Anarchy at Sea...

In the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly, there was a fascinating article by William Langeweische called "Anarchy at Sea". Unfortunately, it's not available online. The article discussed at length how totally unpoliced our oceans are. Thousands of ships with questionable registry, unknown owners and undocumented crews ply the seas with little to no oversight.

Piracy, especially in South Asia, is rampant. Container ships enter and leave ports with next-to-no inspection of their contents.

He also writes about the near-inability of Homeland Security to do much about these problems. A few small steps have been made, but our Coast Guard is woefully unprepared to deal with this risk.

It's also been reported separately that Al Qaida has a great interest in obtaining ships for their attacks. I know this isn't a very reputable source, but Worldnetdaily talks about Osama's 15-ship navy: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35047

I encourage everybody to try to read the Atlantic article. It's really eye-opening. It convinced me that a large ship will be used in the not-too-distant future for a large-scale terror attack. A huge bomb could be brought into a port, oil rigs destroyed, or attacks on civilian ocean liners are all possible. A simple disruption of international shipping trade would be catastrophic.

Scary stuff, no?

:evilgrin:

But so true.

While we are spending zilllions of dollars on Star Wars, very little is being spent on ports per say.


from the begining of Sum of all Fears the tunnel into the underground complex called Site R



I walked that tunnel every day for 18 months.

that's the problem. Star Wars, advanced weapons systems, advanced spying.... none of it will address the relatively low-tech delivery systems of modern terrorists.

HUGE changes will need to be made in the way international shipping occurs, but it will only happen AFTER a catastrophic event occurs.

for starters, we need:

untamperable GPS systems on all ships
satellite surveillance of all ships
an international registry of all ships, owners and crews
an international agency that ENFORCES safety and security

This is a bastion of wingers, but I'm friends with the ass't editor and she tells me she will get it into the paper. Here it is if anybody's interested: (the formatting might be a little boogled from
pasting it in here)




Wagoner, OK 74467

Editor, Wagoner Tribune
221 E. Cherokee
Wagoner, OK 74467

I have been amazed many times in my 61 years. To name just a few events
that evoked that emotion, I submit just a few: landing on the moon,
invention of the transistor, the fall of the Berlin Wall and our loss of
the "war" in Viet Nam. There are more, but I stop in the service of
brevity.

But nothing I have ever observed has come anywhere near amazing me as
much as what I perceive recently, that there are apparently a
significant number of people who still support or even revere George
Bush. (I will abstain from comment on Arnold Gropinator for the nonce.)

Bush is a liar. And a despicable "wannabe" dictator. And a proven
"business" failure, as well as essentially a deserter from the National
Guard slash U.S. Air Force.

As of this moment, THREE HUNDRED TWENTY SIX proud young Americans have
died in a bogus "war." Quotes because there was not a war, there was a
pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign nation, the reasons for which were
fabricated, nuanced, massaged, misrepresented and to call a spade a
spade, nothing but craven lies.

The administration took special pains to frighten Americans about Iraq.
Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell (and others) told us over, over and over
about the alleged imminent threat from Saddam Hussein and made every
effort to get us to imagine he had the capability to wreak ultimate
havoc on our country. Mushroom clouds, biological weapons, chemical
warfare, ad nauseum, and never failed to conflate these images with
Saddam Hussein.

Polls over the summer revealed that over half of Americans believed Iraq
actually had some connection with, if not engineered the events of
9/11/01. NOT TRUE. There were NO Iraqis involved in the attacks of that
day, indeed, 15 of the 19 identified by the FBI were Saudi Arabians,
with whose country Bush continues a romance.

Now, Dr. David Kay, Bush's handpicked hit-man, dispatched to Iraq to
find the elusive WMDs says there are none and probably never were any
since the mid 1990s. He did find a vial of botulin bacteria in some
guy's refrigerator. If you look way back in your own icebox, you
probably have some too.

Before we invaded Iraq, it was run by a nasty fellow. Almost nobody
disputes that. And yes, he did violate some UN resolutions, as have a
dozen other countries. Which we haven't invaded and occupied. But
those other nations don't have the world's 2nd largest oil reserves. I
leave it to the reader to contemplate that one.

And now Saddam is gone (where, we don't have a clue...and what about
Osama Bin Forgotten, the guy we fingered for 9/11?) Bush said, 2 years
ago, "we're gonna get him, dead or alive." Well, he was right, Osama is
either dead or alive. And so is Mr. Hussein.







Meanwhile, Iraq, which had few terrorists who were any threat to us
before our invasion, is now crawling with them. But since they are only
killing soldiers, I guess it's cool, huh. None of my friends or kin
have come home in a body bag. Forgive my black sarcasm.

And another meanwhile, our ports and their adjacent cities lie mostly
defenseless. Millions of large shipping containers arrive every year.
Only a tiny percentage are inspected. That movie "Sum of all fears" is
fiction, so far. It could become fact. "Homeland Security" is a very
bad joke. Bush wants $87 BILLION to continue this Viet Nam Redux. 20
Billion to rebuild Iraq (most of which is what we wrecked in the first
place)...who benefits? Oh, Halliburton again, the very company our
erstwhile VP ran for years and did business with Iraq in the 90s, while
our own infrastructure goes down the toilet. How many potholes and
bridges could we fix here in the USA for $87B? What about our own
electrical grid that failed a couple months ago? Should we think about
that?

