Bloody Pirates! (aka making fun of trrrrrists, it seems)

[BeautifulBurnout]

Which member of the Bush Administration changed the thread title on this?

Would the Honourable Gentleman please go to the third aisle on the left where they have a whole stack of Senses of Humour available at only $9.99. (They are on special due to demand).

Edit: Oh wait! No need to ask! *points in direction of SoCal*

[myrrh]

Arrrr, beauty. The bilge rat got his hornpipe stuck in the grog's bung hole. Lubber just needs a good boardin'.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by myrrh

Arrrr, beauty. The bilge rat got his hornpipe stuck in the grog's bung hole. Lubber just needs a good boardin'.

Aye, Cap'n!

Two more ships seized today it seems, too! A King's ransom, I tells ya!

Shame there is more uproar about this than there is about all the children dying in Darfur, but hey.... no change there then.

[dubman]

well i thought it was an amusing title considering the conflict of levity and "oh but i would feel bad if something happened" directly after the levity.

dammit janie, "trrrsts" stopped being funny like 3 years ago. get an upgrade.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Originally Posted by dubman

dammit janie, "trrrsts" stopped being funny like 3 years ago. get an upgrade.

Anyhoo, the Indians seem to have got this whole problem nailed...

[myrrh]

The EU now has a Navy!

[King of Snake]

we had a navy all the time, we've just finally figured out what to do with it

Also a nice occasion to decorate our army helicopters with movie references!

[Deckard]

Piece by Johann Hari posted a few days ago:
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

I found it fascinating - worth a read.

[//\/\/]

let's make fun of the pirates, some of whom clearly fell victim of shoddy planning - early entries for this year's darwin awards

[BeautifulBurnout]

I am in two minds as to whether to make fun of them or not at the moment, having read Johann Hari's (yes, him of the Inde fame) article in the HuffPo.

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. 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."
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."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas."