[Peace-discuss] India and the Somali pirates

[Jenifer Cartwright]

My impresssion is that the pirates (aka Somali fishermen whose livelihoods have been affected by all the trafficking in the area) aren't interested in the ship's goods beyond what they bring for ransom. They board the ship, hold it captive, name their price to release the ship instead of blowing it up. The ships bring a hefty ransom because they're carrying valuable cargo -- oil or guns -- which they don't want destroyed. Once the pirates are paid off (e g a deal is struck to deliver goods, food, etc) to particular village(s), the ship, crew and cargo are released unharmed. I'm surprised the big guns allow the priates to board, but I'm sympathetic to their cause, kinda like Robin Hood, redistribution of weatlth. 
 
Speaking of India, problems again w/ natives fighting Coca Cola for their water rights -- Coca Cola needs tons and tons of gallons of it to keep their plants going. Haven't we heard this before??? 
 --Jenifer 
 

--- On Wed, 11/19/08, Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] India and the Somali pirates
To: "peace discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008, 2:33 PM






So NPR is repeating today that the Indian Navy has claimed victory in a reported “sea battle” with Somali pirates and even sank one of the pirates’ “mother ships.”  A US Naval College professor interviewed this morning told Daniel Schorr that piracy had now become a major threat to the world’s energy resources.  Presumably the professor was referring specifically to sea piracy – he didn’t mention the big corporate land pirates – and in fact the interview never brought up any pirates other than Somali ones.  



They discussed some Saudi tankers recently seized or threatened by the former Somali fishermen.  Again, the context was decidedly not the potential right of the inhabitants to control or benefit from the resources of their lands – we’re against that, aren’t we? – but the threat to rich people’s profits derived from said resources.
 
Reminds me of a story that Noam Chomsky attributes to St. Augustine , I believe.  Alexander "the Great" it seems once captured a rather mouthy pirate.  Alexander: Who are you to molest the seas?  Pirate: Who are you to molest the whole world?  I have one ship, and you call me a pirate.  You have a whole navy, and they call you emperor.
 
Not that India is the biggest emperor in the picture these days – that would be us.  India has been in the news a lot lately, as have Somali pirates.  India even landed a probe on the moon earlier this month.  The pirates haven’t managed any moon shots yet, as far as I know.  
 
But the Horn of Africa is one of those regions where Washington thinkers and oil company executives like to play Risk.  After all, the Persian Gulf is right there.  (We didn’t think all that Black Hawk stuff in Mogadishu was really about 'humanitarian' concerns, did we?)  And ever since the implosion of the USSR , India has been a lot more amenable to US scheming.  A lot more.  



The rise of the Hindu Nationalists probably hasn’t hurt, either.  The Indian government has had its own conflicts with Islamic populations at home and abroad for many years, complete with suicide bombings and military deployments, even a nuclear arms race with Pakistan .  According to international opinion polls after the World Trade Center attacks, India was the only country that ranked higher than the US in saying “war is the answer.”  And so on.



But I'm certainly no expert on the region (or anything else).  Anybody else have insights on this?

Ricky

"Every time you think, you weaken the nation." - Moe Howard

_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss



      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20081119/8465fdfe/attachment.html