If Conservative, Collaborationist Democrats Opt For A Grand Bargain With The Right... When Do We Get Pirate Party Candidates?

Although the narrator is a 'tard who can barely read the Stratfor script she was given, the main points are well taken: "The traditional political elites are losing control of the system they once dominated... 12 governments of the Eurozone's 17 member states have collapsed or been voted out of office in the last two years. This phenomenon is testament to the near political impossibility of implementing Austerity and reform measures without losing popular support."

In Greece, the right-leaning Conservative Consensus Party and the left-leaning Conservative Consensus Party was each abandoned by much of it's base. Even together they failed on Monday to form a coalition government. Greek voters, furious at their collaboration with the German bankster regime that has imposed Austerity-- failed Austerity-- have turned to alternatives. On the left, voters made a rational decision and voted in Alexis Tsipras' Syriza grouping-- as well as the Communists (8.48% of the vote) and other leftist parties. On the right, of course, the lizard brain went straight for he Nazis. 21 deputies (6.97% of the vote) were elected to the Golden Dawn, a far right populist party comparable to the Arizona GOP or the teabaggers here-- only with more elaborate and menacing iconography.

In other European countries, voters, particularly younger voters, are registering their disgust with the traditional political parties of the Conservative Consensus by voting for... the Pirate Party. It appears to have been founded in 2006 as a Swedish party led by IT developer Rickard Falkvinge and it had more to do with Internet issues than politics per se. But as it spread across Europe it has become more and more associated with other issues of the Enlightenment, from civil rights and universal healthcare to separation of church and state and direct democracy. Last year the German Pirate Party won 8.9% of the vote in the Berlin state election and this past weekend the Pirate Party astounded everyone by winning over 8% of the vote in Schleswig-Holstein and 6 seats in the state parliament, perhaps enough to determine whether the conservative CDU or the less conservative Social Democrats will lead the coalition government.

Worldwide there are now over 40 countries with Pirate parties. The United States Pirate Party, which is based primarily on standing up for Net Neutrality and freedom of information, is registered in Massachusetts, Florida, Oklahoma and Oregon and there are state Pirate parties in New York and Maryland as well. The Pirate Party in Massachusetts says they expect to start running candidates in 2014.

Monday night, sitting in for Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes connected the dots for viewers between what voters across Europe have done and what voters in America must do to save themselves from the economic and social ravages that come with the kind of Austerity the European One Percent has imposed-- and which the American right is trying to impose. Mitt Romney's and Paul Ryan's economic precepts are what Sarkozy and Merkel have given Europe... but on steroids.

Navy Seals Rescue American Hostage And Kill Somali Pirates

Even though a good friend is in Somalia now making a documentary on pirates-- and even though we have discussed the Somali pirates here in the past (yes, before they were so trendy)-- we've left the recent Somali pirate talk to the right wing blow-hards while we tried keeping the focus on the far more dangerous and predatory Wall Street pirates.

Now we're happy to report that Richard Phillips, the American captain of the Maersk Alabama, who was held hostage by 4 surrounded Somali pirates demanding a ransom, was freed, unharmed. Since the rightists were all blaming Obama I wonder when Fox will be congratulating him now that U.S. Navy Seals killed 3 of the pirates and locked up the 4th in a well-executed strategy that was very different from the insanity demanded by the slobbering right-wing nutcases. Despite all the worst wishes of the Republicans who would rather see America fail than Obama succeed, it looks like the president handled his first 3am call just fine-- and still managed to get his daughters a cute puppy!

I wonder why the Bush Regime never did anything about cleaning up the Somali pirates' nests along the Horn of Africa. By virtually ignoring the problem, they let it fester and grow. It was satisfying to see that President Obama moved in swiftly and surely-- and that he authorized the three AK-47 armed pirates who may have been attempting to kill Captain Phillips be shot. And thank God there's no chance of Obama strutting around an aircraft carrier with a sock in his crotch and a big "Mission Accomplished" banner in range of cameras.




