No way. I'm holding out for the aircraft-carrying submarine you've promised me. As I've said before, an adequate pointless-difficulty factor is only achievable with arrested landings.
Bah. It's old, old tech. In WW II he Japanese developed aircraft carrying submarines with which they intended to destroy the Panama canal. The subs were recalled to defend Japan as the home island invasion started to look imminent.
Presented without comment or judgment, because we all know intentionally seeking to kill people is fine so long as it's market based, in international waters (or the coastal waters of a failed, starving state) and your targets may be trying to make money illegally
Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater.
I seem to recall having heard already that this was confirmed as a hoax (surprise, huh?), but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Nutella: Given that there's nothing wrong with intentionally seeking to kill people who are trying to do so to you already (which pirates definitionally are; they're armed for a reason, to kill you if you don't give them what they want to steal - we'll just leave the question of defense of property out of this), what's wrong with paying to do it?
For that matter, what does the failure of the Somali state have to do with it? (As for "starving", the pirates are fishermen when they're not seeking more lucrative payoffs from crime. They aren't starving, even without piracy. People in the Somali interior might be, but fishermen don't tend to have that problem, even for all their complaints about international overfishing.)
The issue with pirates is not that they "may be trying to make money illegally" - the issue is that they use deadly force to steal from their victims.
If you need to mislead and redefine to make your "point" against those icky libertarians, you might just be wrong!
Libertarians, you see, are not unlikely to support smugglers and others who are merely breaking a law to make money, on the grounds that it's none of the State's business to ban trade in any goods or enact protectionist taxes.
Libertarians, just like everyone else that isn't barking mad, also agree that armed robbery* and murder in commission of same are inherently wrong.
(* Catholic doctrine, for instance, states that mere theft - not armed robbery or murder - is tolerable when the alternative is literal starvation, and some libertarians might wink at it or at least understand that the threat of death will make people steal. But that, as stated, doesn't apply here - there are still fish in the seas, and these pirates are also fishermen, and they rob boats by firing rockets and machineguns at them and killing people who don't cooperate.)
"Given that there's nothing wrong with intentionally seeking to kill people who are trying to do so to you already"
My beliefs in the fallacy of this moral argument aside, the pirates HAVEN'T KILLED A SINGLE PERSON DURING A HIJACKING. The only deaths so far have occurred during rescue attempts. Well, at least before the American ship was captured that was the case. I admit to not having followed the story since then.
The failure of the Somali state is relevant because these people essentially have the option of starving or piracy. I mean, yeah, they should become superhuman Hank Rearden and just magically make food that grows in the desert and fish that don't disappear when you're waters are pirated by foreign trawlers due to lack of government protection. It's called KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT WHO YOU'RE ATTACKING.
And the issues is that they resort to deadly completely non-lethal force because they're being screwed and have no alternative. You'd do the same in their position, but, again, since you don't know their position it's really easy to get all high and mighty from the comfortable chair in front of the expensive computer sitting in the large, climate controlled dwelling that is stocked with enough provisions to feed an entire Somalia family for a year.
Libertarians, you see, reduce things down to reductionist arguments so as to attempt to claim the moral high ground and ignore the fact that their "success" and "comfort" stem entirely from the fact that they were lucky enough to be born with a modicum of intelligence in the easiest society to live in in history. A society so soft that is all but unheard of for a person to want for food or shelter.
No, I'm arguing that's it wrong to go and entice kidnappers with the express intent on killing them. See, I call creating a situation on purpose that lets you kill people murder. Sounds crazy, I know, but then I tend to avoid killing people at all costs rather than attempting to put my situations where I can kill them and claim to be just.
Stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, sure. It's a tragic situation and a reasonable response, and AFAIK very few people have ever advocated the death penalty for that.
Kidnapping a ship's entire crew using automatic rifles and grenade launchers, and detaining them in any conditions you see fit until they can be ransomed for several million bucks? That changes the metrics of the situation, I'd say. These people aren't exactly seeking out and targeting food ships, and then boosting the cargo -- they are using calculated violence to extract the maximum sum of money they think they can get. Very conventional piracy, and likely to receive a very conventional response.
Uhm, "hombre", your assumption of the easiness of Sigivald's life doesn't actually have any pertinence to the validity of his argument.
