Vessels have the right of freedom of navigation through straits, on “innocent passage” under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. As it sounds, that amounts to a right to pass straight through on normal business. Territorial waters do not affect innocent passage. The coastal state has the right to establish sea lanes for maritime safety purposes.
So whether the Marshall Islands flagged Maersk Tigris was in Iranian territorial waters is not relevant to its right to pass through. If, as Iranian sources have indicated, it really was impounded for commercial debt, then that would have to be in territorial waters. But for that the crew could not be detained, and the debt would have to be immediately stated and the ship released if paid. Iran is not acting as though this really is for debt.
The Maersk Tigris is however a good example of why the shipping industry is an absolute disgrace. It is flagged in a country with which neither the vessel nor its owners have any connection. It is owned by Maersk, leased to a renting company in Berlin, and then rented back by Maersk. The purpose of the flagging arrangements is to avoid proper safety, crew qualification, wage and trade union regulations which go with a genuine state flag. The leasing is an international tax fiddle. For reasons nothing to do with Iran or the US, I have no sympathy with the owners or insurers.
I rather expect the Iranians are lying about the commercial debt. Iran and the US are playing a pointless, massively expensive hawkish game in the Gulf. At least the Iranians have the excuse that they live there.
Just as Iran should not have stopped the passage of the Maersk Tigris, so the US Navy had no right at all recently to threaten Iranian cargo ships which may or may not have been on the way to Yemen. Even if those ships had entered Yemeni waters, the US would only have had the right to intervene if asked to do so by the government of Yemen. While that government is a Saudi and US puppet, they are not keen for all their people to know that. Giving permission for invisible blasts from the sky is much more deniable than for huge warships.
I was sorry for the two American hostages who were killdied in a drone strike, but sickened that given all the hundreds of innocent women and children he has murdered in drone strikes, Obama finally got all sackcloth and ashes over two American men.
Former presidents of the U.S. now receive pensions amounting to just short of $200,000 per year, in addition to various other benefits, including free medical treatment at U.S. military bases. Obama is in addition independently wealthy, with a net worth of about $7 million (largely from book royalties).
He can afford to settle for an academic job, if that is what he wants.
Habbabkuk : “Would you like me to reply[…] ?”
Of course, if you’d be so kind! If I’m factually incorrect about something, or labouring under misapprehensions, I would absolutely appreciate being informed. I’d far rather be “right” than merely “right-on” 😉
“I was sorry for the two American hostages who were killdied in a drone strike, but sickened that given all the hundreds of innocent women and children he has murdered in drone strikes”
I actually feel sorry for ALL the innocent people killed in drone strikes – of whatever gender and/or age:(
Republicofscotland,
Its a COLOUR thing…shit my capitals look harsh colour rather than color…but I used to have Enormous Respect For American People (well I still do actually) buy that is not from what I read about what other people say or write about them (most of which I know is true) but from Personal Experience of meeting American People and working with Americans in England and various parts of the world as tourists..sure some of them lived up to their images…but basically, from my own personal experience…they seemed well nearly as nice as Muslims and Hindus..but I guess they invited us into their homes…cos well they wanted to learn to speak Lancashire from my Pretty Blonde Wife and Me.
They said..well actually some of the time..they hardly knew one word of English…but that is a part of the fun…maybe a bit of French..a bit of Spanish..a bit of Greek a bit of German…but English tends to be fairly understandable Everywhere..except when I Tried To Speak French in France (when I was 15 -and My Mum was brought up as a Peasant Girl in France)
Tony
Note the off topic goading to which there will be no reply. ‘Night all.
Goodnight Mary
How do you do it?
Don’t they all drive you Mad Here??
I might even vote now
Tony
Poll: SNP on course for clean sweep in Scotland: Ipsos MORI survey suggests the Nationalists are on course to win all 59 seats in Scotland as Nicola Sturgeon warns Ed Miliband he will have to ‘change his tune’ over a deal.
$200.000 a year for former Presidents of the world’s most powerful and richest nation doesn’t seem excessive when set against, for example, the around £400.000 the disgraced former head of one of Britain’s banks (Fred Goodwin, aka “Fred the Shred”) gets as an annual pension.
But I would say that, wouldn’t I, because I don’t hate America 🙂
Mary
“Note the off topic goading to which there will be no reply. ‘Night all.”
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No more off-topic than a lot of other stuff on here and certainly not goading; why, they were just a couple of serious questions arising out of stuff you’d posted, presumably of your own volition.
You must learn to dialogue and not just monologue if you want to be taken seriously.
Does anyone – Lysias, perhaps? – know the pension of the former head of an Oxford college? I should think it would be a lot less than $200.000 a year.
It really is time the little Scotlanders were cut loose from the UK fold. It was inevitable that having failed to vote for their own independence they would become more and more of a nuisance. It is the way of the Scotch, to be a continual nagging presence that demands special treatment rather than going its own way. I have respect for some of them, mainly those out keepering on the moors and looking after the prime salmon beats, but to have the representatives of depressed, skag-ridden lowland slums attempting to dictate the direction of the world’s sixth largest economy, having just months ago wanted no part of it, is too much to stomach. It is time to let the English decide on whether we want these English-hating malcontents in the union any longer.
“It really is time the little Scotlanders were cut loose from the UK fold. It was inevitable that having failed to vote for their own independence they would become more and more of a nuisance. It is the way of the Scotch, to be a continual nagging presence that demands special treatment rather than going its own way. I have respect for some of them, mainly those out keepering on the moors and looking after the prime salmon beats, but to have the representatives of depressed, skag-ridden lowland slums attempting to dictate the direction of the world’s sixth largest economy, having just months ago wanted no part of it, is too much to stomach. It is time to let the English decide on whether we want these English-hating malcontents in the union any longer.”
