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.
Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I've been hearing, it sounds like the biggest problem in defending against the Solmalian surge in piracy is that the pirates know where the US ships are and avoid them. They've taken to attacking farther and farther out from the coast, often impacting new shipping lanes when displaced by US warships.
Maybe I've been reading too much fiction, but am I the only one thinking: Q Ship [wikipedia.org]?
1. Lure pirate in with tasty looking merchie.
2. Wait until pirate is within range and intentions are clear.
3. Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
(Well, the merchies do anyway.)
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It's not just that. Trying to coordinate the numerous navies involved can't be easy. I have been reading the occasional bit of Informattion Dissemination [blogspot.com]'s coverage of the events out there. It's way too much for me to swallow on a regular basis, but it has commentary from professionals, not just journalists or cheerleaders.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (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?
Why take away Nintendo? We have Xbox and PC. (Score:2)
OK, no Nintendo for a week?
So what? Real pirates pirate PC and Xbox 360 games.
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What we really need is for the United States to have a War on Piracy!
Remember how we had the War on Terror, and there hasn't been any terrorism since?
And how the War on Drugs got rid of all drug problems in the US?
And if you don't explain to them what you mean, maybe you can get the RIAA and MPAA behind it!
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.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Informative)
Theres been a war on piracy since 1801. And a war on slavery off the coast of Africa that the US was involved in. Theres a power vacuum now with the fall of the Soviet Union and the shrinking of navies and naval basing.
Back before, the Soviets had naval basing in the region, out of Somalia and at times, Yemen. That dried up, Somalia got disastrous and the UN pulled out. the boil festered and now we are seeing some fallout for giving up on Somalia in the mid 90s.
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Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have modded you up just for the neat phrase you invented: got disastrous ;)
That would be a euphemism for "was destabilized by a US-backed coup"--in this case in 2006.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
A strongly worded letter can't be far behind.
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Why should NATO act ? How many of those hijacked vessels are registered in NATO countries ? I'm betting it's not many so why would we care if they're hijacked or not.
It's down to countries like Saudia Arabia who are making vast sums of money transporting oil through that area to spend some of that money on their own protection, if they want to protect their ships. At the moment it looks like they prefer to pay out ransoms ( which seems to me to be a highly stupid strategy and is simply providing the pirate
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion any real solution has to change something within Somali territory. It's not like the pirates can switch to safer jobs on land when the international efforts become unpleasant.
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.
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Kill enough of them and the others will be scared away.
Something like this [imdb.com] has been tried before. Controlling cities is much harder than controlling the sea. What else would you suggest? Pay them to stop piracy? This is called "extortion", and usually only leads to more payoffs.
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Has that ever worked? I don't really care if we execute them as punishment, but it seems a bit naive to think that will stop it from occuring in the future. It's a punishment, not a deterrent.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Insightful)
The irony is that things only get moving when oil is involved.
Now that they have a tanker full of it, the US will be called to "liberate" it.
Once that ship is gone, we'll go back to Status Quo.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Informative)
Huh? The USN (and other nation's navies) have been working on anti-piracy measures in that area for years. Just because you've never heard of it doesn't mean it isn't happening.
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This sort of solution needs to be applied to areas other than just Somalia. Many (but not all) of our enemies are poor.
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Huh? The US alone could do it if really wanted to. Probably the UK or France could too, though they might need a bit of aid from the other.
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That sounds more prone to problems (and should the pirates actually still capture it, then you're screwed) than my idea. Much like a Q-ship, you have a ship that looks like it's got good stuff on it. However, it's loaded to the hilt with explosives. Have it radio-controlled, so no actual people are on-board. A few lifelike dummies behind the wheel perhaps. Sail it around where things get hijacked, wait for it to have just that done to it, and push the big red button that says "make pirates go away now"
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Interesting)
I seriously doubt that a Q-Ship armed to the hilt and crewed by experienced naval personnel would fall into pirate hands. These guys are attacking with fishing boats for crying out loud! The problem isn't that our ships can't hold their own against the pirates. That much is stupidly simple. It's finding the pirates that's the problem. And these guys are even less sophisticated than other piracy organizations equipped with speedboats and cutters.
