Pirates and the Lies the Liars Told Us

Now that the pirate hostage drama off the coast of Somalia has ended in bloodshed.

And the American navy is patting itself on the back...for using a missile destroyer to bring down four men in a lifeboat.

Maybe it's time to remind you of the pirate story I told you the other day.

And of the other lies they told us.

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.

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."

You know if I was a poor Somali fisherman I'd probably be a pirate too.

And as for those other pirates....

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.

If I had lived back then..... I KNOW I would have joined them.

Although sometimes I think I have...




















Here's to the poor and the oppressed of the world.

Long live truth and justice...