So today, on National Public Radio I heard a disturbing and specious set of speculations by international security experts on the possibility that Al Qaeda might turn to the Somali pirates (who recently took a US captain hostage) for aid and support. To set such ridiculous speculations in play in the public sphere seems tantamount to a useless and pathetic scare tatic.
Moreover, it doesn't match the reality on the ground where the so-called "pirates" are actually fishermen who have been fished out of their seas by European fishing boats and the dumping of nuclear waste in their ocean.
A San Francisco Bay View article indicates:
The “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”
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