UPDATE: The Blow By Blow

There's been so much misinformation, mostly spread by Fox and other rightist sources making things up, as usual, that I figured I'd mention that this was a carefully planned and sanctioned operation and that Captain Anderson had not escaped overboard again. Many of the sources are reporting variations on the story but I'm counting on this NY Times version, which is kind of like what CNN is reporting as well (from Bahrain):

Just after dark on Sunday, snipers on the U.S.S. Bainbridge saw that one of the pirates was pointing an automatic rifle at Captain Phillips, and that the captors’ heads and shoulders were exposed from the capsule-like lifeboat. President Obama had previously authorized the use of force if the commander on the scene believed the captain’s life was in danger, so they fired, Admiral Gortney said. The lifeboat was about 100 feet from the Bainbridge when the shots were fired, a little after 7 p.m. Somalia time (seven hours ahead of Eastern time). The vice admiral said he did not know Captain Phillips’s location at the time the shots were fired, but given the length of the lifeboat, he was less than 18 feet from the snipers’ targets... [T]he Navy managed to attach a line to the lifeboat and began towing it away from shore. Mr. Phillips was being held in a covered part at the back of the lifeboat, the official said, and one pirate typically stayed with him under cover. The lifeboat had gotten as close as 20 miles to shore, drifting after running out of fuel, off Gara’ad, Somalia.

...More than 250 hostages are being held by various Somalian pirate groups, including the 16 crew members of an Italian tugboat captured on Saturday.

One pirate named Ali, in Galkaiyo, Somalia, said the American Navy rescue won’t discourage other Somali pirate groups at all.

“As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard,” he said, adding: “If we get an American, we will take revenge.”

More details from this morning's Washington Post. And as JCWilmore pointed out at DailyKos last night, the Republicans, as usualy, bet against America-- and they lost when America won. All real Americans can be happy that the president passed his first security "test"-- with flying colors.

One Dead Somali Pirate's Uncle Blames Overbearing Naval Ships For His Death After He Collects Ransom Money

Ahoy, matey

One of the pleasures of foreign travel-- though not necessarily to places like London or Paris, but to the kinds of weird destinations Herman Melville and I like-- is that you get to meet other travelers. And when you're hitting places like Tierra del Fuego, Sidi Ifni, Yangon, Urgup and Timbuktu (each a kind of end of the road destination), you meet some pretty interesting folks. A few weeks ago, I was in a small and unnoteworthy town on the outskirts of the encroaching Sahara, Douentza-- where tourists stop to catch their breath on the way to Timbuktu from Dogon country (or going in the other direction). Either way, you're about to experience a road from hell and, even without any charms whatsoever, Douentza is a relief because your skeleton isn't being pummeled and jogged around. We stopped at a nondescript eatery and the most appetizing thing looked like the exit. Roland ordered spaghetti and we sat around with the flies and mosquitos for 90 minutes while they prepared it. But we met a family from Madrid, an architect, his intrepid wife and two daughters.

We swapped travel stories. Luckily I was able to pull out my 1969-era Afghan adventures. These folks had been everywhere. And their favorite place was Yemen. Why Yemen? Well besides the mud skyscrapers they had quite the adventure. They-- the husband and wife; I think it was before the daughters were born-- had been kidnapped and held for ransom by tribal bandits. In retrospect they say they loved the experience. I guess it's great for party chatter. Apparently all 25 crew members who were released along with the Liberian-flagged Saudi supertanker, Sirius Star, will have similar stories to talk about. And A.P. reports that "they are all in good health and high spirits."

They had been held-- as are another 300 or so crew members from the 100 or so hijacked ships-- by Somali pirates. The Saudis paid the pirates $3 million dollars for their (and the ship's and $100 million worth of oil on the ship) release. A Ukrainian ship, the Faina, hasn't been released and that one isn't full of oil, but tanks-- the kinds that shoot cannons and flatten buildings.

The sea off the huge Somali coast is being patroled by warships from France, Germany, Britain, the U.S., India and China. They haven't been very effective at stopping piracy although, according to a one pirate's uncle, they are being blamed for the death of several of the pirates who drown with their shared of the $3 million ransom.

