Trouble Under Pressure

It's the talk of the world. After holding out under enormous pressure, violent tensions break out that threaten the unity of their party, with the world watching and disaster looming.

I mean of course the Pirates.

What did you think I meant? According to the Pirate Spokesman Mwangura (not kidding) they've divided into radical and moderate pirates, and started shooting each other.

"A misunderstanding erupted between the moderate and radical pirates aboard the ship prompting a shootout that left three of them dead," Mwangura told Xinhua by telephone.

"The moderates want to give in but the radicals don't want this to happen. The U.S. naval ships are very close and there is panic among the pirates," said Mwangura.*

The incident came as warships surrounded the MV Faina which was seized on Thursday, with its 21 Ukrainian, Russian and Lithuanian crew members and arms cargo.

I was at the Cash N' Carry grocery store here today in Seattle that caters to the fishing industry- pirates and international finance were being discussed. The general feeling was that we should send in a disguised, heavily armed merchant ship to get the pirates, and that we should spend the $700 Billion, but on good investments instead.

UPDATE: The unconfirmed report above has been supplemented by an interview with the Pirates by The New York Times:

(The new pirate spokesman) insisted that the pirates were not interested in the weapons and had no plans to sell them to Islamist insurgents battling Somalia’s weak transitional government. “Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons,” he said. “We don’t want that suffering and chaos to continue. We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money.”

He said that they were asking for $20 million in cash — “we don’t use any other system than cash.” But he added that they were willing to bargain. “That’s deal making,” he explained.

These bloodthirsty sea-pirates seem reasonable enough. Frankly, I've had less pleasant conversations with my student loan people.