Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
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.
Don't worry. Crimson Permanent Assurance Co. will get them.
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.
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
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.
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!
. . . 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
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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?
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 ----
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.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
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
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..
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