The Pirates of Somalia
The pirates on the high seas meet an American boat. The captain offers himself up as a hostage so the passengers can go free. The captain makes a run for it, but gets recaptured. The army, under cover of darkness, parachute in near the boat, and they set up snipers who take out three pirates and capture one. Only to have other pirates get away, shaking their fists at us as they say, "Damn you, America!! You'll pay for this!!!!!!"
It's a classic American movie, it really is. I was enraptured by this. It was exciting. It was unique. The whole country was enthralled by it. It was a truly heroic and amazing thing that happened. So why did I get more annoyed as the story continued and exponentially so in the aftermath of it?
My first reaction when I read the headline on the first day that an American boat had been captured?--I was thinking to myself, "Wow, pirates are holding hundreds if not thousands of people every day from other countries, and as soon as it's an American ship it gets front page round the world? WHY? This is the first time in my whole life that I can ever remember real life pirates being discussed on the American news networks as a current world problem. They're a huge problem in countries off the coast of Africa because they basically go out and wait for boats so they can capture them and collect ransom. Boats' cargo can be worth upwards of several million dollars in ransom. It's huge the amount that these guys collect on a yearly basis, and only now did anyone acknowledge that it's an issue.
While a lot of articles mentioned some of the alarming statistics of the number of pirates and the number of people being held hostage by them, none of them really talked about their affect on these countries' economies or their people. There was no context or perspective. Not one single article even bothered to mention how so many of these countries are ravaged by chaos because of their terrible economies. Many of those countries have taken out huge loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and they spend almost their entire income paying back just the yearly interest on the loans.
Obama said he's going to get tougher on pirates. That's all well and good, but maybe we should attack the ROOT of the fucking problem and not just react with more violence. America has been acting for the past fifty years as the world bully, and that's exactly the kind of behavior that gave birth to Al Queda. It has led to a world that both hates and fears us. As a nation, we've turned into Jabba The Hutt, and all it's going to take is one guy to mess us up in the right way to make our whole ship/dynasty come crashing down. We have to stop treating the rest of the world like the owe us something, and instead start recognizing that we are all in this deal together as one race. Other cultures are not something to be feared but to be embraced.
This has turned into a rather erratic rant, and I'm sorry, but I was insanely frustrated that whole week while this was going on. Every day in the news it would be Pirates this and The Captain that, but no one ever said anything about Africa's chaotic countries, the World Bank or the IMF, or our widespread disregard for the whole continent (except for the huge amount of money we give to Egypt yearly).
This country seems so hopeless sometimes.
It's a classic American movie, it really is. I was enraptured by this. It was exciting. It was unique. The whole country was enthralled by it. It was a truly heroic and amazing thing that happened. So why did I get more annoyed as the story continued and exponentially so in the aftermath of it?
My first reaction when I read the headline on the first day that an American boat had been captured?--I was thinking to myself, "Wow, pirates are holding hundreds if not thousands of people every day from other countries, and as soon as it's an American ship it gets front page round the world? WHY? This is the first time in my whole life that I can ever remember real life pirates being discussed on the American news networks as a current world problem. They're a huge problem in countries off the coast of Africa because they basically go out and wait for boats so they can capture them and collect ransom. Boats' cargo can be worth upwards of several million dollars in ransom. It's huge the amount that these guys collect on a yearly basis, and only now did anyone acknowledge that it's an issue.
While a lot of articles mentioned some of the alarming statistics of the number of pirates and the number of people being held hostage by them, none of them really talked about their affect on these countries' economies or their people. There was no context or perspective. Not one single article even bothered to mention how so many of these countries are ravaged by chaos because of their terrible economies. Many of those countries have taken out huge loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and they spend almost their entire income paying back just the yearly interest on the loans.
Obama said he's going to get tougher on pirates. That's all well and good, but maybe we should attack the ROOT of the fucking problem and not just react with more violence. America has been acting for the past fifty years as the world bully, and that's exactly the kind of behavior that gave birth to Al Queda. It has led to a world that both hates and fears us. As a nation, we've turned into Jabba The Hutt, and all it's going to take is one guy to mess us up in the right way to make our whole ship/dynasty come crashing down. We have to stop treating the rest of the world like the owe us something, and instead start recognizing that we are all in this deal together as one race. Other cultures are not something to be feared but to be embraced.
This has turned into a rather erratic rant, and I'm sorry, but I was insanely frustrated that whole week while this was going on. Every day in the news it would be Pirates this and The Captain that, but no one ever said anything about Africa's chaotic countries, the World Bank or the IMF, or our widespread disregard for the whole continent (except for the huge amount of money we give to Egypt yearly).
This country seems so hopeless sometimes.