Maria Bartiromo interviewed financial wiz Jim Rogers for the March 9 issue of BusinessWeek. It was a lively interview. 

• Rogers says of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers: “These are people who think the only solution is to save their friends on Wall Street rather than to save 300 million Americans.”
• He’s against bailouts, contending that companies–whether banks or car companies–should be allowed to go bankrupt. 

But he ended with these comments about agriculture, which I found quite interesting.

“I really think agriculture is going to be the best place to be. Agriculture’s been a horrible business for 30 years. For decades, the money shufflers, the paper shufflers, have been the captains of the universe. That is now changing. The people who produce real things [will be on top]. 

“You’re going to see stockbrokers driving taxis. The smart ones will learn to drive tractors, because they’ll be working for the farmers. It’s going to be the 29-year-old farmers who have the Lamborghinis. So you should find yourself a nice farmer and hook up with him or her, because that’s where the money’s going to be in the next couple of decades.”

Suggested names for the Swine Flu outbreak:

• Hamdemic
• The Aporkalypse
• Hammageddon
• Epigdemic
• Hamerican Flu
• A Virus of Epig Proporktions

It’s fun watching the Democrats in Congress scrambling for cover against complicity in torture. They’re all claiming ignorance, but they knew what was going on. Round ’em all up. That includes you, Nancy.

Ali Soufan was an FBI official who interrogated Abu Zubaydah for three months, March-June 2002, as well as other captured terrorists. He wrote a fascinating op-ed piece for the New York Times, dated April 22, called “My Tortured Decision.” Some of his comments:

• Zubaydah cooperated under traditional (and legal) FBI interrogation methods. He revealed that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed materminded 9/11, told about “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, and gave up much more actionable intelligence. Dick Cheney and others say this info came only from “enhanced” interrogation.
• All information gained from Zubaydah using “enhanced interrogation techniques” had already been obtained, or could have been obtained, using traditional interrogation methods.
• “Using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions.”
• Info leading to the capture of Mohammed’s top aide Ramzi bin al-Shibh didn’t come from waterboarding Zubaydah, as is being claimed, but came from another terrorist interviewed using traditional methods.
• Since the FBI refused to participate in torture, agents who knew the most about the terrorists (because the FBI specializes in counter-terrorism) had no part in the investigations once the CIA took over (which is what Dick Cheney wanted). Soufan himself was pulled out because, as his superiors told him, “We don’t do that.”
• “It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out.”
• He opposes prosecuting CIA officials. “Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.”
• Reading between the lines of the memos, “it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.”
• “We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start.”

Jane Mayer’s book, “The Dark Side,” gives a thorough account of Zubaydah’s capture (he was severely wounded) and subsequent interrogation–first by the FBI, then by the CIA. Keith Olberman seems to have discovered the book. He used lots of info from it tonite on his show (and weakly defended the claims of Democrats that they didn’t know anything).

In the 18th century, here’s how the British treated pirates: coat their bodies in tar, wrap them in chains, and publicly hang them from gallows at the harbor entrance. My guess: that wouldn’t be acceptable today. Unfortunately.

Most maritime organizations oppose arming merchant ships. While I cheered the recent events off Somalia, it does raise serious concerns in the maritime community. 

Why don’t merchant ships arm themselves? I did some googling, and here’s what I learned.

• Most sailors aren’t trained to use weapons. “We’re sailors, not soldiers,” said one.
• No matter how ships arm themselves, pirates will come back with bigger guns. If you escalate, pirates will escalate more. You can end up with pirates sitting far off and bombarding the ship or raking it with machine gun fire. 
• Arming ships will increase insurance costs, since insurance must now cover a range of liability and death situations. 
• Most ports won’t let an armed ship dock. Period. “Trust me, you aren’t sailing into San Francisco with mercenaries carrying RPGs on board.” Since a merchant ship may dock at many different ports, carrying weapons would be a problem. 
• The cost of carrying armed private security forces would probably exceed the cost of a potential ransom.
• Ships carrying chemicals or gas don’t want weapons aboard, and don’t want to provoke a firefight.
• Shipping companies would rather pay ransom than risk crew members being killed. It’s all a matter of liability costs.
• From a pirate’s standpoint: if the crew is a threat, why not just kill them?
• If you’re going to give guns to your sailors, you must provide weapons training. That would be a huge expense, and increase liability costs. (You don’t just give handguns to pilots and think an airplane is safe.)
• Do we want foreign merchant ships sailing into American ports with cannons and machine guns?
• Pirates rarely kill commercial crews on large vessels (though yacht owners are frequently killed). Their goal is ransom (whereas on yachts, it’s just thievery). 
• How many sailors are willing to die to protect a rich ship owner’s profit?
• If ships carried weapons, it might make them a greater target, as pirates seek to steal the weapons, too.
• Pirates have been a problem for many, many years, and merchant lines have learned to cope with the threat.
• If a crew member smuggles a weapon into certain port and gets caught, he could spend 5-10 years in a foreign prison.
• Military vessles are considered “sovereign territory” when visiting foreign harbors, but that courtesy is not extended to civilian vessles. So any weapons possession is subject to local laws.
• Nervous sailors could accidentally shoot innocent fishermen, who often approach merchant ships offering to sell their catch. 
• In an armed confrontation with pirates, the chance is great that a sailor will be injured or killed. This raises huge liability issues for ship owners.
• Bringing weapons aboard ships is “strongly discouraged” by the United Nations International Maritime Organization. 
• Many ship owners are less worried about piracy than they are that sailors will kill each other in personal disputes. 
• A fight with pirates can create an international incident.

Ships now use non-lethal methods such as electric fences, water hoses, and long-range sound cannons, of which one person said, “It’s the most annoying sound you’ve ever heard in your life–you literally cannot operate. It makes you nauseous.”