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Mariners Develop High Tech Pirate Repellents
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that owners of ships that ply the dangerous waters near Somalia are looking at options to repel pirates including slippery foam, lasers, electric fences, water cannons and high-intensity sound — almost anything except guns. One defense is the Force 80 squirt gun with a 3-inch nozzle that can send 1,400 gallons a minute 100 yards in any direction. 'It is a tremendous force of water that will knock over anything in its path and will also flood a pirate's ship very quickly,' says Roger Barrett James of the the Swedish company Unifire. Next is the Mobility Denial System, a slippery nontoxic foam that can be sprayed on just about any surface making it impossible to walk or climb even with the aid of a harness. The idea would be to spray the pirate's vessel as it approached, or to coat ropes, ladders, steps and the hull of the ship that's under attack. The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a high-powered directional loudspeaker allows a ship to hail an approaching vessel more than a mile away. 'Knowing that they've lost the element of surprise is half the battle,' says Robert Putnam of American Technology Corp. The LRAD has another feature — a piercing "deterrent tone" that sounds a bit like a smoke detector alarm with enough intensity to cause extreme pain and even permanent hearing loss for anyone directly in the beam that comes from the device. But Capt. John Konrad, who blogs for the Web site Gcaptain.com, says no anti-pirate device is perfect. 'The best case scenario is that you find these vessels early enough that you can get a Navy ship detached to your location and let them handle the situation.'"
An M-16 with a full clip.
Brett
a firearm, worked as a defense against boarding parties hundreds of years ago, it will work just as well now.
Is it more humane to flood those little pirate boats and let the pirates drown then just shooting them in the head?
Bettery yet, why not take x number of ships, create a convoy that is protected by x number of war ships from different nations and run them through? Each nation gets it's chance to be the flag ship so that eveyone gets the credit. .
It worked good enough in WWII and would work now, unless the pirates get smart and buy a bunch of used U-Boats. But then sinking their loot would kind of defeat the purpose wouldn't it?
You start killing pirates and making it really risky to be a pirate and there won't be any more pirates willing to take the risk. Kinda like the old saying, "There are old pirates and there are bold pirates, but there are no old bold pirates".
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Now hold on just a minute, I thought the best pirate repellant was a good, old-fashioned lawsuit. Are you telling me the RIAA LIED to me? I am shocked, SHOCKED I say.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Sounds like a perfect application. No one is really concerned about the comfort of pirates.
Does these guys not accept a parley?!
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Piracy is a crime and should be treated as such. If there's a rash of break-ins in your hometown you don't recommend that every home owner goes out and buys a gun, you track down the criminals responsible and put them to justice.
It's well known that the pirates are getting inside information on ship locations and cargoes from associates in Europe. Feed a false tip into the system and arrest the pirates that come calling. Don't try to arm civilians to fight off what could be a relatively well trained and well armed fighting force, you'll just piss of the criminals and they'll be that much more likely to start killing people.
Actually, in their minds, it will make the pirates more willing to kill. After all, if people will potentially shooting at you, you're more likely to shoot first if someone looks funny. Frankly, I'm a fan of the convoy idea. Heck. One destroyer could protect a dozen commercial vessels, I'm sure.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
How about we reinstate the time honored tradition of privateering? Every privateer gets a representative from a multi-national body of privateer regulators. Kill pirates, take their shit, take their ships. No more pirates.
I thought the whole idea of not arming crews was to prevent possible death to the crews. Do these people think that only applies to GUNS, and not other forms of arms? The pirates are armed with guns, RPGs and the like, not fucking water pistols. They do not have a "stun" setting. Does anyone in their right mind think the pirates, after getting a ship flooded or tasered aren't going to actually use the weapons THEY have? Do they expect the pirates to say "Gosh, you fought fair and humanely. We'll just ignore all that extra effort, pain and discomfort."
Wrong.
How about just adding armed and trained guards to the ships? Maybe armed and trained escort ships? Q-boats? A Naval destroyer sitting in the main bay, shelling their HQ?
Or is this just the kinder, gentler pirates of the 21st century?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"pirate repellents"
WTF are we talking about... TICKS???
"We're getting boarded... must not have sprayed the pirate repellent last night..."
The best pirate repellent is two squads of armed marines. Just have the ships pick them up in the port before the gulf of Aden... and drop them off in the port after, where they can board the ship going the other way.
Much cheaper than flooding the area with warships... and more effective to boot.
I would think that if the Royal Navy was abolish piracy 200 years ago with a mixture of cannon balls, musket fire, and a hangman's noose, then, the M-16 would work pretty well.
This is my sig.