Moving past your senseless and offensive argumentum ad hominem, you also seem to be ignoring or sliding past the fact that the doctrine of defense applies regardless of whether the attacker reasonably holds themselves to be innocent (e.g.: it is proper for me to defend myself from someone that falsely believes that I have kidnapped someone and has a reasonable expectation that attacking me will attain their freedom).
Fair enough, I'm making assumptions. I have, however, yet to meet a libertarian that's ever been hungry.
And now, I reject your ridiculous doctrine because I don't prescribe one thing to all situations. I evaluate occurrences on a case by case basis. The reaction of a crew taken legitamately by surprise is not on the table here. I'm talking about the evaluations of the entire situation made by outside observers. The problem is not piracy. The problem is a failed state.
See, when I see desperate people doing desperate things, I'm all like "crap, what could have driven them to that?" Not "crap, they're acting uncouth. Let us exterminate them!"
Also, crazy as it sounds, I feel a smidgen of guilt for the fact that my culture and lifestyle profited from these people and essentially set them up for the fall they took, but colonialism was totally someone else's fault, so I guess you're cool with just benefiting from it via circumstance rather than intent?
Also, crazy as it sounds, I feel a smidgen of guilt for the fact that my culture and lifestyle profited from these people and essentially set them up for the fall they took, but colonialism was totally someone else's fault, so I guess you're cool with just benefiting from it via circumstance rather than intent?
Interestingly, that same line of argument can be used as a justification for the Iraq war.
(replying to Nutella on Toast @3:58 here as comments only nest finitely)
I reject your ridiculous doctrine because I don't prescribe one thing to all situations. I evaluate occurrences on a case by case basis.
So do I. Evaluation presupposes evaluative criteria. Valid evaluative criteria possess the qualities of generality and universality. Thus, taken as a whole, the set of criteria should be one thing to all situations.
I do confess some shame that I have not yet destroyed my overlords for their crimes in the ruin and rape of Somalia. Nonetheless, that does not give Somalis the right to kidnap, rob, ransom, detain or harass those that peaceably ply the seas.
Nutella: Fair enough, I'm making assumptions. I have, however, yet to meet a libertarian that's ever been hungry.
Then you probably don't know many refugees from countries with socialism-induced famines.
Clarence Thomas, for one, was raised by a poor single mother. I don't know for certain that she was ever actually unable to buy food for financial reasons, but it seems likely.
It should be obvious, though, that this is true for the same reason you don't know many Green Party members from poor backgrounds: Members of the underclass generally don't spend a lot of time thinking about politics, so out-of-the-mainstream political philosophies are generally the domain of the bourgeoisie.
Granted, a lot of people on the far left suffer from personal financial ruin, but this seems to be more a result of their anti-business attitude and the choices it leads them to make than the cause. Conversely, libertarians are rarely truly poor in adulthood because we don't equate having a decent corporate-sector job with selling out.
Me: Then you probably don't know many refugees from countries with socialism-induced famines.
Clarence Thomas, for one, was raised by a poor single mother. I don't know for certain that she was ever actually unable to buy food for financial reasons, but it seems likely.
Those are two separate thoughts. I didn't mean to imply that Clarence Thomas is a refugee from a country with socialism-induced famine.
The failure of the Somali state is relevant because these people essentially have the option of starving or piracy.
There's no evidence this is actually true. A more likely scenario is wresting ten million dollars in ransom out of a shipping company is more lucrative than fishing or farming. If they were really starving where did the boat, the gas, the weapons, the radios, and all the ammo come from? You realize they're using coastal radars to select targets, right? How many hungry people have those kinds of resources?
I have no doubt there are starving people in Somalia. I just don't believe the pirates and the starving people are the same people. Even if they were it still wouldn't excuse attacks on international shipping. Somalia is capable of raising enough food to feed its population - they could simply protect the local farmers.
In any event, piracy is one of the rare international capital crimes. Under laws governing the open ocean pirates are considered hostis humani generis (enemies of mankind) pirates attacking a ship may be legally attacked by anyone, even parties not involved.
