This is a couple months old...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-you-are-being-lied-to-about-pirates-1225817.html

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
Johann Hari

Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - 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. 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 popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

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.

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." William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?


Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here. or here.

POSTSCRIPT: Some commenters seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia's coastline is vast, stretching to 3300km. Imagine how easy it would be - without any coastguard

or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places - but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals, and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.

Thanks for this. I read it at another site yesterday, where they were roasting the pirates, and you know none of them actually slowed down to learn something about the situation.

Thanks for this. I read it at another site yesterday, where they were roasting the pirates, and you know none of them actually slowed down to learn something about the situation.


The jingoism has really been something, the dark soul of the liberal revealed. Can't have context or background or shit like that to muddy the waters....USA! USA! And they can't recognise themselves in the mirror.

Might could give 'em some help on that.....

:-[ Wow, was I behind on the news or what? good stuff bp.

Thanks for this. I read it at another site yesterday, where they were roasting the pirates, and you know none of them actually slowed down to learn something about the situation.


The jingoism has really been something, the dark soul of the liberal revealed. Can't have context or background or shit like that to muddy the waters....USA! USA! And they can't recognise themselves in the mirror.

Might could give 'em some help on that.....


Saw a thread about the captain being freed..cheerleading as expected

Thanks for this. I read it at another site yesterday, where they were roasting the pirates, and you know none of them actually slowed down to learn something about the situation.


The jingoism has really been something, the dark soul of the liberal revealed. Can't have context or background or shit like that to muddy the waters....USA! USA! And they can't recognise themselves in the mirror.

Might could give 'em some help on that.....


Don't see how they can deny it, whatwith all the cheering for the fucking Navy Seals..aas though they're not known as death merchants the world round..

There's actually quite a bit out there if you run a few searches. Oil under Somalia (and natural gas in nearby Yemen)... Here are some articles to add to the archives about why the interest in east Africa, including CIA involvement (of course).

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/technology/companies/article.jsp?content=20070409_85390_85390
http://www.greenleft.org.au/1993/85/4766
http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivejuly/000927601.htm

surprise, liberals are boring law-and-order jerkoffs who think international trade is a wonderful thing for everybody involved & the only legitimate power is white power & the only legitimate exercise of power is that which prserves & strengthens white power.

surprise, liberals are boring law-and-order jerkoffs who think international trade is a wonderful thing for everybody involved & the only legitimate power is white power & the only legitimate exercise of power is that which prserves & strengthens white power.


Nah... they would have behaved exactly the same if the "pirates" were Norwegian.

Maybe, not...

A friend of mine called me up today and asked me to turn on the TV. On the Rachel Maddow show (presumably a "left" media production), they were interviewing the Chairman of Executive Action LLC. They introduced him as a "terrorism consultant" and were talking about Somalia as if nothing was wrong.

For those who don't know the story, Executive Action is the original private mercenary company, established way before Blackwater. More than ten years ago they were responsible for overturning at least half a dozen governments, mostly in Africa, in the hire of Western corporations. They were and are the worst bunch of war criminals on earth... so infamous in their time that they had to go to ground.

It gets better. The name, "Executive Action", came from CIA-speak. It means assassination.

It is the equivalent of Mengele suddenly showing up on Meet the Press and being introduced as a "dental consultant"...

Well this simple housewife learned all kinds of things about Somalia & Yemen today ... notably there is a whole lot of oil under Somalia and mucho natural gas in Yemen. The dots are not so difficult to connect. This must be "our president's" first assignment.

A friend of mine called me up today and asked me to turn on the TV. On the Rachel Maddow show (presumably a "left" media production), they were interviewing the Chairman of Executive Action LLC. They introduced him as a "terrorism consultant" and were talking about Somalia as if nothing was wrong.

For those who don't know the story, Executive Action is the original private mercenary company, established way before Blackwater. More than ten years ago they were responsible for overturning at least half a dozen governments, mostly in Africa, in the hire of Western corporations. They were and are the worst bunch of war criminals on earth... so infamous in their time that they had to go to ground.

It gets better. The name, "Executive Action", came from CIA-speak. It means assassination.

It is the equivalent of Mengele suddenly showing up on Meet the Press and being introduced as a "dental consultant"...



I think you are referring to Executive Outcomes which was founded by Eeben Barlow. Here's the wiki such as it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes

A better reference would be from the 1997 Harper's where this article was published:

An army of one's own:
In Africa, nations hire a corporation to wage war
By Elizabeth Rubin

It was one those pieces I'll never forget. It did indeed send a cold chill down my spine. Executives outcomes was at the time using the very baddest of the bad-asses from South Africa ops and using lots of fancy gadgetry to quell "unrest" all along the Ivory Coast et al.

