And also by "the Somali government collapsed" they mean "The Somali government was torn apart by corrupt warlords attempting to rape their own country for profit and power."
That's generally what I assume when I hear that a government collapsed. Anyway, I don't see how it bears on the truth or falsity of the claims about dumping, the motivations of the pirates, or the need of the Somali people for redress.
See pp 133-134, in which the UN reports the toxic waste dumping as fact. They say that at some point, the people doing the dumping may have had a contract with some faction of the Somali government. But even in the event that it was a legitimate government, the dumping was still in unambiguous violation of international treaties on waste disposal (and I dare any Libertarians in the audience to object to that kind of treaty -- it's hard to imagine anything that is more clearly a commons than the ocean).
Even if true, it has no bearing on the actions of pirates. Seizing and taking hostage cargo ships isn't justified by the claimed environmental or marine exploitation.
As with terrorists, I don't know if justification is always the right concept. The question may be more, do they have a legitimate grievance? And, do they have any way of dealing with the grievance, or are they just getting shit on? If they have a problem and no way to deal with it, then you shouldn't exactly be surprised when they start hurting people, and you shouldn't expect that you'll be able to force them to stop by any means short of killing every last person in the country. Possibly the right solution would be military action against people who are threatening the lives of others, but simultaneously to crack down on illegal dumping and fishing, the way we should have in the first place.
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That, and Somalia borders a major shipping channel--the Gulf of Aden. Kind of impossible to tell folks "sorry, please don't use this channel."
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http://www.unep.org.bh/Publications/Somalia/TSUNAMI_SOMALIA_LAYOUT.pdf
See pp 133-134, in which the UN reports the toxic waste dumping as fact. They say that at some point, the people doing the dumping may have had a contract with some faction of the Somali government. But even in the event that it was a legitimate government, the dumping was still in unambiguous violation of international treaties on waste disposal (and I dare any Libertarians in the audience to object to that kind of treaty -- it's hard to imagine anything that is more clearly a commons than the ocean).
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