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Comment by jlgreco | Hacker News Reader

Between this and the recent stories of mass elephant poisonings and high-tech rhino/elephant poachers, I find it increasingly hard to relate with the "We should dampen our judgement of these people, because they are poor and their families are starving" argument.

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I find it increasingly hard to relate with the "We should dampen our judgement of these people, because they are poor and their families are starving" argument.

Are you referring to Somali pirates or pirates in general?

I am not particularly aware of modern non-Somalian pirates.

Check out the piracy heat-map posted elsewhere in this thread.

Lots of piracy around Singapore/Malaysia, Ecuador/Colombia and Nigeria. The hits around Somalia probably account for about 10-15% of hits worldwide.

Did you try: http://www.icc-ccs.org/piracy-reporting-centre/live-piracy-m...

As you can see, there is a cluster off Nigeria related to the unrest in the Delta, and another around Singapore, which is a choke-point.

I understand that there are pirates elsewhere, let me rephrase: The only stories I regularly see about pirates are Somalian pirates, and the only times I have heard the "you should have some sympathy, they are poor and starving" line is in the context of stories about Somalian pirates. This story is about Somalian pirates. So yes, I am talking about Somalian pirates.

I believe a big reason Somalian pirates get coverage is because they have captured oil tankers (which the disruption of such shipping is obviously a huge concern), the ships they are capturing are both massive and carrying good destined for the US/Europe. I believe other pirates in other parts of the world tend to go for smaller ships and don't go for long drawn out ransoms since there's not too many places to safely stash a huge ship.

And ...

Do you "offen" as in frequently or "offen" as in one having no parents?

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