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Anon1
You don’t honestly expect anyone to read that lump of text,do you? you’d need the Rosette Stone just to decipher it.
Tip Anon1 the next time you comment use PARAGRAPHS!!!!!!!
Better still stick to your colouring in books.
“I actually feel sorry for ALL the innocent people killed in drone strikes – of whatever gender and/or age 🙁 ”
Me too Becky Cohen. Me too. Nobody has the right to take the life of another human being, especially when there may be no evidence of wrongdoing. We have progressed into the 21st century. As Professor Carlo Cipolla said: “Man is still a savage; but the weapons at his disposal are more sophisticated.
I kind of wonder what’s going to happen when other countries start sending drones over the United States to kill people there.
J
A drone recently landed on the White House grounds without being intercepted, or even detected. And more recently, a gyrocopter landed on the Capitol grounds without being intercepted, although the U.S. government now claims that it was detected on radar. Turns out something was detected on radar, but they couldn’t distinguish it from something like a bird. http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-mans-gyrocopter-detected-radar-landing-capitol-lawn/story?id=30660032
Just like Mathias Rust’s flying a small plane as far as the Kremlin without being detected was an early sign of the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union.
JSD, they’ll be shot down in a jiffy?
Why should drones be treated any differently by USAF than jets or other planes?
“Just like Mathias Rust’s flying a small plane as far as the Kremlin without being detected was an early sign of the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union.”
Oh really Lysias, is it ‘just like’? Are you predicting the imminent collapse of the US of A?
Suggest you stick to your daily banal counts of the UK general election.
I hope you’re right. But history shows us that technology can’t be confined to one country: once something is technically possible, it will be replicated. Presumably if radar-invisible drones are possible, other countries will have no scruples about using them, on the grounds that the US can hardly complain.
J
“Oh really Lysias, is it ‘just like’? Are you predicting the imminent collapse of the US of A?”
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I’m afraid he is, Villager. And looking forward to it by the sound of it. I’m glad the nutter’s no longer in the US Navy and Army!
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“Suggest you stick to your daily banal counts of the UK general election.”
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Agree again, Villager.
By the way, he’s slipping, we didn’t get his FT bit today, did we.
@John Goss, for some reason while I was reading this I kept thinking about your little “debates” with RD ! 🙂
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/04/nyt-propagandizes-false-ukrainian-history.html#more
“It’s not the first time O’Bomber has droned an American citizen, though. Anwar al-Awlaki was a US citizen, was targeted for death and then killed in an extra-judicial execution in 2011. They also killed Samir Khan, Awlaki’s 16 year old son, who was also a US citizen.”
And?
The Paedophile Parties.
RobG has been going on about this for weeks and sorry for the off-topic but it has just struck me how utterly insane this is. In a week’s time, tens of millions of people are going to go out and give their endorsement to the Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem parties, which have all been involved in protecting and blocking investigation into child rapists and murderers within their ranks. Abuse that has continued and been covered up over the course of decades. Parties that have given cross-party support, on the Hansard record in the House of Commons, to child abusers.
Honestly, what do these parties have to do to NOT get voted for? How can anything like this POSSIBLY gain the documented support of the majority of the voting public?
Over half the population are actually going to go out of their way to tick a box that says “I approve of protecting paedophiles and child murderers in my government”.
Villager
No, I was mistaken – he got in his FT bit on the previous thread (BBC).
You can’t keep a good loony down, can you.
Clark
29/04/2015 10:28pm
Additionally, everything we have seen to date suggests that this stuff is still going on now. I haven’t seen anything to lead me to suppose that a halt has been called to it.
Kind regards,
John
Anon1
Isn’t fighting for your country’s enemies called treason? And does not treason usually attract the death penalty? And since the gentleman concerned would probably not have returned volontarily to the US to face trial……
Treason in wartime can indeed be punished with the death penalty (although it rarely has been in recent decades). But, unless someone is actively waging war (which usually means carrying arms), the U.S. Constitution provides that he cannot be punished without a trial. Defense against an imminent threat is thought to allow killing without trial.
The last U.S. citizen who was executed for treason was Herbert Hans Haupt, a naturalized citizen who was executed in 1942. Since then, Iva D’Aquino, Mildred Gillars, Tomoya Kawakita, and Martin James Monti have been convicted of treason, but none was executed. (They escaped the death penalty through prison sentence, deportation, or pardon.)
More shocking than the killing of Awlaki (although he may have been guilty of no more than delivering inflammatory sermons that the U.S. government disliked, which should have been protected by the First Amendment) was the killing of his 16-year-old nephew, which has never been properly explained.
Those people I mentioned in the second paragraph all had trials.
All true, Habbabkuk. Except that I wouldn’t call him a gentleman. Inciting vulnerable young Muslims to commit terrorist attacks against their own countrymen is cowardly behaviour to say the least. Lower still are his supporters on the hard left.
When the leaders of Sinn Fein incited young Irishmen to commit attacks against members of the Royal Irish Constabulary in the Irish War of Independence, was that cowardly behavior that meant they were no gentlemen?
“It’s not the first time O’Bomber has droned an American citizen, though. Anwar al-Awlaki was a US citizen, was targeted for death and then killed in an extra-judicial execution in 2011. They also killed Samir Khan, Awlaki’s 16 year old son, who was also a US citizen.”
And?
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Typical of Anon1 who has no compassion for the fact that a man and boy and up to 40 others were killed in this drone strike. Don’t these people disgust you?
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Yes, thanks Macky. RD is drip-fed his ‘knowledge’ from Encycopedia Spuriusa. The recession was world-wide. Anybody who has read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ knows that.