A KANGAROO, YOGI & BOO BOO (TWO BROWN BEARS) AND THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE

Hubble Telescope, before she was released from orbit to roam the universe

Well, as a profound patron of the weird (It finds me anyway so I now subscribe), I have come to cherish the Australians. They make a national hero out of a man who wrestles alligators and idolize those who swim with sharks (In my opinion the indisputably DUMBEST thing I’ve ever heard of). And now another “Digger” has made the news Downunder. Yep, you’re gonna love this.

Neil McCallum and his son were vacationing on the Gold Coast of Australia and beach walking one morning when a kangaroo bounded by them and bounced off into the surf, apparently not at all concerned about the total absence of other mammalian life forms in waters where two hammerhead sharks had been spotted earlier in the week.

Neil and his boy, who hail from Queensland, (Australia) decided to keep their eyes on the ‘roo (I did not make that up. That’s what they call them there. ‘Roos’). And when this roo got caught in a riptide and was being slowly but implacably carried out to sea and probably into the devilish maws of a rapacious Devonian, Neil abandoned all thoughts of family, community and country, stripped down for action and dove into the surf.

In a feat of extra-human strength which will be talked about in that part of the world for hundreds of years to come, Neil McCallum, of the Queensland McCallums, effectively rescued a young marsupial from certain death. The entire nation of Australia is on its feet, cheering this one, He Who Swims With Roos, and this from a nation which has also given us Mel Gibson and Crocodile Dundee.

I think that’s pretty cool. However, I wonder how those glorious headlines would have read if Downunder’s new Everyman had ended up on the menu at Chez Shark. Do you think his widow and children would have been compensated for their loss? Did his life insurance policy cover getting eaten by a shark while attempting to rescue a drowning kangaroo? (I checked and mine doesn’t.)

And if Australia’s tabloids get ahold of it, will there be speculation on what really drove McCallum to such a potentially extreme measure of human sacrifice? Were they actually strangers, these two, or was there some prior relationship? Marsupials have pouches. Will the press wonder what was in that pouch which might have motivated McCallum? Will breathless readers really want to know?

That’s why I don’t court celebrity, immediate or posthumous. It makes life way too complicated. I do, however, love watching folks like Neil McCallum. Even when it’s not a slow news day in Seattle, they’re invariably still the best show in town.

And for those who have been asking about the brown bear who’s been scoping out our Seattle suburbs, he’s still at large and now apparently has company. One has been spotted north of downtown, in Ballard and Shoreline, which are right on the Puget Sound. Another has been seen roaming South Seattle near a big golf course.

State, county and city animal control authorities are working with local emergency services personnel and with residents of the neighborhoods “impacted”. It is fully anticipated that the bears will either find their way back to the deeper woods or will eventually get a friendly assist via a tranquilizer dart and a taxpayer paid ride home.

Yep, everybody’s being cool. Yogi and Boo Boo are just having an adventure and we’re treating them pretty much like any other tourists. (Chamber of Commerce is going to love that one. Sigh) And also quietly respecting that they were here first. The bears. Yogi and Boo Boo. Never mind. I digress.

Our thanks to a reader in Victoria, British Columbia who tipped us off to a possible academic American brain drain which seems due, at least in part, to the present economic climate. As Americans find themselves with less money for education and as American universities themselves are forced to increase tuition to offset the loss of funding from government and alumni sources, American students are going north of the border.

The Toronto Globe & Mail reports that McGill University has seen a 22 percent increase in American enrollment in the last five years. Other academic institutions across Canada cite similar growth statistics. The trend predates the current recession by well over ten years but enrollment figures have increased dramatically in the last year or so.

It’s not clear yet if Americans who graduate from Canadian colleges and universities then seek employment and settle in Canada or whether they return to the United States. It is apparent, however, that dollars which could be going into the American educational system are, instead, going north with those students.

I’m glad that even in times like these, some of us can still afford to give our kids a good education. If American universities cannot compete with the Canadians in that regard, as far as I’m concerned, that’s just another reason to look both inward and abroad for a better way to do things here at home.

