Fatbeard

"This isn't paradise and you know it. The people here are starving and dying. The whole world uses Somalia as a dumping ground for toxic waste. Even the fish here are radioactive." — Kyle

I think it was inevitable that South Park would have a Somali pirate episode. The complete uncensored version is available now, and it's sure to become a classic.

Like all memorable South Park episodes, Fatbeard is rude, crude, and... fair and balanced? That's the only way I can describe it. The crazy story line is about Cartman and his recruits running off to Somalia to plunder treasure completely oblivious to any danger. But by the end of the show, after they sing a catchy sea shanty, they give us insight into the real Somalia -- a political, humanitarian and environmental train wreck.

War on Pirates

"The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate." - Bern Williams

Three remarkable sniper shots ended the Somali pirate standoff in the Indian Ocean yesterday. The Navy Seals rescued the sole prisoner, Capt. Richard Phillips, who, four days earlier, heroically offered himself as a hostage in order to spare his crew.

Prior to the rescue, Fox News was describing the situation as a "foreign policy emergency with no easy solution." So it seems the wingnut's gloating and bloviating was a bit premature. Did they really see political opportunity in the midst of a crisis? I believe the American public firmly rejected this type of divisive politics in the 2008 election.

Of course, dissent is healthy, and I'm sure we'll see plenty of it as we now figure out where the 16-year-old surviving pirate will face trial. It's a unique situation, and until last week, no US ship, sailor, or citizen had been targeted by Somali pirates who seem to be in it mostly for the ransom money.

Or are they in it for something else? When I wrote about Somali pirates last September, I was curious and a little skeptical about the pirated Iranian ship carrying suspicious cargo that was described as "chemicals, dangerous chemicals." But then I came across this article by Johann Hari. He describes the side of piracy that we're not being told about:

In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and 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.

...

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 in a telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali: "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." William Scott would understand.

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

I agree that we need to use force against pirates, but the real bravery will come when we realize that protecting the environment and enforcing international treaties will, in the long term, be more effective than all the high-tech guided bullets we can imagine.

Pirates of Somalia

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -- H.L. Mencken

Nobody reminded me about International Talk Like a Pirate Day earlier this month. We can laugh at the hats, the flags, and the sea shanties, but now let me be the party-pooper and scare you about stories of real pirates:

The Somali pirates who hijacked a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition said in an interview on Tuesday that they had no idea the ship was carrying arms when they seized it on the high seas.

“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a telephone interview. “So we stopped it.”

The pirates quickly learned, though, that their booty was an estimated $30 million worth of heavy weaponry, heading for Kenya or Sudan, depending on whom you ask.

Even with the heavy weaponry, the story never really caught my interest. The pirates are clearly after a ransom and not the weapons.

But then I read another story about a pirated Iranian ship with very different cargo. This cargo was described as "chemicals, dangerous chemicals."

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”

The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.

I'm not a doctor, but I watch House a lot. Sounds like these pirates have a serious case of radiation exposure. But with so little coverage of this story, it's hard to know what's going on.

And if it is nuclear material or chemical weapons, then who shipped it, where was it headed and for what purpose? If it involves Iran, Russia, and/or China, then I'm sure we'll be hearing much more about it.