A few more links on EO:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Executive_Outcomes

http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/mercenaries.html

Colonel Roelf was an Afrikaner who as a soldier and trained assassin spent his adult life suppressing black African liberation movements for the apartheid-era South African defense forces. Yet when I met him in the spring of 1996 in Sierra Leone, the black African civilians whose homes he had liberated in the midst of a brutal civil war said they regarded him as their savior.

Roelf was in Sierra Leone with Executive Outcomes (EO), a private mercenary army composed of former South African soldiers, which had been hired by the government to end the war. “We want to help African countries to neutralize their rebel wars and not depend on the UN to solve their problems,” Roelf told me one afternoon in the remote diamond region where he and his fellow mercenaries had set up their hilltop military base.

For more info on Somalia head to Chris Floyd's blog. He's been keeping up with US activities in Somalia for quite some time.

Here are some other links:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=FOS20070209&articleId=4726

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070110&articleId=4404

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070103&articleId=4342

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/soma-a13.shtml

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1619-silent-surge-bipartisan-terror-war-intensifies-in-somalia.html

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/1493--mass-murder-by-proxy-in-somalia-chris-floyd-on-americas-third-war.html

http://maanhadal.com/articles/Somalia%27s_American-Made_Road_to_Perdition.html

http://pacificfreepress.com/content/view/3072/81/

http://www.africaspeaks.com/somalia/1306072.html

http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2008/04/somalia-open-secret-horror-show.html

A few more:

http://www.geocities.com/arcticreds/somalia.html

http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/09/somalia-nightmare

Oh the irony:

Operation Restore Hope, the United States led U.N. intervention in Somalia in
December 1992.

http://74.125.93.104/search?q=cache:MHWRfb-92nAJ:www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/navy/pmi/somalia1.pdf+us+intervention+somalia&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Do-gooders:
http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Somalia/Somalia.htm

A friend of mine called me up today and asked me to turn on the TV. On the Rachel Maddow show (presumably a "left" media production), they were interviewing the Chairman of Executive Action LLC. They introduced him as a "terrorism consultant" and were talking about Somalia as if nothing was wrong.

For those who don't know the story, Executive Action is the original private mercenary company, established way before Blackwater. More than ten years ago they were responsible for overturning at least half a dozen governments, mostly in Africa, in the hire of Western corporations. They were and are the worst bunch of war criminals on earth... so infamous in their time that they had to go to ground.

It gets better. The name, "Executive Action", came from CIA-speak. It means assassination.

It is the equivalent of Mengele suddenly showing up on Meet the Press and being introduced as a "dental consultant"...



I think you are referring to Executive Outcomes which was founded by Eeben Barlow. Here's the wiki such as it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes

A better reference would be from the 1997 Harper's where this article was published:

An army of one's own:
In Africa, nations hire a corporation to wage war
By Elizabeth Rubin

It was one those pieces I'll never forget. It did indeed send a cold chill down my spine. Executives outcomes was at the time using the very baddest of the bad-asses from South Africa ops and using lots of fancy gadgetry to quell "unrest" all along the Ivory Coast et al.

A few more links on EO:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Executive_Outcomes

http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/mercenaries.html

Colonel Roelf was an Afrikaner who as a soldier and trained assassin spent his adult life suppressing black African liberation movements for the apartheid-era South African defense forces. Yet when I met him in the spring of 1996 in Sierra Leone, the black African civilians whose homes he had liberated in the midst of a brutal civil war said they regarded him as their savior.

Roelf was in Sierra Leone with Executive Outcomes (EO), a private mercenary army composed of former South African soldiers, which had been hired by the government to end the war. “We want to help African countries to neutralize their rebel wars and not depend on the UN to solve their problems,” Roelf told me one afternoon in the remote diamond region where he and his fellow mercenaries had set up their hilltop military base.


Yep... You are right. My friend conflated two different stories and I bit. Gotta check the memory at this advanced age. The bit about "Executive Action" meaning assassination, though, is true.

Now that you mention it, I do remember that EO was disbanded - too embarrassing.

This is about Executive Outcomes being hired by some NGO/Eco-charity:

...The EO provided the military force to back the ARRC's (Africa Rainforest and River Conservation) efforts to raise its own money through trading diamonds dug up in "its" conserved territory, a practice which is certainly "paralegal" and not at all conforming to the NGO's own purported mission in the Central African Republic. As recently as 2002, Bruce Hayse, founder of the ARRC, was quoted as saying "Diamonds looked like a way to develop the project with some kind of secure financial foundation, and to provide a more equitable means for the local people to sell the diamonds they pick up.[3]" The EO case is not necessarily unique, Ferguson argues, as such "paramilitary" private militias have been employed all across the continent since IMF and World Bank reforms, which encouraged the "disengagement" of the state in favor of the "free market," left governance open to contestation among NGOs, warlords, and private firms which were able to capitalise on the newly deregulated market and rapidly deteriorating state authority.

