Somalia

Someone misunderstood, entirely in fact, what I was saying the other day and thought I was expressing sympathy for Somali pirates. Apart from being an alarmingly stupid interpretation of anything I would say, it bothered me more generally because I fear that extremist left-wing individuals without much information are thinking that really, these "rich" Western nations are in the wrong and these "pirates" (it offends me that the term is used as their activities do not at all rise to level of impressive piracy) are behaving appropriately given the circumstances. It should be noted that this is a variation on the belief that Western nations are responsible for poverty in Middle Eastern nations (actually the fault of the ruling oligarchies) and so on and so forth and as a result, human beings are allowed to randomly attack other human beings without consequence.

Obviously, that doesn't make any sense. You can disagree with the world order but certainly anarchy is no solution. No one wins under that scenario.

Somalia has been vaguely painted in the press as a horribly poor country just fighting for survival through these acts. That's not what's going on. This is just another form of the young men without a sense of propriety, discipline, or law enforcement to control their impulsiveness deciding to harass other people so they can engage in whatever marks tacky nouveau riche behavior in their society. There, here's what it is:
"With their black scarves covering their faces and submachine guns slung over their arms, Somalia’s pirates are the real Jack Sparrows of the twenty-first century, minus the eyeliner. One young woman who lives near Boosaaso bragged about going to a pirate wedding that lasted two days. A band was flown in from neighboring Djibouti. There was nonstop dancing and an endless supply of goat meat. “They drive the best cars, they throw the best parties,” she gushed. “We all want to marry them.” She claimed that her own pirate boyfriend had just given her a small gift—$350,000 in cash. For young Somali men, pirate life is becoming too much to resist. Fishermen all along the coast have traded in their ragged fishing nets for rocket-propelled grenades."

Sounds a lot like the Colombian drug lords back in the day, no? And the current Mexican drug lords? And like a lot of people in....well, I've decided against insulting people for a while (but think, hotbed for the nouveau riche).

The twist on this actually also follows the traditional route for justification of this behavior - someone has done something upsetting to the environment and so, drastic behavior that has nothing to do with the original issue is appropriate. In this case, a couple decades ago the country's government fell apart and then things were found floating in what I will assume were national waters for the Somali pirates' benefit in this argument and there was overfishing and so, there was a right to attack international vessels, hold people aboard hostage and extract huge amounts of ransom money. Um okay. Let's say they'd done this and used the money to fix the water, block international vessels from fishing within their waters, etc. Then, maybe, maybe, there would be an argument. It wouldn't be right, but it would be understandable, given that it was unlikely the fisherman could actually reach out to those corporations and demand restitution. Of course, that isn't what they did with the money. Instead, it's now a business, with investors, inventory, ROI estimates etc. without any connection to improving the nation. It is, however, dedicated to a redistribution of wealth from "wealthy" countries to violent people in developing countries.

Just a point - there's no need for violent people in developing countries to have more money. Ergo, there's no reason to support the actions of the pirates. And people who do can turn their money over to the pirates voluntarily. Go ahead.