April 08, 2009
pirates (ongoing)
So we guess this is the part where we find out what "relief aid" really means
Pirates commandeered a United States-flagged container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia on Wednesday, the first time an American-crewed ship was seized by pirates in the area.We do very much hope the pirates bust open some of those thousand shipping containers just in a fact-finding kind of way. It may turn out to be that knowledge of what's in there is more valuable than the contents itself — but this is not to dematerialize the pirate adventure, prioritizing information over goods. One of the great, simple reminders of this new age of pirates is that, even at this late stage, stuff still has to be brought to places. And often that voyage passes though the Straits of Malacca, or some other place that the face of imperial history has left immiserated enough to launch a thousand speed boats.The container ship, the Maersk Alabama, was carrying thousands of tons of relief aid to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, the company that owns the ship said.