[saden1]

Apparently these Somali pirates are no joke, they made 84 million last year in ransom money. I was listening to an interview with one of the pirates couple of weeks ago and they seem principled as far as pirates go. He said the following which made me laugh like a mofo:

1. Once we take over a ship no pirate is allowed to point the gun directly at hostage. If a pirate points a gun at the captured crew members he forfeits 2/3 of his mission pay.
2. Once they capture a ship, they empty its fuel tank and use that fuel for other pirating missions. This means that organizations wanting their ship back have to bring fuel to take their ship back or bring a towing ship.
3. All negotiation is done in English, once the ransom is paid the exchange point must be at sea.
4. We never capture ships at the exchange point evolved in the rescue. It's just not good business. If we see them tomorrow, however, that's a different story.
5. This operation is big, we have investors just like companies traded on the stock market.
6. We're big time ballers in Somalia. We got the nice houses, nice everything. We're blinging to the max.
7. We constantly invest in ships and weapons. We recently bought a new ship with torpedoes.