Analysis: Why Did Somalia Piracy Begin? Democracy Now 4/14/09 1 of 2

[balantz]

Run time: 10:01 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X2yChphxkk   Posted on YouTube: April 14, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: April 14, 2009 By DU Member: balantz Views on DU: 1723

 
"Analysis: Somalia Piracy Began in Response to Illegal Fishing and Toxic Dumping by Western Ships off Somali Coast

President Obama vowed an international crackdown to halt piracy off the coast of Somalia Monday soon after the freeing of US cargo ship captain Richard Phillips, who had been held hostage by Somali pirates since last Wednesday. While the pirates story has dominated the corporate media, there has been little to no discussion of the root causes driving piracy. We speak with consultant and analyst Mohamed Abshir Waldo. In January, he wrote a paper titled The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?"

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrFWrZQhkQE

[Captain Hilts]

1. Is that why they have destroyed their own people and have had a series of violent regimes? nt

[balantz]

2. As you can see in this Counterpunch article the U.S. has been responsible

for the upheaval in a long series of attempts to control politics and resources of Somalia and neighboring countries.

http://www.counterpunch.org/wengraf02132009.html

[baldguy]

4. What? Or you some sort of liberal?

Actually caring about other human beings? You must be a terrorist lover!

:sarcasm:

[balantz]

5. Weird huh? Being compassionate and looking beyond corporate propaganda

seems a rare thing sometimes.

[dipsydoodle]

6. It's called cynicism

thank for posting that.

[baldguy]

3. Is suffering through a 20-yr long civil war a moral failing?

Is being the victim of international corporations illegally dumping toxic waste a crime?

How about watching your children becoming ill & starving?

[Democracyinkind]

8. To think that the US is not connected to what happened/happens in Somalia is to deny reality.

[MADem]

7. It started in the early nineteen nineties. Well before the fishing/dumping.

Well before the barrels washed up on the beach, dumped, ostensibly, by Italian mafiosi.

I remember, I was in the region when it all started up.

[izquierdista]

9. Italian mafiosi?

I wonder if they were invited there by Siad Barre...

[Democracyinkind]

11. I don't know about SIad's time, but Archair/Mob made their deals with warlords, not presidents

... as far as I have researched. Of course around the horn every Warlord maybe president for some time or every president might become a warlord.

[izquierdista]

16. Warlord, president

Kind of like the difference between a capo and the capo di tutti capi.

[MADem]

13. I am guessing it was camorra (Napoli mafia), but I don't know that for a certainty.

They've VERY wrapped up in what goes on at the ports in Campania, and they're reasonably centrally located. Every so often, they rip off a container of stuff headed for the Navy Exchange (the annual "cigarette truck hijacking" is almost a saint's day).

[Democracyinkind]

10. The dumping must logically preceed the washing up though, right?

check it out, piracy was there in the 90's... not in this form maybe, it started with simple robberies and wasn't all that widespread and certainly did not get the attention it gets today.

And someone sold that stuff to the Italian Mafia, and I guess they knew that the Mafia wouldn't dispose of it the legal way. Archair SA certainly did.

[MADem]

12. They didn't sell it to the mafia, they PAID the mafia to get rid of it.

They got rid of it, all right...!

[Democracyinkind]

14. Sure. My mind must have been off writing that.

I mixed up two things while writing.

If Archair would have disposed of that stuff in the legal way, they would have paid ALOT, since the legal options in Europe are very expensive ... (the salt mines etc.) .. Of course the legal way can't compete with the dumping, so they just paid less to get the "job done" to the mafia.

But I think the story was that Archair wasn't the one producing the toxic stuff; they took it from the polluters, saying they'd underbid the legal option, and cashed in big, paying a fraction of that to mobsters to dump it somewhere.

It almost works like the beltway ... :-)

[MADem]

15. I think you're right. Right down to the Beltway analogy...! nt