[HN Gopher] Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship afte...
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Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years
Author : alphachloride
Score : 892 points
Date : 2021-04-22 19:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| tracedddd wrote:
| So could anyone have saved this guy by delivering enough fuel to
| get to port? I wonder what the costs would have been.
| stingrae wrote:
| you would probably have to pay the port fees until it is moved
| as well.
| jandrese wrote:
| The original problem wasn't lack of fuel, it was inspection
| issues. They only ran out of fuel after being trapped and
| running the generators for electricity. In fact the ship
| probably still has a usable supply of bunker fuel on board so
| it wouldn't be that hard to get it to port, except that it is
| still trapped in the original legal limbo.
|
| After 4 years of deferred maintenance the engines are going to
| need some TLC before they can be fired up again. The longer the
| ship sits idle the worse the situation becomes. Left long
| enough and some fitting somewhere will corrode through or be
| damaged in a storm and without power to run the pumps the ship
| will start slowly sinking.
| mrb wrote:
| His ship has been sitting still for so long that you can see it
| on Google Maps:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%86%D...
|
| Edit: a few more story details here:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/19/ever-giv...
| When he rows to shore to get supplies he can only stay for two
| hours at most as the area is a restricted military zone. Other
| crew members were repatriated in September 2019, so Mohammad was
| not alone for 2 years but only for 7 months (which is no less
| unacceptable). The only reason Mohammad was allowed to leave was
| thanks to a local union representative who agreed to take his
| place as the ship's guardian.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| And Google Maps lists it as a "Shopping Mall"
| booi wrote:
| it's where i go to buy despair.
| Fogest wrote:
| Speaking of the shopping, it actually makes me curious how he
| has funded buying the food/essentials he needs to survive. I
| wish that was covered in the story. 4 years is quite a long
| time, I am not sure how he would be affording it all. Makes
| me wonder if some kind of charity was helping him out or some
| local residences maybe. That also makes me wonder if he
| stayed on the ship all the time or if he also spent some
| nights with locals.
| bagacrap wrote:
| this is 2021 is it not? He was alone for 19 months.
| mrb wrote:
| Err, you are right.
| coding123 wrote:
| I think a lot of us have cancelled out 12 months recently
| hi41 wrote:
| The article says he swam ashore to buy supplies. Why can't he
| simply walk away and not return to the ship. The article does
| not clarify that point. Anyone knows?
| NikhilVerma wrote:
| I believe they took his passport.
| elboru wrote:
| > the area is a restricted military zone
|
| I wouldn't try my luck in a foreign restricted military zone.
| megablast wrote:
| Where do you think he is getting supplies from?
| thekevan wrote:
| While true, he is getting them there while abiding by the
| 2 hour limit which is allowed. He isn't seen as a
| lawbreaker.
| csomar wrote:
| He'll probably get arrested. It's very hard, also, to smuggle
| himself. The options are Libya and Israel/Gaza.
| econnors wrote:
| I assume he'd be arrested as a fugitive
| ornornor wrote:
| Because they took his passport away and because he said in a
| YT video a while back that he still wants to work at sea
| if/when this is over which would be impossible if he is a
| "fugitive"
| coolreader18 wrote:
| Wow, 90+ reviews with the "hashtag"/slogan Free Mohammed.
| fnord77 wrote:
| appears to be a capsized boat in the same area
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9322048,32.5328029,607m/data...
| tauntz wrote:
| 3 (?!) more seemingly sunken ones nearby: https://www.google.
| com/maps/@29.9236252,32.5269919,427m/data...
|
| Or is this just some weird imaging artifact?
| tauntz wrote:
| Hard to tell if all of these are actual sunken ships or
| imaging artifacts :(
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8726136,32.521419,622m/data
| =...
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8785189,32.5055481,472m/dat
| a...
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@29.8477291,32.5178057,452m/dat
| a...
| Black101 wrote:
| so he had a free home at the beach for 4 years?
|
| what is this circle, anyways:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D8%B3%D9%81%D9%8A%D9%86%D...
| aarchi wrote:
| The circle is centered around Green Island. Several more
| circles can be seen further south near Ras Abu Rudeis. It
| seems that water only seems to be displayed near land and is
| replaced with simulated blue otherwise.
| irjustin wrote:
| Man these details are important.
|
| The BBC article makes it feel like he was alone for 4 years and
| somehow was able to stay alive with no food/water for 3 of them
| before the ship drifted closer to shore where he could now 'buy
| food and water'.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The BBC is sadly only a semi-reliable source and has rather
| low journalistic standards.
| pivo wrote:
| If you click on the ship, you can see a picture of him starting
| his swim back to the ship with provisions. Or at least I assume
| it's him.
| codeisawesome wrote:
| Even more surprising that there's one situation still ongoing:
|
| > Meanwhile, at the Iranian port of Assaluyeh, 19 mostly Indian
| crew members of the bulk carrier Ula are on hunger strike after
| their vessel was abandoned by its owners in July 2019.
| jonathanberger wrote:
| I hope he is able to profit from his story with book and/or movie
| rights. It's a fascinating story and I bet would make a great
| movie a la Captain Phillips or 127 Hours.
| miguelmota wrote:
| The movie Life of Pi also comes to mind in regards to being
| stuck on a boat and retelling the story but Mohammed's
| experience would make a great survival movie no doubt. Maybe
| Netflix will make a deal with him
| pibechorro wrote:
| MARINER.. certainly not a sailor. Sailors use sails, its a dumb
| naming convention to call power boaters that.
| francoisp wrote:
| maybe someone could have sent him a copy of this film?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Island_(film)
|
| A bit of hacking, some solar panels, a few stereos, tents, some
| poker chips, a rock band's visit... how long before the
| authorities would force him off? How many bitcoins would have he
| raked? (OK this is thinking different in a slightly
| hollywoodesque way... still)
|
| cheers!
| [deleted]
| cigaser wrote:
| For me bigger problem is that Egypt left dead ship near Suez
| Canal in Red Sea for 4 years. If it would crash into tanker...
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Jesus H. Worse than Catch-22.
| biot wrote:
| > "And I can't find a single person on this planet - and I've
| tried - to replace him."
|
| I'll do it for $10M/year, paid in advance of course due to the
| company's financial situation. Oh, he probably means for whatever
| meager wages they were paying this guy. Yeah, no wonder.
| quasarj wrote:
| You think he's getting paid?!
| NullPrefix wrote:
| The usual "We want to hire people but we can't find anyone
| ... willing to work for such wage"
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| Per the article, he was unpaid. Literally just a prisoner.
| selimnairb wrote:
| If only he could have managed to get the ship wedged sideways in
| the Suez Canal. They would've helped him our real quick.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, they wouldn't; heck, his case has gotten attention recently
| _because_ the crew of the _Ever Given_ has become similarly
| trapped, and his case has been held up as an example of what
| might happen to that crew if the dispute between the SCA, and
| the owners and operators of the _Ever Given_ continues.
| Sargos wrote:
| I don't understand why he couldn't just get on another ship and
| leave forever. Worst case you just never go back to that shitty
| country right?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| He would be a fugitive. Not everyone wants to do that. People
| in the US sometimes get jailed for years without conviction
| pending a trail. Why don't they break out and leave the
| country? Because that would be a worse situation.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| So... never be able to captain a ship that goes through the
| SuezCanal?
| Sargos wrote:
| How many times does he need to captain a ship to make up for
| 4 years of lost wages? That's not even accounting for the
| psychological toll.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Wasn't he being paid for that time?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| without a doubt, there's at least one person in egypt, who is
| permanently barred from sailing so much as a rubber
| dinghy....
| abcc8 wrote:
| If your livelihood depends on shipping, being unable to return
| to Egypt likely represents a significant barrier to obtaining
| future employment. Also, he may just have been extradited back
| to Egypt by another government.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| He should have scuttled the ship once the maintenance crew
| left.
| speeder wrote:
| As he said in the article, it is because he has no intention of
| abandoning his profession and will resume working, meaning if
| he had left the ship his career would been ruined.
| nicklecompte wrote:
| Apparently his passport was confiscated[1] so he wouldn't have
| been able to do so legally, nor return home even if he did
| manage to get on a ship.
|
| And if you work in international shipping it's not very good
| for your career to be blacklisted from Egypt.
|
| [1] https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/chief-mate-
| strand...
| akudha wrote:
| He was on a ship, alone, with no power/sanitation etc.
|
| How is this not inhumane and cruel? I can understand
| confiscating someone's passport if that person is a criminal,
| but this? This is like Saudi Arabia taking the passports of
| its laborers.
|
| It is insane that things like this happen, in 2021
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm curious, if he _did_ manage to get on a ship surely he 'd
| be able to return home to Syria on a ship bound there?
|
| I mean, if you're an American citizen heading home and you
| lose your passport on the walkway to board your plane in
| France... it's not like America's going to prevent you from
| entering, right?
|
| Surely it's gonna take some time to verify who you are and
| fix the situation. But it's not like you're forever banned
| from your own country.
|
| Leaving Egypt might have been too difficult logistically to
| pull off, but once he had I don't see any legal difficulty
| returning home.
| nicklecompte wrote:
| According to US law (and I am assuming Syrian law) that is
| true...assuming the government is stable and the country
| doesn't have a devastating stalemated civil war. Getting
| into Syria _with_ a legal passport is difficult enough, and
| Syrian border officials would have good reason to suspect
| that he was a foreigner. He would likely be thrown on a
| plane to Cairo and told to figure it out at the Syrian
| embassy. Although now that I write it out maybe this wouldn
| 't have been a terrible option (albeit Kafkaesque and prone
| to several bureaucratic failures - and it doesn't solve the
| problem of him "abandoning his post" and breaking Egyptian
| law).
|
| Even so, US authorities do not just take "sorry fellow
| USicans, I lost my passport" at face value and will likely
| detain you until you are able to prove you are a citizen,
| and put you through quite a bit of extra screening and
| interrogation. Realistically it would be less of an issue
| for a white person with a bland American accent, since
| Border Patrol would probably let you call a lawyer or
| family member to bring a birth certificate. But I am quite
| sure an El Salvadoran-American who forgot his passport
| would not be able to enter the US from Mexico without
| incredible legal difficulty - again to the point where it
| would be faster and considerably less traumatizing to just
| go to a consulate and wait a few weeks.
| xwdv wrote:
| Nope, worst case you get blackmailed into being a sea slave
| until you're no longer useful and dumped in the ocean to die.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| The saddest part of this unfair ordeal is that his mother died
| while he was confined to this ship, and he couldn't go visit her
| or attend the funeral. This article notes, he contemplated
| suicide then.
|
| Shipping companies regularly do this to their crew, abandoning
| them when the costs of properly managing the situation aren't
| worth it to them. Note that ship abandonment is also what led to
| the devastating explosion in Beirut, Lebanon:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Rhosus
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If you are at the point where your family is dying, and you are
| contemplating suicide, the only rational choice is burn down
| the ship to smithereens and leave it at the bottomn of the
| ocean. Or rip it to bit and sell the parts.
| wazoox wrote:
| A friend of mine who's working on installing multimedia systems
| on luxury yacht told me a recent story today: a woman came from
| Florida to work on a yacht that was called by his owner to some
| place. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to her she had COVID. all of
| the 12 crew members went sick; the boat stopped at Malta, and 2
| stewards died. As the ship was late and stranded, the owner
| simply fired all of the remaining people onboard, sick as they
| were, because he wanted his boat back. Then, the lady, stranded
| without resources in La Valette and probably under crushing guilt
| committed suicide.
|
| My friend knew several members of the crew.
| gowld wrote:
| Your friend shouldn't name and shame the boat owner.
| lovich wrote:
| Why?
| gowld wrote:
| The shipping companies are terrible, yes, but this is also a
| basic failure of Egyptian law, making the ship captain
| responsible for the ship.
| pacman2 wrote:
| I don't get it. 4 years without food an electricity? No Payment?
| What did he eat?
|
| "was able to swim ashore every few days". Ok, swim ashore,
| hitchhike to the next city, try to cross a border. Border to
| Israel looks tricky:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_barrier
|
| Worst case, go to Sudan or something. Apply for Asylum, get
| deported.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| I saw this video from Chief MAKOi (who has an excellent youtube
| channel in general) about this situation a week ago. It seemed
| rather hopeless for him at the time considering that it was going
| on for four years already. I wonder if that video contributed to
| pressure to fix the situation, it does have almost a million
| views.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zD-KjuGuiM
| hknapp wrote:
| This channel is how I heard of it.
| eastbayjake wrote:
| The Egyptian legal system is not known for its fairness... the
| World Justice Project ranks it 125 of 128 surveyed countries, in
| last place out of 8 countries in the Middle East[1]
|
| Similarly (and tragically) the Syrian government is not known for
| its compassion towards its distressed citizens.
|
| [1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-
| index/country/Eg...
| user3939382 wrote:
| Most people may think I'm being pessimistic and jaded. But I
| think these rankings are hilarious (in a bad sense). Just like
| the corruption rankings that come out.
|
| The US gets a green square and a high rank, smaller countries
| are corrupt and unfair. I could fill up paragraphs about how
| corrupt and dysfunctional our (US) legal and political systems
| are. Meanwhile I spent a long time in Central Africa (a red
| square country) and know to compare.
|
| I don't get the purpose of these rankings.
| neither_color wrote:
| That's because, as a consequence of our own transparency, on
| every thread on a political topic, the resident anarchist
| trolls are free to give us a history lesson of everything
| wrong the US has ever done. There are many countries where
| such types of posters would get arrested on some real or
| made-up charge for being hyper critical of the state. Most
| Americans who feel that we're some hyper-corrupt, irreparable
| place(systemically dysfunctional, if you will) have no idea
| how far other governments go to cover up their dirty deeds.
| Our rule of law is still the envy of people who come from
| places that rule by law.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Seems like your rankings are mostly based on anecdotal
| experiences?
| FredPret wrote:
| You think Central Africa is less corrupt and more just than
| the USA? Jeez, that takes the cake hey.
|
| I'm from Africa, have left now, and this is pure nonsense.
|
| The USA doesn't have to be literally perfect for it to be a
| good place.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Same. I help put deals together with some experience in SE
| Asia. The ability to enforce contract and property rights
| in the US, with ready access to the courts and relatively
| clear rules, sets the US apart in terms of business
| efficiency and predictability. In my assessment, it's a
| large part of what's made the US so prosperous. In
| contrast, dealing with corrupt officials in smaller
| countries in SE Asia is just wild.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Right the US has rule of law for businesses. What about
| poor people? Not so much. See: civil asset forfeiture,
| being jailed for petty fines you can't afford to pay,
| insane fees used by low-tax jurisdictions to fund their
| courts.
| [deleted]
| FredPret wrote:
| It's certainly not perfect, I agree with your specific
| points. But it's not even at all comparable with the
| third world.
|
| It's vastly better to a degree that left me totally
| mindfucked for years after I moved to the first world.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > But it's not even at all comparable with the third
| world.
|
| I trust your observations of where you came from but I
| believe this is over-generalizing to places you may not
| have personal experience with.
| coliveira wrote:
| It is much better if you're not the target of the system,
| which in the US means that you're white and/or middle
| class or better.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Yes, the U.S. has gone to great length to ensure the
| smooth operation of business. In fact you might say this
| is essentially the primary purpose of U.S. legal system.
| As an example, one researcher looked at all the Supreme
| Court cases involving the 14th amendment between 1870 and
| 1940. The 14th amendment as you'll recall is an amendment
| focused on the individual equal protections people have
| under the law. I cannot recall the figures exactly, but
| of some 100+ cases ~70% pertained to business and around
| a dozen were focused on violations of individual's
| rights.
|
| Property rights are an especially important tool when it
| comes to the operation of a materially wealthy society.
| But their imposition does not somehow guarantee that a
| society is more just or fair and less corrupt than any
| other.
|
| Edit: I looked up the figures in my notes. The paper
| involved all Supreme Court cases involving the Equal
| Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court struck
| down 232 state laws, 179 of the decisions were in favor
| of corporations, 55 were in favor of the growing
| railroads and 9 were in favor of individual black
| petitioners.
|
| The paper isn't online and I don't have access to it
| anymore to check but I believe it is this paper.
|
| "Protecting Corporations Instead of the Poor" by Alec
| Karakatsanis in Harvard Law Review 275.
| canadianfella wrote:
| Have you considered that cases involving individuals are
| easier for lesser courts to decide? Black and white cases
| don't make it to the supreme court.
| coliveira wrote:
| Correct, the US has an excellent legal system for the
| maintenance of property and commerce, but from the human
| point of view it is a disaster. After all, just
| considering the maintenance of racial disparities at the
| judicial level over several decades will tell that this
| is not a functioning system.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Can you consider it such a "disaster" when so many from
| all around the world are desperate to move here? I
| realize that's kind of a cliche' right-wing talking
| point, but it still seems some relatively is merited.
| coliveira wrote:
| People want to move because they need the jobs! As I
| said, the US has a great justice system for commercial
| enterprises. But from the human point of view it is a
| disaster.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| I don't know, man. It seems to me that having a job is
| actually a pretty big factor from the human point of
| view.
| FredPret wrote:
| You're right. The US has predictable rules and outcomes
| and very civilization-friendly laws. It also has the
| power to enforce law & order within its own borders.
|
| By contrast, especially in Central Africa, the borders on
| the map are largely aspirational on the part of the
| governments. Even the word "Democratic" in the Democratic
| Republic of the Congo is a bad joke. The dominant local
| power in most of that landmass is more likely to be a
| warlord/crime boss than the government.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > The dominant local power in most of that landmass is
| more likely to be a warlord/crime boss than the
| government.
|
| I would argue this is a false statement. There are
| pockets of instability there, especially near Goma and
| Virunga or very rural areas. The last few years
| especially have been unstable. But if you look at the
| country as a whole (which is the size of all Western
| Europe) over the last 15 years, the size of the territory
| not controlled by the internationally recognized
| legitimate government has been very small.
| FredPret wrote:
| We can argue about definiton of words like legitimate,
| control, and "very small".
|
| But a better test is this: would you go for a drive there
| with your family? Would you invest billions in a multi-
| decade mining project there - if you had to depend on the
| government's version of law & order only?
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| You are making the assumption that "investing billions of
| dollars" is synonymous with all other forms of justice.
| During the Junta in Chile for example, you were very safe
| to invest. You were probably even safe to go for a drive.
| But the system was grotesque on the whole. I think the
| point people are trying to make is that
|
| 1) It varies far too much from country to country to
| generalize in this way.
|
| 2) Justice is patchy and even across many areas of law
| depending on where you are.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Well yes, this is the problem. The US legal system is
| great if you're dealing with massive amounts of money in
| the hopes of making more money.
|
| Other aspects are much worse.
|
| Also, most legal systems are generally good for this
| purpose, you just have to use your money judiciously in
| bribes instead of lawyer's fees.
| monocasa wrote:
| Not once, but multiple times I've had police simply steal
| cash from me in the states. Not civil forfeiture, but the
| cash in a wallet disappears on it's way to where it's
| held temporarily, no crimes involved. And from rich areas
| like Boulder, CO.
|
| I have not seen the lack of low level corruption in the
| states compared to other countries. Like in other
| countries they simply confine their corruption to those
| powerless to do anything about it.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What are you doing in your life that you've had your
| wallet confiscated by the police multiple times?
|
| Not judging, just curious.
| monocasa wrote:
| One example, at a large party during college, my wife's
| coat was stolen. The thieves took her credit cards, left
| the rest of the wallet, and dumped the coat on an
| unrelated house's front lawn. Unbenownst to the thieves,
| this house was owned by a professor who she was close
| with. He had searched the coat and found the cash in
| another pocket. When he was unable to reach her via
| cellphone, he took the coat to the police, ultimately
| concerned about my wife's physical safety who then
| confiscated the coat, the cash, and the wallet. He then
| came directly to our house from the police (for the
| second time, he tried our house before we arrived back
| home and before he went to the police), and after being
| extremely relieved that she wasn't dead in a ditch or
| something, informed us of both the coat's location (with
| the police, and the specific station and officer he
| talked with) and the contents he had discovered including
| the cash that my wife had not stored in her wallet but
| instead an inner pocket. When we went to the police they
| informed us that both the intake form for the property
| detailing what had been dropped off had gone missing, and
| that no cash was present nor had been turned in.
| erdos4d wrote:
| This exactly. In the US it is common for police to steal
| from citizens if they feel they can get away with it, I
| know many people who have had it happen to them
| personally, both with cash and possessions.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Did this happen at a traffic stop? Did you give them your
| wallet when they asked for your license? I don't think
| I've ever given a cop my wallet. I take the ID out and
| hand that to them. If they asked me for the wallet, I
| would feel powerless to say no, I just have never been
| asked. I'm not defending the police here, this behavior
| is disgusting, just trying to understand the
| circumstances in which this occurred.
|
| Also, I'm low-key wondering if I should start handing the
| cop my wallet. They never give me a warning, maybe if
| they got some money out of the interaction they'd
| start...
| monocasa wrote:
| It hasn't happened at a traffic stop. Cameras like
| dashcams seem to have an effect on police behavior.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Strange. The only time I've had law enforcement take my
| money was in Mexico.
| omginternets wrote:
| It seems like you're equating "there is corruption in the US"
| with "the US has more corruption than most other countries".
|
| I share your concern for corruption in the US, but I submit
| that you have lost your sense of proportion. The US is not --
| by any stretch of the imagination -- anything less than
| "mostly not corrupt".
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| I believe that the goal is to put pressure on those countries
| and make investors afraid of placing money there. Of course
| that a single ranking can't make this, but having multiple
| indexes + media narrative in this sense can create great
| leverage for unfair trade deals.
|
| If for example you consider lobbying=corruption (in many
| countries it is), then the US should indeed be many rankings
| below.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that for any poor, poorly-ranked
| nation, it's likely that USA actions there include dropping
| bombs, assassinating socialist-leaning democratically-elected
| leadership, stationing troops and/or spooks, encouraging
| theft of natural resources, funding criminal terrorist anti-
| state groups, etc.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Choosing how to measure these parameters and what relative
| weight to give each of them is inherently very political.
|
| US has been given a surprisingly high score while France and
| Italy are way below China!
|
| There seems to be quite a lot of bias in this kind of
| scoring.
| akarma wrote:
| Looking at the WJP Rule of Law Index linked above, it's
| considering factors like constraints on government powers,
| absence of corruption, and fundamental rights.
|
| As someone involved in law in the US, the US is really good
| at these types of things. People, including Americans who
| have lived here their entire lives, are consistently amazed
| when they learn the power of the court and how functional it
| all has managed to be.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Of course, many third world nations have little regard for
| their multitude of poor citizens. But I think it's important to
| high light the way that in situations like this, these nations
| are forced to accept that the "laws of the sea" trump their own
| laws and then wind-up unable/unwilling to intervene when a
| ship, a load of goods or a person winds-up in _international_
| legal limbo - the true, horrific poster-child for this was the
| disastrous Beirut explosion. Enough explosives to level half
| the city sat in legal limbo for years ... until they did that,
| yeah. And as we see here, there are many terrible but more
| mundane examples.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| We detached this generic tangent from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907026.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
| duxup wrote:
| >World Justice Project ranks it 125 of 128 surveyed countries
|
| Man considering the scale here that's horrific.
|
| But I guess that would explain a process here where they seem
| to punish someone... 'just because', and with no value coming
| from the process at all.
|
| It's just injustice for no reason at all.... I can understand
| corruption to some extent. They get something, but punish this
| guy for no value, I don't get it.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| I can think of two incentives for punishing this guy for no
| value: First, it will appear that they have "done something
| about it", say, to their superiors. Second, some people also
| feel good if they can put someone down or enforce a loss on
| someone; It's a stunted heuristic for them "winning".
|
| So there is very clear value in it. If the harm is
| disregarded.
| politician wrote:
| Egypt is about to be dried out. Ethopia is building a dam on
| the Blue Nile and will have the ability to fully control how
| much water reaches Egypt.
|
| It seems that the lack of compassion that Egypt has for its
| neighbors will be repaid in kind.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...
| Popcicley wrote:
| According to the International Labour Organization, there are
| more than 250 active cases around the world where crews are
| simply left to fend for themselves. It says 85 new cases were
| reported in 2020, which is twice as many as in the previous year.
|
| Now that's a sad piece of information I read today.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| How was he being supplied before the ship ran aground?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| according to news articles he SWAM to shore to pick up basic
| supplies. Not even a small rowing boat or something was made
| available to him.
| hn8788 wrote:
| That was only after it ran aground. The article says that
| before that, he was anchored, presumably far enough out that
| he had no way to get to shore.
| Magi604 wrote:
| In the article it states that he started swimming to shore
| only after the ship had run aground a few hundred meters from
| the shore. So the question remains, how did he sustain
| himself beforehand? Did the ship have years worth of supplies
| for him on board?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| i'm sorry, my error.
| Magi604 wrote:
| All good my friend.
|
| I found the article to be really poor actually. It seems
| a lot of details were left out, possibly for maximum
| effect at editorializing the situation.
| abhijat wrote:
| I was wondering the same thing, since the ship had no power
| either perishables would go bad quickly, also where did he
| get money to buy food later on? Was it his savings?
| patentatt wrote:
| So, does that mean this guy's been eating Bahrainian MREs
| for the whole time?
| drak0n1c wrote:
| The article names 2019 as when he totally ran out of fuel.
| I assume there were previously enough rations on board (it
| was stocked for an entire crew before being abandoned), and
| perhaps he made a deal with the visiting guard to bring
| food.
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| I'm not clear what Egypt's goal was by forcing this man to stay
| aboard the ship. Simply declaring him the guardian never made it
| so. He was never going to be able to resolve the issues himself
| and it appears the owners have simply abandoned it and written it
| off. If Egypt can't get money from the owners, then, as owners of
| the canal, deny other of their ships passage through it.
| gowld wrote:
| In a state without civil rights, a hair to the side of a
| dictatorship, people don't have civil rights.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's real hard to tell as a non-Egyptian trying to Google
| enough case law to understand it, but the best I can figure is
| that the precedent is based upon the assumption that the ship's
| owner has interest in how the ship fares while the ship is
| arrested. Ostensibly, the requirement of custodianship should
| be protecting the interests of the owner... But since the owner
| could sue Egypt if their ship is damaged while it is kept in
| the country's care, Egypt mandates someone the owner designates
| stand watch.
|
| ... but, of course, that whole arrangement is predicated on the
| assumption the owner cares, at all, about the fate of the ship
| or its crew. Which is, perhaps, a philosophical throwback to a
| time when ships were the entire livelihood of a town and not
| assets that multinational corporations own hundreds of.
| jandrese wrote:
| It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full
| responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If
| the court were serious about the situation they should have
| handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the ship
| up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it to a
| scrapping company.
|
| If you think this would be unfair to the ships owners this is
| exactly the point. Force them to fix the situation or lose
| control of it entirely. Don't leave an actual human in some
| Kafkaesque nightmare of being jailed on a derelict vessel because
| you are terrible at running a shipping company. The article says
| there are hundreds of these cases around the world, and because
| only regular people are being harmed nobody is trying that hard
| to fix it. This is unconscionable.
|
| Edit: Fixed my faulty memory about the number of ships in this
| situation.
| Debug_Overload wrote:
| > The article says there are thousands of these cases
|
| It said 250, not thousands.
| aqme28 wrote:
| You're assuming that it's valuable to a scrapping company.
| Sometimes a grounded ship is more trouble than it's worth.
| wahern wrote:
| The ship looked quite large. I would imagine scrappers in
| Turkey or Pakistan would have paid well, considering the
| price of steel. But you'd need investors to pay for transport
| and any Egyptian fees. And to secure investors you'd need to
| resolve property rights, at least tentatively, to the point
| the ship could be released, likely requiring some experienced
| maritime lawyer able to work quickly to avoid getting bogged
| down in litigation.
|
| I bet there would be significant profit in it, at least from
| the perspective of a handful of individuals, and especially
| if things could be arranged to make the sailor judgment proof
| --e.g. have his share of any proceeds go to family members--
| so free loaders (i.e. lazy ship owners, clients, and
| insurers) couldn't swoop in at the end to claim any proceeds.
| But it's not just a matter of profit; it's a matter of
| opportunity costs. All the parties most capable of pulling
| this off clearly felt there was _more_ _profit_ to be had by
| walking away and pursuing other opportunities.
|
| Surely people on HN understand this phenomenon: there are an
| infinite number of profitable opportunities out there, but
| some are better than others, and there's only a finite amount
| of time and capital.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I don't understand what value there is here in assigning
| it to the crew member who apparently can't decline?
|
| Even if he could manage the ship, a random crew member is
| highly unlikely to have resources to care for a ship like
| that... what value is there in assigning him this
| responsibility? They just punishing someone for the sake of it?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I suspect it is like assigning child support to fathers even
| if they were raped or it is not their kid.
|
| Somebody needs to do it and the crew members are the simplest
| people to task it to.
| duxup wrote:
| Do what?
|
| The ship had no fuel, it went adrift and ran aground...
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Do what exactly? Keep the ship company so it won't feel
| lonely? It doesn't seem like there was anything for him to
| do during those years.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'assigning ... to fathers even if.. it is not their kid."
|
| Say what?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| If the poster meant "people legally designated as
| fathers" and was referring to, e.g., the presumption
| (conclusive in some jurisdictions) of paternity based on
| marriage at time of birth, its not completely senseless.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think his job was basically security guard for the
| property. Also, if the ship were to come unmoored and collide
| with another vessel they would need someone to blame.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Preventing unmooring probably requires to repaint/reoil the
| moor every few months to prevent rust. I wonder whether 1
| person is enough to take care of the remaining maintenance
| of a wreck: electrical boards, meals, rats... Crews are
| also constantly repainting the hull while at sea, this is
| why it still takes 20 crew on top of a captain to man a
| ship.
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm sure he had no supplies for basic maintenence, but
| the law still requires someone to hold accountable so it
| would be him.
|
| It would be interesting if this did happen and the court
| found him guilty of dereliction of duty for not conjuring
| replacement parts out of thin air. Would he be sent to a
| land prison or back to the prison of the ship?
| devcpp wrote:
| But why can't he quit? If the owning company didn't assign
| another guard that's their fault, not the guard. Imagine if
| a chauffeur was forever assigned to a car because it broke
| on a disabled parking place. It would just get towed and
| the bill or court order sent to the actual owner and the
| chauffeur can quit.
|
| 100% blame on Egypt here for a stupid rule ignoring
| consequences.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Mentally imagining the situation you described with a
| chauffeur is hilarious - which only underlines the
| absurdity of this poor guy's situation.
| munk-a wrote:
| > Yeah I don't understand what value there is here in
| assigning it to the crew member who apparently can't decline?
|
| The article doesn't state it really explicitly but I believe
| he was able to decline but maybe not aware of when that
| decision would need to be made - specifically this passage
| here:
|
| > "I can't force a judge to remove the legal guardianship," a
| representative [of the shipping company] told us. "And I
| can't find a single person on this planet - and I've tried -
| to replace him."
|
| > Mohammed, they said, should never have signed the order in
| the first place.
|
| It sounds like he signed a thing without fully understanding
| the ramifications of it - some eygptian official might have
| pulled a sneaky to trick him into signing it without full
| knowledge of the consequences or he may have simply acted
| unwisely but, either way, I'd hold the shipping company
| completely at fault for letting this situation develop - they
| had options to replace him (for instance, one of the actual
| owners could've stepped up and owned their error), or
| provided clear guidance and legal advice to the crew members.
|
| The fact that the captain GTFO'd before any of this really
| started to go down really reinforces that this guy was left
| holding the short end of the stick and the company itself is
| pretty insanely slimy for not, at least, attempting to
| continue to support him.
|
| Swimming to shore to get fresh water is a seriously messed up
| scenario.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _I 'd hold the shipping company completely at fault for
| letting this situation develop - they had options to
| replace him_
|
| Why? Then there would be someone else stuck in that
| situation. The problem is almost entirely with the Egyptian
| authorities. Such a situation shouldn't even be possible to
| develop. The first mate in the article might not have
| understood the ramifications of what he signed, but the
| Egyptian court certainly did.
|
| There are all kinds of reasons for why a shipping company
| would be unable to help. That doesn't mean it should leave
| a person in a legal limbo. That's on the country rather
| than the company.
|
| I'm surprised the guy didn't just leave. A country whose
| laws don't respect you doesn't deserve respect in return.
| harry8 wrote:
| >Why? Then there would be someone else stuck in that
| situation.
|
| The CEO was the right person to to replace him
| immediately until they could make it a sufficiently
| attractive proposition that someone else would want to do
| it. You know by the usual means. Pay, supply drops, fuel
| for power etc.
|
| The shipping company's CEO is 100% responsible for not
| dealing with the situation properly because they
| absolutely did not do that in any way, shape or form.
| It's so bad I would have no issue with the company being
| blacklisted as a criminal organisation.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _The shipping company 's CEO is 100% responsible for
| not dealing with the situation properly because they
| absolutely did not do that in any way, shape or form._
|
| And if the company went bankrupt or the CEO suddenly
| died/disappeared? Then what? There could be any number of
| reasons why a company might be unable to do what they
| need to do. The guy is still stuck there then, because it
| all rests on the shipping company rather than the country
| whose government is holding him there.
| willcipriano wrote:
| >And if the company went bankrupt or the CEO suddenly
| died/disappeared?
|
| If the company did well instead of go bankrupt who is
| cashing the biggest check? That is who is responsible.
| Work your way down that list until you find someone,
| everyone you can't find is a fugitive and has their
| assets seized.
| harry8 wrote:
| Running and hiding when insolvency hits is illegal in
| most places. But sure, it's certainly possible that this
| has happened to his employer while that company who
| employ him is still providing quotes about it being
| impossible to find anyone who would take his place but
| not paying him either.
|
| So in insolvency that is deemed bankruptcy the assets of
| the company are traditionally used to deal with as much
| of the liabilities of the company as they can in rank
| order of those liabilities. You know secured debt ranks
| ahead of unsecured etc.
|
| This guy's claim on the assets of the company to get him
| out of that hell, for me, rank number 1, and alone. Next
| comes the wages due all employees not deprived of their
| liberty. And that's the usual way it is done too.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I'm not talking about this specific instance. I'm saying
| that companies can fail to do something due to myriad
| reasons. You shouldn't tie a third party's freedom (the
| ship's "legal guardian") to a company behaving
| _correctly_. If the company doesn 't deal with the
| jeopardy a person is in then governments should try to
| resolve it in a reasonable timeframe or at least create
| reasonable accommodations until the situation is
| resolved.
| jandrese wrote:
| Then whoever was second in command at the company sells
| off the ship (probably at a loss) and uses some of the
| money to send the first officer home. If they can't
| afford to keep the ship then they shouldn't sit on the
| title and trap one of their own employees in a derelict
| floating prison.
| munk-a wrote:
| I'm really unfamiliar with maritime laws but I wouldn't
| be surprised if seizing unmanned boats that are flying
| the flags of a different country but within your waters
| is somehow a touchy international grey-zone.
|
| This situation was created by the country essentially
| leaving a 4k tonne vessel derelict off the coast of Eygpt
| after failing to pay to fuel its ride home so there isn't
| going to be an easy answer here. It might be that the
| company had some act-of-god like circumstance happen
| (like an employee fraudulently embezzling funds and
| tampering with a fuel gauge to make it look like the ship
| had far more fuel than it did though... that's insanely
| unlikely given how shifty everyone is acting).
|
| Egypt might be in a position where they've got a rusting
| leaking hunk of trash off their coast that they can't
| remove without causing an international incident and,
| forcing some member of the company to remain with the
| wreck _might_ just be intended to force the company to
| actually call in salvagers to resolve the situation
| (which would likely be a large asset loss for the
| company).
|
| I really don't think Egypt is likely the worst actor in
| this situation but it was cruel what they put this man
| through. Ideally the administrator trying to untangle
| this POS would realize this employee has essentially no
| power to resolve the situation and release them home -
| but his options to escape were likely pretty few.
|
| If you're a passing ship the last thing you want to do is
| piss off Egypt since the country is pretty corrupt and
| controls the Suez Canal (which you plan on sailing
| through if your ship is anywhere in the neighborhood) -
| getting on their bad side is likely a one-way ticket to
| random inspections and tariffs or an outright ban and the
| only land close enough for the man to flee to was Egypt
| itself - so he'd need to sneakily emigrate... he's
| heading back to Syria so that means he'd need to cross
| the Egyptian-Israeli border under the radar and
| potentially without a passport - and probably with very
| little cash.
|
| I really feel for this dude when he says he was
| struggling with depression because his situation was
| utterly screwed - the universe really wasn't on his
| side.... buuuut, I think the company owning the ship
| comes out the worst. The article doesn't have the details
| but something seriously slimy was going on there.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Egypt might be in a position where they 've got a
| rusting leaking hunk of trash off their coast that they
| can't remove without causing an international incident
| and, forcing some member of the company to remain with
| the wreck might just be intended to force the company to
| actually call in salvagers to resolve the situation_
|
| Removing a ship could cause an international incident,
| but forcing a person to stay _alone_ on a ship without
| proper living conditions for _years_ wouldn 't? Imagine
| if the guy wasn't Syrian, but was an American instead.
| This would've either been resolved quickly or there
| would've been an international incident that would've put
| the removal of a ship to shame.
| gowld wrote:
| The shipping company is clearly lying. Plenty of people
| would take a job living on a boat for a while.
| munk-a wrote:
| Yea, additionally, the guy was staying on the boat
| _unpaid_ for the duration - so it 's a lot easier to read
| their actions as pure greed.
|
| There's also a good chance they could've declared the
| ship lost at sea and either scuttled it or offered it for
| a dollar (or other token currency amount) to salvage
| companies.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I might be misunderstanding the situation, but it sounds
| like the original captain knew what was going on and
| sacrificed Mohammed for his own freedom. I assume the
| captain has original responsibility in this case. The
| captain left the ship and never came back. He presumably
| told Egyptians that his first officer is now in charge, or
| the Egyptians boarded the ship and determined that the
| First Officer was the highest ranking official on the ship.
|
| Either way it sounds like the Captain probably knew what
| was going on. When the Captain learned that the parent
| company had ran out of money, he probably was aware of
| these cases of seafarer abandonment and decided he didn't
| want to be one of them. So he left the ship, leaving the
| responsibility on Mohammed.
|
| Mohammed claimed he didn't really know the meaning of this
| responsibility until everyone else started disembarking. It
| sounds like by then the captain had been gone, for at least
| 4 months, and potentially longer.
