Showing posts sorted by relevance for query PIRATES. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query PIRATES. Sort by date Show all posts

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Somali Eco Disaster Bred Pirates

Piracy is the earliest form of primitive captialist accumulation. It was a major force historically in the transition from fuedalism to capitalism, and in the expansion of the European colonization of Africa with the slave trade and then with the colonization of America. Today it thrives in Asia and now the Horn of Africa.


Those offering solutions to piracy advoacte armed force, perhaps hiring the privateers like has been done in the past but in this case one wag has suggested that Blackwater the mercenary corporation involved in scandals in Iraq should deal with the Somali pirates. He also suggested that the pirates of Somalia are connected to Iran.


This is as spurious an assertion as those being made that the pirates are connected to the Islamist movement currently savaging Somalia. They are not. Rather their seaside towns have been assualted by the Islamists seeking to gain control of the pirates booty. Especially the Ukrainian ship which contains tank and heavy weapons.


Battling the Somali Pirates: The Return of the Islamists


However, General William Ward noted on Wednesday that despite piracy being a growing issue of global concern, there was no actual proof that the group responsible for the Somali troubles was linked with Islamic terrorism.


A columnist for the Wall Street Journal has suggested we bring back hanging em from the yardarms. Which was a rare occurance in the 18th ceentury and rarely worked. It certainly did not end priacy in the Caribbean and the Carolina's. That was ended by a privateer being hired by the British mercantilists government to hunt them down.


As I wrote in the Opionion Forum at the WSJ in repy to his column; "Your assertion that pirates were hung because they posed a danger when captured is true but not for the reason given, it was because they were free men, while the saliors aboard most ships at the time were pressed men, indentured, and the priates were seen as subversive, capable of undermining the ships owners and captains authority, enough so that having pirates aborad would lead to mutiny. The hanging of pirates did not end piracy, au contraire to your article, rather it was a concerted effort of the British government to end priacy on the American coast and in the Caribean using ex pirates to break up their hold in the Bahamas and North Carolina. Few pirates were hung, most retired. "


It is because I have been reading about pirates , slavery and submarieslately, as you can see in my Shelfari bookshelf to the left. The Republic of Pirates discusses the history of the short lived pirate republic in the Bahama's how it disrupted British, Spanish and French slave trade in the region and the America and how it was defeated. Eric Willaims Salvery and Capitalism is an important ground breaking work explaining how the use of slaves and a slave economy was key to the growth of primitive accumulation of capital for English capitalists, moving them from a mercantilist economy to a full blown capitalist economy and an Imperial empire. Finally the book on submarines explains that at least one 18th Century American advocate for submarine warfare; Robert Fulton promoted it as a way of guarnteeing free trade and free markets using of the submarine to attack exiting navy blockades of ports. Shades of Hagbard Celine.

The irony is that the Horn of Africa was the original source of the historical 18th Century Pirates, in that case the pirates used Madagascar as their base. The pirates whom lived off raiding the slave ships of the European Imperialist nations. Like their Somali counterparts Muslim pirates led Thomas Jefferson to engage in America's first imperialist navel action against the Barbary Coast Pirates.

As Christopher Hitchens writes;

Some of this activity was hostage trading and ransom farming rather than the more labor-intensive horror of the Atlantic trade and the Middle Passage, but it exerted a huge effect on the imagination of the time—and probably on no one more than on Thomas Jefferson. Peering at the paragraph denouncing the American slave trade in his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, later excised, I noticed for the first time that it sarcastically condemned “the Christian King of Great Britain” for engaging in “this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers.” The allusion to Barbary practice seemed inescapable. One immediate effect of the American Revolution, however, was to strengthen the hand of those very same North African potentates: roughly speaking, the Maghrebian provinces of the Ottoman Empire that conform to today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Deprived of Royal Navy protection, American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. The infant United States had therefore to decide not just upon a question of national honor but upon whether it would stand or fall by free navigation of the seas.
One of the historians of the Barbary conflict, Frank Lambert, argues that the imperative of free trade drove America much more than did any quarrel with Islam or “tyranny,” let alone “terrorism.” He resists any comparison with today’s tormenting confrontations. “The Barbary Wars were primarily about trade, not theology,” he writes. “Rather than being holy wars, they were an extension of America’s War of Independence.”

Piracy arose because of the slave trade on one hand, and because Imperial navies around the world used pressed men, indentured servents. Piracy was the rebellion of the common man against his exploitation, they seized the ships, created a contract form of employment sharing the wealth between them, and ended up creating capitalist democracy on the high seas as Buckminister Fuller wrote in his book Operating Manul For Spaceship Earth

But back to the topic at hand Somali pirates. They are fishermen. Not terrorists. The piracy is the result of the anarchy and free market that is Somalia. But even more so it is the result of the poisioning of the coastal waters by giant shipping companies, poor environmental regulations, lack of UN policing, whereby dumping of toxic waste has devastated the fishing stocks. Fishing stocks that were overfished not by Somali's but by European trawlers. So overfishing and toxic dumping led to the Somali fishermen to take up piracy. In true pirate tradition they are more interested in the booty than harming the hostages. Whom they have exchanged for ransom. And they even have a Canadian connection.


With the world waiting and watching, one of the pirates calling himself Daybed spoke to the BBC via telephone from the Sirius Star. He says the pirates are not negotiating with the supertanker's owners, instead they're dealing with intermediaries and he insists they "cannot be trusted.

"DAYBED (translated): We're fully aware of the consequences, but the world has to realise the problems we're facing here at home. There's been no peace for 18 years, there's no life here. The last resource Somali's have is the sea, but foreign fishing trawlers have come here to plunder our fish. How can they allow the Somali people to die, it's not possible. This is what drove us to piracy, we have to do anything we can to survive. The lack of government causes problems, if we solve the problem with the government, everything would be solved.

Ex-Somali Army Colonel Mohamed Nureh Abdulle lives in Harardhere - the town closest to where the hijacked Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star is moored. He tells the BBC, via phone from his home, that the town's residents are more concerned about the apparent dumping of toxic waste than piracy.
You know, our problem is not piracy. It is illegal dumping.
These problems have been going for sometime and the world knows about it. The Americans have been here in the region for a long time now - they know about the pollution.
Instead, no, the world is only talking about the pirates and the money involved.


Meanwhile, there has been something else going on and it has been going on for years. There are many dumpings made in our sea, so much rubbish.
It is dumped in our seas and it washes up on our coastline and spreads into our area.


