While I was reading the news today, I came across an article that I thought dialogues nicely with Olivia’s post on piracy, and also the notion of limitation and boundaries in the maritime environment.  This article from the BBC surveys the 2012  incident between the Indian and Italian governments; two Indian fishermen had navigated too closely to an Italian oil rig. They were accidentally mistaken for pirates by the two Italian Marines and killed as a result.

Here are some pictures of the two marines (how italian are they?!):

Massimiliano Latorre (L) and Salvatore Girone were first held on suspicion of murder in February 2012

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-26319402

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-22305801

I’ve decided to survey this article because I feel that it speaks to a larger discourse of fear around the culture of piracy that stems from African and Asian countries and also the rampant fear of terrorism within the United States–the American fear of terrorism, which predated, but is symbolized by 9/11, seems to now be spreading from the mainland to symbols of the United States off-shore. This suggests that the boundaries of countries are continuing to change, expanding and shrinking, making the policing of maritime assets and the enforcement of laws increasingly difficult.  Furthermore, this article forces me to revisit and reconsider the human’s relationship to natural resources; the way that nations attempt to claim pieces of land in the name of their country or business.  The ownership of land is all so abstract to me.  And, in many ways, this incident makes me question how civilized we are to obsessively war over land and resources like animals in a desert searching for water.

I understand that I’m abstracting this issue to a certain point, but I think that the difficulty which India faces in deciding how to continue with the case reflects the essence of questions on agency and maritime law.

(an off-shore oil rig)

Separately, but not unrelatedly: I’m interested to see the ways in which Melville’s parlance around “rumours” incites fear and anger in Moby Dick can parallel the current day construction of fear that surrounds terrorism and piracy.  The US has declared “war on terrorism” in a way that is similarly obsessive to Ahab’s pursuit of the White Whale.   I guess what I’m doing is trying to construct an argument for how rumours/moby dick operate in the same way that media representation does with current day terrorism and piracy.