I mean, take a look at these guys [timesonline.co.uk]. If someone would arm our merchies with a few mortars and sniper rifles, these pirates wouldn't be able to get their assault rifles within weapons range. But for some reason, today's governments think that armed merchies are a bad idea. So... Q-Ships. They'd kick ass. :-)
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Informative)
Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.
Your punishment may be a bit extreme but maybe it's just because I'm the kind of guy that likes fair justice & is concerned that the rest of the world sees my country as one that blindly kills people.
... these pirates have even alegedly defended fishing areas for locals [nytimes.com]. They claim they are more like the coast guard trying to protect the food of hungry people. I think entire cities have bought into their propaganda and are willing to harbor/help them.
You are forgetting that these pirates are (aside from being human beings) winning people over by giving them things in a very Robin-Hood-esque type scenario--even if it's only offering the people a paying job as a pirate in an otherwise devastated and unstable economy. You would very quickly fall into disfavor with the locals
True or not, it's brazen disregard for how other people see things that causes really really bad things for America. Going in there, shooting up criminals & leaving is not going to improve anyone's image. Yes, these people are kidnappers & thieves but I don't think insta-death is a good way to deal with them.
Not a whole lot in this world is purely black and white.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Interesting)
"Launch Marine Assault to capture positively identified pirates" works just as well. It merely lacks that nice ring "blast them into next year" has. :-)
Your point is well taken. However, I still think Q-Ships are an answer. Q-Ships are the kind of bait that would cause pirates to identify themselves so that you can take action. Whether that be a matter of sinking them or capturing them, there's a good chance of it working. As a bonus, you'll start to give the pirates pause as they attempt to ascertain whether the ship they're about to attack is a real merchie or a Q-Ship.
For bonus points, borrow real merchant ships but crew them with naval officers and marines. That way NATO forces can move from ship to ship, leaving the pirates to further second-guess themselves. Is this merchie a trap? No way to know short of attempting attack.
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Why not just allow ships to arm themselves? Q-ships will just lead to "scout" pirate ships that test the waters to see if the ship is armed then still go after the regular ships.
If that oil tanker had a few RPGs and people that knew how to use them, there wouldn't be a problem. As other people have said these are fishing boats.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Interesting)
If that oil tanker had a few RPGs and people that knew how to use them, there wouldn't be a problem.
No, RPGs aren't an appropriate defense weapon. 500m is the propulsion limit and the limit of hand held accuracy is more like 50m.
All you need is a handful of hunting rifles of polar bear hunting capability, I suggest my preferred caliber the .300 Win Mag aka 7.62 × 67 mm. Half a dozen of those on deck and you are effectively safe from anything short of an actual warship.
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.300 Win Mag is a great sniper round from a scoped rifle, but that's a terrible platform for a maritime engagement. Aimed fire at ranges very likely to be 300m+ on moving targets from a moving platform on open water with a scoped weapon is a substantial challenge for the most gifted marksman, and that's just hitting the enemy vessel! .300 Win Mag would require a magic shot for that round to do any meaningful damage, and the magic is limited to killing a pirate or damaging the boat's propulsion. It's just
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The problem with that is, right now although the Pirates are armed with RPG's and such they're not generally using them (not saying deaths haven't occured) Doing so would result in an arms race. Look at the roadside bombs on Afganistan.. we supply heavier armor to protect the troops, they build bigger bombs. Although I won't say your idea doesn't have merit, I've thought it myself, it must be looked at carefully before going down such a path.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, that if the ships start shooting at the pirates, the pirates start shooting at the merchant ships.
Given that those ships might carry a cargo worth hundreds of millions, are very slow, almost impossible to miss, and can be sunk with a well placed RPG, it's not a risk most of the merchant companies want to take.
That is the essence of the issue why these ships are not protecting themselves. The pirates would blow them up.
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Justice from where? What court do you try them in? Somalia has no functioning government.
