Red Herring

The disadvantages of reacting to partial sound bites from an authoritarian establishment pursuing single-minded geopolitical agendas couldn’t have been clearer: the world’s markets went into a tizzy when the Chinese central bank announced it would manage the Yuan more flexibly in future. Analysts around the world, no doubt fortified by advanced spreadsheets and financial models on their computers, told us, in great detail, the impact a presumably appreciating Yuan would have on currencies, commodities, global trade, stock markets and on the cost of my cat’s pet food. The Chinese economy will cool down, we were told, as their export led economy slowed on the back of a stronger Yuan. Commodity prices and trade would be hit as Chinese demand fell. Shipping would suffer; dry cargo rates plunged as a result.


A day later, when the same Chinese central bank announced that it would maintain a stable exchange rate, and did not anticipate any major change in the Yuan’s value, all those analysts were silent. Probably exhausted after a high adrenalin 24 hours of calculations, I think.

As always, what the Chinese have done is outsmarted most everybody else while pursuing a straight-line agenda. Some of us, in India and elsewhere, used to the cacophony and chaos of capitalist democracies, do not appreciate the fact that the Chinese ship may steer a few degrees this way and that, but its long-term course is as straight as an arrow. They always, without exception, have an eye on the big picture being painted and add a brushstroke or two with every announcement.


My read of the statements is this: One, the timing of the announcement, a week before the G-20 summit in Toronto, was meant to deflect criticism that the Chinese currency was artificially kept undervalued at everybody else’s expense. The statement did just that: it also allowed the US and President Obama, critical of Chinese policy, a rare face saving moment. Two, the Chinese have been trying, over the last many weeks, to cool down their overheated real estate markets, which some call the biggest real estate bubble in the world today. A perceived slowdown may help in this control. Three, I wouldn’t hold my breath anticipating a Yuan spike anytime soon, because an appreciation of their currency is bound to jeopardise China’s export-led economy. Given labour unrest, an open secret in the country today, the Chinese can ill afford to have people losing jobs; that may cause disgruntlement and threaten their very foundation; a totalitarian system so far in absolute control. Four, jingoistic American thinking may suggest- as it does with outsourcing to India- that an appreciating Yuan will mean manufacturing jobs coming back to the US. The fact is, however, that these jobs are more likely to go to other developing countries so far made uncompetitive by the Yuan’s artificial value, and will not be ‘coming home’ to the US anytime soon. And five, China owns more around 1.6 trillion dollars of US securities, and is buying more dollar denominated debt every week; it will not want to see its investments depreciating unless there is a political or military advantage that justifies the loss.

The Chinese Yuan affair is a red herring, in my view. The dragon’s economy may well cool down, but the reason for this will not be the Yuan’s presumed rising value; The reality is that Chinese exports are much more likely to be hit, simply, by a drop in demand from the US and Europe. This will obviously have a direct and negative impact on shipping.

The UK, after Greece and Spain, was forced to announce ‘austerity measures’ last week. The Euro zone is in a sovereign debt crisis. Consumption will come down; it has to. The levels of debt for the US and UK are staggering and at unprecedented levels; worse, the City of London and North Sea oil, two of the UK’s largest earners, are running out of time and gas. The US, on the other hand, is being bled by two wars it can no longer afford, and, while there may well be a spike in tanker demand after the Deep Water Horizon catastrophe (although a US judge has overturned Obama’s moratorium on drilling even as I write this), expecting large scale demand to pick up from that country very quickly may be futile. The US Federal Reserve indicated so when he announced last week that events in Europe may slow US recovery.

The Yuan’s assumed appreciation is, in any case, not going to solve Europe’s problems or the ones in the US; their economies are hardly going to start growing again just because the Chinese central bank made a statement or two on exchange rates- or even if the Yuan appreciated slightly. As for China, a rising Yuan is not the issue they face. Their issue is that two of China’s largest markets – the EU and the US- are struggling and therefore will buy less. One doesn’t need a spreadsheet to work out the impact on China of this slowdown.


Shipping, with its added tonnage supply overhang problems, needs to be cautious today- perhaps even more so. Governments pumping in trillions around the world may have averted catastrophe in recent times, but equally importantly, this artificiality has hidden the greater problem from obvious view. The price for the excesses committed during the boom years has still not been paid; in fact, it may have been deepened or postponed by the bailouts. The consequences of decades of countries living beyond their means are still being listed. Countries are being bailed out in the developed world.


