With more and more attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden and off the east coast of Africa, including a tanker with a £100m worth of oil on board, how can the pirates be stopped and who should do it?

 

These modern day pirates are no swashbuckling “Jack Sparrow”, they are well armed and organised. They would quite happily take and kill hostages.

 

Should the owners of the ships pay for it?

 

Is it the job of the World’s navy’s to take action.

 

Well, as far as I can make out, these particular Somali pirates haven't actually harmed anyone, in fact there were phone interviews with people on board the ship last week, the folks that journalists talked to were totally calm, quite jovial in one or two cases, one guy said it was an "inconvienience" to be locked up in his room, but apart from that, they seemed in fairly good spirits, one or two even asking about football results.... :lol:

 

I probably shouldn't really be making light of it, but I have to say I DO kinda find it a bit hard to feel much sympathy when it's a case of pirates attacking an Oil Tanker tbh, considering the BILLIONS that oil companies take from the Third World every year, and ordinary Africans, etc dont see any benefits at all from it; a passenger ship would be a different story however, it would be a lot harder to morally justify attacking a cruise ship...

 

The historical pirates certainly were no Jack Sparrow types either, they were right ruthless bunch for the most part who would kill, rape, loot and scuttle the ships they robbed, killing everyone on board, so the whole Jack Sparrow/Errol Flynn idea never, ever existed in reality.... Many Pirates were, in fact, actually given a contract by the state to be "Privateers", basically, as long as they went around robbing and thieving in the name of King and Country, they were tolerated.... :rolleyes: Pretty hypocritical....