Our community used to rely on fishing. But now no-one fishes. You see, a lot of foreign ships were coming and they were fishing heavily - their big nets would wipe out everything, even the fishermen's equipment. They could not compete.


THE PIRATE CAPITAL By David Pratt

IT was almost dusk and the sun was sinking on the horizon. A few hundred yards offshore, the freighter that had earlier dropped anchor was swarming with local Somali men. The ship's crew, however, were nowhere to be seen.
Some of the Somalis carried Kalashnikovs and stood guard, while others, like worker ants, busied themselves loading the ship's cargo on to barges that were then hauled to the beach by relays of sweating men pulling on ropes.
Noticing my curiosity, one of the staff at the tumbledown guesthouse in the port town of Merka where I was staying decided to offer an explanation as to what I was witnessing.
"Our coastguards," he said with a mischievous grin. "Some of them used to be fishermen, but today, with the war and no law or government, they have a more profitable catch," nodding towards the rusting hulk sitting offshore.
Until that moment, nothing I'd seen had struck me as being out of the ordinary. At Merka and other port towns along Somalia's coastline, ships often came close inshore to unload. As for the gunmen, Somalia was awash with weapons and arms smugglers. A few years ago, when I first went to the capital, Mogadishu, and visited its infamous "sky shooters" weapons market in the Bakara district, an AK-47 assault rifle cost a mere $150. Mortars, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns - all were readily available here.
As the ultimate "failed state", Somalia has been exposed to more than its fair share of man's evil ways. It has been neglected for years by the international community and let down by its fellow African nations. It is wracked with Islamic terrorism, suffering a largely ignored humanitarian crisis and is home to widespread organised crime, including the piracy that I witnessed in Merka that day that has now become a multi-million dollar business.
With their biggest hijacking yet last week, of an oil tanker, Somalia's pirates have suddenly drawn world attention to an ancient trade whose only recognisable modern-day practitioners until recently were Jack Sparrow and the crew of the Black Pearl in the Pirates of the Caribbean Hollywood movie series.
There are now serious concerns over the fate of crew members taken hostage by the Somali pirates. There is considerable disquiet, too, on behalf of shipping companies over the huge losses incurred. But pressing as these questions are, there are others regarding Somalia itself that need addressing.
For a start, why is it that piracy has flourished here? Who are these ocean-going bandits and how has their trade affected the local communities? More significantly perhaps, to what extent if any, is this vast money-making criminal activity bound up with Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Shabab that daily tighten their grip on Somalia?


In this impoverished country long devoid of solid institutions or individuals worth looking up to, the pirates and in some cases even the insurgents have even become heroes with virtually celebrity status.
In pirate communities, the trophies gleaned from their trade sit brashly juxtaposed against the poverty. In pirate boom towns such as Harardhere, Eyl and Bosaso on Somalia's northern coast, along the breakaway Somali statelet of Puntland, sprawling new-build stone houses nestle next to shacks made of sticks and discarded plastic bags.
Like western urban drug barons, pirates cruise in luxury cars through unimaginable squalor. However, in these humid coastal dens, where life expectancy is just 46 years and a quarter of children die before they reach five, not everyone sees the pirates in a negative light.
"The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them," said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Harardhere, the nearest village to where the hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker Sirius Star is now anchored.
In these pirate-controlled areas of northern Somalia, people's hopes of a better future are firmly pinned on the prevailing maritime gangsterism.
"There are more shops and business is booming because of the piracy," said Sugule Dahir, who runs a clothing shop in Eyl. "Internet cafes and telephone shops have opened, and people are just happier than before."
In Harardhere, residents are said to have celebrated as the Sirius Star dropped anchor last week.
Businessmen gathered cigarettes, food and soft drinks, setting up kiosks for the pirates who come to shore to resupply almost daily.
"They always take things without paying and we put them into the book of debts," said Dahir. "When they get the ransom money, they pay us a lot."
Among the big men who run the pirate syndicates are an army of negotiators, spokesmen and accountants. The pirates take no chances with the cash, giving "clerks" the task of making sure the banknotes are not counterfeit, using machines like those housed in foreign exchange bureaux worldwide.
Ask Somalia's pirates why they turned to this lucrative trade and they will give a one-word answer: "Survival." They will tell of how, following the collapse of the government in 1991, their fishing grounds were opened to illegal harvesting by foreign fishing vessels from all corners of the world, and how the dumping of toxic waste destroyed so much of their livelihood. To some extent this is true, but some analysts argue it merely serves as a moral cover for their criminal activities.
More worrying perhaps is that the piracy trade might help fund and arm Islamic terrorists in the region.
Recent United Nations reports on arms smuggling in the Horn of Africa, suggest that groups like al-Shabab may have begun to use piracy as a means of bringing in arms or generating cash for weapons. But so far the evidence is sparse, and the pirates' commercial largesse seems directed mainly at those within their clan, families and friends.
Iqbal Jhazbhay, a Somali expert at the University of South Africa in Tshwane, said: "There may be some loose elements among the Islamist groups that have tie-ups with the pirates, because the movement is fractured into six or seven different groups, and each may have its own problems getting funding."
Somalia's recent history is in great part the tale of grave miscalculations made by foreigners in a very foreign land. Here the margins between death and survival are the narrowest imaginable. Given such unforgiving odds, is it really surprising that piracy is considered a sure bet to a better life?
"Regardless of how the money is coming in, legally or illegally, I can say it has started a life in our town," said Shamso Moalim, 36, a mother of five from Harardhere. "Our children are not worrying about food now, and they go to Islamic schools in the morning and play soccer in the afternoon. They are happy
."

SEE;
Somalia

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

'So bananas and dumb': Joy Reid buries Ted Cruz for fearing Disney will make a Mickey Mouse-Pluto sex film

Bob Brigham
April 19, 2022

Screengrab.

The panel on MSNBC's "The Reidout" on Tuesday had an awkward conversation about sexual fantasies and the junior senator from Texas.

MSNBC anchor Joy Reid played a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), but noted she did not want to do it.

"This is so bananas and so dumb, if I read it to you, you would think I was embellishing," she explained.

She played a clip of Cruz imagining Disney might start producing pornography featuring Mickey Mouse and his pet dog Pluto.

Reid appeared to attempt to show the size difference between a dog and a mouse on her notepad.

