Today's Stories

May 22-24, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

May 8-10, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Dead Souls

Jeffrey St. Clair
Echoes of Amchitka: 40 Years After America's Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues

Paul Wolf
Obama's Axis of Obedience

Steve Niva
Iraq: The Return of the Suicide Bombers

Neve Gordon
Jailed for Caring

Mike Whitney
Has Bernanke Pulled the Economy Back From the Brink?

Warren Hinckle
DiFi vs. Marilyn Chambers

Serge Halimi
In Praise of Revolutions

Gareth Porter
The Pakistan Conundrum

Sharon Smith
Something Stinks at Whole Foods

Andy Worthington
Obama's New Gitmo Policy: Back to the Bush Era?

Mark Weisbrot
Hillary and Latin America

Rosa Miriam Elizalde Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident: More of the Same?

David Macaray
Recessions and Labor Unions

Missy Beattie
The Real Housewives of War

Ron Jacobs
Mothers and War

Diane Farsetta
About Face on Pentagon Pundits?

Ramzy Baroud
War Without Context

Phelie Maguire
Living Next to Settlers

Robert Fantina
Party of Rush

Kevin Zeese
A Break From the Past in the Drug War?

Margaret Flowers, MD
The Baucus 8: Why We Risked Arrest for Single-Payer

Dave Lindorff
The Joke's on Us

Richard Rhames
Revenge of the Tundra

Ben Sonnenberg
Let the Right One In: A Vampire Visits a Welfare State

Kim Nicolini
Sin Nombre: Giving Faces to People Who Don't Have Names

Stephen Martin
The Riotous Action of the Complete Banker

Charles R. Larson
The Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

David Yearsley
Jean Ferrard, Organist Extraordinary

Lorenzo Wolff
Death Cab for Cutie: Surprisingly Familiar

Poets' Basement
G.S. Heiligschreib and David Farrelly

Website of the Weekend
Zombie Bank

May 7, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Criminalizing Criticism of Israel

Chris Floyd
A Full-Court Press for Pakistan War

Andy Worthington
Mixed Messages on Torture

Alan Farago
No Place Like Home: a Stress Test for Land Use, Not Just Banks

Ray McGovern
Deux ex Machina on Torture?

Dave Lindorff
Stain Removal: Impeaching the Torture Judge

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Why is There Rampant Famine in the 21st Century?

Ana M. Malinow, MD
Why We Need a Single-Payer Health Care System

Jeff Armstrong
Freeing Leonard Peltier: What Would Warren Harding Do?

Norman Solomon
A Green New Deal

Website of the Day
The End of Lake Mead?

May 6, 2009

Doug Peacock
The Fate of the Yellowstone Grizzly

Patrick Cockburn
Afghans to Obama: Get Out, Take Karzai With You

Richard Neville
The Torturer's Apprentice

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
To Power a Nation: Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine?

Winslow T. Wheeler
Of Pork and Baloney: Obama's Defense Budget

Deepak Tripathi
Pakistan in Crisis

Stephen Soldz
A "Natural Reaction": APA Ethics Policy-Maker Endorses Torture

Reuven Kaminer
Nice is Not Enough: Obama vs. Netanyahu and Lieberman

David Macaray
The Chrysler-UAW Deal

Kevin Zeese
Why We Were Arrested at the Senate Finance Committee Hearings

Marjorie Cohn
Stanford Antiwar Alums Call for War Crimes Investigation of Condoleezza Rice

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology
Investigate Psychologist and Health Provider Complicity in Torture

Website of the Day
Who's Behind the Financial Meltdown?

May 5, 2009

William Blum
Torture and Mr. Obama

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu's Plan

Steven Higgs
Autism and Toxic Pollution

Dean Baker
Why Economists Should Learn Arithmetic

Daniel Wolff
The Education of Rachel Carson

Sibel Edmonds
The Broken Congress

Carole King Klein
A New Chance to Save the Northern Rockies

Fidel Castro
Giving One's All

Belén Fernández
Oil and Aguardiente in the Ecuadoran Elections

Dan Bacher
Schwarzenegger's Big Lie About Fish vs. Jobs

Website of the Day
"I Married Isis on the Fifth Day of May"

