111–120 of 202 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Find the names of the people involved, get a warrant and use the full power of that impressive global surveillance system that we've created to fight the global war on terror to surveil them and find evidence of other crimes that they've surely committed and prosecute the fuck out of them for that.
Seems like a lot of work to prevent India from breaking ships it wants to break.
Glad to see many comments recognize what a bad thing this is. The photographer is sadly insouciant of how many poor people it kills and the terrible ecosystem damage it creates. Read more about it at https://shipbreakingplatform.org/
https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/the-anthropocene-pr...
https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/in-the-wake-of-prog...
https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs/urban-m...
These are probably taken at the Alang (India) and Chittagong (Bangladesh) Ship Breaking Yards, where they run the ships aground at high tide. Both visible on Google Maps satelite view: https://www.google.com/maps/place/21%C2%B023'21.9%22N+72%C2%... https://www.google.com/maps/place/22%C2%B027'24.5%22N+91%C2%...
Read an article about this years ago. It seems they had special pilots to do this. Like wetting the bed on purpose, trained ships captains had a very hard time intentionally running ships aground.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maritime regulation is hard when it operates in the space between states. Asbestos in particular is such a temptation in manufacturing because it's just so useful and cheap. An argument can probably be made that handled properly it saves more lives than it harms just because it's such a good fire resistant insulator.
This might be true in fact, if asbestos use is limited to applications where it's the obvious best choice. But it's uncomfortable to run a simple utilitarian calculus when, as in this case, the groups it benefits (sailors) and those it harms (shipbreakers) are disjoint. Leads one to want to find a solution which is more straightforwardly positive-sum.
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Those industries don't pay well to anyone involved but are a global benefit. Such a strange world we live in.
Is there a word for this specific kind of ambivalence where you label a pitiable, miserable set of circumstances "strange"? As if it's on the same level as the strong nuclear force? Maybe "motivated ambivalence". There's nothing strange about it just as there's nothing strange about cobalt mining conditions in Democratic Republic of Congo: exploitative trade agreements, political corruption, and apathy.
Is it bad when a lion kills another animal? In a way yes, it's extra death that could be preventable, in another way it's what it is. Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average? What about if a human is born more narcissistic than average and does bad things?
It leaves open the possibility of you the writer also being wrong, so it comes across as humbly sharing an opinion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But that might put the EU at an economic disadvantage; it's hubris to believe the rest of the world will bend backwards to meet EU's rules. Actually, it will. RoHS and the push for standardizing phone connectors ended up influencing the whole world and making it a better place for everyone. The EU is a sizable market, and unlike the US with its constant elections and government shutdowns, it's politically relativel…
The EU has consent elections, it's just a proportional representation forces people to work together to get anything done, so you end up with a lot of relatively uncontroversial work happening. There's also little point in trying to score points as you will never have a majority
The EU parliament is elected every five years, and while most of the member countries elect during the EU parliament term and so it's election year somewhere in the EU every year, national elections usually have negligible impact on the European level (outside of dramatic swings like in Poland or Slovakia between dedicated notorious pro-EU and anti-EU parties).
In contrast, the US re-elects the whole House and 1/3rd of the Senate every two years which means that the House is basically only at peace to work for a year at a time (first half year is spent on getting the newbies up to speed, last half year is filled with campaigning), and if changing control over the Senate is even possible depends on if the states whose seats are up for reelection are considered swing states or not. The entire way the US Congress works is not incentivizing bipartisan legislation, and it's outright hostile to the idea that there could be more than two political parties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that strange? At no time in history have jobs paid according to their benefit.
It's not actually strange - GP is just using that word to emotionally manipulate readers.
A few comments here mentioned that old ships being broken up have a lot of asbestos. I would have assumed this would have been an issue on very old ships, but some cursory web searching suggests that it's still prevalent even in relatively new ships. IMO rules ( https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Safety/Pages/Asbestos.aspx ) say roughly that: - Ships built before 2002 may contain asbestos, but it should be "managed prope…
Maritime regulation is hard when it operates in the space between states. Asbestos in particular is such a temptation in manufacturing because it's just so useful and cheap. An argument can probably be made that handled properly it saves more lives than it harms just because it's such a good fire resistant insulator.
If anyone is interested in a game themed shipbreaking/dismantling things, check out Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Instead of oceanic ships one gets to take apart spaceships and sort the salvages like garbage-recycle-compost. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1161580/Hardspace_Shipbre...