These United States - Honor Amongst Thieves
These United States - Honor Amongst Thieves
On Saturday, Somali pirates released a hijacked Greek-owned tanker with all 19 crew members safe and the oil cargo intact after payment of a ransom. This is just the latest in a riveting and sprawling story which has left me unabashedly obsessed.
“Think of us like a coast guard,” pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a recent telephone interview. And I do, sort of.
After the Somali government imploded in 1991, the only profitable industry, fishing, was completely overrun by foreign commercial fleets illegally pillaging the tuna rich waters. In response, a group of fishermen teamed with armed militia men to begin commandeering these ships as a rudimentary form of taxation.
"It is particularly ironic that many of the nations that are presently contributing warships to the anti-piracy flotillas patrolling, or set to patrol, the waters off the Horn of Africa, are themselves directly linked to the foreign fishing vessels that are busily plundering Somalia's offshore resources," Dr Schofield, a researcher with the University of Wollongong's Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security.
Ironic, yes, but if Somalia had oil (not tuna), we’d be in there like gangbusters calling them terrorists and setting up a dummy government. And this leads to the root of my obsession: We are witnessing the human condition pushed to the limit on a grand stage and no one wants any part of it.
Somalia, a country that has been violently destroying itself for years, is now commanding an international spotlight without killing many people at all. In fact, the pirates seem somewhat honorable in their understanding that killing is very bad for the ransom business.
I'm not sure how this is going to play out. The pirates are holding the world hostage with increasing brazenness and something has to give. When it does, I think everyone will take notice.
2 comments:
They have elevated the concept of gentle pirates to a new level. The world has a myriad of ways to fight tyranny, many we probably can't even conceive of because our most familiar notion of desperation is forgetting our PIN at the ATM, at times the seeming source of our sustenance as we blindly glide at the top of the food chain until someone tries to force us to consider others' plight.
More pirate thoughts...
Failing industry holds jobs (and a vital piece of our industrial base) captive, so they say. Wall Street titans hold the American financial system for ransom. Pay up or else! The highly compensated captans of huge industry have a way of extracting the almighty dollar from the US Government in a way that boy we wish us little guys could! But we don't have the goods, the tanker full of 100 million barrels of oil, millions of jobs, or this surprisingly delicate financial system. Where did these corporate pirates get this ethic, this idea of ransom? Not exactly capitalism, or the American way. Piracy reigns! It's a lawless free for all! We don't negotiate with criminals, best thing would be if we could walk away. Do we need any of this? Oil, cars, debt? The banking system ephemeral.
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