Captain Blackbeard Meets Captain Planet

All this talk about the stock market has obscured an otherwise fascinating news story. Think sword fights, eye patches, peg legs, and rum-drunk parrots. Yup, you guessed it: Pirates! On September 25, a group of Somali men hijacked a Ukranian ship filled with heavy weaponry. They are now demanding a ransom to the tune of $20 million. And they say they only take cash. En garde!

Indeed, it is 2008 and these buccaneering bandits are still wreaking havoc on the high seas. But instead of the Johnny Depp-like buffoonery we might expect from contemporary pirates, the issue is actually quite complicated and highly political. These modern-day scallywags appear to be less scally, more wag.

Somali officials confirmed that the seamen are actually former fisherman who began to organize themselves 15 years ago to stop illegal fishing. After the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, international fleets flocked to the area. The foreigners stripped the coast of its valuable product, did not pay taxes, and left thousands without a source of livelihood. The 'pirates' would confront illegal fisherman and demanded a tax.

The US military shouted, "They're going to give guns to terrorists!" The response: "We don’t want these weapons to go to anyone in Somalia. Somalia has suffered from many years of destruction because of all these weapons. We don’t want that suffering and chaos to continue. We are not going to offload the weapons. We just want the money." Word.

Somali diplomats say, "They're criminals!" The response: “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard.” It is hard to stick to our beloved dichotomy of good/evil when the badguys sound more coherent than the good ones... The 'badguys' even call themselves The Central Region Coast Guard.

Are they environmental avengers or nautical marauders? Who can say. But after our massively failed foray into neoliberalism, I say we make all parties responsible walk the plank! Bush, Rove, Paulson, Bernanke, Greenspan. The whole bunch. Send em to Davy Jones' locker! Or at the very least, how about a $700 billion case of scurvy?

Watch this really interesting BBC Video!!!!