Cruise ship runs aground in Antarctica

www.theage.com.auA CRUISE ship carrying 370 people, including 12 Australians, was to be evacuated last night after it grounded off the Antarctic Peninsula. The incident happened at the peak of the polar cruise season, and only days ahead of a controversial transit through the same waters by the first megaliner to sail there, Golden Princess. A sister ship, Nordnorge, was eight hours away from Nordkapp and altered course to take all of the passengers aboard, Mr Torkildsen said. They would be taken to Ushuaia in Argentina, he said.

Couple says they were too scared to leave their cabin because of out of control underage DRINKING while security guards look the other way

moora.yourguide.com.au (Sunday, 28 January 2007) By Evan Schwarten and Jade Bilowol

The Seven Network reported the teenager claimed she tried to jump overboard after an older man raped her while two of his mates watched following a night of heavy drinking. The Network also said patrons claimed the cruise was rife with underage drinking while security guards watched on but did nothing, with one couple saying they were too scared to leave their cabin. Allegations a teenage girl was raped aboard the Pacific Star prove tougher regulations are needed to prevent a repeat of the Diane Brimble scandal, her former husband says. Mark Brimble, the vice president of lobby group International Cruise Victims (ICV), has questioned the effectiveness of a new advisory committee established by P&O cruise lines to thwart another passenger suffering the same fate as his ex-wife. But Mr Brimble questioned the independence of the committee, saying he did not believe the cruise industry was capable of self-regulation. Mrs Brimble died from a toxic cocktail of the date rape drug fantasy and alcohol aboard P&O's Pacific Sky in 2002, prompting a major public relations disaster for the company.
http://www.internationalcruisevictims.org/

16 Year Old Girl Alleges Rape on Cruise Ship

Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia

A girl, 16, alleged she was raped in her cabin on Pacific Star after a theme party on the ship's deck on Wednesday. Six detectives boarded the ship as it cruised near the Queensland coast on Friday. They handcuffed and removed a man, 23, from the ship in Brisbane and charged him with possession of a drug, thought to be ecstacy.
Witnesses said the girl left the party with the man she later accused of attacking her. She had tried to jump overboard after the alleged incident, but was restrained by security guards, they said.
Brett Avey, from Maryborough, boarding the vessel, said: "I'm with my partner and my daughter. I won't be letting my daughter out of my sight."

LA Times Writer digs for truth behind deaths and disappearances on Cruise ships despite cover ups by cruise industry

latimes.com
Cruise industry's dark waters:
What happens at sea stays there as crimes on liners go unresolved.
By Kimi Yoshino, Times Staff Writer,January 20, 2007

"The Stories Cruise Lines Don't Want Told" by Gwyn Topham

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1992955,00.html#article_continue

Today, the Guardian in Great Britain published an article by Gwyn Topham, the author of the book Overboard: The Stories Cruise Lines Don't Want Told, published by Random House Australia

Death on the high seas

...In the last days of the Vietnam war, Hue Pham and his wife Hue Tran spent two perilous weeks on a cramped container ship, adrift with no food and little water in the South China Sea. The couple survived this desperate flight from Vietnam, built a new life in America, and then, three decades later, decided to take a Caribbean cruise on a ship called the Carnival Destiny. This was the boat journey that they would not survive.

The facts of the couple's disappearance, as the Destiny sailed between Barbados and Aruba on May 12 2005, are few. After a fruitless on-board search, the ship eventually retraced its path, joined by the US coastguard. No trace of their bodies was ever found.
For the relatives, the deaths left a terrible, insoluble puzzle. Their son, Son Michael Pham, maintained that his parents had no reason to take their own lives and were in fact planning a trip back to Vietnam, and were looking forward to meeting relatives again. "Two American citizens with no personal or financial problems, no serious health problems, living the happiest time of their lives, both vanished without a trace or witness," he later told an inquiry.
The cruise had been a Mother's Day gift to the couple, and they were on board ship with their daughter and granddaughter. "I immediately flew down to California, went through their home, and tried to find one clue, something unusual. I could not," Son Michael says now.
Since then, with the help of two other bereaved families, Son Michael has helped establish a group called the www.InternationalCruiseVictims.org

Royal Caribbean Tries to Divide & Conquer Families of Victims by Settling Only With Widow Jennifer Hagel Smith and Not George Smith's Entire Family

msnbc.msn.com

Royal Caribbean and wife of George Smith reach settlement
BY AMY MARTINEZ June 30, 2006 aemartinez@MiamiHerald.com

Royal Caribbean (RCCL) seeks to divide and conquer critics and families of victims by not settling with George Smith's entire family. If they really cared about the families of victims and future passengers, they would settle with all of his family and one time and "they" would offer a reward for information that would help solve George Smith's death. They do not seem to care if it is solved. Mr. Fain from RCCL said on Fox News last night that he is not sure when the last time RCCL and the FBI communicated about the case.

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. That along with many thousands of dollars of campaign contributions have kept congress from passing any meaningful regulations.

Remember, they 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 life, but with over 50 individuals missing or gone overboard, fires, and viruses since the year 2000, you could lose your life or health. Imagine if Disney World had 50 disappearances and/or deaths in the last 6 years. 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.

Evidence of Cruise Line Influencing Peddling and Media Manipulation

?

the honeymoon cruise mystery.blogspot.com

The powers that be have decided to delete George Smith's entry in wikipedia (why, that's a good question). I found this information to be a very straightforward account of what is 'known' about what happened to George Smith IV. So I am reprinting it below before it is lost forever to the caverns of the Internet. The information needs to be out there...

Brilliance of the Seas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from George Allen Smith)

Did Wikipedia bow to pressure from the Cruis Lines?
The pattern of intimidation by the Cruise Lines contiues...

(More information to come in the near future)
In an ongoing effort to avoid regulations, taxation and negative publicity, the Cruise Lines continue to wage war against the government and the media. They have used lobbyists related to the Abramoff scandal to spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress. cruiselinelobbyistrelatedtoabramoff.blogspot.com/ They and their employees contribute millions of dollars to the same candidates. safecruise.blogspot.com/2005_12_01 They keep information and statistics secret concerning crimes, assaults, deaths, accidents, and disease from the government and victim's families. They incorporate and flag their ships in poor third world countries to avoid health, safety, security, and envirionmental rules. The worst being Royal Caribbean whose fees paid to Liberia helped finance Dictator Charles Taylor's Reign of Terror and mass murder. safecruise.blogspot.com/2006_04_01

Now it appears they have used their advertising dollars to limit freedom of the press and pressure the media to stop covering their serious safety and security problems. The New York Post September 13, 2006 by Keith Kelly

72 people overboard since the year 2000. Hundreds of sexual assaults, most not reported and few if any prosecuted. Will Congress and the media continue to allow this type of cover-up, sit on the evidence and ignore the red flags like they did with the Mark Foley page sex scandal? The lives of cruise ship passengers are at stake as well as the mental and physical health of the hundreds of women who have been or will be assaulted on cruise ships whether as passengers or crewmembers. If they back down and bow to the pressure of the cruiselines like Mort Zuckerman at the New York Daily News, our wives and children and female crew members will never be safe on a cruise vacation.