The media's doing the usual hatchet job on truth telling and reporting a bunch of half truths – this time it’s about the "facts" in the Somalia story. Most of the lopsided accounts told by reporters and anchors tell not one iota of the history of why the Somalis were forced to start “pirating” in 1991, which include these fundamental facts:
-
mostly Europeans and Asians have been illegally stealing fish (aka seafood) from the Somali waters worth hundreds of millions of dollars for many years, which has naturally reduced the food supply for the people of Somalia, and
-
European countries have also been dumping toxic and nuclear wastes into the waters, which has not only caused the human population to suffer rashes, abdominal bleeding, nausea, malformed babies, radiation sickness, cancer-like symptoms, and other ills that are current (and those that will inevitably occur), but it has also caused illness and death among the sea life and endangered species.
These countries are able to get away with this because Somalia has no real government and the United Nations and European Union have done little to nothing to stop the massive thievery through illegal fishing as well as the hazardous waste dumping that’s become a multi-billion dollar industry.
For more background on this now ubiquitous news story, view videos and read the following links:
Black Agenda Report: Glen Ford's audio/article: “ US Aircraft Elite Navy SEALs Defeat Three Somalis in a Lifeboat ”
Mohamed Abshir Waldo’s essay: “ The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?” Also listen to his Democracy Now! interview.
DaveyD video: Interview with Somali rapper K’Naan
DaveyD video: K’Naan interview continued (history)
HardKnockTV video: Interview with K’Naan
K’Naan’s article: “Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates in Somalia .” Read at Alternet or DaveyD
Johann Hari’s article: “You Are Being Lied to About Pirates.” Read at The Independent or Alternet
Jeremy Scahill’s article: “‘ Pirates’ Strike a U.S. Ship…But Is the Media Telling the Whole Story?” or RebelReports
Those who've read the few links that's been in the recent BN-W eNewsletters concerning AFRICOM know that this might be a place America may try to put that military base that's currently forced to stay in Stuttgart, Germany, because no African country has agreed to allow it to be based anywhere in Africa. But, now with the staged U.S. government furor over Somali “pirates” (which is nothing new in those waters) and the corporate media's usual one-sidedness, it appears that America may be scheming up another plan to control Africa and its vast natural resources.
