The Chandler captives?

[Bitter Ashes]

I've tried looking into this and the official line doesnt seem to make much sense to me at all tbh.

In general, I support the Somali pirates. They target the corporations that do so much harm to them, but do not attack other workers to achieve it. They even redistribute the ransom money for boats to the needy, such as the Haiti victims. Overall, there seems to be a whole Robin Hood thing going on there, which is good.

This whole thing with Rachel Chandler and her husband totaly confuses me though. The most information I can seem to get is that they were on holiday in thier yacht (so, I'm guessing that they're rich) when the pirates took them captive and held them to ransom. The British Goverment isnt paying up, but demanding thier release. It's been going on for several months now. They were on TV last night claiming that they were bieng "tortured". What kind of torture? Beatings? Waterboarding? Cat batteries attached to the genitals? None of that actualy, they've just been kept in different camps for the past 5 days and they're claiming, to the British goverment, who are currently defending thier right to use waterboarding, that this is torture.

Here's where I get confused though. If they have a yacht, wouldnt that mean that they must already be millionares and capable of paying thier own ransom? Also, what motive can the pirates have? This is totaly out of character for the pirates to harm individuals, as there's no point or profit in it. The whole thing doesnt make sense in the slightest to me and looking online has not given any good results of any possible explanation for the wierdness. So, any thoughts?

[Bitter Ashes]

Nobody has any opinions about any of this?

What I'm basicly asking is whether the whole thing's just made up/exaggerated to try smear what looks like a grassroots working class organisation, or whether some of the pirates have just made some kind of isolated mistake.

[Wolf Larson]

Nobody has any opinions about any of this?

What I'm basicly asking is whether the whole thing's just made up/exaggerated to try smear what looks like a grassroots working class organisation, or whether some of the pirates have just made some kind of isolated mistake.

I think it was Confucius who said wisdom is knowing what you know and knowing what you don't know. My wisdom is telling me I don't know enough about the situation to comment on it but thank you for posting it as I was also thinking the so called Pirates were being black balled by the western media. The media should look into what causes the conditions in Somalia. Colonialism and the effects of colonialism plague the world today. The destitute in Africa is a bi product of the white mans burden to exploit, rape and murder indigenous cultures across the globe. Haiti being the latest tragedy. The earthquake in Chile where capitalists decided to half ass set up shop rather than completely parasitically exploit as they did in Haiti, shows us what an infrastructure and decent building materials can do to save lives. Every politician in Haiti who promised to build public infrastructure, roads, emergency response teams, medical care etc was overthrown by the US and their financial goons at World Bank/IMF. Everyone should be stealing from the rich in order to send no strings attached money to Haiti.

What can you tell us concerning why Somalia is the way it is? What specific western colonial/US involvement is responsible for the current environment in Somalia? This is somewhat a rhetorical question I guess but history, true history tell us why young men in Somalia have so little choices. Western media has tried to say the Somali pirates are materialistic wanting nothing but, and I quote, "gold chains and a gangster lifestyle". Barf on the media.