casing and performance requirements. The state has also increased fees for processing shale permits, which has allowed it to hire more inspectors and permitting staff.
…Amid this political scrutiny, the industry will have to take great drilling care while better making its public case. In this age of saturation media, a single serious example of water contamination could lead to a political panic that would jeopardize tens of billions of dollars of investment. The industry needs to establish best practices and blow the whistle on drillers that dodge the rules.
The question for the rest of us is whether we are serious about domestic energy production. All forms of energy have risks and environmental costs, not least wind (noise and dead birds and bats) and solar (vast expanses of land). Yet renewables are nowhere close to supplying enough energy, even with large subsidies, to maintain America’s standard of living. The shale gas and oil boom is the result of U.S. business innovation and risk-taking. …