Respect Authority

Even pirates negotiate. 

While we in America are wringing our hands over maybe thinking about potentially meeting scary foreign leaders without preconditions, Somali pirates currently holding a Ukrainian tanker with military cargo off of Somalia said Monday that they may extend their deadline to, um, destroy the ship and everyone on it.  

The pirates are saying they will blow up the MV Faina on Monday night or early Tuesday unless Ukraine pays them a hefty ransom (seriously, this stuff still happens) but may extend the deadline following requests from the ship’s owner and “other unidentified people” (my money’s on the 20 close-to-certain-death crew members). The pirates were reviewing the deadline to see whether to “modify it and if that is not possible, to execute,” pirate spokesman Sugule Ali told The Associated Press. 

In Kiev, relatives of the ship’s crew members are pretty pissed off that their government has yet to fork over the $20 million ransom, but I think it’s pretty clear what the real question here is: What is, and how do I become, a pirate spokesman?

Pirates have, according to AP, seized more than two dozen ships this year off the Horn of Africa, and often simply hold crew members hostage with little threat of violence, in exchange for ransoms generally topping $1 million. This particular ship drew both pirate and mainstream media interest because it has military cargo that no one wants pirates getting their rapscallion hands on.

But extraordinary circumstances aside, it seems a pirates spokesman, or spokeswoman, would make a fair amount of booty, as it were, simply by acting as a mouthpiece in pirate negotiations (because Lord knows pirates are not the best communicators). 

For any potential pirate readers of RA, I’d like to explain why exactly I qualify for this particular job. For one, as stated in my previous post, I often long for the day when people were obsessed with pirates and I would certainly prefer pirates’ hard-line negotiating over life and death to vampires’ I-will-straight-up-kill-you approach. Secondly, I’m quite good at negotiating. The other day I received four free bananas with my sandwich at the local deli; this may or may not be because I am female, and therefore receive special attention from most people wielding banana-shaped objects, but I consider my feminine wiles no small advantage against other pirate negotiators. Third, I’m very plugged in to pirate goings-on, as evidenced not only by my finding this story, but also by the fact that I have dressed up as a pirate for no less than three Halloweens in my lifetime and would consider repeating the effort this year in exchange for said position.

Fourth, and finally, I’ve already printed up business cards (pictured) with “pirate spokeswoman” on them. Color me prepared.