The pirate repellent foam is lube. They're going to spray attacking pirates with lube.
someone admits that DRM is not the solution to thwarting piracy...
Why bother with all the new 'tech' that is probably expensive, etc. And just use something known to work....a simple fucking gun?!?!?
Geez, if this were my ship, I know I'd be packing some serious heat. A boat starts coming towards me....>bang I do that for my home if an intruder comes in, why not on the high seas where you KNOW a threat like this is not un-common??
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I submit to you that stating "well trained and silent" before "ninja" is redundant. If one is lacking in either training or the ability to be silent, it precludes one's propensity for ninja-ness.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
I wouldn't at all be surprised if the real problem is that the average commercial sailor would say, "Hey, if I wanted to be in the military, I would've joined the military! I don't want to shoot guns OR be shot at, thank you very much!"
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Because many ports of call won't allow a ship with armed men on it to enter. Do you really think we would allow Long Beach to be full with a bunch of well armed container ships? Once you enter a countries waters, you have to play by their rules. And that typically means you can't go there armed. Being on a ship doesn't change that. If I can't buy a 50 cal, why should I let some foreign sailor into my port with one.
To be fair, ninjas and special operations/forces are pretty much the same thing. Ninjas were pretty much feudal Japan's special forces. Their legendary superhuman abilities and magical powers are merely the results of their skill and efficiency. The incredible feats performed by the Navy SEALs and other special forces, while not as easily attributed to magical powers, their feats are often considered superhuman in that the average person could never perform the kinds of things SEALs can.
In short: NavySEALs == Ninjas
Lever back on the testosterone, pal. If the movie Aliens taught us anything, it's that sheer rough-n-ready manpower is not always the answer.
Marines cost to feed and shelter. They take up space that could otherwise be used for crew and cargo. They cost to train. They want to be paid all the time they're on guard. They're not easily replicated or rapidly distributed for a high-demand world. And they're still fragile meatsacks, whatever their will to fight might be.
It makes sense to layer technological solutions onto the manpower ones.
Newsweek just had an article on why killing pirates might be a bad idea. Basically, the pirates have a "code" that they live by which includes treating their hostages well. Their piracy is pretty much an economic transaction. Starting to shoot pirates might make them rethink how they treat their hostages.
Not that I agree with their assessment, but it's an interesting idea that escalating an economic situation to one of life or death might have adverse effects on the innocents involved.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
The ships do not want to carry fire arms not because they don't want to kill the pirates. Carrying fire arms is a safety issue and a legal issue. Some countries would not let a ship armed with machines into their ports. Guns and ammo are dangerous in a fire. And they would attract vandals and thieves who want to steal the guns and ammo. So it is to protect the ship and its crew, they don't want to carry a gun. If they can kill the pirates without guns, they would do so. It is not a question of trying to be humane to the pirates, just sensible precautions to protect the crew.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ninjas who also come disguised as Navy SEAL's with sniper rifles.
Why disguise them as anything? Disguises only matter if you can actually see the target.
You can't see ninjas, they're invisible.
This really has to be the cheapest, most effective method - so there must be some, likely political, reason that it's not being used. Much of the issue with arming crew members seems to revolve around 1) training and 2) what to do with the weapons in whatever random port the ship ends up at where weapons aren't welcome.
Picking up then dropping off paid mercs or active duty soldiers would go around that problem. But it seems like paying ransom is the current preferred action.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Due to activities of privateers and pirates in the past, many nations have laws against armed merchant vessels being allowed in their harbors and/or waters. This is the reason the companies want devices that won't be considered weapons by these countries, Afterall, what good does it do to arm the vessel if it can't dock anywhere.
When I first saw the headline, I thought "why would Seattle be so concerned about Pittsburgh? They're not even in the same league!"
It is an odd headline even knowing the right context.
Does not make sense. Pirates aren't movie aliens and Marines(TM) are known to work quite effectively against them. Marines cost to feed and shelter anywhere you put them so you might as well assign them to ships that are likely to be boarded and let them get some work in. Two squads of Marines do not take up very much space at all (particularly in respect to the capacity of these cargo ships). Their presence would have a negligible effect on crew and cargo. They do cost to train but that money is again going to be spent anyway no matter where they are stationed. They don't get paid all the time that they are on guard (assuming we are talking about United States Marines). They draw a monthly paycheck whether they are on guard duty off the coast of Somalia or stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else. We have plenty of them, they are easily replicated to a point, and can be rapidly sent wherever they're needed. Slippery foam covered pirates wash off and come back to try again. Dead floating in the water until the sharks get there pirates are no longer a threat.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I am sort of curious why this sort of a solution is not often suggested.
It has been said that the reason crewmen are not armed is that they are not trained, and that it is illegal to have armed crewmen at many major port cities where these ships are headed.
