Hog Wild

MAN, I WAS REALLY HOPING this whole swine flu thing would pass and I wouldn't have to pay a lot of attention to it. I tend to avoid stories about national or natural disasters like this, such as the West Nile Virus scare a few years back or, more recently, the dreaded Miley Cyrus Virus. But here in NYC we're getting bombarded regularly with increasingly dire updates, at last count 51 confirmed cases of the virus and 5 school closings, including a few here in Queens. With a possible vaccine at least 4 months away, I have a bad feeling that it could spiral out of control and reach dangerous, pandemic levels, like coverage of the Jonas Brothers or the revival of the musical Hair.

The latest drastic responses to the Flu are almost Biblical in proportion, which is rarely a good thing for Man and/or other living things. In Egypt, the panic led to the slaughter of all 300,000 of its pigs, despite zero cases of swine flu in the country and no evidence that pigs even spread the disease. I too wondered what the hell a Muslim nation is doing with all those pigs anyway; the pork is consumed by the 10% or so of the country that is still Christian and who presumably enjoy a good ham & egg sandwich now and then. For the rest of Egypt, they'll miss the bacon about as much as we'd have trouble giving up hummus. (Talk about plagues visited upon the land: Just read Egypt is already in the midst of an unrelated bird flu outbreak which is responsible for the recent deaths of 26 people!)

The nation of Lebanon took a less severe preventative step but was proactive in its own way: wisely prohibiting the traditional male greeting of 3 kisses on the cheek, like something out of Gay Paree or gay...anywhere. But anything that even for a short while restricts men from kissing each other in public can't be all bad. Now all we need here in NYC is a nice fungal outbreak that keeps men from wearing flip-flops in public.

Update (4/30/09@3:00pm)
The World Health Organization just announced it will stop using the term "swine flu" to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs and will instead begin referring to the disease by its catchy scientific name H1N1 influenza Z. -- a policy change which came a day too late to help 300,000 pigs in Egypt from meeting an unnecessarily premature end.

The Old Switcheroo

Talk about a shot heard round the Beltway! Mr. Single Bullet Theory himself, Senator Arlen Specter, has just announced he's switching sides, leaving the sinking ship that is the current Republican party and joining the majority Democrats as of today. The stunning move gives the Democrats the potential for a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate.

Specter, like most Americans, believed the Republicans in recent years have moved too far to the right in their philosophy, becoming more entrenched in their extremism at every turn:

“Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats,” Mr. Specter said in a statement released in the early afternoon. “I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.” ("Specter To Switch Parties/New York Times By Carl Hulse)

President Obama -- on the very eve of his 100th day in office -- called Specter as soon as he heard the news and told the 79-year-old Pennsylvania Senator he was "thrilled" to have him, and you get the feeling even "thrilled" might be an understatement. C-SPAN just got a whole lot more interesting Senate now with Arlen Specter a Dem and Minnesota Senator Al Franken set to begin his 6-year term.













Arlen Specter explains surprise party defection to former Republican colleague.

Bygone Bylines

JUST SCANNED some old articles of mine at the local Internet cafe.

Two pieces from the Sunday Daily News Arts & Leisure section, two from the Queens Tribune. I think I got $75.00 from the News for each one, and had another one published a few years later; the Tribune items date back to my internship there while attending Hunter College.

We had a real good group of reporters at the Trib back in '86, including Marty Lipp, John Rofe and Tom Zambito. They treated me great, assigning me stories ranging from local community and political coverage to the pop culture stuff they knew I always wanted to do.

The New York Daily News used to have a feature called Counterpunch: Talking Back to the Critics, which was essentially a forum for freelancers. Counterpunch is long gone, and I doubt the News even utilizes freelancers anymore as newspapers continue going the way of pinball games, 8-track players, and private phone booths.



























































(Robert Gordon photo by John Starace)







See also:
News To You
In The News

Blogs Of Contention

JUST GOT BACK FROM CENTRAL PARK, where I took in the sights and enjoyed the near-90 degree weather. My brother and I even caught some of the Greek Independence Day parade down 5th Avenue, including the seemingly omnipresent Chuck Schumer, an old-fashioned pol who never passes up a chance for face time. Every few steps a smiling Schumer, who frankly from my close-up vantage point looked like he could use the exercise, would wave to the crowd on either side of the Avenue, then raise a megaphone to his lips to say something in Greek which I couldn't decipher -- Greek being as Greek to me as it probably is to you despite my Hellenic ancestry. All I know are the curse words.

Now on to the matter at hand. Just stumbled on the Rene's Apple blog, which I used to read but in all honesty kind of forgot about for a few years. Now, it's kind of like the Bizarro World version of Warden's World, in that we are really polar opposites politically with very little common ground to stand on except for an intersecting of musical tastes. Our websites started at right about the same time, and John, in fact, left the first-ever comment on my first-ever blog post way. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, just hopelessly, stubbornly misinformed like the rest of his misbegotten brethren. One thing's for certain: Given that we disagree on almost everything, one of us is gonna be very right and the other very wrong about an awful lot of important issues.

But even though I knew it was unlikely his politics had changed since then, I was still surprised to see how entrenched he was in his anti-Obama stance. To wit, although his commentary would hardly pass as such:

"... (Obama) is... just another left-winger who hates America."