|
| The Captain sacrificed Mohammed here. Either way, someone
| was going to be abandoned on that vessel. I think the
| Captain saw the writing on the wall and abandoned quickly,
| shifting responsibility onto someone else.
|
| There are lots of people at fault here. Egyptian
| authorities, Tyson Shipping and Marine Company (which seems
| to have continued operating despite all this), and the
| Captain. Unfortunately Mohammed is one of the innocent ones
| caught in the middle. He shouldn't have signed the paper as
| the shipping company is quick to point out. But that
| doesn't resolve the real issue. It would have just meant
| the Captain or someone else would have been forced into
| this situation.
| TheCondor wrote:
| Suppose he did sell the ship, without proper authority,
| wouldn't that be a civil matter between he and the owners? It
| was basically derelict, right? It seems like a salvage company
| could come in, pay any fines to Egypt, fuel the ship a d then
| drive it away and it would be theirs. That further incentives
| the owners to handle their business.
| jandrese wrote:
| It would probably be difficult to find a salvage company
| willing to take on that much legal risk.
|
| Maybe the guy could have made some calls down to Somalia and
| convinced some pirates that a big prize was ripe for the
| taking if they were willing to take a road trip?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > It is supremely unfair for the court to assign him full
| responsibility for the ship, but without any power over it. If
| the court were serious about the situation they should have
| handed the ship over to him entirely. He could then put the
| ship up on the market for whomever wanted to buy it or sell it
| to a scrapping company.
|
| This doesn't really solve the problem, it just moves the
| problem around to the free market. What if no one wanted to buy
| it for scrap? Would he be responsible for cleaning up the
| situation himself? The court should have impounded the ship
| using Egypt's own coast guard and billed the company for the
| coast guard's time.
| newsclues wrote:
| If you dig into the class of people who own ships, you'll
| realize that the government doesn't want to offend the wealthy
| class.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| A lot of shipping issues are complicated because we have no
| global government and we have a lot of international waters
| and shipping, by its very nature, tends to involve ships
| passing from one legal jurisdiction to another repeatedly.
|
| It's not about not wanting to offend wealthy people. It's in
| part a matter of "Who has authority here?"
|
| There's a lot I don't understand about it, but this seems
| like it's probably a fairly modern development and it's high
| time we created meaningful solutions so this cannot happen
| again.
|
| Glad to see he got free and a reporter was talking to him and
| he was broadcasting via internet. But that should not be how
| something like this gets resolved, on some kind of ad hoc
| basis after so long.
|
| And someone here said someone volunteered to take his place,
| so it's apparently not really resolved, though he got relief.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| I don't know how collateral on a mortgage on a ship this size
| works. But I am pretty sure even if they handed it to him, he
| couldn't do anything with it because it would have a Lein on
| it.
|
| Your point still remains valid though.
| [deleted]
| bdowling wrote:
| > he couldn't do anything with it because it would have a
| Lein on it.
|
| If he had title, then he could sell it. The lienholder,
| however, would have a claim on the proceeds of the sale.
| Retric wrote:
| Lein's don't normally work that way after a boat was seized.
| Handing it to the remaining sailor isn't identical, but don't
| assume loans have much weight here.
|
| The mess of US civil forfeiture laws originally showed up in
| maritime law such that the owners and outstanding loans
| became irrelevant. In effect the physical object is what's
| confiscated breaking any ties to anyone that had a prior
| ownership stake.
| pulse7 wrote:
| The problem was that this man >>signed<< a document where he
| agreed to be "legally bound to this ship"... So be careful
| before you are signing something...
| kennywinker wrote:
| You are putting way to much stock in "signing a document".
| Anybody can document an injustice, and make it feel
| "justified" - but that doesn't make it justified. If I were
| to convince someone to sign a document saying they have to
| work for me for free, I'm still a slaveholder. Pick which one
| - morality or legality - there is no way that document should
| have been held as valid for longer than a few months, nor was
| there any way that document was morally ok
| smcl wrote:
| We don't know what the situation was here. It could even be
| that all the sailors were required to sign some standard-
| looking documentation (no idea what, agreement to terminate
| their contract with x% of salary, papers allowing them to
| enter Egypt) before leaving the ship, but he was given
| something that was different and bound him to the ship as its
| guardian. Your advice still stands of course.
| munk-a wrote:
| Alternatively - if you're not in the Eygptian legal system -
| be careful of trying to make someone sign something they
| don't comprehend - in the US at best the contract will be
| invalidated and at worst you might be held responsible for
| any damages if it was your job to clearly communicate the
| rights the parties had w.r.t. the contract before signing.
|
| That all said - that's a hard battle and one you're probably
| not going to win unless you a) don't be speak english or b)
| don't have full control of your mental faculties - "I
| couldn't be arsed to read the contract" is generally not a
| defense unless the contract goes out of its way to be
| intentionally misleading.
| mgolawala wrote:
| Yeah that is the part I do not understand.
|
| Isn't there a law at sea where if you find an abandoned ship,
| it is basically yours? Perhaps this law doesn't apply in
| Egyptian national waters?
|
| If he is the legal guardian of the ship, why wouldn't he be
| able to just sell it for profit and move on? Was it just that
| there would be no buyer for it, even to scrap it? Or could
| there have been fines/liens on that ship such that no one would
| want to buy it? If that is the case it seems odd that he
| couldn't himself abandon the ship to the lien holders.
| jandrese wrote:
| It's not abandoned. The government assigned this guy as the
| caretaker of the property.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| That's slavery
| furyg3 wrote:
| They may have been paying him.
|
| (it would still be slavery, however, you have a right to
| quit your job).
| jandrese wrote:
| He was unpaid and the Egyptian courts won't let him
| leave.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Find a 500 year d ship full of gold and everyone owns it.
| Even the original insurance company.
| bluGill wrote:
| International salvage law is complex, but essentially no. The
| ship is stills owned.by someone even when at the bottom of
| the sea and if you take anything from the ship without
| permission that is theft.
|
| Salvagers work on contract with the owners in most cases.
| When they don't there are generally big lawsuits because they
| are entitled for compensation for their work, but if they
| don't give anything brought up back the the owners they are
| in possession of stolen property, and the law around this is
| complex.
|
| If the vessel is more than 1000 years old we probably can't
| trace an onwer anymore and you can get by with calling it
| abandoned in some cases. Though even here the country who's
| waters it is in might consider the wreck a treasure.
|
| He is the guard, not the owner. As such he can't sell it. The
| owners are probably in complex bankruptcy court and the lien
| holders will eventually get to figure out what to do with it,
| but that will take years to resolve. Indeed the expense of
| resolving this might be more than the ship is worth so nobody
| actually wants to resolve it.
| jopsen wrote:
| The company also owes him a salary, he is in possession of
| company property, selling said property to recuperate lost
| salary seems reasonable.
|
| I'm no lawyer (so don't try this at home), and I bet you'd
| need to find a good lawyer to get a with a trick like that
| :)
|
| But as a creditor in possession of property owned by the
| debitor, selling said property to recuperate losses doesn't
| seem entirely unreasonable.
|
| Certainly, not if debitor does not take action recover
| possession of the property, etc.
|
| Even if he got into trouble after selling the ship, I would
| hope a jury would side the person being held for "ransom by
| said property".
|
| But yes, between Egyptian and Syrian courts, I suppose
| there is a serious risk you'll get squashed either way.
| Because we can't have sailors selling their ships :)
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Very off topic, but does this mean that wrecks from
| warships lost during, say, WWII are still owned by their
| respective navies?
| modeless wrote:
| Why would you write an article like this without a word
| describing the legal consequences of leaving the ship? What
| consequence would be worth four years of your life?
|
| Edit: a more useful video linked below explains that the
| authorities confiscated his passport. That would make it
| difficult to leave. Though I'd probably try anyway after a year
| of that.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I saw this video[1] on Youtube that goes a bit more in depth
| into the situation. Apparently after he became the legal
| guardian of the ship, the Egyptian govt took his passport to
| prevent him from leaving.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zD-KjuGuiM
| patentatt wrote:
| But that alone doesn't prohibit him from going to live on land
| somewhere, right?
| [deleted]
| ectopod wrote:
| If they've got his passport and he can't leave the only
| option is Egypt. I expect he thought of that and they
| refused.
|
| ETA: I've read a few of these articles over the last year.
| There have been many similar cases because of covid. It seems
| to be completely normal practice for countries to refuse
| visas to ships' crew.
| randyrand wrote:
| But you are not stranded on Egyptian land. You're at sea. Why
| not just take some boat home? Or to the nearest non-Egypt
| country.
| Kye wrote:
| The article says the ship had no fuel.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I would have had my brother dinghy out to me one of the
| passes.... I guess though since this is in a major shipping
| lane you'd probably get taken out by a ship.
| tobyhinloopen wrote:
| I can imagine you can't just use a 20L jerry can to fill
| her up
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I meant to escape on the Dinghy with my brother.
| [deleted]
| codezero wrote:
| I imagine that a legal system that forces a random guy to stay
| trapped on a ship for four years would do something worse to
| someone who defies their order.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I don't understand what use he was on that ship? And can't they
| find any out of work person from shore to take his place? I'm
| sure there are dozens lining up to get that job for a few pennies
| an hour. And they might just have family in the area that can
| help sustain them.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| You seem to assume that Aisha was paid for those 4 years. I
| assume otherwise too, but I did not saw any contradicting
| evidence.
| INTPenis wrote:
| The article says he wasn't paid, at least part of the time.
| But what I'm saying is that this whole practice makes no
| sense. There must be people on shore who would be willing to
| be custodians of abandoned ships.
|
| That's a business idea, start an office offering ship
| custodians for shipping companies. When they get in trouble
| they can hire your custodian instead of stranding one of
| their own employees far from home.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| This business wouldn't work out, because you expect to be
| paid. Stranded employees get stranded because they are seen
| as expendables, ones that don't need to be paid.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Yeah sure it wouldn't work without a global change in
| policy too. Because right now shipping companies are just
| leaving their ships because of hardships, so to think
| they'd hire someone is silly.
|
| But with policy changes one can imagine a future where
| sailors prefer employers who have a contract with ship
| custodians before signing up with them, thereby voting
| with their employment.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| This story is so appalling that I genuinely have a hard time
| understanding it.
|
| > He was legally obliged to stay aboard
|
| What the actual fuck?
|
| So Egypt has some sort of law, that allows the government to
| imprison people who have committed no crime indefinitely?
| hiimdurex wrote:
| hello
| dilippkumar wrote:
| If he had silently sneaked off the ship, would someone have
| noticed? How long would it take for anyone to notice that a ship
| without power and crewed by just 1 person was actually abandoned?
| [deleted]
| notJim wrote:
| I was wondering about this. My guess (just a guess) was that
| since he wants to still work in this industry, he was afraid
| that abandoning the ship would hurt his career? Either that, or
| he's just an incredibly responsible person.
| bluescrn wrote:
| If you've been unjustly imprisoned for several years, you
| probably don't worry too much about your career?
| javert wrote:
| Ever heard of graduate school?
| Gabriel_Martin wrote:
| I found the last line almost unbelievable
|
| "It's enough, you might imagine, to make him think twice
| about going back to sea.
|
| But he is determined. He says he is good at his job and
| wants nothing more than to pick up where he left off."
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| "Final question. give me an example of a situation
| where..."
| kevingadd wrote:
| The big problem would have likely been how to get home without
| drawing the attention of the local authorities.
|
| EDIT: Apparently his passport may have been confiscated.
| Alupis wrote:
| From the article, he did sneak off the ship routinely after it
| ran aground some years later. He would sneak off, buy food and
| recharge his phone, then return to the ship for some bizarre
| reason.
| vaidhy wrote:
| I believe he was allowed to go to shore. Unfortunately, the
| closest place is a restricted military area and he was only
| allowed to stay for 2 hours each visit. He cannot even sneak
| off as he is getting into a military base for food, water and
| power. If it has been a civilian area, he could have just
| stayed on the land.
|
| It is a sad state of affairs, whichever way you look at it.
| neaden wrote:
| They had his passport, so it would have been difficult for
| him to leave and risking arrest by either the Egyptian or
| Syrian police.
| codezero wrote:
| That region is experiencing a lot of chaos and I'd say that
| being alone on a ship is a lot safer than being alone with
| no passport and wanted by the law.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Seems like a good reason to get in touch with your home
| country's embassy/consulate...
| qz_ wrote:
| Not if you're from Syria.
| true_religion wrote:
| Why not? Syria does have an embassy in Cairo.
| arlk wrote:
| They don't care. Just to let you know how bad are we
| treated. As a Syrian, I should exchange 100 dollars to
| enter the country. Some people were stuck at the border
| with Lebanon when that bill was issued and a woman died
| waiting for someone to bring her the 100 dollars (or 200
| because he also needs to go back). We pay 800 euros to
| get our 2 years of validity passports. A couple of weeks
| ago, I had to wait from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. to get the
| embassy in Berlin to attest my signature on the passport.
| I had to wait 4 hours to attest my papers at the totally
| empty embassy in Jakarta.
| samerjj wrote:
| Same here my friend, they were literally whipping people
| for cutting the line on the Syrian embassy in Lebanon.
| siva7 wrote:
| You realize there is currently one of the bloodiest civil
| wars of this century happening in syria? an embassy isn't
| much worth in such a situation
| jollybean wrote:
| A random Syrian, or someone 'without passport' is not going
| to raise any scrutiny in Egypt. Just a few handfulls of
| cash could have expedited his way to at least Lebanon.
|
| There's something odd about this story because neither a
| passport nor money should have kept him there, unless there
| was literally some kind of watch for him, and/or the cash
| situation was really that extremely dire. That said, he was
| able to survive for 4 years so money had to be coming from
| somewhere.
|
| I suggest that he was maybe being paid a tiny amount, and
| that he felt it'd be better to 'stick it out' as a nearly
| worthless cog, than to take a risky path home to what might
| be nothing anyhow.
| londons_explore wrote:
| He was staying in the hope he'd get back pay. (Either
| from the shipping company, or from proceeds of selling
| the ship to pay fines)
| taycmoore2009 wrote:
| Can Someone ELI5?
| vaughnegut wrote:
| Anyone know how the issue was resolved? The article doesn't
| actually say what changed about his situation to allow him to
| leave.
| snthd wrote:
| https://www.itfseafarers.org/en/news/seafarer-mohammad-aisha...
| speeder wrote:
| I saw another article explaining a local leader of the
| seafarers guild/union offered to stay in his place.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Holy crap. So not even with a return to judicial sanity, or a
| sanction against the ship's owners, but with somebody else
| offering to be the scapegoat?
| throw_away wrote:
| get ready for another article in four years...
