I dont know if any of you guys have been following all this piracy off Somolia but its quite interesting.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27820573/

I know its been going on since ships were invented but for as many millions of dollars that are on ships now I'm surprised some of these countries dont have armed guards or some type of enforcement on this.  Especially with the esculation as of late.

I saw in the article about changing routes and prices increasing 40%.  Yikes.  Why not just take care of the problem instead of ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

Taking care of the problem sounds difficult. We're talking about REAL pirates...not Capt. Jack Sparrow. It's just another head-scratcher.

I agree. Why not take care of the pirates? Solve the problem.

I posted a link to the aol article in the oil prices thread.

Yeah it would be very difficult to fix but it needs to be addressed or it will get worse expodentially.

Just like they did in WW2  send them in convoy with a gun ship through the area.  

To me it just doesnt make sense.  Your sending 100 mil dollars of product plus ship through pirate country.  It would be alot cheaper in the long run to have a cruiser or something tag along.

I saw that an Indian ship destroyed the pirates flagship the other day. I don't think they will last very long. Once countries begin to be threatened enough (as is happening now) they will send navy ships to deal with it.

One of the Marine Corps' first actions after the war for Independence was to defend American ships from Barbary pirates off the coast of Africa, hence "From the Halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli"