THE VINE JUNE 9, 2008
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News from
the high seas: Pirate attacks are up 75% in the last several years. According to a
RAND study, "there's now at least an
attempt at a pirate attack nearly every day." This is half-hilarious,
half-worrisome. Far from the lovably mercenary Jack Sparrow paradigm, these pirates
proliferate small arms, strong-arm weak Indian Ocean
governments, pushing past lax coastal security (even post-9/11) to pinch
valuable goods, from guns to oil to sailors
themselves.
And now, environmentalists! In late May a Greenpeace vessel was surrounded and attacked by
Turkish fishing boats irked at the group's meddling in their seas. Greenpeace
had been advocating more environmentally sound fishing methods and trying to
create a marine reserve in the prized tuna fishing waters. The purse seine (bonus
vocab from my conservation biology class in college), used by the trawlers, is
among the more unsustainable methods of fishing that exist. The seine scoops up
fish, but can also snare turtles, smaller sharks and everything else, including
treasure chests, I suppose.
Watch the swirling Mediterranean drama yourself:
--Dayo Olopade
11 comments
Another reason to support India's huge increase in military spending (naval and air power, mainly) and increased role in world affairs. In this century the Indian navy will be critical to keeping open the shipping lanes to Asia.
It would be nice if TNR could dispatch someone to write about the Indian military and its increasingly close ties to Israel, also explore ways the US can move toward a close working relationship (no alliance poss bec of the Pakistan tinderbox) with this extremely important, pivotal power that should be central to our strategy re Iran and China.
- teplukhin2you
June 9, 2008 at 12:24pm
Agreed, tep, regarding India. Political expansion of a large, Asian, populous, rising Communist country can best be done with the help of a large, Asian, populous, rising Democratic country.
And regarding pirates, it's clear to me that the only plan of action is to get Japan to dispatch lots of ninjas.
- bigfish
June 9, 2008 at 12:47pm
Piracy is an increasingly serious issue. Pirate attacks on shipping rose by twenty percent last year. In March there was a horrible attack on a passenger boat in the Philippines in which the captain and two crew members were shot dead, tied to an anchor and tossed overboard. The Strait of Molucca is the most dangerous body of water for shipping in the world. This is a vital shipping line, with two-thirds of the world's liquified natural gas passing through, as well as much else, of couse. The waters off of the Somali coast are dangerous, too. The new pirates sometimes go old tech and board ships with knives but sometimes they employ rpg's and automatic rifles.
Nice to have you back, tep and Dayo.
- liberal reformer
June 9, 2008 at 12:58pm
This seems to be misplaced. Shouldn't a post about Pirates be on The Plank?
- purcellneil
June 9, 2008 at 2:30pm
If so, purcellneil, various deforestation items should be relocated to The Stump, no?
- bigfish
June 9, 2008 at 3:09pm
I thought The Stump was a quiz show.
William Langewiesche had a masterful article on this very topic (modern piracy), called Anarchy at Sea, in the Atlantic back in 2003. Unfortunately, I just checked and it's not available on line.
- agentzero
June 9, 2008 at 5:00pm
Leave it to the Turks to throw their remaining ballast at the enemy.
- jet
June 9, 2008 at 7:31pm
Another case of Greenpeace v Brown People Who Just Want to Make a Living
When will wealthy American environmentalists learn that poor people get the way we are by destroying the environment?
- cthulhu2008
June 9, 2008 at 8:47pm
Cthulhu2008: Another case of ct slamming enviromentalists.
Agentzero: William Langewiesche is a superb writer. I read his excellent article in the Atlantic in 2003; in fact I think I have that issue around here somewhere.
- liberal reformer
June 9, 2008 at 9:58pm
I knew a guy at college whose refugee boat out of Vietnam had been boarded by pirates. He was ten years old at the time, and had been sent out alone by his parents with his mother's wedding band sewed into the shorts of his jeans. The pirates found him, sick with dysentery, only after they'd forced all the other refugees onto the pirate vessel where they robbed them all and raped the women. They quickly found the wedding band and cut it out of his shorts, and then tossed him bodily into the sea. He swam around to the stern of the refugee boat, where the gunwales were lowest and climbed back aboard, falling into a large cooking pot where he hid until the pirates placed the refugees back onto their boat and left.
Recently my six-year-old has asked, "Is there such a thing as pirates?" to which I've responded, "Yes, but they're not nearly so fun and friendly as they seem in the movies and on tv."
- aeromonas
June 10, 2008 at 9:29am
cthulhu, You'll have to look hard to find anyone more sympathetic to the concerns of fishermen than I am. I come from a commercial fishing community--my high school's teams were called the Crabbers--and I have worked as a deckhand on commercial fishing boats. But if you cannot recognize that overfishing is going to lead to total collapse of fish stocks, including the bluefin tuna stocks alluded to in the video, then you are blind. Poor people aren't going to get anywhere close to where we are by destroying commercial fisheries.
- aeromonas
June 10, 2008 at 9:40am