>Sorry but we haven't been able to serve the page you requested - >please try again >www.independent.co.uk
It's the correct link. Link urls often get broken in email transmission, to fix them delete the line-feeds (between ..."about-" and "pirates-1225817.html") and try again. If not, delete the round brackets (...), they should be sharp brackets <...>. Try this: <http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html> Or this: <http://snipurl.com/g4z0p> Also: Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia By K'Naan, URB Magazine Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Well in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated. <http://www.alternet.org/story/136481/why_we_don't_condemn_our_pirates_in_somalia/> Ethiopia / USA / Somali Pirates' Cover-Up By Thomas C. Mountain April 16, 2009 "Online Journal" One of the best kept secrets in the international media these days is the link between the USA, Ethiopia and the Somali pirates. First, a little reliable background from someone on the ground in the Horn of Africa. <http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22436.htm> More: Somali Piracy and the International Response Rubrick Biegon | January 29, 2009 Foreign Policy In Focus <http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5827> Best Keith >---------- Initial Header ----------- > >>From : [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To : sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org >Cc : >Date : Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:59:24 EDT >Subject : [Biofuel] Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates > >Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates >_http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-y >ou-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html_ >(http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about- >pirates-1225817.html) > >Some are clearly just gangsters. But others are trying to stop illegal >dumping and trawling > >Monday, 5 January 2009 > > >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 US 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 c >hasing 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 labelling 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 Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in >a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: >pirates were often saved 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. > >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, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If >you slacked often, 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 - >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, without torture. 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 eighteenth 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 romantic heroes, 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-pirateing to live." In 1991, the >government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been >teetering on >starvation ever since - and 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 UN 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 Mr Ould-Abdallah what European >governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been >no clean-up, 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 >overexploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than >$300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year >by illegal >trawlers. The local fishermen are now 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 "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. > >Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, >paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in >restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those >crimes - the only >sane solution to this problem - but when some of the fishermen responded by >disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, >we swiftly send in the gunboats. > >The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised 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." Once >again, our great imperial fleets sail - but who is the robber? > >[EMAIL PROTECTED] (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