It's funny, the shit has been hitting the fan for innocent civilians in Somalia but it only gets real attention (and demand for NATO intervention) when it starts to affect our trade ships
Going into Somalia with assistance was tried not so long ago. Didn't work out too well. It's not surprising that there is no real desire to try it again.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, this is incorrect:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21842522-1702,00.html [news.com.au]
http://article.wn.com/view/2008/10/23/Pirates_to_kill_crew_on_arms_ship_if_NATO_ships_attack/ [wn.com]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1572236/Somali-pirates-threaten-to-kill-tanker-crew.html [telegraph.co.uk]
They can and do kill people. And if this is allowed to continue, more and more people are going to die. On both sides.
My plan only addresses the short term issue: The piracy. That has to be dealt with immediately. Unchecked piracy will only result in the loss of more lives and cause economic problems on a world-wide scale.
Dealing with the political issues in Somalia is a more complex issue that lacks an immediate solution. I wish I could venture a good plan, but I do not understand the dynamics of the situation well enough to produce one. It's not like Somalia hasn't been receiving foreign aid [questia.com]:
What do they do with our foreign aid workers? Why, they kidnap and kill them:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/world/africa/06briefs-6FOREIGNAIDW_BRF.html [nytimes.com]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081105/wl_afp/somaliaunrestreliefkidnap_081105183945 [yahoo.com]
http://www.patronusanalytical.com/files/Somali%20Aid%20Worker%20Murdered.php [patronusanalytical.com]
http://www.pr-inside.com/somali-aid-worker-killed-witnesses-say-r904499.htm [pr-inside.com]
What would you have us do? I'm all for finding a peaceful solution if one can be arrived at. But as of this moment, there is an immediate problem people are dying or being threatened with death.
Food for thought: Isn't it interesting how the pirates can't afford food, but can always afford assault rifles? Perhaps there is more to their Robin Hood image than meets the eye.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because assault rifles are a lot more plentiful than food in Somalia.
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So you want the US, fresh on its "success" in Iraq and Afghanistan to "liberate" yet another country we don't really understand (and one that we've previously failed in)?
We go in, "liberate" a country and get called the great satan and western pig-dog imperialists.
We don't go in and everyone whines that we're not doing anything.
Somali isn't even a cause of regime change. There is no effective regime. Somali would be like Afghanistan on hell difficulty in hardcore mode. Humanitarian aid doesn't work because
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It's funny, the shit has been hitting the fan for innocent civilians in Somalia but it only gets real attention (and demand for NATO intervention) when it starts to affect our trade ships
In principle I agree with what your sentiments, but it isn't as if helping Somalia hasn't been tried [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately, the experience has been that going to Somalia and
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:5, Informative)
It's funny, the shit has been hitting the fan for innocent civilians in Somalia but it only gets real attention (and demand for NATO intervention) when it starts to affect our trade ships
Uh, dude...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_(book) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_(film) [wikipedia.org]
For crying out loud, there's VIDEO GAMES about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Force:_Black_Hawk_Down [wikipedia.org]
Just exactly what does it take to meet your threshold for "real attention", since apparently a multiple Academy Award winning Ridley Scott motion picture doesn't do it?
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Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.
Your punishment may be a bit extreme but maybe it's just because I'm the kind of guy that likes fair justice & is concerned that the rest of the world sees my country as one that blindly kills people.
You are forgetting that these pirates are (aside from being human beings) winning people over by giving them things in a very Robin-Hood-esque type scenario--even if it's only offering the people a paying job as a pirate in an otherwise devastated and unstable economy. You would very quickly fall into disfavor with the locals ... these pirates have even alegedly defended fishing areas for locals [nytimes.com]. They claim they are more like the coast guard trying to protect the food of hungry people. I think entire cities have bought into their propaganda and are willing to harbor/help them.
True or not, it's brazen disregard for how other people see things that causes really really bad things for America. Going in there, shooting up criminals & leaving is not going to improve anyone's image. Yes, these people are kidnappers & thieves but I don't think insta-death is a good way to deal with them.
Not a whole lot in this world is purely black and white.
They are pirates, and an ancient law of the sea is that pirates can be hunted and destroyed wherever they roam.
They chose a life of piracy, and should not be surprised when others hunt them down mercilessly; which is what needs to be done to make sea lanes safe for commerce.
One need not worry about image when dealing with pirates on the high seas; other than the one in the pirates mind where they see themselves hanging from a yardarm.
