The Scary Pirates

It seems that the latest media darling boogie man is pirates! From CNN,
New pirate attack thwarted in Gulf of Aden:

NATO forces patrolling the Gulf of Aden foiled a pirate attack on a Norwegian tanker early Sunday morning, a NATO spokesman said.
The Canadian navy's HMCS Winnipeg scared off pirates attacking a Norwegian tanker Sunday, NATO says.

Pirates attempted to capture the MV Front Ardennes, but fled when they spotted other foreign vessels, Commander Chris Davies said.

There's nothing scarier than pirates. Except perhaps pirates that can be frightened away at the first sign of a Canadian frigate.

I gotta say that this whole new boogie man is coming a bit too soon. I'm still scared of immigrants, terrorists, Iraqis, corporations, North Korea, pedophiles, and Internet file sharing. I live in terror of all these ominous threats, and now I get to add pirates to that list.

Arrr!

I barely got over my fear of communists by the time the twin towers fell.

I wonder why these pirates are pirating. It doesn't seem like a viable source of long-term income. And it violates private property rights.

There seems to be some tenuous evidence that the pirates are actually a private "coast guard" to protect the Somali coast, which is being exploited by the navies of other nations for dumping refuse, which is destroying fish stocks and threatening a major sector of the Somali economy.

From The Huffington Post, "You Are Being Lied to About Pirates":

[...]

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."

[...]

(Emphasis added.)

It seems like Somalia's biggest liability is not their lack of government. It's the presence of Western governments.

But we can't worry about that. We have terrorists and pedophiles ... and pirates! ... to fret over.

Bible stories that suck

It's Passover. I've always hated the story of Passover, so I thought it would be a good time to share a couple of Bible stories that really suck. Starting with ...

Passover

The Israelites are slaves in Egypt and Moses is trying his level best to get them out. But dammit if Pharaoh isn't being a real prick about everything. So God unleashed a can of plagues on the land. When Pharaoh still didn't get the message, God let his attack Angel off the leash to go slaughter all the first born children in the land, except the Israelites as long as they painted their door post with the blood of a lamb or kid (baby goat, I assume, not their first born's blood, though I wouldn't put it past God).

As a first born who was raised with this story, I was scared by this story for several reasons. One:

Exodus 7:13 And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said. (14) And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go.

Pharoah was all set to give in to Moses's demands, but God was all like "Nuh-uh. I got more bad-ass God stuff to show off." In fact, God sent Moses into the situation knowing ahead of time that He was going to pull this stunt:

Exodus 4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

It seems like his whole plan was some elaborate excuse to knock-off all the Egyptian first born children.

It scared me to think that God would take my life due to the assholish actions of some distant ruler of the land I live in. Most of the Egyptians probably didn't even know for sure if they were in Pharoah's land. They sure as hell didn't vote for this fellow.

Abraham and Issac

God wanted to test the faith of his servant Abraham. Frequently that whole "omniscience" thing fails him, so it is understandable. So in Genesis 22, God commands that Abraham sacrifices his only son Issac to him. And Abraham said, "yeah, alright," and the next morning he loaded his donkey with firewood and his son, and they walked up the mountainside to the alter.

Issac, not being a complete dumbass, knew what was up. They were going to make a burnt offering to the Lord, but they didn't have any animals with them. But he went along with it because, I assume, living with a father who would be willing to slaughter his son probably wasn't a very happy childhood.

In any event, God played this one up to the last second. Just before Abraham struck his only son with the knife, an Angel swooped down and grabbed his hand and pointed out a convenient ram in the nearby bushes.

And Abraham went on to become the father of nations because of his stupifyingly blind obedience to the mad ravings of a bipolar deity.

I was just a young child when I first heard this story at Sunday School. That's all I really need to say about that. What kind of psychopaths would tell this kind of a story to a young kid? I came home in tears and asked my mother if she would do this to me if God asked her to, to which she gave some kind of foggy answer about having "different kinds of love" for me and for God.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Genesis 19. God informs Abraham that he's planning to destroy Sodom because those folks are like totally giving Him a creepy vibe. Upon hearing this news, Abraham sat around with God all afternoon having the following conversation:

Abraham: You gonna destroy the whole city?
God: Yup.
Abraham: What about the righteous?
God: What about them?
Abraham: You gonna destroy them with the city?
God: That's a fallacy. There are no righteous in that city.
Abraham: But what if there are. Let's say there are fifty righteous in the city. Will you destroy it?
God: No. If there are fifty righteous in the city, I will not destroy it.
Abraham: But what if there are only forty-five righteous in the city. Will you destroy it?
God: No. If there are forty-five righteous in the city, I will not destroy it.
Abraham: But what if there are only forty righteous in the city. Will you destroy it?
God: No. If there are forty righteous in the city, I will not destroy it.
Abraham: But what if there are only thirty righteous in the city. Will you destroy it?
God: No. If there are thirty righteous in the city, I will not destroy it.
Abraham: Ah-ha! But what if there are only twenty righteous in the city. Will you destroy it?
God: No. If there are twenty righteous in the city, I will not destroy it.
Abraham: Yes, but what if there are only ten righteous in the city. Will you dsetroy it?
God: No. If there are ten righteous in the city, I will not destroy it.

At which point, Abraham's IT guy tells him about binary searches.

But it's not until the next chapter that we find out why Abraham was so worried about the exact number of righteous in the city: his nephew Lot had a loft in the Sodom metro.

Now much later on, God sends that whole Jesus character to Earth to preach this bit about "love thy neighbor", but for right now, the plot calls for Abraham to only care about his own blood. Screw the thousands of Sodomites who are blissfully unaware of the coming weapon of mass deitystruction.

So Lot hangs out at the gates of Sodom all day and meets a pair of God's angels. Presumably, this was around nighttime, because Lot is in a huge hurry to get the angels back to his house even though they want to hit up the Sodom nightlife. And here comes the part of the story you might be familiar with:

19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:

19:5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

19:6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,

19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.

19:8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

First of all, let's look at the line "that we may know them". The Hebrew word "to know" in this case means, shockingly, "to know". It could be used to mean "to know" in the Biblical sense. Or it could be used to mean "to know" in the police investigation sense.

The latter definition is much more likely.

You have this town with gates, so they're probably very suspicious of outsiders. The town cops probably have eyes on Lot's house because, well, Lot is a resident alien and none of the Sodomites are too sure about him yet. And here he comes with two strange men into the city.

It's possible that they might have gotten a spontaneous homosexual urge for angel ass, but most likely they were just investigating.

But here's the good part. The "righteous" man in this story, Lot, jumps right to the smutty and offers the cops a bribe in the form of his virgin daughters. Do you suppose the daughters volunteered for this assignment? Either way, it's clear that the rights of women in the eyes of God's righteous man don't matter at all because if they did, they would have been spelled out in the story.

And finally, instead of hanging out in the city with his family, Lot gathers them up and pulls all ten righteous people out of town so God can have room to fire-and-brimstone them like the loving creature that He is.

Bathsheba

King David was chilling on the sunporch one day when he spies on Bathsheba skinny-dipping in yonder river. She must have had all the right curves, because:

David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house.--2 Samuel 11

Well, as it turned out, she was already married and she got pregnant.

But, see, David is a righteous man of God, so he did what all righteous men of God seem to do in these situations: he recalled Bathsheba's husband, Uriah the Hittite, and tried to get him to sleep with his wife so he would think the kid was his. But dammit if Uriah wasn't really in the mood, so David switched to plan B: send Uriah to the front lines where he would almost certainly be killed.

God punishes David for this craven act of righteousness by killing the child. Yeah. Once again, take it out on the innocent children caught up in all this.

But when that wasn't enough, God let David live a long life until 1 Kings chapter 1 rolls along and "his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat."

Ouch.

Cuddled by a comely virgin for warmth.

Harsh.

Joseph

Jacob's favorite kid, Joseph, is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers and eventually, he ends up in Egypt as the second-in-command. Pharaoh's been having some messed up dreams, and he heard that Joseph was good at interpreting dreams, so that's how they met. Joseph, being the cunning sort, saw an opportunity and claimed that Pharoah's dreams were talking about a coming famine.

That's a no-lose situation for Joseph. If there is a famine, he can claim to have predicted it. If there is no famine, he can claim that his warning effected positive change.

Pharoah, knowing how to recognize good help, hires on the dream-interpreting slave as Egypt's minister of the interior and agriculture. Joseph promptly sets about nationalizing all the farms, just like the Soviet Union and Communist China would do a few millennia down the road.

And sure enough, in the first self-fulfilling prophecy in all of fiction, Joseph's government bureaucracy caused a massive famine.

Which, incidentally, led to the Israelites coming to Egypt for food and being enslaved by the Egyptians. So God sent Moses to talk to Pharoah, but first, he hardened Pharoah's heart ...