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Google Map To Real Piracy
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.
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?
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.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I wish people would stop using the word Pirate; they're merely redistributing content.
How come Wall Street doesn't have the biggest cluster? It's talking about robbing $7.4 TRILLION in booty from Americans now, with no end in sight.
--
make install -not war
Google identified the pirate locations based on the ships themselves! If you zoom in on one, such as Attack ID: 2008/187 You can actually see the pirate ship, and somebody walking the plank! (Just above puerto la cruz)
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
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
Free Martian Whores!
5 Comments in and its already Slashdotted. Time to upgrade the 'ol 486!
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/ .
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
omg I so wish I had mod points right now.
Site is slashdotted, here's a mirror of the current pirate activity:
Pirate Hotbed
Wouldn't that strategy work at least as well as it did in WWII?
I don't think the pirates have submarines or aircraft... yet.
True, however it doesn't cause any physical harm as piracy tends to.. I'd say while it's not entirely harmless, it is definatly much 'less real'
remember the "bailout?" more like a handout to old buddies from the club for King Henry. a yo-ho-ho and a tip of the hat when they put a cluster of about 10 circles in New York.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It looks like the jacked up idle template pirated my user page. What do we have to do to get rid of it?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"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?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Send the RIAA and their lawyers after the pirates. It won't stop the piracy, but it will get rid of the RIAA and a bunch of lawyers.
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.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
U.S. Pledge for Bailout: U.S. $ 7.4 trillion
This Criminal who
continues steal from the U.S. Treasury: Priceless
Here in NL we have a song about Piet Hein. 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.
-- Cheers!
Now I can find where to download the new Photoshop more easily!
. . . 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?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
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. 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.
Nick
No, most pirates were not privateers. But most privateers were also pirates. The reason being, privateers could only get Letters of Marque and Reprisal 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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there."
Problem? I find it refreshing that pirates are able to preserve their autonomy in spite of the land cartel.
I believe that re-distributing digital content is the new piracy. The merchants seem to be scared enough of it, and like "real" piracy, they can do things to put a damper on it, but it's going to keep happening until they find a different way to distribute it. In this round, the merchants use DRM and lawsuits instead of cannon and guns-for-hire, and in place of the Seven Seas we have the World Wide Web. We even have "letters of mark" from people like Radiohead and Trent Reznor. And if digital piracy doesn't seem adventurous enough for ye romantics out there, take a look at some of the exploits of the world's largest BitTorrent tracker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay/ http://thepiratebay.org/legal/ I'm not saying that "boat" piracy doesn't exist, of course, but that digital piracy is just as legitimate.
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.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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.
...when will there be a Google map showing the locations of ninjas?
Hmmm, the economy is collapsing because of the sin of "greed". People are screaming for the government to bail them out because of their "need". Huge industries are being nationalized in the name of protecting the People. And now, Ragnar Danneskjold, is terrorizing the seas.
Where have I seen this before?
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.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
But its a question of manpower. These large argo ships have may one, two dozen people to keep costs down. The pirates have a semi-infinite supply.
The graph needs to be extended.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
OK, no Nintendo for a week?
So what? Real pirates pirate PC and Xbox 360 games.
With Daisy Cutters and turn the ports into rubble. Then use the Navy to sink everything floating larger than an egg carton.
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/dumb/blu-82.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_upy14pesi4
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
This Issue is not black and white as most people think. This piracy has been going on for more than a 15 years off the coast of Somalia. In the past the targets were usually Japanese boats illegally tuna fishing a few miles off the north-eastern coast. back home these men are not looked upon as pirates they were a de facto navy for so long. believe it or not they have certain code they follow which is largely based on our nomadic culture .. they have not hurt a single hostage nor are they interested in doing so ... their hostages are treated with respect and food and water are shared equally among capture and captured... they are not locked up or anything like that.
I admit the last few months what they are doing is beyond the pale .. but I cannot help admiring the the courage to take on a vessels of that size with dingy motor boats.
contrary to what many articles report they are nowhere near as organized as they would have you believe .. the whole hi-tech thieves things is BS ... granted the last 'pirate' boat i've seen was about 13 years ago .. but the only thing these guys have got going for them is the 2 steel spheres in their shorts
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!!!!
The register published an informative article on this not too long ago. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/13/retro_piracy_brouhaha_discussed/ Basically, why would the UK suddenly care about ships being captured it failed to care about the high numbers of ships with foreign crews sinking?
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=anon
Link goes to details
We need to find out where all the pirates have been hiding in order to decrease global war.. I mean... "climate change" (that's it)... So sayeth Our Noodly Saviour....
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 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 with huge popular mind-shaping software like, "Command & Conquer". Something is going on. Despite conventional wisdom, convergences of this nature never happen for no reason.
