I realize this is the smack talk & fun stuff section, but if you'll indulge me a little, I'd like to add an interesting comment on the issue of Somali pirates.
I used to be of the belief that someone should go into that area and blow those theiving pirate thugs out of the water, but things are never as black and white as they might first seem. I'm sure the right-wing idealogues on this board considers the huffington post to be part of the liberal pinko MSM conspiracy, but this article does raise some interesting points:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html.
The upshot of the article is as follows:
First of all, pirates are not really of the stereotypical parrot on the shoulder murderous rogue variety we normally think about today. Back in the day, these guys were actually popular folk heroes fighting a repressive navy, who were often rescued from the gallows by a supportive populace. During the Revolutionary War, the US actually employed pirates since we didn't have a navy of our own.
That's all an interesting historical account that I encourage you to read more about but where it gets even more interesting is when the author starts to talk about the modern phenomon of Somali Pirates. "In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas."
First, re: dumping nuclear waste. "As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken....Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness...""Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. "
Secondly, re: stealing the country's food supply. "We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving."
Of course, none of that justifies WHAT these pirates are doing but it does do a lot to explain WHY they do it. "This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. [According to one of the pirates] their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." "
Of course, many of these guys are clearly just gangsters out for personal enrichment, such as when they hold up UN aid ships. But one survey found that 70 percent of all Somalis "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." And how is that much different from our employing pirates back during the Revolutionary War when we were still just a young and defenseless country facing overwhelming more powerful foreign interests.
There is talk about sending a naval taskforce to the area to deal with the pirates, but will that force also be tasked with doing anything to deal with the illegal dumping and fishing that is the justification used by these pirates?
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