Felix Stalder on Wed, 1 Oct 2008 11:29:13 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Piracy and commercial fishing |
The NYT has a fascinating story about the current piracy drama off the coast of Somalia. What makes that one different is that the pirates happened, by chance it seems, upon a ship carrying weapons officially destined for Kenia, but according to the pirates, actually for Dafur. How does the NYT know this? Well, the pirates these days have official spokespeople, one Sugule Ali in this case, the only person on the ship who is "authorized to be quoted". Anyway, what is interesting is the origin of piracy in Somalia, as act of self-defense against robbery by commercial, presumably European, Chinese, and Japanese fishing fleets. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/world/africa/01pirates.html?hp The piracy industry started about 10 to 15 years ago, Somali officials said, as a response to illegal fishing. Somaliaâ??s central government imploded in 1991, casting the country into chaos. With no patrols along the shoreline, Somaliaâ??s tuna-rich waters were soon plundered by commercial fishing fleets from around the world. Somali fishermen armed themselves and turned into vigilantes by confronting illegal fishing boats and demanding that they pay a tax. â??From there, they got greedy,â?? said Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya. â??They starting attacking everyone.â?? --- http://felix.openflows.com ----------------------------- out now: *|Mediale Kunst/Media Arts Zurich.13 Positions.Scheidegger&Spiess2008 *|Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society. Polity, 2006 *|Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Ed. Futura/Revolver, 2005
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