And if you love good news as much as I do and figure that if they can do it anywhere, “by gum, by gosh, and by golly, we can do it here,” you’re also going to enjoy reading that even in the worst of economic times, dislocated workers start companies which succeed and, in some cases, become profound landmarks on the entrepreneurial landscape. Hewlett Packard, for instance, was born at the end of the Great Depression; the Hyatt Corporation, in the Recession of 1957 and Fed-Ex during the fuel crisis of 1973.

In Oregon, they’re showing that it can be done now, in the Pacific Northwest. Business licenses in Portland are actually UP since the start of this last downturn and that may very well be due in part to the efforts of the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, a nonprofit organization which provides tools and training for new business owners. In a recent interview with Oregon Live, Tom Embree, a partner in a Tigard investment company, explained it this way.

"Down markets are great times to start a company. When people get laid off or choose to take buyouts, both startup founders and employees are created." He said that when venture capital is scarce and "it's difficult to raise money, you learn to do more with less.”

The State of Washington has endorsed this idea of the citizen entrepreneur by providing the unemployed here with the opportunity to learn how to start their own businesses while still being allowed to collect benefits and without needing to also look for work at the same time. Olympia seems to feel the state’s workforce is itself capable of retooling and history seems to bear this out as well.

And finally, here’s to the Space Shuttle Atlantis and to the venerable Hubble telescope. Unless NASA changes its mind, the space shuttles are being retired. Hubble is already enroute to the stars and beyond.

She’ll be sending us those incredible photographs for as long as she can. It’s a vast universe and she’s built to last. I wish her good luck and Godspeed. I’m going to miss her.

Until next time, then, take care, stay well and thanks for the ear.

Rusty

MEMORIAL DAY EXTRA: FOR FALLEN COMRADES

RMSM Scott Miller, December 1969 Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

Hi, folks, and Happy Memorial Day. Someone asked me the other night how many barbecues I thought would be going on today and when I told him I had no idea but that I was dying of curiosity about why he wanted to know that, he just shrugged and said, “I’m going to two, is all. I just wondered how many others there were.”

We sat down over another latte (This is Seattle, remember?) and did the math. We figured that in one way or another, almost every American knows someone who either served this nation under arms and didn’t come back or knows someone who did, including veterans who on this day and on Nov. 11, celebrate fallen comrades. We couldn’t come up with an exact number but we figured that it probably added up to a bunch of barbecues.

I’m glad. I think it’s good to remember and respect those who made the ultimate sacrifice. There’s not a town or city in the nation which doesn’t have cemeteries where tiny American flags fly on headstones and even in foreign countries whose names I can hardly pronounce. Plain fact is, Americans have been dying bravely all over the world for almost 250 years now.

I can relate. I’m a veteran myself. But since I’m shy by nature and trained in gregariosity (If that’s not a word, we can always make it one, right?), I’ve never been much for public celebrations. Also, being a Pisces. I tend to go to deeper and quieter places to remember, reflect and let my emotions go for awhile.

I hope we never stop celebrating holidays like these. But I’d also like to see them tempered by some other considerations. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I miss the people I lost in “my” war.

I miss their humor. I miss hassling with them. I miss sharing letters from home and I miss them being there to count on when there was totally no one else. Those I lost didn’t just make that ultimate sacrifice for those they left behind, they made it for those with whom they served.

By my reckoning, these are a real special breed of Americans. We’ve needed them in time of war and they’ve come through for us. Down the generations and certainly unto the present one.

We’ve also needed them in time of peace and sometimes I think that because so many of them died on the battlefields of the world, there’s never been quite enough of them left to make this nation, much less this world, an enduringly safe place.

We need, perhaps now more than at any other time in our history, that vision these heroes had that made them see beyond themselves. We need the power and purity of that absolute and total belief that what they and their comrades were doing would ultimately bring about a more peaceful society which made their choice the only choice.

For their sacrifice to mean anything at all, it seems to me it’s just like Lincoln said after Gettysburg. We need to live with the same conviction and sense of purpose by which they served and died.

We need to remember that they’re still doing that and that maybe if we did our job a little better, there’d be a few more around to celebrate with next year and a few less to miss.

I could live with that. With all due respect to all those barbecues.

