{"id":240,"date":"2009-01-08T03:03:15","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T03:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/bologs\/vng\/one-mans-pirate-is-another-mans-coastguard\/"},"modified":"2009-01-08T03:03:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T03:03:15","slug":"one-mans-pirate-is-another-mans-coastguard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/one-mans-pirate-is-another-mans-coastguard\/","title":{"rendered":"One man&#8217;s pirate is another man&#8217;s coastguard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few centuries the word &#8220;pirate&#8221; has been used in a very similar way to &#8220;terrorist.&#8221; You can apply either to &#8220;the enemy&#8221; and win instant support from the masses. <\/p>\n<p>People who speak out against the the status quo have been labelled &#8220;terrorists&#8221; for hundreds of years, even if the most terrible thing they ever did was to suggest that the rich should give more money to the poor. Likewise, &#8220;piracy&#8221; has been applied to everything from armed robbery, to kids recording copies of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.darnkitty.com\/manic\/\">Manic Miner<\/a>&#8221; on cassette tapes after school.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/bologs\/veghead\/vm\/378\/media\/Image026.jpg\" width=\"250\" class=\"illustration\" alt=\"Terrorist groups sell pirate DVDs to raise funds\" \/>Perhaps the most beautiful abuse of both words can be illustrated by this 2005 poster, about which I have <a href=\"http:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/bologs\/veghead\/vm\/378\/\">previously blogged.<\/a> In a nutshell, if you copy a DVD, you are not only a pirate, but a terrorist. Brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>So the recent tales of invincible &#8220;pirates from Somalia&#8221; have confused me. How can this happen in the 21st century ? I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ve all made jokes about them having one leg, a bunch of parrots, and making the victims walk the plank, but perhaps that&#8217;s significant; we have no idea what pirates are, or even were. &#8220;Pirate&#8221;, like &#8220;Terrorist&#8221;, is a word that is more emotive than descriptive. So what <i>is<\/i> actually going on ?<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/johann-hari\/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html\" title=\"you are being lied to about pirates\">Here&#8217;s an article that may muddy the waters<\/a> even further, but it&#8217;s thought provoking if nothing else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past few centuries the word &#8220;pirate&#8221; has been used in a very similar way to &#8220;terrorist.&#8221; You can apply either to &#8220;the enemy&#8221; and win instant support from the masses. People who speak out against the the status quo have been labelled &#8220;terrorists&#8221; for hundreds of years, even if the most terrible thing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatsquirrel.org\/oldfartsalmanac\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}