You are being lied to about pirates | Hacker News Reader

You are being lied to about pirates

sfbayview.com

23 pointsenra11 comments

Please.

This is about money. Some armed men have found a way to get extraordinarily rich in third world-countries by seizing undefended tankers and cargo vessels and holding them for ransom. Then they play for sympathy/admiration by saying they're trying to stop fishing and dumping when they're of course not actually bothering fishing vessels or holding any ship with toxic waste for ransom - much less chasing these vessels out of regional waters.

Describing yourself as a champion of the people while making yourself rich is an old, old criminal shtick.

Not only are they seizing defenseless civilian ships, they're bribing countless Somali warlords, paying for their political ambitions and child armies. Not holding these people accountable (or trying to attach ridiculous motives) is a kind of soft bigotry that has hampered Africa for the beginning, and allowed butchers like Mugabe, Idi Amin, and Charles Taylor to gain and hold power.

The fact that the author has seen to have confused toxic waste with nuclear waste makes this all the more unbelievable.

How do you know which ships are carrying radioactive waste or other toxic chemicals?

The article read more like a condemnation of our selective global policing/reporting, than a defense of the pirates.

And the motives of robbers is always useful information. Crime is often a symptom and treating symptoms directly is rarely an effective approach.

Something doesn't add up. Ships are dumping toxic waste (including nuclear waste) into Somali waters sickening the population on land, but at the same time other ships are stealing the fish from those waters? Aren't the fish also sickened by the waste?

Did you read to the end of the article?

Postscript: Some commentators seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn’t this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia’s coastline is vast, stretching 3,300km (over 2,000 miles). Imagine how easy it would be - without any coast guard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals and stirred-up piracy. There’s no contradiction.

Waste might be contained and therefore not so wildy spread.

"It appears that the tsunami broke open the containers and scattered a lot of these toxic substances around," Mr Nuttall told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4312553.stm

I'm not being lied to. There is simply more to the story.

What's with the headlines this week? We had the "body slam" on prostate cancer, and now this?

And even when knowing the rest of the story, I'm happy that the synopsis I've received in the major news media is adequate. There is no conspiracy or mass media control going on. Robbers have motives. Film at Eleven. Yawn.

In both the "body slam" article and this, the titles used on HN were the titles taken directly from the articles as per HN guidelines. I don't like sensationalist headlines either, but the HN users are not to blame.

(I know you didn't explicitly blame the HN users, just wanted to make that point in case someone interprets it that way.)

> the HN users are not to blame.

Sure they are - this one at least is a blatantly off topic story.

I blame Disney.

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