What’s wrong with this story?
Andrea 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 ….”
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!
How many people will read this comment and think, “Well, that just means we need cameras all over Central Park!”
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…”. 🙁
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
Likewise I worry when advocates of marijuana legalisation point out that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than marijuana ….
Nothing stops a band of pirates more effectively than a good hosing.
Well, if the Wicked Witch of the West ever turned to piracy, it would work against her.
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”.
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.
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.
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.