Media outlets are remarkably comparable to exclusive fashion houses. They are staffed by an assortment of egomaniacs who must sell a particular product in order to feed their addictions to various substances. On the face of it, clothing and news stories worthy of being published are entirely dissimilar entities. But like an ageing supermodel trying to maintain some semblance of a career and public image, you just have to dig through a couple of layers of makeup to find the wrinkles and Botox scars.Climate change. Swine flu. Jordan and Peter Andre splitting. These are media fashions masquerading as genuine news, page turners and button clickers, fodder for the erudite discussion at the water cooler, topics that will be forgotten by next season as quickly as one makes the decision not to wear those Capri pants that were Oh My GOD! so hot last year.
When it comes to fashion and the media, time has a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff. Capri pants and unnecessarily exposed cankles may pass, but jeans will always be cool. Polar caps will freeze, pigs will become healthy, Peter Andre and Jordan will reunite when they receive a high enough offer for an exclusive magazine photo spread of their tearfully joyful reunion, but I’ve only seen one recurring news story this season that has a level of cool and potential for perpetuity equitable with that of jeans.
Somali pirates.
Self-proclaimed pirate experts claim that they’re not real pirates. I strongly disagree. While they may not have wooden legs, parrots and swords, the general principles of piracy are there. Seize control of a ship on the high seas by way of force and obtain riches (or “trayzure”) by whatever means necessary. I didn’t hear anyone complaining at the height of Napster’s piracy fame that it was staffed by bespectacled nerds who didn’t have an eye patch or sea shanty between them.
It is easy to get caught up in the sexy image of bad boys in ragged army fatigues, wielding AK-47s and rocket launchers, zooming about in go fast boats in pursuit of hapless Norwegian oil tankers. This seemingly endless stream of well equipped bandits of the high seas raises an interesting question – in a country beset by widespread famine and civil war, a country that boasts an average male life expectancy of 47 years – where are all these amphibious outlaws coming from?
Mogadishu? Hargeisa? Kismayo? Curiously, the point of origin of almost 80% of current Somali pirates is much further afar – a relatively nondescript building in an industrial estate in Düsseldorf.
In what many mentally diseased capitalist pigs would consider the finest example of globalisation and the free market, relatively unknown yet exceedingly wealthy German industrialist Klaus Leutehersteller has been producing batch after batch of Somali pirates for the past year or so.
It is a queer notion: a German supplying a distant African nation with formidably armed aqua bandits. He is an odd character though, and to truly understand the Klaus Leutehersteller story, one must first examine the humble roots of this understated trailblazer of people manufacturing.
Born in Stuttgart in 1955, Leutehersteller was an only child to father Dieter and mother Klaudia. Both were stern believers in the virtues of industriousness: his mother was a respected geneticist, his father an eminent robotics expert; each was considered to be well ahead of their time. They have since passed away, but their legacy of the augmentation of what we regard as life lives on in their son.
After graduating from the University of Leipzig in 1989 with an impressive collection of PhDs, Leutehersteller took a job with Münchencyborgindustrien Verbunden as lead motion technician. Disillusioned with what he saw as inefficient business practices and a misguided focus on the novelty end of the industry, Leutehersteller resigned after just six months, vowing to use his skills for a more beneficial purpose.
It was with little fanfare that Leutehersteller’s fledgling company, Leutelösungen, was launched in 1991. Based in the same unremarkable premises as they are currently located in, Leutelösungen quietly went about their business, even if at the time very few were of the precise nature of their operations.
By autumn of 1993, it was a different story. Leutelösungen was a homegrown success, having taken just two years to morph from a moderately anonymous company into the number one supplier of parking inspectors to all major German municipalities.
Leutehersteller had become incredibly wealthy and enjoyed widespread recognition in the notoriously cliquey Deutsche Alternative Herstellungsliga. He was given the key to Düsseldorf, and briefly dated film star Brigitte Schittenhelm. Life was good, but it was not enough for Leutehersteller.
Having mastered the previously daunting parking inspector algorithm, Leutelösungen turned their attention to other opportunities for mass production of niche individuals. Stunning the industry yet again, they turned out highly successful lines of tram conductors, street sweepers and taxi drivers.
