The News Muddle-Puddle of the "Arctic Sea"

For a situation that's been in the news for more than three weeks, the business about the "disappeared" "Arctic Sea" can only be described as being "the damndest thing." This is because the media, those supposed bulldogs on information, have at no time been on top of this story, and as a result all it's been able to pass along are some by now extremely tired rehashings of unreliable and contradictory rumors.

This is no way to treat what is being billed as the first ship to be grabbed by pirates on the Baltic Sea since the 15th Century. The 15th Century! What a long time ago that was! And the first thing a person would want to know would be where along those heavily populated and civilized shores would pirates take such a big ship to hold for ransom, a la the Somalis.

I blame the Russians for this snowjob.

But they are strictly landlubbers who tend to lose their bearings whenever they take to the sea. Note the pitiful stories of the "Kursk" and the K-19 nuclear subs. and the incredible saga of the sailing of the whole Russian fleet from Murmansk around half the world in 1905 (without global warming, taking the shortcut along their Arctic Coast was not an option), only to be shot to smithereens at the battle of Tsushima by the Japanese, who barely had to sashay out of their backyards.

The "Arctic Sea" had connections with Finland, Malta, and Russia, but it was the bad luck of events that the Russians took charge of the task of "finding" the freighter, after it was reported as having disappeared back at the end of July. But the Maltese, who seem to have a hand in owning the ship, now claim that at no time was its whereabouts unknown. In any case, a Russian warship eventually stopped the "Arctic Sea" somewhere near the Cape Verde Islands, far from the Baltic and not in Algeria where it was supposed to discharge its modest cargo of timber. The Russians are now questioning eight men of various nationalities that they found on board, under suspicions of piracy, and they are also grilling the 15-man all-Russian crew. But they've been doing that for several days now, with not a peep as to what is going on.

When the U.S. Navy took not the slightest interest in helping to find the ship, I knew something was up. I had great confidence that with all the eyes and ears they always have out on the seas, looking and listening everywhere, they could've disclosed that ship's location in seconds. But it was as if they already knew that this was a bogus story, though out of professional courtesy they were reluctant to say so. Otherwise I couldn't see how they could so easilly pass up this chance to strut their stuff while showing up the Russians in the process.

Now we're still at the mercy of the Russians to get the straight scoop, though at the moment they seem to be suffering from what I call the "Yellow Tape Syndrome," the tendency of police everywhere to get tight-lipped and self-important and to keep sitting on anything that people would want to know, for days and weeks, when it is the liberal and prompt applying of the grease of accurate information that keeps the machinery of civilization operating smoothly. Secrecy about nearly everything is badly overrated.

Maybe the Russians are taking this time to see what they can do to clean up the fact that they let the "Arctic Sea" wander for several weeks, from the Baltic, down through the English Channel, and then out into the Atlantic and southward.

And maybe we'll finally get to hear what it was all about, some time in the years to come.