Google Map To Real Piracy 262
An anonymous reader noted that you can now see a Google Map of piracy. Not the pretend kind, the real kind with boats and stuff. Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there.
Not Pirates (Score:5, Funny)
I wish people would stop using the word Pirate; they're merely redistributing content.
Woah if you zoom in, you can see the ships! (Score:4, Funny)
Shippers urge copyright blockade of Somali coast (Score:5, Funny)
By EILEEN NG - 42 minutes ago
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Shipping officials from around the world called Monday for a military blockade along Somalia's coast to intercept copyright infringer vessels heading out to sea. Yemen's government said Somali copyright infringers have seized another ship.
Peter Swift, managing director of the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, said stronger naval action -- including aerial and aviation support -- is necessary to battle rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia.
But NATO, which has four warships off the coast of Somalia, rejected a blockade.
Some 20 tankers sail through the sea lane daily. But many tanker owners are considering a massive detour around southern Africa to avoid copyright infringers, which will delay delivery and push costs up by 30 percent, Swift said.
The association, whose members own 2,900 tankers or 75 percent of the world's fleet, opposes attempts to arm merchant ships because it could escalate the violence and put crew members at even greater risk, he said.
"The other option is perhaps putting a blockade around Somalia and introducing the idea of intercepting vessels leaving Somalia rather than to try to protect the whole of the Gulf of Aden," Swift said.
Somali copyright infringers have become increasingly brazen, seizing eight vessels in the past two weeks, including a huge Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million worth of crude oil.
On Monday, Yemen's Interior Ministry says Somali copyright infringers have hijacked a Yemeni cargo ship in the Arabian Sea. It said communication with the vessel was lost last Tuesday after it had been out to sea for a week.
The ship is called Adina and it was not immediately clear what cargo it was carrying. The U.S. 5th Fleet based in Bahrain could not confirm the hijacking.
The Arabian Sea is part of the Indian Ocean and stretches between Yemen and Somalia. The Gulf of Aden links it with the Red Sea.
A blockade along Somalia's 2,400 mile coastline would not be easy.
"But some intervention there may be effective," Swift told reporters on the sidelines of a shipping conference in Malaysia.
U.S. Gen. John Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander, said Monday the alliance's mandate is solely to escort World Food Program ships to Somalia and to conduct anti-piracy patrols.
Asked what he thought of a Russian proposal to jointly attack the copyright infringer strongholds, Craddock answered: "That's far beyond what I've been tasked to do."
According to Lt. Nathan Christensen, 5th Fleet spokesman, more than 14 warships from Denmark, France, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, the U.S. and NATO are currently patrolling a vast international maritime corridor. They escort some merchant ships and respond to distress calls in the area.
Christensen declined to comment on the idea of a blockade.
But the navies say it is virtually impossible to patrol the vast sea around the gulf.
NATO has ruled out a blockade.
"Blocking ports is not contemplated by NATO," said NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels. U.N. Security Council resolutions "do not include these kind of actions and as far as NATO is concerned, this is at the moment not on the cards," he said.
Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa said Monday Arabs should deploy their own naval forces to fight piracy in the Horn of Africa and also cooperate with foreign fleets in the area.
Diplomats of the Arab countries on the Red Sea met in Cairo last week to coordinate efforts to combat piracy, but some of these nations have been reluctant to get involved.
Somalia, an impoverished nation caught up in an Islamic insurgency, has had no functioning government since 1991. Before the Yemeni report of another hijacked ship, there had been 95 copyright infringer attacks so far this year in Somali waters, with 39 ships hijacked.
There were 15 ships with nearly 300 crew still in the hands of Somali copyright infringers, who dock the
They've kidnapped the maps! (Score:5, Funny)
NEWS FLASH
This just in...
Somali pirates have seized control of Slashdot and are using it as their new gunship to take down web sites such as http://www.icc-ccs.org/ [icc-ccs.org] .
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
Site slashdotted, mirror here: (Score:5, Funny)
Site is slashdotted, here's a mirror of the current pirate activity:
Pirate Hotbed [google.com]
Re:Not Pirates (Score:4, Funny)
We should really be going after the shipyards...without them, we wouldn't have this problem!!
The solution is simple (Score:5, Funny)
No, they might laugh themselves to death . . . (Score:5, Funny)
. . . which can only be the real intention of the announcement of sanctions against the pirates.
This is actually a big deal for the UN, because they banned Joke Warfare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke_warfare) years ago.
Maybe someone should threaten the pirates with "going to bed without any supper?"
OK, no Nintendo for a week?
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
Pave the entire country and turn it into permit required parking.
Then deny parking permits to all of the pirates.
So... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
Re:massive weaponry has been suggested (Score:3, Funny)
Hire adventurers? Put an exclamation point in front of the hiring place and gun toting wow players will naturally gravitate towards the quest giver. Set up cameras and sell footage to TV shows. Adventurers get salvage rights on the pirates taken out, everyone wins.
Call it the Naval Interdiction Nullification Joint Assault program. Or for short, the NINJA program.
Lets see how that would play out (Score:1, Funny)
Merchant ships start arming themselves with small weapons.
Pirates notice this and begin increasing their armament to compensate.
Merchant ships begin loading bigger and bigger guns in an accelerating arms race in an effort to scare off the pirates.
Pirates become used to buying weapons from the black market and scavenging from captured merchant ships.
Naval artillery becomes as easily available as AK's as weapons manufacturers begin to step up production to meet the increased demand.
Pirate fleets begin to organize themselves with small lightly armed scout ships and heavily armed destroyers cruising through the seas. They experiment with a few old Russian subs acquired cheaply.
Turf wars begin to erupt between the pirates as the small guys are not able to keep up with the arms race and the big players begin to defend their 'feeding grounds'.
Some of the more desperate merchants begin to hire pirate groups to protect their cargo from the other pirates.
International navies realise that the situation is getting out of hand and try to intervene only to actually be outgunned.
The cost of shipping goods increases exponentially as protection money costs are passed on to the consumer.
Boosted by the influx of cash from "protecting" merchant ships, huge pirate flotillas, the rival of any countries' navy, begin raiding sea ports worldwide stealing cargo even from dry land, blockading ports and demanding ransoms, etc.
The world's oceans become a lawless zone where people fear to tread. People begin to move away from the coasts for fear of pirates. Cities like Singapore become pirate-run towns.
Governments try to use their full military force to stamp out the problem only to realize that the pirates just keep growing in number and CANNOT BE STOPPED. For every one that falls a new one is born.
AND THIS IS HOW THE PIRATE NATION WAS BORN!!!!
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
A strongly worded letter can't be far behind.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
You can go further back also, to Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty which eradicated poverty in the U.S.