Interesting how it all works out sometimes: Near the same waters where the USS John C. Stennis rescued the crew of the Al Mulhai, there’s word of the Iranian navy rescuing the crew of the Xianghuamen from pirates.
No, the Chinese are no closer to throwing their weight around the Gulf of Oman than they were back in October of 2009, yet it is interesting how much more committed IRIN is to showing the flag after the embarassment of having the “Great Satan” keep their waters open for them. (While in the process of demonstating that at any time thay they could close those waters as well, but that’s details…) Which just goes to show, that when you go pirate and sail against all flags, some of those you’re up against that you’d never expect to band together just might…
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Mind you, you say “pirates” to anyone outside of the shipping industry, or to people who think Jane’s Defense Weekly is part of a series that has “Dick and…” in the title of all volumes, they tend to think of characters from the Golden Age of Piracy, the rough folk from the early 18th Century we remember better from J. M. Barrie’s work.
Folk such as the ones featured in the advertising campaign for Island Federal Credit Union based in Hauppauge,NY. Which when you look closely says something interesting here…
The obvious element they go for is the whole pirate attitude, the bucking the system mystique that define pirates and keep them popular today. See, the point of their campaign is to offer themselves as a viable alternative to the “big banks,” the commercial institutions that frankly could easily make the Dutch East India Company of that day seem like a forlorn subsidiary in an asset-to-asset comparison. And considering the rise of piracy in that period was in large part in defiance of the Mercantilist System, where capital was restricted to limited avenues where the house would always win by taking a cut at every turn…
Yeah, that’s kind of a mixed metaphor, roll with me here a sec…
…because piracy was in part about taking money out of the preferred avenues of circulation and keeping some of it aside, what better spokesfolks can you use for a credit union than pirates? And how many other businesses can you think of where pirates are just so right for your ad campaign?
My only real question is, why they went with actors when the folks of Long Island’s own Ye Pyrate Brotherhood could probably have crewed the spot. Then again, bankers being who they are, they probably wanted someone who wasn’t going to misread their letter of marque, ifyouknowwhatImean…
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Anyways, if you think even these folks are too serious for you, there’s always the crew you can play in the game Pirates of the Stupid Seas. For a flash game consisting of ballistic puzzles with a pirate theme, it’s not half bad, and the special features you can unlock when you get full sets of treasure are interesting. No, Sid Meiyer has nothing to worry about from them, but it makes for a pretty decent time waster.
I should know; I am so far behind in moving the novel along…
James Ryan 