"Obama continues his Permanent Campaign of Misdirection."

"...it's already obvious that ripping Bush is more fruitful politically than supporting the callow Obama's feeble attempts at diplomacy, including his recent apology tour."

That's the gist of 3 of his more recent posts, and the overall tenor of Rene's Apple in general. In one post he puts great stock in a poll that shows Mike Huckabee coming within 7 points of Obama in the 2012 election. Love how Republicans ignore all facts except those that suit them, such as the one that showed the president with substantial approval ratings even after the right-wing smear campaign. Even the scripted Tea Parties failed to convince most of the country that Obama was a dangerous left-wing ideologue hell-bent on taking away everyone's gun and building reeducation camps for Americans who voted against him.

So while my blood was still boiling, I attached the following comment to a recent Rene's Apple post, and I wanted to reproduce it here in case it gets removed -- not that it was particularly personal, especially relative to the current blogosphere standards of venom. But hell, I wrote it and I meant it, man, so why not post it here for posterity's sake if not for the general betterment of Mankind?

"Well, it's been a long time. Good to see you're still at it. But enough small talk; now it's on to my take on some of your recent political commentary.

Given your distaste toward the Democratic economic platform, one that seeks to address the gross inequities where the standard of living for the middle class as you know has plummeted while the very upper classes have consolidated unprecedented wealth, I'm assuming you're a very wealthy man who also has benefited greatly from the 6 yrs. of Bush tax cuts. Good for you. Otherwise I'm at a quandary as to your denial of what brought us to the current malaise financially.

In your mind Bush deserves no blame for the state of the economy. The deregulation of financial markets that allowed a Bernie Madoff to flourish, that oversaw something akin to the Enron-ization of a nation? How can this discrepancy exist for the right? In other words, how do you keep a straight face when you right these kool-aid-flavored right wing talking points?

By all means, we should hold the election over again. Because now that Americans have been seeing the Republican leadership in action, not to mention the groundswell of new ideas coming from your side, I would envision a Republican landslide this time around.

I also don't see how using diplomacy and offering goodwill on an international stage after years of Cheney & Co. bullying the rest of the world qualifies as apologizing. The problem with conservatives is this visceral hatred of any criticism of America, as if the nation was an altar boy who must be patted on the head at every turn instead of learning from past mistakes.

In Latin America, don't you see that a Chavez and a Castro way before him are able to thrive politically because of years of U.S. interference in their affairs, branding anyone a socialist who dared steer his way toward a national directed economy. History is replete with such examples (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, need I go on) throughout the last century, although I don't expect you to either know about how that history is perceived in other countries or to acknowledge the effect it has had on relations between America and other nations.

Do you in your naivete still believe that our intentions in this part of the world were always altruistic, or was it a case of America exploiting the politician situations in these countries for their raw materials and cheap labor markets? Maybe the answer is somewhere in between, although I know Republicans don't do nuance a whole lot.

Using the Bush-approved torture methods gives us a similar black eye. It also goes against everything we stood for. And even in the darkest days of WWII, against an Axis fighting machine multitudes greater in threat, America still adhered to the Geneva Convention, because that is what civilized nations do. It's what separates us from the barbarians we purport to be fighting against.

And guess what, despite what agitprop like 24 may tell a dumbed-down viewing public, torture has not only been proven ineffective, but studies have shown it to be counterproductive -- wasting precious resources on false leads.

Anyway, assuming you made it this far, as you can tell we are still polar opposites politically. The country itself is fractured as well, how can it not be when one side, the side that got pummeled in the last two elections, is openly rooting for the president to fail at every turn, and make no secret of it. It's even very good business at fair and balanced Fox.

So cast your lot with the gang that gave us Abu Ghraib, no weapons of mass destruction, shock and awe, Enron, no-bid contracts, the disgraceful response to Hurricane Katrina, waterboarding and other savagery straight out of the Red Chinese torture manual, Attorney General Gonzalez, etc. When another gun nut uses an automatic weapon to blow up a school, remember how Bush let the ban on such weapons lapse. How he started two wars that cost us much more in lives and resources than we can afford, instead of going directly after terrorist cells in this country.

Are the democrats perfect? Of course not. Never suggested they were, and there's a lot I don't like about Obama, especially some of his cabinet choices. But you know, he's on the progressive side of history, while you and your friends are always comfortably numb fighting against the wave even as it crashes down over your heads.

Still like some of your musical taste. I just downloaded I forget from which MP3 blog an entire Stevie Wonder concert from England back in his mid-70s prime. Just amazing song after amazing song like You Haven't Done Nothing and Living in the City."

Sum Kwik Hitz

IT'S EARLY YET, but Yanks off to pretty good start at 9-6 after yesterday's almost 5-hour extra-innings 9-7 win at home over Oakland. Melky Cabrera went deep from both sides of the plate, the last one a game winner from the left side in the bottom of the 14th.

N.Y. Manager Joe Girardi has to at least be thinking real long and hard about platooning Cabrera (4 HRs, 7 RBI in just 23 at-bats) in centerfield with slap-hitting Brett Gardner batting a powerless .240 with only 3 RBI in 50 ABs.

