from the hip

As a kid, I used to love playing a pirate. There was something mysteriously romantic and exotic about pirates. When we played pirates, we all had pistols, some of the guys would also have swords or knives. And masks and eye patches, of course, was a part of it, as pirates, in our conception, were usually one eyed.

Later I admit to liking to read historical novels with fights with pirates, like for instance Dewey Lambdin’s books about the fictional naval hero Alan Lewrie or Steve Brennan’s The Gigantic Book of Pirate Stories. But until recently I have considered piracy something remote, something belonging to ancient times, even though I knew that the practice has persisted in the Malacca straits and a few other places.

However. I can’t say that I find the surge in piracy that we have witnessed recently very romantic. Piracy seems, oddly, to have become a booming business in some parts of the world. Sea borne piracy against transport vessels is a significant issue (with estimated worldwide losses of US $13 to $16 billion per year), particularly in the waters between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, off the Somali coast, and also in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore, which are used by over 50,000 commercial ships a year. You can see a list of the pirate prone areas at the ICC web site.

The business model employed by some of the modern pirates, most notably the pirates in Somalia, is fairly straight forward. They hijack ships, take over control, bring them into harbor some place along the coast, and then negotiate a price for freeing the ship, including, usually, its crew and cargo. The modern pirates favor small, fast boats and take advantage of the small number of crew members on modern cargo vessels. They also use large vessels to supply the smaller attack/boarding vessels.

Modern piracy thrive on conditions of political unrest. Thus, countries with limited territorial control provide good bases for modern piracy. You can see a movie of pirates taking a capture super tanker into a little fishing village in Somalia on Guardians web site! (See also New York Times on this).

It is to some extent odd that this practice can exist today. The Romans fought piracy, and at one point largely wiped it out in the Mediterranean. But today, with modern fighter planes, modern navies, efficient guns and rockets, as well as electronic surveillance, that fight should be much easier, even though the seas are still huge. As it is, we don’t really fight them, even though the West sometimes gets into the occasional little fight and some of them are killed or captured.

I think they survive because of leniency from the West. As long as they don’t expand their business too much, and don’t really do too much damage to international shipping, and especially the oil trade, they are more or less ignored - at least in the sense that the West is unwilling to use the level of force necessary to remove the problem completely. Also, who is to pay for it? The pirates to some extent get away with it because the patrols and military actions required to take them out is a collective good nobody at present is willing to pay for.

So, modern piracy is bad, but I think it is bad because we permit it to happen.

A Norwegian agent of the National Security Authority was sentenced in Norway a few days ago for downloading and storing child pornography. He actually did this at work! Aftenposten writes:

The man, who did not have an Internet connection at home, used two years before his arrest in March 2006, sitting in a former NATO bunker in Kolsås and filling 99 CDs with child pornography, involving the abuse of minors as young as four to five years of age.

.. The NSM worker had the highest security clearance at the time, with access to top secret material when arrested.

The NSM’s own control system picked up the abnormal network traffic on their service server, and notified police.

The secret agent actually had compiled a collection of 600 films and 1750 images of hard-core child porn while on the job.

I guess secret agents aren’t all like James Bond after all?!? Sad, sad.

The Austrain Incest Case

Father Confesses to Horrific Crime. He held his daughter prisoner and abused her for decades. In the most spectacular kidnapping and incest case in Austrian history, a man has confessed to having held his daughter hostage for 24 years and siring seven children with her. (Der Spiegel)

Austria Stunned by Case of Imprisoned Woman. With his Mercedes-Benz and his fine clothes, Josef Fritzl looked every inch a property owner, neighbors in this tidy Austrian town said Monday. Even when running errands, they said, he wore a natty jacket, crisp shirt and tie. (New York Times)

The Family Man of Amstetten: Double life of a pillar of Austrian society. How did the perpetrator of one of modern Europe’s most horrific crimes convince his neighbours he was a respectable man? (The Independent)

Josef Fritzl: a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant. Casual acquaintances knew Josef Fritzl as a jovial fellow who liked to drink beer and enjoyed a bawdy joke.

