The Ever Given is still stuck

The giant cargo ship that blocked the Suez canal in March is no longer holding up billions of dollars in world trade, but it’s still stuck…in legal limbo. It’s currently docked, unmoving, it’s $700 million in containers on deck, while lawyers are battling to fix the blame. And get the billion dollar salvage fee.

The vessel is stuck once more – this time by an almighty international legal row. By mid-April, it had been impounded, with the Suez Canal Authority, or SCA, slapping a claim against its owners in an Egyptian court. The salvage fee? Nearly $1bn. “I’ve seen cases like this but on a much smaller scale,” explains maritime solicitor Jai Sharma of law firm Clyde & Co, which represents the insurers of more than $100 million worth of cargo on board the Ever Given. “What sets this apart is the amount of money being requested – it’s far, far beyond what anyone in our industry would expect.”

With negotiations at an impasse, the Ever Given’s Indian crew remain stuck on board a ship that cannot sail. And there’s only so much work to do for a ship that’s going nowhere. The Ever Given does at least have Wi-Fi to help pass the time and stave off cabin fever. There’s also a toll-free counselling helpline for the crew and their families. “Being in anchorage for so long definitely dampens the spirits,” says Abdulgani Serang, who heads the National Union of Seafarers of India, which has visited the crew on board. “But, in this case, it comes with the baggage of the Suez Canal incident, which adds to their trauma.”

The Ever Given was due to dock at Rotterdam on April 3, where much of its estimated $700m worth of cargo was to be offloaded and forwarded on to the rest of Europe. In the time that it’s idled, more than 4,000 vessels have passed it by on Great Bitter Lake. The delay has been so long that seven crew members have returned home following the end of their contracts. But the SCA’s requirement that the ship is operational means that six replacement seafarers have been drafted in from India – notwithstanding the Delta variant of Covid-19 that has torn through the country.

The amount of money tied up in this one boat is mind-boggling, and the fact that a group of people are trapped aboard the thing by all the legal machinations is depressing. At least I learned the cost of shipping: one 40 foot container (which is big and can hold a lot of merchandise), from China to Europe: $10,522. Out here in the painfully rural Midwest we’ve come to rely on services like Amazon to get our fix of toys and gadgets and useful tools, and it’s daunting to look at the tracking info and see how many of those things come from China — almost everything on my work desk has been on one of these ships or a cargo plane, and was delivered to me from half a planet away. We tend to take the global supply chain for granted, until something disrupts it.

Too hot to sleep

Come back, winter. It’s been a rough night, waking up at 4:30am uncomfortably drenched in sweat, so I got up in time to hear the rains begin and the temperature to drop below 20°C.

OK, I’ll be satisfied when fall comes back. Anything but this midsummer kiln we’re living in.

It’s going to heat up again tomorrow, but the good news is that the combination of rain and warm temperatures means the bugs will be thriving, and that means the spiders will be getting plump.

Bad news, good news

I’m going to rip off the bandage over the bad news: Bill Cosby has been released from prison. He was accused by 60 women of drugging and molesting them; he even confessed, in the most chillingly reptilian way, that yeah, he doped them so he could do whatever he wanted with them, but he made that confession after a prosecutor promised him immunity, so it was obtained under false pretenses, and now he’s been set free. I think it’s good that bad lawyers get their tactics rebuked, but yikes, they let a monster out.

At least he won’t be making any more puddin’ pop commercials, I hope.

In other bad news, Britney Spears has been living under a repressive conservatorship for well over a decade (I don’t care what you think of her music, whether you love it or hate it, this is a human being we’re talking about.) Why, I don’t know. She’s a grown-ass woman, pop stars have a long history of making fools of themselves without getting all their rights stripped away, but this seems to be one of those situations where a greedy family has a grip on the one money-making talent in their midst, and are squeezing her for all that she is worth. She’s been trying to get out from under their control, and unfortunately, a judge has ruled that her father will continue as her conservator. Leave Britney alone!

Now for the happy news. Nikole Hannah-Jones has been awarded tenure after all! This should have been a no-brainer, considering her immense accomplishments and standing in the intellectual community, but it took a second closed-door meeting and tremendous public pressure to get the board of trustees to do the right thing. Opponents just needed money. It turns out that a man who donated $25 million dollars to UNC thought that gave him the power to pressure the university to deny her tenure because he didn’t like her opinions.