Bono coulda used these guys...

Gainsaying the NGOs and the State Department is beyond the pall. Don't try it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5455631#5456034

Kudos to SLAD

Why We Don't Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia

By K'Naan , URB Magazine. Posted April 14, 2009.

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Well in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated.

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery? Well in Somalia, the answer is: it's complicated. The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast, with such lopsided journalism that it's lucky they're not on a ship themselves. It's true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective. But according to many Somalis, the disruption of Europe's darling of a trade route is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don't believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And despite its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.


After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It's as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe. A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It's because of this disagreement that we've seen one of the most devastating wars in Somalia's history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead. But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore a good clan-based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid's men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and reselling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard. But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Progresso, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they could dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, where as in to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.

In 2004, after Tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters, the UN Convoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, that deterance has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to bury our nation's death trap.

Now Somalia has upped the world's pirate attacks by ove r21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali if they think getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western vessels, and the production of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.

It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice. As is apparent these days, one man's pirate is another man's coast guard.

http://www.alternet.org/story/136481/why_we_don%27t_condemn_our_pirates_in_somalia/

The truth is, those pirates were not always there. They did not exist 30 years ago when Somalia still had a government of sorts and was pretty close to self-sufficient in food.

There were still no pirates in the late 70's when the IMF forced down a "structural adjustments" program on the Somalian state. Among other provisions, this plan led to the abandonment of the program of free vaccination of the cattle. Cattle was 80% of Somalia's export. Vaccines were now too expensive for the peasants. Cattle died. Pretty soon, peasants died too. Famine, disease.

Healthcare budget was down by 78% thanks to the same plan. So was education which went from 82$/child in 1982 to 4$ in 1989.

Then there was civil war and Somalia collapsed. A US-led military expedition in 1996 killed a few thousand Somalis but did not make things better. Canadian military, lacking their UScounterpart firepower for large-scale massacre, contented themselves with torturing to death one Somali civilian.

When 17 US military were killed (remember black Hawk Down ?, foreign troops just left.

From then on, Somalia was pretty much left to itself. Still divided among warring warlords, still always on the brink of famin. Stille no government. A conservative paradise really : no state and guns everywhere.

Really pirates are the least important of Somalia's problems. They even bring quite a large amount of cash in some coastal villages. The only income those places have, actually.

Rules ? Somalis have learned the hard way : there are no rules.

These are the ordinary Somalian fisherman who at first took speedboats to try to prevent the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. 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. There was lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury. Much of it traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply.

At the same time European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. These so-called "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population and strongly support the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters. During the revolutionary war President Washington and the founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Piracy has historically been a natural consequence of the building of maritime empires. The piracy that destroyed the Minoans was fueled by their jealous guarding of their trading privileges with their colonies. The pirates, after taking over the Minoan empire and duplicating its monopolistic policies, fell prey to a new generation of pirates, some of whom used to sail ships for the Minoans. The Romans, the Spanish, the British, over and over again we see the oppressions of empires answered by the atrocities of free thugs. Over and over again, we blame the thugs and their excessive liberty, but the cause lies elsewhere. "The more you tighten your fist, the more systems will slip through your fingers," says Princess Leia, but the lesson is a very old one from the annals of Earth history. Piracy is a natural human reaction.

Really, the average level of insight in these remarks is not encouraging. Yes, we can establish that pirate molestation is vile and prone to being undertaken for personal gains far more than upholding national sovereignty issues. But how many of us North Americans have ever had to live below subsistence level for most of our lives and face social upheaval and violence throughout our daily life experience? Those of you who balk at armed resistance have no doubt lived a very settled and undisturbed existence that is only periodically marred by things such as armed madmen storming community centers. How placid would you remain if your livelihood or well-being were reduced to miserable conditions? Until you've come close to that scenario, you've got nothing substantive to say.

Somali pirates risk choking key world trade route 14 Nov 2008 16:19:48 GMT
Source: Reuters
Nov 14 (Reuters) - Somali pirates are causing havoc in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, which connects Europe to Asia and the Middle East via the Suez Canal.

Piracy off the Horn of Africa has been a problem for years, but daily attacks are now forcing shippers to seek alternative routes. Here are some facts about how the wave of attacks is threatening international seaborne trade.

* WHAT IS THE IMPACT?