You can only carry so many automatic outs in a lineup. Alex Rodriguez's replacement at 3B Cody Ransom is struggling at the plate big-time so far, "hitting" an anemic .170 with 0 HRs. Obviously whatever's responsible for the record pace of long balls leaving the new Stadium -- with speculation ranging from wind tunnels and seating angles to early-season weather patterns -- it isn't rescuing Ransom any when he's in the batter's box. Five more were hit yesterday: the 2 by Cabrera, 1 each by Hidecki Matsui and Derek Jeter (playing in his 2,000th game as a Yankee), and 1 by Oakland's Kurt Suzuki.

John Sterling, too-long-time radio voice of Yanks, has lowered his own lame standards with new home run call for 1B Mark Teixeira. It starts with the usual unspontaneous "It is high, it is far, it is gone" before the cringe-worthy "Mark sends a Tex message!" Weak.

Mets at 6-8 are playing even worse than their record, and with their legions of neurotic fans, you just know that the psychiatric business will be thriving now despite the recession.

WFAN and ESPN-Radio phone lines are burning up already, with talk show hosts fielding complaints about everything from Dan Murphy's defensive struggles in left field and the shaky starting pitching after Johan Santana to the lack of clutch hitting and the stunning lack of Met history on display at the new Mets home, Jackie Robinson Stadium, uh, Citi Field.
What were the odds? The Pittsburgh Pirates are having a much better year than the Somali Pirates. After a modern sports record 15 straight losing seasons, the revamped Bucs have started off 9-6, with an astounding 4 pitched shutouts on the young '09 season. They just completed an impressive dismantling of the surprising 11-4 Marlins, outscoring Florida 18-6 over the 3-game sweep in Pittsburgh.

Nobody can explain why the homers are flying out out of new Yankee Stadium, with 26 hit over the first 6 games of the homestand (only 160 were hit over 8o games last year at the old Stadium). Moreover, another design flaw has been on display at the new park: two HRs already have been disputed because it's so easy for fans to reach down over the wall and interfere with outfielders. One umpire conference lasted over 7 minutes before upholding the HR ruling. It's just bush league.

Another common sight at the new Yankee Stadium is row upon row of empty box seats, the ones priced at thousands of dollars per game. Wherever fans are sitting, they can expect to be routinely gouged by the obscene food and beverage prices, to the tune of up to 15 bucks a beer if you're foolish enough to enter the Stadium's Hard Rock Cafe.

Also an inordinate number of grand slams and cycles hit this year already. Over the first 15 games, there's been something like 15 Slams and 3 cycles, which for the uninitiated is a player hitting for a single, double, triple and HR in the same game. Cycles are usually much more rare, with 3 about an average full season's worth, if I had to guess. Thank god I don't...














He'd rather be in Pittsburgh
"The pirate suspect arrested in the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama was all smiles on arriving in New York City late Monday, escorted by a phalanx of law enforcement officers."

Shoot 'Em Ups

A NEW WESTERN AND AN OLD ONE, separated by a Great Plain of 37 years -- the recent Appaloosa directed by Ed Harris, and 1971's The Hunting Party with Gene Hackman and a surprisingly winsome Candace Bergen. Took both DVDs out of the local library last week, watched them, and as you probably guessed I'm here to tell you all about it.

What's eerie is how similar these flicks turned out to be -- like two long-lost cinematic cousins that came together in my DVD player. Both feature a ruthless gang of outlaws that kidnaps a woman and then of course the "good guys" trying to get 'er back. I put good in quotes in that last sentence because the Gene Hackman character (Brandt Ruger) in Hunting Party is such an unsympathetic sumbitch that you end up rooting for the kidnappers. Mean Gene plays his usual tortured soul here to perfection, even reveling in some downright kinky scenes where he coldly dominates poor Candace and then cruelly torments a terrified Asian hooker.

Now, I'm a pretty hard marker when it comes to Westerns both old and new, mainly because I've seen enough of them to know how memorable and effective they can be when done right. Sadly, in my opinion neither one of these merits a repeat screening (although my friends Bob and Holly had seen Appaloosa already and they didn't mind watching it again at my house last week).

Usually good Westerns -- especially of the more spicy spaghetti variety -- are less about the top of the poster stars than an interesting supporting cast of character actors: think Good, the Bad & the Ugly, think any Western Clint Eastwood made from '64 to '76. Hunting Party wins out in this measure over Appaloosa, boasting fine actors that you definitely would know from other movies (L.Q. Jones, G.D. Spradlin) and obscure actors with rugged faces seemingly made to play rustlers, outlaws and thieves. The older Western also just does a better job of avoiding frontier cliches, but then again there were probably fewer of them around back in '71. I think both movies are most effective when staying close to an almost Sergio Leone-like cynicism regarding the human race, but each fails to deliver anything as gratifying or offbeat as that legendary director's work.
In Appaloosa, new arrival Renee Zellweger, in full scrunch-face mode, first falls for lawman Ed Harris over his sidekick Viggo Mortenson, then goes for young Viggo, and finally even old Jeremy Irons gets in on the action when he later abducts her and let's just say tucks her in a few nights.

