Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The coverage of the pirates is typically sensational and one-sided in the US. You wonder: is it better to be suspected (as an Arab) of piracy or of terrorism? Piracy is not terrorism of course, and Johnny Depp--I thought--made piracy cool. But AlJazeera Arabic, for example, had a report yesterday about the background of the pirates: it spoke about the plight of destitute fishermen who were made unemployed by large fishing ships and corporations. That is missing from US news coverage.