On the surface, the pirates of Somalia appear to be lawless, cruel, inhumane thugs.
We read much about how the pirates are terrorizing sailors of various countries as they sail around the Cape of Aden; but, is there another side of the saga?

By checking several sources, I came upon the following information. From Foreign Policy in Focus, a think tank without walls, comes the statement, “Piracy in Somalia began because traditional coastal fishing became difficult after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks. These fish stocks included lobster, shrimp, tuna, sardines, mackerel, sharks and other fish. Desperate local fishermen started attacking trawlers until the trawlers’ crews fought back with heavy weapons, leading the local fishermen to turn to other types of commercial vessels. The pirates prefer to call themselves the Somali “coast guard,” noting that, prior to the recent spate of hijackings, they organized themselves to defend their communities from overfishing and according to several accounts, to protect Somalia’s coastline from toxic dumping by foreign vessels.”

According to “Aidan Hartley, “piracy is just one symptom of several ways – you can add gun-running and terrorism to the list – in which Somalia’s crisis will lash out at the world in 2009. If the international community is to comprehensively address the crisis, its “first task is to understand the background.”

Then the Washington Post confirms the origins in the fight against illegal ocean use. In their article it states, “once you get past the mis-lede of piracy, you find this. Piracy began as a violent reaction to rampant illegal fishing by commercial fishing companies, mostly from European and Asian countries, and according to U. N. officials they say the foreign fishermen often operate with fake licenses.” It is also said that sometimes these foreign trawlers disguise who they are by flying flags friendly to Somalia.

A Somali man said he became a pirate in 2009 after several confrontations with commercial fishing vessels operating in Somali waters. This fisherman stated, “We used to put our nets at night in the sea and go back in the morning to see our catch, but we’d just see a big ship taking our nets out of the water.” When he and his colleagues steered their boat close to the vessel, he said, the crew sprayed them with hot water, and the crews of one of these vessels fired bullets. One of the Somali fishermen was injured, their boat sunk and they had to swim to shore.

Absent from the discussions about piracy in Somalia is the role that years and years of European illegal activities have had in the origins of the piracy. Somalis themselves, environmental analysts, human rights campaigners and aid workers on the ground are warning that unless the underlying causes are tackled, navies from the wealthier nations will only find themselves caught in another expensive, unwinnable guerilla war - except this time at sea instead of in the cities of the Middle East or the mountains of Central Asia.

In the Epoch Times Charlie Ghanen, Epoch Times Staffer, wrote in an article “Origin of the Pirates: Root Causes of the Somali Piracy Phenomenon,” the “original” pirates, according to Abshir Waldo, “are the foreign trawlers and vessels who have been fishing illegally on the Somali coast since 1991. He also said that these same vessels have been dumping industrial, toxic, and nuclear waste in the water, ruining the Somali coast life. He further stated that this was the reason “shipping piracy” emerged.

“When the Somali community demanded the vessels to leave the area, they were met by “pouring boiling water on fishermen, shooting at them, and running over their canoes and fishing boats. When they were again ignored by the international community, and seeing their marine resources of a poor country being pillaged, they saw no choice but to fight.”

In the Euobserver, Leigh Phillips writes “ As global powers ratchet up the naval pressure off the coast of Somalia and the European Union prepares to play host to a major international conference on the growing scourge of piracy, very little attention is being paid to the other “piracy” in the area – the decades of European illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste in Somali waters.

Time Magazine in April, 2002 had an article, “How Somalia’s Fishermen Became Pirates.”
This article states that since the Civil War in Somalia brought down the government in 1991, the 2,000 miles of coastline – longest in continental Africa – has been pillaged by foreign vessels. A United Nations report in 2006 says the absence of a functioning coastguard has caused the Somali waters to become the site of an international “free for all” with fishing fleets from around the world illegally plundering Somali stocks and freezing out the country’s own fishermen.

