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Safe Cruise

Project Safe Cruise Press Release: See www.projectsafecruise.blogspot.com & details below. Leave a message if you have experienced incidents involving poor security & safety practices of cruise lines. Hearings are scheduled; we will provide them to Congress. We must act to insure passenger safety. The current lack of safety & security is not acceptable especially after 9/11. On 5/12/05, we were on the Carnival Destiny near Aruba when an elderly couple disappeared without a trace.

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Location: Michigan, United States

Government could save $50 billion per year by having two shifts of white collar employees work each day. Office space costs $50,000/year for each employee yet we only use space 30% of time. We can no longer afford to have banker's hours for all. With over 2 million federal employees this cost-free paradigm change could avoid lay offs/furloughs and reduce pollution. See new plan at http://whitecollargreenspace.blogspot.com/

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Blood Diamonds, Blood Cruises, Americans unknowingly provide cash that is used to murder thousands of adults and children in Africa

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=13594
Diamonds Are for Never?
A global conflict hits home.
“ALL DIAMONDS ARE BLOOD DIAMONDS!” and “BOYCOTT ALL DIAMONDS!”
“We’re not boycotting the movie,” says protester Deidre Martin, as she and fellow protesters shift back and forth on their feet to fend off the chill. “We just want to deepen it a little bit.” The protesters are members of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC), a group with a primarily white membership that acts as a voice to the white community for the African Uhuru Movement. They object to the film’s focus on the violence of African Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone in the ’90s, saying it ignores the conditions jewelers De Beers and West created long before these conflicts.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200612120634.html
Namibia: Diamond Industry Must Not Whitewash Blood Diamonds:
Diamonds in some parts of the world have been used to fuel conflict, hence the expression "blood diamonds".

How and Why Did Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Help and Liberian Dictator, Charles Taylor Brutally Kill over 300,000 Individuals in Africa during the 1990's? Did the fees they paid also allow Taylor to assist terrorist groups like al Qaeda? 1.5 million individuals were made homeless or became refugees.
Charles Taylor has been described, as the third most wanted war crimes suspect in the world -- after Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic
In recent years the region, particularly Liberia, has harbored al Qaeda operatives, senior Hezbollah financiers and a plethora of transnational criminal organizations. Hezbollah might not be as strong as it is today if not for Charles Taylor and fees paid by Cruise Lines.
[ http://www.douglasfarah.com/articles/conflict-diamonds.shtml ]
Would you do business with or be a customer of a corporation who provided money for a regime who supported terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah whose history of horror may be second only to Hitler's. And
Why it is important to pressure Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL) to allow "Sea Marshals." independent law enforcement officers, on each of their cruise ships:
61 people have now gone overboard and died on cruise ship vacations since the year 2000. This does not even include the number that have died from accidents, disease, fires, assaults, and other crimes on board or during shore excursions. America's worst serial killer, the Green River Killer Gary Ridgeway, had 48 victims. This last week, Robert Charles Browne's claimed 49 killings. rockymountainnews.com July 28, 2006See http://www.cruisebruise.com/ a list of some of the deaths and http://www.cruisejunkie.com/ for list of person's overboard, outbreaks of disease, and other events. I would encourage all victims and their families contact http://www.internationalcruisevictims.org/ for guidance, support, and to prevent future tragedies. And refer to http://www.projectsafecruise.blogspot.com/ for a possible solution that could be implemented quickly.The American Public should demand that Cruise ship deaths be given as much attention as a serial killer case. There are about 200,000 beds on the cruise ships. If there were 6 disappearances in six years, or about 9 per year in the same neighborhood and no changes were made in security, we would quickly fire the police chief and people would no longer go to that neighborhood. In fact, there is a serial killer on cruise ships; it is the total lack of independent law enforcement and regulation. Currently, cruise lines rely on private security guards whose first loyalty is to the cruise company. Law enforcement should treat 60 disappearances like they would a serial killer case. They should cross-check all available data to see if there are any common elements such methods, circumstances, or the same passengers or crew members being present. Any thread of commonality could help solve some of the disappearances and prevent others.Cruise lines have little or no legal obligation to settle because they are not regulated. RCCL is incorporated in Liberia and for many years they flagged their ships in Liberia. A country with a dysfunctional legal court system and no regulations or laws to protect cruise line employees, customers, or stockholders. The Cruise lines have poured millions of dollars into lobbying efforts, at times using lobbyist closely connected to Jack Abramoff and we know what kind of tactics he used. cruiselinelobbyistrelatedtoabramoff blog That along with many thousands of dollars of campaign contributions has kept congress from passing any meaningful regulations. Cruise ships are giant gambling operations. Kind of like a floating crap game. And I have never known anyone who ran a crap game to be concerned with those gambling. Its used to be the only thing you could lose is your money, but with over 60 individuals missing or gone overboard, fires, and viruses since the year 2000, you could lose your life or your health. Imagine if Disney World had 61 disappearances and/or deaths in the last 6 years. Would anyone want to go there? The only significant actions taken by the cruise lines in the last year was to spend more money on public relations efforts and issue new sets of talking points to their employees answering the phone when the subject of safety and security come up. They do like to suck as much money from their customers as they can. They also suck as much blood, sweat, and tears from their employees as possible by offering low wages and few benefits.
www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060315/BUSINESS/603150392/1003
War, corruption, murder in Liberia fueled by revenues from companies wishing to register their vessels in Liberia & save $ & avoid regulations -
See
www.cruisedeath.blogspot.com
for details.

www.leonardodicaprio.com: Leonardo DiCaprio works with orphans from SOS Childrens Villages on the set of his upcoming film, "Blood Diamond" SOS Childrens Villages has been providing homes for orphaned and abandoned children since 1949. Today there are over 450 SOS Villages in 132 countries caring for over 60,000 children and hundreds of thousands more are helped through education, medical, and emergency relief programs. SOS Childrens Villages has been nominated fourteen times for the Nobel Peace Prize and is the 2002 winner of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Award.
SOS Childrens Villages relies on the generous support of individuals as well as businesses to provide long-term support for the orphans in their care. If you live in the US and want to make a tax-deductible contribution or sponsor a child, visit www.sos-usa.org. If you are outside of the US, visit www.sos-childrensvillages.org.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

CDC issues `no-sail' recommendation for sick ship

kansascity. KANSAS CITY STAR 12/10/06
MIAMI - Armed with sanitizers and disinfectants, dozens of workers will be scrubbing the world's largest cruise ship on Monday, a day after it returned to the Port of Miami-Dade with more than a hundred sick passengers and crew members - again.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a rare "no-sail" recommendation to Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas. The Miami-based company agreed to comply, keeping the ship docked until Tuesday so it can be thoroughly decontaminated. The decision delays the next cruise two days.

The Freedom of the Seas returned to port Sunday morning with 97 passengers and 11 crew members who had suffered from a norovirus outbreak. Last Sunday, the same ship came back to Miami from a Caribbean cruise with about 380 recovering passengers and ship employees.

Another cruise ship docked in Port Everglades on Sunday with 119 cases of norovirus. That ship, Princess Cruises' Sun Princess, was cleaned and it set sail again Sunday afternoon. The CDC did not recommend a no-sail delay for the 2,875-passenger ship.
For more dirt on cruise ship safety see:
CDC's CCruise Ship Outbreak Summaries
and
Cruise Ship Sanitation Reports @ cruisbruise.com
and
RCCL Majesty Of The Seas - Cockroaches Discovered By Inspector Were Dancing On Grill

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