Demands of Somali Pirates--More Reasonable Than You Think

So yeah, about those scary black pirates who've stormed our poor calm capitalist waters. Yeah, um, they're trying to tell you that your toxic waste is all up in their business down in Somalia.



Oh silly American media, you forgot that part! You only told me about the scary black men stealing booty.

How is it I have to go to "terrorist" news source, Al Jazeera, to find out that these "pirates" have much more depth to their attacks than what is immediately visible?

Somali pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of a Ukranian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the waste.

The ransom demand is a means of "reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years", Januna Ali Jama, a spokesman for the pirates, based in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, said.

"The Somali coastline has been destroyed, and we believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas."

The pirates are holding the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and military hardware, off Somalia's northern coast.

According to the International Maritime Bureau, 61 attacks by pirates have been reported since the start of the year.

While money is the primary objective of the hijackings, claims of the continued environmental destruction off Somalia's coast have been largely ignored by the regions's maritime authorities.

Now for the juicy part...

"Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there," he said.

"European companies found it to be very cheap to get rid of the waste, costing as little as $2.50 a tonne, where waste disposal costs in Europe are something like $1000 a tonne.

"And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it."

Nuttall also said that since the containers came ashore, hundreds of residents have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments.

You know, I get tired of that nonsensical public mentality that is only capable of understanding criminal-like activities as undeniably evil. Can't it be the case that people are forced into criminal activities when they are being consistently beaten down? Can't some people steal a ship to get some leverage in their demands for basic human rights like clean water for their peoples?

When the world has turned its back on you and shat all over your water, it makes sense that your only option is to fight back by any means necessary.

COLTAN: The Other "Blood Diamond"

If you don't know what Coltan is, you really need to find out. Unfortunately, it was something I barely found out about just a couple years ago in college.

I was pleased to randomly come across a little Yahoo article about Coltan, a very unique metal that is essential to all electronic devices. Yes, it is in your phone, your computer, and a lot of other stuff close to us, including our Play Stations.

Unfortunately, the atrocious reality of Coltan is not nearly publicized enough, even though it is essential to the Western world.

From Yahoo:

According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

...the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

From Suite101.com:

Every day millions of children are forced to crawl into underground mines on their hands and knees to dig for the essential raw material, coltan, to make electronic gadgets like cell phones, iPods, laptop computers, play stations, wireless systems, DVD players, blackberries and pagers possible.

These technologically advanced toys are given life from capacitors, which are made from coltan, dug up from dangerous mines by children, under age 10.

The illegal trafficking of coltan in the Congo, has made thousands of children labourers. They work from sunrise to after dark digging with their calloused little hands into the earth to remove the raw material to be traded on the black market for US $400 a pound.

This is a really complicated issue--we got race, class, globalization, human rights issues, capitalism, and a whole lot of other stuff implicated in this Coltan business. As controversial as Marx is, right now his Fetishism of Commodities is first on my mind. We really need to know the history that is hidden within our commodified products.

Pointing Our Dirty Finger At China

The controversy about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing is deeper than it might appear on the surface. Westerners pointing to its human rights violations and other issues are doing more than just that--they are carrying a long-held note sung by our country for about half a century. Ever since China turned communist, there has been a bitter-sweet diplomatic history between it and the United States.

This Olympics controversy is throwing fuel into the flame of anti-Chinese sentiment. From the Los Angeles Times:

As the Olympic torch made its way through the streets of Paris, London and San Francisco, tens of thousands protested China's treatment of Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

But inside some Chinese American communities, notably the San Gabriel Valley, the view of Tibet and its spiritual leader is far more complex.

On Cat Chao's Mandarin-language talk show "Rush Hour" on KAZN-AM (1300), most callers haven't been debating whose side to take but why the Western media has been so biased against China in its reporting of the riots that rocked Tibet earlier this month.

"They're pretty angry," Chao said. "People usually trust Western media because they think it's balanced. Not anymore."

Others complained that the torch protests have gone beyond criticizing the Chinese communist government and have a decidedly anti-Chinese feeling.

Our country's people are voicing a lot of objections to China, especially now in light of the Olympics controversy. But we should keep in mind that as much as we try to disassociate ourselves from China through discussions of human rights abuses and environmental abuses, our country has been and currently is guilty of the same things.

I'm talking about our companies that set up sweatshops and/or factories in foreign countries--abusing local workers, their families, and their environments. Such as the Mexican maquiladora industry.

There is a lot going on with the Olympics controversy, we can't just try to target China because in doing so we are implicating ourselves. In other words, who are we to point the finger? It's not that no finger should ever be pointed, but come on, the United States?

James Bond Filming Clashes With Chilean Community

Here's some weird news from Chile: during the filming of a scene in Chile for the upcoming James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, a local Chilean mayor angrily drove a vehicle into the set. Mayor Carlos López, of Baquedano, Chile, was protesting the filiming for its negative impact on the community.Tom Leonard from Telegraph.co.uk reports:

Mr Lopez was arrested and briefly detained for what police called "causing public disorder". It was claimed that he almost ran over two people at the town's railway station as he sped onto the set.

He had been protesting at what he called an excessive police presence in Baquedano and objecting to Chilean soil being used as a stand in for neighbouring Bolivia.

Baquedano lies in a mining region around the city of Antofagasta in the far north of the country. It was forcibly annexed by Chile from Bolivia in the late 19th century - an issue that continues to divide the two countries.

...Mr Lopez said yesterday: "For a town that has just 1,000 residents, sending in special forces and water cannon, preventing people from walking in the street, reminded me of the worst of the Pinochet years.

So what's the problem? This situation just comes off to me like another one of those big western capitalist F.U.'s to the other guys. Sure the filming was permitted and legal, but that doesn't rid it of all evil. I mean, all those foreign companies set up in Jamaica are there legally too...but their presence there has greatly harmed the national sovereignty of the country. When Jamaica finally gained its independence, like many other countries, it faced overwhelming debt. As a result, the country turned to international lending organizations for help. However, the loans came with conditions that forced Jamaica into submission under foreign companies. Ultimately, the country's own resources and monetary system were completely undermined by foreign imports, and the country ultimately fell at the mercy of foreign Western capitalist nations.

Specifically, I'm trying to get at the issue of Western capitalist interests overpowering the national sovereignty of other countries. I'm talking about a blatant disregard for the culture, history, and identities of the locals who become unavoidably involved in Western capitalist affairs in such countries. In the specifics of the James Bond incident, I'm trying to point out that the filming of this movie cannot simply take place without imposing on the relations of the Chilean and Bolivian people implicated by the filming controversy.

These kinds of filmings are not uncommon, but we have to realize that taking such projects into a foreign country does not have the same effect as filming on some Los Angeles high school campus for some Hollywood teen movie. There is a heavy racial, cultural, and international clash that takes place--which the general Western capitalist public takes for granted.