Hotmao

Tasteless I do realise, but it is quite cool to be living in a new age of piracy. From their bases in the lawless badlands on the East African coast we’re seeing guys achieve both impressive nautical and military feats with crappy weapons and leaky boats. Given that oil tankers are the new Spanish gold-fleets there is a whiff of Pirates of the Caribbean about these African pirates and it’s hardly surprising that every Somali boy now wants to grow up to be one.
Yes there is the point that this piracy does leave a potentially threatening security situation given the guys getting their hands on all this booty are less arrrrrr and more Moharrrrrmed and that for the 200 odd crew members being held hostage at the moment it probably isn’t all quite so jolly hockeysticks. But still this is the second aspect which makes the new piracy so exciting:
Possibly right now teams of special forces are having briefings a la Where Eagles Dare and armed with some hefty moustaches, some stun grenades and a few RIBs there is the real possibility of seeing a hefty firefight and some decent material for either UKTV Documentary, Sean Bean or whoever.
Obviously wise old heads will say that war is hell and sub-machine guns and small arms aren’t cool but they obviously haven’t seen the Rock. For my part if I was dragged off my ship and forced to sit in some god-forsaken Somali hell-hole I believe I would find it comforting to know that winging their way over were teams of action heroes armed with bristling facial hair and heavy-duty weaponry.