Somali pirates are arraigned in the law courts of Kenya's coastal town of Mombasa, November 18, 2008. (Joseph Okanga/Reuters)From Yahoo News/Christian Science Monitor:
Johannesburg, South Africa – By hijacking a Saudi oil tanker – the largest ship ever taken – Somali pirates this week may have guaranteed their biggest ever haul of ransom.
The capture of the Sirius Star, which can carry more than one-fourth of Saudi Arabia's daily oil output, helped send prices above $58 a barrel. And the fact that it was nabbed 450 miles off Kenya's coast is a sign of growing sophistication and reach by the pirates, who have tended to stay closer to the Gulf of Aden, a pinch point for sea traffic routed through the Suez Canal.
The news also raises concern from some Western analysts that the pirates' spoils could help fund a growing Islamist insurgency in Somalia, although there is little evidence of that so far.
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My Comment: It is amazing how the pursuit of money is a universal human condition. The fact that a bunch of hungry, poor and uneducated fisherman can bamboozle the fleets of the the U.S., NATO, Russia, and everyone else .... and be able to steal an oil tanker from the Saudis in the process .... there is a movie somewhere there.