In Hunting Party, Hackman's wife, the future Murphy Brown, is seized by the Oliver Reed character, who -- get this -- kidnaps Candace Bergen because he thinks she's a schoolteacher and the guy is dead set on learning how to read! I know, I know -- the whole literacy thing is pretty far-fetched, and the movie gets weighed down by more than one tediously preachy scene where good old Murphy Brown teaches the alphabet to Oliver Reed. Yeesh, as they used to say in the Old West!

Appaloosa, despite the clueless blurb from Peter Travers right on the DVD box that the movie is a real nail biter, is lame in more than a few ways. It's a sort of buddy film with both leading men attracted to the same dame. Unfortunately, in between taking turns shooting bad guys they spend far too much time sitting around the saloon trading equally painful Western banalities.

This film would have been wise to have kidnapped a few of the writers from HBO's brilliant Deadwood and then forced them to write some scenes featuring that show's trademark lively frontier banter. If nothing else it would demonstrate even in an action genre like the Western, talkiness is not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, however, much of the the "Appaloosian" dialogue is downright spotty, stilted and just plain boring for long stretches, nowhere more than in the unconvincing early scene where Harris, Morgensen and Zellweger meet in a hotel lobby. No kidding when I say you've heard more scintillating conversation at the local coffee shop from random strangers.
Now, as you might expect from a movie called The Hunting Party, there's plenty of cold-blooded shootin', and the weapons here don't disappoint; indeed, the guns play an increasingly key role in the proceedings. See, Hackman plays a rich railroad baron, and he's among the very few in the whole country to get his hands on a new model of high-powered-scope rifle that's able to shoot close to 800 yards -- or about twice as far as any gun before it -- with deadly accuracy. In fact, the rifle Hackman used throughout the movie won a Best Supporting Firearm award at the '72 Oscars, and was a big attraction at gun shows well into the 1990s.

Anyway, Hackman and his hunting buddies are on their way to a weekend hunt when news of his wife's kidnapping reaches them, so they soon set their sights on human prey. The rest of the film features Hackman & Co. methodically hunting down Reed's gang of dirty misfit scoundrels one by one, picking off like 26 of them along the way in spectacularly gory, Sam Peckinpah-like slow-motion cinesplatter. In the grand finale, after tracking his wife and captor through the desert, he slaughters the both of them before collapsing as the credits roll.

Ed Harris doesn't let his jealousy drive him that far in Appaloosa, taking Zellweger back despite suspicions of infidelity, but by movie's end I wouldn't have minded so much if someone fired a few rounds at old scrunchyface. Not saying blow her head off, just a glancing blast that shuts up all that dang overacting. Candace wins out in a big way over Renee as the better, more sympathetic damsel -- not sure what these movies are trying to say about the plight of women in the Old West, but as pawns designed to move a Western along and get to all the shootin' and killin' and bleedin', well, there are worse plot devices than a damsel in distress on the open plains.

Actually, there's a bit of a women's lib subtext underneath all the manly mayhem, in that Bergen's character falls for Reed's character, who, paradoxically, treats her better in captivity than her husband ever did in matrimony.
Out of curiosity, I just cracked open my trusty 2002 Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, where Hunting Party is rated a BOMB: "Fine cast wasted in repellently violent Western that adds nothing new to tired plot, unless you count the bordello-equipped train." Damn, forget about that last bit, Leonard. That was cool: Hackman thoughtfully providing hookers for all his buddies. Maybe I will watch it again...

Out & About

STRANGE ARTICLE THE OTHER DAY in amNew York, one of the free daily papers here. You might even call it a little queer. Turns out a number of major tourist destinations are bending over backwards to appeal to "the gay dollar." I can hear dear old Mom now: Take that money out of your mouth, you don't know where it's been.

Anyway, the piece mentioned New York among some 10 cities courting gay travelers, targeting ad campaigns in a concerted effort to attract gay and lesbian tourists and their coveted disposable incomes:

Many in the industry say gays -- who often live in two-income households without children -- are less likely to cut back on travel. "The gay dollar has been shown to be more resilient (in a recession)," said Bob Witeck, a marketing consultant who works with the Gay and Lesbian Travel Association.

Warden's World was able to get hold of the list of proposed slogans for some of the destinations that are marketing themselves specifically to gay tourists.

Philadelphia, already known as the City of Brotherly Love, is thinking of going with "Yo, 'Mos!" in honor of Philly native Sly Stallone and the world-famous Rocky movies.

The Canadian city of Toronto is favoring a straightforward approach -- no pun intended -- in its campaign, hoping that "Be Gay Here, Eh!" catches on with the homosexual class the world over.

The tourism boards of England, Wales and Scotland have already launched a joint website specifically for gay visitors. Wales is billing itself as "Sodom by the Sea," England is going with the reliable "Bring Out Your Gay," while Scotland, known for its open-mindedness through the ages, has chosen "Trannyspotting" in honor of Trainspotting, the Oscar-nominated 1996 film set in Edinburgh and starring Ewan McGregor.

New York City is not taking its firmly entrenched position -- bad pun intended -- as the No. 1 fairy- , flit- and pansy-related vacation destination for granted. Its tourism agency is thinking of erecting -- pun pending -- a temporary statue of a drag queen going down on the Statue of Liberty, giving travelers entering New York Harbor a glimpse of what excitement awaits them in the Big Apple. The Big "Gay" Apple, that is!

