I decided to take my head out of my navel and look around this morning, but maybe I shouldn’t have. Here’s another bit of news this Easter Sunday that makes you wonder if Western civilization truly has any right to live:
In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Meanwhile, illegal trawlers off the coast of Somalia have taken so many fish, the local fishermen are reported to be starving. The article in the Independent continues:
This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence”.
Hostage-taking and gangsterism aside, this is the other side of the coin. Western governments did nothing to stop mafia dumping of toxic nuclear waste or fisheries theft — assuming this actually occurred — but once an actual American sailor is captured, send in the aircraft carriers! Not that I have the slightest objection to rescuing hostages, obviously, just the hypocritical moralizing. [NOTE: Capt. Phillips has been freed, and kudos to the U.S. Navy seals.] But the Lord moves in mysterious ways, as the saying goes: if you dine on seafood in posh restaurants in fine cities all over the world, you may be eating fish caught illegally in waters poisoned by nuclear waste.
That can be the case most anywhere, given what we’ve done to the Earth — I’ve been leery of seafood for decades for just that reason — but in this instance, it’s kind of a satisfying twist. Nature’s way of taking care of itself, you might say.
UPDATE: I just did some more research. Plenty of controversy to go around on the origin of Somali pirating, all right, but damn, this isn’t black and white. We all have a part in it, which is why my title stands.
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“stupid” i will give you. But duplicitous? c’mon, how many plants and animals use coloration to fool predators into thinking they’re poisonous?
I edited that line out, but not because it wasn’t true.
Just tightening up the writing, etc.
Your analogy is wrong, however. Protective coloration is a result of natural selection, not conscious intent.