Interesting riff on libertarianism and piracy

From here:

For Ron Paul’s growing legion of dope-addled contradictarian libertarians, Somalia is like nirvana. There are no taxes. No public education. No national healthcare. No national debt. No labor laws. No environmental laws. No business regulations. No unions. No import or export restrictions. No meddlesome big government—or small government for that matter. And everyone smokes khat, which is a leafy plant that temporarily deludes its users into feeling as if their problems are gone. Somalia, a country that hasn’t had an operating central government since 1991, is a libertarian Republican’s wet dream.

... Killing pirates, it turns out, is a good political move. President Obama, in the eyes of an amoebic media, is now a decisive leader ready to take those 3am phone calls Hillary Clinton and John McCain warned us about. He allowed pirates to be shot. He’s a real leader. Now that he’s cut his teeth, faced that first ritualistic bloodletting of a US president, and experienced the power and prestige that comes from defeating pirates, perhaps it’s time to take on real, big-league pirates. Perhaps it’s time to deal with the pirates on Wall Street who have been holding our economy hostage. Maybe, if they run, we’ll even pursue them to their Somalia-like offshore tax havens.

Pirate chronicles

An archived piece from '03 on marine piracy in the London Review of Books... as relevant today as it was relevant when piracy was rampant off the Malacca Straits five years back. Only this time it has shifted westwards to the Horn of Africa. The article squarely puts the onus on the U.S. to curb the pirates. One might ask why does the United States need to step up so much when none of its vessels are hijacked. The answer might be found in one of those Spiderman movie quotes "with great power comes great responsibility - it is both a gift and a curse". Of course, the other factor being that we seem to have unconsciously anointed ourselves as the world police force with rhetoric that includes phrases like Bush Doctrine and exporting democracy.

Although the shipping world is demanding protection, neither the United Nations nor the United States sees piracy as a priority. The American Government’s concern for seafarers’ security is no greater than its attention to the health and safety of industrial and mining workers in the United States, where protective regulations are vanishing in the quest for easier profits. The only way to make Washington, and thus the rest of the maritime world, take notice is to project a connection between the pirate enemy and global terrorism. The connection is not far fetched.

Military adventures further American business interests. Halliburton becomes an East India Company running portions of Iraq. Bechtel disburses contracts to be paid from Iraqi oil revenues. Third World economies and former state services become the preserves of Securicor, American Medical International and Monsanto. The subjugated watch their masters to see how it is done. The American way of life is dividing people into two ‘communities’ – those on the inside and those on the outside. Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, the city ghettos of the Western world and the frontier badlands of Russia are more restive than ever. So are the oceans. America constructs nuclear shields in space, fortifies its borders and patrols its coasts. The barbarians are at the gates, and shortly they will be at the harbour walls, but they are inside, too – washing the dishes, shoplifting and, occasionally, beating someone to death to pay for a fix. If Washington’s war on terror does for Islamic extremism what its war on drugs did for the drug barons, we may all end up praying towards Mecca.

Somalia Dismalia

Vanity Fair on the worsening condition in Somalia (no, it is not about piracy). The article talks about the potential fallout arising from a metastasizing al-Qaeda movement that stealthily seems to be poised on retaking all of the country over the next six months.

Al Shabaab militants who have seized much of southern Somalia are now on the brink of overwhelming Mogadishu. Ethiopian forces are edging toward withdrawal, together with a beleaguered force of African peacekeepers. If the jihadi militants succeed in Mogadishu, it will be the first time an al-Qaeda ally has controlled a country since the Taliban in Afghanistan before 2001. This time, their foreign agenda could be both more organized and more aggressive against the outside world.

The ramifications of an al-Qaeda controlled Horn of Africa is a potentially destabilizing force for all of the countries along the Indian Ocean. Obama has a lot on his hands.