It has also been said that stationing mercenaries or marines on board all ships all the time is prohibitively expensive, and possibly has the same legal problems.
But the area in which these problems are occurring seems to be relatively small, compared to the entire trip these ships are taking. Why wouldn't it be reasonable to drop off 10-15 marines/mercenaries at a point before they get close enough for pirates to be a threat, and pick them up on the other side. You'd think that it would be getting cheaper than just buying insurance on the cargo pretty soon.
Or, for as bad as the news makes it seem, go back to the old World War II convoy system. If the gulf is too big to have warships patrolling the entire thing, have a convoy leaving twice a day with a bunch of tankers and 1-2 warships covering it.
The fact that these steps have not been taken must mean that the chances of any one ship being taken are still small enough that most companies can afford to take the risk.
After you've caused some of the pirates to break their arms and legs on a newly frictionless surface, and made yet more of them bleed from the ears, perhaps deaf for life, they finally manage to board you.
For how long do you expect to survive?
Seriously, I'd cut our your eyes and lop off your ears out of spite at that point. And I'm not even a seafaring pirate.
Reminds me of the anti-rape condom that causes the would-be rapist immense pain. Good job, now he'll definitely kill you.
Why don't they just use guns?
In part because it's too expensive. You can't just start handing our guns to the ship crews, they don't have any training and some of them may not be legaly allowed to have guns (due to previous convictions etc) or they may not be trusted with guns by their own company. There would need to be specially trained people on board, something like air marshals. Note that the pirates are typically armed with RPGs and machine guns, so a single guy with a pistol wouldn't make much difference, you'd need to have a bunch of heavily armed people on each ship. Given that 7.5% of all the world's shipping goes through Suez canal, that's literally an entire army that needs to be paid by someone. The incidents of piracy are so miniscule compared to the total amount of shipping that goes through that area that shipping companies find it much cheaper to just pay the ransom.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
> I understand the liability issues involved in stocking guns on a non-military ship
Do you?
Do you really?
Because if you do, I'd like to here it.
Nobody has ever published a single believable argument against having a small secure locker of arms on a merchant ship. Further, this practice was common in all merchant fleets right up to and through the 40s.
Its not a liability issue at all. There is a far greater legal liability to the shipping companies for failure to protect their crews.
Some ports have regulations against on-board guns, BUT nearly all such ports that do have ways around them, such as advance declaration, locked cabinets etc.
No, the only argument presented against arms on merchant ships has nothing to do with liability, and often boils down to "starting an arms race" with the pirates, which is a ridiculous example of reaching and scare mongering.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"pirate repellents"
WTF are we talking about... TICKS???
"We're getting boarded... must not have sprayed the pirate repellent last night..."
Well, see, as you're sailing around there's always a probability that you'll have a random encounter. At low levels the pirate encounters can be a good way to gain experience points and loot - but at higher levels they're not worth the hassle, so you'll usually want to just avoid 'em. That's where pirate repellent comes in.
I hear it's made from ninja urine.
Bow-ties are cool.
Perhaps then there is a market for firearms escrow aboard ships stationed just outside of a nation's territorial waters. You could leave port, arm yourself, sail wherever, and leave your guns behind before arriving in the next port.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I dunno - I think you need to look at the incentives involved. These pirates are businessmen - not crusaders. They do it to make money. If they know they aren't going to make money they'll stop doing it.
I once heard somebody argue that when a plane is hijacked that the military should just shoot it down with hostages and terrorists alike perishing. Of course that sounds dumb, until you realize that you've eliminated any negotiating power the terrorists might obtain from holding hostages. A saner approach would be to simply not sincerely negotiate at all and always mount military responses if the terrorists don't surrender after a reasonable period of time.
> few of the major cargo ports will let an armed ship dock. US ports certainly wouldn't.
That is bull.
As long as the US Coast Guard knows in advance that you have the the weapons aboard and secured and are a validly registered ship from a known shipping company you will have no problems.
Worst case, is the Coast Guard adds their own padlock to the gun locker for the duration of the visit.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yes lets debate between lethal and non lethal firearms instead of addressing the actual causes of the problem. Like an ineffective government and global inequality
Oh give me a fucking break. "Global inequality" doesn't give you the right to start holding human beings hostage for ransom money.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Am I the only one that thought about baseball as soon as they read this? I don't think I should be allowed on this web site anymore.
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
All the testosterone and gung-ho aside, how about not giving them a reason to pirate? It seems that nobody here realizes that the Somali pirates are doing what they do because other nations illegal fishing (worth an estimated 300 million) in the region have depleted [freerepublic.com] their fish stocks while the UN turned a blind eye. To add insult to injury, there's been some toxic waste dumping off the coast.