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That's a really touching story but the pirates are armed and attempting to take over a ship with a crew and hundreds of millions of dollars of cargo.
The only thing treating them nicely will buy you is more pirates.
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a few years doesn't repair the influence of 300 years of colonialism.
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Park an aircraft carrier out there, give the ships the radio for it, and whenever someone yells help send a plane to blow them out of the water.
I know it doesn't address the source, but we're not able to fix that source. This is effectivly a 'bad neighborhood' and we frankly don't have to take this shit from them. We tried to help them, the country doesn't want helped. If that's how it's going to be, fine... but there's no re
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Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't find the reference right now, but when I was reading about piracy last week arming the merchant ships was said to be difficult politically.
I think it was something like this: the merchant ships have to pass through many nations' waters, and in some of those nations the arms needed to fight off pirates are illegal. So... if you have private armed guards on board, you're breaking the law at some of your ports. Therefore, being a well behaved company, you don't have guards at all.
This is lame, even as it makes sense. How would a US port feel about a foreign ship pulling in when a dozen civilians with grenade launchers are strolling around on deck? The Coast Guard would go ape.
Anyway, I would like to find a proper explanation for the current state of affairs.
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Insightful)
> How would a US port feel about a foreign ship pulling in when a dozen civilians
> with grenade launchers are strolling around on deck? The Coast Guard would go ape.
As an NRA member I'm not afraid of arms or people wielding them, so long as they are the right people bearing them for the right reasons and shooting them at the right (or would that be wrong?) people. So no, I would have no problem with a $150M tanker laden with $100M in crude being armed. Seems rather sane to me. If we are trusting the crew not to use the far more dangerous tanker itself as a weapon I see no reason to begrudge them a couple of rocket launchers to defend themselves from pirates. No, they can't carry them off the ship and they should be expected to have the decency to stow them away once they are safely in US waters. If I can't have a rocket launcher why should they get to have all the fun. :)
This story just goes to show ya what pansies we have allowed ourselves to become. Can you imagine pirate infested waters under Ronald Reagan's six hundred ship navy? People might accuse America of trying to police the world, but dang it back when we really did it the world was a safer place... as it was when the British Navy ruled the seas. Pirates had short life expectancies.
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Oh, I agree. I wasn't trying to say that fear was the RIGHT reaction. If foreign merchant ships want to have mercenaries on board I think we should find a way to make that work--and their home ports should extend us the same courtesy.
Pirates... Sheesh. History, like Hollywood, has run out of ideas and is relaunching old ideas.
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> As in, full of Middle-Easterners. Do you really want those people armed?
Ok, you are trying to make a funny and all that but I'm gonna play along. Dude, they are already armed with a fully loaded oil tanker. Just how much more damage are they going to do with a couple of AKs and perhaps a rocket launcher or three? A hundred million dollars worth of crude oil is enough to do a heck of a lot of damage to a port. Plus they could opt to just sink the damned thing in an inconvienient spot.
So unless we ar
Re:Time for Qs to come back (Score:4, Informative)
Mirror here: http://www.networkmirror.com/Nps113nZfgofLI1s/www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/20/google-maps-used-to-mark-pirate-attacks.html [networkmirror.com]
Mk-38 (M-242) (Score:2)
The solution is rather simple, the Mk-38 25MM Autocannon. In international waters these vessels have every right to defend themselves against pirates. This unit is widely used by the military and is very easily attached to all sorts of ships would provide a nice deterrent. The rate of fire and range are more that sufficient to keep many craft at a distance. And not only are they easy to maintain, simple to use, but fun as heck to use.
http://www.zombiesurvivalwiki.com/page/M-242+Bushmaster+25MM+Autocannon?t=
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i don't talk about those cases where you have to kill them to defend your life. but in the current debate noone ever questions if hijacking a boat and kidnapping the crew is a crime which deserves instant death.
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Most people are talking about killing the pirates before the boat is hijacked. You might be able to argue that that doesn't deserve instant death if there is a way to capture the crew without risking yourself doing it. Reasonable people could argue that.