You don't read much outside of Fox News, do you? Somalia waters are being dumped in illegally and fished to death by foreign vessels. The pirates call themselves "The Somali Volunteer National Coast Guard," I'm guessing because of the Coast Guard's notoriety as a profiteering, looting, and destructive force.
You call them pirates, they feel they are doing the only thing they can in a world that is busy shitting on them because they don't have a government that can do anything about it.
Again, it's called knowing WTF you are talking about. I mention it often here, but no one seems to catch on. Perhaps I should call it "enlightened self-not-being-a-moron."
Oh, I'm aware of your arguments, and have almost certainly read far more on the subject than you have. Your problem is you've accepted the "poor starving people with no other options" line completely uncritically. But put in a little thought and you'll realize it can't be true.
The whole dumping/overfishing thing is just a sham, of course. There's no evidence it's actually true, and when international experts offered to test the environment for heavy metals and count the fish they were told to stay away or be killed. Not exactly the behavior of people with a legitimate grievance.
This item started as a rather clever joke email just over a weeks ago, complete with amusing illustrations. It got picked up and rewritten as a "news" item and took on a life of its own. (Note that all references are circular.)
BTW: whoever wrote it actually bothered to do a bit of research: the ammo prices listed are pretty much the wholesale rates. (Of course, on a cruise ship the prices would undergo a hefty markup.)
Still, if any libertarians want to go out hunting pirates in international waters, be my guest. With libertarians and pirates battling it out, as long as one of them loses a member, the world is victorious.
The problem with this is not that it's wrong to use deadly force against kidnapping. The problem with this is the existence of a business that basically sells you the possibility of killing people.
Oh, and quite likely the "wealthy sportsmen" (sportsmen? WTF?) will be anxious to get their money's worth. There will be a lot of twitching index fingers on those rented AK-47.
I'd like to think that everybody who read the article shares this view, and finds these points so evident that they aren't even not worth writing, in fact it's almost a insult to other people's intelligence to even point them out. Instead, it's better to have a little fun.
It is an unbelievable shame that this is a hoax. $11.50 for 5 boxes (100 rounds) of AK-47 ammo? That would be FANTASTIC! The current price is more than twice that...
Sourced from Ananova, the successor to the Weekly World News.
My company pays bloggers to do news round-ups on various topics, and we have to constantly warn them to avoid Ananova stuff. You literally can search on Google News and not find a single other source. There's another outfit out of South Africa that is just as bad.
I think these outfits hire comedy writers to just make shit up.
In the old days all the weirder tabloid stories (head transplants and the like) came out of places like the old East Germany, since that made them hard to follow up on. Today Russia will have to do.
The Somali pirates started out attacking ships that were illegaly fishing in their waters and/or dumping waste in their waters. They got good at it and found out that they could make money, so they moved on to hijacking cargo ships just for money, not because they were illegaly using their waters.
I fully support their attacks on those who are essentially invading their territorial waters to steal fish or dump toxic waste. I condemn their attacks on others just to make money.
The military should run q-ship operations against the pirates... take a tanker and load it up with concealed weapons. As soon as the pirates attack - boom! - no more pirates. To be fair, we should offer to take out any ships illegally operating in Somali waters.
Jesus. F-ing barbarians. Is this the same people of Tolstoy and Stravinsky?
I hope you are talking about the pirates...
That wooshing sound you hear is Rob Lyman running to cash in his 401k.
No way. I'm holding out for the aircraft-carrying submarine you've promised me. As I've said before, an adequate pointless-difficulty factor is only achievable with arrested landings.
Besides, I bet this is a hoax.
Bah. It's old, old tech. In WW II he Japanese developed aircraft carrying submarines with which they intended to destroy the Panama canal. The subs were recalled to defend Japan as the home island invasion started to look imminent.
Who says the market doesn't a have a solution for everything?
In all seriousness though, I would be surprised if this turned out to be true. My money is on a hoax.
Presented without comment or judgment, because we all know intentionally seeking to kill people is fine so long as it's market based, in international waters (or the coastal waters of a failed, starving state) and your targets may be trying to make money illegally
Hooray, libertarians!
I'm holding out for the aircraft-carrying submarine you've promised me.