That little bit of rationalization only goes so far. The fishing issue is why some people (fisherman who lost their livelihoods) turned to piracy but it's largely driven by a profit motive now. They've realized that they can extort money out of shipowners and have no reason to stop doing so as long as the reward is greater than the risk.
are doing what they do because they system has failed them and they see piracy as the most feasible method to force change.
How is piracy going to force charge in Solomia when the warlords that have ruined that country are the ones sheltering the pirates and taking a cut of the money they steal?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I wouldn't root for the pirates, they're just armed thieves, not liberation heroes.
But what is causing piracy is extreme poverty and a shattered Somalia. Before reaching for the gun think how this situation can be changed.
Fighting poverty would be a lot cheaper and better for everyone than fighting its causes. You can get all the sophisticated guns you want, if there's extreme poverty you'll never be safe. And I'm not only talking about Somalia. Look at your neighborhood.
Oh spare us the BS. The pirates aren't hijacking fishing vessels or garbage barges to police their waters. They're hijacking cargo ships and ransoming them. They're doing it 100% for greed, which is motivated by a lack of consequences (little rule of law there) and lack of alternatives (crap economy there).
When they stop taking tankers and start taking fishing boats and garbage barges, you can speak in their defense. Until then, STFU.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
There is a lot of issues.
Some political some practical. non military vessel is not allowed to be armed, for one.
Second is people without training will be trying to shot someone . Trained personal under fire have a very low rate of hits. This would be worse.
Then there is the very real matter that if you just start killing them you will get escalation.
Sure, it would be great to drop a seal team onto every boat, but that's not really practical.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That is an extremely good point, however it may unfortunately be too late to stop the piracy by just improving economic/environmental conditions alone. From my limited understanding of the issue, there are many organized groups of pirates now, most with a hierarchal leadership structure. Those at the top are probably doing considerably better for themselves than what they did as fishermen (or whatever they did before). And if it's like most other organized crime, the leaders will go to great lengths to ensure they remain in power. So even if other ways to make a living become viable again, the pirates may still be forced to remain pirates for fear of repercussions from the leadership.
I think the best approach may be to do both...use the gung ho approach to take out the leadership and collapse the organization, and rejuvenate the economic conditions so that pirates may return to other occupations, and thereby prevent the whole mess from happening again.
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There is no stable government in Somalia either. The lack of social system, education and so forth has in fact failed not only the pirates by their society as a whole. This is not the reason for the rampant piracy, especially when dealing with ships that are brining in food supplies.
This is good old fashioned greed, until recently it has been pretty much a win-win for the pirates. They were seldom if ever confronted and the return on investment was massive. With those conditions in place it created an environment similar to what we had with Privateering.
They claim to care about the over-fishing, the illegal dumping and so forth, but it boils down to greed. Especially when you see that it is not fishing vessels that are hit, but supply tankers with big fat cargos worth millions.
If they were there as social activists, they would be boarding vessels that actually created their problems and keeping them on their shores as a political statement. Not claiming million dollar bounties and going after the next ripe and defenceless target.
That's why they are so vocal about recent warship involvement. Their goose is cooked if world navies crack down.
But what is causing piracy is extreme poverty and a shattered Somalia. Before reaching for the gun think how this situation can be changed.
The last time we tried to intervene in that situation it didn't end so well. If the Somalis want change I'd say that it's up to them to provide it. You can't impose freedom or change on a population that isn't willing to accept it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You know, cops also are paid no matter where they are stationed, so why not put a trained cop in every car on the road?
I'm pretty sure if one freeway accoutns for most of the crime in their jurisdiction, the police will figure out a way to assign their forces there. There are only so many merchant vessels going around the East coast of Africa at any given time. I think the limitations probably have more to do with our forces being so heavily committed on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I doubt the USA would allow Chinese container ships with cannons, and sailors well-armed with lethal weapons to enter US ports.
They don't need cannons. Rifles and pistols would probably suffice. And why would the USA care if Chinese container ships had small arms aboard ship, as long as those small arms didn't come ashore? A rifle in a weapons locker aboard ship isn't a threat to anyone.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Personally I am rooting for the pirates maybe they can drive up the cost of the goods being transported making more local or regional options viable in areas of commerce and energy supply.
Forget your anti retard pills today? If you're rooting for them, you have to realize that most of the shipping there goes INTO Africa. They would be raising the price of aid to areas where local and regional options are insufficient. The pirates are shooting their own region in the foot for their own profit... it helps no-one. I say nothing works better against pirates than hot lead.
That being said, I would love to be on the first ship equipped with anti-piracy non-lethal technologies.
