Sure, everyone's an expert after the fact. It's reallllllll easy to look back now and say, "Captain Richard Phillips was warned at least seven times in the week prior to his trip to stay at least 600 miles off the dangerous Somali coast, but he ignored these warnings, and got his ship and crew hijacked." Real easy. So a lot of the crew is saying that, now.

Four of the 20 crew members told the AP that they blame Phillips for the hijacking.

"He caused this, and we all know it," said chief engineer Mike Perry of Riverview, Fla. "All the Alabama crew knows about it."

Look at the bright side, guys. You have a great adventure story to tell your kids one day. You didn't have to hack anyone to pieces. And, most importantly, you'll go down in history as an anonymous crew member who served with Hero Captain Richard Phillips. He got to meet The Rock!
[Pics: AP]

When the piracy was confined strictly to a small portion of sea off the Somali coast, it was kind of cool. Danger and international intrigue in a rigidly controlled and monitored space! But now it's spreading into the Indian Ocean like an oil spill; word comes this morning that a Spanish fishing vessel with a 36-member crew was hijacked 450 miles off the Seychelles today. The same ship dodged another hijacking attempt a month ago! And two other Spanish ships, last year!

Obviously, what's going to happen is that each Western nation will have to individually prove that it won't hesitate to send in the Navy, guns blazing, to protect any ship from pirates. If Spain owns any guns, they may want to start cleaning them now.

Juan Guartem would not have stood for this!

We dare not even speak the thought that America's heroes may have swiped it!

But sources say the SEALs, along with the members of the international anti-piracy Combined Task Force 151, and the crew of Maersk Alabama are being questioned over the missing cash.

Hero captain Richard Phillips has already sold the movie rights to his story. He seems pretty money-hungry. Has anybody checked his pockets? Has anyone contacted the Hardy Boys?
[NYP. Pic: Getty]

"YOUNG BUC'S NEW RAPS."

Take a moment to appreciate the double entendres-squared at work here. Abduwali's young. He's a buccaneer. Young Buc is a rapper. A rap is also a criminal charge. It's a complete circle of subtext in four short—but meaningful—words.

A worthy follow-up to the last story about Abduwali crying, which used the now-classic term "PRIVA-TEARS." Now if only Andrea Peyser could just find some way to get Andrea Peyser to break into Abduwali's cell and scream at him about how he'll never see his mother again, and then laugh maniacally, and then write about it, leaving out the maniacal laughing, the Post would totally win this BUC WILD story.

Ideally the Somali pirates would go around, swashbuckling, but not actually killing people, and they wouldn't mess with Americans, because America kicks ass all over the world, thank you very much. Then we could keep the Pirate Folk Hero thing alive, no big deal. But look guys, how can we secretly idolize your unrestrained manliness when you are not really beating anybody at anything?

Example A: Five pirates who hijacked a Yemeni ship were killed by the special forces of Yemen—a nation which we did not even know had special forces.

Example B: Pirates tried to jack an Italian cruise ship but the captain had his security guys shoot back and then the pirates ran away. Um.

Hey Somali pirates, get with the program or get out. You guys are totally wrecking the fantasy lives of pirate re-enactors:

"Most of us don't consider what's going on there true piracy. They sound more like terrorists. Or thugs," complained Christine Markel Lampe, who edits No Quarter Given, a pirate re-enactor newsletter.

Christine is the only person that the pirates defeated today.
[Pic via]

"SOMALI PIRATE IN PRIVA-TEARS." Yes! That is a once-in-a-lifetime pirate pun there, people! How many Post readers even know what "privateer" means? Well I guess now they can Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach themselves some vocabulary, amirite? Eh?

Let's be serious: they brought Muse in court and decided that he is 18 so they can try him as an adult, and he cried and wept and said "I don't have any money." Clearly, a terrorist. Angry lady Andrea Peyser is now covering his trial, which should make for some awesome examples of human empathy in action. Starting today!

He looked more like an urchin seeking adoption by Madonna than a swashbuckling Somali pirate [Ed. note: He's a black African, see?]...sobbing and sniffling like a little girl...he swatted at his dribbling nose, like a child facing punishment...he cried and cried...
Muse, so recently jolly, looked miserable and confused, though I don't know why. He faces up to life in prison if convicted. If he does, he'll achieve his dream.
He told his captors he always wanted to go to the United States.

Andrea's doing okay so far on the raw hatred of humanity, but just wait until the barely-contained sexual subtext bursts forth. That's when the real fun starts.