But former neighbors say the man accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering her seven children ran his household like a dictator. Piece by piece, a picture is emerging of a shrewd liar and an obsessive tyrant. (International Herald Tribune/AP)
(more…)

The case about Josef Fritzl, the Austrian that kidnapped his own daughter and kept her in a small underground apartment, behind seven locked doors, for 24 years while he abused her both sexually and in other ways, represents, to me, evil in a pure, undiluted form. Not only bad, evil acts, but systematic, organized evil.

As the full extent of his actions has been revealed - the torment to which he exposed his daughter for almost a quarter of a century, raping her and fathering her seven children in that little cave - I have become more and more perplexed. How can this be? How is such behavior possible in our time and age? How can a man become such a monster? And at a more practical level - how could a thing like this go on in a civilized, well-regulated society for 24 years?

A man claiming to be protecting his family, but obviously also a man who knew this his style of protection was more than a little at odds with socially accepted forms of protection. While his lawyer may be able to see good things in Fitzl, I really do not.

We are starting to learn a little bit about his past. It sheds considerable light on the question of how he became the monster. It offers, possibly, at least the beginnings of a seemingly plausible psychological explanation for his monstrous crimes. The Independent writes:

In an interview, the sister of Fritzl’s wife, Rosemarie, a woman identified as 56-year-old Christine R said that Fritzl had been brought up by a single mother with an explosive temper who resorted to violence to control her child.

“Josef grew up without a father. His mother raised him with her fists,” Mrs R said. “She used to beat him black and blue almost every day. Something must have been broken in him because of that. He was unable to feel any kind of sympathy for other people. He humiliated my sister for most of her life.”

He grew up being systematically subjected to and controlled by violence. But even so, the case still makes me perplex. The reason is that Josef F. at the same time was so much more than a monster, in other settings, with other people. He was evil incarnate, but also a smiling, respected, and somewhat successful businessman who amassed a fortune of 4 million dollars or so.

Over the years, more than 100 people have rented rooms and apartments from him. Seemingly without having much of a clue as to what went on. Apart from one person, that is, who has admitted to knowing about sexual abuse. But he was scared of Josef F. and did not dare to report it to anyone. Also, it has become known that Josef’s brother had a key to the basement.

Lately, after the case has become public, we have also seen a number of old, unsolved crimes resurfacing. An unsolved murder, several unsolved rapes. So far, the ties to Josef F. are speculative. But it would not, I guess, be very surprising if they turned out to be real. According to Der Spiegel, he raped his own daughter in front of her his and her children. So why should anything be a surprise?

So there was Josef F. the beast, and there was Josef F. the family man, and Josef F. the businessman. Possibly Josef F. the murderer and rapist. The multiple faces of Josef F. And the smiling face with the evil behind.

The little we know about his background, so far, may perhaps begin to explain, partly at least, the monster. However, explaining how the monster could coexist, seemingly with easy, with the other faces of Josef Fritzl, is a bigger challenge.

More about this case:

The Independent: The Making of a Monster

No need to be surprised when a house of horrors turns up on a quiet provincial street

Josef Fritz in the news

New York Times: Austria Stunned by Case of Imprisoned Woman

Painting a portait of Austrian incest suspect Josef Fritzl

Guardian (UK): How many more of our missing are stuck in some underground prison? (Expert view)

‘Every little thing she did, her father would hit her’

I always get very suspicious when governments, at whichever level, are eager to block, halt or close down fraud investigations. Now Gordon Brown is eager to close down the fraud investigation against BAE Systems.

