It seems piracy is not just a Somali phenomena.

This live piracy map shows details of piracy attacks across the world. There are three main cluster regions - the Horn of Africa, West Africa and the seas between north west India and Indonesia.

An amazingly detailed map of piracy off the coast of Somalia

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“Optimism is a Political Act” speaks to those who are willing to put up with the status quo and those who repeatedly deny the possibility of change. Especially for Nigerians who despair and have silently given up hope REPENT for there is still a chance to make a difference …………

Optimism, by contrast, especially optimism which is neither foolish nor silent, can be revolutionary. Where no one believes in a better future, despair is a logical choice, and people in despair almost never change anything. Where no one believes a better solution is possible, those benefiting from the continuation of a problem are safe. Where no one believes in the possibility of action, apathy becomes an insurmountable obstacle to reform. But introduce intelligent reasons for believing that action is possible, that better solutions are available, and that a better future can be built, and you unleash the power of people to act out of their highest principles. Shared belief in a better future is the strongest glue there is: it creates the opportunity for us to love one another, and love is an explosive force in politics.

On the 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, Iraqi Veterans Against War (IVAW) US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be gathering in Washington today for 4 days of testimony on their experiences and feelings. The testimonies will be streamed on the internet and broadcast on satellite TV.

The veterans are not against the military and seek not to indict it – instead they seek to shine a light on the bigger picture: that the Abu Ghraib prison regime and the Haditha massacre of innocent Iraqis are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “bad seeds” as the military suggests, but evidence of an endemic problem. They will say they were asked to do terrible things and point the finger up the chain of command, which ignores, diminishes or covers up routine abuse and atrocities.

Former British special forces trooper, Ben Griffin banned from speaking in public

As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).

I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless ”
Ben Griffin, Former UK Special forces trooper

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Afganistan
USA
Iraqi Veterans Against War
extraordinary rendition
Battle for Haditha
Abu Ghraib

The Australian government is to officially apologise to the “stolen children” of Kamerra but with a refusal to offer any financial compensation to the thousands [The Bringing Them Home report, of 1997, says at least 100,000] of indigenous children who were fathered [I cant find anything around the circumstances of the “fathering” but it seems highly probable that the mothers were raped and abused] by white men and taken away from their mothers and families.

“We are a broken people. A lot of our people have no identity, they have no pride in themselves,” says Wallace, who returned to her grandfather’s sacred Worita land to immerse herself in aboriginal culture seven years ago. “They have lost the will to survive, and that’s been passed on to their children. They have got into drugs and alcohol and a lot of our youth are killing themselves. Recognising that we were stolen, it’s admitting that a wrong was done to us.”

Her mother’s sister, whom she affectionately calls Mum-Aggie, recalls the way part-Aboriginal children were removed. “A middle-aged white man came, a short man who smoked a pipe. He would go around the communities and pretend to have a conversation with people but really his eyes were on the children playing,” she says. “That’s how he took note of the kids and reported them.”

Interviews with some of the stolen children

LINK: Facing Australia´s history: truth and reconciliation for the stolen generations

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Stolen Children
Australia

The Atlanticist : Africa needs tough love, not more aid poured down a rat hole:

There is not a single state on the African continent that would not today be better off administered under a colonial regime, as Hong Kong was by Britain. If the West genuinely cared about Africa and wanted to make a difference rather than more charity, it would send soldiers to overthrow corrupt and despotic regimes, and constitutional law experts and administrators to architect and operate governing legal and economic systems there patterned after our own.

Like it did in Iraq? I kind of followed this line of thought, clipping my mouth shut with clothes pegs at places, so I wouldn’t yell out obscenities in front of my children. And I went through without a single f-word. I think the writer does identify the problem most of the time:

The African continent is a patchwork quilt of artificially drawn and imposed borders, established, for the most part, by European colonial powers.

Apart from the wars being fought now in Africa, the ones that the colonial west interrupted (while the west itself was free to fight its own murderous wars and get them over with — effectively establishing its borders without African or other outside interference) — but I was saying, apart from these wars, frontiers on the African continent were established entirely by the colonial master and mistress. It is inaccurate therefore to say for the most part. Nevertheless, the writer identifies there a seed for conflict.

Monetary aid is poison. It does not encourage more responsible government. […] A deluge of aid will not fix what ails Africa.

Of course it doesn’t, and it won’t. Whoever said it did or will? But, again, the writer has identified part of the problem. Here’s the thing, as an African, I want the west out, not in, for several reasons. The writer mentions the first one. The second one is unfair trade practices from which Africa is getting thinner and its western trade partners fatter. The third one is that the west messed Africa up once, it’s time it stopped. Got on the bus home. Knowing that “legal and economic systems […] patterned after our own,” as the writer so shamelessly puts it, seem to the west to be the best because ours were uprooted and incapacitated by the same west.

Lack of access to Western markets for products in which African producers enjoy comparative advantage such as sugar, cotton and textiles is a huge problem. Western import restrictions and tariffs stymie wealth creation in Africa.

There again, the writer concurs with me. It is of course a huge problem. And the solution?  “American and European markets should be unilaterally opened to Africa goods, with protective regimes for Western producers being discarded.” Why not stop there, and also provide logical solutions for the other problems so nicely identified? Why talk of colonial regimes in Africa administered by America and Britain? We’re quite tired, as a people, of fighting the west off. We want to be left alone.

That’s all we’ve ever wanted, really, even as the west scrambled for chunks of our land. But guess what… instead of getting out, the west is getting in deeper: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7026197.stm . I think somebody took your advice, dear writer. The shame of it is that it’s a waste of money, and we’ll just have to fight and kick the west out again, albeit with an even more messed up continent.

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