The host said, "that is so dark and bananas that it makes me worry that maybe Josh Hawley (R-MO) should be investigating Ted Cruz, because where his mind goes is some deeply, deeply creepy stuff if he's imaging a mouse and a -- okay, I'm just going to go ahead and let you comment."

Democratic consultant Kurt Bardella replied, "Well, number one, Joy, I think we just got a really disturbing look at what Ted Cruz fantasizes about. I don't want to go into that, that's outright disturbing."

Watch:

Ted Cruz launches bizarre anti-Disney rant -- and predicts cartoons of 'Mickey and Pluto going at it'

Brad Reed
April 19, 2022

Ted Cruz (Screen Capture)

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) this week disturbed some of his fellow conservatives when he predicted Disney wasn't very far from having gay sex depicted in its children's cartoons.

While talking on his "Verdict" podcast, Cruz complained about Disney's opposition to Florida's new "Don't Say Gay" law that critics say could force LGBTQ teachers to remain closeted out of fear of being sued by parents.

"I think there are people who are misguided, trying to drive Disney stepping in saying, you know, in every episode now they're going to have, you know, Mickey and Pluto going at it," he said.

"Thank you for that image senator," co-host Michael Knowles said sarcastically.

"But it's just like, come on, guys, these are kids and, you know, you could always shift to Cinemax if you want that!" Cruz said, although Cinemax has never run a pornographic movie featuring two iconic Disney characters. "Like, I'm a dad, it used to be that you could put your kids on the Disney channel and be like, all right, something innocuous will happen."

Watch the video below.


IT'S BEEN DONE

Air Pirates Funnies, 1971Also other well-respected institutions such as Disney were "befouled," for instance in Air Pirates Funnies (1971), a comics series by artists Bobby LondonTed RichardsShary FlennikenDan O'Neill and Gary Hallgren. The well-known Disney characters were made to perform unspeakable acts, which caused Disney to start a legal process for copyright infringement.               https://www.lambiek.net/comics/underground.htm





Disney’s Bloody Attack on The Air Pirates

What follows in an excerpt from The Pirates and the Mouse: Disney’s War Against the Counterculture (Fantagraphics 2003) by investigative journalist Bob Levin. The book describes the so-crazy-it-must-be-true story of Disney’s attack on a group of underground cartoonists who, under the moniker The Air Pirates, set out to take down the Disney empire with satirical comics featuring Disney characters in decidedly un-Disneylike situations. The resulting legal battle took place over the course of 10 years, making its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and back. Ultimately, Disney settled, but artist Dan O’Neill had to agree to stop depicting Disney’s copyrighted characters in his comics, dealing a blow to free speech.

Reprinted with permission from the author. ©2013 Bob Levin

***

Draw a mouse, go to jail. That, it seemed, was the conclusion of a case that wended its way, throughout the 1970s, from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to the Supreme Court and back. In our age of easy and ubiquitous copying, that case matters more than ever.

On one side was Walt Disney Productions. Its good-hearted, uplifting, family-oriented fare drew upon values — patriotism and Puritanism, consumerism and conformity — that the cultural revolution of the ’60s had called into question, and fed those values back to a public in need of reassurance, earning it $750 million a year.

On the other side was cartoonist Dan O’Neill. His career’s trajectory, though mostly downward, was, in its commitment to a free-spirited, convention-defying, bluenose-shocking, light-out-for-the-territory view of the personal and public good, just as resolutely mythic-American as Disney’s.

In 1963 the San Francisco Chronicle had made O’Neill, a skinny, bespectacled, 21-year-old college dropout, the youngest syndicated cartoonist in American newspaper history with his daily strip Odd Bodkins. Its primary characters were waistless but had arms and legs, neckless but had mouths and eyes; only one had a nose. “Potatoes with hands and feet,” O’Neill called them. They and other equally bizarre characters traded philosophical bon mots that became more and more political (and, to many, incomprehensible) until O’Neill was fired–more than once, but for good in 1970.

As the ’60s cultural revolution roared on, O’Neill decided that what America truly needed was the destruction of Walt Disney. So after the Chronicle canned him, he rounded up a ragtag band of rogue cartoonists who called themselves the Air Pirates, after a group of evildoers who had bedeviled Mickey Mouse in the 1930s. In 1971 they produced two issues of an underground comic book in which a number of Disney characters, particularly Mickey, engaged in very un-Disneylike behavior, particularly sex.

In 1979 O’Neill stood before the bar, 38 years old, unemployed, with total assets of $7, a 1963 Mercury convertible, a banjo, and the baggy gray suit he was wearing. Disney, which already had a $190,000 judgment against him, sought to have him fined another $10,000 and imprisoned for six months.

An artist asks, “Why have a fight if no one comes?”

O’Neill’s partners in crime and eventual co-defendants were Ted Richards (a 24-year-old who had been working for the underground newspaper the Berkeley Tribe), Bobby London (a 20-year-old, creator of Dirty Duck, also working for the Tribe), and Gary Hallgren (a 25-year-old psychedelic sign painter in Seattle).

O’Neill says the Air Pirates were born out of the “revolutionary fervor” of the times. “Those were the ’60s,” he says, “and it was everybody’s duty to smash the state. And we smashed a lot of it; but, you know, they smashed us back.” Still, the specific planks of his platform are elusive. “The main point,” O’Neill says, “was to buck corporate thinking. We just didn’t like bullshit.”

The Air Pirates settled into a kitchenless couple of rooms in San Francisco (later relocating to a former firehouse used by director Francis Ford Coppola for storage). Their two issues of Disney-parodying absurdity, Air Pirates Funnies, were published in editions of 15,000 to 20,000 copies in the summer of 1971.

The first cover, by London, showed Mickey Mouse piloting an open-cockpitted, propeller-powered plane with two sacks labeled “Dope” tied to its fuselage. The second, by Hallgren, had Mickey and Minnie on horseback, hands raised, confronted by a bat-winged, green-cloaked figure with a revolver in his right hand and the “Dope” sacks in his left. The contents were generic underground comix: sex, drugs, and revolutionary politics. (The least of these was politics. In fact, No. 1’s back cover instructed, “And always remember, kids, politics is pigshit.”)

The Air Pirates had gone after Disney partly because of its reputation for striking back. But Disney had not obliged. So O’Neill gave copies to a friend, “the gay son of the chairman of Disney’s board of directors.” He smuggled the comics into a board meeting and laid them out around the table like notepads. “We called them out,” O’Neill says. “I mean, why have a fight if no one comes?”

