Easy Solution to Pirate Problem.
 

There's a very simple solution to stopping the African piracy problem. Look back to WW1 Naval tactics. Arm merchant vessels, plain and simple. you can hide deck guns quite easily in those storage boxes on most tankers and transports. Fuck international law, Do it old school. They have AK-47's and a few shit boats, no match for a WW2 era 20mm autocannon or a 70mm deck gun.
I'd prefer convoys, but who the hell has resources for that these days?

I thought merchant boats are allowed to be armed already.

no i dont think so because then if there was a war you'd have just cause to shoot every merchant vessel.

plus that's kind of spying :(

I thought they hired mercenaries to protect their ship. Hmmmm

If they did you would think they wouldnt be getting jacked. :\ I can see how a government body cant just shoot but I fail to see how merchants and such cant. If it is illegal for them to defend themselves by shooting at pirates, the navy (or whoever) that would come after them are the same that should be going after the pirates in the first place. The merchants could take a page out of the pirate play book and just not shoot at the navy and in turn the navy couldnt do anything to them either. Assuming the navy would ever even know about it. Who would tell them? The pirates?

The short answer to this is that most shipping companies don't really care to be in the business of actually shooting and killing people in international waters. Can you imagine some shirt-and-tie buerecrat working in the business of importing banannas wants to buy M-16s to arm the sleezy dudes that run his boats?

civilians aren't really supposed to be armed i dont think. I'm sure legally they can carry weapons that are legal for civilians to own.

Well, I saw a show on this sort of thing a few years back. What happens is the dockmaster sells info to the pirates, like whats on board and what the crew looks like. Most of the time a deal is struck and the pirates get paid. This time something went different and the took the captain hostage off the ship into a life boat.

They need to get mercs with rocket launchers is what they need to do.

Molotov are a lot cheaper and should to the trick. As they get close in their speed boats you just light them up.

They need to pay off the village elders that allow this to take place. They have to understand that this sort of thing can ONLY escalate and result in being even more shut out from the international community. Arming ships only complicates portage in countries that don't allow that shit and then theres the fact that merchant marines are not trained to use weapons and could be sued if (or when) something goes wrong. Nation building is the only path here, we should just let the islamic radicals do it since they seem to wan't control of Puntland (north somalia) for some reason. If theres one thing the islamics are good at it's enforcing the rule of law, cazy laws.

Sued? By who? I think I would rather be hiding guns from the port authorities rather than trying to dodge bullets from pirates.

The employees of the shipping companies could sue their emloyers who said they must use guns even though they were not trained to do so. And to train everybody on every ship would be ridiculous. Also, commercial ships arent allowed to carry firearms into ports (for instance in New York harbor, a shipping company can be fined) hidding the guns for emergency use ins't worth all the bullshit.

I was thinking the employees would be bringing the guns to defend themselves. Operating a gun isnt so hard. AKs are notoriously famous for being easy to maintain and use.

Well, it's always been that the companies pay the ransom and pass the savings onto us. If I was the crew, I would rather it be that way than a gun fight.

The only real way to solve it is to boycott all trade with those ports until the clean it up. It is the ports government that is behind all this pirating.

What ports? These are ships merely passing through the area. Northern Somalia has no more functioning ports. They have a harbor but the vast majority of it's equipment has no paid operators or any means to offload containrs from ships.

So you are saying to boycott Somalia more than we are. So that the Somalian (is that how you would say that?) government clean up the port or pirates? I believe what little government Somalia has probably gets most of their money from the pirates. :\ Piracy is unfortunately the only means of survival for some of these people and their alleged government. I have to agree with Robot that nation building is probably the only way to solve the problem with Somalia and therefore the root of the pirate problem. If I were a sailor on a merchant ship I think I would much rather shoot at some pirates then be dragged off to shit hole Somalia and held where I may or may not be killed over a ransom someone else may or may not pay. From what I hear they use small speed boats to catch up to the ships then use grappling hooks to climb on board. If you had so much as 4 guys with guns just blind firring over the side of the ship as they were trying to climb up, I think you should be able to hold out. But then again, what do I know. I have never been on a merchant ship neither have I ever been attacked by pirates. :\

Yeah, that's what I'm suggesting.

Somalia is a shithole. Watch Black Hawk Down and remember that it is 10x worse than that now.

Nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I've been following these acts of piracy since around 2004 when nobody even knew who they were, at one point people were blamming the chinese. I can only recall one death due to piracy and in that incident the guy had a heart attack from all the commotion. For the most part the pirates were non-violent, and they operated under a code of ethics, often claiming that they were only attacking ships that were dumping black water tanks and garbage since there is no coast guard to stop them. "Eco-warriors" they called themselves, but those days are over now that the US is finnaly involved. The crews were ussually held on the ship with food being brought to them and after a certain degree of trust was gained it could turn almost festive with villagers and crew feasting aboard the ship. This isn't always the case and now they want revenge for those three "jerkoffs" killed by Navy snipers. I predict that the attacks will get EXTREMELY violent in the next week or two.

Hey guys remember this article?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006...tt.theobserver

Soooooo, this is the jews fault?

Fuck you

I always wonder why countries turn into shit everytime the US interferes with them. I mean I could understand that it would benefits the security firms greatly buuuut...oh wait

Well you could say it's the fault of the US but another point of view is that the US is always getting into these last ditch attempts to save countries from going to shit and don't always succeed. A great example of this would be the Korean penninsula during the 50's. We got our puppet government in place and things coudln't be better for the people of Seoul, the north however, is fucked because they rejected the US.

So... let me get this straight... Supposedly the US government went into Somalia to give military support the president, who was getting funds from the UN? And this is illegal? I like how the UN decides they are going to "support" a government in a "troubled" region, the US actually provides support (opposed to only deciding they want to help) and we get flack from the rest of the world. No one ever wants to look at how much foreign aid we give out. Why is that?