Open Season declared on US Navy
 

If you can dump your weapons overboard before they catch you feel free to attack the US Navy whenever you want. Its not Piracy unless you succeed...

Thank you Virgina! :damn:

http://blog.usni.org/2010/08/17/judg...s-isnt-piracy/


Why am I reminded of Sidshow Bob?

I miss the old days of piracy

FIRE BROAD SIDE !!!!!!! shoot first, shoot second, shoot some more and when everybody's dead ask a question or two

but seriously, as a future sailor how are supposed to defend ourselves from people accidentally boarding my ship, taking me hostage and (possibly) slitting my throat

Shoot them in the groin, cut open their abdomen, shove in a length of chain, tape shut and throw overboard, piracy problem soled and you even have time for a cold beerbefore you have to clean that mess up.

Remember when our snipers took out those pirates and saved that captain? Those were good times. :salute: This is just a screwed up court ruling anyways, maybe next time the navy wont take any prisoners on account of this.

You know, just zip cuffing them to a length of anchor chain is just as effective and a lot less messy. :O:

If it were up to me to issue orders to the navy...

my official piracy and protest policy would be the old one of 'Dead men tale no tales'.

Its very difficult for fish food to make a court case

Taking them out of the water, cutting them open and throwing them back into the sea to save time to drink a beer?

Wouldn't it be much easier to just them stay in the water, and have time to drink more beer?
"Somalia is about 40 miles that way - see ya, guys!" :ping:

:gulp:

Yeah, well this is what happens when the government is sent to do the private sector's job. This is a private matter that affects private shipping and should be handled by private security companies whose only interest is preventing/deterring/thwarting pirate attacks.

Unlike the private sector, governments have politics and media and public sector careers to consider on top of everything else, so this doesn't surprise me a bit. In the meantime, the Navy is wasting millions of dollars of taxpayer money to perform what is now an apparently impossible mission using enormous and expensive warships where a squad of private guards could do a better job. Out-f-ing standing!

I could fix this pirate problem within the space of a week. All you have to do is grant import concessions on stupid things like shirts with more than one pocket in exchange for land and legal permission for US security firms to operate from affected ports-of-call. Then all you have to do is get the message out. There would be a dozen private companies competing for protection contracts in a matter of hours, and they'd do it right because their job depends upon it. Within days, every shipping company along threatened routes would be contracting security services at bargain prices.

But then, none of this crap is really about finding a solution, is it? Much like the War on Terror or the War on Drugs, the current course of action is being directed more by sheer bureaucratic and political inertia than anything else.

Give it time. The judge didn't make his ruling out of a love for pirates. It was a tougher legal case than you might think, given that the law of piracy is rather old and musty in the United States, and the precedent a poor fit for the instant matter. I think that the judge interpreted it within the narrow limits to which non-activist judges usually confine their rulings knowing that it's going up to the Fourth Circuit on Appeal, and probably with the sincere hope that the he'll be overturned.

But why bring the courts into it at all? Why the Navy? Why anything other than private security? Even if the decision is overturned there are still the operating costs of using warships to defend against skiffs and taking this BS to court to begin with. It's a huge waste of time and money.

Do you wish to abolish the rule of law?
Summary execution for all suspected criminals.

Its always been the job of the Navy.

Because private security for most ships would be a legal and logistical nightmare, plus given the relaibilty of many contractors in the field it would also be a finacial disaster for the nations whose flags the ships carry.

Less fun though.

Yes, Tribesman, my sole desire is to abolish the rule of law by substituting private firms for the US navy, as the rule of law is incompatible with private firms. That's because I think expatriate private firms aren't governed by both foreign and domestic law, because I'm an idiot. Give me at least a little credit, would you?

For the record, I do favor the abolishment of the rule of stupid laws established for protectionist and therefore political reasons.

The OP says that part of the issue here was that a US Navy warship was used to obliterate a skiff, which in itself raises the question of whether or not excessive force was used against civilians, since they wouldn't be technically classified as "pirates" by US law.

Of course, they were pirates and they did, stupidly, attempt to raid a warship. For a private contractor safeguarding a merchant ship with proper permissions from the nationalities concerned, this isn't a legal problem; it's just a matter of self-defense. But when the a US Navy man-of-war blows the crap out of a tiny boat that is incapable of doing any harm to it, it becomes a legal issue.

Delivering the mail and packages used to be the sole job of the post office. Now private companies do it better, faster, and cheaper. So what?


It couldn't be any more of a legal nightmare than US import quotas are, and both government and private industry manage to find a way to work that out when people don't intentionally bypass them by smuggling goods.

Relaxing trade quotas in exchange for the operation of private shipping security firms is a wonderful idea, if I do say so myself. We simultaneously create a new vector for some economic growth and undo soem of the ridiculous damage that US trade unions have done to the world market by insisting upon protectionist measures, only to then commit suicide by offering overpriced goods. The concessions we could extract from textile and fiber exporters alone just by allowing them to sell to us would go far beyond what we need to establish security companies, and the length of the agreement need not be more than a decade at most, more than enough time to destroy the industry of piracy.

Furthermore, you underestimate the ability of private firms to negotiate, redefine, and when necessary, circumvent legal barriers that are counterproductive. International industry deals with legalities in one way or the other all the time, and you suddenly suppose that private shipping-security firms are unworkable? That's just lazy thinking.