"'Ow do you know 'e's a pirate?" "'E LOOKS like one!"

[unixronin]

Since the end of August, Gortney said, there have been 50 instances where coalition ships have disrupted potential pirate attacks, throwing guns overboard and sinking small skiffs.  But in many instances they had to release the people on the ships because of the legal hurdles.

I put it to you that there is a simple solution to this:

"If we find you loitering with apparent intent in the shipping lanes, in a small boat with weapons, we will presumptively assume that you are a pirate.  Game over."

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I saw a suggestion the other day that has merit. "Q Ships" -- I'm sure we could stir up a mothballed small cruise ship that looks like a hell of a good ransom target, and add a few 20mm mini-guns here and there . . .

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

A suggestion I've made more than once myself. It worked against Nazi submarines; I see no reason it wouldn't work against Somali pirates.

Probably wouldn't go with Vulcan guns for the Q-ships. A couple of 40mm Bofors guns and a couple of M2HBs, together with some reasonably modern small arms for the crew (FN SCARs, say) ought to work just fine, and possibly a few light anti-armor weapons such as AT4s or Armbrust 300s.
I did toy with the idea of containerized Phalanx weapon systems that could be placed on random ships before leaving port, though.

[radarrider.livejournal.com]

Then there's always the good old armed merchantman.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Probably better to have Navy personnel (whatever country) on Q-ships, for legal reasons. With civilian gunners on civilian ships, the complications of chewing up a trawler by mistake get . . . complicated.

At least one "pirate" sunk has been a victim rather than a perp.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I think it'd be a great time to re-introduce Letters of Marque and Reprisal. :)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'll drink to that!

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Of course, other people have other opinions. I saw someone the other day, claimed that the pirates were your fault, and mine. See, it's our fault that Somalia doesn't have a government, and that these poor people have to go out and rob the broad highway.


As I was a-walkin round Kilgary Mountain
I met Colonel Pepper and his money he was countin',
I rattled me pistols and I drew forth me saber,
Sayin' "Stand and deliver, for I am the bold deceiver!"

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, that argument does have a grain of truth underlying it.

Somalia and Ethiopia had a perfectly sound and functional government and system of justice before we Europeans interfered ... we just didn't recognize it as one because it didn't have a single recognizable central governing body. It was all based on tribal and clan judges. When the West destroyed that system to introduce a "proper civilized government", the result was to create a power vacuum at the clan and tribal level. The judge system worked because each tribe was governed fairly by one of its own — there could be no accusation of bias or unfairness, of favoring one tribe over another. When a dispute arose involving more than one clan or tribe, the respective judges would meet and negotiate a fair and just solution, and the solution that was respected by all involved because they heard it from their judge. The imposed central government failed because, since it had no connection to individual clans or tribes, there was no reason they should respect it — lacking any connection to the people at the clan/tribal level, it was isolated, powerless, and ignored. Any time it tried to do anything, the tribes as a whole refused to comply because the edict was not coming from a member of their tribe, so they saw no reason to comply. They accused those in the government of unfairly favoring their own tribes, and most of the time the accusation was true — those appointed to the government DID look out for their own tribes first, because that was how the system had always worked. The emergence of the Somali warlords can be seen as a failed attempt to return to the traditional system, except that instead of government by the wisest elders of individual tribes, local rule now falls to whoever can muster and maintain the largest and strongest armed force.

"Westerners" went in with the best of Victorian half-informed intentions to "civilize" the Horn of Africa, based on the blind assumption that because there was no Western-style government they couldn't be civilized, because Western-style government was of course the only working kind. (Besides which, the tribal judgeship system was not readily exploitable by corrupt colonial administrators seeking to plunder whatever wealth could be found in the region.) The chaos in the Horn of Africa today is a direct result of that interference.



Of course, to go from there to saying that the current outbreak of Somali piracy is the fault of the West is a bit like saying that if I stop at a light and some goblin tries to carjack me, it's my fault for owning a nice car.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Yeah. That's why I tagged on the bit of ballad -- to my Irish and Scottish ancestors, the highwayman was a resistance fighter hero . . .