Muse, who weighs, I'm guessing, about 120 pounds, and is the walking incarnation of evil, came into NYC last night surrounded by a dozen federal agents, and smiled for the cameras, which is a perfectly normal reaction for a teenager from Somalia, I guess, and may end up being a smooth PR move for him as well. He's a human, you see!

The Post only dubbed him "Jolly Roger," rather than, say, "Laughing Satan From the Land of Darkness," which is a fair indication that his press could be not all that bad. Muse is reportedly facing life in prison. Unless Barack Obama saves him:

''I appeal to President Obama to pardon my teenager; I request him to release my son or at least allow me to see him and be with him during the trial,'' [Muse's mother] Adar Abdirahman Hassan said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from her home in Galkayo town in Somalia.

Now is the time when Hussein Obama shows his true pirate colors! The ideal outcome of this case would be that Muse gets sympathetic press, a short sentence, and comes out smiling and vowing to change his ways, then becomes a man-about-town here in NYC, fawned over by downtown club kids and UWS intelligentsia alike. Worst case scenario: the Post loses its sense of bemusement. If so, watch out for the lynch mobs.

[Also: the AP finds out the kid's actual name while the tabloids go with the court documents' spelling of "Abduhl Wal-i-Musi," which reeks suspiciously of "Hick American sounding out a foreign language."]

Weep at the classic, cinematic story of Ilka Ase Mohamed, a poor honest man in Somalia who finally saved up enough cows to marry his sweetheart, only to have her stolen away by a dastardly, disrespectful pirate!

The woman Mohamed still calls "my beloved girl" was betrothed to a Somali pirate who wears a black cowboy hat, drives a Land Cruiser and paid $50,000 cash in what Mohamed described as a soulless deal with her mother...
Mohamed said he watched in horror as the pirate sat on a carpet without taking off his shoes, a sign of disrespect. In the following weeks, Fatima married him and was whisked off to Europe.

In the movies, Mohamed would then learn karate and/ or win a game show and give the pirate his rightful comeuppance, but in this case he just moved to another country and is all like, "Dang." But he may have the last laugh; international policy experts are commiserating on how to stop these dudes from stealing more girlfriends, not to mention ships. There's even a conference! But the best idea so far, from the UN's former chief security officer in Somalia: get the women mad at them.

In 1995, for example, the water supply for Mogadishu, the capital, was shut off by the United Nations humanitarian agencies until a hostage who worked for another aid organization was released. On the first day of the shutoff, the women who collected water from public distribution points yelled at the kidnappers; on the second day they stoned them; on the third day they shot at them; on the fourth day, the hostage was released.

Oh women, is there any scourge that it's not your job to fix while men sit around chewing khat? I think not!
[WP, NYT. Pic via]

The crew members have arrived back here in the USA, and they're telling their tales—tales of swashbuckling, high seas marauding, and murderous, bloodthirsty rage. By them! Here's the story of how they snatched one of the pirates (the one still alive) who was trying to hijack their ship:

"I pulled a knife on his face and said, 'We are going to kill you,' and my supervisor said, 'Don't do anything to this guy,' " deckmate Miguel Ruiz, 46, of The Bronx, recalled.

"We could have killed the hostage, but we didn't have the orders to do it. We are not killers. We try to help other nations."

Miguel displays just the type of benevolent American power that extends our nation's influence to the far corners of the earth. Even our merchant seamen are helping other nations, not killing them! That wretched pirate is now coming to stand trial in America and serve as a proxy for the sins of his entire nation, dang. We promise to only imprison him in a foreign country for a mind-boggling number of years, not kill him. USA!
[NYP. Pic via]

The crew of the Maersk Alabama arrived back in the US, to "the gratitude of a nation," reportedly, although it's unclear why that would be the case. Captain Richard Phillips, the hostage-in-chief, reached dry land in Kenya, with "Sweet Home Alabama" playing at the dock. For real!

Hillary Clinton, our secretary of state who has, disappointingly, never been pursued by pirates, said the international community is planning on freezing the assets of pirates, to fight them. Is that some sort of "Freezing your ass—in the morgue!" joke? Let's hope so. Because it doesn't sound all that scary. Especially when said "assets" are two million dollars in cash bricks, dropped by a helicopter onto the deck of a hijacked freighter in international waters. Anyhow. The media continues to have success goading brash young Somalians into saying dumb things:

A pirate said Wednesday that his gang was targeting American ships and sailors.

"We will seek out the Americans, and if we capture them we will slaughter them," said a 25-year-old Somali who gave only his first name, Ismail.

Anything some 25 year-old dude says to impress a foreign wire reporter might as well be pirate national policy, and we must fight back, with patriotic insanity.
[Pic via]