O’Neill got his fight.  It became one of the longest and most absurd in the history of attempts to use copyright to stifle artistic expression in America. The lessons learned from it are more relevant than ever to anyone who chooses parody as a way to speak to power, especially corporate power.

On October 21, 1971, the firm of Cooley, Crowley, Gaither, Godward, Castro & Huddleson filed half a pound of legal documents in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Walt Disney Productions. Disney accused the Pirates of copyright infringement, trademark infringement, unfair competition, intentional interference with business, and trade disparagement through the wrongful use of its characters. It stated that Disney, through “great effort and…large sums of money,” had created characters whose “image of innocent delightfulness…are known and loved by people all over the world, particularly children” and that the defendants’ efforts to “disparage and ridicule” these characters threatened to destroy Disney’s business. The complaint requested that Disney be awarded all of the Pirates’ profits, $5,000 for each copyright infringement, treble damages for the trademark infringement, punitive damages of $100,000 from each defendant, surrender of the offending books, and reimbursement of its attorneys’ fees.

Two weeks later, based on declarations by Disney’s attorneys that allowing the Pirates to continue to disparage Disney’s work would cause it “irreparable” harm through the destruction of “business, goodwill, and public image” whose monetary equivalent would be “difficult or impossible to ascertain” but which it was doubtful the Pirates could pay, the court granted a temporary restraining order barring them from any further production or dissemination of their comics, to stay in effect until a hearing on Disney’s motion for a preliminary injunction. That motion was scheduled to be heard by Judge Albert C. Wollenberg on March 10, 1972.

The day before the hearing, the Pirates held a press conference at a converted Victorian on Eddy Street belonging to the hip law firm of Rohan & Stepanian. O’Neill’s lawyer, Michael Kennedy–who had previously defended draft resisters, alleged cop killers, and Timothy Leary–says the purpose of the conference was to rally public support for the Pirates’ position: “The line belongs to us. If it ends up a mouse, it’s still a line. We have absolute freedom to copy anything as long as we add to it.”

Newspaper pictures of the event show O’Neill in cowboy hat, wire-rimmed glasses, and gunslinger moustache. Hallgren is smiling, moderately moustached, a Mr. Zig Zag patch sewn onto his jacket sleeve. Richards has shoulder-length hair, a cowboy hat, and a rakishly angled cigar. London’s hair flops over one eye. At one point, with television cameras rolling, he recalls yelling, “We’re guilty! We’re guilty!” while the lawyers yelled, “Cut! Cut!”

In parody, “the reference to the original must be made clear and kept clear”

O’Neill entered the U.S. District Court for his first appearance in his “Jack Palance-Shane outfit”: black hat; buckskin jacket; gun belt with holster. “On the elevator,” he recalls, “I tie down the holster so they can see it sticking out under my jacket and step out on the 18th floor like I’m gonna draw. The U.S. marshal leaps over his desk, grabs me by the throat, and hoists me in the sky. I’m strangling; and he whips open my coat, and in the holster is… a banana!'”

To obtain its injunction, Disney had to convince Judge Wollenberg it was likely to win the eventual trial and that it would be severely damaged if the Pirates were allowed to publish their comics in the interim.

The Air Pirates’ attorneys interpreted the stories Disney vilified in terms so positive and respectful that any reader who had not been immediately awe-struck gazing upon them felt like a Philistine deserving David’s stone. Richards’ “Zeke Wolf,” for example, turned out to be a response to Disney’s repeated portrayal of poor Southern whites as “vicious and ignorant simpleton[s] with nothing to do but commit crimes,” a slander which had kept North and South from uniting against “the true cause of Southern problems…ruthless exploitation…by a cabal of powerful interests…the banks, the media, and the military [The Three Pigs].”

O’Neill’s “The Mouse Story,” characterized as a tale of “the awakening within Mickey…of an awareness of his sins and his subsequent transformation and redemption,” received the most impressive revisiting. Mickey, the lawyers noted, is initially presented as “depressed.” (The Pirates’ attorneys voiced regret at having to quote the exact language of his discontent: “Why won’t anybody fuck me?”) He is then set upon by an alliance of old foes, which Disney had derived from various offensive stereotypes: the Jewish lawyer (Sylvester Shyster), the French-Canuck (Pegleg Pete), the trashy Southerner (The Big Bad Wolf).

Having dressed the Pirates’ work appropriately for court, the defense then legitimized their pedigree. It established them not as nose-thumbing smut peddlers but as respected parodists, following in the footsteps of Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Swift. All humor, it philosophized, is based on “conflict between the expected and the actual,” and parody juxtaposes a “known existing work” against “something else.” To succeed, “the reference to the original must be made clear and kept clear.” The Pirates were engaged in “aesthetic and political criticism of a deeply serious nature.”

With respect to copyright infringement, the defense argued that while an entire work can be copyrighted, characters within it cannot. Even if they could be, the Pirates were protected by the “fair use” doctrine, which permits individuals the right to freely reproduce limited amounts of copyrighted material in limited situations. By restricting their copying to the visual representation of the characters, the Pirates took the minimum necessary for their parody to succeed. They had then created an original work, distinct in plot, dialogue, setting, themes, and character personalities from anything Disney had ever done.

Moreover, the Pirates were not trying to pass their comics off as a Disney product. They aimed at a different market: adult hippies, not children. They sold through different outlets: head shops, not newsstands. The Disney-buying public was unlikely to have its craving for Mickey Mouse satisfied by an issue of Air Pirates Funnies. Disney would not lose a dime.

The Pirates also claimed protection for their work via the First Amendment. Mickey, they argued, had become “part of our national collective unconscious,” as well as an internationally known symbol of American culture and power. While he may once have been accurately perceived as “innocent and delightful,” he now could be viewed as “a reactionary force…[devoted to] Establishment values,” “a partisan of elements and values in American government and society which the Air Pirates oppose.”

The right “to use Mickey Mouse as a vehicle”

Each Pirate filed a sworn statement of purpose. Richards said: “‘The Wolf and the Pig’ has existed within folk literature for well over five hundred years. Walt Disney studios cannot claim exclusive ownership of an old folk tale.” O’Neill’s affidavit was the lengthiest and — ultimately — the most damaging: “Disney presented Mickey Mouse to us when we were children. As cartoonists and adults, we approach Mickey Mouse as our major American mythology….I chose to parody exactly the style of drawing and the characters to evoke the response created by Disney. My purpose in using the Mouse as a character is not to destroy the Disney product, but to deal with the image in the American consciousness that the Disney image implanted.”