A UN report estimated that $300 million worth of seafood is stolen from the country’s coastline each year. Because of this the fishermen have been forced over the years to defend their own fishing ports. Additionally the Somali fishermen complained of being shot at by foreign fishermen with water cannons and firearms. The first pirate gangs emerged in the ‘90’s to protect against foreign trawlers, according to a lecturer in terrorism studies at Scotland’s University of St. Andrew. A study published in the journal Science in 2006 predicted that the current rate of commercial fishing would virtually empty the world’s oceanic stocks by 2050.

According to the U N, trawlers from as far away as South Korea, Japan and Spain have operated down the coast of Somalia, often illegally.

A 2005 UN Environmental Program report cited uranium radioactive and other hazardous deposits leading to a rash of respiratory ailments and skin diseases breaking out along Somalia’s coast.

Also according to the UN it costs $2.50 per ton for a European company to dump these types of materials off the Horn of Africa as opposed to $250.00 per ton to dispose of them cleanly in Europe.

Based on the findings of these writers, it is now up to you to decide how should this travesty be addressed. Is there an opportunity for investigation, diplomacy, intervention and resolution where blind justice and fairness prevail or will this simply be treated as a case of lawless people behaving lawlessly? It is up to each of you to answer the question, “ Is there another side of the pirates of Somalia Saga?

By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration

In the spirit of pacifism, I offer the following prose poem:

PACIFISM, NOT PASSIVISM

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the
silence of our friends.” With these incisive words, Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. diplomatically expressed his frustration with the prevailing
silent acquiescence and tacit consent to America’s egregious
discrimination against people of color. Like his mentor, Mahatma
Gandhi, Dr. King was assassinated, but both men will live forever in
the pantheon of human dignity, civil rights, and social justice. Let’s
hope that their exemplary acts of selfless, courageous pacifism will
inspire all of us to appropriate levels of moral outrage and activism.

By Hugh Mann
http://organicMD.org
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/338/apr28_3/b1719#213226

“Girls On Our Streets” from the New York Times by Nickolas Kristof
Jasmine Caldwell was 14 and selling sex on the streets when an opportunity arose to escape her pimp: an undercover policeman picked her up.
The cop could have rescued her from the pimp, who ran a string of 13 girls and took every cent they earned. If the cop had taken Jasmine to a shelter, she could have resumed her education and tried to put her life back in order.
Instead, the policeman showed her his handcuffs and threatened to send her to prison. Terrified, she cried and pleaded not to be jailed. Then, she said, he offered to release her in exchange for sex.
Afterward, the policeman returned her to the street. Then her pimp beat her up for failing to collect any money.
“That happens a lot,” said Jasmine, who is now 21. “The cops sometimes just want to blackmail you into having sex.”
I’ve often reported on sex trafficking in other countries, and that has made me curious about the situation here in the United States. Prostitution in America isn’t as brutal as it is in, say, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Malaysia (where young girls are routinely kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by brothel owners, occasionally even killed). But the scene on American streets is still appalling — and it continues largely because neither the authorities nor society as a whole show much interest in 14-year-old girls pimped on the streets.
Americans tend to think of forced prostitution as the plight of Mexican or Asian women trafficked into the United States and locked up in brothels. Such trafficking is indeed a problem, but the far greater scandal and the worst violence involves American teenage girls.
If a middle-class white girl goes missing, radio stations broadcast amber alerts, and cable TV fills the air with “missing beauty” updates. But 13-year-old black or Latina girls from poor neighborhoods vanish all the time, and the pimps are among the few people who show any interest.
These domestic girls are often runaways or those called “throwaways” by social workers: teenagers who fight with their parents and are then kicked out of the home. These girls tend to be much younger than the women trafficked from abroad and, as best I can tell, are more likely to be controlled by force.
Pimps are not the business partners they purport to be. They typically take every penny the girls earn. They work the girls seven nights a week. They sometimes tattoo their girls the way ranchers brand their cattle, and they back up their business model with fists and threats.
“If you don’t earn enough money, you get beat,” said Jasmine, an African-American who has turned her life around with the help of Covenant House, an organization that works with children on the street. “If you say something you’re not supposed to, you get beat. If you stay too long with a customer, you get beat. And if you try to leave the pimp, you get beat.”
The business model of pimping is remarkably similar whether in Atlanta or Calcutta: take vulnerable, disposable girls whom nobody cares about, use a mix of “friendship,” humiliation, beatings, narcotics and threats to break the girls and induce 100 percent compliance, and then rent out their body parts.
It’s not solely violence that keeps the girls working for their pimps. Jasmine fled an abusive home at age 13, and she said she — like most girls — stayed with the pimp mostly because of his emotional manipulation. “I thought he loved me, so I wanted to be around him,” she said.
That’s common. Girls who are starved of self-esteem finally meet a man who showers them with gifts, drugs and dollops of affection. That, and a lack of alternatives, keeps them working for him — and if that isn’t enough, he shoves a gun in the girl’s mouth and threatens to kill her.
Solutions are complicated and involve broader efforts to overcome urban poverty, including improving schools and attempting to shore up the family structure. But a first step is to stop treating these teenagers as criminals and focusing instead on arresting the pimps and the customers — and the corrupt cops.
“The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews,” notes Stephanie Davis, who has worked with Mayor Shirley Franklin to help coordinate a campaign to get teenage prostitutes off the streets.
Two amiable teenage prostitutes, working without a pimp for the “fast money,” told me that there will always be women and girls selling sex voluntarily. They’re probably right. But we can significantly reduce the number of 14-year-old girls who are terrorized by pimps and raped by many men seven nights a week. That’s doable, if it’s a national priority, if we’re willing to create the equivalent of a nationwide amber alert.