Regional markets aside, to think that broad shipping demand will shoot through the roof in all this may be very, very wishful. One does not need a spreadsheet to know that either.
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Future Shock

An entertaining Chief Officer I sailed with long ago (the same one who put up a checklist in his cabin for going to the loo, starting with opening the door and ending with spraying air freshener) had a theory about international trade.  After a couple of months of carrying steel products into Thailand from elsewhere and then carrying other identical steel products out of Thailand to the same elsewhere, he said that merchant shipping would become superfluous as soon as people realised what was being produced next door.

I was reminded of that statement as I read conflicting reports recently: reports that made me wonder if shipping experts really had any clue of what was going on in their own backyards. All their studies bore on the dry cargo and tanker oversupply situation that is supposed to either hit freight rates badly or not affect them much in the next couple of years, depending on which expert one listens to. As many ships are on order as there are afloat now in the dry cargo market, one says. En masse cancellations are likely, says another. But orders made to greenfield shipyards don't count, says a third, pointing out that those shipyards themselves may now never be built because capital has dried up. Only twenty percent of the order book will actually be delivered, another analyst says with suspiciously remarkable accuracy, considering that nobody seems to have any remotely accurate system that would give numbers of how many vessels will finally be spewed out through the pipeline.

Whatever the experts say, it is clear to anybody that there are simply too many ships around today for the cargo on offer, and that this mismatch between demand and supply will not vanish next Monday. This is because when freight rate graphs were hitting the roof, many owners extrapolated those graphs to infinity, got excited access to the easy credit sloshing around the system and bought or ordered ships greedily like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately, tomorrow is now here.

To compound the usual myopia, everybody forgot that it is not easy to get rid of assets when markets crash, especially large assets like ships. They even forgot that shipowning is a long term commitment and that shipping has always been a cyclical industry. The chickens have come home to roost now. To make matters worse, the last couple of months have seen fuel prices rising, more than doubling since last December. This has hit shipowners even as they struggle to dodge the sword of Damocles- tonnage in the pipeline over the next two years- hanging over their heads.

Notwithstanding the spike in rates from the second half of October that have relieved those that look for green shoots with magnifying glasses, it seems to me that things are obviously going to get worse before they get better. There may be periodic glimmers of hope, like temporary or calculated Chinese demand (again) spiking rates for a while before they drift down, or the hope that trade will improve with better than expected figures now coming out of the US economy. Freight or hire rates in different sectors may be out of sync for awhile, like what has happened with tanker rates recently as compared to bulk carrier ones. Let’s ignore box ships for now; they have been particular casualties in this mayhem. One of the same experts predicts that container companies are going to lose 20 billion US dollars this year. The fact that a record 11.7 percent of the box ship fleet is presently idle and that the containership segment will grow just 6 percent in 2009, the lowest growth rate in the last decade, speaks for itself. The same analysts expect the idle fleet size to peak by February 2010 before easing, though what will happen to the 1.8 million TEU scheduled for 2010 delivery is anybody’s guess; one can be quite sure that deliveries will be deferred wherever possible). 

But here's the thing: Whether things get better or worse in the short term, we in the maritime industry have so far been used to the surety that the long term will surely be to our advantage. That may well be true this time around too; at least all the experts seem to think so. However, I suggest that the industry could do well to factor in a couple of particular caveats into their plans this time.

The first one is actually more a paradigm shift than a caution: With the Chinese economy rivalling the US one, (some voices are already saying that it is globally the more important one of the two) there will be, inevitably, a shift in the kind of tonnage required in the future, Chinese (and even Indian or Brazilian) demand being of a different nature than that from the US. The requirement of more raw material carriage, for example.

It would be simpler if this was merely a matter of shipowners adjusting the kind of ships they buy and operate, which is what they have always done as they react to demand and supply. However, it may require greater nimbleness this time around, because I have a sneaking suspicion that US consumption will remain slow even after their economy recovers. I suspect that we have already seen the heydays of American consumerist prodigality: there will be much that the US just cannot afford now, and some scales may have well fallen off some eyes. If this happens, it will inevitably put pressure on Chinese exports, with a result that overall trade between the two behemoths may well remain sluggish. Of course, other developing countries, including India, may well pick up the slack. Regardless, shipowners will have to react to these developments with much greater agility; they may even have to predict the developments better to take full advantage of the opportunities; paradigm shifts demand this.