Now they want 600 million more dollars to keep up searching for the
WMDs that could have been deployed "in 45 minutes", if you believed the
liars back in March. For another 7 months. 1200 people, 7 months,
it comes to about $90,000 a MONTH for each of them. Can I sign up for
that job?

George Bush failed at several endeavors (actually, ALL his previous
ones) and was bailed out by his daddy's friends. He was "elected" by
his daddy's friends. And he got the notion he had some talent. He does
not. He is a bogus president, a liar, and is borderline insane. And he
is a man with a finger on the nuclear trigger. Be very afraid, folks.

karl@vigoris.net

Karl Schneider
Proud, angry but hopeful liberal Democrat.

I really think the current candidates are missing a big opportunity by NOT tying everything back to domestic security. They need to say what that 87 billion dollars could do for us here. They need to say what the whole cost of the war could've bought for us here at home, focusing on security.

Bush is gonna run as the "Security" president, and he's failing dismally at it, and the dems should get out in front of him on this issue.

things like "what do you want fixed first, the bridge over the Verdigris a mile from here, or one over the river in Baghdad?" actually gets a few neurons firing. The reply is of course predictable, then I say "Well, we probably owe it to the Iraqis to repair what we destroyed. How do we pay for it?"

I get lots of rather blank stares.

his own floating country at sea. When I was eight years old, we were traveling on a freighter with a few other passengers. One of them had a child my age. We discovered that we could untie some of the ropes over the life boats and play Tarzan swinging out over the open sea while our mothers were playing Bridge below deck.

When the Captain found out, he spanked both of us and ordered our mothers to be with us at all times. He also forbade them to play any card games or other activities that would distract them. There was nothing they could do because he was the ultimate law out on the open sea and none of the merchant marines would disobey him.

but the best captains can be the victims of piracy. OR an unscrupulous one can knowingly participate, or a good one can be duped into carrying some very dangerous cargo.

I'd like to see one of the Dem candidates address this issue - it seems to be the biggest hole in our security and nobody's doing much to address it.

Anyone could take a page out of the DC/MD sniper's book and wreak havoc on the entire nation with just a few cities. Plus, terrorists don't even have to kill people...they could cripple us just messing with our infrastructure. All the money we are spending in Iraq will leave us bankrupt to take care of home in an emergency. Just like squandering our surplus on tax cuts has left us.

but at least we have SOME level of policing/scrutiny on our public roads.

The Atlantic article made it clear how thoroughly unpoliced the ocean lanes are.

.....could flatten everything within a 7 mile radius.
Tankers being slow and having a low freeboard are especially vulnerable to piracy/hijackers.

I used to, but I've found that it can have credible information on it. You just hae to be careful because the NOT credible info can be astounding.

Eloriel

I don't dismiss it out of hand. That's why I posted the info, but with a disclaimer.

In this case, the story meshes with other things I'd heard about Al Qaida's interest in shipping.

but I doubt it will tell me much more than I learned in all those years I was an underwriter insuring ships and cargoes.

Lots of really interesting stuff in one of my favorite pubs from back then:

http://www.fairplay.co.uk/

A few observations from those years--

The US is the largest shipowning country in the world, but only a tiny
percentage flies under the US flag. Many of the perceived problems could be handled by piercing the corporate veils over the flags of convenience and tightening up on the operators. The same could be said for many European owners. Lloyd's List, Lloyd's Intelligencer, etc., try to keep track of all vessels trading, but can't keep up with all of them. One trick was for the crew to repaint the ship, put a new name on it, head for a "friendly" port and sell the ship and cargo on the black market. While putting in an insurance claim for its disappearance, of course.

Now the talk is all about terrorism, which may be a threat, but piracy, massive fraud, barratry, and vast other troubles have always been a problem in blue water shipping. Personally, I fear rotten maintenance and slipshod operations more than a terrorist attack. No tankers have exploded or collided due to terrorists, but there have been a lot of explosions and collisions. Shipowners have often been doing a better job of destroying things than the terrorists could do.

Every ship entering US ports is met by customs, FDA, DEA, and other US agents. The mechanism is already there to inspect the ships and their cargoes, and has been there for years. But, they have never been able to get all of the illegal ginseng, pot, cocaine, fake Rolexes, rotten food, mislabelled condoms, and whatever else entering the ports. They're gonna find terrorist stuff? Complete inspections, rather than the cursory inspections they are now forced to do, would solve a lot of problems. It would also cost a fortune. More bonded containers coming in would help. Certify the stuff before it leaves the warehouse.

Ain't gonna be easy to clean up the mess. Too many international laws, treaties, and business practices. Exxon is not going to be easily convinced to do anything that will cost it money or time.

Interpol has been trying to get resources to fight fraud and crime on the high seas for years. Anybody remember Interpol? They had marvelous stuff in their marine crime units. Knew where all the "ports of convenience" were, and who a lot of the players were.

Never could catch anyone, though-- too many countries were all too happy to protect people for an "appropriate fee."

You are right on about the vulnerability of containers...I work at a place that exports large amounts of citrus overseas(and it is one of the smaller of such businesses in my area)....a standard container is 1260 cartons (4/5 bushels each) stacked 63 to a pallet. When a large ship is in port, there is no possible way all these cartons on all these trucks could possibly be checked...and it would be very easy for anyone to put in one or several of those cartons, enough of something powerful enough to do a lot of damage.....

My fav homeland security story, though....has to be the cuban soldiers who drove a gun boat to key west...docked...and then turned themselves in to a quite baffled local cop....OMG