From the waiting room at an ACT Health Centre

You sometimes find the strangest things when you visit ACT health.

On this particular instance I was visiting ACT health as part of a weekly program which is assisting me with a pressure sore. In the waiting room there was this strange thing called The Epoch Times. Believe it or not the thing actually has a web address. I have deliberately not placed the web address for this link into the text that I am typing for you I will actually spell it out. The web address is HTTP://www.theepochtimes.com.au

Try this for yourselves and see what results you get the let me know how you get on. I had a paper version of The Epoch Times to read which told me it's offices are in Forest Rd Hurstville NSW at telephone number (02) 86686188. The entire newsletter is printed in Marrickville.

There is an article in the December 17 - 23 publication labelled edition 204 which is of considerable interest to me.

The title is " Fixing Somali Piracy the 'Jefferson' way" which I hope you too will be able to read at your leisure.

I wrote some comments in jest the other day about our need for the Phantom, a legendary figure from the comic world whose parents, grandparents and many other ancestors fought against piracy, successfully it would seem.

In this article there is an explanation about Thomas Jefferson, a future president of the United States but then First Minister to France and John Adams met Abd Al-Rachman then ambassador to London from Tripoli.

The two envoys of the nascent American Republic inquired; “by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers? Al-Rahman replied in a now familiar refrain; “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” Jefferson noted, with irritation that Al-Rahmen did not fail to; “mention the size of his own commission”, writes Hitchens, in “Thomas Jefferson: Author of America (Eminent Lives)”.

Comprising of today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia, the Barbary States terrorised, extorted, kidnapped and enslaved “some 1.5 million European and Americans between 1530 and 1780”. Hitchens surmises, Jefferson had already decided, after his first encounter with the extorting Al- Rahman, that should he become commander-in-chief of American forces, he would strike the Barbary pirates.

And so he did, the first “Barbary Wars” began in 1801, when President Thomas Jefferson dispatched a freshly minted naval squadron to North Africa, to protect American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. He even assembled a small coalition from Europe’s seafaring nations. The ensuing conflict lasted some 15 years, and concluded with the shelling into submission of Algeria in 1816. The first line of the Marines’ Hymn still invokes the attacks and victory over the Barbary States; “To the shores of Tripoli”.

(then to more recent times)

. . .In November, 2002, after the capture of Abd al Rahman al Nashiri, widely acknowledged as Al Qaeda’s chief of maritime operations, interrogators were astonished, “by a 180-page dossier, captured with him, which listed cruise liners sailing from Western ports as "targets of opportunity." The dossier indicated that large cruise ships exceeding 140,000 gross tons and carrying more than 5,000 passengers were desirable targets for terrorists.” Nashiri insisted that if warships became too difficult to approach, tourist ships could be targeted.

I am unable to check whether the paragraphs above are true or not. If they are however, then I wonder whether America, Russia China and other states whose shipping is being affected (this now includes Saudi Arabia and no doubt will include Iran if it does not do so already) should get together and create a force of warships and military personnel ready and willing and able to clear the world's shipping lanes of the Somali pirate presence and if necessary, with the permission and support of the United Nations, enter Somalia itself to establish law and order there, so that we no longer likely to have have another:

“CNN Effect” That famously coined 24/7 news coverage, of starving and dying Somali children, beamed into our lives throughout 1992-1993.

Let's deal with Somalia the way that less well informed people did several centuries ago. Let's wipe out the pirates, bring back some law and order and assist Somalia which in my view is now a failed state, to deal properly with its borders and its people.

Somehow, I still have this naive expectation that the UN will function the way it was designed and for the purposes for which it was designed if only we gave it a chance.

I wonder if in 2009 with a new American president and through the fiscal crisis, perhaps a willingness to change and do things differently and better we might not get some better outcomes.