You Are Being Lied To About Pirates by the Independent and Pacifica Radio

[Henry Musikar]

May I add that the rad left's support of the pirates hurts what little rad
left is left in the USA.

I've been told that the pirates arrrre, in fact, spreading their ill-gotten
gains around Somali villages.  If spreading the booty means paying a few
people hush money, sponsoring a wedding, recruiting for their organization,
and buying petrol, food, and yes... booty, then the ends themselves are also
in question.  If their largesse is the largesse typical of organized crime
PR, e.g. "The Godfather" and modern-day drug lords, then the pirates are
just taking advantage of a bad situation.  Their threats to target USA
vessels even though Somalia could be in line for aid from the new USA
administration doesn't sound very altruistic to me, and in fact, their
inability to sustain a few casualties doesn't sound very brave, either.
Coast Guard?  NOT!

If someone knocks at my door, and they answer my "Who is it?" with "Arrr...
candygram!" I'm not opening it.

Henry Musikar
Sr. IT Consultant
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20/ 
http://tinyurl.com/342april09/   


-----Original Message-----
From: Henry Musikar [mailto:scuffling at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 8:38 AM
To: 'Pynchon Liste'
Subject: RE: You Are Being Lied To About Pirates by the Independent and
Pacifica Radio

Fascinating, yes.  Somalia is a dumping ground, but for the socialist cabal
to suggest that that fact has anything to do with the pirates, other than
that they have safe haven in a country that is so poor that it accepts the
world's toxic waste, e.g. scum of the seas, is to put bad music to nonsense
words. 

"This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen
took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least
levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of
Somalia - and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site
WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of
national defence". 

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly
just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme
supplies. But in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule
Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to
be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would
understand"

I'm shocked that anyone would take any spokesperson's words as fact, let
alone those of, no matter what else he may be, an unquestionable criminal.
If we are to believe that words stand by themselves without consideration of
authorial intent, then surely acts, for example piracy, must be interpreted
without unsubstantiated explanation.  What did you expect Ali to say?
"We're in it for the money and the general bad-ass-banditry of the whole
thing?"  How much of the millions of dollars that these poor fishermen with
their huge fortified boats and weapons have collected has gone to anyone but
themselves?  Should the USA be flooding Somalia with thousands of copies of
"Robin Hood," as s reminder that you're supposed to "rob from the rich AND
GIVE TO THE POOR!" 

Henry Musikar
Sr. IT Consultant
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20/  
http://tinyurl.com/342april09/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Bailey

Fascinating article from the UK's Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-yo
u-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html