The second caveat is that the industry will have to factor in, much sooner than they think, one new heading under costs into their business plans. Let’s call this heading ‘Environmental Costs’; included will be many new headings of expenses including expenses related to shifting to cleaner and greener fuels and new ballast water treatment requirements.  The costs involved in both are likely to be worryingly steep. All of us know about the high costs for cleaner fuel, of course, but those who think that ballast water treatment will not be all that expensive need to think again. As an example, US laws in the pipeline will require what the American Waterways Association, a trade body, calls “extremely expensive ballast water treatment systems” to be installed on board.

Of course, there will be, probably justifiably, no let up in pressure on the maritime industries to do more to protect the environment. ‘Environmental Costs’ will keep on rising as new regulations we cannot even envisage now are enacted across the world; Shipping will not be left alone much longer, confusion after Copenhagen notwithstanding. Unfortunately, going greener costs money and impacts shipowner profitability.  If bottomlines are squeezed beyond a point, freight rates will be pressurised northwards. Is the global consumer prepared to pay more for just about everything yet?

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Theme from Shaft

Stories have started trickling in again about cash strapped companies abandoning crews without salaries, or even without food and water. In one case, a company even refused to repatriate the dead body of a crewmember on a ship stuck in Africa. It is often difficult to know the full extent of this problem; the old boy network that exists in the industry does not encourage publicity detrimental to certain commercial interests, especially if these are large Shipmanagement setups or their Principals. However, organisations like the ITF have started ringing alarm bells.


I am reminded of the recession in the eighties. Although I was fortunate to escape largely unscathed, I do recall joining a horde of officers at one small (now huge) manning company's offices at Ballard Pier. I remember vividly, twenty five years later, how everybody in that office, as in many others, treated all of us, Third Mates and Masters alike, with disdain and disrespect bordering on contempt. For some obscure reason, even the peons, receptionists and clerks (access to a manager? Ha!) did not have the basic courtesy to tell us that there were no openings; they seemed to take an unholy delight in making us fill forms and hang around their office for the day, and then ask us to return the next day. I did that for two days and then tore my form up, vowing never to enter that firm's offices ever again.


(How times change. That same organisation now periodically tom toms the fact that it considers its seafarers 'part of a family'. I can only say, based on my experience and that of others much more recently, that their family must be incestuous.)


I was present, too, when a friend of mine in dire straits after Scindias closed down visited some seedy manning setup in a dive near the then named VT in Mumbai. He was asked to pay twenty rupees for the form to apply for a job that we later found out never existed. Some joker had decided that duping broke seafarers of twenty bucks apiece was a good way of making money.


As it turns out, we got away lightly. A collage of anecdotes heard now flashes before me as I write this: these tales cover not just the recessionary period of the eighties but a few years after that too, when manning agents continued with the same mindset. Incidentally, I believe this: that although many call themselves 'Shipmanagement Companies' now, the mentality has not really changed. Sometimes a rose by another name doesn't smell as sweet.


And so, I recall a Chief Officer telling me in the nineties boom, when officers were getting scarce, that he went around agreeing to join the companies that had treated him shabbily in the past, did his medicals, collected his ticket and missed the flight. A Fourth Engineer telling me in the eighties how he was never paid a year's wages in a pretty well known outfit. A Third Engineer returning with some minor engine spares as poor compensation for unpaid wages after the owner sent in some musclemen to rough up the protesting crew. Stories of terrible treatment and living conditions, substandard food and threadbare wages. A Second Mate told me he worked as a certified officer for just food and board in an Indian company. A batchmate told me that one of the best known Indian companies asked him to come back after six years of unpaid leave. An out of work junior officer was found working as a parking attendant in Delhi. Minor demonstrations in Mumbai by officers were witnessed. A national magazine ran a lead story on the Indian seafarer's plight; usual crocodile tears were shed and wiped away.


Of course, none of this is news to those of us who lived through that period. However, such anecdotes of downright mistreatment and criminal dereliction would certainly be an eye opener to the many who joined the industry in the nineties and later, and who should be wary now. Those mariners who have seen just good times and the facade put on by the same manning agents in times of officer shortage should not be shocked if they suddenly start getting treated like poop stuck under somebody's shoe.