And finally, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the highest-ranking openly gay official in NYC, announced that the Yankees and Mets will host a series of "Out a Gay at the Game" nights, with both home teams planning to wear colorful rainbow caps representing tolerance.

The city of San Francisco was said to be beside itself with rage, at press time threatening to scratch the eyes out of any city that comes near it.

SPEAKING OF ODD, what to make of those contrived so-called Tea Parties, those patently-faux grassroots rebellions sponsored by Fox News and other right-wing media outlets? The crowds gathered with their "Obama = Socialist" signs, parroting the same conservative talking points that are drilled into their soft, receptive craniums with the regularity of a dripping faucet.

All but ignoring the political referendum known as the national presidential election held just 5 months ago, speakers at these scripted rebellions tried to incite the crowd along the typical anti-taxation, anti-spending lines -- with some, like Texas Governor Rick Perry, even mentioning secession -- a bone, no doubt, to all the unreconstructed confederates who are "fightin' mad" over the direction of the country. Imagine if you dare a collection of Joe the Plumber types massing by the hundreds around the country and you get an idea of the level of dumbed-down nuance involved. Throw in appeals to all the hard-core racists who will never get past the idea of a black man in the White House, and you have a tried-and-true recipe for stirring up these simpletons. They don't want to pay taxes, but where do they think the money comes from to build all the bombs we drop all over the world -- the weapons that supposedly prevent another 9/11?

When the Bush crowd and their minions in the mainstream media were whipping up fear-based rhetoric with the endgame of cowed citizens surrendering their constitutional rights to a Patriot Act bill of goods, where was the outrage from this gang? When the billions of dollars poured into rigged government contracts for Republican crony companies like Halliburton and Blackwater, where were the Tea Parties? When Bush/Cheney continually invoked the sacred memory of 9/11 in election campaigns -- in the process fueling wars in two countries and a global war on terror -- where were the mass protests?
These idiots give tea drinking a bad name.

I mean, I'm all for protesting against the system. But I prefer doing my marching with well-informed fellow citizens who like me are outraged that over the last 25 years, the richest 1% of American households increased their net worth by over 75%. Where during the same period, the bottom 40% lost close to 60% of their net worth. Where more than 1 in 3 households now has less than $10,000 in net worth. And where over 5 million Americans have fallen below the poverty line since 2000, the year a bitterly partisan Bush-Cheney administration began forcing through Congress its now widely discredited supply-side economic agenda.

The reliably nutzoid New York Post covered the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) parties as if the swelling crowds paralyzed major thoroughfares of cities and jammed traffic across this once-great nation of ours. The page 7 headline declared Protests sweep nation & DC, and claimed "5,000 people jammed the streets around New York's City Hall, where conservative icon Newt Gingrich spoke." No mention in the article that these "spontaneous" protests were promoted hundreds of times this week on Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News stations, a sure barometer of non-partisanship.

There are three photos accompanying the Post article, and in the middle one my eagle eye spots a spelling error: some joker holding a sign reading: "Can we banrupt the country? Yes We Can!" Perhaps misspelling bankrupt is not quite as memorably clueless as the jackass holding the Get A BRAIN! Morans GO USA signs at a pro-Iraq war rally a few years back, but I feel a strong need to mock nonetheless. Next time, I'd like to stand near the same guy with a sign reading: "Can you sheeple spell? No, You Can't!" Just a little proofreading humor to lighten things up.

But in light of the just-released Homeland Security Department report on the growing right-wing domestic terror threat, maybe the organizers of the latest tea party know what they're doing. It's only a matter of time, and opportunity, before some laid-off gun nut gets whipped into a frenzy by someone like Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity and takes a shot at a politician.

WITH SOMALI PIRATES ramping up the harsh anti-American rhetoric in the wake of the successful rescue operation last weekend, it's also just a matter of time before the next hostage situation, or worse. On Wednesday, a U.S. cargo ship was shot at by pirates using grenade launchers, but the crew foiled the attack at the last minute.

And if that act didn't signal the pirates' intention to inflict harm on Americans, one pirate from the Somali port of Harardhere made it even clearer: "We will seek out the Americans, and if we capture them, we will slaughter them. Last night, an American-flagged ship escaped us by a whisker."

That's the downside of not paying the pirates' ransom and then shooting 3 of them dead while negotiating with a 4th: they're gonna start taking that kind of stuff personally. And that's what we've got on our hands here, and so it's all hands on deck, shiver me timbers and at last report some 15 men on a dead man's chest, and we all know how painful that can be.

But seriously folks, did you see some of the juvenile coverage on the pirate drama in the New York Post last week? Something about pirates really brings out the bad taste in the Post newsroom. One beaut of a cover had a photo of Johnny Depp in full Pirates of the Caribbean regalia channeling The Simpsons -- the giant headline blaring YO HO D'OH! US heroes foil pirates. Talk about your pop culture reference overload. Any wonder why the paper is considered a laughing stock?

Turning to more reliable news about the ongoing pirate menace, Somali's Prime Minister is pledging his government's help in curbing pirate activity. "We have information on who is behind this, who is involved," Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said from Kenya. "There is a lot of money flowing in ... we are following very closely how money is distributed here."