Rob, I never promised an aircarft-carrying submarine - I promised you an aircraft/submarine.
http://www.popsci.com/node/3747
Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, famed for the U-2 and Blackbird spy planes that flew higher than anything else in the world in their day, is trying for a different altitude record: an airplane that starts and ends its mission 150 feet underwater.
Looks like those years I spent in the Navy on a submarine might finally be of some profitable use.
I seem to recall having heard already that this was confirmed as a hoax (surprise, huh?), but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Nutella: Given that there's nothing wrong with intentionally seeking to kill people who are trying to do so to you already (which pirates definitionally are; they're armed for a reason, to kill you if you don't give them what they want to steal - we'll just leave the question of defense of property out of this), what's wrong with paying to do it?
For that matter, what does the failure of the Somali state have to do with it? (As for "starving", the pirates are fishermen when they're not seeking more lucrative payoffs from crime. They aren't starving, even without piracy. People in the Somali interior might be, but fishermen don't tend to have that problem, even for all their complaints about international overfishing.)
The issue with pirates is not that they "may be trying to make money illegally" - the issue is that they use deadly force to steal from their victims.
If you need to mislead and redefine to make your "point" against those icky libertarians, you might just be wrong!
Libertarians, you see, are not unlikely to support smugglers and others who are merely breaking a law to make money, on the grounds that it's none of the State's business to ban trade in any goods or enact protectionist taxes.
Libertarians, just like everyone else that isn't barking mad, also agree that armed robbery* and murder in commission of same are inherently wrong.
(* Catholic doctrine, for instance, states that mere theft - not armed robbery or murder - is tolerable when the alternative is literal starvation, and some libertarians might wink at it or at least understand that the threat of death will make people steal. But that, as stated, doesn't apply here - there are still fish in the seas, and these pirates are also fishermen, and they rob boats by firing rockets and machineguns at them and killing people who don't cooperate.)
"Given that there's nothing wrong with intentionally seeking to kill people who are trying to do so to you already"
My beliefs in the fallacy of this moral argument aside, the pirates HAVEN'T KILLED A SINGLE PERSON DURING A HIJACKING. The only deaths so far have occurred during rescue attempts. Well, at least before the American ship was captured that was the case. I admit to not having followed the story since then.
The failure of the Somali state is relevant because these people essentially have the option of starving or piracy. I mean, yeah, they should become superhuman Hank Rearden and just magically make food that grows in the desert and fish that don't disappear when you're waters are pirated by foreign trawlers due to lack of government protection. It's called KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT WHO YOU'RE ATTACKING.
And the issues is that they resort to deadly completely non-lethal force because they're being screwed and have no alternative. You'd do the same in their position, but, again, since you don't know their position it's really easy to get all high and mighty from the comfortable chair in front of the expensive computer sitting in the large, climate controlled dwelling that is stocked with enough provisions to feed an entire Somalia family for a year.
Libertarians, you see, reduce things down to reductionist arguments so as to attempt to claim the moral high ground and ignore the fact that their "success" and "comfort" stem entirely from the fact that they were lucky enough to be born with a modicum of intelligence in the easiest society to live in in history. A society so soft that is all but unheard of for a person to want for food or shelter.
Otherwise, though, stellar reasoning, hombre.
Are you actually arguing that it is wrong to use deadly force to defend oneself against a kidnapping attempt?
Nah, I think he's mostly opposed to the honeypot approach, and just expressing his distaste for it with the usual blunt instrument.
No, I'm arguing that's it wrong to go and entice kidnappers with the express intent on killing them. See, I call creating a situation on purpose that lets you kill people murder. Sounds crazy, I know, but then I tend to avoid killing people at all costs rather than attempting to put my situations where I can kill them and claim to be just.
Stealing a loaf of bread because you're hungry, sure. It's a tragic situation and a reasonable response, and AFAIK very few people have ever advocated the death penalty for that.
Kidnapping a ship's entire crew using automatic rifles and grenade launchers, and detaining them in any conditions you see fit until they can be ransomed for several million bucks? That changes the metrics of the situation, I'd say. These people aren't exactly seeking out and targeting food ships, and then boosting the cargo -- they are using calculated violence to extract the maximum sum of money they think they can get. Very conventional piracy, and likely to receive a very conventional response.
Uhm, "hombre", your assumption of the easiness of Sigivald's life doesn't actually have any pertinence to the validity of his argument.
