Private Mars Rocket II

A thought hit me - various nation states (cough *Russia* cough) are using criminal ransomware gangs much like nation states in the 1600s used pirates. First, a bit of history from your friendly local historian.

In the 1600s, England did not yet rule the seas. Spain did. England, France and the Netherlands were competing for second place. As a way to harass Spain, those other countries allowed pirates to operate from their overseas possessions. "Allow" is doing a lot of work there - one English pirate, Henry Morgan, became a baronet and Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica.

From the English point of view, piracy was a good tool. It was self-funding (maybe even a profit center - pirates had to buy their cannons from somebody) and if an individual pirate was causing too much trouble, disavowing him was easy. The pirate attacks were rarely big enough for Spain to justify going to all-out war over them.

Does any of this sound like the recent spate of ransomware attacks? Self-funding, easy to disavow, and not yet serious enough for the US to launch cruise missiles? It's also being undertaken for the same reasons. Russia is not nearly strong enough to win any sort of protracted war with the US.

My Rotary club is having a picnic instead of a meeting today, [insert missing logic here] so have some links.

A) Found via View From the Porch, cogent thoughts on the spate of TV survival shows. Money quote: In the end, regardless of what you think you might have learned via osmosis from TV, if you haven’t actually built a shelter from scratch, gathered wild food, butchered a critter, and drunk water you sanitized yourself, you haven’t yet graduated survival kindergarten.

B) Pretty pictures! 10 Beautiful Places That Actually Exist.

C) The world's oceans can be an unlawful place: murder caught on video but not prosecuted.

D) Presented without endorsement: states with tough gun laws have fewer gun murders. My state, Illinois, is (despite Chicago) below the national average.

One of the many, many fine whines emitted at volume complaints of the Sad Puppies is that "social justice warriors" keep insisting on changing the races of people in order to advance the cause of social justice.

Then I was referred to this interesting article: black men and the black flag. Turns out that during the Age of Sail, lots of black men were pirates. Like, for example, Blackbeard's crew was 60% black!

Nor were these blacks just grunt labor. There was Diego el Mulato Martin (el mulato = "mixed race" in Spanish) who ended up a commissioned officer in Spanish service. Or Diego de Los Reyes, aka Diego el Mulato Lucifer. Or Black Caesar, who spent a decade terrorizing the Caribbean from his base on Elliot Key, then hooked up with Blackbeard.

In short, what happened is that history whitewashed (literally) the pirates of the Age of Sail. The "social justice warriors" are merely restoring historical accuracy to that era.

Comment The First

From Jay Lake jaylake I get this: artificial leaf is 10 times as efficient as nature. The article makes a radical claim: the chip [the size of a deck of cards] could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. Since the device works by generating hydrogen, it would allow the power to be stored for night-time use.

Obviously, the average house of the developing world uses less electricity than your house or mine, but still, this is a radical improvement. This device, if the claim is true, could make solar power even more competitive.

Comment The Second

Pirates in Somalia remain problematic - the Dutch amphibious ship HNLMS Rotterdam recently shot up a pirate mother ship (pictures at the link). Why the pirates elected to fire on a 12,000 ton warship with AK-47s is beyond me. They lost the election.

Travelling tomorrow, and Rotary today, so have a few links:

A) On the piracy front, I see that the European Union has attacked pirate bases on land. I've reported previously, in a life-imitating-art mode, that insurance companies are building their own anti-piracy navy. Well, the first seven ships of that navy will soon be at sea.

B) Presented without comment: Legalize Pot, Save Public Education, and end Student Indebtedness.

C) Definitely presented without comment: Invasion of the Austerians.

The title says it all: U.S. Navy Rescues Iranian Fishing Vessel from Pirates in Arabian Sea.

I'm going to Windycon this weekend, and tomorrow's a bank holiday, so this is probably the last post for the week. (My schedule at the con is here.)

