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I have heard of tough women before. And mean women. And women most men wouldn't dare cross. But to end the Somali Piracy industry . . . with a satellite phone? Now that is tough. More . . .

<p>Despite the Indian Navy's claims that it sank a so-called pirate "mother ship" last week, there is no evidence to suggest that any pirates were on board, and the destroyed ship may simply have been an innocent commercial fishing vessel, a U.S. official with knowledge of last week's incident told FOX News.</p>

It's a safe bet, dear reader, that the title of this column has caused you to either (a) roll your eyes and wonder, What century do you think we're living in? or (b) scratch your head and ask, Yes, why don't we? Wherever you come down, the question defines a fault line in the civilized world's view about the latest encroachment of barbarism. Year-to-date, Somalia-based pirates have attacked more than 90 ships, seized more than 35, and currently hold 17. Some 280 crew members are being held hostage, and two have been killed. Billions of dollars worth of cargo have...

NAIROBI - SOMALI pirates have hijacked another vessel, a Yemen cargo ship, in the Gulf of Aden, a regional maritime official said on Tuesday. Mr Andrew Mwangura, coordinator of the Kenya-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, identified the vessel as the MV Amani, but no other details were immediately available. Word of the latest attack at sea came 10 days after gunmen from Somalia seized a Saudi supertanker in the largest hijacking in maritime history. The Nov 15 capture of the Sirius Star - with US$100 million (S$151.6 million) of oil and 25 crew members from Britain, Poland, Croatia, Saudi...

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) — Shipping officials from around the world called Monday for a military blockade along Somalia’s coast to intercept pirate vessels heading out to sea. But NATO, which has four warships off the coast of Somalia, rejected the idea. Somali pirates have become increasingly brazen, seizing eight vessels in the last two weeks, including a huge Saudi supertanker with $100 million worth of crude oil. Peter Swift of the International Assn. of Independent Tanker Owners said stronger naval action and aerial support were necessary to battle rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia. About 20...

By Leslie SacksOff Somalia's vast Indian Ocean coastline, a set of entrepreneurial Somalis have found gainful employment in one of the world's most impoverished settings. The Horn of Africa is the setting for a latter day "Barbary Pirates," where ragtag groups equipped with GPS devices, rocket-propelled grenades and assorted machine guns roam at will, boarding supertankers and cargo vessels at a rate of about two per week. As a result, some 15 dormant ships are now berthed in lawless yet booming Somali ports. Perhaps oil-thirsty America can bid for some of those oil-filled supertankers on the cheap and quietly...

>snip< Geoffrey Cheng, analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research, said insurance companies had raised premiums by 12-15 percent this year. With many shipping firms already operating at a loss, he said "they are actually burning money now." A terrorist attack on shipping would further raise insurance premiums. The impact of Somali piracy on premiums shows the extent to which costs can suddenly spike -- corporate security firm BGN Risk estimates the special risks insurance levy for crossing the Gulf of Aden has leapt to $20,000 per vessel per transit from $500. And an attack aimed at shutting down a major...

Civilization walks the plank Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 20, 2008 www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1226404794131&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull A Somali pirate and a former US defense secretary are flying to London for vacation. One of them is stopped at immigration at Heathrow airport and arrested on suspicion of committing war crimes. Which one do you think it was? On Tuesday, Somali pirates, sailing in little more than motorized bathtubs, armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, and sustained by raw fish and narcotics, successfully hijacked the Sirius Star, a Saudi-owned oil tanker the size of a US aircraft carrier. The tanker was carrying some...

(CNN) -- Five Indian sailors who were among the crew of a Japanese-owned cargo ship hijacked by pirates and held for two months before a ransom was paid said Monday their captivity was "total desperation." "I wish that no one else ever has to go through this -- (hijackers) are not human but rather animals," said Alister Fernandes, one of the sailors, at a news conference in Mumbai, India. They arrived in Mumbai on Monday after several days of rest and medical and psychological treatment following the release of their ship on November 16. The Stolt Valor, a chemical tanker,...

Once again, piracy captures the world's attention, though it seems unlikely that Hollywood will ever cast Johnny Depp in Pirates of Somalia. It's equally unlikely that a Somali immigrant got carried away on National Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th) here in the States and sent word to his friends back home. Greed and jihad represent the motive of this resurgence of maritime larceny off the coast of Africa, while the opportunity was provided by Somalia's civil wars and the loss of central state control. Piracy has been with us since at least the 13th century BC, with every...

