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Very few people turn to crime due to an abundance of brains.

Kinda like when someone stumbles into MiniThink.

Somebody buy those guys one of those ship profile recognition guides.  They can read it in French prison.

And what's the deal with airline food?

Somalia isn't using piracy as a national solution to their problems, just like Nigeria isn't endorsing people to write emails on behalf of deposed princes.  A group of individuals did.  If they hadn't mistakenly boarded a French ship, then they most likely would have terrorized, robbed, and perhaps even killed innocent victims.  So, I choose to laugh at their faux pas.  There's a certain degree of karmic justice there, no?

No, he was drawing an incorrect conclusion, perhaps on purpose.  Allow me to rephrase:

unshavenyak wrote:

it's pretty disgusting watching people make light of another nation's desperation

None of us were pointing and laughing at Somalia.  We were pointing and laughing at inept criminals who caught their due justice, literally.  Misfortune did not bring them aboard that ship.  Their own feet did.

If we went through life and decided to closely inspect anything we find funny for any sort of disparaging harm, we would never laugh at anything.  Elmer Fudd gets blown up by his own gun, and we laugh.  A stupid kid does a backflip through the rear windshield of his car, and we laugh.  We're taught to laugh at adversity, at the horrible things that glare at us from the deep, dark corners because if we didn't know how to do that, all we would do is collapse under the weight of the world.  Do I pity Somalia?  Yes.  No more, however, than I pity people forced to live in high-crime areas because of discriminatory hiring practices; no more than I pity the countless number of children in the world dying because they have no food.  I look in fear at my future, how I sit here in a job where I have no hopes for advancement, wondering if my dreams will ever come true.  Or, what's worse, I wonder if I'll be able to provide enough help to make the dreams of my daughter come true.  Will our dreams deferred, as Langston Hughes so poignantly put it, shrivel up and die?  I fear these things.  I live in fear.  I bathe in pity.  I wallow in compassion.  However, if my heart were forced to split open every time something worth a tear crossed my path, it would be cleaved into as many pieces as to be completely destroyed, and I would be a shell of a man.  So, I choose to laugh.  I choose to see the lighter side of things.  I choose to think... no, know that all of our dreams will come true as long as we fight hard enough.

It feels much better to laugh than to cry, don't you think?

Last edited by Jokotai (2009-10-09 1:00 am)

I try.

ShnickyShnack wrote:

That was some very interesting free-associating.

Not another one!

Pariah wrote:

I actually have a fair degree of sympathy for the Somali "pirates", most of which are just fishermen who live in a failed state and who's waters have been practical fished out by foreign factory ships and poisoned by foreign dumpers.
An honest man will steal bread for his family.

Bingo.

Jokotai wrote:

No, he was drawing an incorrect conclusion, perhaps on purpose.  Allow me to rephrase:

unshavenyak wrote:

it's pretty disgusting watching people make light of another nation's desperation

None of us were pointing and laughing at Somalia.  We were pointing and laughing at inept criminals who caught their due justice, literally.  Misfortune did not bring them aboard that ship.  Their own feet did.

Ahahaha it's laughable to assert that their own [subtext: free] feet brought those people there. While some may  have come out of a desire to loot those ships, many are adolescents -- 14 - 17 -- who are there through the coercion of gangs.

If they have not been outright extorted into service, they joined vainly in hope of seeing an end to their families starvation or were unfortunate enough to have a baby brother or sister born, and effectively sold themselves to a local gang just to avoid having their new sibling blown away for being a drain on local resources.

Growing up in Toronto, I've had the privilege of hearing the horror stories first-hand from many Somali refugees who now reside in the Rexdale area.

If you cannot be bothered to read about Somalia's horrifying colonial history before calling this "justice", then at least stroll down to your local music store and pick-up K'Naan's "Dusty Foot Philosopher" and "Troubadour".

Tallgeese wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

That was some very interesting free-associating.

Not another one!

Can't have too many free-associators.

Oh, wait, yes you can.

Tallgeese wrote:

Pariah wrote:

I don't think the Samolia situation is at all funny but that one particular incident certainly has a dark comic aspect to it.
It's like someone thinking a hornets nest was a pinata, that they get stung a million times isn't funny, but the surprise and running around certainly is.

I actually have a fair degree of sympathy for the Somali "pirates", most of which are just fishermen who live in a failed state and who's waters have been practical fished out by foreign factory ships and poisoned by foreign dumpers.
An honest man will steal bread for his family.

I've said it before, but if your response to injustice is violent crime against people with the same color skin as your 'oppressor', I have no sympathy when you get your ass blown away.

Agreed. If they were going after the people dumping crap in their seas, or other fishermen poaching their fish; fine - I wouldn't have a problem with it.

However, they aren't doing that. They are hijacking ships and putting people in danger for profit. As long as that is the case, I have zero problem with using extreme force against them. In fact, I think we should send a solid navy down there, with satellite support, to hunt down the pirates and end their scourge. It would also help if we could hunt down the poachers and polluters as well, to take away any reason for further piracy.

jerwin wrote:

radarman wrote:

However, they aren't doing that. They are hijacking ships and putting people in danger for profit. As long as that is the case, I have zero problem with using extreme force against them. In fact, I think we should send a solid navy down there, with satellite support, to hunt down the pirates and end their scourge. It would also help if we could hunt down the poachers and polluters as well, to take away any reason for further piracy.

Satellite Support? Whoa whoa whoa. Slow down cowboy! Satellite support is expensive. I say we send in a carrier group, and wait and see whether satellite support is warranted.

There is a lot of water to cover, and carriers can't be everywhere. Besides, a carrier is overkill. A few destroyers would do the job nicely. Given the location of this particular scum, they probably don't even need to retask them very much, as I suspect they already get lots of pictures of the middle east.

Actually, this sounds like a great job for NATO. The French are already down there, so why not deploy a few other navies that aren't doing squat.

It's time to bring law and order to the waters off Somalia, fully-automatic style.

EDIT - after I posted, I remembered an idea I had a while back. Decoy ships that are filled to capacity with high-explosives - triggered when they try to open the door to the bridge. The ship itself is remote controlled until it sends some pirate scum to Davy Jones locker, at least the bits that don't get vaporized in the initial blast. I'm sure we have a few old ships that could be sacrificed for such an effort.

Last edited by radarman (2009-10-09 10:18 pm)