AlterNet: Rapacious Corporate Players Are the Real Pirates of the High Seas

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Rapacious Corporate Players Are the Real Pirates of the High Seas

By Leon Fink, AlterNet. Posted April 16, 2009.

Though they may be the most violent actors at sea, the Somali pirates' mercenary motives place them in the mainstream of today's shipping world.



The Somali pirates literally blown away by the USS Bainbridge were unlucky thieves. In capturing a U.S.-flagged container ship, the Maersk Alabama, and its captain, Richard Phillips, they chose the wrong target.

One sequestered U.S. captain drew more attention than the hundreds of other pirate captives, either ransomed or still in Somali custody.

The difference between the Maersk Alabama and the Somalis' other targets, however, was not just that they had picked on the most powerful nation in the world, but that they were suddenly confronting a "nation" at all.

Unlike the 18th century Barbary pirates to whom they have been compared on the superficial grounds that they are both poor Muslims feeding off nearby oceanic traffic, today's pirates are stateless actors generally operating in a medium (the ocean) of weak or even fictive states. Moreover, though they may be the most violent actors at sea, the pirates' mercenary motives and ethics place them in the mainstream of today's shipping world.

In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith famously anticipated a world in which a relatively unfettered marketplace would maximize production, trade and wealth for all those who could participate in its self-governing mechanism. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/136901/rapacious_corporate_players_are_the_real_pirates_of_the_high_seas/