Rob the Gob

A while ago, somebody I know told me that they were thinking of getting into scrap books, as a kind of business. Not wanting to take the piss too much, (although, admittedly, that was hard), and wanting to at least manage to find out some more about the peculiar statement she’d just made, I dutifully came up with jocular conversational bits and bobs on theme. Trying to find out exactly how one would make money, I asked her how she could charge for things cut out of newspapers and such, and was acidly informed that scrap books had ‘moved on’. And I was trying so hard too. Given this, you shouldn’t be surprised that Piracy has moved on a bit too. The ships are bigger, they’re made from metal now, apparently (what will they think of next?) and the personal arms of choice have shifted from cutlass and flintlock to machete and AK-47. Yet, like scrap books, I suppose, the principles have remained constant even if the whistles and bells have changed.

            So, you can now have a choice of two different costumes for your pirate fancy dress party. There may not be too many platted beards, parrots or pieces of eight on show, but history does have something to teach us, and there are a surprising number of parallels. Take one valuable thing, stick it on a ship, and sail it passed some poor people with access to basic weapons. There used to be these really huge European empires that kept everyone that wasn’t directly related to those in charge in conditions dogs used to point and laugh at. They went to places that had a large quantity of the stuff they valued – in the olden days it was a very dense and unutterably pointless metal called ‘Gold’, whereas now it’s an exquisitely useful black liquid stuff. Then they shipped vast amounts of this wealth about in ships to get it to the place they wanted to. Unsurprisingly, some of the poor people they sail passed look out to sea and think ‘hmm… you know, if I had that rather than that rich bloke over the sea, then me, my family and everyone else I’ve ever met could have a place to live, something to eat and maybe even a PS3. Hell, If I kept it all to myself, maybe I could go somewhere or do something that meant that I didn’t have to carry this AK all the time like it’s my packed lunch.’ ‘Dave? Where’s that boat of yours?’

Basically there are people in the world who, as usual, have a shedload more stuff than everyone else, and pirates are a product of this. As in the past, they have a certain charismatic appeal despite being generally pretty awful people because, as before, it’s equally difficult to like the people their stealing from. As usual, there will be some who do it just for the worst kind of cruelty-based poops and laughs, and others who don’t. Having a fearsome reputation can get you a long way in the Piracy game. Still, no need to feed people their own balls this time, eh lads? Most of them won’t do particularly good things with the money they acquire – they’ll just use it to get better houses and equipment and weapons and then exert even more power and influence… erm… but then… actually that sounds like exactly what they guys who own the boats will do as well. So really, the situation is pretty funny as far as I’m concerned – the new multinational empires of wealth are feeling the piratical thorn in their sides just like the governmental empires of old once did.

I’m not sure I’d find any of this as funny if my job was driving tankers passed the coast of Somalia. But it’s not, so there. On the other hand, I do have some sympathy for the crew. Ok, the people who own the boats themselves and the cargos they contain are likely to be under direct contract to one Mr Lou C. Fur, but the blokes who might get posted back to their relatives in bits are just workaday guys like the rest of the world – almost everyone works for somebody truly despicable at some point in their lives; considering that most of the world is in the hands of the most corrupt and unpleasant, you’d be doing a remarkable dodge if you didn’t. Indeed, as being an utter bastard seems to be the prime requisite for success in almost any capacity, picking between the bastards who make the money out of the oil and the bastards who stole it seems like a fairly pointless exercise. Just for the record, they aren’t currently in the habit of posting bits of dead guys here and there, in fact the latest crew are reported to be ‘fine’, indeed, asking about football scores – although there are more than 300 currently held by pirates from some fifteen captured ships and sixty-five attacks, and they can’t all be happy little rabbits. As usual, those who directly suffer are essentially innocent. I don’t like it any more than you do, but even more poor buggers would be suffering, no doubt, if those that want to be in charge of everything were allowed to act unopposed. You’d better believe it. Throw away your all your Primark, Nike, Unilever or any other brand label you care to name – and start with anything you’ve ever bought from Tesco’s – before you start casting stones about your glasshouse.     

According to the UN, something must be done, and I guess that my amusement won’t prevent it. Maybe they’re worried that too many poor people with access to basic weapons might get the same idea, and that consequently their Porsche Cayenne’s will grind to a halt twenty miles from their homes in the middle of winter (20 miles being about as far as you can get in a Porsche Cayenne before it burns through an oil tanker’s worth of petrol).  Apparently, the United States is also worried Somali pirates may forge ties with terrorist groups, but, of course, they have no evidence. Well, lack of evidence has never stopped them from doing anything before, but, then again, any direct action taken might accidentally hurt some Saudis, and we can’t have that. If the US does take action against the Somali pirates, I expect that action to be the invasion of Iran. The UN itself has decided to ‘tighten their action on Somalia’. How they plan to do this is beyond me – Somalia essentially doesn’t exist in any sense beyond the lines we draw on maps. There are some warlords, some pirates, a load of kids with guns, a load of injured people, sick people, refugees and some bricks and stuff that might one day be put back into an order that resembles a country, but nothing you can ‘tighten’ on.

So, if something really must be done, what to do? Well, in the olden days, most of those in charge used brutal tactics, capital punishment and military muscle to fell the pirates. It’s just about feasible that those who love the black slimy stuff the most are willing to further add to the woes of the Somali’s by bombing it back beyond the stone age, which presumably would involve replacing all the people with Homo Erectus. Given that we don’t want to do this, let’s look back to history once more. In the ‘golden age’ of piracy, one plucky little nation that was feeling the pinch of being massively inferior in both military might and wealth dealt with some pirate by giving them jobs, and, therefore, some measure of protection. Thus did Britannia come to rule the waves. So, here’s my plan – and listen up all you struggling nations. You can’t upset people unofficially any more, because information’s too good, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it covertly. The Brits used a kind of ‘plausible deniability’ system in the golden age of piracy, where  we aided and gave support to utter bastards, and gave them the letters of mark they needed to be not found swinging from any yard arms, then denied any knowledge of their previous wrongdoings when accused of consorting with pirates. It was easier all round, but don’t think the rest of the world didn’t know exactly what was really going on. Still, we might need to modify the tactics a bit. So: give the pirate somewhere nice to live instead. You will have an instant navy, and all you need is: to have no extradition treaties with the right countries, a banking system willing to take money that’s been gained from ransoming oil tankers, somewhere to live that’s nicer than Somalia (so, like, anywhere that isn’t Somalia), and the ability to turn a blind eye to the odd time one of your ramshackle ships drops your flag and pinches somebody’s shipment of BMW’s.   

A-ha me hearties, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.