But, if you are talking about people that have already hijacked the boat and kidnapped the crew, I don't see how you could argue that instant death isn't warranted. If the pirates surrender that is one thing, but I don't think we're talking about that are
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Not Pirates (Score:5, Funny)
I wish people would stop using the word Pirate; they're merely redistributing content.
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Yes, they redistribute valuables from a big ship to a small port. What's wrong with redistributing the contents of a big ship?
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I know, we'll let the majority vote on whether or not we should take the contents from the bigger ships and distribute to the smaller ships... Just the ones catching less than 250,000 fish per year.
Re:Not Pirates (Score:4, Funny)
We should really be going after the shipyards...without them, we wouldn't have this problem!!
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Historically, there were very few real pirates.
Most were privateers, meaning they were sponsored by a nation. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the case here as well. These so-called pirates don't have a lot to gain in the long term. It'll be interesting to see what the response will be by governments in order to "fix" this problem and who really benefits.
These stories about pirates have been very frequent in the past few weeks, magically when oil and gas are well below what most could have ever predicted.
Take off the tinfoil hat (Score:5, Insightful)
No, most pirates were not privateers. But most privateers were also pirates. The reason being, privateers could only get Letters of Marque and Reprisal [wikipedia.org] when their country was at war, and the letters only covered attacking enemy shipping. What did privateers do during the times their country was not at war? They turned to outright piracy.
The idea of modern countries handing out letters of Marque is ridiculous. Implying the pirates are after oil is just dumb. Saying the pirates don't have a lot to gain in the long run is also stupid, and shows how uneducated you are on the matter. Just look at the ransoms they receive. You only have to do it once. This is not some kind of Pirates of the Caribbean secret order of pirates. This is groups of starving desperate men trying for the Big Score. They take what they can get, and hope the shipping company will pay a ransom rather than see their ship sunk. They aren't selling oil and goods on the black market.
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Have you heard anything about Somolia in the past, oh I don't know 20 years? There is no government in control of the people, not in the sense you seem to imply. There's also no organized economy or workers rights. Most likely, these pirates are average people with starving family back home, doing anything they can to put food on the table.
Like a lot of problems around the world, the only way you are going to 'fix' the problem is to raise the standard of living so that the risks of brazenly illegal behav
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I work for a large shipping company. Piracy has been in the news lately because they are going after larger and larger ships in deeper waters. The most recent headliner was a supertanker carrying $100 million in crude oil getting hijacked, the largest vessel in history to ever be hijacked. One of our company's vessels fended off an attempted hijacking a few weeks ago as well. Regardless of cargo, vessels of this size often cost nearly 6 figures a day just to own, let alone operating costs. The costs of
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Mostly because the pirates have gotten very, very, bold of late. And without the election or the Emmys, well there isn't much news.
Woah if you zoom in, you can see the ships! (Score:4, Funny)
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And if you follow this link [weebls-stuff.com] you can even see the pirates and ships up close!
np: Rhythm & Sound with Paul St. Hilaire - Free For All (See Mi Yah)
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
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stronger naval action -- including aerial and aviation support -- is necessary to battle rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia.
Nice try, grasshopper.. You got the concrete nouns, but you missed the abstract.
/.ed (Score:2)
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] .
Site slashdotted, mirror here: (Score:5, Funny)
Site is slashdotted, here's a mirror of the current pirate activity:
Pirate Hotbed [google.com]
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Really, the funniest thing about this is one of the "reviews":
Rated 2.0 out of 5.0
Service was OK - bob - Aug 1, 2008
Atmosphere could use some help, and gets a bit noisy at times (I could barely hear my lunchpal throughout the meal). The service was mediocre, because while they do exactly (most of the time) as you tell them, it takes a holler and sometimes a fervent hand wave to get their attention. Plus, you have to shout out your orders too. Food was decent but for the price, not really worth it.
Convoys (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't that strategy work at least as well as it did in WWII? [wikipedia.org]
I don't think the pirates have submarines or aircraft... yet.
Re:Convoys (Score:4, Interesting)
Because that would be expensive. There are too many ships going through the Red Sea or other hot spots to organize small enough convoys that don't end up leaving ships waiting for days for an escort. And imagine the traffic jams you'd see at the Suez and Panama Canals when that convoy showed up.
