First Sea Lord Is Constrained to Express His Grave Concern
The House of Commons has reported on the alarming growth of piracy in the world, affecting in particular the Malacca Straits and the coast of Somalia, as well as a growing series of attacks near Iraq, and a recent one in Guyana. The full report of the committee places some blame on ship owners, working their crews past the capacity to even keep lookout watches. One incident mentions a fully laden oil tanker steaming through the Straits with no one at the helm, and gunfights on Liquid Natural Gas Tankers. Use of swords among Indonesia pirates, possibly associated with the rebellion in Aceh, is actually more common than guns.
The report criticizes the popular culture view of pirates as contributing to the problem by glossing over the rape, murder, kidnapping and theft that are increasing.
However, as one wag retorted on the BBC site: why are pirates romanticized? They just arrrrrr.
A significant issue is that merchant crews cannot carry guns. It occurs to me they might carry swords and bows. More importantly, the breakdown of international cooperation among world naval powers (anyone? anyone?), the loss of the Royal Navy base at Hong Kong, and the Iraq war, are contributing factors.
posted by JAB at 6:58 PM
2 Comments:
You have got to read this piece by one of my favorite nonfiction writers, William Langewiesche, who writes for the Atlantic Monthly.
Anarchy at Sea: http://www.wesjones.com/anarchy.htm
In fact, you should probably read anthing he writes, he's that good. In fact, I think I will write a post about him.
I heartily recommend it this real story, almost Conradian in tension and character. At sea in particular, the remorseless march of unrestrained capitalism can kill merchant seamen by externalizing consequences; try holding a shipping company responsible for an oil spill sometime. The growth of piracy is inevitable unless we re-police and re-regulate.
I only guess here, but I would bet that ten minutes of research would find some blame to place on the Bush administration, for further pushing out the international shipping legal and political structures that had brought some order in the post war period.
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