Take care, yahoos (and yahoo-ettes?), and thanks again for the ear, then, eh?

Rusty

CANADA’S NEW OCEAN, SEATTLE’S CURRENT BLACK BEAR AND OTHER THINGS THAT MAKE THIS ANOTHER REAL INTERESTING WEEK

HMCS Toronto and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Pierre Radisson sail past an iceberg in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Baffin Island. Sergeant Kevin MacAulay/Canwest News Service

Hi again, fellow yahoos and yahoo-ettes(?). And thanks for the emails about what to do with all those older cars, trucks and SUVs the auto dealers (new and used) might have to deal with if that environmental bill in the American House of Representatives goes through.

I was humbled by a reader from the UK who quietly reminded me in that in her country, they do now and have for some while sort, recycle, smelt, and remanufacture. And sometimes, like especially during World War II, they learn to enjoy what’s really important. Thank you, Lady D. I still think my idea about artificial reefs and stuff was cool, though. With all due respect, eh?

And speaking of things seaworthy and also under the heading, “Attitude Is All”, I found it absolutely in keeping with my native land that Canada, whose motto is “From Sea to Sea” is now engaged in a national debate because global warming is melting the Arctic Ocean and opening up, all year around, the Northwest Passage. Much to its chagrin, the “Dominion” needs to add another ocean to its motto. That’s like adding another group to protect under e pluribus unun.

Perhaps more somberly than the word play involved, it also means that Canada is also engaging her citizens (and anyone else tuned in to a quiet channel) in a discourse on an important change in national priorities.

I suspect that Washington, DC and the Joint Chiefs are listening. Canada’s naval (surface and submerged), air and land forces now stand also stand as America’s first line of defense in these regards. For those unfamiliar with Canada’s history in war, this may admittedly be a source of some humor.

But anyone who has ever studied Canada’s combat record and her willingness to commit to the protection of her people probably also has listened to her national anthem and knows that at the end of World War II, Canada had the third largest standing navy in the world. If she needs to again manifest what it took to make that happen then, she will.

She is America’s largest trading partner but she is not now, nor has she been since 1878, a prime candidate for colonial acquisition, across the Arctic Circle or south of it.

The lyrics to her national anthem are not as dramatic as those of The Star Spangled Banner. But then she came of age differently than the States did, for the most part. However, in times of international terrorism and economic uncertainty, I find the last three lines of O Canada very reassuring.

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!

From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

Trust in God and if the Diety is too busy at the moment, eh? Canada didn’t invent it and certainly makes no claim to authorship. And the real kicker for me is that Canada’s sea to sea motto is Biblical. Check out Psalms and then tell me the world’s not weird. (Hint: Psalm 72:8)

About three hours closer to Seattle and for those of you who enjoyed that story about that black bear living the median, guess what? Yep, we got another one running loose but this one’s in greater Seattle, (north of downtown) along the Puget Sound, a lot further west than we’re used to seeing them.

For those a little squeamish about the outcome, nope, they’re not hunting him down to kill him. He’s behaving himself and so are the humans involved. It’s just a matter of catching him and relocating him further east, back across the mountains, just like the one they did south of here.

That black bear and how we’re reacting to it may, at least in part and to a degree, explain what I’m coming to realize from feedback from you folks seems to be not just a regional thing with us but more an awarness/attitude that doesn’t respect maps. But just to test this one out.

We in the Pacific Northwest are just as concerned as anyone anywhere else about what goes on beyond our “borders”. It’s just sometimes we get a little distracted by things that remind us that even as important as human beings and all that goes on with us seems to be, to the rest of the planet and perhaps to the occasional black bear, it might just not be all about us.

As Walt Disney as that might sound, we have bigger forces than black bears and cougars to remind us of what happens here if we do not pay attention to the fauna and flora who are also our neighbors. We have three volcanoes.

I found something else, again by “accident,” that reminded me of how well the rest of the life on the planet was doing before we got here. Beavers are helping the salmon runs here by returning to the tidal mouths of about six percent of what’s left of those wetlands and creating pools in which the chinook among others, can rest and/or spawn. Those wetlands were the first to go when the Puget Sound went first agrarian and then industrial.