If you want a military solution, a better option would be to park a carrier or two in each hot spot, and give each merchant ship contact information for the carrier(s) in an area, so they can call in a strafing run on any small, well armed boats that get too close (like pirate 911).
A better solution still would be to remove the international legal restrictions against carrying small arms (e.g. battle rifles) and fixed armaments (e.g. fixed machine guns and light artillery) on a merchant ship. A few years ago, a Cruise Ship [wikipedia.org] used a sonic weapon to fend off a pirate attack off Somalia. Imagine if instead of a non-lethal sonic cannon, they had unleashed a few rounds from a 30mm Cannon [wikipedia.org] modified to fire at sea-based attackers. It would have stopped that attack and prevented those pirates (and that boat) from mounting any future attacks.
Re:Convoys (Score:4, Informative)
By the time the 'small, well armed boat' is identifiably too close...it is too close for an aircraft to get there in time. Plus which, the military pilot can't just take the word of some random guy about whether to shoot some other random boat in the water.
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The EU navies have begun convoy operations in the Gulf of Aden:
http://www.lloydslist.com/ll/news/eu-launches-naval-escorts-in-gulf-of-aden/20017577798.htm [lloydslist.com]
speaking of piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
It looks like the jacked up idle template pirated my user page. What do we have to do to get rid of it?
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Yes, I was wondering about that. I go to my user page now and I've got a bunch of spam about features of slashdot I don't care a damn about instead of the list of my recent comments I was looking for.
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The Real Deal. (Score:2)
"Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there."
You don't consider people who share content they're not suppose to a "real problem"? Why am I not surprised?
The solution is simple (Score:5, Funny)
RIAA (Score:2)
If I were the RIAA I would be donating money to the effort the united nations are making to stop Somali pirates. That way they could try to keep the word "piracy" for their own corporate use.
Right now, with the news of the pirates real kidnapping and killing, people has to be wondering why the same word is used for someone that makes a copy of a file.
Piet Hein (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in NL we have a song about Piet Hein. [wikipedia.org] He brought us the Spanish silver fleet when Holland ruled the waves and was at war with the Spaniards in the 17th century. He was a national hero back then, but in fact he was just a pirate. He stole all the silver the Spaniards had stolen from the natives in South America.
Proof for Pastafarienism (Score:5, Insightful)
The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster has revealed to us that there is a link between pirates and global warming, as piracy goes down, global warming increases [venganza.org]. Surely this is evidence (not that any is needed) for this basic truth? As pirates steal oil tankers the price of oil will increase thereby limiting its consumption and decreasing the amount of global warming.
It's plain simple logic, just like the plain, simple, wholesome taste of pasta with a tomato sauce.
Historical Precident (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm normally pro-US hegemony and quick to defend our actions. But, I'm about to give a silver bullet to my opposition.
I can't help but notice the parallels between America's situation and Rome during its final centuries. Rome eventually degraded as barbaric pressures from the outside world overwhelmed their ability to control them.
Modern America seems to be collapsing under a similar weight. Terrorism and piracy are equivalent modern forms of barbarism. The fact that the US cannot control it anymore validates the position that the US military is way overstretched and that our empire is on the decline.
Ug.
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The thing is, piracy and terrorism get worse, if you don't deal with it. My take is that the current level of piracy has gotten worse over the past couple of years (though no doubt it is somewhat exaggerated by the media). If the world were to consistently fail to deal with the problem for twenty years, for example, Somali pirates would probably be raiding all over the Indian Ocean. The piracy business would be so profitable that massive numbers of eye-patch wannabes from elsewhere would be immigrating to S
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I'm not going to dismiss the notion of any parallels between America's present situation and that of the fall of Rome. But I'm not sure that the ones you've stated stand up to scrutiny.
If there's one thing we should take from the last 8 years, is that international terrorism is not a problem to be solved through military means.
As for these pirates. Purely because the US hasn't sent its military to deal with them, doesn't mean that it couldn't. The US Navy is quite capable of indiscriminately denying Soma
So... (Score:4, Funny)
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---
I look forward to killing you with a map soon!