Abukar Haji, uncle of one of the dead men, blamed the naval surveillance for the accident that killed his pirate nephew Saturday.

"The boat the pirates were traveling in capsized because it was running at high speed because the pirates were afraid of an attack from the warships patrolling around," he said.

"There has been human and monetary loss but what makes us feel sad is that we don't still have the dead bodies of our relatives. Four are still missing and one washed up on the shore."

Pirate Daud Nure said three of the eight passengers had managed to swim to shore after the boat overturned in rough seas. He was not part of the pirate operation but knew those involved.

"Here in Haradhere the news is grim, relatives are looking for their dead," he said.

Roland asked me to make sure his point of view is represented in this post and that is that things would be much grimmer if the French, German, British, American, Indian and Chinese navies decided to shell the coast of Somalia and see if they could make it uninhabitable for a few decades while the people further inland figure out that piracy has real consequences. The Somalis, by the way, actually justify their behavior.

“We just saw a big ship,” the pirates’ spokesman, Sugule Ali, said in a telephone interview. “So we stopped it.”

The pirates quickly learned, though, that their booty was an estimated $30 million worth of heavy weaponry, heading for Kenya or Sudan, depending on whom you ask.

In a 45-minute interview, Mr. Sugule spoke on everything from what the pirates wanted (“just money”) to why they were doing this (“to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters”) to what they had to eat on board (rice, meat, bread, spaghetti, “you know, normal human-being food”).

He said that so far, in the eyes of the world, the pirates had been misunderstood. “We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits,” he said. “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.”

...Piracy in Somalia is a highly organized, lucrative, ransom-driven business. Just this year, pirates hijacked more than 25 ships, and in many cases, they were paid million-dollar ransoms to release them. The juicy payoffs have attracted gunmen from across Somalia, and the pirates are thought to number in the thousands.

The piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago, Somali officials said, as a response to illegal fishing. Somalia’s central government imploded in 1991, casting the country into chaos. With no patrols along the shoreline, Somalia’s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax.

“From there, they got greedy,” said Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. “They starting attacking everyone.”

By the early 2000s, many of the fishermen had traded in their nets for machine guns and were hijacking any vessel they could catch: sailboat, oil tanker, United Nations-chartered food ship.

The Somalis are close kin-- oddly enough-- to the Yemenis across the Bab el Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden. Kidnapping and holding people for ransom are perfectly acceptable traditions. In the mid-1850s Sir Richard Burton, one of Britian's greatest explorers and a bit of a crackpot, became the first European to travel to the heart of Somali territory and live to tell the tale.

As Richard Burton journeys deeper into Somalia, the water gets bad, the people wilder and the danger greater. More than once the Bedouin feign an attack-- with the idea of making a real one if the target makes a run for it. Such challenges are usually dealt with when Burton draws his revolver, ‘the father of the six’ and fires a shot overhead. Then the aggressive Bedouin become flattering and hospitable, treachery and dissimulation, according to Burton, being essential characteristics of the African Bedouin.

Passing through hostile foothills with thorns and tribes bearing poisoned arrows, Burton arrives close to Harar and the village that hosts him also prays for him-- and here we hear more of the author’s dry wit:

“..all the villagers assembled and recited the Fatihah, consoling us that we were dead men.”

Burton continues, of course, though half his party is too terrified to join him. He comes to the city of Harar and discovers it to be an unremarkable pile of rocks, devoid of any charm or grandeur. He’s ushered into to see the Amir and begins to make speeches full of the oriental pomp suitable for the occasion, declaring the earnest will of the British Empire to re-establish friendly connections and trade with the great city of Harar. He continues in this flowery vein until the Amir smiles and Burton realises that he won’t be executed that day at any rate. He lies down to rest that night and is:

“..profoundly impressed with the poesie of our position. I was under the roof of a bigoted prince whose least word was death; amongst a people who detest foreigners; the only European who had ever passed over their inhospitable threshold, and the fated instrument of their future downfall.”