MOGADISHU (AFP) - - Somali Islamist fighters on Sunday urged pirates holding a Saudi super-tanker to free the ship or face armed action. ADVERTISEMENT "If the pirates want peace, they had better release the tanker," Sheikh Ahmed, a spokesman for the Shebab group in the coastal region of Harardhere, told AFP by phone.The Sirius Star, a huge tanker carrying around 100 million dollars worth of crude oil and owned by Saudi Aramco, was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean on November 15.Pirates have since anchored it off their base in Harardhere and have demanded a ransom of 25...

I am 42 years old and have nine children. I am a boss with boats operating in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. I finished high school and wanted to go to university but there was no money. So I became a fisherman in Eyl in Puntland like my father, even though I still dreamed of working for a company. That never happened as the Somali government was destroyed [in 1991] and the country became unstable. At sea foreign fishing vessels often confronted us. Some had no licence, others had permission from the Puntland authorities but did not...

    When the Sirius Star and its US$100 million crude oil cargo and 25 crew were hijacked by Somali pirates nine days ago, one country was ready to respond immediately. After Indian shipowners and seafarers’ unions outlined the pirate threat, New Delhi moved with laserlike focus. The navy dispatched a warship to the region in mid-October, and its personnel have in recent weeks foiled three attempted hijackings and sunk a pirate mother ship – the only country to do so.The Somali pirates have wreaked havoc – increasingly so – in the Gulf of Aden and along the coast of...

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali pirates holding a Saudi supertanker after the largest hijacking in maritime history have reduced their ransom demand to $15 million, an Islamist leader and regional maritime group both said on Monday. The November 15 capture of the Sirius Star -- with $100 million of oil and 25 crew members from Britain, Poland, Croatia, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines -- has focused world attention on rampant piracy off the failed Horn of Africa state. Scores of attacks this year have brought millions of dollars of ransom payments, hiked up shipping insurance costs, sent foreign naval patrols rushing...

In the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick makes the point about the piracy in the Gulf of Aden that I made here back in April and repeated on Question Time this week– that a major reason this menace has got out of hand is the spineless response of Britain and other western nations which have tied up their own hands through international law and ‘human rights’ doctrine. A Wall Street Journal article a few days ago made exactly the same point, noting that the British Foreign Office instructed the British Navy not to apprehend pirates lest they claim that their human...

Gone are the swashbuckling days of repelling pirates with cutlasses -- a British firm is spearheading use of a high-tech "sonic laser" to beat bandits on the high seas. The piracy problems of shipping firms running through the Gulf of Aden and down Africa's east coast have been thrown into the spotlight this week by the seizure of the Saudi Arabian super-tanker Sirius Star. But help could be at hand in the form of a long range acoustic device (LRAD) -- hooked up to a humble MP3 player. About the size of a domestic satellite dish, LRADs blast the target...

"Sir, you have done India proud." That was how the anchorman of a television channel in Delhi addressed the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on the victorious sea battle by warship INS Tabar with would-be hijackers as dusk was falling on Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Aden. Those words would have made Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century British navigator and slaver-politician of the Elizabethan era, truly envious. Sir Francis had bigger claims to fame in a life cut short by dysentery while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1595. Unsurprisingly, the patriotic Indian media dutifully expressed its gratitude...

The Wars of the Barbary PiratesEssential Histories #66Osprey Introduction Most Americans are unaware that, as a young republic, their nation fought a war with the Barbary pirates, the North African corsairs who plied the waters of the Mediterranean at the turn of the 19th century in search of ships to loot and men to enslave. This is perhaps not surprising, for the wars were conducted on a small scale, over a short period of time, and at a considerable distance from American shores. They were, moreover, the product of one of the most inglorious – even degrading – episodes in...

Electric fencing, sonic guns and even armed mercenaries are being offered as the first line of defence for ships at risk in pirate-infested waters. The world of private security and mercenary soldiers has been put on alert this week by the seizure of the supertanker Sirius Star. The tanker industry, however, is resisting any introduction of weaponry on vessels that are little more than floating petrol bombs. Frontline, a leading owner of oil tankers, has called for a multinational force to be sent to the Gulf of Aden to protect the access route to the Suez Canal. Fleet owners want...

The fighters from the Shabaab militia, a fundamentalist movement likened to an African Taliban, were reported to have turned up in the port of Haradheere in southern Somalia, close to where the tanker is currently anchored. * * * The pirate group that hijacked the tanker, which is carrying $100 million worth of oil, have demanded a $25 million ransom for return of the vessel and its 25-strong crew, which includes two Britons. "The Islamists arrived searching for the pirates and the whereabouts of the Saudi ship," said a clan elder in Haradheere. "I saw four cars full of Islamists...