Attention Johnny Depp: there’s lots of material for sequels — and updates — of your popular pirate-themed movies. Because now more than ever the word “pirates” is surfacing as it’s applied to those clamoring for government bailouts and the real thing being pitchforked into international headlines.

The Ottawa Citizen’s Cam Cardow brings the two together in the editorial cartoon above. But there is now big news on the REAL pirate front:

1. India’s role as a country with military might has come into focus again with news that the world’s largest democracy’s navy has sunk a major pirate ship. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

The Indian Defense Ministry announced today that the Indian warship INS Tabar destroyed a suspected pirate ship in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Africa.

It’s the second major show of force from India this week in the world’s most dangerous waters, which only days ago saw the seizure of the MV Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker now being held for ransom in Somalia. A Greek ship and a Thai fishing boat have subsequently been captured.

India may be leading the way in a renewed international response to Somali pirates, who are accountable for some 80 attacks this year. In recent weeks, they have become more brazen in the size of the ships they seek and the distance they are willing to travel off the coast for their booty.

India’s Defense Ministry said the INS Tabar destroyed the pirates’ boat Tuesday evening, foiling an attempted attack, according to the Los Angeles Times.

2. And UPI makes it official: pirates — this time operating within the context of the 21st century economy where oil is the real treasure — is BACK at a time when except for movies many people seemingly forgot about it. Some people think “walking the plank” means standing on a steak. UPI’s lead:

Piracy is back. And in a big way. The heirs of Blackbeard — 18th century Caribbean pirate Edward Teach — and Anne Bonny are alive and well on the Somali main, looting the great ships of the world.

Pirates on Sunday took over the 1,080-foot Saudi supertanker Sirius Star when it was 450 miles off shore and have ordered it toward the Somali coast. It is said to be holding $100 million in Saudi oil.

On Wednesday the Indian Defense Ministry announced that its frigate INS Tabar had destroyed a large pirate “mother vessel” in a fierce combat engagement 285 nautical miles southwest of the Omani city of Salalah.

Several more attacks, including the seizing of a Hong Kong-registered vessel carrying 36,000 metric tons of wheat, recently have been reported.

U.S. Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was stunned by the breadth of Somali piracy attacks as groups have carried out about 90 hijackings in the Gulf of Aden so far this year.

But Mullen should not have been surprised. The scourge has been steadily growing over the past few years. And it is very profitable — Somali officials say the pirates have reaped $50 million in ransoms this year as ship owners are willing to fork over funds rather than risk the ships.

Read it in its entirety.

What some don’t realize about piracy: it doesn’t just ential brute force, but also represents an attempt to exploit confusion over international law. The Wall Street Journal:

By the 1970s, as a part of a growing chaos in parts of Africa and Asia, incidents of piracy began to pick up. But it was not until the 21st century that piracy has experienced a meteoric rise, with the number of attacks increasing by double digit rates per year. Last year, according to the International Maritime Bureau, 263 actual and attempted pirate attacks took place. Large maritime areas have now become known as pirate heavens, where mariners can expect to be routinely molested. The Victorian self-confidence that drove pirates from the seas is gone.

Twenty-first century economics being what they are, the pirates have been more interested in the payment of ransom by anxious owners and insurers than in the vessels or their cargoes. Piracy is nonetheless a vicious and violent activity that exposes the world’s merchant mariners to additional risk of death or injury. Even more fundamentally, the dramatic surge in piracy is, like terrorism, part of a broad challenge to civilization and international order.

Experience — especially that of colonial America — suggests that a few sporadic anti-pirate efforts will not be not enough to solve the problem. Only a dedicated naval campaign, along with a determined effort to close the pirates’ safe havens will succeed in sending piracy back to the history books.

There has been some progress on this front. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has dispatched a formidable multi-national force — including British, Italian, and Greek ships — to join the American, French, Canadian and Danish vessels already cruising off Somalia’s vast coastline. France has also aggressively pursued pirates, freeing captured vessels and hostages.

Capturing pirates is not the critical problem. Rather, the issue is how to handle those in captivity. Traditionally, pirates fell within that category of illegitimate hostiles that once included slave traders, brigands on the roads and, in wartime, unprivileged or “unlawful” enemy combatants. As Judge Nicholas Trott, presiding over as a pirate trial, explained in 1718: “it is lawful for any one that takes them, if they cannot with safety to themselves bring them under some government to be tried, to put them to death.” This law, of course, has changed since the 18th century. Pirates, brigands and unlawful combatants must be now tried before they can be punished.

Here’s the hitch:

The key problem is that America’s NATO allies have effectively abandoned the historical legal rules permitting irregular fighters to be tried in special military courts (or, in the case of pirates, admiralty courts) in favor of a straightforward criminal-justice model. Although piracy is certainly a criminal offense, treating it like bank robbery or an ordinary murder case presents certain problems for Western states.

Read it in full.

For a roundup on how to fight pirates GO HERE…