Disney lawyer Frank Donovan “Sandy” Tatum pointed out that for its copyright to be meaningful, the characters within these works had to be regarded as “copyrightable component parts,” for they had “achieved identification independent of the cartoon strips, books, and pictures in which they have appeared.” Disney had spent “millions of dollars and years of effort” developing these characters. Tatum dismissed fair use as “a potpourri of so-called principles…most of which are virtually meaningless.” Whatever it meant, by no stretch of the imagination could it embrace the “perverted,” “obscene nonsense” the Pirates had authored. The term fair simply could not be applied to a use whose purpose was “to defame,” “to destroy,” “to degrade and disparage all that Disney has done.”

Since visual representations of cartoon characters must be regarded as copyrightable, the Pirates were taking not a small portion of a larger whole but “the entire subject of the copyright.” Tatum called the Pirates’ First Amendment argument “nonsense.” If their logic were followed, all copyright laws would be “utterly nullified.” While they had every right to deliver whatever message they desired, they had no right “to use Mickey Mouse as the vehicle.”

Judge Wollenberg took the matter under submission. “If he wasn’t a fan of Disney’s at the start,” Kennedy says, “he was by the end. We may’ve driven him there by being so obnoxious and the work so profane. Jonathan Swift, he did not think we were.”

The most troublesome question for Wollenberg was whether Congress’ protection of “all copyrightable component parts” within a copyrighted work extended to cartoon characters. Disney had marshaled an impressive posse of funny-paper support for its argument that it did. Characters from Mutt and Jeff to Spark Plug (Barney Google’s horse) to Superman had had their copyrights protected in court decisions over the years. But an obscure 1954 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (which includes California) cast doubt on the copyrightability of fictional characters divorced from stories. Warner Brothers Pictures v. Columbia Broadcasting System involved the rights to Sam Spade, which Dashiell Hammett had sold to CBS for a radio show. Since Warner Brothers had owned the rights to The Maltese Falcon, which featured Spade, it sued CBS, claiming ownership of the gumshoe.

The 9th Circuit held for the radio network. “The characters were vehicles for the story told,” it said, “and the vehicles did not go with the sale of the story.” Although the court did not explicitly rule all fictional characters uncopyrightable, the Pirates’ argument that the decision pointed to that conclusion struck Wollenberg with “considerable force.”

But he discovered “a narrow gap” in the decision’s reasoning through which Disney could wiggle. The 9th Circuit had said a character could be copyrighted if it “really constitutes the story being told,” and Wollenberg concluded that “the principal appeal [of Disney’s books] to the primary audience of children for which they were intended lies with the characters and nothing else.”

Thus, the characters were copyrightable even under Warner Brothers. The question now became whether the Pirates had taken too much for a fair use. The 1956 9th Circuit case Benny v. Loew’s had declared that copying a “substantial part” of a prior work, even in parody, could be actionable. Wollenberg had already held characters to be the crux of Disney’s work. And since O’Neill had admitted copying Mickey and his cohorts “exactly,” a “substantial” taking was self-evident.

An artist declares, “I was a warrior… I would stay in the battle”

Which left the First Amendment to protect the Pirates. Wollenberg brushed it aside. To apply it would “obliterate copyright protection” anytime anyone asserted their infringement conveyed an idea. Besides, Wollenberg let slip that he had “some difficulty in discovering the significant content of the ideas which the defendants are expressing.” Wollenberg granted the preliminary injunction and ordered the Pirates to surrender all copies of the offending books and all material for making additional copies.

Gary Hallgren allowed judgment to be entered against him for $85,000. It was understood, without being memorialized in the official record, that as long as he abided by the other conditions, Disney would not attempt to collect. O’Neill says London and Richards were also supposed to settle. “It was my idea,” he says, “and they weren’t supposed to take the rap.” Richards says he didn’t settle because he still believed the Pigs to be part of a common heritage and he wanted to protect his rights to Zeke Wolf. He also felt a commitment to O’Neill. “I was a warrior,” he says. “I had received great training, and in return I would stay in the battle. But it was a mistake.” London remained defiant too.

Wollenberg had postponed the trial until August 11, 1975. On July 3 Disney lawyer Paul Laveroni made a motion for summary judgment, which Wollenberg granted. He permanently enjoined O’Neill, Richards, and London from infringing Disney’s copyrights and trademarks, and ordered a hearing before a federal magistrate, Owen E. Woodruff Jr., to determine the amount of damages and attorneys’ fees Disney should receive.

The U.S. Code gave courts two methods to assess damages for copyright infringements. The first, ordering the Pirates to turn over their profits to Disney and to reimburse Disney for its losses, would not work, Laveroni said, because the Pirates had made no profits and Disney could not measure its loss. The second method, applicable when either profit or loss is unknown, is to award damages of between $250 and $5,000 for each infringement. Accusing the Pirates of 38 infringements, Laveroni asked for $190,000, plus $27,292.50 for attorneys’ fees to date, $1,500 for future work, and reimbursement of his firm’s costs.

Kennedy’s reply, on behalf of O’Neill and London–Michael Stepanian, Richards’ lawyer, filed no opposing papers–asserted that the Pirates’ unrebutted evidence showed their profits to be nil and that Disney had presented no evidence of any loss–neither a decline in sales nor a diminution of its public image. Disney, therefore, deserved only a nominal award. The argument didn’t work. On March 5, 1976, O’Neill, London, and Richards were ordered to pay Disney the full amount Laveroni had requested. The Pirates appealed.

A “climate of passion and prejudice”

When Kennedy filed the Pirates’ opening brief with the 9th Circuit, he asked the appeals court to overrule Benny‘s substantiality standard, on which Wollenberg had based his decision. Parodists had to be able to copy substantially, he argued, in order to deliver “the shock of the unexpected.” He urged the court to adopt an approach advocated by UCLA law professor Melville Nimmer, author of the leading treatise Nimmer on Copyright, and assess whether the infringing work was apt to satisfy a potential customer’s desire for the original. The Pirates’ work was not going to replace Disney’s.

And even if characters were a copyrightable part of a copyrighted work, Tom Steel, a new lawyer on O’Neill’s team, argued, this did not mean they could not be copied. Every individual work bore only one copyright. This work should not then be “dissected into as many ‘copyrightable component parts’ as imaginative counsel can conjure up.” If that were permitted, any couplet, sentence, phrase, or name could be the subject of an infringement claim.

