Somali Pirates Stimulate Selves (in the economic sense)

It's been a banner week for the suddenly resurgent Somali piracy biz. Depressed in the early months of '09 by bad weather, low volume and low turnover, the pirate market soared last week on strong returns from no fewer than 5 successful hijackings in the western Indian Ocean.

Somali buccaneers in the past week nabbed a German freighter, a Taiwanese fishing vessel, a British ship, a French yacht and a Yemeni tugboat, and tried for many more. There are now believed to be at least 18 ships and 270 hostages under Somali pirate control, marking an abrupt turnaround in pirate activity from the dismal winter months.

[Update April 14: Another 4 ships and 60 hostages seized today]

The pirates apparently were so buoyed by the surge in their fortunes that they took on a U.S. freighter for the first time (and lost; they took the American captain hostage but that ended yesterday in the deaths of 3 pirates). Then on Saturday they struck at a 26,000-tonne super freighter, though this one escaped after its crew turned high-powered water hoses on the attacking pirates.

A Canadian warship in the Gulf of Aden, the HMCS Winnipeg, even foiled 3 pirate attacks this past week. Despite the setbacks, the pirates are not dissuaded.

While Wall-Street white collars continue to hope and pray for the government to bail them out, Somali pirates know there's no stimulus like self-stimulus. Not waiting around for their chunk of the Obama administration's 357-gajillion-dollar bailout package, the pirates are making their own recovery, and the trickle-down is already being felt.

"We can smell the cash near," one local fisherman from the port town of Eyl told Reuters, in reference to the pirates' swagger and penchant for throwing money around after returning from a successful heist.

Yes, it seems for some folks--and we're talking about the ones who aren't hostages--happy times are here again.

In related news, class warfare is breaking out amongst the pirate hostages. Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme (the top pirate tracker) is dismayed that so many journalists and other do-gooders have flocked to East Africa to inquire about the safety of the lone American captain held hostage, while no fewer than 90 Filipino seamen, for example, have been languishing for weeks or months without so much as a page-17 news bite.

"It's hypocrasy," he said. While Western front pages are reserved for frightened rich white tourist folk like these, the Filipinos only make the local paper.

Do you think that, if it were only Filipinos and Bangladeshis under duress, NYT adjunct Mr. Fix-It Robert Kaplan would write this much hyperbole about how America needs a "third navy" to survive in a post-apocalyptic future world run by a Chinese-Al Qaeda-Somali Pirate triumvirate?

Some analysts are not ruling out an inevitable Marxian hostage revolt on the Somali coast which, while creating a Utopian hostage society in which each hostage is measured according to his or her abilities rather than skin colour, will also in an ironic twist establish a socialist government in previously ungovernable Somalia which will regulate the pirate industry and fill in the chasm between rich and poor with the teardrops and toil of the proletariat whose ceaseless labour will ultimately render the entire pirate trade worthless and save the whole world from the apocalypse that Kaplan predicts.

Well, you know anything is possible.

[Interested in pirates? The Tuque Souq Somali Piracy Watch has you covered, though we cannot afford to pay your ransom.]

Pharaohs were gay, says Sadat widow

Okay, she didn't really say that exactly. But former Egyptian First Lady Jehan al-Sadat has had a few bizarre statements come out of her mouth during her publicity stints while promoting her new book.

First, there was this odd NYT interview, in which Jehan was asked why Islam is so hard on gays (pun apparently not intended). She responded:
"Homosexuality is against Islam. Here in Egypt, there are not many homosexuals, not like the United States. There are some. We’ve had them since the Pharaohs."

To which the NYT's obvious follow-up question was, "You mean the Pharaohs were gay??"

She denied this, although really, it's not like the Pharaohs were Muslim, so she could attribute homosexuality to the Pharaohs (which, I mean, come on: what about that phallic beard) and not run afoul of the Islamic establishment.

Hey, speaking of sweeping generalizations, the NYT also asked Jehan if Palestinians are as smart as Israelis. Stupid question, but she answered it anyway:
"Believe me, they [the Palestinians] are more like the Jews than us. Most of the Palestinians are very well educated. Because they are a minority, they are like the Jews. They are intellectuals."

Uh-huh. So by deduced, logical, inductive reduction, Egyptians are not as smart?

But Egyptians don't take shit from those smarty-pants Palestinians. Asked her thoughts on how desperate Gazans tried to flee into Egypt before and during the recent Israeli attacks, she said:
"When you want to cross into Egypt, there are rules. But the Palestinians want to come without anything, just like that. There were thousands and thousands and thousands who wanted to cross, which is not legal."

Boo-yah! Who's smart now!?