All indications are that the theories of an immediate revival in the global economy are somewhat overstated. It is not my case that shipping is absolutely down and out, but with unique issues of overcapacity, shipping might well take longer to recover. It is best to be forewarned and forearmed in case this happens; in such conditions, the default schizophrenic thinking of some shipmanagement honchos and their client owners is to shaft the seafarer of his legitimate dues, for a start.


My two paisa worth of advice to mariners: Stick to good setups, which may not always the biggest or the best known ones. Work directly for owners. Don't be bothered by a salary difference of a few hundred dollars. Most importantly, perform professionally.


And expect professional behaviour in return. At the first sign of trouble, especially unpaid wages, walk away.


Because it is better to lose a month's wages than a year’s.

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Different Strokes

At Differentship Management, we are as numbed by the alarming figures coming out of the industry as any of you. Shocked by the reports of ships laid up across the board, we are aware that VLCCs are being used for storage, as also new box ships. Storing oil and empties is cheaper on a laid up ship than in port now. We do not believe that the recent revival of the Baltic Indices is sustainable, because they are not backed up by improved figures coming out of the global economy. Quite the contrary.


Differentship does not believe that the old paradigms of marine recruitment, whether at sea or ashore, apply today. In fact, we have often criticised those prototype solutions as unsustainable at the best of times. The inability of most of the industry to maintain quality in the recent boom, or even produce the required supply of manpower, bears this thinking out.


After a fair deal of thought, therefore, Differentship has decided on the following course of action within the group. Our aim is the retention of excellence by promoting
long term mutually beneficial associations with our employees, both ashore and afloat.


We now make this plan public.



Strategically,

The execution of our plans will be made in a manner that is transparent to all employees, whether at sea or afloat.
The execution of our plans will be carried out in a legal and ethical manner. Our behaviour towards our employees has never been variable, or dependant on market conditions, and we see no reason to change that now.
We have, at present, 50 ships under management. Although this number can certainly decrease if conditions get worse, we intend to maintain our shore and floating staff at a level that will sustain this number with excellence.
We do not see great issues with financing Differentship’s initiatives. As we will show here, enough lard exists in the system that can be burnt off. Additionally, we have some out of the box plans to ensure economic sustainability.
We will pursue our new initiative with vigour for 3 years starting today. Although this initiative will be reviewed annually, our commitments made now to our employees will remain unchanged for 3 years.
The initial selection process of employees will be intensive, robust and discriminating. We will ensure that only excellent performers are identified. If in doubt, the new plan will not be offered to many.


Tactically

This is what we have started doing today:


Floating staff

A three year contract will be signed between Differentship and carefully selected floating staff that are willing to participate. The contract will be renewable at the end of three years. We are calling this a ‘permanent contract’.
Differentship will offer this permanent contract to 60 officers, Cadets and Crew of each rank. The balance of our requirements, if any, will be met by additional contractual seafarers, although we intend to have permanent employees wherever possible, subject to our overriding requirement of retaining excellence.
A penalty of a three months salary will be payable and incorporated in this contract, in case either party decides to renege. Our lawyers assure us that this is legally binding and enforceable. We hold ourselves to the same penalty, as a sign of our commitment.
Cadets will be offered full pay, whether at sea or not. We estimate that the cost of this, at 12,000 dollars a month, is well worth the future payoff of well trained officers within our fleet.
All other officers and crew will be paid 25% less salary (now called ‘new salary’) than they presently receive when sailing. A minimum of four months full salary will be guaranteed each year, in the event that the employee does not sail for four months.
When not sailing, all officers and crew will receive wages of 15% of the new salary each month when at home. In return, they agree to undergo online training programmes which we are in the process of finalising, from within the comfort of their homes. We guarantee our mariners more than five months salary every year with these initiatives (4 months seagoing plus 15% for 8 months). Of course, if one sails more than four months, one earns more.
These terms will remain in force for the three year period even if market wages collapse elsewhere, provided the employee does not take up any alternate employment.
Tenures on board will be determined by repatriation costs. We expect some flexibility in this regard from seagoing employees. Our intention, however, is to align these tenures with the contract system as it is followed today, where rank determines the length of seagoing time.
All other present terms and conditions now stand cancelled.
Annual bonuses will be payable depending on company performance to all employees, whether at sea or afloat.
Although a seagoing employee will remain subject to dismissal for fraud and gross negligence, we believe that with our robust selection process already in place, the chances of this are negligible. It does not bear repeating that we pride ourselves on being ethical, and so it will be in this eventuality. The process will be transparent to all employees and subject to peer review.