Laveroni, Steel argued, hoped to create a “climate of passion and prejudice” in which the court would take more extreme action than affording Disney financial relief. Disney wanted all criticism of its worldview extinguished. It wanted the Pirates’ tongues torn out, their pens ground into dust, their pages burned.

A. Kirk McKenzie, another new lawyer for the Pirates, centered his oral argument around changes in the law wrought by the recently enacted Copyright Act of 1976. In that law Congress for the first time had specified factors for courts to consider in determining fair use: the nature and purpose (commercial or noncommercial) of the infringing work; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the copied portion in relation to the whole; and the effect of the infringing work upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.

On September 5, 1978, the 9th Circuit ruled 3-0 that the Pirates were guilty of copyright infringement. The court agreed with Wollenberg that because the Pirates had other means of expressing their ideas, the First Amendment did not allow them to infringe Disney’s copyrights. And while the court replaced Wollenberg’s “substantiality” test for fair use with one allowing parodists to copy enough to “conjure up” their target, it found the Pirates had overreached by this measure as well.

Kennedy petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari on behalf of O’Neill and London. (Stepanian did not join in this request for Richards.) The Copyright Act of 1976, Kennedy wrote, had made market value diminishment the prime requisite for denying fair use claims. Even though it did not apply to cases that arose before its passage, the act expressed Congress’ view. The 9th Circuit should have paid “greater deference” to this view.

On January 22, 1979, the Supreme Court, without comment, refused to hear the Air Pirates’ appeal.

Suddenly: “Ahhh, good! One more fight.”

“I got the news sitting in the bathtub in this tiny house with no foundation,” O’Neill remembers. “The bathtub is tilted; the water is cock-eyed; and Farley, my neighbor, hollers in the window, ‘O’Neill, you just lost nine-zip.’ I was feeling pretty low at this point. My second divorce had just hit. I had 700 pounds of hollering children and 340 pounds of mothers of those children attached to 3,000 pounds of district attorneys after me….I was thinking of jumping off a bridge. And suddenly — ‘Ahhh, good! One more fight.'”

“Doing something stupid once is just plain stupid,” says O’Neill. “Doing something stupid twice is a philosophy. When you’re down $190,000 in a poker game, you have to raise.” The next step was obvious: Commit a new crime. If O’Neill defied the injunction, Disney’s only recourse would be to have him held in contempt of court. “And then they have to put you in jail,” he says. “For drawing a mouse? In the land of the free? No way.”

O’Neill called Stewart Brand, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog and, since 1974, Co-Evolution Quarterly. Brand knew about the Air Pirates case, and he put four pages in the spring issue of the magazine at O’Neill’s disposal. O’Neill produced “Communique #1 From the M.L.F.” (Mouse Liberation Front). The comic opened with Mickey and Minnie happily married and living on a small farm in Mendocino County. They explained that, after 40 years in Hollywood, they had hit bottom, careers going nowhere, hooked on alcohol (him) and diet pills (her), having affairs, so jealous and embittered they had once almost put out a contract on Donald Duck.

Their children (Mortie and Ferdie) were so concerned that they hired “these bozo artists” (the Air Pirates) to kidnap and recondition them. Dosed with psychedelics and indoctrinated by sexuality seminars, Mickey and Minnie recommitted to each other, but Disney had the Pirates arrested and prosecuted. Now Mickey and Minnie wanted to speak out. They credited the Pirates with turning their lives around and defended the artists’ right to parody Disney by exactly copying its characters. They demanded that Disney cease all legal actions against the Pirates and work with them in a joint venture (“rebuilding Cleveland, making films, whatever”).

Mickey and Minnie noted that, while the court said “some” copying is permissible and “too much” is not, “No one, including the court, is sure how much is ‘some.'” O’Neill demonstrates the absurdity of this standard in a way that Louis Brandeis with a Ryder van full of footnotes could not. “Is this ‘some’?” he asks of a Minnie with an extra-fingered left mitt. “Is this ‘some’?” he inquires of a hairy-torsoed Mickey with a lengthy, naked, articulated tail.

On April 20, 1979, Disney petitioned to dismiss its remaining causes of action against the Pirates for trademark infringement, unfair competition, and trade disparagement. With its injunction in force and its award of damages sustained, it was content to let things conclude.

Then the Quarterly hit the stands.

On May 2, Disney moved to have Judge Wollenberg hold O’Neill, Brand, and POINT (the business entity that owned the magazine) in contempt, fine them $10,000 each, and order them to pay its attorneys’ fees and costs. The next day, it asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute them criminally.

Sometimes, “There are some facts too good to check”

Tired of going unpaid, the Pirates’ original counsel had jumped ship. O’Neill’s new lawyer, John Keker, responded to the contempt motion by reintroducing his client to Wollenberg as “an indigent cartoonist against whom Walt Disney Productions has a $190,000 judgment and whom Disney is now trying to put in jail.” Keker and Lawrence Klein, Brand’s lawyer, pointed out that the order the defendants stood accused of violating forbade O’Neill only from infringing upon Disney’s copyrights. Under the present state of the law, as defined by the Copyright Act of 1976, however, “Communiqué” was not an infringement but a fair use.

O’Neill’s pictures were “different caricatures expressing different themes in dissimilar contexts fulfilling dissimilar purposes” than any drawings Disney had ever issued. O’Neill had added original dialogue, locales, personalities, and story lines. No Disney mouse had ever been angst-ridden or espoused such bitterness at his employer or the legal system. Most important, O’Neill had caused Disney no economic harm.

If O’Neill and Brand were not covered by the fair use doctrine, the respondents continued, they certainly were protected by the First Amendment. “Communiqué” was a “political essay,” exploring the “metaphysical distinctions” underpinning copyright law and dramatizing Disney’s “draconian efforts” to muzzle O’Neill. Like any citizen, O’Neill had the right to mock Disney’s prosecution of him. As a cartoonist, he had the right to use pictures to do so.

The June 28 San Francisco Chronicle reported that a settlement seemed likely. The terms were rumored to include no admission of guilt by, and no jail time for, O’Neill, though the damage award would remain in place. O’Neill’s recollection of the final proceeding is positive. “It was great,” he says. “The judge told ’em, ‘I’m not gonna welcome this case into my court. If you bring him in on criminal contempt, he will bring up the First Amendment…I will not end my legal career as a judge that weakened the First Amendment….Now you knocked him down once, and he got up and hit you back. You knocked him down twice, and he got up and hit you back. You knocked him down three times, and he got up and hit you back. By now, you should have figured out he’s Irish.'”