(The victim is almost always an English name, with some kind of rank or title. Funny, that.)

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

It's your own fault for not carrying a pistol. How about that? :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I do. :)

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Well played, sir. Well played.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

The U.S. never got rid of them! They don't even need to be reintroduced. :)

There has never been a Constitutional amendment rescinding Congressional authority to grant these letters. There was even a Letter of Marque and Reprisal issued in WW2 to a privately owned military company.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Huh. Learn something useful every day. :)

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Letters of marque and reprisal were banned by treaty at the Declaration of Paris in the mid-19th century, but the United States was not party to the treaty and has never considered itself bound by it. That said, as a matter of national policy we don't issue them, mostly due to concerns about civil liability for the actions of privateers; but the government still possesses the legal authority.

The WW2 letter of marque and reprisal was issued to, of all things, a PMC fielding an armed blimp. Antisubmarine warfare. Can you imagine that? "Grandpa, what did you do in World War Two?" "Well, I was a privateer aboard the Resolute, an armed blimp hunting the Nazis..."

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It would make a hell of a story. :)

[databeast.livejournal.com]

Isn't non-military possession of firearms on boats in international waters, banned by international treaty?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Not being a sailor, I haven't a clue.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Sailor Jim would probably know.....

[databeast.livejournal.com]

I know that the reason cruise ships are such good targets for pirates, is because international rules forbid the crew or passengers from being armed. Wondering if there's any way around that.

A few years ago a gun group got together to put together 'pack for a cruise' and were basically told that even if they managed to buy the cruise ship, they wouldnt be allowed to leave dock with guns on board.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I think it's generally that civilian crews are forbidden from possessing them in port.

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

I favor the model of "Sink the pirates and don't tell anyone." The psychwar benefits of "They go out and _they_do_not_come_back" is immense.

Does anyone boast when they swat a fly?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

There's a lot to be said for that, indeed.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, neither the political leadership of the US or Europe has the stomach for this kind of solution. Most Americans and Europeans live in a relatively crime-free and peaceful world. It has fostered a dangerous complacency in that people mistake their incredible good fortune for "the way the world works" as opposed to the amazing stretch of luck that it is.

Personally, I'm of the belief that any Taliban captured after participating in hostilities against American troops ought be shot twice in the head and buried in a shallow grave. If they're not going to play by Geneva, then we don't have to play by Geneva: in fact, that's what Geneva itself says. But I can count, just barely needing both hands, the number of friends I have who understand that what I am proposing is not a war crime. They have been so intoxicated, so narcotized by their good fortune that they cannot imagine a world in which the presence of that good fortune is no longer an underlying axiom.

Piracy is a great example of this. The instant you enter the sea you enter the food chain, and for perhaps the first time in your life you're not at the top. You're days from civilization and can afford no mistakes: even small things going wrong have an alarming potential to kill you. Now introduce pirates into that environment.

In The Dark Knight, the Joker promises Batman, "You'll see, I'll show you, that when the chips are down, these, uh, civilized people,, uh... they'll eat each other."

I agree with the Joker. And I think the greatest failing of modernity is in how, rather than confront the possibility (probability, certainty) of the chips one day coming down and preparing psychologically for that, we continue to pretend that our good fortune will continue unabated.

It's the old parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, and I am getting pretty fucking tired of all the grasshoppers.

But then again, I know you are, too.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

excellently put.As someone's who's been nearly blown up (I exaggerate of course, they mostly always gave warnings) by the IRA on two occasions now (once by a matter of 30 minutes difference in travel times, the other by putting off my usual saturday plans for the first time in weeks), my first reaction to the cooldown/acceptance of the reality of Tuesday, 9/11/01, watching everyone around me adjust to their 'everythings changed' world, was to think to myself..

"...now they know what It's like to live outside the US..."

