WOW! Simply amazing. Key highlight, a year ago it would cost 50k a day to charter a cargo ship, today, only 5,500 dollars a day for the same ship!
Posted on 09/16/2009 10:43:56 AM PDT by fightinbluhen51
The biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lies at anchor east of Singapore. Never before photographed, it is bigger than the U.S. and British navies combined but has no crew, no cargo and no destination - and is why your Christmas stocking may be on the light side this year
The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face that has just peeped anxiously down at me from the rusting deck of a towering container ship; he is more disturbed by the fact that I may be a pirate, which, right now, on top of everything else, is the last thing he needs.
His appearance, in a peaked cap and uniform, seems rather odd; an o fficer without a crew. But there is something slightly odder about the vast distance between my jolly boat and his lofty position, which I can't immediately put my finger on.
Then I have it - his 750ft-long merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves don't even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It's the same with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a destination between them.
My ramshackle wooden fishing boat has floated perilously close to this giant sheet of steel. But the face is clearly more scared of me than I am of him. He shoos me away and scurries back into the vastness of his ship. His footsteps leave an echo behind them.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
WOW! Simply amazing. Key highlight, a year ago it would cost 50k a day to charter a cargo ship, today, only 5,500 dollars a day for the same ship!
self-ping!
Doubtless, several existing socialist experiments, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Western Europe, etc don't really appreciate that our economy was actually the economic engine that kiept theirs afloat. So much for sending aid to disaster stricken countries. We'll have problems of our own. Too bad for the always starving children of Africa. We'll be busy trying to feed our own.
There is absolutely no was to estimate the number of deaths that will occur as Obama's socialist thugs redistribute the wealth of our once mighty nation in the name of "social justice."
Was the D-Day invasion fleet in the headlines before D-Day?
Not even close to the biggest armada in history.
Is it just me, or is the water there full of oil slicks...
That’s not the picture to use to make this point.
Most of those “ships” are mere boats.
There ARE, however, photos that do make the point about the idle “ghost fleet.”
“South Korean shipyard Hanjin Heavy Industries last week said it had been forced to put up for sale three container ships ordered at a cost of £60 million ($100 million) by the Iranian state shipping line after the Iranians said they could not pay the bill.”
Hmm, the Iranians couldn’t pay the tab...so, they’re either A: Broke or B: Spending the money on “other projects.”
The current administration loves this recession and the opportunity it afford them to permanently destroy out economy. The following is a comment from one of the airheads on the article:
” What so many of us fail to understand, is that continual economic growth (capitalism) is a linear, and totally unsustainable model. We have been so unconscious in our consumption of our planet’s resources, using military, the IMF, and the World Bank to maintain third world nations as slave labour pools to fuel our ever growing need for more, more more of the latest, the greatest, the newest, the best, the biggest, the smallest ... Consumerism is the bedrock of capitalism - the grease (the lie) that keeps the weels turning. STOP CONSUMING!
More ships, with their huge environmental footprints, NEED to be retired, as do our old ways of thinking. Let us stop feeding the beast. It bites -no, it DEVOURS - the hand that feeds it.
MASSIVE change is required NOW - by everyone of us. STOP FEEDING THE BEAST!
Let us all get to work building a sustainable future. There is plenty of work for everybody.
Our governments MUST be made to pay attention - NOW!
- Joanna, Toronto, Canada, 13/9/2009 21:40
Those LAZY American CONSUMERS are “draggin’ up on the job”!
and, there is something else,..here is this from Denninger, clearing the air:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1VbGcaVvFM&feature=player_embedded
Nice catch.
I didn’t say the article was entirely accurate. Perhaps, merchant maritime history?
Agreed, but I didn’t take the photo. ;-)
Google earth is a good view too, and there are some sat photos in the article.
I didn’t read the captions, but good catch. Or was that in the last paragraph, i didn’t read that either.
Anchored and semi-mothballed? Agreed it’s not as large as D-Day, but merchant maritime.
Anchored and semi-mothballed? Agreed it’s not as large as D-Day, but merchant maritime.
I think it’s about the third from last paragraph.
“The GHOST fleet....”
AHA!!!! More RACISM on display.
GHOST(RACIST refrence to Black folk) is linked to an entire fleet of ships NOT WORKING!!!!!! How transparent. RACISM pure and simple.
Frankly, I can’t see how the cost of building something in China, then shipping it all the way around the world to America can be less than building in Iowa, or Nebraska, or Arizona and shipping it to Chicago, Seattle, or LA.
Seriously - if a manufacturing plant in China can make a widget for 15 cents, why can’t a manufacturing plant in Wyoming make it for 15 cents?
// HINT - GOVERNMENT REGULATION
/// And this is the people we want in charge of our health care?
And - while I’m on a rant here. The Environmental Protection Agency was chartered in 1970, and employs some 17,000 people. If the planet is falling apart because of “Anthropomorphic Climate Change”, can we just fire these people and shut down the whole bureaucracy? Obviously *IF* there’s “ACC”, then they’ve failed, and we’ve wasted all that money anyway - so let’s quit throwing money down THAT sinkhole.
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