2:21:08 And you might, I just want to run the story out there because I think we're gonna...I think it's part of something else. And I think you've talked about, I think, I think, I think you've talked about some of these rules, these high sea rules and some of these ocean laws. The law of the sea? I don't know that this is directly connected but there's a guy writing a series in The New York Times it was on the News Hour talking about it good stuff! I mean really outstanding I could just see Pulitzer written all over this is set up as a Pulitzer But let's play a few clips of it. He is moaning and groaning about the shit going on, on the oceans. Start with murder on the high seas. Okie dokie! In your series you document horrible incident that happened I believe was in the Indian Ocean this very graphic cell phone video of men being shot in the water
2:22:01 Again, have you seen this video? Yeah. They showed it. Oh really cool! This is pretty clear evidence of a graphic horrible crime and yet no one has been held to account for this how they were brown do you explain that it's pretty amazing so in the cell phone video that was found and it shows a clear case of murder there are four men floating on water over 10 minutes they are shot at the end of the video the most striking part is that those involved in the shooting posed for selfies. They've just shot men to death in the water and then here they are taking selfies of themselves And the video ends up on the internet, and so The question is how is it possible with this much evidence? There are four large tuna longline vessels In the area So that means there's dozens of witnesses A video on the internet with the culprits But it gets to the heart of the issue you raised before
2:22:57 There's no interested party that has the wherewithal to prosecute or investigate. And at the end of the day, the seas are this sprawling space and so pinning down where and when something occurs out there when they're so few other people that weren't party to the crime is difficult Alright, so that was one of the little tidbits. So let's play the clips that kind of start with the ships overview and then we'll do two other clips and... And uh... There is something just unusual this is coming up It's easy to overlook just how dependent our lives and the entire global economy have become on shipping and the seas. Today, several million ships carry roughly 90% of the world's goods but a New York Times series shows how little we know about the lawless seas migrants stowaways and fishermen disappear often killed in accidents or worse there is evidence of murders taking place offshore
2:23:54 and tens of thousands of workers are essentially enslaved each year. All the while, international maritime law seems wholly inadequate and few authorities ever step in. We have a number of themes going on at the same time one of them is slavery major major theme in all the news streams So you sex slavery this sort of slavery that sort of slavery right slavery in India slavery the slavery, so there's a major theme This ship thing just adds to it because who do you know we didn't think that the you know? The idea of press gangs which apparently take place still Grab you and make your work on a boat whether you like it or not. I guess they just can't pay enough I'm not sure why that happens but this little tidbit here. This is the ships
2:24:38 that have one bad apple little sub clip I thought was very entertaining. Ian Urbina reported this series and he joins me now, Ian welcome Thanks In the first part of your series you talk about a particular ship the Donna LaBerta And you document a whole manner of crimes terrible treatment of its crew throwing stowaways overboard dumping oily residue into the water. You're able to name the owner of the ship, but yet nothing seems to be done about that. Why is that? Number one a lot of these companies are essentially P.O boxes and they're sort of shells over shells over shells
2:25:16 And that was the case here. So just pinning down the owning company, it was tough. But secondly you have a boat that has maybe 10 different nationalities in terms of the crew—the captain from yet another nation, the company that owns it is a third nation and its flagged to a fourth nation and it's passing through international waters so Even figuring out who would prosecute or investigate a crime is tough. And then the last part is, there's really no one wanting to investigate these matters. When crimes occur it's usually against crew or the environment and the crew are typically from poor countries and those countries don't have the wherewithal to prosecute Now do you have any thinking behind this John? What what what is going on with this report in general
2:26:07 or with the interests? I believe it has something to do with laws of the sea. They're trying to find a, although this is still gonna be impossible because if you got... If you're one of these ships in your middle Pacific Ocean and you throw some guy over the side cause he's a stowaway that's, you know, surprise anyone would be a stowaway with that threat. I don't know how are you going to enforce any of this stuff but there just has something to do with and I believe if we played the last clip I'll have some thoughts on it. I think this has something what they said in the initial part of the report, which is 90%...this is outrageous if you think about it. Ninety percent of all the world's goods are on a ship? Yeah, see that's what I caught and I'm thinking does this somehow tie into the Chinese rail that is, you know, the New Silk Road which is delivering goods via rail all the way to Germany? And I think this is a report that's aimed at...the Chinese rail has nothing to do with us
2:27:05 And their audience for this piece in the New York Times is about, it's about stuff. Why are they telling us about this? We don't care about the Chinese rail or anything like that. There's something else afoot and I think it has to do with trade with China because if you think of it, when you hear 90%... Is this TTP maybe? This is a TTP story. Well then they have to deal with the enforcement. I'm not sure but I'm telling you it's something and let's listen to this last thing because adding on, let's call it piling on. We have all these guys are killing people or shooting people they're throwing them over the side and then there is this...this is the environmental crimes." The environmental crimes that you document in this series are also quite stark You write ships intentionally dump more engine oil and sludge into the oceans in a span of three years then that spilled in the deepwater horizon and Exxon Valdez accidents combined ocean researchers say and emit huge amounts of certain air pollutants far more
2:28:05 than all the world's cars. But what is being done to combat those types of crimes? Not a whole lot, again because while there are rules on the books, rules are only as good as their enforcement and that's where the high seas become especially difficult because it's super costly to put boats on the water. It's such a huge space of patrol and no nation has the jurisdiction to do that in the high seas because it belongs to everyone and no one, so there are strong rules in the books preventing you know forbidding that kind of behavior but there is no one out there to stop it. Okay, the only way you can deal with any of this is you have to have monitoring
2:28:49 So you first have to have the laws. They say the law's already in place, but then you can't dock these boats in any certain ports. You can do what we do best and sanction things. You can't bring your boat into any of our ports like Long Beach, San Francisco on the West Coast and then you have the Eastern Port. They stopped that whole blockade, the whole strike right? That ended months ago. But now you need monitoring costs money. This may be just another scam to sell stuff, you know, Chertoff again selling monitors that you have things that monitor what's the bilge water and all this stuff because they're dumping crap over the side and shooting people who knows there is something afoot it's all I can tell ya i don't know what it is but its something complicated now where did this take place? Was this off of the coast of West Africa
2:29:45 I think this is mostly the Pacific, it's all over. Well then the logical explanation is we need to bring warships into the area? You can't... that's not a logical explanation when you look at the size of the area. Yeah, with pirates you could probably do a little bit of...you can help a little because they're only within a certain limited square miles. But the Pacific Ocean if you're dumping crap off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean there's nobody around I mean there's not anything to be seen from horizon to horizon except water and your throwing it stowaway over the side shooting him or whatever he does doesn't make any difference. I still think it's funny! I can't help it! They are shooting these poor bastards?
2:30:30 It was so, you know sometimes things are so horrific. Crazy clip there these guys hey what are they doing there? Why did they throw him in the water to begin with and then shoot him? They're shooting away their lousy shots target practice I guess we were shooting from the hip because it weren't hitting anything There's something amiss, there's something going on and it has something to do with trade. It has something to do with China. It says something about monitoring... That's TPP. Licensing. Maybe it's just all about the TPP. I'm thinking maybe there's something that will help Congress want to pass TPP because people being shot?