There’s never been a scientific record of this before but it’s suspected that it’s probably been going on for a long time. Might account for why the several tribes of First Nation who have shared the Sound never made permanent settlement in these tidal marshes either. They didn’t have gills, webbed feet, feathers or real impressive front teeth. As Washington State experiences its own regreening, this is being given some study, thought and consideration.

Despite the fact that Canada owes a fair share of its history to the international market for beaver pelts, I’m hoping the taste for salmon mitigates the cycle some further north, with all due respect to Quebec and the radical West. I’m reasonably confident that it has in Washington State. And perhaps in your house as well, eh?

Take care, folks, and hang in there. We’re making it and weird is getting cool again. Until next time, then (eh)?

Rusty

FROM YOU GUYS
(thanks, Bonnie)

From: Senator@murray.senate.gov
To: minstrel312@aol.com
Sent: 5/22/2009 8:48:48 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subj: Response from Senator Murray

Dear Mr. Miller:

Thank you for forwarding me an article from the Northstar Journal blog. It was good to hear from you.

As your Senator, it is important for me to know your concerns and opinions. I seriously consider the views of all of my constituents, and I want you to know I have made note of your concerns and forwarded the article to my staff.

I appreciate the time you have taken to share this article with me. Please keep in touch.

I hope all is well in Seattle.

ELEPHANTS IN TENNESSEE, CASH FOR CLUNKERS AND THE WASHINGTON STATE PATROL MAKES THE BEST DRESSED LIST…YEP, IT’S BEEN A FUN WEEK SO FAR

The Elephant Sanctuary

Hi again, folks. Well, it’s shaping up to be another real interesting week. I don’t know how many of you read The Wall Street Journal. In this house, we do, but mostly just for the pictures, the cartoons and the crossword.

However, according to Rupert Murdoch’s proudest possession, the federal government could be subsidizing the automobile industry in a rather unique way. There’s a bill being hammered together in a House Committee ~ and already endorsed by President Obama ~ being referred to as “the cash for clunkers” which would give consumers a voucher for up to $4,500 to trade their gas-guzzlers in for more fuel efficient vehicles.

It’s actually part of an environmental/climate change bill that seems to have the best of intentions and I’m sure that now that a lot of people are looking to preowned but more cost efficient vehicles, this will also help new vehicle dealers out.

What the bill’s not real clear on is what’s going to happen to those older vehicles after that. If anyone’s got any suggestions, send them and I’ll add them to the end of this blog as comments from the readership.

We’ve got several elected officials reading the NSJ, including Maria Cantwell, one of our US senators. Knowing several of you personally and others of you by reputation, this could be real entertaining. I myself am thinking artificial reefs.

A little closer to MY home, Washington State’s done it again. For the second year in a row, The National Association of Uniform Manufacturers and Distributors has voted our State Patrol the best dressed in the nation. This year, we share that distinction with the State of Mississippi, so to all our readers south of the Mason-Dixon, nice going, y’all.

Considering the justifiably proud reputation our law enforcement professionals have over a jurisdiction which extends from British Columbia, Canada to Oregon, and from the Columbia River, west to the Cascades, across the Puget Sound, the Olympic Peninsula and its mountains, and finally to the Pacific Coast, it’s nice they can serve so well and spruce up so good for photo ops.

The last time I personally experienced this blend of dedication, ability and pride in appearance, I had some reason to be thankful to the United States Marine Corps. I’ve lived in big cities and backwoods in this state and the WSP is one of the biggest reasons I’ve never had any problem. So, nice going, guys. What’s next? A calendar? (Need a good lens jockey?)

Under the heading a VERY weird week, we just got a big mystery solved in this house and you’re absolutely going to love this. A few years ago, one of the young people in this house was doing a summer vacation hitchhiking from Miami, Florida back up here to Seattle and the University of Washington.

He had a fantastic time in a place in the middle of Tennessee by the name of Hohenwald. It’s a small town with a lot of history and a lot of natural beauty. Tom was a musician back then and he is also part First Nation. He remembers having a real good time with kindred spirits and doing the things that young musicians in search of themselves and things to sing about do.