A footnote from Randle Loeb

Sex Trafficking is a crime against humanity that pervades the spirit of America, and which must be stopped. The impact of this brutal behavior touches the lives of every person and infects the spirit of our world. Nothing is more evident than the evil perpetrated against women in these acts of violence.

Caring and Surviving: Saving a Life and Many More. From the Winnipeg Globe

“Homeless Man Saves Life, Wins Season Baseball Tickets and Chance to Move On” One responder expressed the situation, “Is this what it takes to end homelessness?” The answer is that we are all heroes and we are all on heroes’ journeys. It is inspiring that the spark of the forty-four year old Mr. Hall is alive and presents a real virtue that all of us are worth the effort to reach out and say, “let us rise.” The effort is not merely that of social services and the government, but more of the surviving people who are motivated by trust and effort to stand and carry on. We are living proof that our role as members of the community and leaders by example is the grist of the success in our world. What we are capable of being is sometimes hidden, but no matter what, we are marching on together.

PATRICK WHITE
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 5, 2009 at 9:15 PM EDT
WINNIPEG — The morning before every politician in town wanted to shake his hand, Faron Hall woke up on a park bench spray-painted with the tag “Not super.”

He's called this stretch of riverbank overlooking the Provencher Bridge home for the last seven years, staying away from the homeless shelters even when a 50-below chill took a portion of his ear several years ago.

“I'm a chronic alcoholic,” he says, sitting on the bench. “I don't bother nobody and over here nobody really bothers me.”

But for a split-second decision on Sunday, Mr. Hall would have remained in this hazy seclusion. He's the first to admit that his memory isn't nearly as sharp as it used to be when he was taking classes at the University of Manitoba, but he recalls clearly jumping into the turbid Red River and pulling a young man to the shore – an act that has garnered him a thousand handshakes, season tickets to the Winnipeg Goldeyes courtesy of the mayor and the unanimous moniker of hero.

“I did my best,” says the 44-year-old Mr. Hall. “That's all.”

It was around 2 p.m. when Marion Willis saw a teenager who had been running across lanes on the Provencher Bridge disappear between a gap that separates the car deck from the walkway.

“There was an absolute look of terror in this boy's face,” she said. “He didn't realize there was such an opening. I looked at my son then and said, ‘This won't be a rescue; this will be a recovery.' “ Little did she know, Mr. Hall was on the scene. He was sharing a beer with a friend, Wayne Spence, downriver from the bridge when he heard a loud splash. In a light-hearted mood after a long day of collecting cans, he remembers saying, “Damn, that must have hurt.”

But humour turned to shock when they spotted the teen screaming for help 40 metres out on the fast-moving river. Living life on the margins helped him decided what to do next. “People ignore me,” he says. “But I don't ignore them. We look out for one another out here.”