I wouldn't want to be near such a ship. The pirates aren't limiting themselves to 'non-lethal technologies'. What are you going to do when they respond to your water cannon with an RPG? Sending people armed with 'non-lethal weapons' up against those armed with lethal ones seems pretty stupid to me.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So once they get their huge ransoms and can feed their family, why do they still pirate? I have no doubt these people have been screwed, and that should stop. But there is still more to it than just what you are saying. Pirating is more profitable than fishing. Why would they go back?
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They claim to care about the over-fishing, the illegal dumping and so forth, but it boils down to greed. Especially when you see that it is not fishing vessels that are hit, but supply tankers with big fat cargos worth millions.
Why do you think that responding to running out of fish means people must only attack fishing vessels? If the water is over-fished and poisoned why would there even be any fishing vessels around anymore to attack?
Your argument is akin to saying that if a man was really starving, he would only steal groceries and not steal money to spend on groceries. Its a really blatant mental short-circuit. It suggests that you can't rebutt the GP's original point, but you are so emotionally vested in your current perspective that you have to make up a bogus argument that you can easily knock down in order to avoid considering a broader perspective. I believe that's a form of cognitive dissonance.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If the movie Aliens taught us anything, it's that sheer rough-n-ready manpower is not always the answer.
Remind us of the lessons from a work of FICTION next time you get taken hostage and half your traveling companions (including friends and possibly family) get killed.
Lever back on the testosterone, pal.
You carry a squirt gun, I'll take a fully-armed crew carrying M-16s.
I have to second the GP, I really can't believe anyone even wants to consider non-lethal means ("Anything but guns?" What sort of bleeding heart came up with that line of feelgood BS?) to deal with armed killers on the high seas. These people board mostly-defenseless ships and kill people, loot the cargo, and take the "important" people for ransom. Just fucking kill them. No "alternatives" necessary.
When container barges start carrying half a dozen 150mm guns, you'll watch this crap vanish overnight. Somehow I don't think various Three-Stooges-esque slapstick "solutions" will accomplish more than pissing the pirates off.
As an aside, these clowns only get away with this because they attack highly-multinational ships, crews, and cargos, so no particular country feels a need to respond. When they do go after, say, a mostly-American (or even mostly-French, recently) ship, we end up with living crew and a few less pirates. Good riddance.
Well, I can vouch that a handful of drunk unarmed Sailors can cause some problems :-]
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
This really has to be the cheapest, most effective method - so there must be some, likely political, reason that it's not being used. Much of the issue with arming crew members seems to revolve around 1) training and 2) what to do with the weapons in whatever random port the ship ends up at where weapons aren't welcome.
International Maritime treaties forbid merchant ships from army themselves during peacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_passage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea
If ships armed themselves, then they waive the "right of innocent passage" and when they are out of international waters, then they might run into problem with the local authorities.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/part2.htm
You may wonder how armed Naval ships can have and use weapons, but that is because they are not merchant ships and are ruled by other naval treaties in respect to international law.
If this law was changed, you have to keep in mind that would allow Chinese and Russian merchant vessels to be armed while in US ports so it is a very sticky situation.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
At this point the best thing we do is stop making things worse.
http://reason.com/news/show/132942.html
We didn't create their situation, but we've definitely exacerbated it.
should be issued to each crew by the British. That way they will cease to be Pirates and become far more respectable privateers and will only attack French or Spanish boats.
Nullius in verba
Roger that. And the first way to promote change in productive directions is to stop them from thinking that "taking a ship's crew hostage for millions of dollars in ransom" will result in a change in anything but their body temperature.
These people aren't pirates because the see any "global inequality", they are pirates because they think they can make millions of dollars easily and face no consequences. It's no different than any criminal activity, white collar or blue.
The passage you quoted does not prevent seaman from having weapons, merely from doing anything with them within territorial waters. So just keep them locked up when in territorial waters. Once you're outside territorial waters (or in the territorial waters of a state which doesn't respect innocent passage anyway), break 'em out.
There's probably other treaties getting in the way, but that isn't one of them.
Before reaching for the gun think...
okay, let's look at my neighborhood (or the immediate surrounding areas). a lot of people have it really rough and there is a lot of poverty. but if you kick down my door i am not stopping to think about how rough you have it or how hungry your kids are. if you threaten someone with violence expect a reaction in kind. i won't shoot first, but i will if you threaten me. it's called self-defense and if you don't like it, don't go around attacking people on the high seas or in my front room.
I'm not sure if the american govt is just a big lumbering oaf or destabilizes the region on purpose. Either way they fuck up everything they touch.