May 4, 2009

James G. Abourezk
The AIPAC Spy Case

Jeff Leys
Obama's War Budget

Patrick Cockburn
Afghan Ayatollahs Press Marital Rape Law

Andy Worthington
A Start on Guantánamo, But Not Enough

Jaime Avilés
Mexico's Plague-Bringers

David Swanson
An Even Worse Bybee Memo

Paul Craig Roberts
Working with Jack Kemp

P. Sainath
Celeb Crusades and the Death of Politics

Eugenia Tsao
Canada's Obama and the Cult of the Prof

Benjamin Dangl
Protest and Rubber Bullets in Paraquay

Sami Al-Arian
Mourning William Moffitt

Website of the Day
"Soldiers Are Cutting Us Down": Kent State, May 4, 1970

May 1 - 3, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Game-Changers: Specter Jumps, Souter Quits

Gary Leupp
Dropping the AIPAC Spying Case

Peter Linebaugh
The Key to the Bastille

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank:
Half Life of a Toxic War: Iraq's Wrecked Environment

C. G. Estabrook
Minion of the Long War

Patrick Cockburn
Kabul's New Elite

Mike Whitney
Economy on the Ropes

Pierre Sprey /
Winslow Wheeler
What "Sweeping Overhaul" of the Pentagon?

Andy Worthington
Al-Marri's Plea Deal: Dictatorial Powers Unchallenged

Mairead Maguire
Stand Up to Israeli Apartheid: a Letter to Obama From a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Nadia Hijab
The Israel Boycott is Biting

Diane Farsetta
Life, Death and Water Policy

Michael Calderón-Zaks
The Déjà Vu Flu: Why Much of the Discussion About Swine Flu is Racist

Richard Rhames
When Piggies Come Home to Roost: Swine Flu and the Industrial Meat Gulags

Russell Mokhiber
Inside the Beltway Baucus

Ramzy Baroud
Clinton's Unpromising Start

Rannie Amiri
Understanding Lebanon's June Elections

Deb Reich
No Talking, Dammit!

Steven Higgs
Indiana Criminalizes Dissent: Roadblocks on the NAFTA Highway

Brian Cloughley
Malice in Blunderland

David Michael Green
The Party's Over

Farzana Versey
Sex, Swat and Susan Boyle

Jim Goodman
Think Before You Eat: Agriculture and the Environment

Carl Finamore
New Prescription for a Healthy Union Movement

Christopher Brauchli
The Sounds of Silence: the Texas Option

Susie Day
The Real Cause of Unemployment: Employees!

David Yearsley
Nuts Over Beethoven

Lorenzo Wolff
Three Minutes of Perfection

Peter Stone Brown
Dancing with Dylan

Poets' Basement Dominguez, Orloski and Springate

Website of the Weekend
May Day Europe

April 30, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Obama and "Two States": Seamless Continuity From Bush Time

Dana L. Cloud
The McCarthyism That Horowitz Built

Paul W. Lovinger /
Jeannette Hassberg
A Nation of Laws

Binoy Kampmark
Swine at the Trough: the Business of Pandemics

Brian Downing
The Perils of Modernization in Afghanistan

Frank Snepp
Tortured by the Past

David Swanson
The Wrong Torture Question

Conn Hallinan
The Coming Asian Storm

Ron Jacobs
Not Dead Yet: an Interview with Jerry Gordon on the State of the Antiwar Movement

John Goekler
The Only Path to a Middle East Picnic?

Jasmine L. Tyler /
Anthony Papa
An End to Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity?

Website of the Day
Emergency Petition: Stop Coal Industry Intimidation of Activists

April 29, 2009

Joann Wypijewski
Death at Work in America

Patrick Cockburn
The Taliban's Roads to Kabul

Andy Worthington
Cheney's Twisted World

Chris Floyd
The Specter Diversion

Dave Lindorff
No More Excuses: a Specter is Haunting the Democrats

Jeremy Scahill
The Nuremberg Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Doug Henwood
Zionist Lobby Targets Another Tenured Professor: an Interview with William Robinson

Michael Hudson
Will Iceland be Handed Over to a New Gang of Kleptocrats?

Russell Mokhiber
My Ron Pollack Problem--And Yours

Eric Toussaint
Ecuador at the Crossroads

Website of the Day
An Interview with Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on "American Casino"

April 28, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Little Red Light: On Israeli Fascism

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Iraq: the Picture of Dorian Gray

Dean Baker
The Perfect Gift for Wall Street: a Financial Transactions Tax

Michael D. Yates
At the Factory Gate

Conn Hallinan
Georgian Plots? Saakavili's "Order No. 2"

John Stauber
Beyond MoveOn

Tom Barry
The Failed Border Security Initiative

Harvey Wasserman
Who Pays for America's Chernobyl Roulette?

