Odds are you laughed a little when you heard about pirating on the rise in the 21st century. But as is always the case, extraordinary events don't happen in a vacuum, and there is always a backstory. Sure, some of them are plain gangsters, but others have different reasons.

Says Johann Hari:

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our toxic waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We won't act on those crimes – the only sane solution to this problem – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 per cent of the world's oil supply, we swiftly send in the gunboats.

Read the whole article. It's a short read, and well worth your time.

A different source for his statements about nuclear waste can be found here.