Just like WMDs,You are being lied to about pirates

[J431S]

February 4, 2009

You are being lied to about pirates
by Johann Hari


Somali pirate "ships" are small, but the ships they seize are huge. They held one gigantic tanker for months until ransom was paid.Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.

But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?

In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 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.

Yes: 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. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it.” 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. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million 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. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

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 Coast Guard of Somalia - and it’s not hard to see why.

In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said 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.” William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”

One of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said 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.”
During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor."

[jbm]

[Ernst]

Well, while the original rallying cry was indeed claims of other nations trespassing and taking fish from Somali waters... the pirates now operate far outside of that territory, negating their claims of "righteous protection of sovereign waters". They are openly attacking ships in international waters that have nothing to do with the Somalis original grievances. Greed trumps all. Thank you for playing.

[J431S]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZtiruwzLcI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y4WgyhkkJA

[J431S]

Well, while the original rallying cry was indeed claims of other nations trespassing and taking fish from Somali waters... the pirates now operate far outside of that territory, negating their claims of "righteous protection of sovereign waters". They are openly attacking ships in international waters that have nothing to do with the Somalis original grievances. Greed trumps all. Thank you for playing.

I concurred... it is certainly the case of the weak pirates verses stronger pirates. You be the judge.

[*RAGE*]

Did someone say pirates?

[*RAGE*]

A head shot is the best way to end the pirates job...

[*RAGE*]

what the last thing that went through the Pirates head?





















the bullet....


LMFAO

[MuscleScience]

what the last thing that went through the Pirates head?





















the bullet....


LMFAO

Your Insensitive Prone and my feelings are hurt now, you big meanie head...

[cfiler]

what the last thing that went through the Pirates head?





















the bullet....


LMFAO

Very funny! Almost made me cry from laughing too hard.

[Tigershark]

The pirates are out there and a lot more of thier ships get sunk then what is reported to the media. My friend's brother goes out on some of these ships and he has tols us before some crazy shit goes on out there that is kept hush hush.

[CSAR]

[CSAR]

And my favorite...

[CSAR]

Du mah niheu Skinnies...

[CSAR]

[Tigershark]

I love every single one of those.

[Charger527]

I say good to them, why not its not like there stealing from the poor,


and it creates more work for me.

[xo3et]

Id be doing exactly the same if i lived in lawless country.

I mean its not much different from when US/UK rolled in and took what they needed from Iraq, just they do it on a smaller scale.

They take the gamble jacking ships, as do the seamen/company's sail their ships past their country. Before the latest killings the pirates would not harm anybody they captured, oh now its such a different story.

[DSM4Life]

[Brown Ninja]

I thought they were Sudanese pirates? They hijack your ship and then infest you with aids.

[Chode Logan]

I thought they were Sudanese pirates? They hijack your ship and then infest you with aids.

They tried to do that to me, but I already had super AIDS, then they all over-dosed on AIDS leaving me with their loot.

[Dobie-BOY]

I dont buy into most of these conspiracy theories. Bunch of B.S. 99.9 percent of the time.

[Chode Logan]

Is this thread about butt-pirates?

[J431S]

I dont buy into most of these conspiracy theories. Bunch of B.S. 99.9 percent of the time.

exactly...I'm still unable to reconcile how some bunch of thug fishermen in a canoe manage to capture a giant naval armed fleet and also take some hostages? This is a scapegoate similar to LAPD officers whoare well known to incriminate brothers with a piece of crack-cocain they didn't possed simply because of they have a long criminal record. I'm sure this another case of strong pirates verses weak pirates. Too bad some of these motherfnvkers don't get it.

[Lightsout2184]

if u have any questions about pirates just watch tonights south park

[Misery13]

pirates are real...

[vpchill]

Ive seen Pirates of the Caribean. I dont like the Pittsburgh Pirates.