But in Somalia, the pirates have become so powerful that they not only seriously damage the already weakened state of the government, but threaten its very existence. That makes the PM's ambitious plan to "prevent (the pirates) from going into the waters" and to "establish at least ten or more observation posts on the coastline" grandiose at best and possibly foolhardy under a worst-case scenario.

As the Associated Press tactfully reports,

Still, it was not clear how this plan could cover the 1,900-mile Somali coastline, since his government controls only a few square blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, with the aid of African peacekeepers. Donors have also been reluctant to fund a government with little accountability but the recent spike in piracy attacks may change that.

The inevitable American casualty, which we came close to seeing a few days ago, would undoubtedly drive a wave of international retaliation against pirate strongholds in Africa, just like it sometimes takes a fair-haired murder victim to personally feed a city's tabloid frenzy when waves of darker-hued corpses washing up on the shore are chalked up as mere crime statistics.

The New Pirate Menace

THE FIVE-DAY HOSTAGE STANDOFF off the coast of Somali ended in dramatic fashion yesterday when Navy snipers aboard the USS Bainbridge shot and killed three pirates holding American ship captain Richard Phillips on a nearby lifeboat. But the violent resolution of the crisis -- coming on the heels of the French decision Friday to use deadly force on a hijacked yacht which freed 4 of the 5 people held but ended in the deaths of one hostage and two Somali pirates -- is likely to raise the stakes when the next act of piracy occurs, with one Somali pirate promising to take revenge on the next American or French nationals they encounter:

"The French and the Americans will regret starting this killing. We do not kill, but take only ransom. We shall do something to anyone we see as French or American from now."

With five American warships already in the area, a more active military role in curbing the pirate menace is inevitable. Greatly complicating matters are the 228 hostages held aboard 13 ships in possession of the Somali pirates. The latest addition includes 16 people seized on board an Italian tugboat just after the attack on the Maersk Alabama last week. This latest threat of retaliation becomes at the very least a negotiating tool, and more likely to be carried out as the pirates feel threatened onshore in known Somali pirate dens like Eyl and Gaan. One of the pirates holding a Greek ship in the latter port has already bluntly stated, "We will retaliate for the killings of our men." Based on the actions of ruthless pirates down the ages, there's little reason to doubt him at his word.

Americans have probably heard more about real pirates this last week than in the past century combined, having long condemned to the past larger-than-life characters like Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and "Calico" Jack. Not counting the lucrative Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, of course, which in itself is no small indication of the enduring fascination of pirates in the popular imagination, even as we struggle to avoid attaching old, familiar pirate tropes to the current band of misfits menacing humanity.

No matter which era of piracy you want to talk about, it all comes down to money. The danger pirates face as they attach their grappling hooks to the deck of a targeted ship and storm onboard, guns blazing and knives drawn, is the same in any age, which explains why only the most desperate sign up for the pirate package. And as long as ships sail on the sea, there will be people in other ships trying to seize them.

We all know the famous opening stanza to the official Battle Hymn about of the U.S. Marines:

From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land, and sea...

Well, you may not know that Tripoli refers to a famous battle in the Barbary Wars (1801-1804). It just so happens that, among many other "underlying causes" of the war, as we used to call them in grade school, President Thomas Jefferson's refusal to pay the ransom of a ship taken by pirates caused Tripoli along with Tunis and Algiers, the Barbary states, to declare war on the U.S. The nascent U.S. Navy responded in force, bombarding the Muslim states sponsoring terror on the high seas. The Barbary pirates "hijacked European ships with impunity and ransomed back the crews" -- a practice so widespread that in 1784 the U.S. Congress allocated money in the budget for "tributes" to meet the demand of the corsairs operating out of North Africa. While Jefferson was ambassador to France in the 1780s, he once accused an envoy from Tripoli of supporting acts of piracy, later recalling the response:

"It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every muslim who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once."

Demonstrating once again that History is nothing if not heavily ironic, the warship Navy SEALS shot from yesterday to take out the Somali pirates is named after William Bainbridge, a major player in the last major U.S. operation against organized pirates based in Africa over 200 years ago. And although Bainbridge later went on to become a Commodore for his heroics in the War of 1812, in the First Barbary Wars his role was somewhat less distinguished but notable nonetheless. According to fairly reliable sources,

In 1800, Bainbridge was sent to carry the tribute which the United States still paid to the dey of Algiers to secure exemption from capture for its merchant ships in the Mediterranean. Upon arrival in the 24-gun USS George Washington, he made the tactical mistake of anchoring in the harbor of Algiers--directly under the guns of the fort. The dey demanded that he ferry the Algerian ambassador and retinue to Constantinople or be blown to bits on the spot. With great disgust, Bainbridge raised the Algerian flag on his masthead and submitted to the embarrassment of serving as the dey's messenger service. ^[1]

When the United States found that bribing the pirate Barbary states did not work, and decided to use force, he served against Algiers and Tunis. In command of the USS Philadelphia, when she ran aground on the Tunisian coast on 29 December 1803, he was imprisoned until 3 June 1806. On his release, he returned for a time to the merchant service in order to make good the loss of profit caused by his captivity.