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| _But he is determined. He says he is good at his job and wants
| nothing more than to pick up where he left off._
|
| Meanwhile HN commenters be moaning every time their scrollbar is
| hijacked by a link or they have to deal with spaghetti code at
| work like "I'm so burned out"
| tuwtuwtuwtuw wrote:
| If this guy was staring at the same code I stare at hours per
| day he would probably also be moaning at times.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Can someone send a Laptop to Aisha so he could look at
| spaghetti code?
| coding123 wrote:
| So true
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Is there something that could be done by people otherwise
| uninvolved - like myself, or my fellow HN readers - to help the
| other ~250 people who are currently stuck in similar situations?
|
| I don't even know how to go about enumerating who those people
| are, their ships, or where they are anchored. With that
| information a well-organized and/or funded group could at least
| get someone out to these people to check on them, provide basic
| supplies, and perhaps some form of reliable communications.
|
| A lot of problems seem insurmountable large and complex, and even
| this one seems so if your goal is to free these people of their
| legal liabilities - but if you set aside trying to solve the
| reason they're stuck onboard these ships in the first place,
| providing basic humanitarian aid to them seems doable.
|
| ETA: This looks like a good place to start -
| https://www.ilo.org/dyn/seafarers/seafarersbrowse.home
| BurningFrog wrote:
| From reading the article, they just for some legal reason need
| a person on board the ship.
|
| So maybe people could volunteer to replace them on a rolling
| schedule.
| jrnichols wrote:
| could be a great airbnb
| Ancapistani wrote:
| In this particular instance, that seems to be the case. I
| imagine there are probably legal hurdles that needed to be
| overcome to even make that happen, but I'm glad it did.
|
| I just sent an email to the International Maritime
| Organization, who manages the database I linked in the GP, to
| ask if there are any extant organizations dedicated to
| providing relief to people in similar situations. I'll update
| here when and if I hear back from them, or as I make progress
| toward figuring out the scope of this issue in other ways.
| gowld wrote:
| The Egyptian law is ridiculous. The government should hire
| coast guard staff to supervise the boat.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't have the ability
| to easily influence that. I _might_ have the ability to
| make people's lives easier in similar situations.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I wonder if there is any value in supervising the boat if
| it has no power... No power means no engines, no lights and
| no radios. That means even if the boat was robbed, there is
| nothing the supervisor could do about it.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| I assume the purpose of holding someone physically
| accountable is to make it harder to use countries as ship
| parking lots
| willcipriano wrote:
| "Where is what ship? Oh, after 180 days we let the
| national guard boys play target practice with the ships
| that go unclaimed."
| csomar wrote:
| > they just for some legal reason need a person on board the
| ship
|
| So what if the guy in question doesn't show up?
| dawnerd wrote:
| Sounds like a joke but turning them into airbnb would
| probably end up being pretty popular. Who wouldn't want an
| entire ship to themself for a night?
| rxhernandez wrote:
| For me, it would depend on how stabby the ship is.
|
| (I don't want to get injured by a ship in disrepair)
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Ah, here's the IMO database entry on the MV Aman. It provides
| much additional context.
| https://www.ilo.org/dyn/seafarers/seafarersbrowse.details?p_...
|
| In particular, here's a recent update that sheds some light on
| why Mr. Aisha remained aboard - in short, he refused to leave
| unless and until he was paid the wages due to him:
| Govt. of Bahrain (7 March 2021) From Registration of
| Ships & Seamen Affairs I would like to highlight few
| facts as below: 1) Vessel is not abandoned, but under
| court arrest due to ongoing cases. 2) Seafarer by the
| name Mohamed Aisha had accepted a court appointment to act as
| court representative onboard. As such, when the owner
| repatriated all other crew members he was not allowed to be
| repatriated by the courts. 3) We had intervened with
| owner several time and also arranged for the courts to allow
| his repatriation by appointing another representative, but he
| decided not to disembark due to outstanding wages. 4) The
| owners have tried with all resources available to repatriate
| him but he was not willing to cooperate. If he is
| now ready to be repatriated, then the owners are willing to
| cover such costs of air passage and local charges as a show of
| our commitment towards him.
| gwright wrote:
| This seems like pretty important information if correct. A
| huge portion of the HN discussion is moot if the Mr. Aisha
| chose to remain. Seems like he could have continued his fight
| for the outstanding wages elsewhere.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| I thought this video was pretty clarifying, including words
| from Aisha himself: https://youtu.be/1zD-KjuGuiM
|
| It definitely sounds like he got at the very least a shitty
| deal. If you don't have time to watch, he mentions he feels
| he signed something he didn't fully understand, leaving him
| liable as guardian, passport seized and all.
| klint wrote:
| This article says local officials were also holding his
| passport so that he couldn't legally leave:
| https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/chief-mate-
| strand...
| mycall wrote:
| I wonder if embassies can intervene under these
| conditions, when a foreign government will not release
| passport.
| bluGill wrote:
| They can, but will they? It is really tricky to handle
| this type of thing without declaring war. It's is also
| tricky for the other country to do this without getting
| war declared on them.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If I understood that correctly, "chose to remain" because
| if he didn't, he would lose his claim for wages for the
| time he was stuck on the ship. That's a fair amount of
| money.
| gwright wrote:
| Sure if that is the case, it is not a good trade-off. But
| that is a much different situation than the one that was
| communicated by the reporting, which suggested he had
| _no_ legal way to leave.
|
| I'm still not sure I have an accurate picture of the
| situation.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I totally disagree. Based on sibling comments it seems like
| some people think this would have legally screwed up his
| claim to the lost wages, and even if not, giving up your
| only leverage in this situation is probably not the optimal
| strategy.
|
| I can see a parallel world where he decided to get off the
| boat and we're reading an article about how he lost all
| that time and won't be able to recover wages, and some HN
| commenter goes "oh well he should have just stayed on the
| boat, he got off willingly, so all this discussion is
| moot".
|
| The reality is this guy was put into a nightmare situation
| by a combination of his company not appearing to have
| planned properly (or cared enough about this outcome to
| prepare for it) and Egypt's ridiculous law where someone
| can be legally responsible for a ship they have no
| ownership of. Expecting him to correctly navigate
| international laws to determine what the action is for him
| to get off the ship but get paid for the time as he
| deserves seems somewhat ridiculous. In reality, this
| situation should never have happened in the first place and
| I place the vast majority of the blame for that on the
| company and Egypt.
| ntr-- wrote:
| What "leverage"?
|
| I suspect there is more to the story, but if the GP entry
| is to be believed how is wasting away by yourself in a
| tin can trying to recoup wages from an insolvent company
| for 2 years a more "optimal strategy" than going home to
| your family and getting on another boat?
|
| Extricate yourself from the system, do not vindicate
| yourself from within it.
| gwright wrote:
| My point was that "I have no legal way to leave" is a
| different scenario than "I won't leave until I get paid".
|
| Both situations have a tremendous unfairness about them
| but they aren't the _same_ and I don 't think it is
| unreasonable to think that those details are an important
| part of the story.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Depending on thtle situation, there is little to no
| difference between "I have no legal way to leave" and "I
| have no legal way to leave and be paid for my work".
|
| The vast majority of the world's population is not in a
| financial situation where they can just write off months
| of work for no pay, so they might as well have been
| legally trapped there.
| stickfigure wrote:
| As opposed to spending four years on the boat, then
| leaving without getting paid? Cut your losses, man.
| Stephanie123d wrote:
| Start your home business right now. Spend more time with your
| family and earn. Start bringing 55$/hour just on a computer. Very
| easy way to make your life happy and earning
| continuously......>>>>> Nifty2.com
| birktj wrote:
| I don't get it. I might be misunderstanding things, but my
| understanding is that here in Norway the owner of a vessel has
| the ultimate responsibility in cases like these. Why is the
| Egyptian law this way? It doesn't seem very practical to legally
| require this one guy to stay on board, what problem is that
| supposed to solve?
| bluGill wrote:
| What can Egypt do to the owner? The owners are not in Egypt.
| aasasd wrote:
| Not to compare bad vs worse, but when I get bored for ten minutes
| I tend to remember that at least I'm not in Otokichi's crew:
|
| > _The ship, without a mast or a rudder, was carried across the
| northern Pacific Ocean by currents. It drifted for 14 months,
| during which the crew lived on desalinated seawater and on the
| rice of their cargo._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otokichi (from a recent-ish HN
| thread).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Omnibus podcast episode: https://www.omnibusproject.com/324
| lolc wrote:
| Fascinating story. It led me into a short Wikipedia bout
| reading about Japan's period of isolation.
| jzl wrote:
| You don't even need to go back that far. Just look at the story
| of Jose Alvarenga from a few years ago. He was adrift in the
| Pacific in a tiny fishing boat for the same amount of time:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Salvador_Alvarenga
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/07/fisherman-lost...
| jsmith45 wrote:
| > The Aman's owners, Tylos Shipping and Marine Services, told the
| BBC they had tried to help Mohammed but that their hands were
| tied.
|
| > "I can't force a judge to remove the legal guardianship," a
| representative told us. "And I can't find a single person on this
| planet - and I've tried - to replace him."
|
| Well, obviously nobody would volunteer unless things were going
| to change.
|
| But surely the ships operating company had violated their
| operating agreement, giving the owner grounds to "evict" them,
| find a new operator, get the updated safety equipment and
| classification certificates, and pay for the fuel. Once that was
| done surely the ship would be unseized, and with a new crew
| installed, Egypt ought to be happy to cancel the guardianship.
|
| This was all especially true back before it ran aground.
|
| It would also seem like this all would be very much in the
| owner's interest as letting the ship decay cannot be good for the
| ships value, and they probably were not getting paid rent by the
| current operator for this.
|
| But I'm guessing there is a lot more to this that the BBC article
| has left out.
| xwdv wrote:
| How exactly was he able to eat for that long? What are the
| logistics of being stranded on a ship?
