This is an archive. The forum is not taking new registrations or allowing new discussion, despite what the buttons might suggest.
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
<p><a id="title_permalink" title="Permalink" peppycount="56" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html"><b><span style="font-size: x-large"><font color="#111111" face="Georgia">You Are Being Lied to About Pirates</font></span></b></a></p>
<p>by <a peppycount="51" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari"><font color="#058b7b">Johann Hari</font></a>, Columnist, London Independent</p>
<p>Quote:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px"><span style="font-size: small">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-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of 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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px"><span style="font-size: small">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 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."</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px"><span style="font-size: small">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 over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are 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."</span></p>
<p> Find this article: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>by <a peppycount="51" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari"><font color="#058b7b">Johann Hari</font></a>, Columnist, London Independent</p>
<p>Quote:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px"><span style="font-size: small">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-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of 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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px"><span style="font-size: small">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 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."</span></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px"><span style="font-size: small">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 over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are 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."</span></p>
<p> Find this article: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html</a></p>
<p> </p>
Howdy, Stranger!