-FL
If all small boats were warned that if they travelled at more than 10 knots they were liable to be sunk without notice the whole thing would fizzle out after a dozen sinkings or so.
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 24 hours we were on gunpoint," said Fernandes. "We were all staying on the bridge (in the) navigation area. All 22 crew members were sleeping there, eating there. Only for shower and all, only two people were allowed -- two people will go, then they come up, two (more) people will go."
Another crew member, Naved Burandkar, said the hijacking occurred when pirates came behind the Stolt Valor on a boat and fired rocket-propelled grenades.
"They were continuously firing (at) our ship," he said. "They boarded our ship. They were firing ... nobody was going to understand what's happening so you can imagine what the situation was there."
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/24/india.pirates/index.html
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
But is it me, or are the highest piracy rates located in areas where a certain religion is practised?
your tinfoil hat is a bit tight, seems to be speeding the insanity
Think now: You took the time to fling a pre-packaged insult at me in an attempt to. . ? What? Embarrass me into only speaking the 'right' things? Have you ever stopped to wonder why your knee jerks like that? What purpose does it serve? --Of course, it's pack mentality; this is understood. But why? Do you really think it's YOU making that decision. It's not. It's auto-reaction, and it was baked in place long ago. And not by you.
Most people simply auto-react their way through every minute of every day, thinking that it's them at the helm, when really it's not. It's actually very easy to control populations and events in a way which is quite invisible to the population. Heck, there's a good chance you don't even realize you're mostly robot. The very idea right now is most likely making you scramble to access some basic calming program to make the creepy feeling go away as fast as possible.
With these mechanisms being so ubiquitous, if somebody wanted to make a group of people become pirates and have them think it was their idea all along, it would be very easy to do.
-FL
Considering how much time we spend talking about the other kind, I think it's worth paying attention to the real problems out there.
Maybe I'm just old-fashiond and boring, but it's not because you couldn't care less about piracy that it isn't someone lese's real problem...
When I opened the site I thought that the map points are incidents of piracy where violence was threatened so I was surprised to see that most of the reports are about covert robberies of anchored ships ... I guess they're still technically incidents of piracy since a ship was robbed but it's probably not what people have in mind when they think about pirates
Is it so difficult to position a platoon of troops armed with the latest infantry weapons on every merchant ship that is sailing through this area ? If we can have security guards in banks, factories and other land based installations, why is it so difficult to have guards on a ship carrying USD 100m worth of merchandise ?
Insight into much, Influence over nothing !
A strongly worded letter can't be far behind.
RIMMER: Well, that's certainly an option, David, yes. Erm, but here's my proposal: Let's get tough. The time for talking is over. Call it ... "Chameleonic Life Forms, No Thanks" ... and if that's
extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and hit it fast with a major -- and I mean _major_ -- leaflet campaign, and while it's
reeling from that, we'd follow up with a {whist} drive, a car boot sale, some street theatre and possibly even some benefit concerts. OK?
Now, if that's not enough, I'm sorry, it's time for the T-shirts: "Mutants Out"
not enough, well, I don't know what will be.
If you actually RTFM(ap), you'll see its actually *not* Somali problem, its a world-wide problem.
The really interesting thing is that almost every single attack (all but one or two) happened in the tropics. Why would that be? There are plenty of failed states outside of the tropics. Does the international pirate union require the perpetrators to go shirtless or someting?
Also, they were all offshore of "third world counties" ... with one exception: Italy. It looks like one incident happened right near Rome. WTH is up with that?
I'm off to brush up on my Somali for Talk-Like-a-Pirate-Day :)
Protecting a route in international waters:
At the beginning of the route, a small team of 4 soldiers is put onto a voluntary ship by an helicopter.
At the end of the route, another helicopter takes back the team and a bit later puts it onto another voluntary ship cruising in the other direction.
Needs:
- Two small helicopter carriers, one at each end of the route
- Ten or so teams of 4 soldiers.
Thus, ships are not armed when they re-enter national waters, which is the main concern against arming ships.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/fishing-fleets-are-pirates-too/2008/11/23/1227375062168.html
No offense, but the example you used to prove your point is absolutely terrible. You wrote:
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.
These are very small fishing boats for god sake. You write like we used to somehow control all small forms of piracy but now we can't. Think about your point, it doesn't make sense.
Really, you're just writing to get modded up by all the Anti-American trolls on the site. Newsflash: The American Navy is not in danger of falling any time soon.. I'm too lazy to look them up, but simulations have been run where the U.S. navy can simultaneously engage all other navies of the world and come out victorious.
If you're going to predict the downfall of America, try using a different example.