A simple calculation will show that seagoing staff will get the benefit of permanent employment for three years without a great drop in income. This will remain even if contractual wages collapse elsewhere.

Cadets will be assured employment for three years. Sea time requirements may take longer to complete if fleet size decreases; however, we will persuade owners to increase berths for cadets, which are relatively low cost.

Differentship will get the benefit of retaining performers and weeding out the non performing staff. We envisage that we will be in an excellent position to grow whenever the global economy turns around, as it eventually will. Meanwhile, we will strengthen bonds with our employees within the group.




Shore staff

As with seagoing staff, we will retain shore staff at a level that will support 50 ships. The retention will be based on performance alone. People asked to leave will be given three months notice with full wages.

The following will apply to retained shore staff

A three year ‘permanent contract’ similar to the one with floating staff will be signed. This will have similar enforcement penalties and bonus plans.
As with seagoing employees, shore employees will be subject to a 25% pay cut.
Traditionally, wages at sea have been considerably higher than shore wages, everything else being equal. Largely because of the different nature of work, this is also partly because a shore employee works almost throughout the year. With this reasoning in mind, Differentship will guarantee 6 months full wages to each shore employee (instead of four months offered for seagoing staff). In the event of a shore employee being ‘benched’, he or she will receive 35% of the new salary for the remaining period. This will remain in force for the three year period even if market wages collapse elsewhere, provided the employee does not take up any alternate employment.
Although a shore employee will remain subject to dismissal for fraud and gross negligence, as with seagoing staff, the process in this eventuality will be along identical lines outlined for the floating staff.



Finance, Austerity measures and miscellaneous initiatives

Move to smaller premises. Given collapse in real estate prices and rentals, this makes sense. Also because we envisage a leaner and meaner workforce.
Cost cutting on travel, unnecessary seminars and such expenses. Rollout of online training programmes as mentioned earlier.
New premises to be energy efficient. Functionality to replace flashy ambience. Office to exude a cheerful, professional and no nonsense atmosphere.
We envisage considerably lower recruitment costs after the conclusion of the initial selection, as we believe we will have a core of competent personnel, and a pool that will be growing. Lower attrition rates will give rise to many collateral advantages.
Streamlining of systems to minimise wastage of time, manpower and communication costs, especially between the vessel and the office.
Training programmes for shore and seagoing employees to be well thought, cost effective and sustainable.
Smart maintenance and storing on board. Dead stock to be minimised. Smart maintenance not to mean minimum maintenance, however.



Differentship believes that economic conditions will get worse before they get better. Salaries, too, will probably drop further. While we are locking ourselves in to a three year commitment with a base of higher salaries, we believe that our flexible approach with an annual minimum guaranteed package will offset some of these higher costs, and our austerity measures will do the rest.


Equally importantly, we believe that if Differentship has to come out of this recession poised for growth, we need to identify, employ, retain and train our core employee strength right now. Without people, we are nothing. Our initiative is aimed, therefore, at guaranteeing our performers ongoing employment with us. We are treating them as adults, and we know they will not disappoint us, or we them.


We are comfortable with our back of the envelope calculations on this. We believe that this is a sustainable and forward thinking way of surviving the hurricane that has hit the global economy today. We also believe that we will be idling at the runway, ready to take off, when the storm passes.


While our accountants are crunching the finer numbers, and while we will undoubtedly refine our thoughts as we go along, we will not allow electronic calculators to dictate our business plans in this recession.


We know how damaging it was to us last time this happened.
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Armchair Hard Talk

Industry statistics and reports out in the last week or so have confused the hell out of me. Unfortunately, the bikini conceals more than it reveals. I confess to bewilderment, besides disappointment, of course.


On one hand, the Drewry/Precious Associates annual manning report says that there will be a shortage of 33000 officers at sea this year, and that this figure will reach 42700 by 2013. The Drewry analysis says ship owners are offering higher wages and benefits even under present economic conditions in a bid to retain floating staff, and, for Indian officers, a five to ten percent pay hike this year is likely.


