“Merchant and pirate were for a long period one and the same person. Even today mercantile morality is really nothing but a refinement of piratical morality.”– Friedrich Nietzsche

The current situation in Somalia is bleak and disheartening. The only thing that takes our minds off our seemingly perpetual misery these days is the growing number of pirates some of whom have shown discipline, organization, courage and daring to hijack foreign ships under the very watch of the navies of powerful countries such as the US and France that have established sizable bases in our sister state of Djibouti on the pretext of monitoring terrorists based in the horn of Africa in general and Somalia in particular. More on Piracy or Privateering?