Moving past your senseless and offensive argumentum ad hominem, you also seem to be ignoring or sliding past the fact that the doctrine of defense applies regardless of whether the attacker reasonably holds themselves to be innocent (e.g.: it is proper for me to defend myself from someone that falsely believes that I have kidnapped someone and has a reasonable expectation that attacking me will attain their freedom).
Fair enough, I'm making assumptions. I have, however, yet to meet a libertarian that's ever been hungry.
Fair enough, I'm making assumptions. I have, however, yet to meet a libertarian that's ever been hungry.
And now, I reject your ridiculous doctrine because I don't prescribe one thing to all situations. I evaluate occurrences on a case by case basis. The reaction of a crew taken legitamately by surprise is not on the table here. I'm talking about the evaluations of the entire situation made by outside observers. The problem is not piracy. The problem is a failed state.
See, when I see desperate people doing desperate things, I'm all like "crap, what could have driven them to that?" Not "crap, they're acting uncouth. Let us exterminate them!"
Also, crazy as it sounds, I feel a smidgen of guilt for the fact that my culture and lifestyle profited from these people and essentially set them up for the fall they took, but colonialism was totally someone else's fault, so I guess you're cool with just benefiting from it via circumstance rather than intent?
Also, crazy as it sounds, I feel a smidgen of guilt for the fact that my culture and lifestyle profited from these people and essentially set them up for the fall they took, but colonialism was totally someone else's fault, so I guess you're cool with just benefiting from it via circumstance rather than intent?
Interestingly, that same line of argument can be used as a justification for the Iraq war.
(replying to Nutella on Toast @3:58 here as comments only nest finitely)
So do I. Evaluation presupposes evaluative criteria. Valid evaluative criteria possess the qualities of generality and universality. Thus, taken as a whole, the set of criteria should be one thing to all situations.
I do confess some shame that I have not yet destroyed my overlords for their crimes in the ruin and rape of Somalia. Nonetheless, that does not give Somalis the right to kidnap, rob, ransom, detain or harass those that peaceably ply the seas.
Nutella:
Fair enough, I'm making assumptions. I have, however, yet to meet a libertarian that's ever been hungry.
Then you probably don't know many refugees from countries with socialism-induced famines.
Clarence Thomas, for one, was raised by a poor single mother. I don't know for certain that she was ever actually unable to buy food for financial reasons, but it seems likely.
It should be obvious, though, that this is true for the same reason you don't know many Green Party members from poor backgrounds: Members of the underclass generally don't spend a lot of time thinking about politics, so out-of-the-mainstream political philosophies are generally the domain of the bourgeoisie.
Granted, a lot of people on the far left suffer from personal financial ruin, but this seems to be more a result of their anti-business attitude and the choices it leads them to make than the cause. Conversely, libertarians are rarely truly poor in adulthood because we don't equate having a decent corporate-sector job with selling out.
Me:
Then you probably don't know many refugees from countries with socialism-induced famines.
Clarence Thomas, for one, was raised by a poor single mother. I don't know for certain that she was ever actually unable to buy food for financial reasons, but it seems likely.
Those are two separate thoughts. I didn't mean to imply that Clarence Thomas is a refugee from a country with socialism-induced famine.
There's no evidence this is actually true. A more likely scenario is wresting ten million dollars in ransom out of a shipping company is more lucrative than fishing or farming. If they were really starving where did the boat, the gas, the weapons, the radios, and all the ammo come from? You realize they're using coastal radars to select targets, right? How many hungry people have those kinds of resources?
I have no doubt there are starving people in Somalia. I just don't believe the pirates and the starving people are the same people. Even if they were it still wouldn't excuse attacks on international shipping. Somalia is capable of raising enough food to feed its population - they could simply protect the local farmers.
In any event, piracy is one of the rare international capital crimes. Under laws governing the open ocean pirates are considered hostis humani generis (enemies of mankind) pirates attacking a ship may be legally attacked by anyone, even parties not involved.
You don't read much outside of Fox News, do you? Somalia waters are being dumped in illegally and fished to death by foreign vessels. The pirates call themselves "The Somali Volunteer National Coast Guard," I'm guessing because of the Coast Guard's notoriety as a profiteering, looting, and destructive force.
