Q Ships?

A recent letter to the Economist brought up the idea of "Q Ships" as a means to combating the pirate menace off the Horn of Africa. Regardless of the practicality of the suggestion (which is limited, one suspects) I was sent off on a wave of nostalgia by the mere mention of these armed decoys.

When I was a small lad I was given a collection of adventure stories for a birthday or a Christmas. This book accompanied me just about everywhere (much to the chagrin of my dad: "We are on bloody holiday, get your nose out of that book look out the bloody window at the bloody scenery"). I wish I could remember the title or the publisher but I do recall that the collection contained all the usual suspects (climbing Aconcagua, the chicken switch, the fights of Jack Dempsey, the battle of Leyete Gulf, To Build a Fire, Churchill's escape from the Boers, and- oddly- The Pit and the Pendulum).

All of these stories were great but the one that inspired me most of all was the story of the Q Ships. Perhaps this was because my reading the story for the first time coincided with Mr T transforming broken vehicles into tanks on the A Team, or perhaps because I loved the pure justice of sneakiness countering stealth and restoring fairness to the ocean battle space, but I loved Q Ships. The letter in the Economist has thus inspired share the following link:

Q Ships

I'm looking for volunteers for the 'Panic Party'.

Crikey

From the BBC:

Pirates off the coast of Somalia have seized a Ukrainian ship carrying 30 T-72 tanks, an official has said.

My analysis? We are all safe until they reach port. Secondly, do you think they might start flogging these out of suitcases in Battery Park? If so I'm on my way to New York with used bills...

Fell off the back of a freighter, mate

50 pounds of suet in a 25 pound bag

From the BBC:

Ivory Coast's 'big-bottom' craze

I had no idea that I lived next door to an Ivorian Consulate. Its the fact that all my neighbors in that building are white that threw me off, I suppose. I sense twin-town possibilities; maybe some toasts with pints of "Fat Ass in a Glass"?

You're Welcome

On behalf of the defunct yet still poisonous British Empire, I would like to offer a big "no problem, our pleasure" to the rest of the world for ugly emergence of tribal strife in the false construct of Kenya. Just add it to the pile of Palestine/Israel, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and many other countries and regions created out of whole cloth in a back room of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office withought thought to ethnic or regional faultlines, or deliberately buggered up by withdrawing imperial administrators.

We might even be better than the French at this blowback business. By comparison to us and Johnny Frog the Americans are real rookies at this unintended consequences malarkey.

Perspective.

While we go apeshit crazy with grief over one very, very old man who died surrounded by family and expensive doctors, consider this:

Thousands have been killed and more than 1 million left homeless in a 15-month conflict between Arab militias and the black African population in the western Darfur region of Sudan.