Monday, April 13, 2009
I'm a little worried because I haven't heard from The Angel that my taxes are ready. What if there's an error like last year's, which led to all kinds of grief? I'll call Piper later and ask.
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The Somali pirates are in the news, of course. What a lot of people don't realize is that this isn't the first time the US has had a similar problem with pirates. That's what the Barbary Wars in the early 1800s were all about - piracy. The pirates sailed out of the city of Tripoli (in what is now Libya), and that's what the phrase "shores of Tripoli" in the Marine hymn refers to.
The biggest difference is that the Barbary pirates were controlled by the government (the pasha), and if you paid tribute to the pasha, your ships were safe. The Somali government on the other hand, seems to have no control whatsoever, and doesn't seem to be directly profiting from the practice. So battering Somali, as some reich wingers would like, is unlikely to have any effect.
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