Hopefully, the next band of Somalian corsairs will take note of the name of the American ship that came to the rescue of Captain Phillips, read up on the relevant American military history, and change their present course with all due haste. More likely, pirates see the deaths of their comrades in arms as the price of doing business, just as pirates down through the ages realized what they were getting into. One local maritime expert predicted the deadly rescue missions by French and American forces would result in a more cutthroat brand of pirate in the future:

Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of Mombasa-based East African Seafarers Assistance Program, said the rescue would change the stakes in future pirate attacks. "This is a big wake-up to the pirates. It raises the stakes. Now they may be more violent, like the pirates of old," he said.

Back to last night's rescue. I'm sure more of the details will surface surrounding the use of deadly force against the 3 pirates in the lifeboat while a 4th was negotiating onboard the Bainbridge. All's fair in love and war, and piracy is nothing if not a declaration of war against whatever country's flag the hijacked ship is flying. Interestingly, most reports have Captain Phillips tied up on the deck of the 24-boot lifeboat, with his captives training their AK-47s on him, when the decision to fire was given. Last night, for instance, in How Captain Phillips was rescued, the BBC reports that "One pirate was seen through a window pointing an AK-47 at the back of Capt Phillips, who was tied up." But on the same website, another story reported that the snipers opened fire after Phillips jumped into the water in a second escape attempt and the Somalis opened fire on him. Apparently the latter scenario has been discounted, as the BBC story I bookmarked last night has Phillips tied up and still on the boat when the shooting occurred. Call me naive, but I'm pretty certain if the good captain had his arms tied, he's not inclined to jump into the ocean and make a swim for it.

Short of arming merchant ships, there will be more pirate attacks as long as the ransoms are paid. Two factors to keep in mind. With insurance rates already escalating, the pressure to keep crews at a minimum to keep the profit margin as high as possible works in the pirates' favor, as does the sheer size of the ocean when it comes to patrolling the area. Moreover, the last thing ship owners want to see is a firefight on their vessel, especially container ships carrying oil or other combustible cargo.

Will swift, harsh punishment against the few pirates in custody act as an effective deterrent to their increasingly brazen brethren? Not as long as the dire conditions remain intact that are driving these hopeless desperadoes in the first place. Not only is the whole pirate operation financed and sponsored by warlords and organized criminal elements onshore, but the lure of a high reward will offset the risk for the millions with little to lose.

Unemployed Somali fishermen make up a large component of the Somali pirate class. In fact, they consider themselves marines or a form of coastal defense against illegal commercial fishing. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Somali government, European conglomerates, mainly Italian and Swiss companies, illegally dumped hazardous waste in the waters off Somali, destroying much of the country's traditional fishing ground:

Somalia's long, remote shoreline was used as a dump site for the disposal of toxic waste. The huge waves which battered northern Somalia after the tsunami are believed to have stirred up tonnes of nuclear and toxic waste that was illegally dumped in the country by several European firms ... European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1000 a tonne.

What the toxic waste didn't damage, foreign commercial fishing interests took away, further fracturing the blighted Somalia's economic base. The result is a country where over 70% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Is there any wonder people might turn to crime given such squalor?

Now that Americans have been singled out for reprisal by the Somali pirates, who knows whether elements of Al-Qaeda or other terrorist cells will join forces for acts of terror against U.S. ships. The increased military presence in the area seems like an inviting target, and an opportunity unlikely to be resisted indefinitely.

Perhaps the most successful pirate in history, Bartholomew Roberts, once neatly summed up what attracted him to piracy as "better being a commander than a common man." Of course, not every pirate captures 470 vessels, as Black Bart is credited with. Yet the Welsh pirate is known today as much for his cruelty when angered as for the immense wealth he accumulated plundering shipping in the Caribbean, off the American coast, and off West Africa. The legacy of Roberts is further enshrined by the code of conduct he drew up to enforce an Honor Among Thieves that survives to this day, including mainstays like equal votes, proper shares, no gambling on ship, and provisions for being wounded in battle. It's fair to say Roberts ran a tight ship, if Article 2 of his code is any indication:

Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes, because over and above their proper share, they are allowed a shift of clothes. But if they defraud the company to the value of even one dollar in plate, jewels or money, they shall be marooned. If any man rob another he shall have his nose and ears slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.

But aside from the harsh code of justice, the sheer number of ships plundered, the vast treasure he is said to have accumulated during a prolific 30-month period, and even his striking appearance, Roberts is remembered for a string of attacks he conducted against Barbados and Martinique in the 1720s. So infuriated was the bloodthirsty pirate with what he saw as unwarranted interference in his operation that he designed a flag specifically intended to terrify the inhabitants of those island nations. According to Angus Konstam's The History of Pirates:

One showed a pirate figure, presumably representing Roberts, standing on two skulls. Under one skull were the letters ABH, meaning 'A Barbadian's Head,' and the second was labeled AMH--'A Martinique's Head.' The threat was clear, and sailors from these two islands could expect no mercy if they offered any resistance.

Now the very real threat of piracy competes with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic recession-slash-depression for President Obama's attention on any given day, as if America had nothing else to occupy its attention and concern. What has to keep U.S. decision-makers up at night is whether intensifying the military effort to stamp out what Secretary of State Clinton is calling the "scourge of piracy" will result in escalating violence against American nationals. With modern-day Somali pirates showing an increasing adaptability that their forebears might envy, there's every reason to believe the threat at face value. As a 30-year-old Somali told the Associated Press yesterday, "From now on, if we capture foreign ships and their respective countries try to attack us, we will kill the hostages. (U.S. forces have) become our No. 1 enemy."

