PIRATE!
...seriously though, they've been in the news, and they're not like you'd expect. Isn't the stereotypical pirate that nearly every American envisions is the Capt. Jack Sparrow or Blackbeard figure: powerful, cunning, charismatic leaders, and ruthless with a hint of honor? Well, forget the Pirates of the Caribbean, and start thinking "pirates of Nigeria". They're everything you'd expect from a pirate, except there's a harsh reality in the business. There are no swords. There is no honor code. There is no charm. There is only the money, the guns, and everything else that's in the way of getting it. It's a very bloody mess.
In Recent News...
Nigerian pirates have assaulted an American oil tanker, taking hostage both captain and chief engineer -- both American. No doubt they'll get what they came for, with plenty of booty and more. Regardless of a rescue op or not, there will probably be blood spilt, and those nightmarish devils will recede back into the darkness of the mist-covered ocean...
Personal Input
I am a romanticist. That's the bottom line. To see such a gruesome reality in one of my most treasured professions (if you can call it that), is just so...terribly sad for me. The pirate is everything I, everything WE cannot be -- truly free. He works outside of the system. He takes what he wants, when he wants to, and how he wants to do it. No God (i.e. no enforced moral code), no glory, no king -- only women, wine, and pleasurable wealth. And even though he always plays by his own rules, he never lets his own liberty burden others. If he pillages a village, only hostiles are captured/killed. If he boards a ship, no gun is fired unless fired upon first. The legendary figure I have in my head is a living paradox, called the Gentleman Pirate -- and he's a figure that probably never existed, except in the form of the privateer.
THE KING MADE THE PIRATE WHAT HE IS.
The privateer was quite an opportunist. When the king needed men to work outside the bureaucracy of his regular army, the privateer was ready for the gold. The English monarchy needed men, unmarked personnel, devoid of any national or political affiliation, to attack Spanish ships without the Spanish being able to trace it back to the English. As I know it, any loot they found was theirs to keep, just as long as they attacked the Spanish. Think of them a private contractors, PMCs, or whatever... working outside of the law, for God, Gold, and Glory.
Then, economic decision to hire on "naval thugs" was thought as morally wrong by the king's subjects and so it was outlawed. The approval was gone, but not the privateers. Haven been abandoned by their county and king, they became pirates, ones willing to plunder anything for anything. Legends were made, and the rest is history...
These pirates,
the ones we see in the news, are related to the historical ones, in that they are naval gangs. Either they are contracted to do the plunder, or the profit is in the plunder itself. Regardless, it's a sick sick reality.
On a side note, I will be dressing as Jack Sparrow for Halloween... heheh
The stranger thing is that piracy was ever romanticized in the first place, as it basically consisted in robbing and attacking vulnerable transport ships. However, on second thought, maybe it is not that strange. There is always a tendency to romanticize certain criminals as morally justified even if they are not legally justified. We want to imagine that people step outside the law because of necessity. In a way, though, this is what is happening here. The pirates try not to kill people if possible. That's not to say that they aren't ruthless, but ransoming is actually a less violent technique in many ways than the tactics of old.
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