On the "OMG" front, I saw Rick Perry's brain freeze at the debate last night. Now, as a writer who forgets his characters' names, I sympathize with the man. On the other hand, write it down! He had notes, and I saw him look at them. Make a cheat sheet, dude! For a more in-depth overview of the debate, including the Cargo Cult Of The Sacred Free Market, see Charles P. Pierce.

Moving on, here's a few links for the long weekend:

1) John Scalzi says everything that needs to be said about the Penn State pedophile scandal. I agree completely with his comments.

2) On the pirate front, the maritime insurance companies are creating a private navy to hunt pirates. Something very similar happens in the sequel to Pirates of Mars.

3) The White House officially announces they are not hiding evidence of ETs, but they would, of course.

4) More evidence that we don't understand our own digestive systems - GI Specialists Suspect Specific Carbohydrates May Cause Painful Symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

5) A serious look at a not-so-serious problem - Seven scientific reasons a zombie outbreak would fail rather quickly.

On August 3rd, Stephen M. Carmel, a Senior Vice President at Maersk Lines, one of the world's largest ocean shipping companies, was invited to make a speech at the US Navy's Second Fleet Intelligence Symposium. It's a long speech, but well worth the read. I will be "borrowing" concepts from it for my future novels. The speech was about the threat of piracy in Somalia, and had several key concepts:

1) The current level of piracy is low - too low to be a serious threat to merchant interests.
2) Piracy in Somalia is not a threat to US interests. Ships in this stretch of ocean are largely going to and from European, Chinese and Arab ports.
3) The costs of paying ransoms and/or defending ships are vastly overshadowed by the costs of complying with US port environmental regulations.
4) What the international community should do is define what is an acceptable level of self-defense armament on a ship and get the heck out of the way.

Now, as a point of fact, Carmel is correct about points 1 and 2. Somali piracy is only on the radar because piracy used to be practically zero. I would add that, considering Maersk and other shippers spend considerable effort dodging taxes by using flags of convenience, expecting first-world navies to come bail them out would be chutzpah at its finest. Point 3 is relevant to Maersk, although you can color me unsympathetic, and I agree completely with point 4.

There are two key flaws in Carmel's argument. The first is that he is thinking short-term. Piracy is like cancer - it doesn't go away on its own, rather it grows and expands. We're already seeing piracy pop up off of the coast of Nigeria and Benin. Second is the refusal to see any responsibility for his corporation's actions, whether in piracy or in the cost of running a port. So although I agree with his immediate tactical assessment, I take great issue with his conclusions.

Having said that, you will see a character in Night Watch make exactly these arguments!

Because it's too damn hot for anything more substantial.

A) Why you shouldn't worry about getting cancer from your cell phone: it's in the same risk category as coffee and pickled vegetables.

B) Murder levels in the US are at roughly the level of the least violent era in American history, the late 1950s. The question is why? Not only that, but murder rates over the last two centuries have been trending down, albeit with several spikes.

C) Two bits of naval news: First, China's new aircraft carrier is a piece of junk. It will be decades before Chinese naval aviation is a threat to the US. Second, piracy can be profitable - to insurance companies!

D) You've heard how horrible, bad and no-good Canadian health care is? Well, not so fast, partner. Turns out that Canadian health care is as good or better than the US for significantly less money.

Stay cool and hydrated, people.

There has been other news this week besides the death of Osama Bin Laden:

A) The economy, while still sluggish, added 244,000 jobs last month. Private employers created 268,000 jobs -- the most since February 2006.

B) General Motors made a quarterly profit of $3.2 billion (yes, Virginia, "billion" with a "b") this past quarter. They also had a 25% sales increase over that period - greater than the industry average.

C) Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives, keeping their laser-like focus on jobs, passed a bill to tax abortions. That's right - if you get an abortion, you have to pay taxes on the health insurance used to cover the procedure.

D) The Somali pirates are still at work. However, the Indian Navy prevented them from capturing the MV Full City, a Panama-flagged cargo ship.

E) In personal news, I visited my optometrist last night. The bifocals are coming next week. As somebody said, "getting old's not for sissies."