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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.
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. 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.
My work here is dung.
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).
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.
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)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_(film)
For crying out loud, there's VIDEO GAMES about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Force:_Black_Hawk_Down
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?
Mirror here: http://www.networkmirror.com/Nps113nZfgofLI1s/www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/20/google-maps-used-to-mark-pirate-attacks.html
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
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.