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.

Comments

Time for Qs to come back

[AKAImBatman]

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.)

Re:Time for Qs to come back

[thrillseeker]

The pirates are on the run now - the UN has approved sanctions against them - God help them when they read that.

Re:Time for Qs to come back

[eldavojohn]

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. 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.

Re:Time for Qs to come back

[nbert]

One thing I'd like to add: There are not enough military ships in the world to really control the affected area. More ships result in higher safety, but as long as cargo and tourist ships pass the area unguarded the pirates still have a chance.

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

[Sponge Bath]

...any real solution has to change something within Somali territory

Pave the entire country and turn it into permit required parking.
Then deny parking permits to all of the pirates.

Not Pirates

[youngerpants]

I wish people would stop using the word Pirate; they're merely redistributing content.

Shippers urge copyright blockade of Somali coast

[mcgrew]

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!

[davidwr]

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/ .

Site slashdotted, mirror here:

[Anonymous Coward]

Site is slashdotted, here's a mirror of the current pirate activity:

Pirate Hotbed

Convoys

[zentinal]

Does anyone know why, given the huge area and the number of ships to protect, merchant ships in the area aren't being organized into convoys with military escort through those waters?

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.

Take off the tinfoil hat

[spun]

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.