-- Major operators of the world's merchant fleet -- carrying some 90 percent of the world's traded goods by volume -- are seriously considering by-passing the Gulf of Aden and Suez Canal altogether.

-- Industry experts say the alternative trade route, round South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, would add some three weeks or more to a typical journey, pushing up costs for goods.

-- Two well-known shipping firms, one that specializes in gas and the other the world's largest tug operator Svitzer, are already routing their vessels via the Cape of Good Hope.

-- Millions of tonnes of crude oil, petroleum products, gas and dry commodities like grains, iron ore and coal, as well as containerised goods from Hi-Fis to toys are ferried through the Gulf of Aden and Suez Canal every month.

* WHERE IS THE GULF OF ADEN?

-- The Gulf of Aden is located in the Middle East with Yemen to the north, Somalia to the south and the Arabian Sea to the east. It is connected to the Red Sea by the Bab el Mandab strait. Somalia has been stuck in civil conflict for 17 years.

* WHAT PASSES THROUGH?

-- Exports from the Gulf and Asia to the West must pass through Bab el-Mandab before entering the Suez Canal. Nearly 20,000 ships pass through the Gulf of Aden each year, heading to and from the Suez Canal.

-- The Bab el-Mandab passage handles around 3.3 million barrels per day of oil en route to the Canal and the Sumed Pipeline discharging in the Mediterranean for onward shipment to markets in Europe and the United States.

-- Seven percent of world oil consumption passed through the Gulf of Aden in 2007, according to Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit.

-- Around 30 percent of Europe's oil goes through the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.

-- Some 17 tankers transit the Gulf of Aden every day carrying about 6 million barrels per day of crude and petroleum products.

-- The total volume of crude and petroleum products voyaging westbound through the Gulf of Aden represents 18 percent of the United States and Europe's combined oil import volume.

-- Liquefied natural gas exports from Qatar and Algeria pass through the Gulf of Aden en route to consumers in the West and in Asia. The largest class of gas carrier transiting the area carries enough gas to heat 4.5 million British homes.

-- The Gulf of Aden and Suez Canal are the main trade routes for dry commodities and containerised cargo -- manufactured goods -- between Asia, Europe and the Americas.

-- The Suez Canal is the third major source of income for Egypt.

* REGIONAL SECURITY:

-- Intelligence sources say three suspicious trawlers are now in the Gulf of Aden and are believed to be pirate mother vessels looking to attack and hijack ships.

-- The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said a total of 199 incidents of piracy or attempted piracy were reported worldwide during January-September, of which 63 were in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast.

-- Recent attacks have brought the anti-terrorist Combined Task Force 150 into action. The multinational unit, part of Washington's Operation Enduring Freedom, is based in Djibouti and has come to the aid of many ships attacked by pirates.

-- In late August, it announced a string of waypoints marking a Maritime Security Patrol Area or safe corridor, which warships will patrol while coalition aircraft fly overhead.

-- While there is no formal agreement between the coalition and other navies, they have been communicating with each other and sharing information to more effectively patrol the area.

-- The British navy killed two pirates this week after the attempted hijacking of a Danish vessel. Britain's HMS Cumberland was joined in action by a Russian frigate. French ships have also engaged pirates in recent months, killing some, capturing others and freeing hostages.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LD681364.htm

Really, the average level of insight in these remarks is not encouraging. Yes, we can establish that pirate molestation is vile and prone to being undertaken for personal gains far more than upholding national sovereignty issues. But how many of us North Americans have ever had to live below subsistence level for most of our lives and face social upheaval and violence throughout our daily life experience? Those of you who balk at armed resistance have no doubt lived a very settled and undisturbed existence that is only periodically marred by things such as armed madmen storming community centers. How placid would you remain if your livelihood or well-being were reduced to miserable conditions? Until you've come close to that scenario, you've got nothing substantive to say.



hear, hear, thanks for all this info Chlamor...a mile in the shoes is something many don't understand in this country...

Really, the average level of insight in these remarks is not encouraging. Yes, we can establish that pirate molestation is vile and prone to being undertaken for personal gains far more than upholding national sovereignty issues. But how many of us North Americans have ever had to live below subsistence level for most of our lives and face social upheaval and violence throughout our daily life experience? Those of you who balk at armed resistance have no doubt lived a very settled and undisturbed existence that is only periodically marred by things such as armed madmen storming community centers. How placid would you remain if your livelihood or well-being were reduced to miserable conditions? Until you've come close to that scenario, you've got nothing substantive to say.



hear, hear, thanks for all this info Chlamor...a mile in the shoes is something many don't understand in this country...




Very welcome. Here's an article well worth the read on the subject of Somalia the IMF/World Bank and imperial ambitions.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/33/006.html