Laveroni remembers no such admonition. Keker says, “It’s what Judge Wollenberg should have said. I have no recollection, so I can’t deny it was said. There are some facts too good to check.” He recalls that, during settlement discussions in the judge’s chambers, Disney’s lawyers insisted on a written promise from O’Neill to no longer draw Mickey Mouse.

“So I said, ‘All right’ and went out to Dan,” Keker says, “and he drew a picture of himself in a barrel, with no clothes on, saying ‘I won’t draw Mickey Mouse.’ I thought it was terrific. Wollenberg, who was a wonderful old guy, laughed and thought it was great; but Disney’s lawyers went crazy, behaving like a bunch of pompous assholes. ‘This shows how contemptuous he’s being….Blah blah….'”

It all ended in 1980, with the Pirates agreeing to abide by the original January 1975 injunction to not draw Disney characters for public display any longer and with the full judgment Woodruff had recommended against them, although there is no evidence Disney ever collected any of it. Newspaper reports referred to “apparently secret agreements” which provided that contempt charges would be dropped and Disney would not attempt to collect damages as long as O’Neill didn’t draw Mickey again. Disney was said to be out $2 million in legal fees from its campaign to scuttle the Pirates.

Copying “the heart of the original”

More than a decade later, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, finally addressed the Air Pirates’ arguments. The rap act 2 Live Crew had released a parody of the song “Oh, Pretty Woman” in 1989, and Acuff-Rose, which owned the publishing for the song, sued for copyright infringement. A U.S. district court granted 2 Live Crew’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed Acuff-Rose’s suit. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed, saying any infringement for commercial purposes was presumptively unfair and that, by taking “the heart of the original,” 2 Live Crew had taken too much.

The entire Supreme Court disagreed. The Court’s majority opinion, by Justice David Souter, reached its conclusion through a step-by-step analysis of the four factors of fair use set forth in the Copyright Act of 1976. Among its conclusions were that the crucial question about the infringing work’s “purpose and character” was not whether it was commercial or noncommercial but whether it copied the original in order to “supersede” it in the marketplace or to “transform” it into something new. When the infringing work was a parody, this question became whether the copying cast new “light” upon the original, enabling the public to view it in a new way.

The Supreme Court decided that even the original’s “heart” could be copied, so long as the parody did not become “a market substitute” for it. And the Court made clear that it did not matter if the parody depressed the sales of the original. Even a “lethal” parody that “kills demand” entirely may be a fair use. “Displacement” could be prohibited; “disparagement” could not.

In 30 pages, the Supreme Court mentioned Walt Disney Productions v. The Air Pirates only once — and unfairly, I believe. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a separate concurring opinion, dismissed the Pirates as “profiteers who [did] no more than…place the characters from a familiar work in novel or eccentric poses.”

Still, the Court eviscerated the Disney arguments that had swayed Judge Wollenberg and the 9th Circuit. Acuff-Rose, copyright authority Nimmer wrote, made market displacement “the most important, and, indeed, central fair use factor.” If Air Pirates Funnies did not “satisfy the same purpose” as Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories — and how, in God’s name, could you conclude it did? — it was a fair use.

My optimism should be tempered. When I ask Boston University law professor Wendy J. Gordon, who writes often on copyright, if she agrees the Pirates would have prevailed under Acuff-Rose, she replies, “On general principle I would agree with you, except that I think most courts are too sexually ill at ease to give Air Pirates fair use.”

Acuff-Rose gives cause for that skepticism. The Court stated it was not laying down “bright-line rules” and that future decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis. This caveat, coupled with Kennedy’s less-than-sensitive take on Air Pirates Funnies, suggests that it left a lot of room for judicial bias and subjectivity. As Nimmer has written, parodists need to “continue to pay their insurance premiums.”

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!

Monday, March 25, 2024

 

India Begins Its First Prosecution of Somali Pirates in More than a Decade

pirates seized by India
Pirates and their small boats offloaded in India marking the first time in more than a decade India has pursued the prosecution of pirates (Mininstry of Defence)

PUBLISHED MAR 25, 2024 2:25 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

India is proceeding with the prosecution of the 35 Somali pirates captured aboard the bulker Ruen 10 days ago. According to the reports, it is the first time in more than a decade that India has brought captured pirates back to the country for criminal charges revising an earlier policy of disarming the pirates and releasing them.

The pirates arrived in India on Saturday, March 23, and were handed over to the Mumbai police as additional details on the ransom demands and capture also came out in the media. The court on Monday ordered the 35 individuals remanded for 10 days while the cases are developed on charges including kidnapping for ransom, extortion, criminal conspiracy, wrongful confinement, attempted murder, and criminal intimidation. Part of the delay in the prosecution is that the captives are reporting to only speak the Somali language forcing the Mumbai police to obtain a translator.

The cases are being brought under India’s Maritime Anti-Piracy laws that were enacted in 2022. According to the reports, the 35 pirates could face life imprisonment or even the death penalty. After disembarking the pirates and handing them over to the police, they were taken to an Indian hospital for a medical examination. 

According to the media reports the pirates had told Navibulgar they wanted an astounding amount of nearly $60 million for the release of the Ruen (41,600 dwt) and the 17 crewmembers remaining aboard since the ship was seized in December 2023. One additional crewmember had been released at the beginning of the incident to the Indian Navy for medical attention. Separate reports are saying the pirates are currently demanding $5 million for the release of the Bangladeshi vessel Abdullah which is still being held in Somalia.

 

Indian forces rounded up the pirates on the deck of the Ruen in the Indian Ocean (Indian Navy)

 

The Indian Navy located the Ruen approximately 260 nautical miles to the east of Somalia on March 15. According to the reports, the Indian warship Kolkata confirmed the presence of the pirates aboard using a drone. When the pirates spotted the drone, they shot it down and fired shots toward the Indian warship.  

The Indians responded according to the reports by disabling the navigation systems and steering aboard the Ruen. With the bulker stopped in the ocean, an elite team of Indian commandos parachuted into the area but they were able to convince the pirates to surrender without the further use of force.

The Ruen was cleared by the commando team and the vessel was taken to India where it was returned to Bulgaria. The Ruen departed and is now near Oman. The ship is carrying 37,800 tons of coal worth around $1 million.

The police reported that the Indian Navy in addition to the 35 captives also handed over two small boats and three engines that they believe would have been used for additional attacks. They seized nine mobile phones and 196 live cartridges as well as a knife.

