Times discussions on Somali Pirates

[Mintid Farayar]

OK, enough with the name-calling, gentlemen. So, Puntlanders, what's the solution? The West will not give any money to Faroole or his "administration" b/c it doesn't believe in its functionality. Nor will it give a contract to private Puntland companies for coast guard duties as previously proposed by some enterprising individuals(from Puntland).

 

For those living in the States, you've probably observed the usual public opinion being worked into a frenzy to do something muscular soon (just watching the American news media in the last few days).

 

So what's the solution? Who ultimately holds power in Puntland - the local elders of Nugal? It's obviously not the administration as admitted by Adde Muse in one of his last interviews with VOA ("they have far more money and arms than us").

 

Do you see where this can lead? Bombings of coastal villages where innocents are killed? More foreign troops on sovereign Somali regions?

 

Are there any local solutions to this? While most from Puntland are busy pontificating on how other Somali regions should be governed in their postings on this Forum, let's hear what your local recipes for Puntland are.

[Somali Pirate]

the chickens have come home to roost basically. the lawlessness in somalia has led to this. until we have a strong central government, that can rule the waters then this problem will continue.

 

and more desperate poor somalis will join the cause for an easy buck. that's what happens when your sole livelihood is being plundered by european fishing vessels. shame really

 

feel sorry for the captain honestly. he's caught in a situation of not his own making.

[Sherban Shabeel]

I find it amusing that people whine about piracy when Puntland is ruled by certain politicians that would make Mugabe blush.

[NASSIR]

Somalipride, I won't put on the same level drug dealers in Mexico and Somali pirates. The latter don't kill and mutilate ruthlessly the bodies of their victims. They are running their business and executing it well. They conceived a very shrewd network formed out of clan allegiance.

 

They are well trained, well armed and highly desciplined in carrying out their duties. They also seem to have a chain of command, public relations, technical experts, and doubtedlessly, safe havens in places where their respective clans' traditional settlement are dominant.

 

I read two western journalists saying that for the first time in history, you have pirates treating their hostages in a humane manner, concluding that the pirates from the North east have democraticized the system. Hillarious!

 

I also watched Gettleman, the NY times' East African correspondent, speak to a KPBS news anchor yesterday, on this subject. He described the pirates as people who are "pretty intelligent and found a way to survive in an anarchic and forgotten land and exploit it to enrich themselves."

 

Pirates will prove to be harmful and ungovernable, but I find it hypocritical to locate this seemingly prevalent sea choas outside the conditions that created it. In other words, the media is dancing on the symptom.

[Abwaan]

As some of us over here claim, if the pirates’ agenda originally was to scare the foreign vessels fishing around Somali sores indiscriminately and some foreign criminals dumping nuclear waste into our sea I think the job is done.

They have gone too far by going to Yemen, Salalah of Oman and even Mauritius. These guys are criminals who won't do any good for Somalia either.

I have been reading that they waste money robbed from foreign ships and sometimes pay $30 for a cup of tea, which is creating inflation...right?

If you guys chanting here now will cry tomorrow because pirate eeddadiis dhashay was killed in the Indian Ocean you better advice them to give up this business.

 

It is obvious that some politicians might be involved in this piracy thing as stated by some reports earlier the young men will eventually be the victims.

[LayZie G.]

Dear M-Society Aka Meiji and now Histo-enthusiast;

 

You said:

History is written, I merely tell what historical books say.

It is true that the book you referenced has promising historical tales of colonial Italy.

 

However, you can not interpret history to support your own biased point of view of the sultans and you can not recite the historian's narrative(Professor Hess) and spew it back as a waxa la yidhi tale for the purpose of sticking it to Dukey.(The general)

 

To this end, you being a histo-enthusiast should know that history is an ongoing process, one that requires patience and rejects the notion of it being the absolute truth. It is an ongoing process that must be questioned at all times. It can not nor can you and I repeat or take the events of the past thats described in the book as gospel.

 

What you, Mr histo-enthusiast should do to verify your historical references is ask yourself the WHAT and the HOW questions. You should keep in mind that the surviving documents (original documents) or in your case, the sources ought to be taken with a grain of salt because they are not the absolute truth. Furthermore, you meiji should ask yourself, what sources did Professor Hess gather and how did he use it? Hence, the WHAT and How aspect of uncovering history.