Some of that opposition came from Walter Hussman, a UNC donor and Arkansas newspaper publisher whose name adorns UNC’s journalism school. Hussman, who is also an alumnus, told NPR he was given pause by criticism of prominent scholars that Hannah-Jones distorted the historical record in arguing that the protection of slavery was one of the primary motivations of the Founding Fathers in seeking independence from the British. (Hannah-Jones has recently tweeted that she will be able to back up that contention in her forthcoming book.)

You know, that doesn’t even sound that controversial to me. The British had outlawed slavery in their country, and we can see right there in the US Constitution all the compromises the founding fathers had made to convince the slave-holding states to join in their rebellion. I’d be curious to see her argument that this was a primary motivation, but I don’t find it at all implausible. Also not implausible: that a rich conservative Republican would try to silence a valid criticism of the history of this country.

But wait! We need more good news! How about the beginning of the end of the Trump grifting empire?

A grand jury in Manhattan filed criminal indictments Wednesday against former president Donald Trump’s company and its longtime chief financial officer, according to two people familiar with the indictments.

The indictments against the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, will remain sealed until Thursday afternoon, leaving the specific charges against them unclear. Earlier Wednesday, people familiar with the case said the charges were related to allegations of unpaid taxes on benefits for Trump Organization executives.

Weisselberg is expected to surrender Thursday morning at the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), two people familiar with the plan said. He is expected to be arraigned later in the day in front of a state court judge. The Trump Organization will also be arraigned, represented in court by one of its attorneys.

Trump himself is not indicted, yet. They’re going after the Trump hotels and golf courses, which probably hurts him more.

It’s also cute that they’re going after him on tax evasion, like Al Capone. The lesson I take from this is that when I become an evil overlord, I will be meticulous in paying my taxes. Either that, or I will buy a bunch of congresspeople and get legislation passed to give me plenty of legal loopholes.

You want to post pictures?

I got an offer to see a picture of a scorpion yesterday, which is neat, but we don’t allow pictures in comments because we want to be kind to readers’ bandwidth and because there are trolls who would abuse it. But then I thought…hey, you know that Freethoughtblogs has a Discord server? That would be a perfect place for that sort of thing. I even created a #photos channel within it, awaiting your submissions.

I suppose I could create a spider-free channel if people demand it. But why wouldn’t everyone want to see spider photos? (Don’t bother answering, I know.)

Waking up to Florida Man!

Ah, the benefits of being hated. My phone beeped at me this morning to let me know I’ve got an Important Text Message incoming. Here it is:

Huh? Who dis? I was curious about what I had done to annoy this stranger, so I looked him up on Facebook. He is a 37 year old who owns a construction company in Orlando, Florida, and he’s an anti-masker, anti-vaccine, COVID denying, BLM opponent who supported Trump, so that didn’t help — I think there’s zero common ground there.

Suggestion to all you anonymous critics: do try to be a little bit specific. I can’t possibly correct my repulsive behavior, or even feel a little bit chagrined, if you don’t declare what’s bothering you, beyond my simple existence. As it is, it just looks like you might have had a bad day, and instead of feeling hurt by the pettiness, I’m more like to feel sorry for you.

In case anyone is plotting to disrupt my sleep with a flood of late night hate texts, don’t bother. I’ve got them disabled until my wake-up time, so I hardly need an alarm — the phone lights up and makes a little chime and I can look over on the nightstand and see the pile of abusive messages. It’s an incentive to get up and face the day. Which is always unremittingly hostile in stupid, trivial ways.

I did something normal last night!

It felt good. The Morris Theater has re-opened after a long pandemic hiatus, so I actually went to a movie! I love just going to a movie theater, and I’ve missed it.

In case you are concerned because the pandemic is not over yet, I was sensible about it. I’m vaccinated, I wore my mask while interacting with the box office clerk, and, well, this is Morris. I was the only person in the theater! I would like to complain to the management that they could have stayed open all through the past year if they had only allowed one person, me, to attend each showing.

Oh, the movie? Cruella. If I’d had a lot of choices, it’s not one I would have picked, but well, this is Morris. You take what is offered. It was an OK bit of fluff, it’s main virtue is that it gave two Emmas (Stone and Thompson) an opportunity to chew the scenery as over-the-top villains. I like them both as actors, so I’m not going to complain that they got paid to have some indulgent fun.

I also have low expectations for summer movies. The previews were a blur of car chases, superheroes, and random explosions.