If you’re like me, you probably haven’t really been paying too much attention to this whole “pirate situation” that the mainstream media is currently masturbating itself over. I did give a passing thought that I wished I knew more about the development of the “pirate phenomenon” that has sprung up over the past ten years or so, and I also considered the three obviously very poor very under funded “pirates” to be more than a bit stupid for so directly confronting a first world nation.

Other than that–I’ve been pretty non-committal. Mainstream news masturbation does not interest me too much, really.

But now alternative media and radical media sources are starting to do what they do best–presenting the story mainstream media is too busy jacking off to pay attention to.

First, start with the following videos from Somalian rapper, Knaan.

pt 1.

pt 2.

Then, read this essay about how badly wrong the MSM has gotten the story of Somalia:

In 1991, the government of Somalia – in the Horn of Africa – collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

And suddenly, you have a much more complicated picture of the role of pirates in general, but also of Western culpability in the *creation* of this mess to begin with. As the above article questions–what the hell would the U.S. do if the same thing was happening to us? Or more to the point–what *did* we do when our shores were as vulnerable as the Somalian shore is?

Like the article notes–there’s some serious shit going on with the pirate “culture” (for lack of better word) that doesn’t all play out as Resistance (as in standing up to the First World Nations sense). I, for one, am wondering about the effect that this seemingly hyper masculinized form of action is having on the women and queer people of Somalia. Hyper masculinization rarely means good things for women or queers.

But even so, 70% popular support means something, and we need to start paying attention to that. And wondering why so many of us (namely, myself) didn’t look at this story more critically before radical and alternative media started to challenge it.

What is it about violence in largely black nations that allows so many of us to pretend to not see it?

Could it be racism?

All information found via the amazing los anjalis