He ended up camping just outside of the village, in some woods. During the night, a real warm, calm, clear and starry July evening, Tom dreamed of elephants and swore he awoke to the sound of them trumpeting. But also being half rational, he figured there was only one outside possibility and that’s that his Native American ancestors were telling him that wholly mammoths once roamed this land.

Even for Tom, a native Northwesterner, that was just a little too far out there so he just chalked it up to another weird episode among many and kept on trucking. But for some reason, it stuck with him. He tweaked a little when that baby mammoth was discovered in Siberia a few years back.

But it wasn’t until just yesterday that Tom’s mind was set to rest in these regards. One of you emailed out of the clear blue and asked if I knew where the biggest elephant sanctuary in the United States was.

There’s an elephant sanctuary in America? Yep, you’re way ahead of me. It’s a place called ~ somehow appropriately in my humble opinion ~ The Elephant Sanctuary. And guess where it is?

Tom’s settled down some since he camped about five hundred yards from that place. He still loves music but he’s an engineer now and for some reason, he’s wondering if, in a green and increasingly more animal friendly age, there might not be a way of putting these big creatures to work paying their room and board.

Personally, I can’t see elephants stomping around my neighborhood, but then I never figured there’d been twenty-four of them in Tennessee either. But I do like his attitude so I’ve wished Tom the best and asked him to let me know if there’s anything we can do for him in these regards.

Until next time, then, eh, folks? And keep the faith. We’re making it and once we’re through this…right?

Rusty

HOW GREEN IS YOUR VALLEY?

Jogger on Montlake Cut Photo by MS(R)M

Well, spring is charging around the Pacific Northwest like an enraged wet bull looking for a matador with an umbrella. Heavy rains and winds gusting to 45 mph have played havoc with the power grid and forced the euthanasia of some century old evergreens. It’s a pattern of life that’s far older than even those great Douglas fir, though, and we’ve adapted.

Despite the fact that, at this writing, Washington State now has 58 probable and confirmed cases of swine flu, our schools are staying open. They’ve been scrubbed down and all concerned apprised of the precautionary measures necessary.

Like the rest of the nation, we’re grateful it isn’t as virulent a strain as other influenza viruses have been but equally aware that it could mutate. Seattle happens to be the home of some of the finest medical facilities in the nation and these interact with the various health departments throughout the state. Like the weather, we’re adjusting to this, as well.

And as the rest of the nation and the world, the Pacific Northwest continues to pursue economic recovery and checking global warming by developing a host of alternative and integrated energy sources. For those interested in what’s being done in our region, I would highly recommend Oregon Public Broadcasting’s series, The Switch.

I found it very interesting that Nissan has chosen Seattle as one of a dozen or so cities next year to sell a new electric car. Our own “emerald city” was selected because we’ve been moving in that direction for some while now. A portion of our transit system is electric and we’re providing free electrical vehicle recharging at our park and ride stations.

What’s going to be interesting is to see how these electrics do on our seven hills. I’ve lived in San Francisco and Seattle both and I’ve seen nothing in the City by the Bay which can equal our Queen Ann Hill. I’m also, however, no engineer and I suspect that before they decided to include our fair city, Nissan, et al likely took that under consideration.

If it works out, there’s an odd custom in this town which is going to make a lot more sense to me.

People in this weird place bike and jog to work and are doing that in numbers that are not increasing in proportion to the number of people still driving (and riding) combustion-engine/fossil fueled transportation on the roadways right alongside these dauntless metro green athletes.

Those dedicated metrogreenletes are in maximum aerobic mode. The heart’s pounding, the blood’s circulating, etc. But what are the lungs taking in? How about the exhaust from the vehicles right alongside? And up ahead. And when there’s a low/inversion layer over the Puget Sound, everything that belches fumes including unreconstructed cigarette smokers.

I’ve never understood why a city capable of banning smoking in bars, creating car-pool lanes and rescuing a very long floating bridge across Lake Washington has never been able to institute staggered commuting hours. I mean, isn’t that what flex time is all about?

But then again I’ve never been able to fathom why in the world a technological culture capable of putting a Rover on Mars has yet to come up with an email kissing smiley with a mustache on it.

