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Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

bbc.com

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Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#81

Post by munk-a »

duxup wrote: post #34
jandrese wrote: post #8

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…

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?

> 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.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#82

Post by akudha »

nicklecompte wrote: post #43
Sargos wrote: post #2

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?

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...

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

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#83

Post by laurent92 »

jandrese wrote: post #56
duxup wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#84

Post by avidphantasm »

hcurtiss wrote: post #78
FredPret wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#85

Post by mym1990 »

user3939382 wrote: post #53
eastbayjake wrote: post #38

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...

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 coun…

Seems like your rankings are mostly based on anecdotal experiences?

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#86

Post by omginternets »

user3939382 wrote: post #53
eastbayjake wrote: post #38

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...

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 coun…

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".

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#88

Post by DoreenMichele »

newsclues wrote: post #17
jandrese wrote: post #8

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…

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.

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.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#89

Post by DubiousPusher »

hcurtiss wrote: post #78
FredPret wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

#90

Post by FredPret »

hcurtiss wrote: post #78
FredPret wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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