Carnival Triumph Cruise Ship Is Offshore Disaster Like All Our Offshore Messes

The most recent Carnival Cruise disaster is a great analogy to what is happening in general to the US population.  We are aboard the United States Carnival Cruise To Hell and the ship is running out of power and is becoming a plague ship as Feces, water reported on floor of disabled Carnival cruise ship in Gulf of Mexico.  But the owners of this ship claim Conditions on Disabled Cruise Ship in Dispute and they are taking good care of the people imprisoned on this slow boat to Alabama.

 

The US is the same thing as this ship.  It is a ‘consumer economy’ which produces much less than it consumes and thus runs very deep in the red.  Carnival Cruise lines is running in the red, too, and to pay for this they skimp on maintenance.  Like in the US today.  The passengers who party on board suddenly find their money is worthless because there is nothing to buy or use and since energy runs these systems and the energy is gone, their money is worthless and they are now in Dante’s Hell rather than Pleasure Island for Bad Boys (Pinocchio).

 

The passengers report six hour lines to be fed foul food and acts of desperation and aggression as well as great discomfort and general ennui as  there is little to do except watch sewage flow across the floor.  All the cruise ships are registered in tax havens overseas and are totally ‘offshore’ entities like much of our banking system and manufacturing power.  This way, no one regulates them, they do as they please and they provide dangerous or shoddy services with impunity while most of the staff running these ships are ‘illegal aliens’ that is, ‘poor people from third world countries desperate for work’.

 

A comment at this Brit news site caught my eye:  Carnival Triumph: CEO Micky Arison takes in basketball game as thousands suffer | Mail Online

 

Lawyer John Arthur Eaves, a Jackson, Miss.-based attorney isn’t surprised that the same ship seized by the district court in Galveston, Texas, nearly a year ago based on Carnival Cruise Lines’ lack of compliance to standards regarding on-board safety and procedures aimed at preserving the lives of passengers and crew is now adrift in the Golf of Mexico.

 

On request of the Law Offices of John Arthur Eaves, police had seized the Carnival Triumph in the port of Galveston, Texas, on March 29, 2012. “We seized this exact ship to make Americans aware the same inadequate standards that caused the sinking of the Costa Concordia are the same problems on every Carnival cruise vessel,” Eaves said. “How ironic is it the Triumph is the ship we seized to make this point?”

 

Eaves maintains Carnival continues to put profits over passenger safety. “We call this greed, and the only way to remedy this is to close the loopholes in the law and hold the company accountable” says John Arthur Eaves

 

All these loopholes exist thanks to bribes paid to Congress people.  Especially the GOP in Florida.  These cruise lines pretend to be American corporations with fancy buildings in the US but they are foreign entities which have written rules so they are totally outlaw operations that have no oversight what so ever in the US.  I said in the past, they should fly pirate flags.

 

Virtually no news stories in the US talk about the fact this ship was seized last year in response to Carnival Cruise Lines abuse of passengers leading to them dying.  Here is a site I visited last year during the Italian crash news days which is about the legal ramifications of maritime laws:

 

Passenger Rights : Cruise Law News

 

Ms. Wooldridge goes so far as to suggest that the recent safety proposals of having safety drills before cruising, keeping strangers out of the bridge and other long overdue basic practices may “eliminate such incidents altogether.”
Now I am accustomed to delusional puff pieces like this from travel publication editors (Mr. Woolridge is also editor of Travel + Leisure). The most notorious pro-cruise puff pieces come from cruise cheerleader Carolyn Spencer-Brown, who is editor of the Expedia/Travel Advisor owned Cruise Critic publication. She loves to say that cruising is “absolutely safe.”
The truth is that there have been far more deaths on cruise ships over the course of the past five years than other forms of major transportation. The U.S. based commercial aviation industry is remarkably safe. The airlines had strict pre-flight checklists and safety procedures 50 years ago. And needless to say, the aviation industry never let the pilot’s girlfriends hang out in the cockpit or permit jets to buzz towns for fun.
Cruise lines also have a major problem with crimes committed by employees and drunk passengers against women and children. The chance of being raped on a cruise is twice that of being raped ashore. Airlines, railroads and buses simply do not have these types of problems.

 

Airlines are trying desperately to be increasingly like the cruise lines.  Offshore, regulated by third world countries, cheap labor, poor sanitation, etc. is their goal.  Thanks to deregulation, the standards fall rapidly but this makes for cheaper business and thus is quite profitable.  The fall in standards leads to dangerous accidents and poor service but then, much of airline travel resembles more  like cattle car train transport these days.

 

The courts determine whether a cruise line is legally responsible to a passenger by reviewing the terms of the passenger ticket. I saw one judge literally pull out a magnifying glass to read the fine print buried in the ticket. The passenger invariably loses when this occurs, which is not surprising. The cruise lines have spent considerable effort drafting language which protects them from virtually every imaginable situation. The exception is when a passenger has been injured or assaulted – there is a federal statute which prohibits cruise lines from limiting their liability in these circumstances. However, this exception may not apply if the cruise ship does not call on a U.S. port.
Cruise lines reserve the right to change their itineraries at their discretion. Do passengers have any right to compensation or a refund (other than port charges) if such a change is made?
No, based on the “fine print” in the ticket. For example, Royal Caribbean’s language says that it “may at any time and without prior notice cancel, advance, postpone or deviate from any scheduled sailing or port of call.” As a public relations gesture, some cruise lines offer $100 or so for missing a port. But this is dependent entirely on the cruise line; they hold all of the cards in these type of situations.

 

The cruise line people have to have ports of call in the US to pick up passengers but if they could void this by say, building a port just offshore and claiming it is foreign territory, they will do this is too  many people sue them.  The main point here is, jurisdiction is removed from our own system and this is passively assented by Congress which has been steadily allowing all of our business and affairs to be transferred offshore for corporate profits.

Email:

emeinel@fairpoint.net

MAILING ADDRESS:

EMS NEWS

P.O. BOX 483

BERLIN, NY 12022

Make checks out to ‘Elaine Supkis’

Click on the Pegasus icon on the right sidebar to donate via Paypal.