
How do you pay a pirate's ransom? - soundsop
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7752813.stm
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kiba
I heard fish trawlers regularly stole ton of fishes from local African
fishermen, forcing them to turn to piracy.

It's a Tragedy of the Common thing.

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9oliYQjP
I also heard that the French, British, Americans, Chinese, and well... pretty
much all the nuclear club were using that area off Somalia as a dumping ground
for nuclear waste. When the tsunami hit, the locals discovered this was
happening when all the waste washed ashore. That, allegedly, helped spark the
piracy. None of the western media outlets report this but the likes of Al
Jazeera have been reporting it long before the piracy situation even started
making mainstream headlines in the west. There has even been a UN special
envoy tasked with investigating the situation.

EDIT: I knew an Al Jazeera link would go over here reallll well LOL, so here's
an AFP link from Google about the UN investigation:
[http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVV_gQDsp1m8v7nPcumVc5Mc...](http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVV_gQDsp1m8v7nPcumVc5McYV-Q)

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ckinnan
The international community's willingness to pay these ransoms is making the
problem far worse...

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brent
Should we let our peers who are delivering food aid die instead?

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ajkirwin
Unfortunately, yes.

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rudyfink
Yeah, perhaps. It's just a ton of money to tempt people with, relatively
speaking.

Putting it all in comparison with a table of purchasing power parity (
ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita ) is
revealing.

The average Somali income is apparently 600$ per year. So an average 2 million
$ ransom is 3,333 times the average yearly income. Using the same chart, 3,333
times the US number (47,500) is 158.3 million $.

According to the article below, a low level pirate makes 10,000 a year, which
puts him 17 times above average. Using the same US comparison this gives him
an income of 807,500.

Edit: Updates after reading [http://www.marinebuzz.com/2008/11/20/somali-
pirates-have-lav...](http://www.marinebuzz.com/2008/11/20/somali-pirates-have-
lavish-life-style-or-rot-in-jail/) . Adjusted the ransom to be the average of
2 million and added comparison of low level pirate.

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electromagnetic
If I could make ~$800,000 a year for doing some morally duplicitous acts, well
I'd be earning more than your average lawyer so I guess there'd be a lot of
people who wouldn't have a problem doing it.

I can see where these Somali's come from, I likely can't make it through the
10 years to become a lawyer or doctor. However, I could probably pick up a
rifle, be good enough of a shot to actually be capable of doing the job and
probably wouldn't hurt any more people than if I was a slimeball lawyer or
incompetent doctor and would make a lot more money doing it.

It's quite depressing that shooting someone can become an acceptable way out
of the society you're placed in. Be it a third world nation (piracy) or a
first world nation (going postal).

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gaius
_It's quite depressing that shooting someone can become an acceptable way out
of the society you're placed in_

You have to remember that these pirates are only really interested in
ransoming cargoes - they don't set out to kill the crews like pirates back in
the day.

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Luc
It is interesting they seem to practice something akin to the 'pirate
democracy' of 17th and 18th centure pirates. The old pirates also gave every
man an equal vote, regardless of previous rank, and the captain was elected by
the crew.

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gruseom
According to an interview I just heard on NPR, you stuff a million dollars in
a plastic tube, attach a parachute, then fly over the hijacked ship and drop
it. Pirates bring bill counters along on raids, so don't think you can
shortchange them. Also, make sure during negotiations that the pirates have it
all worked out about how much each of them gets: you want a nice orderly
transition, free of inconvenient last-minute violence.

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cake
Why don't they catch them when they leave the boat (easy to track with some
drones) ?

How do they leave ?

I couldn't find any answers to that in the article.

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mynameishere
Seriously, just have the US/UK/French navies make a joint agreement to
immediately destroy any hijacked ship and the problem will solve itself
immediately.

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electromagnetic
Unfortunately, I rarely agree with harsh military action, but when it comes to
matters like this the non-military action is largely too complex to consider.
We cannot guarantee any money paid to a country like Somalia in aid or
whatever would prevent piracy.

The best solution would be to launch attacks on the pirates supply ships.
Sadly the cost of keeping a naval ship in the region is likely too high,
especially with aircraft carriers being ridiculously large and little to no
capability on the small scale.

A craft capable of carrying 2-3 aircraft would be capable of hitting these
pirates where it hurts, but a ship carrying 24 aircraft and 5,000 people isn't
cost effective to have sit in an ocean for a handful of attacks.

This problem is likely only to get worse, the next carrier in the US fleet
will have ~75 aircraft, which if following current metrics will mean a crew of
~15,000.

Honestly, if this situation continues, I wouldn't doubt if companies started
spending the money to defend themselves. ~$16 billion is lost in piracy a
year, which is enough to buy 3 Nimitz class aircraft carriers and their full
compliment.

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Xichekolas
Current Nimitz class carriers normally carry 48 combat aircraft and 16 support
aircraft, and have a crew of 5k-6k (2480 in the air wing, the rest as ship's
compliment). The upcoming Gerald R. Ford class will carry more aircraft, but
only require about 4600 crew, and be roughly the same size.

But quibbling aside, there is no reason you need to send a carrier group to
deal with this situation. The (already dispatched) USS Boxer is an amphibious
assault ship that supports helicopters and VTOL aircraft (including Harrier
II, SuperCobra, and Sea Knights), which will be more suited for dealing with
pirate mother ships and coastal bases. It has a crew of roughly 1000.

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frisco
You don't.

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TweedHeads
With a nuke.

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ams6110
Actually I think a couple of ounces of lead would suffice.

