I'm in the middle of putting up our new polly house to ensure we get a winters crop of food this year.
You lot have rooms with windows (I believe it's illegal not to have windows) ... use it to save yourselves.

Clip from several articles on shipping.

Somali pirates seize supertanker loaded with crude

Now there's an idea.

Neal

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Clip from several articles on shipping.

Hold on to your hat: the Baltic Dry Index was down at 826 points yesterday, a shattering drop from its high of 11,793 in
May.

The index, which tracks the price of shipping bulk cargo, might not sound like a reason to choke on your cornflakes. But it is
an unparalleled, ifsubtle, barometer of the global trade in economic building blocks like iron ore, coal and grain – and it is
telling a worrying tale.

The wheels of international shipping are greased with "letters of credit" issued to buyers of bulk cargo by their banks. These
guarantee the value of the shipment once it is in transit but before it is delivered. The problem is that the credit crunch, with the
resulting liquidity problems in the international banking sector, is taking its toll on the availability of these entirely routine
instruments. "We have the hugely worrying and unprecedented development where there are perfectly creditworthy shippers
and receivers unable to open perfectly standardletters of credit."

Cargos are sitting on docksides because the finance is not available to ship them, with the gravest implications for the future.
"This is a nuclear bomb in the freight market, and in world trade," Mr Kerr-Dineen said. "Liquidity has to return because if
there is insufficient money to provide standard finance, world trade will be sharply cut back and economic growth will
implode. Ultimately, flour mills will run out of wheat and power stations will run out of coal."

Firms using containers to ship bulk products such as bananas, meat or fish are already feeling the pinch.

Fifty to 100 ships, each bigger than The Trump Building in New York, have been unable to find cargoes or their owners won't
accept rental rates that have plunged 98 percent in five months. Normally about 250 such carriers compete for spot bookings,
he said.

``There are simply no cargoes. It's primarily the steel market but it's even more difficult due to financial markets and letters of
credit in particular.''

Everyone along the supply chain should worry about their jobs. Many will lose their jobs sooner rather than later.

If cargo trade stops, the wheat doesn’t get exported. If the wheat doesn’t get exported, the mill has nothing to grind into
flour. If there is no flour, the bakeries and food processors can’t produce bread and pasta and other foods. If there are no
foods shipped from the bakeries and factories, there are no foods in the shops. If there are no foods in the shops, people go
hungry. If people go hungry their children go hungry. When children go hungry, people riot and governments fall.

RE: When children go hungry, people riot and governments ... don't fall because they are expecting this and are very ready for
your childish riots.

Everyone along the supply chain should worry about their children going hungry.

Well I disagree entirely.
If people didn't spend that time in worry but put in their crops where they are ... even if they don't have ground they can grow
food in pots on any flat surface they have.

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Somali pirates seize supertanker loaded with crude

It was the largest ship pirates have seized, and the farthest out to sea they have successfully struck.

The hijacking highlighted the vulnerability of even very large ships and pointed to widening ambitions and capabilities among
ransom-hungry pirates who have carried out a surge of attacks this year off Somalia.

Saturday's hijacking of the MV Sirius Star tanker occurred in the Indian Ocean far south of the zone patrolled by international
warships in the busy Gulf of Aden shipping channel, which leads to and from the Suez Canal. A U.S. Navy spokesman said
the bandits were taking it to a Somali port that has become a haven for seized ships and bandits trying to force ransoms for
them.

Maritime security experts said they have tracked a troubling spread in pirate activity southward into a vast area of ocean that
would be extremely difficult and costly to patrol, and this hijacking fits that pattern.

"It is very alarming," said Cyrus Mody, manager of the International Maritime Bureau. "It had been slightly more easy to get it
under control in the Gulf of Aden because it is a comparatively smaller area of water which has to be patrolled, but this is
huge."

The tanker, owned by Saudi oil company Aramco, is one of the largest ships to sail the seas. It is 330 1,080 feet long, or
about the length of an aircraft carrier, and can carry about 2 million barrels of oil.

Fully loaded, the ship's cargo could be worth about $100 million. But the pirates would have to way of selling crude and no
way to refine it in Somalia.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, said the Sirius Star was carrying crude at the time of the
hijacking, but he did know how much. He also had no details about where the ship was sailing from and where it was headed
at the time of the attack.

Christensen said the bandits were taking the ship to an anchorage off Eyl, a northeastern Somali port town that is a haven for
pirates and the ships they have seized.

The ship was sailing under a Liberian flag and its 25-member crew includes citizens of Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland
and Saudi Arabia. A British Foreign Office spokesman said there were at least two British nationals aboard the vessel.

The Sirius Star was attacked more than 450 nautical miles southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, the U.S. 5th Fleet said in a
statement from its Middle East headquarters in Bahrain.

"It's the largest ship we've seen hijacked and one attacked farthest out on the sea," Christensen said.

The capturing of the oil tanker represents a "fundamental shift in the ability of pirates to be able to attack merchant vessels," he
said.

Classed as a Very Large Crude Carrier, the Sirius Star was commissioned in March and is 318,000 dead weight tons.

With a full load, the ship's deck would be lower to the water, making it easier for pirates to climb aboard with grappling
equipment and ladders, as they do in most hijackings.

It is not clear if there was a security team on the vessel. An operator with Aramco said no one was available to comment after
business hours. Calls went unanswered at Vela international, the Dubai-based marine company that operated the ship for
Aramco.

Somali pirates are trained fighters, often dressed in military fatigues, using speedboats equipped with satellite phones and GPS
equipment. They are typically armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank rocket launchers and various types of grenades.

As pirates have become better armed and equipped, they have sailed farther out to sea in search of bigger targets, including
oil tankers, among the 20,000 tankers, freighters and merchant vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden each year. Attacks have
increased more than 75 percent this year.

With most attacks ending with million-dollar payouts, piracy is considered the most lucrative work in Somalia. Pirates rarely
hurt their hostages, instead holding out for a huge payday.

The strategy is effective: A report last month by a London-based think tank said pirates have raked in up to $30 million in
ransoms this year alone.

In Somalia, pirates are better-funded, better-organized and better-armed than one might imagine in a country that has been in
tatters for nearly two decades.

They do occasionally get nabbed, however. Earlier this year, French commandos used night vision goggles and helicopters in
operations that killed or captured several pirates, who are now standing trial in Paris. The stepped-up international presence
recently also appears to have deterred several attacks.

Raja Kiwan, a Dubai-based analyst with PFC Energy, said the hijacking raises "some serious questions" about securing such
ships on the open seas.

"It's not easy to take over a ship" as massive as an oil tanker, particularly VLCC's that can transport about 2 million barrels of
crude, he said. He said such vessels typically have armed guards but could not say if that was the case with the Sirius Star.

Pirates have gone after oil tankers before, most recently in October when they were thwarted by a Spanish military plane.

Warships from the more than a dozen nations as well as NATO forces have focused their anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of
Aden, increasing their military presence in recent months.

But Saturday's hijacking occurred much farther south.