Jeff Nygaard
Pirates, Profits and Propaganda

Frederico Fuentes
Why the U.S. Still Hates Cuba

Website of the Day
The Man Behind the Hood

April 27, 2009

Pam Martens
The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire

Patrick Cockburn
Torture? It Probably Killed More Americans Than 9/11

Andrew J. Bacevich Guardian of the Status Quo: Obama's Sins of Omission

Mitu Sengupta
The Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

Franklin Lamb
Hillary Does Beirut: The 165-Minute Swoop-In

Firmin DeBrabander
Crimes of Economic Madness

Dave Lindorff
Wide Open to Pandemic?

Russell Mokhiber
How Corrupt is That?

Mike Whitney
Pinter's Message to Obama

Mark Weisbrot
Overhauling the IMF

Rev. José M. Tirado
Iceland's New Dawn: How the Right Got Trounced

Website of the Day
American Casino

April 24-26, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Putting the Bush Years on Trial

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Andy Worthington
Who Ordered the Torture of Abu Zubaydah?

Jeremy Scahill
Are Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?

Chris Floyd
Top of the Heap: the Democrats' Teachable Moment on Torture

Mike Whitney
A Housing Crash Update

Anthony DiMaggio
Obama and the Housing Crisis

Chris Kromm
Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act

Saul Landau
Seventeen Months in "the Hole:" an Interview with the Leader of the Cuban Five

Dave Lindorff
Free John Walker Lindh

Greg Moses
The Debt Looters

Joshua Frank
Calling for a Coal Moratorium: an Interview with Ted Nace

Fred Gardner
Collective Farming and the Lynch Case

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Homework, Testing and Stealth Apartheid in Education

David Michael Green
Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters

Ramzy Baroud
Middle East Spies: a New Front in Gaza's Conflict

Rannie Amiri
Mubarak's Expanding Enemies List

Laura Carlsen
Mr. President, Calderon is Not Mexico

Richard Morse
The Haitian People Need a Lobbyist

Nikolas Kozloff
Protecting the Bald Eagle: a Task Now Falling to ... Hugo Chavez?

Kent Peterson
The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scammers Rent a General

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts

Ron Jacobs
Torture is More Than Just "Harsh Tactics"

Richard Rhames
Roman Legends, Book Burning and History's Hunt

Stephen Martin
Wherefore Art Thou American Dream?

David Yearsley
Rodgers, Hammerstein, Michener and Nostalgia's Clammy Embrace

Poets' Basement
Khalil and Mankh

Website of the Weekend
Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies and Edward Abbey

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

Weekend Edition
May 22-24, 2009

Truth and Consequences

Why We Love to Hate Pirates

By SONIA CARDENAS and ANDREW FLIBBERT

Make no mistake about it. We hate Somali pirates. What's more, we love to hate them. In a survey by the Pew Research Center (17-20 April 2009), the capture of the American-flagged Maersk Alabama was the most closely followed news story of that week, displacing the economy, the discovery of CIA torture memos, and potential changes in U.S.-Cuban relations. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll (13-14 April), an overwhelming majority of Americans supported the decision to kill the three pirates who had taken hostage the American captain. Hating the pirates is not a partisan issue, and it is not limited to Americans.

Across countless blogs and media outlets, here and abroad, thousands of people have called unequivocally-often in blunt, colorful language-for killing Somali pirates. "Kill the Pirates" was the headline of a Washington Post op-ed on April 13 by Fred Iklé, a defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. As Jonah Goldberg wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Shoot the pirates, problem solved." The mainstream media has described today's pirates as savage enemies of humankind, with pundits even saying that if it were not for political correctness, international law, and human rights, we could eliminate this scourge. In his blog, Amitai Etzioni of George Washington University blames piracy itself on "a radical interpretation of human rights," which discourages capturing and trying pirates for fear of violating their rights. He proposes instead a "007 license" with shoot-to-kill permission for commercial ships. Even before the latest incident, Robert Farley and Yoav Gortzak wrote in the December 2008 issue of Foreign Policy, "nobody likes pirates, and nobody-legal niceties aside-really minds too much if you shoot them."

The hatred is obvious. The question is why. Why the intense emotion, the fascination, the amusement? Why the willingness to bypass legal procedures normally extended to the most heinous murder suspects? Why the self-righteousness and moral outrage against piracy compared to other transnational crimes that are arguably more disturbing and reprehensible, such as the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation, or drug cartels or money launderers or corporate polluters or private mercenaries that fuel armed conflict and take thousands of lives? Why the euphoric celebration when Navy SEALs shoot three teenagers at close range and haul a fourth, whose age is uncertain, to federal court in New York to be tried as an adult? Why the unwillingness to consider the origins of contemporary piracy and devise measured, targeted responses with a prospect of long-term success? Why has piracy taken hold of the public imagination in such a visceral, aggressive, and ultimately puzzling way? Here are five possibilities.

