America and Africa

i've been watching reports of the norfolk based ship, overtaken by pirates off the coast of africa, somalia specifically. it's just a wierd thought....this notion of pirates at sea. i had no idea how common it was. today's attack was the sixth time a massive ship has been overtaken by these pirates in......not a decade, not a year, not a month even....but in six days. stunning, wouldn't you say?

this particular hijacking got immediate, widespread publicity because the crew was american born. the hostage they took, not a european, not a canadian, but a regular guy from vermont. i learned today that shipping companies have had one option in these situations prior to now. they paid up......they paid up to the tune of 150 million bucks in ransom just to ensure the safe passage of their ships, their cargo, their crew.

back when i was a kid, africa was in the news for different reasons. africa was in the news because africa's people were dying by the thousand from an aids epidemic. africa was in the news because her children's bellies were bloated from hunger, their eyes blank and hopeless, their hands swatting at flies that circled their faces as if they were caged animals. americans would tell their kids not to waste their vegetables because there were starving kids in africa. aside from that, nobody did much. afterall, they were africans, we were americans, their suffering wasn't our fault, our concern, our responsibility. africa was a world away from here.

is it just me, or did the world just get a little smaller today?

i heard someone refer to the pirates as water-based terrorists. i wonder how many of those "terrorists," armed with grenades and automatic weapons, once stood by the dead bodies of their family members, burned en masse to cut down on the spread of infection, inhaling a stench the likes of which no human being, african, iranian, afghan, iraqi, chinese, russian, american, no one.....should ever be forced to inhale. i wonder how many of those "terrorists" learned while still in single digits that a sip of water and a slice of bread was something you had to fight for. i wonder how many ever set foot in a school house. i wonder how many were ever given as much as a word of encouragement for free.

mostly, given all they had to endure to even grow up, all they suffered while americans were force feeding their kids into a state of obesity and self-centeredness, ignoring their need......i really wonder.........who was the terrorist first?