 

Yes, you do have the right to express your views, as biased as they may appear to be, however, those views are just views, they are not facts. What you should have done is separated your readings of Hess from your baseless accounts of the sultans which are prejudicial. On the matter of the reading, Hess's sources have been verified, its just not sufficient. For you, you lack the basics of understanding and reading past events and you are driven by anger and hatred for certain regions, which cloud your judgement.

 

Getting back to your reference, Hess's only problem was that he did not utilize the existing materials, there was no evidence of him examining other published works of Italian historians before him or taking to account their versions or else he or you would know that he did not say anything new on the subject, other than approach it from a different point of view with a twist.

 

He poorly reproduced events from his standards in order to make sense of the past so that we can understand how the past shaped the current events etc etc in english context. This does not mean that other historians won't uncover other surviving documents which may or may not surface in the future, if at all, therefore you should always keep an open mind. Even thought Hess did a sound job overrall, the critics who extensively reviewed his book all concluded that he had total disregard for other published works, who have used similar documents, evidents etc. They also did not take a liking to the one-side approach to interpretation. The reviews were included in published journals, all of them were different in geography and they differed in their field of displine. They were professors from the University of Rome to University of Indiana to Cambridge.

 

Almost all of them concluded that these accounts were all taken from the perspective of the colonizer and not the colonized. Professor Hess, as thorough as he has been with his original source, did not, and I repeat, he did not include the accounts of the subject of his discourse. All of his accounts were found in the colonial archives of the Comitato per la Documentazione dell’Opera dell’Italia in Africa. Meaning, they were written by colonizers and there is a good possibility that he had no interest in looking else where to uncover and support his argument.

 

On the contrary, Professor Hess has achieved what no other american historian has and thats to gain unlimited access to the colonial archives of the Comitato per la documentazione dell'opera dell'italia in Africa, government sources. He was the first of a non italian researcher to do so, quite an accomplishment.

 

You, on the other hand, probably knew all of that, didn't you? After all, the book is in your possesion. Read and check the bibliography. Verify the sources of your reading material, ok?

 

All in all, the professor has failed where most modern historians have succeeded and by failure he played right into the playcard by fully utilizing the history by exclusion accounts, influences, documents and artifacts that can not be substantiated and so so on and so on.

Historians today are taught to collect as many sources as they can and not solely rely on the aggressor's accounts, or in the case of Hess, rely on the archival of colonial italy documents as the sole truth and nothing but the truth.(after all,we are not living in Eric the Red era)

 

The historians need to be able to write and read history without prejudice. Some historians have gone back to re-examine first contact accounts in the Americas by digging up archeology pieces, examing the natives accounts with the little surviving documents and using anthropoly to verify some of the explorer and settler accounts.(the very same explorers whose word was gospel for a very long time and who are overwhelmingly present in most textbooks)

 

 

ps:

Still Puntland will never call a Pirate Nabadoon or Shiekh. We know they are tough businessmen and criminals at worst.

Dukey, ku jecliyaa eedo. Hahaha

 

Don't you dare speak of Kasha's adeer in such a manner because the criminals (the aweys of the world, and the sheikh hassans) and who faciliated the looting and rape of innocent people for years are just good old boys, AWLIYO at best. But the day you mention adeer Yusuf and Sheika Sharafta with his TFG, seefta ayey lasoo boodaan without wiping the tigre blood off it.

[AYOUB]

Peculiar use of the term "gospel" there, Lazie G.

[Duufaan]

Pirates are indeed problem for everyone, but international community fail to stop. The ignorance of west, they can do everything by themself did not work here. there is nothing more the west can do, it is time , west understand only somalis can solve their problem and only somalis can safeguard and protect somali coast.

[Allamagan]

This pirate biz is quite complicated one. There are many foreign organizations and countries involved into this in order to make SOMALIA something of a history and to share the booties (the land and its resources) amongst themselves in a "legal" frame provided by the UN. So this piracy thing is just another tool as that of Sharifka's tfg.

[peasant]

I like how every tribalist starts his debut on SOL boards of being somali nationalist and blah blah. Then after few threads the true and the unconcealed nature of them pops out because they can not hide it anymore. This Meiji character was once preaching a somali nationalism in another thread and kept heckling old timers like NGONGE for being straight and upfront about their views on somalis and tribalism. Now it looks like he wound up where he should began in the first place but sadly he did not and wasted lots of energy.

 

 

 

 

-------------------- ---------

 

here he is playing your tribe vs my tribe blame game with Duke...