Okay, more likely our readers saw Jehan show up on the Daily Show with John Stewart this past week, which obviously proves the 75-year-old is much more interested in selling books to the stoned, hyper-educated news junkies who watch Stewart than she is in appealing to the hyper-educated stoners who read the NYT.*

A deferential John Stewart asked Jehan al-Sadat if any Arab leader today might be as brave as her late husband. [Anwar al-Sadat was assassinated in 1981 after concluding a peace treaty with Israel, a landmark in the history of the modern Middle East but also a big eff-you to the Palestinians who were hoping for a more comprehensive agreement.]

"Believe me, John. All Arabs want peace. All Israelis want peace. The problem is with the leaders."

Oh, so what about your leader, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak? Hmm, no mention there.

Then Stewart asked if Arab leaders use the Palestinian conflict as an excuse to keep their own populations disinterested in domestic issues.

"Yes."

Zing!

Well there you have it. Gay pharaohs, a stupid disinterested populace, a cowardly president: Jehan calls Egypt what it is, I guess.

[Thanks, Arabist.]

* Wait, at the Tuque Souq, we watch the Daily Show daily and read the NYT obsessively, yet we dispute the correlation between these two activities and smoking weed. We apologize for insinuating our own use of what is still an illegal drug. Kids, don't do drugs (until they are legal or you are 19).

From underneath the rubble of Gaza

“From talking to many people, I can say that Palestinians in Gaza are against the continuation of fighting. They are relieved it is over. Hamas has sensed that; therefore, Hamas political leaders have decided to abide by the truce. From talking to Hamas senior leaders, one can sense their interest in the truce not only because of the public pressure but also because they need to succeed in governance.

“Regarding the firing of the rockets, there is split of opinion. Those supporting Hamas view the Qassam rockets as a method to put pressure on Israel to ease their lives. One woman said, 'It’s symbolic. With firing the Qassam rockets, we want the world to notice our issue of occupation,' one Hamas member said. 'The goal is to try to create a balance in fear.' On the other hand, there is a stronger voice that is against the rockets. Their logic is: why invite an Israeli retaliation? It will be interesting to see if that voice will become louder in the coming stage. It’s too early to come out with a conclusion regarding Hamas’s popularity. Definitely there are those who are disappointed at Hamas for driving them into this stage, but we can’t ignore those who are blaming Israel.”

-- Taghreed El-Khodary, New York Times Gaza correspondent, in an interview about her time in the Strip during the war.

Al Qaeda declares U.S. election for Obama, calls the new prez a "house negro"

After either a meticulous recount or a two-week power outage in the caves, Al Qaeda's quaint, 1950s TV technology has finally and grudgingly called the election for Barack Obama.

Al Qaeda's "Number Two," Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, immediately played the race card, reminding his audience new fewer than a dozen times in his video tirade that Obama is black; and not only black, but negro.

Al-Zawahiri's term for Obama is زنجي البيت (zanjii al-bayt) which al-Zawahiri translated into Arabic after watching Malcolm X refer to docile black Americans as "house negroes." Rebellious blacks like X were in X's words "field negroes," زنوج الحقل (zunuuj al-hiql in al-Zawahiri's translation, or more likely the translation of Adam Gadahn, a.k.a. Azzam the American).

In the video, al-Zawahiri goes on to warn Muslims that the new American prez has "a heart full of hate" for Islam, and he tries to paint Obama as another crusader like George W. Bush. Alas, it seems "Number Two" wasn't following the U.S. election quite as obsessively as the rest of us.

Somali Piracy Watch: Pirates seize tanker, make fortune in oil futures

The New York Times reported late today that Somali pirates caused a brief surge in the global oil futures market, after a group of pirates reportedly seized a Saudi-Aramco oil tanker off the coast of Kenya.

Oil futures, trending downward and currently around $56 per barrel (U.S.), briefly spiked to $59 per barrel when the markets gasped at the news.

Did anybody check to see if the pirates bought low and sold high?

As always, keep up with the adventures of Somali pirates here at the Tuque Souq Somali Piracy Watch. There's more on this particular story over at Al Jazeera.

Somali Piracy Watch: Show me the Money!

A spokesman for Somalia's infamous pirates confessed to the New York Times that he and his fellow buccaneers are simply in it for the money.

[That's The New York Times, ladies and gentlemen... "all the news that's fit to print."]

The spokesman, Sugule Ali, gave the NYT the following gems:

“We just saw a big ship. So we stopped it.”

“We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.”

"We only want money, so we can protect ourselves from hunger.” [Why so much money?] "We have a lot of men."

“Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons. We don’t want that suffering and chaos to continue... We just want the money.”

We just want the money. Mr. Ali then goes on to explain in the NYT article that the pirates are a cash-only business. No credit cards, please.

[See more from the Tuque Souq on Somali piracy, including Canada's role, here and here.]

Here's a map detailing Pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia.