What is "flags of convenience"

Usage examples of "flags of convenience".

They also serve as flags of convenience for hundreds of coastal hexes, particularly the nontech and semitech ones that have to get ships and crews from high-tech places.

We fit out a dozen vessels-not our own, oh dear me no, but flags of convenience, ships from Panama or Liberia or Honduras-with two or three rockets apiece.

Or that it hadn't been the contest of two great global alliances, but was much more confused and complex: different sources would claim it was north against south, or young against old, or UN against nations, or nations against transnation-als, or transnationals against flags of convenience, or armies against police, or police against citizens-so that it began to seem every kind of conflict at once.

The flags of convenience had been destroyed by attacks from the have-nots in the south, but apparently the transnationals had fled to the group of seven, and had been taken in and defended by the seven's giant militaries.

But the chaotic violence had convinced the transnats to resolve their disputes, or at least table them, and all the revolutions had failed, especially after the militaries of the Group of Seven intervened to rescue the transnats from dismemberment in their flags of convenience.