Pirates & Swimming in Radioactive Waste

As a person who with a perennial fascination with Special Forces and a devotee of the now defunct TV show "Alias," I let out a hearty "HOO-YA!" when I heard about this weekend's technically perfect rescue of the heroic ship captain being held by Somali pirates.

It's taken me two days, but it's finally sinking in: the three pirates simultaneously killed were *teenage boys.* Three women, somewhere out there, dead or alive, and probably my age, carried those boys for nine months and birthed them. Somewhere out there, people who loved those boys are grieving.

Now, don't get me wrong. The US Navy did the right thing. The captain, in protecting his crew and protecting his cargo (food aid for africa) did the right thing. The pirates did the wrong thing. But there is a context that I'm not seeing discussed in the mainstream media regarding how richer countries have exploited Somalia over the past 15 years and set up the context that shaped those boys actions:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html

I have often wondered: "Why *has* Somalia remained lawless for so long?" The same can be asked of a lot of neighborhoods in the U.S. The answer lies in the profit that springs from the absence of law: Environmental injustice, illegal drugs, political corruption, exploited cheap labor....the story of Somalia and the pirates isn't that different from places all over the U.S. and all over the world.

As we get whipped up into a further frenzy over the coming weeks about restoring order to Somalia, I hope we also get whipped up into a frenzy over social justice.

Who is responsible for dumping the dangerous chemicals that are killing Somalis? Who is responsible for illegal fishing? Let's bring order to Somalia but let's also bring justice....

A quote from an article in today's Washington Post:

In Somalia, in the pirate haven of Harardhere, where locals have benefited from millions of dollars in pirate ransom, the military operation seemed like a bewildering display of force against four errant young men. "It was wrong to kill those pirates," said Aisha Gurey, an Arabic teacher. "The international community is wrong, and the pirates are wrong. But in this case, the strong one has killed the weak one."