Barbary Wars.

Everyone knows that piracy is a centuries-old problem. When people think of pirates today, they really have in mind seventeenth- and eighteen-century images of buccaneers, Spanish galleons, and plundered loot. Drawing on childhood memories from classic literature-Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, The Red Rover-we watch with delight as heroes best villains in thunderous battles at sea. This is how we picture the Barbary Wars, in which American naval forces confronted Muslim pirates in North Africa more than two-hundred years ago. The custom of the day was to kill pirates on sight and sink their ships. These historical images linger, making the use of military force to halt contemporary piracy appealing and seemingly appropriate. They also underlie the drive to treat piracy as a one-dimensional and atavistic form of criminality, not a complex modern-day political pathology. If piracy today is essentially like piracy from centuries ago, it is easier to advocate the use of force as a solution and to dismiss more costly and comprehensive legal and political responses.

Black Hawk Down.

For Americans at least, even those who cannot find Somalia on a map, the east African country stirs memories of Mogadishu in 1993. On some level, killing Somali pirates is revenge for the deaths of 18 American servicemen more than 15 years ago. The iconic image, depicted in Hollywood's Black Hawk Down, is of a burning helicopter and dead American soldier being dragged by a Somali crowd through dusty city streets. Did that image influence the on-scene commander's judgment that the American captain's life was threatened, or did it even shape the decision to plan an operation to shoot the pirates on the premise of imminent danger? No one knows, though it seems likely that America's clash with gun-toting Somalis in the 1990s left a score to settle.

The Black Hawk incident also remains the quintessential case of humanitarian intervention gone wrong, helping to explain the American reluctance to intervene in Rwanda's genocide only six months later. And while the American public typically is reluctant to pay a high price for saving foreigners, absent national security concerns, it loves occasional acts of heroism. The fact that some of the ships being hijacked by pirates today, including the Maersk Alabama, carry humanitarian aid for Somalia only reinforces the idea of us as innocent do-gooders-even saviors-and them as malevolent savages who deserve what they get. In this sense, vengeance and heroism meet in the waters off Somalia to produce a happy ending.

Disney Effect.

Speaking of happy endings, it is easy to trivialize pirates when they are the subject of children's literature, Disney films, theme parks, and sections of toy stores. As virtually every four-year-old in America knows, socialization about pirates begins early, often with Peter Pan. There is something alluring about the tales of adventure, the colorful costumes, the simple weaponry, and the good versus evil theme. As American cultural consumers grow up and leave Neverland, they transition from J.M. Barrie to Johnny Depp's more mature cinematic interpretation, tapping into the American film industry's well-developed repertoire of exoticized, stick-figure foreign adversaries.

Inconveniently, the twenty-first century reality of fishermen-turned-pirates is incomparable to the Disney version. While Somali pirates brandish automatic weapons like we wear wristwatches, their efforts to pull alongside ships in dinghies and clamber aboard is nothing like the movies. Disney nonetheless is firmly embedded in our imagination, making it possible to turn them into caricatures, stripped of the basic rights owed to everyone under international law, such as the right to a free and fair trial. Criminals in democratic societies are afforded these rights by virtue of their humanity. The assumption that pirates are different, existing outside the realm of basic entitlements, reflects a de-humanized image of them-closer to the kid-friendly films of our childhood than the reality of life on and off Somalia's shores.

War on Terror.

Since September 11th, analogies between contemporary terrorists and historical pirates have become common. Terrorists are portrayed as akin to their seafaring cousins-brazen outlaws, transnational privateers, enemies of mankind. An article by Joshua London in the National Review Online of December 16, 2005 carried the title, "America's First Terrorists," referring to the Barbary pirates. As pirate attacks have increased recently, commentators like Robert D. Kaplan have raised the specter of sinister linkages between contemporary pirates and terrorists. The association is not without consequence. Shortly after the recent incident in Somalia, a Rasmussen Reports poll showed voter confidence in the "war on terror" rebounding.

