Who are the real pirates?

In an interview, Sugule Ali, one of the pirate leaders explained "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits (to be) those who illegally fish and dump in our seas." Mostly, pirates say their attacks are payback for the world's abuse of Somalia's territory and resources and surprisingly some piracy experts agree. Peter Lehr, a Somalia piracy expert at the University of St. Andrews says "It's almost like a resource swap, Somalis collect up to $100 million a year from pirate ransoms off their coasts and the Europeans and Asians poach around $300 million a year in fish from Somali waters."^{[32][33]from wiki}

they've got there own stash of cash!

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/9/north_carolina_town_prints_own_currency

Here's a link to a video article about a small town in the US where they use there own town currency.

Nice. We'll see if it can go the distance. Not many better ways to stimulate the local economy.

Tunnels to Gaza

Here's a short bit from an article/news bite about the underground tunnel markets that have developed in response to the Israelis closing off all borders into Gaza:

Gaza resident Omar Shabaan is critical of the kind of economy generated by the tunnels.

OMAR SHABAAN: We are very angry to be seen by the international community as tunnel diggers. We are a nation looking for peace, for a state, not to dig tunnels. We were obliged to dig tunnels to take food for our children. We, most of the Palestinians, are against that, because the tunnel has caused a huge trouble to our economy and to social fabrics. Some people become rich in two weeks. Some kids make $1, $2 million in three weeks. So the whole economy has become informal economy. Usually black economy, ten percent; the 90 percent is the legal one, registered, formal, pay taxes. But we have now 90 percent of our economy is the black market. We don’t know who’s bringing what and on what basis, what’s the criteria. The main thing here about this tunnel, this tunnel will create a group of people who will be against any peace, because peace means the end of the tunnel phenomenon. So the Israeli policy created some people in Gaza who are against the peace, against the truce.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/6/land_of_ruins_a_special_report