Citizen of the Galaxy as applied to this problem: (Score:3, Interesting)
Robert Heinlein wrote a book where merchant ships scooting through space were armed with nuclear rockets to blow the pirates straight to hell because the government cruisers, while effective, were few and far between.
Obviously, we don't need to go nuclear on the pirates, but some small arms would go a long way to curbing the problem. Bigger ships can get bigger guns.
Arm each ship with some guns and grenade launchers. Scale up as appropriate for larger ships. Problem solved.
massive weaponry has been suggested (Score:2)
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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.
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A little background (Score:2, Interesting)
What a bunch of crap (Score:2, Informative)
According to some of the hostages just released:
Five Indian sailors who were among the crew of a Japanese-owned cargo ship hijacked by pirates and held for two months before a ransom was paid said Monday their captivity was "total desperation."
The sailors were generally in good health when they were released, but according to the five who spoke publicly Monday conditions aboard the Stolt Valor were severe and they lived for two months in continual fear of being killed by the pirates.
"We were always ... all
Reasons Piracy Continues (Score:4, Insightful)
Piracy exists in Somalia because the government lacks sufficient ability and influence to stop it.
It continues largely because the international community that has the ability to stop it, doesnt have the reason to. Modern warships can sink targets they cant visually see. The Gulf of Aden is large, but its not that large.
Most ships, even if owned by a western company, are flagged in a Convenient state - Panama, Liberia etc. these countries love the revenue form being a flag state but have no means of protecting their flagged ships. Most ships are crewed by non western crews.. many from the Philippines, Bangladesh, etc. again countries with limited abilities to protect their nationals internationally.
The west has many ships in the area, however they are reluctant to act for political reasons, if no nationals are involved, or its not a home flagged ship, its really not the concern of the country. The pirates get their million dollar ransom, which to a pirate is a wind fall, but to a shipping company, used to paying $60000/day fuel bills, really isnt that big a deal. Furthermore the risks to the pirates are relatively small - the French raided a la Poinete, a yacht that was taken by pirates and was crewed by french nationals, and the Indians sunk a Pirate mother ship last week. So for the pirates 2 out of over 100 incidents ended badly. To stop the pirates, the western world needs to actively seek them out, hunt them down and stop them from taking ships, as well as recapturing ships by force. When pirates begin to face the consequences - to this point there have been almost none, then they will cease their actions, because taking a ship no longer results in a quick profit for the prirates, and the risk of death goes up significantly for the actual takers of the ship.
Incidentally, the IMO is now recommending ships hire private security to protect them in troubled waters. Blackwater international has also purchased ships. The 18th century tales of piracy make a difference between a Privateer and a pirate a privateer was a mercenary ship working for a nation, to harass enemy shipping - they could take prizes, but paid a percentage to the crown, and wouldn't attack friendly shipping. a pirate had no Letter of Marque, paid no commissions, and attacked who he wanted when he wanted...
everything old is new again.
One final aside, those whom complain about copyright infringement by referring to it as piracy do a great disservice to the victims of piracy, imagine having your office attacked by men armed with machine guns and RPG's and your only defense is to run, and spray the attackers with a fire hose. from the floor above..
Didn't we do this once already. . ? (Score:2)
Didn't we already have an age of piracy? Wasn't it the main reason the U.S. Navy was invented?
This looks like another trumped up excuse to scare people and spend money on guns.
--We've had a fairly large up-tick in media awareness about pirates over the last few years. (Thank-you, Disney and Mr. Depp.) --Heck, a few weeks back when I was buying some coffee, the lady at the cash informed me that I could win a prize because it was international 'Pirate Day'. WTF??
Before Iraq, there was a media build up wit
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Don't worry. Crimson Permanent Assurance Co. will get them.
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Oh, right, it's just a coincidence that Wall Street is getting bailed out, and Wall Street spend huge money on bribes and inserting cronies into government.
Congress is stuffing the loot into sacks. But of course it's Wall Street's piracy operation.
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Technically, Wall Street is the Capo di tutti Capi directing their Uomini D'onore, Congress, on who to shake down. Leave it to a troll who's name is deliberately reminiscent of 'hairy vagina' to defend Wall Street.