Piracy makes a comeback

[Tribesman]

but the the best way to minimise anarchy like this is perhaps for the US administration not to interfere to overthrow regimes they don't like.

Strictly speaking that ain't fair Banquo , the area most of these pirates are coming out of isn't part of the country that was run by Adid or the coilition of warlords , neither is it a part that the Islamic courts ran , for that atter it isn't a part that the US backed Ethiopian invasion took over before the new Islamic groups started kicking their arse back towards the border , its just one of the regions in the country that no one has really bothered with .
So you cannot really blame Americas screw ups in Somalia as a whole for the events in that region of Somalia .

That battleship would be the equivalent to a 17th century frigate, no?

Correct , the answer is no .
The New Jersey is a battleship which would be a battleship .

The pirates work as a beehive and the current effort is just chasing the bees ( the small pirate ships) away. To kill a beehive you need to strike at it and not the bees. Generaly an argument such as ' If you dont release the ship we will flatten your pirate port to the ground' works better. U need to arrest the Pirate lords, capture the ports and destroy their infrastructure to succeed.

The problem there is that the people running this are sitting in a luxury villa in Mombasa or Dubai collecting the ransoms and couldn't really give a damn if you flattened a town in somalia and killed all their gunmen , they would just buy another town and hire more gunmen .
What you need is a small international police operation to arrest the financiers , plus of course you need relative stability in the area of North-East africa so any that escape the net don't have a bunch of local warlords and armed people looking for jobs that the financiers can hire easily .

[Banquo's Ghost]

Strictly speaking that ain't fair Banquo , the area most of these pirates are coming out of isn't part of the country that was run by Adid or the coilition of warlords , neither is it a part that the Islamic courts ran , for that atter it isn't a part that the US backed Ethiopian invasion took over before the new Islamic groups started kicking their arse back towards the border , its just one of the regions in the country that no one has really bothered with .
So you cannot really blame Americas screw ups in Somalia as a whole for the events in that region of Somalia .

I stand corrected. Though I still believe that interference has delayed the development of a stable government that might have begun to build control over the area sooner rather than later. Interventions in other countries' affairs is invariably wrong, but unthinking interventions without even an analysis of likely future impacts is foolish - and the War on Terror does tend to follow the Fragony Fallacy - everything Islamic is dangerous and monolithic.

The problem there is that the people running this are sitting in a luxury villa in Mombasa or Dubai collecting the ransoms and couldn't really give a damn if you flattened a town in somalia and killed all their gunmen , they would just buy another town and hire more gunmen .
What you need is a small international police operation to arrest the financiers , plus of course you need relative stability in the area of North-East africa so any that escape the net don't have a bunch of local warlords and armed people looking for jobs that the financiers can hire easily .

Interesting. I had suspected that there would be a "kingpin" type of approach, but hadn't found any corroboration or analysis. I know I'm not going to get a link, but any chance of a bit of direction to useful sources?