On the other hand, Lloyds List says that the number of ships scrapped this year will touch the thousand mark, three times last year’s figures. The World Bank says that global trade will decline for the first time since 1992. Reports indicate that up to ten percent of the global container fleet is on its way to being laid up. People are wondering what to do with the Car Carriers fleet that is badly hit, and talking about using those ugly ships for training or for rock concerts. And Precious Shipping (not to be confused with Precious Associates above) says that a third of the global merchant fleet will be scrapped in the next two years.


I honestly fail to understand how, when businesses, salaries and jobs are being lost across the world, the shipping industry thinks it can survive paying higher wages even as freight demand contracts. Granted that the threefold rise in freight indices in the last few months is a welcome breather for our businesses that had their backs firmly to the wall. Regardless, recent manufacturing and export figures out of Japan and Germany are abysmal. China and India are hardly doing much better, with GDP growth slowing down faster than anticipated. Of course, the US continues to slide even deeper in the mire, bailing out everybody they see around them. Globally, protectionism is rising and trade barriers are more likely.


Trade is contracting, and there is an obvious huge oversupply of tonnage, as indicated by estimates of tonnage bound for graveyards in Asia and elsewhere. I find it therefore hard to believe that the industry expects freight rates to pick up dramatically soon from here on; without higher income, higher salaries seem impossible to justify.


So, my question. Shortage of officers notwithstanding, can the industry afford even present salaries, leave alone higher ones, at a time when its freight income is likely to shrink?


Perhaps some can. After all, those who have not gambled away the huge profits of the last few years on injudicious new buildings and roll of the dice FFA agreements are presumably sitting on cash. As for the others, don’t hold your breath expecting firms to be able to afford even present wages, leave alone higher ones. Some will not survive this cataclysm.


Unless the global economy turns on a dime, and soon, I expect seafarer jobs to be under pressure. I expect a cascading effect of loss of some jobs followed by wider industry layoffs and frozen wages. I expect lower wages in many cases.


While all of this will be beneficial to a segment of the industry, making it more competitive and able to employ a higher calibre of officers for lower wages, seafarers would be well advised to be cautious about their near term future. As they saw in the eighties, what is good for the industry is not always good for them. Some officers, depending on individual circumstances, did not survive in the industry in that recession. For them, it matters little that the operation was successful, because the patient died.


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I am a regular client of the BBC’s ‘Hard Talk’ programme. Hard hitting most of the time, it seems to elicit passionate responses from the variety of guests defending their positions. Therefore, it was with some anticipation that I sat down to watch Efthimios Mitropoulos on the show last week. The programme billed him as the “Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation, the UN body charged with safety and security at sea”. The main thrust of the session? Somali piracy.


During the half hour programme, Gavin Esler asks Mr. Mitropoulos, on a couple of occasions, as I recall, why there cannot be a global move to not pay any ransom to pirates. He asks, quite forcefully (it is Hard Talk, after all) why criminals should be negotiated with, and implies that if there was a UN writ to the effect, the problem of Somali piracy would disappear. Mr. Mitropoulos response was a diplomatic and almost apologetic, ‘We have to consider the seafarers on these ships’ (paraphrased by me). If my memory has not failed me again, I think he repeated this on two separate occasions.


With the benefit of preparation time, perfect hindsight and armchair analysis, this is what I would have told Gavin Elser:
“Mr. Elser, the IMO is in the business of safety at sea, not safety at the cost of its seafarers’ blood. Not to put too fine a point on it, if seafarers on twenty thousand ships refuse to sail through those waters, a large part of world trade will grind to a halt”.


“As for a ‘no negotiating with criminals’ policy, perhaps I would be more sanguine in proposing such an action if the world community did not have a history of negotiating with criminals, even terrorists. Recent developments in Swat bear my hypothesis out. Other examples: Spain negotiating with the ETA, the Oslo peace accords when Israel negotiated with the PLO and your British governments’ backdoor channels with the IRA even after that organisation attacked 10 Downing Street with mortars. Incidentally, Arafat got himself a Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi did not.”


But that is just me.


In all fairness, Elser also asks Efthimios Mitropoulos why Somali pirates are not being dealt with on land and why the international community is not attacking their bases there.


Good question, that one. Worth waiting for an answer.
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