He threw off his backpack, kicked off his old black dress shoes and jumped into the chilly water.

“When I got to the kid, he started fighting me,” says Mr. Hall, pointing to a bloody scar on his forehead where the teen socked him. “I had to smack him back, tell him, ‘Hey, I'm here to help you.' “ He'd pulled the teen within 20 metres of shore when his adrenalin stalled and fatigue set in. “It's too damn cold,” he remembers yelling to Mr. Spence, who was standing along the shore.

“You can't let go, you can make it,” Mr. Spence yelled back, before wading up to his knees in the water to drag his friend and the petrified teen to the shore.

Paramedics soon arrived and took the boy and Mr. Hall to hospital. The teen has since been released.

Within a few days, strangers were coming up to congratulate Mr. Hall. “Yes, I saved that boy,” he would say. “I just did my best.”

Mr. Hall's best hasn't always been good enough. From a foster-home upbringing, he worked his way through courses at the University of Manitoba and eventually became a high-school teacher's aide, only to be set back by his mother's murder 10 years ago. He struggled with an urge to drink the grief away until his sister was murdered about seven years later.

“That's when he really slipped,” said Nicole Morin, a close friend and teacher. “He started to believe that hard times, drinking and living on the street were his destiny.”

By helping avert tragedy, Mr. Hall may also have altered that destiny. The witness, Ms. Willis, is a former social worker and has been housing Mr. Hall since the rescue while several local groups work to put a more permanent roof over his head.

By Tuesday afternoon he was back sitting on his bench, describing the rescue, when a well-dressed man trod down the path towards him. “That's Sam Katz,” Mr. Hall said, recognizing the Winnipeg mayor. “That was very special what you did,” said the mayor, jutting out his hand. “If you're in the mood you can come to my place. Do you want to come?”

Sensing an opportunity, Mr. Hall hugged the mayor and said, “I just want you to promise me one thing: I wanna come to a ball game.”

“How about if I get you a pair of season tickets?” said the mayor, who also owns the local ball club.

“Honest? I love baseball.”

“You did something a lot of people would not do,” said the mayor.

“No, I did my best.”

The Problem

On October 7, 2008, Barack Obama stated “I think it [health care] should be a right for every American.” Unfortunately, it isn’t. In fact there is not one single word in the Constitution about health care. Together we can correct this.

Today over 46 million Americans lack health insurance. This number grows daily as the ranks of the unemployed swell. The economy lost 663,000 jobs in March, 5.1 million since 12/2007. Those that were lucky enough to have health insurance when they were employed and had an income are now forced to make the difficult choice of whether or not to pay over $1000 per month for health insurance for a family of four or to go without until they can find another job.

Even if they do find another job, the percentage of employers offering health insurance is dropping as health insurance premiums rise. Many employers have kept their plans while asking their employees to pay a larger share. When you consider that the cost of health insurance for a family of four is more than what a minimum wage employee makes it is easy to see why this is putting American businesses in a tight spot.

As the economy continues to shrink the budget deficit continues to grow, anticipated to be over $1 trillion in 2009. There will be a time in the future when this will catch up to us. Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP currently account for about one third of the federal budget. Nearly 30% of Americans have health insurance through these government programs. Yet there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the power to do this. There is nothing in the Constitution that protects those that receive health care from the government from losing their coverage or having their benefits reduced.

In these tough times there is much uncertainty. Together we can eliminate one of the primary causes of uncertainty. By making health care a right for all Americans we can insure the uninsured, protect the benefits of those on government programs, and remove the burden for health insurance from the backs of our businesses, the very businesses that we are depending on to help lift our country out of this economic crisis.

The Solution

#1 - Join this group so that we can demonstrate our numbers to the press and the politicians.

#2 - MAKE SURE that your friends join, don't just invite them. There is power in numbers.

#3 - Go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/makehealthcarearight/ and sign the online petition.

These steps are designed to get the ball rolling. Once we have sufficient numbers we will take this campaign out of cyberspace and into the real world.