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I can understand most people's first reaction being shock.

What I can't understand is the people whose second reaction was fear. Mine was fury.

I submit that one of the binary divisions by which people can be classified is the ones who say "ZOMG we're all gonna DIE!" vs. the ones who say "Fuckers. ... Pass the ammunition."

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

The problem is:

• fishing boats are likely to loiter ... that's kinda what they do
  
• in that part of the ocean, a fishing boat without an armed crew is a stupid fishing boat
  
• the pirates are using fishing boats too (as they're fishing boats being used for piracy)
  

So, it would seem to me, that unless all of the fishing industry in that area has dried up (which _could_ be the case), then your heuristic is awfully prone to false positives.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

That's where the Q-Ships come in. They wait for someone to attack them. Instant ID.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

right, but Q-ships wasn't the offered solution. the offered solution was:

"If we find you loitering with apparent intent in the shipping lanes, in a small boat with weapons, we will presumptively assume that you are a pirate. Game over."

that's a solution with bad false positives.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Personally, I tend to assume that "in the shipping lanes dodging ships" probably doesn't make for good fishing. I think the odds of false positive are pretty low providing you adopt a sensible definition of "apparent intent". A fishing boat that pulls in its nets and gets out of the way when a ship approaches, or whose crew ignores any ship not on a possible collision course, is probably innocent. A boat that has nets in the water but whose crew seems to put far more attention into scrutinizing passing ships than into doing any actual fishing, on the other hand, should probably be regarded with suspicion.

I also tend to doubt the idea that ordinary honest fishermen who'd never think of piracy are going to be putting to sea heavily armed. The evidence seems to indicate the pirates aren't going after the fishermen. A net half-full of bream doesn't bring in much money when your business plan is based on ransoming supertankers.

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

As johnkzin said, your simple solution is, uh, flawed. In pirate-infested waters, we should expect every fishing vessel to carry all the arms it can for self-defense, and every pirate vessel to carry as much fishing gear as it can -- and even do a little fishing, why not? -- as camouflage. If a vessel's in the shipping lanes, maybe it's because that's where the fish are. I see only three ways to make intent "apparent": do a sonar scan and see if they're "fishing" in a place where there are no fish -- and even then you don't have much grounds for arrest, they can always say, "No fish? Gee, thanks for telling us; we'll try somewhere else"; sail a nice fat merchantman past it and see if they chase it (oh, for this one to work you have to make your ship invisible first); magic.

It's simply not that easy to tell a pirate from a fisherman. Hell, a man could go out to fish, see something tempting, become a pirate in the blink of an eye, and go back to being a fisherman as soon as he got rid of the loot. England's coastal villages used to have lots of men who got their living by fishing and/or smuggling, whichever happened to be less risky and more profitable.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

sail a nice fat merchantman past it and see if they chase it (oh, for this one to work you have to make your ship invisible first);

As Jim points out just above, that's where the Q-ships and armed merchantmen come in. Pirates are self-identifying: killing only the ones who attack you has a false-positive rate of essentially zero.

[msa.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I'm surprised the navies involved don't simply:

- Blockade the entire strait
- Notify all commercial shippers they need to go around for a few weeks.
- Warn any traffic in the area for the first week
- Sink whatever is left on the second week, and anything else that arrives in the next couple of weeks.

Then:

- Drop leaflets in the harbors they are camped out in, telling everyone to GTFO or face the consequences
- Send in the Marines and clear said port cities.

But I doubt anyone in the west has the balls for this. I'm not really sure what presents such a legal problem -- piracy has been punishable by death for centuries. And yes, when they can land oil tankers, I don't think pirates are a great threat to some very poor fisherman. There's no payoff in a small fishing boat, when they can get tens of millions by grabbing a tanker.

Small arms in international waters isn't the problem; the problem is that so many places restrict firearms that they'd have a problem putting into port anywhere if properly armed. So you pretty much have to let the military handle it -- I'm okay with this, sinking ships is what they do ;)