It's time to wipe out the pirates. Pirates are a great thing for Hollywood, but that shipping lane is one of the most important for the world's energy needs. It's time to shadow a few prime targets with submarines. Once they "raise the Jolly Roger", you deep six their ships. Ships are a very expensive thing, even in Somalia. Secondly their needs to be some Marines (or an Arab equivalent) placed on board some of those prime targets with heavy machine guns and shoulder fired missles. The thought of just paying these pirates free these vessels will only lead to paying the same pirates "protection money" to not attack in the first place. The world will be doing itself a great disservice to allow such to continue for any length of time. To allow such will only embolden other thugs in other areas of the world.

Although he doesn't condone the pirateering, Dr. Tantillo, who has a marketing blog, has a marketing and branding blog, did a post last week on why the pirates have been a success, as seen from a branding angle: "they have established a standard set of expectations in their victims: 1) they can capture huge ships successfully, and no crew is impervious; and 2) once aboard they take charge but remain relatively humane and can be counted on to turn the ship, cargo and crew over for cash. This means that their repeat performances have trained crews to surrender and for ship owners to pay up." Tantillo's full post

It is important to know where it is, yes, but what are the chances of the next step of recovering the tanker and the oil. We talk about terrorists; these pirates are of that ilk, it seems to me.