The plight of the Somali pirates is something I find myself increasingly sympathetic to. Without supporting terrorism or killing, the hard survival logic is difficult to argue with: When you are starving to death, you might as well steal from the oil giants.
Case in point, the Saudi-owned crude oil carrier Sirius Star. It's not like Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, is strapped for cash: In a time of economic collapse, the country showed a multi-billion dollar surplus in 2008.
Photo courtesy of trekearth.com
Then there's the interesting idea that the pirates are in fact, fighting to protect their country from the environmental ravaging of the Western world, the big bullies that are both overfishing and dumping nuclear waste in their water and getting away with it. While it may be difficult to agree with the title they have for themselves--the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia--it is certainly true the pirates are making the environmental plight of their country front-page news. 
It is also perfect irony that Somalia, the victim in this environmental disaster, is stealing from arguably one of the biggest environmental offenders there is.
Photo courtesy of businessfacilities.com
Oil giants may be a necessary evil in our modern world, but few will deny that they are stripping the land of its natural resources and feeding all our modern pleasures with the seeds of global warming.
Ecosystems in poor countries are destroyed around the world with hardly a ripple. In Somalia, the people finally have a voice for their outrage, an unconventional voice that rides the high seas.
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