Ah, yes, it's all our fault. Sorry, I forgot that as an American I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world. The Somali warlords bear no responsbility at all.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
They only waive this right if they act in ways that are "prejudicial to the peace, good order or the security" of the country in whose territorial waters they are sailing. One specific example from one of the articles you linked to is "weapons practice", but not "weapons possession". Even submarines, which are well armed, don't need to give up their weapons in territorial waters, they only need to sail on the surface under colors.
Yes, if a merchant vessel came into US waters with guns blazing, I think there would be concern. If, however, they entered with "guns stowed and locked", there is no danger to the security of the US. In Somali waters, there would be no danger to Somali 'good order', unless Somalia decided that successful piracy was part of their 'good order', and then they'd run afoul of international law. It is a reasonable expectation that merchant vessels should receive protection from piracy while they are in territorial waters from the owner of those waters.
Even so, the pirates operate in international waters, IIRC.
How many people read the headline and wondered why a Seattle baseball team was trying to create something to keep Pittsburgh players away?
You don't need a cop in the USA since most places you go a private citizen can legally have a gun in their car for self defense. Of course the vast majority don't because being kidnapped and help for ransom isn't high on the threat list here.
No matter where you go, there you are.
Two?!? One squad of US Marines is a heavily armed element; 8 or 9 M16s or M4s, a couple of grenade launchers, an M240 or M249 MG, and a bunch of AT4s (replacements for the old LAW rocket). More than enough to deal with the level of threat we're seeing in Somali waters. If the pirates want to rachet up, at least you'd have a force in place to delay them long enough to bring up the Navy.
a lot of the commentary here has to do with the idea the crews should be armed
the rationale being that this is the best policy in civic life as well
well, crews are not armed, because when you give arms to a handful of guys in the middle of the ocean, interesting scenarios develop involving needless death. not even the majority of such scenarios having anything to do with pirates. hey, don't argue with me. this is official policy on the high seas for a reason
which is exactly why no one should have guns in civic life as well: why multiply the number of scenarios in which the outcome is death for the victims, nevermind the perpetrators
i'd actually like to see the common sense we have on the high seas apply to common sense in civic life: stop the proliferation of guns in civic life, which only results in thousands of needless deaths due top pointless escalation from random domestic situations, posturing teenagers, curious children, miscommunications, accidents, etc.
not that you will see gun proponents ever admit this. in their eyes, a gun is always and forever more used only according to the most virtuous of reasons, and the outcome is always good. even though reality and history and statistical fact proves otherwise, by orders of magnitude
but don't argue with me. argue with the wisdom of those who maintain ships on the high seas
as for what to do about the new pirate situation off of somalia that seems to challenge this wisdom: ships in convoys, chaperoned by warships, just world war i&ii in the north atlantic when german uboats were on the prowl. just like we deal with crime on land: with police, not with the arming of random yahoos on the street with dirty harry complexes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If they attacked waste barges and fishing vessels (there are fishing vessels to attack in the massive area they commit piracy in) they MIGHT attract the attention of the UN who would say "look, they are doing it to stop the dumping. This makes sense." and they MIGHT get help. However, using your issues as an excuse for being a warlord/waterlord is bullshit. Its a fact - Crime is illegal, and they know it. They do it for money, not for ideals. Do you think Somalis give a shit about the environment? Their own environment? Hello, they want MONEY, POWER, FOOD. They could switch to agriculture and get help but they don't want to do that, they want the quick dollar.
Get off your high horse, before a Somali takes it for ransom... I mean "aid".
No. It doesn't. It does, however, explain why it happens. A person grows up in abject poverty, and thanks to mass media's portrayal of the western world, he realizes just how much poverty he's got to deal with. He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
That sense of entitlement is what, he feels, gives him the right to hold a person hostage demanding ransom.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Although I feel like I shouldn't respond to such a blatant troll, since your post was modded up I have no choice but to respond here. (Since nobody else has gotten it right so far)
Calling the GP post BS is just plain wrong. Toxic waste was dumped in their waters, this is a fact. In addition, illegal fishing of their waters is a fact. Your response for the GP to "STFU" is simply uncalled for.
However, none of these facts justifies kidnapping and ransoming people who had nothing to do with those crimes. Many of the first Somali pirates probably started off with noble intentions, but after seeing the potential money that could be made by simply hijacking ships (rather than telling people to get lost) most pirates joined in and the ransoming we see today was born.
At the same time, the GP's suggestion that simply stopping people from illegally fishing and dumping waste in Somalia's waters will end piracy is obviously wrong. As the parent correctly points out, the motivation has become greed. With that said, that means the solution to piracy needs to be a two pronged approach: Stop pirates from hijacking ships, and expel foreign fishermen/polluters from Somalia's exclusive economic zone. If there are fish to catch and punishments for piracy, people will go back to legal methods of income.