"A Bad Meeting"

SOME FAST BREAKING NEWS, or what's known in the news business as a big development, in that pirate story. For the last two days, as you had to have heard by now, four Somali pirates have kept Richard Phillips, the American captain of a merchant vessel, hostage in an enclosed lifeboat. Now it turns out Phillips made an unsuccessful escape attempt sometime last night, jumping into the water. It's not clear from The New York Times story whether Phillips' action was coordinated with the American warship stationed nearby.

The Somali kidnappers are said to be desperate to make it back onshore with their captive, while at the same time a pirate known as Badow is saying additional pirates are on their way to the scene of the standoff in the Indian Ocean:

“They had asked us for reinforcements, and we have already sent a good number of well-equipped colleagues, who were holding a German cargo ship,” the pirate, identified only by the name Badow, was quoted by The A.P. as saying.

“We are not intending to harm the captain, so that we hope our colleagues would not be harmed as long as they hold him,” Badow told them. “All we need, first, is a safe route to escape with the captain, and then ransom later,” he added.

Last year alone, Somali pirates collected a cool $80-100 million via ransom, and I'm fairly certain they didn't declare it on their income tax statements when they split up the loot. Let's face it: defiance pays.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the pirates "nothing more than criminals" and, showing off her encyclopedic knowledge of pirate history, reminded everyone that "One of the very first actions that was undertaken by our country, in its very beginning, was to go after pirates along the Barbary Coast” of North Africa. Aside from that history lesson, there's really little her State Department can do at the moment given no state of Somalia to negotiate with. Using language similar to my Scourge of the Seas post the other day, Clinton called on the international community to “come together to end the scourge of piracy.” Good luck with all that. Civilized nations have been saying that for years, going all the way back to the mid-18th century, when when the famous English jurist William Blackstone wrote:

As, therefore, the pirate has renounced all the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind, all mankind must declare war against him: so that every community has a right, by the rule of self-defense, to inflict that punishment on him, which every individual would in a state of nature have been otherwise entitled to do.

Looks like the Somali gang still hasn't gotten that memo, if the quote attributed to one of the four pirates holding Phillips hostage on the lifeboat is any indication: "We are safe and we are not afraid of the Americans. We will defend ourselves if attacked."

If that's backing down, I'd hate to see them when they're being uncooperative. Just heard that these modern-day Blackbeards are demanding a ransom of $2 million. Actually, in the past the ransom has been paid off in crisp U.S. $100 bills, as opposed to Pieces of Eight, the traditional pirate currency of yesteryear. My money no pun intended would be on the pirates. Seemingly outgunned and outmanned, what with the American warships in the area, yet they're still calling all the shots, and they hold the main card in the deck: the American captain of the Maersk Alabama.
Incredibly, just minutes ago came the report that a French attempt to rescue five of its citizens held captive aboard yet another ship seized by Somali pirates has ended in the death of one hostage and the freeing of four others, including a child, with two pirates killed and three others captured. The French vessel, a 41-foot yacht, was hijacked about a week ago. According to the BBC News:

The French operation to free those on board the Tanit - the third time French troops have freed hostages from pirates - began late on Thursday, five days after the yacht was seized, the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said. Negotiations with the pirates which began earlier this week had failed to secure the release of the hostages, the president's spokesman said.

With obvious implications for the resolution of the American hostage crisis, a BBC reporter quotes the French government official as saying that with "the threats becoming more and more specific, the pirates refusing the offers made to them and the [yacht] heading towards the coast, an operation to free the hostages was decided upon."
Even if this one ransom attempt is thwarted, it's doubtful to have any lasting effect on the stunning frequency of hijackings taking place recently in the waters off Somalia. It would take a long-term concerted effort to root out the numerous pirate lairs along the hundreds of miles of African coastline, to say nothing of the deep-rooted conditions that make the area ripe for piracy and terrorism. It's the broken parts of the world that have always produced the best candidates for piracy, and in that regard the year 2009 is no different than 1809 or 1609.

A famous sea shanty composed in 1609, "Ward the Pirate," tells of the notorious English pirate John Ward, who later changed his name to Yusuf Reis, converted to Islam and made a fortune plundering ships sailing in the same part of the world where the Maersk Alabama found herself confronted on Wednesday:

A ship was sailing from the east
And going to the west,
Loaded with silks and satins
And velvets of the best,
But meeting there with Captain Ward,
It proved a bad meeting;
He robbèd them of all their wealth
And bid them tell their king.

According to Wikipedia,

Ward was an enigmatic figure, in some ways like a Robin Hood, but in the 16th and 17th centuries many English pirates operated out of the mouth of the Sebo River and preyed on Mediterranean shipping. Ward was supposed to have spared English ships while attacking "papist" vessels. John Ward and Simon Danseker are credited with introducing Barbary corsairs to the use of square-rigged ships of northern Europe.

I kind of imagine that in Somali these modern-day corsairs are enigmatic figures, and if they get away with the two million in booty, you can bet there's gonna be a folk song or two written about the daring exploits of the fearless pirates who defied the Americans and lived large enough to tell all about it later.