The plan is to get this proposed amendment on the ballot in all 50 states for the November election and make this the first "Popular Amendment". We will bypass the halls of power and the political infighting, compromise and negotiation and by bringing this Amendment directly to the people.

So, please join us NOW! And get your friends to join. We must act quickly if we are to get this on the ballot in November!

We also must act NOW because the politicians and the special interest groups are discussing health care reform in D.C. If we don't act NOW, they'll act without our input, and the opportunity may be lost.

So, please, join us TODAY and invite your friends to join.

It only takes a few clicks to change the world.

Mental Illness carries with it a stigma and a blessing. It is a mean spirited excuse to keep people focused on differences, not the common relationship of those who do not fit in. When I gave the manifesto to a colleague I realized that his perceptions of me were lost in his prejudices and bigotry.

Great people are those who see their efforts as blending with those everywhere, whether they see things the same way or not.

It is a better day when we realize that those with difficulties are sacred messengers for understanding and insight. We are no different because we are here as wealthy or poor, as crippled or beautiful, in the light we are the same.

Each of us contains within us darkness and dark nights. Each of us contains epiphanies and strokes of genius like Archimedes.

What we are is related and connected through pain and loss, through joy and sorrow, through gifts and misery as companions. In Gheel, in Belgium the people with disabilities are offered a place to live among those who can provide. They are nurtured all of their lives as members of the community and the family. This act was much more common in the world than it is today.

Perhaps we need to rekindle old conspiracies to care for the afflicted and realize that everyone is our bother and sister. Perhaps we need to remember that that the fears and depth of courage needed to face the storm within is quelled by the spirit of those who can comfort and provide a hand, stroke the face and kiss the dancer with grace.

Perhaps there needs to be here a world that is living testimony to how we dwell in the world as neighbors and in peace. Let us carry aloft the mentally ill and put them in our consciousness as leaders and people of worth. For the gifts of those with the least are formidable.

Breathe air and speak softly,
carrying ourselves with humility, as stewards of the earth.
Teach the children and guide them in their growth.
Study all we can and learn to love discipline and simplicity.
Practice living with kindness holding grace towards everything and
gently go into that unknown that stands as a bridge toward ultimate ends.
Wash the feet of each of our brothers and sisters while looking at all life as sacred.
Each breath is a blessing and each one is a gift to the whole of life.
We are all a part of the commonweal. All steps and all ways are a blessing.
Though we may trip and fall that there is another to comfort and hold us as a gift.
We, here are a glimpse of a breath and disappear, leaving an indelible mark of passing this way touching every crack and fissure, every great expanse and horizon.

When we pass, even unnoticed we change irrevocably the lives of each
life like permafrost that lies on the tundra. When we tread on the finite moss and lichen we impact the destiny of the fragile universe.
Each step carefully weighed upon the frozen expanse changes our

sense of this fragile wonder. We must be educated to perceive all that is with grace and that all is here living in the infinite connecting spirit of one.

In an age when spontaneous communicating occurs between individuals throughout the world, there is a way to at last check on news sources from correspondents to see if their information makes sense and is accurate. There is at last instantaneous accountabilty for the news, instead of relying excusively on the United Press, or Associated Press for leads.

It is refreshing to think that a blog can be a faster way of investigating the news than the newspaper. We have entered a time when misrepresentations of the jounalists can be edited and informatrion literally can be in the hands of the people. There is no heirarchy of despotic caretakers of the truth as the Medevial monks transcribing the Latin version of the Vulgate and whatever their brand of reality.

This is a pleasant change in the virtue of reading and spaking to others. Now, when I have a question about a story that I read in a spurce that has been considered the font of knowledge and veracity of research I can write to one of my friends and say, "what do yuo think about this idea in Indonesia?" I can instantly check with counter point and see if I agree with what is stated in the correspondence.

There is no better means to create a lasting meaning of a pandemic or of a financial issue, a violation of human rights or the occupation of a sovereign nation than listening and conversing with the people directly impacted by the indformation being reported. I think that we are on the threhhold of a world where being republican and democratic, communist and socialsit, nationalist or independent can be eliminated and we can at last live in one world with each other and every other creation of the earth.