So in the future, the GP and P should consider thinking about the other sides argument a bit and coming up with a more logical solution than their gut-reactions ("evil international community" vs. "evil pirates")
The real lesson is that pussies get raped. First ship gets hijacked out of the blue. Owner pays several millions to get it back. Pirates buy huge amounts of guns and bling-bling. Pirates are heavily armed and broke, hijacking the next vessel. Then the pirates' neighbors see all that bling and now try to do the same.
Rinse, repeat and then you have an economy of blackmail, robbery, extortion. Earning millions by simply hijacking a passing ship is sure as more profitable than planting wheat in soil as hard as concrete, so they're doing it. Now that they've tasted it AND have more weapons than they'd ever need, you cannot stop them without killing at least half of 'em.
No amount of training can prepare you to kill someone. The prospect of THEM killing YOU is a fairly effective motivator though......
Actually, this is not true at all. Most people have to be trained to kill. For the early part of the century, in the world wars, it turns out that a huge problem for the American Army was that there were a lot soldiers that simply did not shoot at the enemy because they did not want to kill people. This actually happened even when soldiers were under fire themselves. It turns out that those soldiers that did shoot other people were more likely to have been hunters in their civilian life, so the idea of killing in their minds had been broached just not with human life.
In response to this, the Army would make a lot of changes in its training. Gone were circular targets, and in shaped were human shaped targets, is one. Also, drills and terminology were introduced to dehumanize the opponents. They weren't people to be killed, but targets to be engaged.
It could be argued that in today's culture, this is not so much of an inhibition. We look at something today like Gary Cooper's biblical inhibition against killing Germans in Sgt York and simply laugh as if its camp. But it used to matter to a lot of people. Now, it seems like killing is so common that it doesn't even matter at all.
I just wonder if, people have ever stopped to really look at the media, be it movies, tv, or video games, watched someone getting killed, and really actually just dwelled on what happened for a minute, the significance of the act. I guarantee you if you talked to any soldier that has killed, its an awesome (in the spiritually overpowering sense) thing to have done, and it makes you wonder if some of the alienation that veterans face is the realization that their own deep experience of having killed or be killed does not all square with the cavalier view of the media that holds the death of a man is almost the same sort of thing to talk about like, the weather.
This is my sig.
Remember, terrorism isn't about money, it's about instilling fear in people, i.e. terrorizing. So if you start shooting down every hijacked plane, what actually happens, is that the terrorists will use their readily available supply of martyrs to continuously hijack airplanes with no other intent than getting shot down. Then you either keep your word, shoot the planes and the people within, and soon nobody in their right mind will ever board a plane again (public uproar notwithstanding), or you don't shoot the planes and start negotiating with the terrorists.
hey would be raising the price of aid to areas where local and regional options are insufficient.
Second that. Almost 1/3 of the Maersk Alabama's cargo was relief supplies.
This thread seems to have stirred up a lot of buzz.
People who have no stake whatsoever, or who are impacted only in a very negligible way by this piracy, probably a mere two cents out of their big fat wallets, seem spoiling for a fight. Lots of cowboy swagger here...
Some things I'm wondering...
On April 24, 1895, at the age of 51, Joshua Slocum departed Boston in his tiny sloop Spray and sailed around the world single-handed, a passage of 46,000 miles, returning to Newport, Rhode Island on June 27, 1898.(1) Along the way, he developed several methods to discourage, yes problems even then, trouble from pirates. Sometimes, he would out run them. Other times he would put on different colored watch caps, sweaters, and pop up from hatches and companionways all over his boat. After it appreared that his boat had a significant crew, the pirates retreated and left him alone. On a suggestion from another captain, he employed a method where he spread tacks all over the deck of his boat when he went to sleep. Several times, he would be wakened by screams and spashes as pirates jumped off his decks at night. The next morning, he picked up the tacks with a magnet and was on his way. His story,"Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum, documents his creativity and courage. Look around and you can find it as an e-book. On November 14th of 1909, at the age of 65, after learning that he had incurable cancer, he set out on another lone voyage to South America leaving from Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard, but was never heard from again. (1) http://www.joshuaslocumsocietyintl.org/
Wherever you go, there you are.
He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
Having actually lived in Ethiopia for a month, and having talked to dozens of people there, I assure you this isn't the case.
This view you describe, which seems to be based in cynicism and class envy, simply doesn't exist all over the world. I can't speak for Somalia, but in their neighbor Ethiopia, the attitude is largely one of overwhelming generosity despite having close to nothing.
