Community of Nations

Last week the United States hosted a gathering of nations in New York. Many countries were represented and many heads of state had time to address the body. President Barack Obama had an opportunity to speak before the body and kept his remarks consistent with what he has been saying on the world stage thus far into his presidency. Sadly he was again polarizing as those on the political right criticized him for apologizing for the United States past behavior. Some on the political left praised the president for his honest and candid reflections on the United States presence in world affairs. However, not every speech was common fare. There were some notable United States allies and enemies who took to the stage who received considerably different responses.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations and went into a tirade against the Nazis, Iranians and and all members of the body who stayed seated as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke. Ahmadinejad again stood on the world stage and denied the holocaust ever existing. Members of the United States delegation left when Ahmadinjad came to speak as did delegations from many other nations. On the other side of that coin, there were delegations that left in protest against Israel when Mr. Netanyahu rose to speak. Mr. Netanyahu received fair to favorable coverage in the United States media although the Palestinian Authority has a war crimes suit against Israel before the World Court at The Hague.



A man who did not receive such favorable response was Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Gaddafi addressed the body for nearly two hours. He rambled through much of his speech failing to strike a consistent theme or tone. He was not a poised nor polished speaker and his thoughts were not clear to say the least. However he did seem to have merit to his suggestions. He was the only speaker who suggested a one state solution to problems in the Middle East. He suggested that if the future of the Israelis and the Palestinians were linked as one there would be more incentive for cooperation. He also pointed to a positive Arab-Israeli relationship citing the Arab harboring of Jews in the wake of the holocaust.

Muammar al-Gaddafi is by not means a saint, nor are his comments the most profound words uttered from the podium at the United Nations. However neither is Mr. Netanyahu or any other foreign leader who has risen and spoke from that podium. Many leaders across the world have the metaphorical "blood on their hands". As listeners to the speeches from the United Nations, we have to be critical of what we are hearing and who we are hearing it from. We must be vigilant to weed out the rhetoric and find the substantive points of the speeches.



In doing that, we as the American public must also be fair. If we are going to be open-minded and hear Mr. Netanyahu out before reaching a conclusion about him, we must also hear Mr. Gaddafi before we simply dismiss him. Neither of the men are angels, but likewise neither are devils. They are merely two players on the world stage who we hope can help solve a centuries old problem. To dismiss either one as a mad man who can offer nothing of merit is disrespectful to both men. Since much of the United States press won't offer a fair minded approach to Mr. Gaddafi and some foreign press services won't offer honest observations of Mr. Netanyahu that puts the burden on the citizens to do the necessary research and think critically and come to their own conclusions about the world around us.

Terror on the High Seas

Much has been made about the recent developments on the seas and the waterways in Eastern Africa. The United States media has recently taken a keen interest in the affairs of that region of the world. Sadly and unfortunately many of these same outlets only seem to tell one side of the story. Rarely, if ever, does that side tend to be from the African point of view. As the Navy Seals are celebrated and the Maersk Alabama's captain is returned to the United States, key questions such as why and how that were not asked or answered in the mainstream media must be answered here.

The why and how that I seek to answer are less related to the efforts of the Somali pirates in their attempt to take the Maersk Alabama, but rather why they feel the need to patrol the seas and oceans of that area anyway. Initially one's first line of reasoning would be why would pirates patrol an area. Many will rightly say that's the navy's job. However for a country such as Somalia that has been in turmoil as long as it has it has no standing navy. Once we acknowledge that, then we can see a myriad of problems that will develop for Somalia because of a lack of a navy.

One main problem that has served as a key spark in this pirating epidemic is the dumping of nuclear waste. Because Somalia is a nation in chaos and lacks the ability to organize a standing navy to combat foreign navies, many countries (including some western countries) dump their nuclear waste in Somali waters. What this does is pollute the Somali air quality and shorten the life expectancy of Somali citizens. If this isn't bad enough, when other nations don't want to over fish their waters, they send their fishermen to Somali waters. This takes work away from the Somali fisherman and food away from the Somali people. In turn many western "aid" groups step in to provide essentials like food for the Somali people when it is these same aid groups governments that are a factor in causing the starvation of the Somali people in the first place.

The Somali people's response to this is to fight back. As has been belabored the Somalis do not have a navy to formally fight with, so they fight with improvised tactics. The United States first faced improvised tactics with the Vietnamese and guerrilla warfare. Since then other organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda have fought back using improvised techniques because they lacked proper armed forces. All of these groups have also been labeled as terrorist mind you. Sadly what happens in these cases is that otherwise innocent people are are the victims of the loose organizations (Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Pirates) on account of the policy decisions these innocent people's government have made. The United States mind you is the same government that armed and trained the Afghan people to fight against the Russians during the cold war in the 1980's. Then they were freedom fighters fighting off oppression. When they fight the United States they are called terrorist. What has changed? Nothing but the oppressor.

This is not in any way to condone or excuse violent behavior against innocent people. Perhaps (and one can only hope) the crew members of the Maersk Alabama were not on the high seas to dump nuclear waste and were there in fact as reported to deliver aid. If that is the case it is terrible that innocent people had their lives threatened. It was a shame that there were innocent victims in the numerous attacks across the world. In no way is this meant to praise the work of the Somali pirates or the Middle Eastern fighters. All we want to do, and it is our responsibility as citizens to do this, is look a little deeper than the obvious and find out the truth. The west and particularly the United States have never had clean hands when dealing with "third-world" or undeveloped countries. It is unlikely they'd start now.