The BBC reports a gun battle after pirates opened fire, though no-one was hurt and the ship was not boarded. An EU naval force which patrols the dangerous stretch of water dispatched a plane and a search vessel but no bad guys were found. Earlier this week the same disappearing pirates returned a Spanish ship they had held for six weeks after reportedly receiving a $3.5m ransom. Piracy, it seems, is still a booming trade.

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!

There haven't been European pirates for hundreds of years. But a cargo ship called the Arctic Sea sailed through the English Channel last month and disappeared. It hasn't been heard from since July 28! That was four days after "armed men in masks posing as anti-drugs police" boarded the ship and beat up the crew. Now nobody knows where it is! Have they looked in Hollywood?

"I think there was probably some sort of secret cargo on this vessel, not criminal but secret," [the editor of a Russian maritime journal] told Reuters.

"I don't think that it was pirates who took this vessel but it really smells of some sort of state involvement. This is real cloak and dagger stuff, like a (John) le Carre novel."

This is no joke. Screenwriters, get a jump on it now. Respected international news organization Reuters gives you a helping hand with this actual section head—take note:

The military-industrial complex has been trying to make killer lasers at least since Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s. The unproven, ridiculously-expensive technology was later tested against ground targets. And now, maybe pirates.

Northrop Grumman and the Navy want $98 million just to test a laser for warning away suspicious boats — including pirates, ooo — and even melting their engines.

The Pirate Menace has become the hot new way of selling weapons systems; a defense-industry consultant recently floated the absurd argument that the cancelled F-22 air-to-air fighter would be awesome against pirates.

But the Navy has about a trillion other ways of destroying pirate ships, other than with pricey lasers:

Phalanx: A radar-aimed Gatling gun originally designed to shoot down missiles, it has been adapted to work against small ships and is widely deployed.

Basic cannons: The preferred method for killing pirate ships since forever. Basically all Navy combat ships still have at least one; on Ticonderoga class cruisers it's this Mark 45 five-inch gun.

Chain gun: The 25mm M242 Bushmaster machine gun has been mounted on everything from the Apache helicopter to the M2 Bradley infrantry fighting vehicle. The Navy version includes an infrared scope for night operations and a laser rangefinder.

Harpoon anti-ship missile: Intended for use over long ranges, the missile was recently adapted for use in shoreline areas.

So the Navy has all of these toys at its disposal already. There are two land-based insurgency wars ongoing, which have killed thousands of ground troops. There's a massive recession. And the high command is asking for a super sea laser, to kill pirates. Someone needs to walk the plank, just for thinking about asking for this bullshit.

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]

From the Kids Section, of all places:

Somali pirates don't wear ruffled shirts and have parrots on their shoulders; they are dangerous criminals. In fact, there never were pirates who looked like the swashbuckling characters from today's toys and movies. The pirates who terrorized ships off America's coast 250 years ago were also violent thieves and were widely feared and hated.

Ahem, there absolutely were pirates who looked like the swashbuckling characters from today's toys and movies, thank you very much. Now go kill Santa why don't you?

We must start out with the most important development of all: dolphins have joined humanity in the fight against piracy:

Thousands of dolphins blocked the suspected Somali pirate ships when they were trying to attack Chinese merchant ships passing the Gulf of Aden, the China Radio International reported on Monday.

The Chinese merchant ships escorted by a China's fleet sailed on the Gulf of Aden when they met some suspected pirate ships. Thousands of dolphins suddenly leaped out of water between pirates and merchants when the pirate ships headed for the China's.

The suspected pirates ships stopped and then turned away. The pirates could only lament their littleness before the vast number of dolphins. The spectacular scene continued for a while.

It's about time these marine mammals got off the sidelines! In somewhat more depressing news: the three pirates killed by HERO NAVY SEAL SNIPERS who fired the three most accurate shots in the history of war (SPECIAL SECTION: Navy SEAL Snipers and How Accurate Their Three Shots Were, P. 14-32) turned out to be teenagers. They were all from 17-19 years old. Jesus Christ. Also they were all grumpy and irritable like you, when you're out of cigarettes:

As they bobbed in the ocean near the USS Bainbridge, a Navy destroyer sent to rescue Phillips, the teenage pirates were experiencing withdrawal after days without khat, a mildly narcotic leaf chewed in for its stimulant effects. "They were realizing they were in a no-win situation," said a senior U.S. military official. "They were floating around in rough waters, they were tired. . . . These guys didn't have their chew with them."

Even people going in front of a firing squad usually get a last cigarette. That's just sad. In the meantime, three more ships were attacked by pirates. And since Somali Pirates are a monolithic group in constant communication with one another this means they are PROVOKING America, time for war war war war war. War on Piracy. We can model it on the War on Terror. It'll be a weary nation's great ego-booster!

• Do not fuck with America any more: If you do, you will be totally wiped off the map, okay? Just don't.
• More hippie, less terroristy: The reason you pirates became folk heroes in the first place was, 1. you weren't fucking with Americans (see above), and 2. because you embodied a certain sort of free-living ideal that appealed to average Americans trapped by American suburban luxury. If you can believe it! The guns and things should be props, just for show, not something you use to actually shoot people. Be the new Merry Pranksters, not the new Al-Qaeda.
• You must regain the affection of the media: Look, the US media is by and large a big herd of sheep, led by a few wolves. Everyone in the media is afraid to be a contrarian, except for the handful of professional contrarians, who are ignored. When some shit like the kidnapping of the Captain incident happens, it becomes a contest to see which media outlet can most strenuously condemn you. For chrissake, even the NYT and the New Yorker have lost their sense of bemusement and bleeding heartism about the pirate situation. They're agreeing with Glenn Beck, like this was 9/11.
  Well, fuck that. What you must do, pirates, is to cultivate a few loud voices who aren't afraid to steer the rest of the sheeplike media back towards a more understanding point of view. It's a classic PR strategy. Turn one reporter and watch the rest follow. Make friends with some of those ragged East African correspondents. Give some exclusives. They'll love you for it! The rote rewriters stateside will defer to those on the scene—your new friends. So play nice.
• Think like a 21st century capitalist, not an 18th century one: Piracy, really? It's cool and everything, but the money in piracy is not in holding boats for ransom. Your time has run out on that. Nations are now officially pissed. Soon you will start getting dead from doing the hijacking thing. So think bigger: exploit the pirate fantasy for cash. Look how well Disney's done with it. And you're much cooler than Disney.
  The time has come to move into pirate merchandising, pirate experiential tourism, pirate speaking tours, and all the other lucrative spinoffs of your pirate "brand" that don't involve being shot by Navy SEAL snipers. Hello, US college campus speaking tour, complete with t-shirt sales, a hastily recorded CD of pirate songs, and a pitch for weeklong excursions on a genuine pirate boat off the Somali coast, only $3,999? And television, guys. Television! Spike TV just ordered up a reality show called Pirate Hunters about the US Navy hunting you down. A reality show starring the pirates would get five times the ratings. There are plenty of Hollywood agents willing to fly to Somalia to make this happen. You guys can corner the pirate fantasy market in a year. Get off those skiffs and get on it.
• Smile: You're pirates. Just be nice ones, and you'll be able to rip off Westerners with no machine gun necessary.