The notoriously insatiable Leutehersteller remained far from convinced of his undeniable genius, questioning the worth and cultural relevance of his creations. At the turn of the century, he vanished. Leutelösungen continued to churn out their invaluable products, however rumours abounded about the whereabouts of their founder.
Observers pondered whether Leutehersteller had developed a taste for slightly more colourful products, a theory supported by the CIA’s brief listing of him as a person of interest. Insiders at the CIA suggested Leutehersteller was suspected of manufacturing Colombian rebels and having them dropped from cargo planes directly into combat zones where American operatives were fighting alongside the Colombian army. This paved the way for yet more spurious and unsubstantiated rumours. He was accused of producing and transporting armed mercenaries to no less than 13 separate conflicts between 2001 and 2007: Colombian drug rebels, Georgian separatists and Tamil Tigers were but a few of the allegations made against Leutehersteller. While no charges were ever brought, mud sticks; his current range of products do nothing to dispel the rumours that dogged him during his self-imposed exile in the early 21st century.
Pirates seem an odd choice for a man who has made a name for himself by producing individuals that are ostensibly nothing more than obedient servants. Assuming the rumours surrounding his foray into the black market were true, it too produced a series of acquiescent lackeys, even if they were better armed than his range of taxi drivers.
So why pirates? In a recent interview with Deutscher Automatismus Monats, long time business associate Gunter Fenstermacher suggested that Leutehersteller had grown weary of churning out what he saw as simplistic creations. He yearned to manufacture sentient beings that thrived upon anarchy, sought riches by whatever means necessary and answered only to themselves. With global pirate stocks vastly depleted and cocky sea captains becoming increasingly complacent, Leutehersteller saw his opportunity and took full advantage of it.
If there were worries within Leutelösungen that the pirates would be a failure, their fears were allayed within days of the first batch being transported to Bremerhaven port. In a bittersweet success for the company, the pirates seized control of the ship en route to the Gulf of Aden and demanded a hefty ransom. Leutehersteller reportedly greeted the news with a wry smile, promptly wiring the ransom to the pirates and adding a 10% gratuity.
The machine from which Leutehersteller’s creations emerge is understandably shrouded in secrecy. In the same interview with Deutscher Automatismus Monats, Gunter Fenstermacher remained coy, but noted that the machine uses the principles of advanced thermodynamics, molecule reassignment and basic cold fusion, contains purple and blue lasers, an industrial sewing machine, macro nano technology, epidermal multi-layering, a digital tack inserter, and a series of levers and pulleys.
The astonishing effectiveness of the Somali pirates has captivated the world, and only time will tell if widespread media coverage and increased outrage from various maritime bodies will render the pirates and their creator victims of their own success. At the time of writing, they held no less than 17 cargo ships, a Japanese scientific whale research vessel (and two Humpback whales), three offshore oil rigs, and the set from Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.
In an ironic twist, the stubborn, traditionalist captains of the very ships that the pirates attack are possibly the only thing preventing them from being sent to a watery grave by any number of warships lurking in the area. Shunning armed assistance, the captains insist upon battling the pirates the old fashioned way – scimitar duels on the poop deck. This is indeed an ill-advised decision considering the arsenal of automatic weapons and explosives their adversaries are equipped with.
Perhaps it is fortuitous that the captains share such admirable naivety. Should various foreign powers be given the authority to neutralise the pirates and destroy the fledgling industry, the consequences would be dire. Somalia’s economy would collapse entirely, conceivably taking with it the nation’s best chance of recovery in decades.
More concerning though would be Leutehersteller’s reaction. It is highly unlikely that he would return to what he sees as the drudgery of producing the common man, however profitable that may be. He has proven on numerous occasions precisely what his genius is capable of creating. He has joked privately about producing an army of crocodile/human hybrids with the ability to shoot lasers from their eyes. Forcing him underground could potentially spur him to unleash a horror that all the warships in the world would not be capable of thwarting. World leaders may like to consider the fact that when it comes to a manageable and relatively harmless problem such as Somali pirates, it may well be better the buccaneer you know.
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