You call them pirates, they feel they are doing the only thing they can in a world that is busy shitting on them because they don't have a government that can do anything about it.
Again, it's called knowing WTF you are talking about. I mention it often here, but no one seems to catch on. Perhaps I should call it "enlightened self-not-being-a-moron."
Oh, I'm aware of your arguments, and have almost certainly read far more on the subject than you have. Your problem is you've accepted the "poor starving people with no other options" line completely uncritically. But put in a little thought and you'll realize it can't be true.
The whole dumping/overfishing thing is just a sham, of course. There's no evidence it's actually true, and when international experts offered to test the environment for heavy metals and count the fish they were told to stay away or be killed. Not exactly the behavior of people with a legitimate grievance.
Someone should offer cruises to Nutella types. A boat that stands between the pirates and the honeypots.
Will serve sandwiches. Wouldn't want anyone getting hungry.
Derek (free market in action)
Rob, I never promised an aircarft-carrying submarine - I promised you an aircraft/submarine.
No cat-shots/arrested landings, no deal.
Hoax. The ammo price they listed is too cheap.
Good point. Maybe they're .22 conversion rifles.
But yeah, hoax.
This item started as a rather clever joke email just over a weeks ago, complete with amusing illustrations. It got picked up and rewritten as a "news" item and took on a life of its own. (Note that all references are circular.)
BTW: whoever wrote it actually bothered to do a bit of research: the ammo prices listed are pretty much the wholesale rates. (Of course, on a cruise ship the prices would undergo a hefty markup.)
Megan, why are you linking to that site? Shame on you! Let David Frum and his nerd club die of loneliness.
Sounds like its satire, not real:
http://mercifulcrap.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/pirate-hunters-ahoy/
Still, if any libertarians want to go out hunting pirates in international waters, be my guest. With libertarians and pirates battling it out, as long as one of them loses a member, the world is victorious.
"Because after all, people getting shot and killed in an armed robbery attempt is a good thing, as long as they disagree with me on political issues!"
The problem with this is not that it's wrong to use deadly force against kidnapping. The problem with this is the existence of a business that basically sells you the possibility of killing people.
Oh, and quite likely the "wealthy sportsmen" (sportsmen? WTF?) will be anxious to get their money's worth. There will be a lot of twitching index fingers on those rented AK-47.
I'd like to think that everybody who read the article shares this view, and finds these points so evident that they aren't even not worth writing, in fact it's almost a insult to other people's intelligence to even point them out. Instead, it's better to have a little fun.
Yes, it's satire. And yes, that's the point.
sportsmen? WTF?
Well, taking the PETA line, they're no different than fishermen, so why not?
It is an unbelievable shame that this is a hoax. $11.50 for 5 boxes (100 rounds) of AK-47 ammo? That would be FANTASTIC! The current price is more than twice that...
Sourced from Ananova, the successor to the Weekly World News.
My company pays bloggers to do news round-ups on various topics, and we have to constantly warn them to avoid Ananova stuff. You literally can search on Google News and not find a single other source. There's another outfit out of South Africa that is just as bad.
I think these outfits hire comedy writers to just make shit up.
In the old days all the weirder tabloid stories (head transplants and the like) came out of places like the old East Germany, since that made them hard to follow up on. Today Russia will have to do.
The Somali pirates started out attacking ships that were illegaly fishing in their waters and/or dumping waste in their waters. They got good at it and found out that they could make money, so they moved on to hijacking cargo ships just for money, not because they were illegaly using their waters.
I fully support their attacks on those who are essentially invading their territorial waters to steal fish or dump toxic waste. I condemn their attacks on others just to make money.
The military should run q-ship operations against the pirates... take a tanker and load it up with concealed weapons. As soon as the pirates attack - boom! - no more pirates. To be fair, we should offer to take out any ships illegally operating in Somali waters.
How is that "fair?" What do we care what's happening in Somali waters, beyond them shooting at American-crewed ships legally transiting their waters?
Q-Ships are fun, but arming merchants with even a couple of .50 BMG M2's and obsolete guided ATM's would be more than sufficient.
The issue is international law and indemnification, not practicalities.