This weekend marked 100 days since India embarked on its latest security mission in response to the increased activity in the Indian Ocean coming from Somalia and the Houthi militants. India’s Ministry of Defence reports they have deployed 21 ships with 5,000 personnel, steaming over 450 days, and operating 900 flight hours. They have responded to 18 incidents reporting that have saved over 110 crewmembers and provided security for more than 450 vessels.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

 

Bulker Anchors off Somalia as Pirates are Reported on the Prowl for Targets

hijacked bulker
Hijacked bulker Abdullah being shadowed by EU forces (EUNAVFOR)

PUBLISHED MAR 14, 2024 3:12 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

The hijacked Bangladeshi bulker Abdullah anchored off Somalia on Thursday morning after unconfirmed reports of a possible failed rescue mission. At the same time, multiple security agencies are cautioning that they believe the pirate groups are prowling the waters for more vessels including possibly using the Navibulgar bulker Ruen they seized in December 2023.

With the monsoon season over and emboldened by their recent successes, several pirate groups are thought to now be hunting other targets. The security operation Maritime Security Centre - Horn of Africa (MSCHoA) and EUNAVFOR Atalanta are speculating that as many as five groups are active from three camps in Somalia spread out between the north, center, and south coast. They warn that the pirates are likely operating from mother boats scouting targets in favorable sea conditions for boarding.

The Abdallah was reported anchored near the Habyo port and Garacad along the central Somali coast. Government officials are saying that no contact has been established directly with the pirates but they are working with the international agencies. EUNAVFOR reports it is in contact with both Bangladesh and Somalia while the shipping company is also involving a UK-based insurance company to act as a go-between. 

Atalanta confirmed the vessel’s arrival off Somalia saying that their air and sea resources were tracking the vessel for more than 24 hours. They said that visual information shows at least 12 confirmed alleged pirates aboard the vessel. They are saying they may be from the same camp that also seized the Ruen in December.

While the EU operation is only acknowledging monitoring the bulker, the Daily Observer newspaper and others in Bangladesh are saying there were reports of shots fired late on Wednesday. The unconfirmed report speculates that a rescue attempt was underway before the vessel reached Somalia saying that an unidentified navy vessel approached the Abdullah. The pirates reportedly opened fire or possibly exchanged fire with the navy vessel which withdrew. It is possible that it was the monitoring operation and the pirates became spooked, but the newspaper says the pirates again threatened the lives of the crew telling them they would be killed if rescuers attempted to board the vessel.

MSCHoA and EUNAVFOR are saying that the danger zone has been extended north of Eyl up to a distance of 1,000 nautical miles.

While the Abdullah anchored, the Ruen departed and for the past 24 hours was reported heading east. The security operations are speculating it could be used as a mother ship for additional attacks. They are also citing that six dhows were hijacked in January. Further, an unidentified Iranian fishing dhow captured by the pirates is working in the region with EUNAVFOR warning it “is expected to make multiple attempts until it finds a ship to board.”

While the situation remains fluid with heightened warnings going out to all shipping, recriminations are mounting in Bangladesh over the incident. The newspapers are citing reports from Ambrey and others that the Abdullah appeared not to have taken precautions, such as razor wire or water hoses, while they are citing SK Shipping’s lack of security guards aboard the vessel.

Parent company Kabir Group and government officials are being quoted as saying that hundreds of vessels have been taken and returned peacefully. They said they were working to make contact with the pirates to negotiate the release of the crew.


Pirates Want $5M and Threaten to Kill Crew as Bulker is Taken to Somalia

bulker
Unconfirmed reports are the Abdullah will reach Somalia on Thursday morning (file photo)

PUBLISHED MAR 13, 2024 1:19 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

 

The pirates that boarded the Bangladesh-owned bulker Abdullah (58,000 dwt) have reportedly threatened the lives of the crewmembers if their ransom demands are not met. Government officials cautioned however that they have not yet been able to make contact with the boarders and expected that the ship would first be taken to a safe area before communication would be established. 

Several government officials speaking with the local media said everything was being done at all levels of government and through international partners including India for the safe return of the crewmembers. They said however they did not have any information about the media reports that family members were told the lives of the crew are being threatened.

Media reports are saying the Abdullah’s Chief Officer messaged family reporting the pirates said, “If the ransom is not paid, the crew will be shot dead one by one.”

Unconfirmed media reports from family members also said the pirates had told the crew they wanted $5 million from the government for the release of the ship. Reports are now saying that there are believed to be 22 pirates aboard the vessel with crewmembers telling family members the pirates have “heavy arms and ammunition.”

Crewmembers were able to communicate with families before reporting that the pirates were confiscating mobile phones. They said that the crew had been rounded up and were being locked in a room with their phones taken. Officials from the company however said they had been able to make brief contact on Wednesday morning a day after the vessel was taken and that the crew was safe and physically unharmed. There are 23 Bangladeshi crewmembers aboard.

The Bangladesh Merchant Marine Officers Association told local media that through the use of international resources they had been able to locate the ship approximately 170 nautical miles east of Somalia although the pirates disabled the AIS signal and other systems that would permit tracking the ship. Initially, the ship was making just 5 knots but later Wednesday they reported it has increased speed to between 11 and 14 knots. The Abdullah appears bound for Garakad, Somalia, the same general area where the bulker Ruen was taken after it was seized in December 2023.

Based on current data, they are estimating the ship will arrive in Somalia on Thursday morning. The ship had been traveling from Mozambique with 58,000 tonnes of coal bound for the UAE. Officials of SR Shipping Line, a division of KSRM Group (Kabir Steel and Rerolling Mill) said they were in close coordination with the government. They had notified the international authorities after they heard from the ship’s officers midday on Tuesday that the ship was being boarded. 

So far, the only communications the government said are through second parties. It was noted that another Bangladeshi vessel, the Jahan Moni, was taken in December 2010. The crew was recovered they said unharmed after 100 days.

The EU operation which for the past 15 years has been monitoring maritime security in the western Indian Ocean, EUNAVFOR Atalanta reports one of the vessels in its force is currently shadowing the bulker. Command for the operation said they are taking the lead and have been in contact with both Bangladeshi and Somali authorities. They are also coordinating with partners including the Indian Navy, which was successful in disrupting two previous attempted hijackings in 2024. They acknowledged the vessel is sailing toward the Somali coast and that "the action is ongoing."