While it is true that terrorism and piracy are both crimes against humanity in international law, differences in historical context reveal a crucial distinction. Years ago, piracy was labeled the first crime against humanity only because it occurred on the high seas, where no governing body ruled. Its extra-territoriality, not the odious nature of the crime, gave jurisdiction to all countries. For most Americans today, the similarities between pirates and terrorists seem natural: foreigners, many of them Muslim, engaging in brutal and seemingly irrational crimes against innocent civilians. The real differences, of course, are monumental. Piracy has political origins in the form of state failure, but pirates do not have political objectives. They are not interested in publicity, in mobilizing supporters, or in polarizing adversaries, and they do not typically set out to kill civilians or engage in grand schemes of psychological manipulation. They are motivated purely by financial gain and are more like the foot soldiers of organized crime than the terrorists of global insurgency. For observers accustomed to lumping together all enemies, the distinctions are inconsequential.

Commerce and Crime.

Money explains why over twenty countries are working to combat piracy off Somalia's coast, including the European Union's first naval expedition and China's first major venture outside the South China Sea. Although piracy is not limited to Somalia's coast-Africa's longest-the entire Horn of Africa juts like a dagger into the Arabian Sea to form a strategic chokepoint, and in recent years, private insurance companies have begun to pay billions in ransom on behalf of their ship-owning clients. Not only is piracy proving financially costly and logistically disruptive, but it has become politically embarrassing in a world where naval strength remains an integral dimension of national power. Petty thugs interfering with commerce on the high seas and attacking innocent civilians are not tolerated, and when ships flying the American flag are struck, commerce and nationalism unite to meet the threat.

Never mind that foreigners have engaged in commercial crime off Somalia's coast for nearly two decades, taking advantage of collapsed state authority on shore. According to the Marine Resources Assessment Group, over 500 ships a year have fished illegally off Somalia's coast, robbing the country of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. As recently as 2008, the UN envoy to Somalia emphasized illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste (mostly by European countries) as dire problems requiring immediate international attention. Toxic waste reportedly has contributed to elevated birth-defect rates and health problems in Somali coastal communities. And yet global outrage is selective and unidirectional, obsessed only with the crime of piracy.

We hate pirates because we have drawn false historical analogies and are swayed by a semi-fictional past that equates them with barbarism. We hate Somali pirates because we remember bitterly our failed attempt to intervene in their country on humanitarian grounds. It is easy to hate them because we have been socialized to imagine pirates as Disney characters, without families, histories, or rights. We have hated them even more since September 11th triggered a global war on terror, with pirates and terrorists seen as one and the same. And our hatred has translated into military action because states and economic barons have come to view Somali piracy as too costly and challenging to be tolerated.

Legal options are available. In principle, national trials in the detaining state are feasible, just as the creation of a special international tribunal for piracy is an option. But the political will for either is altogether absent and the measures taken so far reveal a good-enough-for-the-enemy attitude. While countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and the Netherlands are trying pirates in their home legal systems, the U.S. and U.K. have also transferred captured pirates to Kenya, a country with which they have entered into special agreements. Kenya's legal system is ill-prepared, and already there are signs of mistreatment and abuse. This is precisely why the Law of the Sea Treaty, to which the United States is not a party, stipulates that pirates should be tried by the country that detains them; universal jurisdiction applies only to apprehension. States have been reluctant to prosecute pirates themselves, fearful of not meeting the high evidentiary standards of their own legal systems and unwilling to deal with asylum requests by pirates facing persecution back home.

So we prefer the use of force, as we did in Iraq, despite the fact that America's unmatched military power is ineffective against the underlying causes of piracy, and plunking a few plunderers does nothing to reverse a sunken American image in the world. Using force is expedient and the pirates are expendable, even if no one should be overly impressed with shooting teenagers in a lifeboat attached to a warship at 90 feet-the distance from home plate to first base. Military action is indeed a quick, dramatic, and satisfying morale-booster for a battered military and an image-burnisher for an administration concerned about looking soft. It makes for good sound bites and masquerades easily as derring-do, the stuff of Hollywood.

In the end, hating the pirates has very real effects. We convince ourselves that they can be deterred by a show of force, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary-attacks increased after the SEALs operation. We dismiss as naïve calls for a political solution, which would require too much of us: rebuilding Somali state institutions that afford basic protections to the Somali people and providing sustainable support for a country suffering from a multi-year drought and food shortages. We are blind to the potential for unintended consequences like the possibility of piracy becoming more violent, costly, dispersed, and deadly. We ignore the hard choices, even while we remain intensely fascinated by pirate attacks and armed responses that let us live out our childhood and nationalistic fantasies.

Sonia Cardenas is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Human Rights Program at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Andrew Flibbert is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College.

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