Kevin Gross
For all the well-informed people who know, and to the ignorant population who don’t, Somali pirates are richer and more powerful than ever. Five days ago, pirates struck their largest jackpot yet: a Saudi-owned supertanker with more than $100 million worth of crude oil onboard. Not to put a damper on the pirates’ previous hijackings, but we’re talking oil, and $100 fucking million of it. Crazy? Yes, but what’s more astonishing is that it took this long for companies to say they’re going to travel a different route. To me, that’s saying companies don’t mind losing a few cargo ships a year because it took a $100 million dollar ship’s seizure for them to open their eyes, sounds to me like they need to lay off that Marley leaf. And I say that because after the Saudi supertanker was seized was the first time a European shipping company, left anonymous but I can’t see why, said they are going to look into rerouting their ships. What the fuck? I’ve never heard something so belligerent other than the following statement, which coincided to say that the company “sees the deteriorating political and humanitarian situation” in Somalia as the cause for piracy. No shit, it’s about time such a high-powered shipping company became well-informed about Somalia’s instability, which by the way has been going on since 1990.
All that talk about the ignorant and uninformed shipping companies has me delusional and eyes half open, ha-ha, not really. The rise of piracy in Somalia is an indication of well-informed people adapting to their environment. As humans, we, better than any other species, can play the game no matter the circumstance. In a country with no central government to guide them, people altered their behavior to something that would guide them, something that coincidentally couldn’t exist with a central government: piracy. With no hint of a central government coming in Somalia’s near future, my highjackers on the high seas will continue their reign! Pirates have reshaped parts of the country by building homes for their families to live in and opening businesses to create jobs for those not willing to conquer on the high seas. The amount of money pirates are making in such a ravaged country is unheard of. Pirates have propelled to earn a star status in Somalia and they deserve it for all the hard work they’ve put in.
The United Nations can’t do anything to stop piracy from existing because it’s too weak of an organization. The UN has a fleet of naval tankers off Somalia’s coast, but they can’t be everywhere at once. Even if they do get a call about a hijacking, those tankers aren’t moving that fast and surely will not prevent it. Not every action is a good effort and that seems to describe the United Nations. Countries that can stop pirates, like the United States by invasion, obviously don’t want to get involved. There aren’t many American ships being hijacked and that’s not a coincidence, they’ve simply chosen to avoid the area. Somalia is a prime location for the piracy business because it has the idiotic Europeans and Middle Eastern countries to the north of it, which serve as lucrative hijackings.
Piracy is a naturally occurring phenomenon that’s so difficult to prevent because of how enormous the oceans are. It’s like a natural shield because we live on land and have zero accountability for the majority of what happens on the high seas. As an outsider looking in, piracy is ingenious, why do you think its been going on for so long? Pirates are simply a product of their environment doing whatever it takes to get by.