 

Originally posted by Meiji:

Duke,

 

History has already shown that you end up defeated and humiliated everytime you entertain yourself with playing a ''sly cat and mouse game''.

 

Your ''sly game of cat and mouse'' with the Italians in the 19th century ended in humiliation and utter defeat of the two clan chiefs. Your ''sly game of cat and mouse'' with the Ethiopians ended in utter humiliation after the main figure A.Yusuf was thrown in jail by Mengistu, then freed by Meles to be used and thrown away again to end up in Yemen.

 

Your ''sly game of cat and mouse'' with the West will result in more humiliation.

 

The thing is: Everytime you play this ''sly cat and mouse game'' and get humiliated and defeated, you take Somalia with you, like during the Italians, during the Ethiopians and now the West.

 

Time will tell.

Here again he puts on the nationalist mask and objects someone the use of clan names because it leads to division..

 

Originally posted by Meiji:

Shabelle,

 

There is no D-block or H-block. It is that kind of mentality that has led to division and misunderstanding between the Somalis.

 

You should be careful since some opportunists can justify the secessionist path by uttering the same nonsense as you, i.e. I-block crap.

 

Also, Somalia is as the name explicitely says: independent, and internationally recognized country for the Somalis.

 

Since we are missing few Somali lands in the Horn, we should not divide what we already have.

[Mintid Farayar]

This will have a terrible ending for all Somalis of that region. There's no positive outcome from this. And Somalis will be further reviled by the world community.

 

I gather from the writings that many posters haven't been anywhere near the Horn for a while. Life is miserable for Somalis even if you're the most honest, law-abiding individual when you travel to other people's lands. There's a certain pause in the conversation when you announce you're a Somali.

 

If you hold a Western passport with all its protections, what about your mother, brothers, sisters, cousins, and other kin who don't? What happens when they fall sick and need advanced medical treatment in another country? One by one, visas to Somali nationals are being outlawed in the region. The particular American ship in question was carrying food aid for Somalis (ironically). How many children died because of the delay in food arrival due to piracy? Somehow those significant effects never get discussed in this Forum!

 

I'm still waiting for the Puntland "Amiin" corner to propose some solutions on this thread instead of the reflexive my clan is better than your clan response.

[NASSIR]

Pax Americana must learn from the old British Empire.

 

Sit down with the elders, respect their dominion and power, ask for their collaboration in stopping piracy, force the local administration in Puntland to thoroughly investigate and identify suspected politicians and their affiliation with pirates, and last but not least, call for a grand conference in which elders take a center stage in resolving this issue.

 

 

Eedo Lazie girl, si fiican baad ugu jawaabtey Meiji. Keep us informed.

[Somali Pirate]

Originally posted by Mintid Farayar:

This will have a terrible ending for all Somalis of that region. There's no positive outcome from this. And Somalis will be further reviled by the world community.

 

I gather from the writings that many posters haven't been anywhere near the Horn for a while. Life is miserable for Somalis even if you're the most honest, law-abiding individual when you travel to other people's lands. There's a certain pause in the conversation when you announce you're a Somali.

 

If you hold a Western passport with all its protections, what about your mother, brothers, sisters, cousins, and other kin who don't? What happens when they fall sick and need advanced medical treatment in another country? One by one, visas to Somali nationals are being outlawed in the region. The particular American ship in question was carrying food aid for Somalis (ironically). How many children died because of the delay in food arrival due to piracy? Somehow those significant effects never get discussed in this Forum!

 

I'm still waiting for the Puntland "Amiin" corner to propose some solutions on this thread instead of the reflexive my clan is better than your clan response.

top post

 

how low have we somalis have sunk? bereft of hope or oppertunity, poor people have resorted to piracy.

 

the cause of some of these pirates is understandable as we have suffered years of plundering of our seas by foreigners.

 

But it just shows how pathetic the ruling trash is when somalis have to resort to hijackings to tell the world their message.

 

how can you expect the world to respect us when we can't even respect ourselves?

[Somali Pirate]

peasant,

 

meiji is a true nationalist. no point in smearing him

[Ashkiro]

^Pirate, I don't think a true nationalist, would use such words, as "you" were "defeated" and "humiliated" when concerning the subjection of Somalia by the Colonial Powers, rather see it as "we" were, same way as the Pirate Issue is a Somali Issue, and not a "Puntland issue" as your "nationalist" wants us to believe. I think Peasent got it right.