In both Somalia and Sweden, piracy has been very much in the news. At first glance, these seem like radically different stories.
Somalia
Somalia is in collapse and has no resources to patrol the largest coastline in Africa (for the sake of comparison, its coastline is longer than North America’s eastern seaboard). Somali nationals have been seizing vessels along the coast, disrupting international maritime traffic. There were 130 incidents in 2008 and acts of piracy have increased tenfold in the last three months.
On April 13th, US Navy SEALS shot and killed three Somalis who were holding Capt. Richard Phillips hostage. A fourth pirate, who may be as young as 15, was taken into custody and will be tried as an adult in the US. Following this incident, Obama took a law and order stance, saying: “we are resolved to halt the rise of piracy in that region.”
NATO is beefing up its presence in the Gulf of Aden. Acting as part of the NATO contingency, Canadian forces foiled an attack on a Norweigian tanker on Saturday April 18th, while Dutch forces captured another seven pirates. Unlike, US forces, both Canadian and Dutch forces obeyed international law, questioning the men, then releasing them because they lacked legal authority to detain the men.
Sweden
While Sweden is about as far from collapse as a country can get, nevertheless it finds itself under enormous pressure from large US media concerns like the MPAA and RIAA to crack down on Piratebay. Piratebay is a torrent tracker. Piratebay doesn’t actually host copyright protected files. Instead, it provides a mechanism for others to share such files. (Read my commentary on the limitations of bitTorrent here and here.)
Earlier this month, the four founders of piratebay.org were found guilty of “assisting making available copyrighted content,” each sentenced to one year in prison, and ordered to pay a combined 30 million kronor (Cdn $4.3 million). They have said they will defy orders to make payments. To date, the piratebay.org site continues to operate. In fact, I just used it to locate the latest recording of Canadian jazz singer, Diana Krall, who now resides in Ireland so that she can avoid paying taxes on her earnings. The four pirates plan to appeal the decision and have begun their next salvo by charging that the judge hearing their case is in a conflict of interest because he sits on the board of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property. Naturally, the judge denies the allegation.
What do these stories have in common?
I cite both as examples of what I term “rhetorical terrorism.” Rhetorical terrorism is a dialogue stopping tactic. It uses emotionally charged and politically laden words to import negative associations that undermine meaningful discussion. In fact, the phrase “rhetorical terrorism” is self-illustrating. It uses the word terrorism to suggest that people who use passive-aggressive speech habits are doing something far worse than simply being annoying or anti-intellectual. We’ve seen this deployed to great effect during the Bush administration with phrases like “eco-terrorism” which was applied to Jeff “Free” Luers who was sentenced to a prison term of 22 years and 8 months for setting fire to three SUV’s. (The sentence has been reduced to a mere 10 years.) Without an act of rhetorical terrorism, it would have been unthinkable to equate Luers’ punishment to that of a murderer.
The term “pirate” stirs in our imagination a Disney/Johnny Depp image of a swashbuckling rogue who has no regard for the rule of law and poses a threat to the very social order. The rogue will destroy our property, run off with our daughters, and make it impossible for us to do trade with our neighbours. However, like all rhetorically terrifying phrases, the negative associations have been manufactured by those who hold power so that they can retain power at the expense of those who do not hold it. Marcus Rediker argues that the “golden age of piracy” arose as a rebellion against the inhumane working conditions of the navy and merchant marine. I would add that, while pirates were able to seize control of their own lives and working conditions, as an uneducated underclass, they were unable to seize control of their story (nor of their name). As a result, we continue to think of piracy through the story of power, which includes the power to disseminate the story.
In both Somalia and Sweden, the “pirates” represent an underclass, and they have stories too. While they have less effective access to the means of disseminating their stories than their powerful opponents, the modern-day flattening of access to media allows those stories to emerge nonetheless.
In the case of Somalia, people are fighting to protect domestic waters from overfishing by vessels from other (Western) countries who drift in illegally from international waters. More alarming is the revelation that Somalia’s coastline is being used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste, including nuclear materials. To date, 300 Somalis have died from radiation sickness. Read here. Without basis, American pundits have amplified the “piracy” fear by coupling it with the “terrorist” label, speculating that pirates may be plotting to join forces with radical Islamic groups. Typical of conservative American interests, paranoia utilizes passive-aggressive tactics to perpetrate acts of rhetorical terrorism. See this piece in Salon.
In the case of Sweden, four young men have been treated as criminals for forcing a conversation which big media refuses to engage. So long as big media continues to apply a rights-based model to proprietary interests in digital media, it will continue to jail young men and women for doing precisely what digital media are designed to do. If big media doesn’t like it, then what the hell are they doing in the digital media business in the first place? For a discussion of issues, see my reviews of Copyrights and Copywrongs and Free Culture.
At bottom, what links these two news items is that they engage us in the question of story. Who has the right to tell our stories? And when we encounter the stories of others, do we have an obligation to be active listeners? Should we be posing critical questions and demanding that those who mediate the stories of others engage them with a greater depth and with a commitment to truth?