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Four years stuck on a ship with no pay and lots of free time? I
| think I'd sell what I could for scrap, gotta got paid somehow.
| jopsen wrote:
| What does legal guardian mean? What if you flee?
|
| And if your employer owes you a salary can you sell the ship for
| scrap to recover salary? -- I'm guessing suck tricks would
| require a fancy lawyer.
| Stephanie123d wrote:
| Start your home business right now. Spend more time with your
| family and earn. Start bringing 55$/hour just on a computer. Very
| easy way to make your life happy and earning continuously...>>>>>
| www.Nifty2.com22
| yawnxyz wrote:
| What would happen if the ship "accidentally" started sinking, or
| if an explosion or other event of some sort happened to damage
| the ship?
| bagacrap wrote:
| hard to imagine how he could intentionally sink the ship given
| its lack of fuel/power
| avaldes wrote:
| > hard to imagine how he could intentionally sink the ship
| given its lack of fuel/power
|
| Shawshank Redemption style. Eroding the hull from inside and
| letting rust do the rest.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Holy fuck
| Borrible wrote:
| Oh, he is not the only one.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/emirates-oil-tanker-int-idUS...
|
| Now, whose hell is hotter?
|
| This world is definitly a ship of damned and fools.
|
| https://jakeanddinoschapman.com/works/ship-of-fools/
| huilo wrote:
| So, does he own the ship now?
| jollybean wrote:
| Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing.
|
| When foreign entities are able to bid for a lot less, and pay a
| lot less, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they will not
| bother with 'end of life' for ships, or getting insurance, or
| worrying about the lives of people who are 'expendable'.
|
| Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty labour
| practices.
|
| If every piece of this puzzle from end-to-end were to have
| happened in a 'rich country' there'd be legal issues, PR/media,
| litigation, and a separate kind of bureaucracy altogether,
| meaning the 'alternative' for a lot of corporations is just 'wash
| their hands' of it, pay 1/2 the price, and get all the ugly parts
| 'off the books'.
|
| We are to the point now where we have ample material surplus - we
| don't need any more 'plastic stuff from China' - it'd be
| worthwhile to start integrating a lot of 'off the books' stuff
| into trade deals. Ironically, it would be good for 'them' as
| well, because in chaotic, quasi-lawless systems it doesn't make
| sense for participants to invest in anything further ahead than
| what is in front of their noses (i.e. don't hate the Lebanese
| shippers for doing the only thing they can do to remain
| profitable, i.e. don't hate the player, hate the game) ...
| forcing some degree of transparency and accountability in these
| systems might raise prices a little bit, but the benefits would
| likely be immensely positive in the system overall.
|
| It's nice that the story is made personal, about a real
| individual (think: that Tom Hanks film about someone stuck in
| international airport limbo) but that's not really the story here
| is it.
| kevmo wrote:
| Nasty labour practices... It's just slavery. This poor
| gentleman was forced into slavery.
|
| You're right that this is what we're outsourcing. All of the
| corporate trade agreements - American manufacturing was shipped
| overseas, and American labor forced to compete with what is
| often a modern form of slave labor.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| American manufacturing was shipped overseas _because_ , i.e.
| after, American labor was unable to compete. I'm not sure
| what "corporate trade agreements" means either; corporations
| don't make "trade agreements".
|
| I'm also not sure why everyone takes for granted that America
| not having as many manufacturing jobs is a bad thing...
| danielheath wrote:
| You mean paid labor couldn't compete on price with slaves?
| Color me shocked.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Yes, but also the standard of living in the US that
| American labor can't really compete on price with anyone.
| water8 wrote:
| Manufacturing is like a ladder. When you outsource the
| bottom, it's no different than cutting the rungs of a
| ladder beneath you. Manufacturing is essential to the
| wealth and prosperity of any nation.
| [deleted]
| seneca wrote:
| Words have meaning, and the meaning of "slavery" is not "a
| bad situation". Slavery is alive and well in the world, but
| this story has nothing to do with it.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| They appointed him as a forced custodian and imprisoned him
| on a boat for 4 years by way of forcing him to be its
| guardian. That is slavery. Could he quit? Did he have any
| rights or freedoms while in his situation?
| dzolob wrote:
| And it was forced to slavery by the same people who took that
| job out of seas. Greed has no bottom.
| krapp wrote:
| Yeah but just think of the value being created for
| shareholders and consumers! /s
| corty wrote:
| And remember, the company only has a duty to its
| shareholders to be more greedy!
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| Exactly. What you need are systems architected in such a
| way to stop greed and its nasty effects.
| emmelaich wrote:
| If you call indentured servitude slavery, you're not helping
| - it just lessens the dynamic range of language.
|
| It sure doesn't help actual slaves.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If you call indentured servitude slavery
|
| You're being perfectly accurate; indentured servitude is
| consistent with both historical understandings of slavery
| and modern legal definitions; it was certainly distinct
| from the particular form of chattel slavery that was
| popular for a few hundred years and fell out of fashion in
| thr 19th century, and it is useful to be able to
| distinguish them since they overlapped in time and space,
| but that particular form of slavery was not the
| historically dominant form, itself, and it doesn't make
| sense to narrow the definition to that particular form.
|
| While, certainly, that form of chattel slavery was the most
| immediate concern for, say, American abolitionists, I think
| they would see it as badly missing the point and not
| actually abolishing slavery if indentured servitude had
| been restored to replace chattel slavery.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Yup, not the dominant form.
|
| However I found a curious tidbit the other day; the 1619
| ship had indentured servants not slaves. Not to belittle
| their plight, as they were de facto slaves as soon as
| they got on the ship.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| American abolitionists very much understood that chattel
| slavery wasn't the only form of slavery. The text of the
| 13th amendment indicates as much.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| Ultimately it's a tragedy of commons situation and in these
| instances the only solutions are rigorous regulation or
| internalization of the costs of externalities. Both won't
| happen, because the politics behind it are also a tragedy of
| commons.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Nit on economic dynamics: more a Greesham's Law circumstance
| (bad or no regulation drives out good) than a tragedy of the
| commons (uncontained resource allocation leads to global
| overuse).
|
| They're similar, but have some significant and relevant
| distinctions.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Err here in the United States you have people pissing in
| bottles and bags because they can't take a break without
| missing targets. The West is not immune to predatory hiring and
| employment practices.
| open0 wrote:
| Ever been enslaved on a Thai fishing boat? I know a few
| people who have, including a neighbor that was missing for 3
| years. The US has its own problems, but places like Dubai,
| Southeast Asia, etc. have a much more severe problem with
| mistreatment and abuse of workers.
|
| Last year a building collapsed here during construction and
| killed about 60 people. Stuff like that happens all the time.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I lived in Gulf countries for 12 years; I'm well aware of
| the shitty and life-threatening work conditions for migrant
| labourers.
|
| I've also lived in the US for 9 years; I'm also well aware
| of the mistreatment of workers here, such as workers who
| are undocumented migrants, workers who are prisoners,
| workers who work gig companies, Amazon workers, and many
| others.
| tacocataco wrote:
| The common theme here is humans are excellent at
| externalizing costs.
|
| Jeff bezos is not pissing in a bottle. The people who
| profit the most from these ships are never trapped on
| them.
| runarberg wrote:
| Normally I don't engage in these kind of false comparisons
| and I do know that south east asia has a problem with off
| shore industrial slavery unprecedented in the USA.
| Sometimes things are uniquely bad in other parts of the
| world and there is no domestic comparison. That is
| certainly the case with the enslaved fishing vessels
| (although a case can be made about EU/EFTA operated fishing
| vessels out of Western Sahara and Mauritania).
|
| But now I'm gonna make an exception and point to the Hard
| Rock building collapse in New Orleans in 2019 which killed
| 3 workers and injured dozens more[1]. Things like that
| happen all the time in the US as well.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1031_Canal#Partial_collaps
| e_du...
| jjeaff wrote:
| That Hard Rock building collapse did not seem to be
| something that happens all the time in the US. That thing
| got tons of news coverage because it is rare. It
| definitely happens, but not on the scale of many of the
| countries it is being compared to in this thread.
| unreal37 wrote:
| It seems fairly easy to get a union if a workplace wants
| one...
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Right, ask Amazon workers about that.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| The warehouse workers down in Alabama? Why would you ask
| them? They didn't want one. It wasn't close at all,
| either.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Because Amazon moving killed all other local work
| opportunities, and also because Amazon did not allow
| workers access to union organizers and information. The
| case is probably going to go the NRLB which will rule the
| election illegal.
| peteretep wrote:
| I have pissed in a bottle before out of expediency, but I've
| never spent several years stranded on a ship without power,
| company, etc, out of free will. Conflating the two seems
| weird.
| Klinky wrote:
| Do you piss in a bottle on a daily basis as part of your
| job? Comparing peeing in a bottle [a few times in your
| life] for expediency compared to doing it on the daily,
| seems to be its own conflation.
| unishark wrote:
| Private investigators have to do this routinely. Of
| course they are probably self-employed.
|
| OSHA laws require companies allow bathroom breaks though.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I piss in bottles and on the sides of roads on road
| trips. Sometimes daily, depending on the length of the
| trip. You make it sound like some great injustice. It's
| just pissing in a bottle, who cares?
|
| It's pretty offensive to compare this to being held
| prisoner on a ship.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Doing something freely of choice with no (or very mimial)
| downside risk, and _doing it at the penalty of losing
| ones jobs, whilst the employer denies the practice_ ,
| have substantial daylight between them.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I can only assume you have some very deep seated issues
| around urine and urination? With a totally straight face,
| you're comparing pissing in bottles with _being
| imprisoned for four years_. Amazon could demand full
| bottles at close of workday, and then pour it on your
| head, and this comparison would still be farcical.
| Recalibrate your outrage.
|
| I'm going to blow your mind: _RV toilets are just giant
| bottles with levers and valves._
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I am comparing the case of urinating on a roadtrip as a
| means to save a few minutes on arrival time, with a
| significant labour force being obligated to do so under
| terms and conditions of employment whilst their employer
| loudly and publicly denies this fact. (The fact that the
| employer later retracted the denail doesn't obviate the
| predicate clause.)
|
| Your reading of my statement is far from the mark,
| curiously so.
| Klinky wrote:
| Please start peeing in bottles daily as part of your job,
| and let your co-workers know about, note their reaction.
| This discussion is about unacceptable work hazards, not
| exclusively about being imprisoned on a ship.
| peteretep wrote:
| If my current workplace offered me a 15% raise in
| exchange for forgoing toilet breaks and pissing in a
| bottle for the next year, I would go for it.
|
| I'm sure there's a number for which I'd agree to be
| stranded on a boat off the coast of Egypt without power,
| but I suspect it's closer to 15x my salary.
|
| As I understand it, this makes the latter 100x worse than
| the former.
| Klinky wrote:
| No, you'd need to compare the actual job that requires
| you to piss in a bottle, along with its salary, not your
| current job with a 15% bonus tacked on.
|
| Also people don't sign up to be abandoned on a ship,
| they're not told of that possibility, until it happens.
| They signed up to be merchant marines or seaman, not
| prisoners of ghost ships.
|
| Just because you find getting bit by a dog more palatable
| than falling into a pit of snakes, doesn't make getting
| bit by a dog okay or acceptable.
| [deleted]
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Exactly! And I know hardcore capitalist apologists who would
| say it was his free choice to agree to be legally bound. If you
| ask me, that's some next level mental gymnastics, redefining
| the term "free choice." But, there are those who disagree with
| me, and I expect you'll see some of them show up to react to my
| comment.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| See! They found me! Lol. Predictable. I guess the
| "marketplace of ideas" is inefficient these days.
| TheButlerian wrote:
| You win the reward: Clown post of the day!
| justinator wrote:
| You just described Capitalism.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Under capitalism man exploits man. Under socialism it's just
| the opposite.
| justinator wrote:
| Downvote me all you want it's not not true. Rich people don't
| exist without exploiting the poor; so too with countries. I'm
| not sorry if you're wealthy and this is hurting too close to
| home, better live with it if you also want to be so wealthy.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| We're downvoting you, not because it "hits too close to
| home", but because we think you're full of baloney. Don't
| take the downvotes as confirmation that you're right,
| because they're not.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Trade isn't zero sum.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| People with more resources have been exploiting people with
| less resources since probably the domestication of animals
| and plants created sedentary living and the idea of
| money/credit, perhaps before that even. Not just under
| capitalism, mind you, but every form of economic system.
|
| I believe resource inequality will exist until free or
| near-free energy sources are developed, and even then, you
| still need ever expanding amounts of land/space. I believe
| it's a consequence of scarcity and human nature.
| rhengles wrote:
| As Mark Twain said, "Buy land, they're not making it
| anymore". Nothing can make land "free". The planet's
| resources are vast but finite. If people continue
| reproducing with no limits they're reducing everyone's
| share of the pie. This is the actual reason why "the poor
| gets poorer", there's more of them but the resources stay
| the same.
|
| This is the same logic that explain why building more
| roads does not reduce traffic congestion, because new
| demand is created to use the new roads and the traffic
| stays bad.
| jollybean wrote:
| Countries mostly become rich by being highly socially
| organized, and having a high standard for individual
| contribution.
|
| For example, 'gold' imported by ill-gotten means from some
| far off land actually provides 0 value in terms of material
| value creation. Of course 'oil' does, but remember the
| 'House of Saud' is kept in power by the US not with the
| promise of US access to 'cheap oil', rather, with the
| promise it will be sold at full value, on the open market -
| just not in some kind of strategic/complicated/backwater
| setup with the then Soviet Union or China. The US didn't
| 'go in and take all the oil', which they definitely had the
| power to do.
|
| This exemplifies, in perhaps a crude, ham-fisted
| realpolitik manner the 'enforcement of trust' in systems I
| alluded to in my original comment: it's actually the US
| (and ultimately everyone's) interest to uphold fairly basic
| commercial and humanitarian standards in the long run.
|
| And to be fair, these problems are to some extent a
| function of capitalism, because only 'very large' systems
| have the opportunity to plan on the generational scale,
| ergo, there's effectively no commercial enterprise for
| which the implementation of such standards really matters,
| that's generally the purview of governments.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| This feels slightly more true than the comment you
| responded to. But I feel that important aspects are left
| out.
|
| I don't feel like I can make much justice for those
| aspects but here's my two cents: Selling oil on the free
| market disproportionately benefits those that own the
| means to process and resell it further. Or rather, those
| that ultimately coordinate global oil logistics. The
| global fossil fuel market doesn't exactly seem like a
| "free" market. There are few players and they are
| powerful.
