Dial 'P' for pirates

Via my brother, Chuck, who left a comment on yesterday's post about going after the Somali pirates on shore.

A BBC reporter provides an amusing view into how she got the Somali pirates who are holding the Sirius Star supertanker on the phone.

It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.

"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."

My daughter had heard me repeatedly trying to get through to the Somali pirates on board the Sirius Star.

They usually picked up the phone but put it down again when I said I was from the BBC. My obsession with getting through to them had reached the point that I had even saved their number on my mobile phone.

"Mummy, mummy, please can I phone the pirates for you?"

"No."

"Pleeeeez."

By this time, with rain battering my windscreen and cars jamming the road, I was at the end of my tether.

"OK", I said, tossing the phone into the back of the car.

"They are under P for pirates."

"Hello. Please can I talk to the pirates," said my daughter in her obviously childish voice.

I could hear someone replying and a bizarre conversation ensued which eventually ended when my daughter collapsed in giggles.

Of course, this being the BBC and all, the reporter can't help but feel sorry for the bad guys and educate us on the "root causes" of piracy:

A pirate, who called himself Daybad, spoke in Somali, calmly and confidently. He said Somalis were left with no choice but to take to the high seas.

"We've had no government for 18 years. We have no life. Our last resource is the sea, and foreign trawlers are plundering our fish."

OK, maybe that's not fair. We've known since Bill Clinton's first term that Somalia is 'profoundly under the shithammer'.