I talked to one guy who said that he had a brother who lived in America, but he never even cared to visit. He loved his life in Ethiopia. The attitude that everyone in the third world resents everyone in the first world and is willing to set aside their morals to attain material wealth is ignorant and potentially racist.
Certainly every society has their criminals. But poverty is not itself a spawning pool for criminal behavior. Go ahead and witness children who eat about 10 bites of food per day offer you some of theirs, and come back and post again.
Although I certainly do not claim to be an expert in maritime law, commercial ships have helicopters take off from and land on them all the time, which would seem to violate those statutes just as blatantly as adding a few .50 machineguns would.
I think I now know remotely how a black guy must have felt back in the fifties, when the roles were reversed. But in 2009, all things Whitey does or ever did are considered incredible atrocities while everyone else gets a guilt-free genocide every now and then.
If you really believe that white in 2009 = black in 1950, then I can only conclude that your grasp of American history, as a German, is about as good as the average American's grasp of German history.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Have you ever been outside of the US?
... because I have, and I can tell you most people I've met in the third world see their own nations as the place where success and material wealth are a birthright, and they see the US as the one place where success is actually accessible to anyone (even immigrants).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
What's stopping them from doing something productive, such as planting some crops? People got along just fine for millenia before boats were even invented, just by building themselves mud huts and picking berries. Now, it's even easier, as we know how to plant crops and grow food for ourselves.
These pirates aren't struggling to survive; they're taking their ill-gotten money and living in luxury with it, buying SUVs of all things.
The reality is it's either be a pirate or die.
What happened to the option of just pulling some fish out of the ocean and making an honest living? Last I heard there were plenty of fish in the sea.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Having actually lived in Ethiopia for a month, and having talked to dozens of people there, I assure you this isn't the case.
Having visited several other third world countries, including Honduras, Belize and Venezuela, I also almost no stealing. When I did see stealing, it was people who actually had comparatively high wealth, like having a beat up old pickup when 95% of families don't have a car.
Similarly, in the U.S., you rarely see people stealing to feed their families. It is almost always people stealing because they are greedy and want what someone else has but don't want to work for it. These are people who consider themselves poor, but have more wealth than 80% of the rest of the world.
I have been in the class that the United States calls poor, and I have been in the class that the United States calls rich, and now am in the class that the United States calls middle class. When I was poor, I felt the same attitude that many poor do, that the rich were somehow just given their money and didn't deserve it, nor the things that came with money. I never acted to right this perceived wrong, but I did have the attitude. Then after working my way up to rich, I realized that I had worked hard for what I had, and when people stole from me, I resented what i perceived their attitude to be, which is the same one I had when I was poor, but now having worked hard for what I had (and lost) I understood that the rich are not someone to despise for their wealth. Then I became poor again, thanks to 9/11, and now have worked my way up to middle class. I feel I understand (certain members of) the poor's attitude toward the rich, but think it is wrong.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The problem with that (and merc's or proper military being stationed aboard ship) is that ports will not allow a ship to dock when its carrying any kind of weapon. Having to police small arms in every port is not cost effective and requires too much co-operation from the shipping companies/sailors to declare arms.
Besides, most governments wouldnt allow it simply because they fear attack, governments remember the merchant warships from WWII and governments don't really need reasons to be paranoid. (strange how governmental memory works, armed merchantmen are forefront on their minds but they seem to forget about their lack of ability of occupy foreign lands).
Piracy is limited to very small parts of the world so keeping firearms and/or troops on board all the time isn't cost effective. If a company keeps guns on board then they need to make sure the crew is trained to use them effectively otherwise its a waste of resources. Piracy is really limited to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean around Myanmar.
However the real problem with the Gulf of Aden pirate situation (anyone who thinks it's just the Somali's is deluding themselves, rouges and SOF's the world over would be taking part in this, just using Somalia as a base of operation) is who is going to pay for it. A military patrol of the waters from Tanzania to Egypt and the UAE is incredibly expensive and ongoing cost. No government or corporation wants to foot the bill so we keep having this problem. Of course we could onload/offload marines around the effected area's, this would get around the nervous government problem but it fails in two ways. The most effective means of defence against pirates it to take them out before they board, a repel boarders situation is difficult and dangerous, for the crew and marines, secondly it still doesn't cover who is going to pay for it, keeping enough marines in the area on standby is going to be incredibly expensive even with a multinational effort.
This situation could be used as a proving ground for large scale UCAV operations, unfortunately the UCAV's would need to be rushed into service which rarely turns out well in wartime and almost always goes wrong in peace time. Also, generals could oppose it, with Navy commands being notoriously conservative and Air Force commands beginning to follow suit and become reluctant to change.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.