90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Over 1,000 Crew Members Are Stranded On 'Abandoned' Cargo Ships Globally Without Pay Or Food

Pandemic-driven global trade disruptions and an increasing number of shipping companies abandoning their own vessels over mounting debts including older vessels deemed too costly to repair has led to the rise in the phenomenon of crewmembers simply being abandoned at sea, often left to fend for themselves as they await pay which sometimes never comes.

A Friday investigative report in The Wall Street Journal has detailed some of the shocking stories of tanker crew members left adrift after companies abandoned vessels or sold or transferred them, or couldn't pay mounting debts, while trying to survive oftentimes on little food even while moored close to resort locations in places like Dubai - or in other cases floating off the Suez Canal or at Black Sea ports.

"The $14 trillion shipping industry, responsible for 90% of world trade, has left in its wake what appears to be a record number of cargo-ship castaways," the report begins. "Abandonment cases are counted when shipowners fail to pay crews two or more months in wages or don’t cover the cost to send crew members home, according to the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency."

The UN agency recorded a doubling in the number of abandonment cases for 2020, with the number expected to grow once again for 2021 particularly after a noticeable surge in cases now getting media attention.

WSJ cites the industry labor union, International Transport Workers’ Federation, to detail that over 1,000 international crew members are currently abandoned. But the report assures the true number of those left aboard container ships and bulk carriers whose transport operations have been halted is likely way higher, given individual crew members' reluctance to come forward for fear of not getting hired by other freight companies.

Though most of those who effectively overnight became "castaways" choose to stay aboard abandoned ships until they get paid, in many cases they legally cannot disembark even if they wanted to due to complex local laws dictating policies of...

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Former Senior Level Pentagon Leader Sounds the Alarm, China Has Won the AI War and Will Dominate the Planet

The United States and it’s military appears to be currently led by the most defeatist, incompetent, and anti-American group of people in modern history.

One former senior level Pentagon leader is sounding the alarm, claiming that the USA has already lost the AI battle to China and in his opinion we might as well give it up and praise our new Chinese overlords.

Via the Financial Times:

The Pentagon’s first chief software officer said he resigned in protest at the slow pace of technological transformation in the US military, and because he could not stand to watch China overtake America.

In his first interview since leaving the post at the Department of Defense a week ago, Nicolas Chaillan told the Financial Times that the failure of the US to respond to Chinese cyber and other threats was putting his children’s future at risk.

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“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” he said, adding there was “good reason to be angry”.

Chaillan, 37, who spent three years on a Pentagon-wide effort to boost cyber security and as first chief software officer for the US Air Force, said Beijing is heading for global dominance because of its advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and...