NAIROBI, Kenya -- Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms -- some with a reputation for being quick on the trigger in Iraq -- are joining the battle against pirates plaguing one of the world's most important shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia. The growing interest among merchant fleets to hire their own firepower is encouraged by the U.S. Navy and represents a new and potential lucrative market for security firms scaling back operations in Iraq. But some maritime organizations told The Associated Press that armed guards may increase the danger to ships' crews or that overzealous contractors might accidentally fire on fishermen.
The growing interest among merchant fleets to hire their own firepower is encouraged by the U.S. Navy and represents a new and potential lucrative market for security firms scaling back operations in Iraq.
But some maritime organizations told The Associated Press that armed guards may increase the danger to ships' crews or that overzealous contractors might accidentally fire on fishermen.
Um, the wholesale privatization of "security" operations and the creation of mercenary forces (in the pay of merchant fleets?) bodes ill for the survival of the nation state. The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.
And that's where the EU is so interesting as a concept, and at the heart of that fight, because the EU is in a much better position to impose rules on corporations. The fact that it is currently busier deregulating is not something that need be permanent; in fact, the more the EU is pushed by the corporations to impose pan-EU deregulation, the more legitimacy it has to impose re-regulation on a continental scope.
What matters in the end is whether the EU has political legitimacy or not, and ironically, big business needs the EU to have the ability to make pan-EU rules, and the more it does to strenghten such pan-EU powers, the bigger we have a chance to fight big business back, eventually. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
* The symbiosis between private insurance and privateering dominates. If the company that owned the rescued ship wasn't a US defense contractor, its kidnapping insurance company (likely Lloyds) and its designated crisis representatives (likely Control Risks Group) would have negotiated to pay the pirate's fee to get the hostage back -- as are thousands of kidnappings from Mexico to Colombia to Nigeria to the Gulf of Aden are settled every year. Somali pirates have made tens of millions this way already. Further, in many parts of the world, kidnappers are almost never caught/killed (<5% in Mexico and the same is likely true for Somalia). So, given this backdrop, the Navy's rescue effort was just a sideshow and the industry that made it possible will continue to grow rapidly.
And anyway, sea-based mercenaries aren't a serious threat to any modern state. I'd be more worried about militias taking over police roles on land.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Losses caused by weapons of war, for example where armed militia might deploy bombs or rockets, are excluded from P&I insurance cover, even thought the militia were initially engaged in piracy. Ship owners are now being recommended to buy war risk cover for the Somali coast for such excluded risks from a commercial war risk underwriter. Many owners have now been taking out such cover after the events of September 11 2001.
= big fat insurance and private contractor scam. This ties in seamlessly with the US's marine equivalent of Nato, with the Proliferation Security Initiative [PSI], put into effect by GWB in 2005.
The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) is a U.S.-led multinational initiative involving the interdiction of third-country ships on the high seas on the basis of carrying nuclear materials. The PSI has over 90 member nations, including Russia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore and Norway. Among countries opposed to the PSI are China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Iran, who dispute its legality.
The Somali "piracy crisis" is enabling the US to generate false premises upon which to undermine international maritime law, in order better to control key shipping lanes. It should be no wonder that China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Iran are opposed to the PSI.
The whole, heavily mediatized Somali 'piracy' saga reeks of broader geopolitical strong-arming. .