It is a strange case. Tony Blair pressed Robert Wardle, the director of the Serious Fraud Office, to drop the investigation into secret payments by the arms company to Saudi Arabia. Then the case was brought before the high court. On Thursday, the high court, according to Guardian, 

rejected claims that the inquiry had had to be closed down for security reasons because “lives were at risk” if Britain no longer received intelligence on national security from Saudi Arabia.
…  Lord Justice Moses, .. with Lord Justice Sullivan attacked the government’s interference as unlawful.
In their ruling, the judges said: “We fear for the reputation of the administration of justice if it can be perverted by a threat … No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice. The rule of law is nothing if it fails to constrain overweening power.”

Gordon Brown and the Conservatives in England are trying to hide something. For the moment it is difficult to know exactly what. But that it is something that would be hard to defend publicly is clear.

I don’t think Gordon Brown will be able to stop the investigation. I don’t like it when politicians place themselves above the law and above the high court.

From freeinternetpress.com:

The court said that the Saudis should have been made to understand “the enormity of the interference with the U.K.’s sovereignty, when a foreign power seeks to interfere with the internal administration of the criminal law. It is not difficult to imagine what they would think if we attempted to interfere with their criminal justice system”.

The high court will reconvene in a fortnight to decide what remedy to award the two groups of anti-corruption activists who brought the judicial review of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) decision to end the inquiry.

The UK activist groups Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House have done a great job in bringing this before the high court and winning. They deserve support in the continuation of this story as well.

I certainly will support them!

_____________________________

Here is a little background on the case:

The arms company BAE secretly paid Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia more than £1bn in connection with Britain’s biggest ever weapons contract, it is alleged today.

A series of payments from the British firm was allegedly channelled through a US bank in Washington to an account controlled by one of the most colourful members of the Saudi ruling clan, who spent 20 years as their ambassador in the US.

It is claimed that payments of £30m were paid to Prince Bandar every quarter for at least 10 years.

No, even that doesn’t bother me very much. Until recently, under UK law, even this was legal. Indeed, it was tax deductible, so legal was it.

This is the bit that does worry me though:

It is alleged by insider legal sources that the money was paid to Prince Bandar with the knowledge and authorisation of Ministry of Defence officials under the Blair government and its predecessors. For more than 20 years, ministers have claimed they knew nothing of secret commissions, which were outlawed by Britain in 2002.

See also: BAE corruption investigation switches to Tanzania

We all know that Norway is an expensive place to visit. However, it may well be that some of the prices are even higher than you may think. I would even so far as to say pretty wild.

A Norwegian blogger yesterday published the fines local police authorities in Norway issues for minor offenses like urinating in public (or in the snow, as the case may be), drinking in public, or starting a fight.

The fine for peeing in the snow in the small city of Trysil, according to the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, cited by the blogger, is NOK 10.000. That’s approximately USD 2.000 or GBP 900!

Here is the headline from Dagbladet:

10 000 i bot for å tisse ute

Politiet i Trysil har egne påskepriser for dobesøk ute i naturen.

It says: “10.000 for peeing outdoors. The police in Trysil have their own prices for using nature as a toilet”.

Here is the list of prices compiled by the blogger:

• Trysil: Peeing in the snow - USD 2.000-3.000
• Trysil: Drinking in a public place - same
• Voss: Public fighting - USD 1.000
• Voss: Peeing - USD 400
• Beitostolen/Kvitfjell: Peeing USD 600-1.000

The official term, of course, is not peeing, but urinating in a public place. I’m just abbreviating a little.

Many people ask themselves, quite understandable, what to do when they are out skiing and need to pee? One commentator on the Norwegian blog suggested breaking into a cabin and peeing there. The fine for breaking and entry when in distress is lower than that for peeing, was his argument.

While imposing fines on foreigners and people from the cities seems to be a favorite activity for the Norwegian police, and no doubt brings money into the coffers of the Government and the police departments, crime is rising rapidly in Norway. Many Norwegians, therefore, feel that the focus of the police may be slightly misdirected.