| unishark wrote:
| > Selling oil on the free market disproportionately
| benefits those that own the means to process and resell
| it further.
|
| What is the basis for this comparison? Compare the profit
| margins of a gas station (tiny) versus the profit margin
| of a company that needs to purchase fuel to operate a
| factory (could be anything). Or for that matter a company
| that needs products produced at one of those factories
| (the rest of us). The benefit is widespread and it's not
| at all obvious who benefits most, commodity or not.
| jollybean wrote:
| The means to process and transport oil are commodity,
| there's very little surplus in it. It just requires a bit
| of investment, but not much.
|
| Exclusive control of 'easy access to Oil' is
| overwhelmingly the power in that value chain.
|
| The 'first order' issue is earlier in the process, it's
| that 'House of Saud' keeps most of the surplus for their
| family and furthermore use it to do some suppressive
| things.
|
| The fossil fuel market it is very open, and market
| oriented. It has obvious geostrategic artifacts (notably
| the petrodollar, some politicians refusal to build
| pipelines, military support of interventions, OPEC), but
| it's generally open season. Nobody controls the flow of
| spice melange.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The means to process and transport oil are commodity,
| there's very little surplus in it. It just requires a bit
| of investment, but not much.
|
| > Exclusive control of 'easy access to Oil' is
| overwhelmingly the power in that value chain.
|
| Singapore might disagree. But what do they know?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The wealthy exploiting the poor predates capitalism by 10s
| of thousands of years.
| wildrhythms wrote:
| And nothing has changed.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Your employer has the legal right to tell you whether
| (and who) you can marry? To tell you where you're allowed
| to live? Come on. It can simultaneously be true that some
| people in our society have it bad and also that they have
| it better than they would have in the middle ages.
| yerwhat01010 wrote:
| I'd also say that the relationship between the average
| 10th-centry peasant and his feudal lord strikes me as a
| lot less "exploitative" than the typical employee-
| employer relationship today.
| s_fischer wrote:
| How is a two-way, 'at will', relationship more
| exploitative than one which comes with legal penalties
| for choosing to complete your job? (a job that you were
| born into, I might add)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "At will" is vastly insufficient to generate an equality
| of power.
|
| _The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much
| more easily: and the law, besides, authorises, or at
| least does not prohibit, their combinations, while it
| prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of
| parliament against combining to lower the price of work,
| but many against combining to raise it. In all such
| disputes, the masters can hold out much longer. A
| landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant,
| though they did not employ a single workman, could
| generally live a year or two upon the stocks, which they
| have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a
| week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year,
| without employment._
|
| -- Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ http://www.gutenberg.o
| rg/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...
|
| Under the feudal system, lords had at least a nominal
| obligation to see to the welfare of their charges. I'm
| not claiming the relationship was otherwise equal, but
| that sense of obligation is now all but wholly absent.
| LegitShady wrote:
| ...please explain your point using a logical argument,
| because on its face it's ridiculous and untrue.
| yerwhat01010 wrote:
| Wait, I'm an idiot. I wrote "less exploitative" when I
| went to write _more_ exploitative. You 're right: to say
| that it's _less_ exploitative would be absurd.
|
| I need to write fewer posts when it's late at night...
| LegitShady wrote:
| no worries, I wasn't sure what you intended but it didn't
| make sense so I asked.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| In which case one might observe that capitalism merely
| perpetuates that injustice.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The wealthy exploiting the poor predates capitalism by
| 10s of thousands of years.
|
| I feel like in order to make this claim, you'd need a
| pretty detailed definition of what "capitalism" is.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Not that Wikipedia is the definitive source of knowledge,
| but it indicates capitalism forming around the 16th
| century[1].
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I mean, I think it's sufficient to quote the opening of
| the article verbatim:
|
| > The history of capitalism is diverse. The concept of
| capitalism has many debated roots, but fully[ _quantify_
| ] fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars[
| _specify_ ][ _weasel words_ ] to have emerged in
| Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the
| Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries.[ _citation
| needed_ ] Over the following centuries, capital
| accumulated by a variety of methods, at a variety of
| scales, and became associated[ _by whom?_ ] with much
| variation in the concentration of wealth and economic
| power. Capitalism gradually became the dominant economic
| system throughout the world.[1][2](subscription
| required)[ _need quotation to verify_ ][3][ _need
| quotation to verify_ ] Much[ _quantify_ ] of the history
| of the past 500 years is concerned with the development
| of capitalism in its various forms.
|
| > It is an ongoing debate within the fields of economics
| and sociology as to what the past, current and future
| stages of capitalism are.
|
| This does not leave me filled with confidence that people
| know what they mean when they mention "capitalism".
|
| The problem is that there are two broad paradigms of what
| "capitalism" should mean:
|
| 1. Whatever the United States does.
|
| This is what most people seem to be talking about when
| they talk about "capitalism", but it leaves something to
| be desired on theoretical grounds. Many aspects of it are
| not particularly economic.
|
| 2. An economic system defined... somehow. Mostly by
| constrast with "communism", which -- unlike "capitalism"
| -- has a large body of theory attached.
|
| This is what people want to claim they are talking about.
| It is more or less conceptually incoherent, being defined
| only as the absence of policies covered by the term
| "communism". But all of those negative policies are very
| old, historically.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Nothing you quote suggests that it is a popular opinion
| among historians that capitalism is an appropriate label
| for systems used in antiquity though. Marx may have
| coined the term capitalism to have a term to contrast
| communism, but it definitely has a large body of theory
| attached see e.g. Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations."
|
| It is probably better to contrast capitalism with
| socialism though, and classical economics with communist
| theory. Not all capitalists ascribe to classical
| economics, just like not all socialists ascribe to
| communist theory.
|
| Marx gave capitalism a name to talk about it as a step in
| the thrust of history, contrasting it with earlier
| feudalism systems, and to argue that it would inevitably
| lead to its own destruction while advocating that
| communism is the logical next step. It wasn't just
| "anything before communism" even for him.
|
| Keynes, Hayek, and Smith all have a common thread on
| their belief in the market, despite the fact that they
| would in many cases advocate for very different policies.
| glenmorangie_14 wrote:
| You should check out the book "Debt: The first 5000
| years" by Graeber. It covers this topic in depth.
|
| My summary won't do it justice, but basically our society
| has a myth that society has always been capitalistic, but
| there is some evidence that is not true. It's a pretty
| interesting take on some fundamental economic thoughts
| and theories, because the author is an anthropologist.
| lmm wrote:
| It's also littered with factual errors (I'm not an
| academic but even I spotted an outright falsehood), which
| makes one rather dubious of the overall thesis.
| karaterobot wrote:
| If I had to name an economic system where ordinary people
| were made to wait for a long time due to pointless and
| arbitrary decisions made by a bureaucracy that doesn't care
| about them, capitalism would not be the first thing that came
| to mind.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The system you appear to prefer intersects with the system
| you appear to criticise, and extracts profits from it
| whilst perpetuating human abuses.
|
| That seems to indicate a problem with the system you appear
| to prefer.
| novok wrote:
| The fault here is ultimately with egypt. They were not letting
| him leave, they took his passport and not even letting him get
| 'deported' back to his home country.
|
| This is not from outsourcing, this is Kafkaesque bureaucracy
| created by Egypt itself.
| Popegaf wrote:
| I disagree, ultimately, we the consumers are at fault. We buy
| the cheapest products (or the flashiest: see Apple) and these
| are the consequences. Companies have to save costs to compete
| because we won't agree to pay more. We won't vote for
| politicians that make everybody's life better: we will vote
| for politicians who promises that "the other guys" are going
| to suffer and that "you or your group" is going to have an
| easy life.
|
| Somewhere down the line, yeah, Egypt is to blame, but _we_
| are the source of the problem - we are to blame. If you want
| these kind of things to decrease, try to buy local products,
| try to buy second hand, try to vote for the benefit of
| everybody (not just you or your group), try to pollute less,
| try to be conscious about the effects of your actions, and be
| less egoistic.
| cardanome wrote:
| > I disagree, ultimately, we the consumers are at fault.
|
| Nope. This is a lie fabricated by big corporations so that
| they don't seem responsible.
|
| People have limited money and time. Just because you buy a
| more expensive product does not mean it is produced more
| ethically.
|
| If two companies are selling their product for the same
| price then the one using non ethical behavior to lower
| production cost will still make more profit. It has a
| competitive advantage and will take over the market.
| Increasing the base price because you as a consumer are
| willing to pay more does not help the situation.
|
| Some companies advertise with certain labels that imply
| that they are more ethical. One example of this is called
| green washing. Most of the time it is an advertisement
| stunt and does not improve the situation.
|
| The research necessary to ensure the product you buy is
| ethically produced is way above the scope for an average
| consumer having a job and other obligations to do.
|
| > We won't vote for politicians that make everybody's life
| better
|
| Lobbyists have way more power over politicians than the
| common man trying to vote for the smaller evil.
|
| Only if they are organized do they have a voice. For this
| they need to first understand that blaming consumers is a
| lie and that the industry needs to be regulated.
| [deleted]
| 1337shadow wrote:
| You are Nongqawuse :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongqawuse
| Popegaf wrote:
| You are Ken M :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_M
| 1337shadow wrote:
| You mean I'm amagogotya :P
| nickff wrote:
| It seems like the court basically enslaved him.
| lmm wrote:
| That's how contempt of court rules generally work in
| common-law countries, even in the west.
| csomar wrote:
| Someone is always going to bear responsibility. This is why,
| when you are incorporating an off-shore company, you need
| some kind of "representative" in the country itself. These
| people might be making "free" money but if things turn sour
| they might find themselves in trouble.
|
| The court did not do some random detention (they did let the
| rest of the crew) but they declared him the responsible
| party. In that case, he did break the Egyptian law.
|
| If you are getting a job where you bear a certain
| responsibility, you have to make sure that the company is not
| breaking the law _through_ you. You 'll be responsible, and
| worse, if the company is headquartered overseas, you might
| bear the whole responsibility.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > Someone is always going to bear responsibility.
|
| "Powerful people demand that there is always some scapegoat
| who they can abuse, even if they aren't at fault and it
| doesn't really help make things better."
|
| Blood for the blood god, I suppose!
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You wrote: <<This is why, when you are incorporating an
| off-shore company, you need some kind of "representative"
| in the country itself.>> Absolutely not. All kinds of shell
| corporations are setup with nothing more than a letterbox.
| Look at the Carribean (incl. Bermuda), Gibraltar, Isle of
| Man, Langkawi, Singapore, Hongkong (the list goes on and
| on!). Literally, they have huge numbers of off-shore
| corporations registered with no one on-shore.
|
| In places with stronger regulation and rule of law, these
| letterbox shell corporations are not allowed or strictly
| regulated.
| Crashbat wrote:
| The article states there are more than 250 of these cases all
| throughout the world, it's nothing to do with 'bureaucracy'
| or Egypt.
| lolinder wrote:
| Egypt definitely has fault here, but the company that owns
| the ship could have gotten the ship out of there if they
| cared about him at all. Yes, it might have been expensive,
| but I would expect a US based company to have rescued him
| within weeks of this situation starting, not years.
| nickff wrote:
| The article says the parent company is in financial
| difficulties, and the individual in question was basically
| being held for ransom (along with the ship). Depending on
| the ordering of debts (for the company), they may not have
| been able to compensate the Egyptians.
|
| All of that being said, I agree an American company likely
| would have had this sorted out faster, because the USA
| tends to deal with bankruptcies and the like very quickly.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Seems to me that corporations owning ships having
| financial difficulties would be a natural consequence of
| outsourcing behaviour. You want to outsource risk and
| responsibilities. So the big companies get rid of their
| ships and hire small companies on the edge of
| profitability.
|
| I assume it's not always the most sound way to do
| business but some should get away with it.
| refurb wrote:
| What's the option if you don't outsource? Every company
| who wants to ship something by sea needs to purchase and
| boat and man a crew?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| How? I mean there are shady American transport firms.
|
| This isn't the result of big massive conglomerates. It's
| mom and pop small firms.
|
| People to small and broke to sue.
| leetcrew wrote:
| mv aman is a 100m ship. any company owning that is kinda
| stretching the term "mom and pop".