I’ve concluded that it’s all a matter of priorities. Whose priorities? Not mine, thank you. Someone once had the audacity to ask me what would be my first act, if the Deity died and left me King of the World. My response was a single word beginning with the letter “a”.

Yep, abdicate.

I am NOT responsible for any of this. I’m only here for the free peanuts and the perspective. Me and my two monkey brothers. That works for now and as long as it does, I’m not fixing it.

Until next time, take care, stay well and thanks for the ear.

Rusty

EXACTLY WHOSE 100 DAYS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE?

Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms

Some folks sure have this interesting way of measuring progress. Who, exactly, came up with this 100 days evaluation of a presidential administration? That’s rhetorical. I can Google. I still have a problem with it.

I’m math challenged and I think that’s part of the problem. I see eight years of a previous administration, with two wars and a recession as a legacy. Even by No. 2 lead pencil and legal pad computation, that’s still 2,920 days to get us into all this. And Barack Obama has been on the job exactly how long again? I mean, come on here, gang.

On the other hand, I’m solidly behind what appears to be new attention focused on the performance of our elected officials by the population at large. While the constituency’s expectations may not always be entirely realistic, the voters have apparently decided that it’s not just enough to elect these people. We need to stay on them to make sure they’re doing what we’re paying them to do.

I look, as well, at the changes I’ve seen in the nation and in the international community since Barack Obama assumed office. There’s a new spirit of cooperation and “can do” growing in America and abroad.

Sometimes change needs the right environment. For the first time in perhaps more than eight years, we have a president who is not saying, “Follow and I will lead you to (fill in the blank)” but one whose message seems clearly to be, “Help me get us where we’ve together decided we need and want to go.”

I see these attitudes either flourishing among states and communities which already have them, and/or growing ~ albeit sometimes reluctantly and skeptically ~ among those who, in the past and for whatever reasons, have been unwilling or unable to adopt them.

So, as more comes out about the responsibilities assumed on the regional, state, county and community level, I’m inclined to believe the constituency has, as well, decided to give the doctrine of personal responsibility a go. And push it on up the line.

It’s like, “Together, we broke it. Together we’ll fix it. And the Good Lord willing and the crick don’t rise, we won’t have to do this again anytime soon.”

That too is also how history sometimes plays out. Even for Americans, eh?

SOMALIS ULTIMATE VICTIMS OF ADEN GULF PIRACY

Hi again folks. Like millions of Americans this week, I’ve been following Matt Lauer’s interview with Motorized Vessel (MV) Maersk Alabama captain Richard Phillips and his wife on NBC’s The Today Show.

It was a story of human courage, determination, decisive executive action, and brilliant military execution reminiscent of the Israeli rescue of the hostages of Air France Flight 139 at Entebbe, July 3-4, 1976.

It was, as well, a dramatic statement of American international policy and one for which the United States is legendary. We don’t care who you are. You will not do this to us.

For all of that, it should probably be noted that the Somalis are not the world’s best buccaneers. In this case, they were certainly not as informed as they needed to be. They saw this big unarmed American ship in what they considered their waters and went after it with a real simple game plan.

Board, capture, take it into a protected port in northern Somalia and hang onto it until the owners paid a ransom. That done, everybody goes on about their business and sorry for the inconvenience.

Good plan, by pirate standards, and pretty much like 1,000 or so others made and carried out in the several years the Somalis have been learning and refining the craft of seagoing hijacking and kidnapping.

The Maersk Alabama is owned by a Danish company but is homeported out of Norfolk, Virginia and is of American registry. When it was interdicted, it was bound for Mombassa, Kenya, with a cargo of food and agricultural supplies for both the United Nations and the US Agency For International Development.

Before the pirates could board, the vessel’s crew disabled it and alerted most of the known world that they were in imminent danger of capture. So what the pirates, former fishermen, most of them, got was a big vessel that wasn’t going anywhere and a tough proud crew who were no more about to surrender their vessel than John Paul Jones or David Farragut were theirs.

