Sweet Home Maersk Alabama

What’s wrong with this story?

The Black FreighterAndrea Phillips, the wife of Capt. Richard Phillips of Underhill, Vermont, said her husband had sailed in the waters off Somalia “for quite some time” and a hijacking was perhaps “inevitable.” …

Merchant crews aren’t supposed to fight pirates, short of using high-pressure hoses to try to stop them from climbing aboard, said John F. Reinhart, president and CEO of Maersk Line Ltd. “They (the crews) don’t have any weapons ….”

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11 Responses to Sweet Home Maersk Alabama

  1. Anon73 April 8, 2009 at 5:57 pm #

    Roderick, roderick… you’re missing the point. Governments maintain a monopoly of force… meaning people can’t even use force to defend themselves from robbers and pirates! The truest patriot is clearly the one who allows himself to be stabbed and robbed in Central Park without lifting a finger against his assailants; after all, as he lies bleeding to death he can call the police for protection!

    • Robert Paul April 8, 2009 at 7:53 pm #

      How many people will read this comment and think, “Well, that just means we need cameras all over Central Park!”

  2. Anon73 April 8, 2009 at 8:40 pm #

    Some libertarian wrote an article called “the death of reductios”, maybe Rad Geek, to describe that exact thing. For example I don’t like a lot of Roderick’s arguments that supporting governments logically entails supporting world government, because some people will react, not by accepting limits on government power, but by saying “Yeah, world government, that sounds pretty good after all…”. 🙁

    • Robert Paul April 9, 2009 at 1:31 am #

      Ha, I was thinking about that very thing (supporting governments logically entails supporting world government) recently. I didn’t even know Roderick had already written about it.

      I just found Sheldon Richman’s post on that here: http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/26864.html

      • Roderick April 9, 2009 at 2:30 am #

        Likewise I worry when advocates of marijuana legalisation point out that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than marijuana ….

  3. Bob Kaercher April 9, 2009 at 9:11 am #

    Nothing stops a band of pirates more effectively than a good hosing.

    • Roderick April 9, 2009 at 4:07 pm #

      Well, if the Wicked Witch of the West ever turned to piracy, it would work against her.

  4. Rich Baumann April 9, 2009 at 4:35 pm #

    Somali Pirates See Themselves As Unofficial Coast Guard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcpwS0izoJg

    It’s kind of funny because for months I’ve been pointing out to statists that the pirates aren’t doing anything significantly different from what national governments do with their “navies” and “coast guards”.

  5. Anon73 April 9, 2009 at 5:55 pm #

    Exactly Rich, it’s basically a form of newspeak. The “pirates” are in many ways behaving exactly like the coast guards of neighboring countries behave, but because no existing governments want to confer legitimacy on any somali organization engaged in state-like activity they just call them convenient insults like “pirates”, or brigands or whatnot.

  6. MC2 April 14, 2009 at 3:27 am #

    I’d like to see an uncensored history of all the crew on this “innocent” merchant ship. Could the whole thing have been a setup? I’d imagine that there’d be hundreds of “special forces” types eager to put themselves in harms way with the opportunity to “fly the US flag” and perhaps shoot up some Somali’s. Book and movie rights would be just a bonus….
    Just a thought from a cynical Aussie.

  7. Anon73 April 15, 2009 at 9:48 am #

    I would guess not, simply because all the U.S. had to do is wait for a U.S. citizen to be taken captive to do something. I mean, the pirates were going to hold the entire crew captive including the captain right? In that scenario I don’t see how it would make the matter more or less serious for the pirates for the captain to offer himself in a trade for the crew.

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