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| The mom and pops are the puppets of large companies.
| Large companies transfer risk and plausible deniability
| to small companies all the time.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Name me a country where logistics orgs never run out of
| money or resources.
| labster wrote:
| The United Federation of Planets doesn't even use money,
| and it's post-scarcity so they don't run out of
| resources.
| dexterous wrote:
| I had a feeling someone was eventually going to pull this
| one out. :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The United Federation of Planets doesn't even use money
|
| Well, they occasionally say they don't (and Roddenberry
| said they don't), but they actually do (or discussing the
| fact that they do) in every single one of the series, and
| several of the movies.
|
| > and it's post-scarcity so they don't run out of
| resources.
|
| They do run into resource limits.
|
| Also, the UFP is, you known, fiction, and not even haed
| science fiction (or even particularly internally
| consistent fiction.)
| edoceo wrote:
| replicators tho. makes a _huge_ difference.
|
| we're headed away from UFP and more towards DOOP.
| imagineerschool wrote:
| They run out of resources all the time and it drives many
| plots!
| drdeca wrote:
| fictitious evidence isn't.
| zoshi wrote:
| Ships, planets, space, etc. are scarce and owned by
| various actors. The Federation is an interplanetary
| government made of sovereign member states, many of which
| do trade and use money. Even without the use of trade,
| there must be systems for determining who controls what.
| robotbikes wrote:
| This discussion makes me wish that I had borrowed the
| book Trekonomics from my friend when he offered to loan
| it to me. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trekonomics
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Let's invert that.
|
| Let's assume that logistics organisations _consistently_
| run out of resources. That this is a probabalistic
| outcome of operations. The BBC article even gives us a
| sense of the baseline risk, about 250 cases presently,
| and 85 new ones reported in 2020 (meaning that _typical_
| durations exceed a year in length).
|
| In that case, _how do you address the inevitable
| circumstance without creating a human rights abuse
| crisis, presuming sufficient consideration and political
| will exists for this to occur?_
|
| Elsewhere in the thread, surity bonds are mentioned. That
| is, a ship on entering a port or other navigational /
| marine facility, places a bond in which some large and
| _far more solvent_ entity assures that compensation where
| due is paid.
|
| International treaties (to which major transit points
| such as canals might be obligated to join) are another
| option.
|
| An international response organisation with the ability
| to both intervene _and_ impose additional sanctions on
| any entities which impose such sailor-arrest.
|
| Keep in mind that the 2020 Beruit ANFO explosion occurred
| after a not-dissimilar situation, in which a ship was
| deemed unseaworthy and its cargo seized and held under
| exceptionally (and ultimately massively fatal and
| damaging) conditions, _in part because its ownership and
| questions over compensation were not met_.
|
| (There were quite admittedly _other_ concerns and
| failures, including by the Beruit port authority and
| judiciary, but the ownership and payment aspects touched
| on most of these. Hazardous cargo and storage have been
| at the heart of several other recent major disasters,
| including in Tianjin, China.)
|
| Whilst "flag of convenience" regulations make race-to-
| the-bottom standards in shipping regulation common,
| obligations to maintain surity bonds or similar
| instruments _of substantial duration_ (e.g., a year or
| more) to access major ports, canals, fueling depots, and
| the like, could help ensure compliance.
| rfrey wrote:
| Most of these ships are owned by single vessel companies,
| much like power plants. This allows the massive shipping
| companies to walk away from individual vessels.
| account42 wrote:
| > are owned by single vessel companies
|
| This legal fiction is only true as long as it is allowed
| to be. Egypt can see who was operating and using the ship
| and block their other ships until they fix the issue -
| they don't need to hold a scapegoat hostage for years.
| ornornor wrote:
| There is also back channeling. I also believe that if the
| shipping company and the sailor were from a different
| country (not necessarily the US but not failed states
| either), he would have gone home a long time ago.
| efitz wrote:
| There's a time honored solution for this - bond. You're not
| allowed in port until you post a bond that would cover
| whatever - crew repatriation, port fees, whatever. This
| could be formalized, eg through a holding company (Lloyds?)
| that the port could verify the bond with, etc. I don't have
| any knowledge of the shipping industry but from hearing
| this and other stories it sounds like a cluster f*k.
| Breza wrote:
| That makes sense. If I want somebody to change my locks
| or cut down a tree at my house, they need to post a bond
| first.
| zp33 wrote:
| the article says it's a middle eastern company that owns
| the ship: Tylos Shipping and Marine Service
| malandrew wrote:
| Egypt is using the violation of human rights as extortion
| here. I'm sorry, I'm this is in no way the fault of the
| shippers. A fair discussion is two entities sitting at the
| table and negotiating. Not two sitting at the table with
| one being cruel to the other that the other might care
| about. That's pure extortion.
| lolinder wrote:
| If a ship were straight-up captured by pirates and the
| crew held for ransom, I would still expect the company
| that sent the crew out to do everything in its power to
| bring them home. If said company simply shrugged and said
| "we tried to come up with the ransom money, but
| couldn't", I would consider that behavior unethical.
|
| The same applies here: yes, Egypt is corrupt. Yes, this
| is a massive violation of human rights. But the company
| took on a moral responsibility when it sent out that
| crew. We can't excuse someone from their ethical duty
| simply because other people neglect theirs. Ethics is
| meaningless if it stops applying as soon as there's
| corruption outside.
| Breza wrote:
| Plus the United States probably would have sent a diplomat
| as soon as the press found out what was happening.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Given the excessive "compensation" demand that Egypt is
| making for the ship that blocked the canal, I'm going to
| assume the fault lies with Egypt.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Let's get more specific. What is reasonable compensation
| that should Egypt demand?
| fallingknife wrote:
| The canal was blocked for 6 days and revenue is $15
| million per day, so that's $90 million. But many of the
| ships that were held up eventually transited anyway, so
| $90 million is an absolute upper bound. Then there is the
| cost of the operation to free the ship, which I don't
| know. But Egypt is asking for $1 billion, so the rescue
| operation would have had to cost at minimum $900 million
| for the price to be justified. And I know it didn't cost
| $900 million, because if split evenly over 6 days that
| would be $150 million per day, which would be > 50% of
| Egypt's entire government spending over the time period.
| So I can say with confidence that the rescue was at least
| an order of magnitude less than that, so another $90
| million (and that's still a massive over estimate).
|
| So absolute upper bound for losses is $180 million. If I
| were making odds I would guess that only 1/3 of the ships
| diverted around Africa, so $30 million, and that the
| rescue cost another $15 million, so over/under $45
| million.
|
| And that's without even bringing up that there was a
| canal pilot on the ship at the time who may share some
| portion of the responsibility for the accident. So, yeah,
| it's extortion.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Egypt is likely using treble damages in their
| calculation.
| vasco wrote:
| A pilot from the canal was on board, how is it not their
| fault? (Zero compensation)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I don't know the rules of the canal, but I highly doubt
| this scenario. The Egyptian gov't basically has a
| monopoly and can charge anything they want and write any
| rules they want. Of course, ships are free to circumvent
| Africa (around the Cape of Good Hope) if they disagree.
|
| More likely: Ships are required by rules to have an
| Egyptian pilot on-board during the passage, and there is
| limited legal liability for ordinary operating
| circumstances. That said, if an Egyptian pilot was found
| grossly negligent of their duties, then they would be
| liable. However, in most legal systems, this is an
| exceptionally high bar. And, I assume if you pass the
| canal, you subject yourself to the Egyptian court system.
| (Read about the big cruise ship that ran aground in
| Italy. That story reads like text book gross negligence!)
| krisoft wrote:
| Per the Suez Canal Authority - Rules of Navigation
| Article 4, section 7 (page 7):
|
| "(7) Owners, mobilizers, charterers and/or operators bind
| themselves responsible for any mistakes resulting from
| pilot's advice or arrise by SCA personnel."
|
| https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/English/Navigation/Pages/Rul
| eso...
| vkou wrote:
| The pilot is supposed to steer the ship, but the captain
| is ultimately responsible for it.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| No, the ship owner abandoned their ship and Egypt wants
| the trashing to be paid. That's not their fault. The
| methods to get there are not ideal but given the
| matroshka method of hiding responsibility I don't see
| what else they could have done.
| FpUser wrote:
| Depends on what company. One headed by people like Ross
| Perot ( RIP ) definitely will. The other that runs private
| jail would most likely let people expire if it makes them
| extra dollar.
| munk-a wrote:
| It reminds me of the court case that was controversial
| when Gorsuch was confirmed involving a trucker - "TransAm
| Trucking v. Dept. of Labour" in particular. It's another
| case where company property is valued over individuals
| lives - the case itself hinged on the fact that the
| employee was free to leave the site on foot but that it
| was illegal for him to use the tractor half of the truck
| owned by the employer to reach safety without
| authorization from the employer. Essentially the ruling
| of that case leads to the learned lesson that all truck
| drivers should strap private motorcycles to the sides of
| their trucks - doing otherwise is irresponsible.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding something? The courts ruled in the
| truckers favor. Besides, I'm not sure a motorcycle would
| have saved him from the extreme cold.
| girvo wrote:
| I must be reading it backwards, but wasn't the order
| eventually upheld that the employee be reinstated?
| Gorsuch dissented, but he wasn't the one making the
| ruling. At least thats what the article I just read on it
| said, but I could be wrong -- it's early in the morning
| and I only just had my coffee!
|
| > TransAm appealed, but in a 2-to-1 decision, a panel of
| the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the Board's
| reinstatement order (TransAm Trucking v. Department of
| Labor, 2016). Judge Neil Gorsuch dissented.
|
| https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/477996
| beaconstudios wrote:
| in case anyone else wants to know the details of this
| case:
|
| https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/477996
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You can find examples of such bad behavior in pretty much
| every state; it's by no means unique to Egypt.
| raducu wrote:
| I wonder if sailors can get two passports for this reason (I
| know in my country you can get two if you plan on visiting
| both Israel and some other country that's hostile towards
| Israel).
|
| Not that it would help much, because you'd have to phisically
| escape anyway.
| BBC-vs-neolibs wrote:
| Less outsourcing means being less beholden to Egypt, too.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| > Mohammed, they said, should never have signed the order in
| the first place.
|
| I wonder what would have happened if he refused to sign
| mkhalil wrote:
| I am not certain but from my expierence, it would most
| likely consist of detention, fear, and likely some torture;
| to say nothing of the torture it is to take someone's
| passport and trap them onboard a ship for 4 years.
| zaphirplane wrote:
| The other crew left and presumably the captain after this
| guy signed to stay and be the custodian, there is nothing
| to indicate in the article he of all the crew was singled
| out (from memory)
|
| Obviously it doesn't change the tragic situation, had he
| not signed up as custodian we'd be reading an article
| about a ship captain stuck on a ship Not to victim blame
| there is a difference between someone stole x thousands
| from my home vs I lost x thousands investing in an
| ostrich farm Both are sad, but ...
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Read a story of a ship's captain, stuck on the ship at anchor
| in New Jersey.
|
| There is a mariner's charity in Greater New York that would
| help out. They would post a bond with ICE and drive the sailor
| to an airport or another ship.
|
| Well, whether 9/11 security or what, they weren't allowed to do
| this. So the captain had been on the ship for over a year.
|
| So, yes, it can happen here.
| busterarm wrote:
| Sounds interesting. Got a link?
| [deleted]
| chiph wrote:
| It happens fairly frequently. The owner runs into financial
| difficulty and the creditors seize the ship. The crew can't
| leave because they aren't allowed to abandon it, as well as
| not having a visa to enter the US to get to the airport,
| nor the money for airfare home.
|
| The locals usually donate food & supplies to the crew.
|
| https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/story/how-a-
| charleston-p...
| silly-silly wrote:
| I'm slightly confused, if the owner can't afford to deal
| with the costs, they obviously dont have the financial
| ability to penalize the individual NOT to abandon ship.
|
| That level of cognitive disconnect surely can't be held
| up as valid in any legal system that has greater
| cognitive ability to do 'connect the dots drawings'.
| hulahoof wrote:
| I would imagine it is illegal to abandon a ship in port
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Illegal for whom? Surely it's illegal for the owner, or
| perhaps the captain at most, but not the crew?
| unishark wrote:
| That story is probably due to coronavirus travel
| restrictions, given it is from last May.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| This was in print and almost 20 years ago, so unfortunately
| not.
| Stephanie123d wrote:
| Start your home business right now. Spend more time with your
| family and earn. Start bringing 55$/hour just on a computer.
| Very easy way to make your life happy and earning
| continuously...>>>>> www.Nifty2.com22
| ryanlol wrote:
| > Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty
| labour practices
|
| I've spent the past few months taking a deep dive into the
| Dubai real estate market. Excluding some villas, there are
| maybe 2 or 3 "very nice" buildings.
|
| Many look nice on the outside, but rarely on the inside.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing.
|
| I doubt that you could find even one person on here who _wouldn
| 't_ support a blanket ban of outsourcing/externalization
| tomorrow.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| We
| vermontdevil wrote:
| What is shocking is the number of active cases right now. 250 or
| so around the world. Wow.
| jakub_g wrote:
| Just a few months ago, Beirut port blew up after a series of
| events that started with an abandoned ship.
|
| The way the world's maritime shipping system works is really
| screwed up.
|
| https://www.stableseas.org/blue-economy/explosion-beirut-sea...
| markbnj wrote:
| If you're interested in shipping I highly recommend the YouTube
| channel of Chief Engineer Makoi
| https://www.youtube.com/c/ChiefMAKOi. He has been talking about
| Mr. Aisha's situation for some time now. Really awesome to see
| that he's been relieved.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I started to write a comment about why international law doesn't
| require ship owners to post a bond superior to other debt blah
| blah blah. Then I realized I am out of my element. I am like a
| child walking into the middle of a movie and wants to know what's
| going on.
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