subax wanaagsan!

D-squared notes that International Talk Like a Pirate Day is only six months away, and offers a guide to colloquial Somali:

Bill waa tegaya geeska Afrika
Bill is going to the Horn of Africa.

Tuulo baa la joogaa
Staying in a village

Bill telefoon buu diraa
Bill makes a telephone call

Bill lacag buu sarifta
Bill changes some money

Can’t wait to see how it ends. David Axe meanwhile, gives us some background:

Recall that Somali piracy has its roots in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Somali government threw open the doors to major foreign fishing companies to illegally enter Somali waters and fish out all the tuna, which once comprised one of Somalia’s major commodities. The first Somali pirates were fishermen who decided to render a “fine” on any boats they found illegaly fishing Somali waters.

Well, guess what. Piracy has effectively cut in half tuna hauls for major foreign fishing companies working near Somalia, according to Warships International Fleet Review. Today piracy is essentially organized crime, at sea. But the piracy mafia has inadvertently accomplished what the original pirates set out to do.

I think it was Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons that identified depleted fishing stocks as an example of what happens when no single entity owns property. So piracy, to some extent, is a riposte to that, as well as a dramatic means of solving the collective action problem. But then the move from income substitution to outright extortion could be regarded as an example of regulatory capture. There’s simply too much effort involved in trying to restore fisheries when more tempting targets of effort and initiative are floating over the horizon. From Attlee to Thatcher…

Comments

[dsquared]

I frankly don't believe this Robin Hood story of honest fishermen forced to take to the outlaw life by the destruction of their environment. AFAICMO, what happened is that a few warlords decided to go into the fishing permits business around the mid 1990s, and in vague support of their franchise got into the practice of harassing fishing boats, a practice which spiralled as they realised that after ten years of conflict, the sea had more stuff worth nicking than the land. So it's sort of a private property story, but twisted a bit. Since then, they've been keen to help themselves to the rhetoric of the downtrodden fishermen, but this is marketing material rather than anything else.

(I also believe that the historical Robin of Locksley was almost certainly a bit of a nasty thieving cunt, so I am probably too cynical).