Well, as I mentioned before, the Somalis are not hardcore at this business. They quite simply haven’t been at it all that long. While the sea is definitely in their blood (some say they were there when the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean were created), they are Neptune harvesters in a part of the world dramatically overfished and predominantly by a modern international industry with no respect for Somali territorial waters.

The Somalis first began attacking other FISHING vessels in order to protect their way of making a living. There’s not a mariner from the Banks to Bristol Bay who can’t relate to that. There are only so many fish and every boat represents families and communities which must be fed, clothed, sheltered and otherwise provided for.

In the roughly 15 years or so they’ve been at it, the Somalis have discovered that piracy pays better than fishing, at least for now. Theirs is a chaotic land where tribe, clan, village and family mean much more and have far more impact that a strong national government and infrastructure.

The ransom collected by these pirates ~ and it is in the majority of the cases ~ pays overhead and is distributed along traditional power lines to all those involved. Regardless of the moral and legal implications, piracy is the major industry of northern Somalia and is run like one.

And in contrast to the Barbary Pirates of some three centuries ago and those of other nations which plied this craft during the European empire building period, the Somalis are remarkably well-behaved. In a report to the United Nations Security Council in November 2008, International Maritime Organization Secretary-General Efthimios Mitropoulos reported that:

Of a total of some 440 acts of piracy and armed robbery reported to have taken place off the coast of Somalia since IMO started compiling relevant statistics in 1984, more than 120 attacks have been reported this year alone. More than 35 ships have been seized by pirates and more than 600 seafarers have been kidnapped and held for ransom. Currently, 14 ships and some 280 seafarers from 25 nations are being held hostage in Somalia. Two seafarers have already lost their lives.

President Obama and the United States Navy responded appropriately, for even two deaths are unacceptable. America is certainly not alone in this sentiment and this is the second time her navy has apprehended Somali pirates.

The maritime military of other countries have interdicted Somali mother ships and assault boats. Last November, Indian Naval Ship (INS) Tabar attacked and sank a pirate 'mothership' in the Gulf of Aden when it refused to respond to warnings. The Canadians and the Dutch are among those NATO forces which have engaged. The Japanese are joining a growing internatioinal anti-piracy task force. The Chinese and the Russians are already there. This kind of combined operation does not bode well for the Somali bucaneer community,

The nature of that community, however, is changing as it grows to incude those whose motives have nothing to do with the loss of one livelihood at the hands of those who are now expected to make restitution.

Under the leadership of militants and organized crime, piracy will become what it was four hundred years ago. Crews will be slaughtered and hosed into the sea, along with passengers not fit for ransom or the slave trade. Cargos will be offloaded at the nearest protected port and brokered. The vessel will be either stripped for salvage or sold and the profits used to finance among other things, human greed and international terrorism.

If tolerated, piracy will become a major option for a lot of interesting people. Wherever boats and ships of value gather, there will be a bucaneer or several just waiting for the opportunity to swash, buckle, rape, murder, plunder and party with the gang back in the ‘hood. Along the Great Barrier Reef, the Mekong Delta, in the canals of Venice, the mouth of the Thames, a stretch of the Mighty Mississippi, a Great Lakes waterfront, the banks of the Hudson or the St. Lawrence Seaway, no one will be safe.

The world community is not going to let that happen. It’s not good economics. Just like it wasn’t good economics thirty years ago to help the Somalis protect their fisheries. I do hope someone gives just a little thought to what these desperate people might turn to next to keep from starving to death.

They are not likely to go gently into their good night.

For More Information
Pirates’ captive: ‘I didn’t think I’d ever get out’ - TODAY People
International Maritime Organization
Somali Pirates Are Getting Rich: A Look At The Profit Margins - TIME
BBC NEWS Africa Somali pirates living the high life
Who are Somalia's pirates? csmonitor.com
Somali Pirates Tell Their Side - They Want Only Money - NYTimes.com
U.S. Navy Apprehends Somali Pirates for the First Time - Political Radar
Indian Navy destroys Somali pirate ship as hijackers demand $10m ransom
Somali Pirates: Canadian Nato Forces Foil Attack On Norwegian Tanker U.S. Captain Is Hostage of Pirates; Navy Ship Arrives - NYTimes.com