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Old 03-25-2008, 04:30 AM
BeautifulBurnout
MadMinistrator
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 2,522
Re: When are Americans going to learn how to behave in foreign countries?
Quote:
Originally Posted by chuck View Post
It had containers full of 'FREEEEEdooooommmm".

And large pallets carrying stockpiles of "Fuck YEAH!"
ROFLMAO

Quote:

Silly buggers aside - I'm with Sean on this (shock horror) - lets hear as much of the full story as possible before firebombing our nearest Burger King shall we?

McDonalds you can feel free to ransack at anytime of course - everyone's favourite imperialist icon makes really shite burgers these days.

Pretty ballsy these hawkers - how were they expecting to get their cigarettes and cheap Levis knockoffs up to the railing of these container ships? Catapults? Hand-held rocket launchers? .... oh, I see how we could have a problem of interpreting intent here.

Strictly speaking - they were in international waters were they not??
As far as international waters, I guess it depends where exactly they were in the Gulf of Suez, and I don't want to get into the kind of "lines in the water" debate we have every time there is an incident in the Straits of Hormuz. But one thing seems clear - there must be hundreds of these little boats there, plying their wares.

And as for whether or not they were trying to sell cigarettes to this particular container ship, I doubt it very much. They were probably just buzzing about in the area along with others trying to sell stuff and because they didn't immediately obey an order from a ship who has no right to order them to do jack shit, imo - and is a container ship, not a warship, remember - as usual, American Paranoia kicked in and the shoot-first-ask-questions-afterwards reflex was spontaneously engaged before anyone's brain was.

There is more info on the Beeb link now than when I first posted it last night, and the commentator's final mark is just as much speculation as to why this happened as anything else I can say on here. So yeah - let's wait and see how this pans out. Or wait and see how it is all hushed up so the Egyptians don't upset Uncle Sam.
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