*This is not the first time this ship has been seized, but it was done previously with lawyers who steal without a gun on behalf of white-collar criminals. Go read the last paragraph at the link.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the navy had called his hostage experts "to assist with negotiations".
He said the FBI was now "fully engaged in this matter".
Oh effing swell. With the Federal Bureau of Ineptitude on your case, Captain, given their 'hostage negotiation' record, you're toast. You better just jump overboard and swim for it and pray that the nearby US warship blasts those pirates to Kingdom Come if they point their weapons at you. Best of luck.
Captain Phillips gave himself up to the pirates as a hostage. While I am not sure it was the right thing to do, it was his call and I certainly won't second-guess him from the safety of my keyboard. I applaud him for his concern for his men and for his bravery.
Analysts have said the negotiations could be lengthy, with the pirates keen to extract a ransom for the captain as well as compensation for a boat that was wrecked in the attack.
Pirates? Want compensation for a boat used in an attack on a merchantman? That'd be like 'compensating' a failed liquor store bandit for his car that got wrecked runnin' from the cops. They got some brass ones, those guys! Heh. They'll be lucky to keep their lives!
And the lifeboat is thought to be equipped for a week at sea, although the ship's owners, Maersk, said it had run out of petrol and was "dead in the water".
Screw the petrol. Wait 'til they run out of drinking water and they'll be more amenable to listen to reason. We will see.
There are lotsa piracy-related links at the Beeb site, but this one got my attention:
Could 19th Century plan stop piracy?
Shorter: Nope. Read on...
If the navies of the world need some advice on ways to stop piracy off Somalia, they could look to Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary in 1841.
"Taking a wasps' nest... is more effective than catching the wasps one by one," he remarked.
Palmerston, the great advocate of gunboat diplomacy, was speaking in support of a British naval officer,Joseph Denman.
Denman had attacked and destroyed slave quarters on the West African coast and had been sued by the Spanish owners for damages.
It was British policy to try to destroy the slave trade, but this sometimes ran into legal complications.
The slavers had lobbyists? Figures.
With Somali piracy still threatening shipping, it sounds as if modern navies need a few Captain Joseph Denmans, or the like-minded American, Commodore Stephen Decatur.
Sent to attack the Barbary pirates off North Africa in 1815, Decatur simply captured the flagship of the Algerian Bey [ruler] and forced a capitulation.
The United States' very first foreign war was over this exact same issue:
The Marines Hymn contains a reference to this conflict in the opening line: "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli..."
No such action against the "wasps' nests" along the Somali coast is possible today, even though the UN Security Council has authorised the use of the "necessary means" to stop pirates on the high seas and hot pursuit into Somali territorial waters.
Phooey. Damn and blast!
Everything has to be done in accordance with "international law" and this is interpreted as complying with the conditions of the International Law of the Sea Convention.
This convention, in article 105, does permit the seizure of a pirate ship, but article 110 lays down that, in order to establish that a ship is indeed a pirate vessel, the warship - and it may only be a warship - has to send a boat to the suspected ship first and ask for its papers.
This is hardly a recipe for a Denman - or Decatur-type action.
I will bet that deep inside Pirate Headquarters, those clowns are well aware of this and are laughing their fool heads off that the very people they are sticking up have made it nearly impossible to protect themselves from it in any meaningful way.
What to do, what to do?
Since writing in December last year about the legal problems involved, I have had a lot of e-mails from people angry at the ineffectiveness of the measures taken so far and proposing their own solutions.
These include:
* Convoys. Already done in the case of aid ships going into Kenyan and Somali ports
* Arming the crews. The crews might not want this, though in the latest case the American crew of cargo ship Maersk Alabama did fight back
* Arming merchant ships with heavy guns. Ship owners might not want to risk an engagement at sea
* luring pirates into attacking apparently unarmed ships which then declared themselves as warships. Would this be in "accordance with international law"?
Maybe not, but 'Q-ships' work!
* Other ideas suggested would appeal to officers Denman and Decatur. Fixer, Gordon, quit with the letters already. I get it.
I mighta made part of that up...
I understand that the maritime powers have hamstrung themselves and made piracy nearly impossible to deal with, but something needs to be done to make this sort of criminal enterprise less appealing. Short of fixing Somalia so it works and less of its men have to turn to crime to survive (some always will), perhaps we need to go back in time even further for a solution. Simply put:
A pirate is a robber who travels by water.
How did governments fight back against the pirates?
Successful pirate attacks became so frequent and troublesome that governments were forced to take strong action. In the 18th century, they sent heavily armed naval warships to the pirates' favourite hunting grounds. Terrible battles were fought, during which some of the most famous pirates, such as Bartholomew Roberts and Blackbeard were killed. Other pirates were captured and put on trial, and were then executed amidst great publicity. Bodies were coated with tar and hung in special iron cages as a dreadful deterrent to others thinking of taking up piracy.
Works for me.
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