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Nation Magazine Cruise Diary: The Case of the Forbidden Flambée

Contributing editor, The Nation; professor of history, UC Irvine; author, 'How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey Across America'

The annual Nation magazine Seminar Cruise sailed a couple of weeks ago from San Diego for seven days of panels, talks, and stops in Cabo, Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. The 450 subscribers on the cruise were not just liberals and progressives, but also people with an activist bent, always ready to organize a protest. I was one of the eight speakers, and our duties included hosting nightly group dinners. The first night, and at my table, when the crêpes flambée arrived, they were not flaming. They were just lying there.

As the host of the table, I complained to the waiter, who said, “we are not allowed to flambée the crêpes at the table any more.”

Why not? “Too dangerous,” he said – adding, “terrorism!”

I reported this to Robert Scheer at the next table, one of the featured speakers, whose syndicated column appears at TheNation.com . He said, “they are afraid terrorists will attack the ship with flaming crêpes suzettes?”

But the waiter was firm: “It’s against the law.”

It seemed unlikely this prohibition would be part of the USA Patriot Act, but I checked with our resident expert on the food portions of the Act, another of the featured speakers, Calvin Trillin, The Nation’s “Deadline Poet” who writes often on food for The New Yorker .

Trillin told me he was “a little surprised you haven’t heard about this” -- although he did concede that the prohibition on cruise ship crêpes flambée was “one of the lesser known provisions of the Patriot Act.”

Arianna Huffington, another featured speaker on the cruise, founder of the HuffingtonPost.com, explained that the provision was added to the Act because of false flambée threat stories published in the New York Times by Judith Miller.

My table, eight long-time readers of The Nation , decided to take action, and organize a legal challenge seeking to seeking to overturn the “forbidden flambée” provision of the Act. We asked another of the cruise speakers, Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, Legal Affairs editor of The Nation , to represent us – he’s an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has litigated other parts of the Patriot Act.

David asked what the constitutional basis of our challenge would be.

We turned again to Trillin. He suggested that serving crêpes which had not been flambéed “could be considered ‘cruel and unusual.’”

We announced our plan to all 450 people on The Nation cruise, after which one man came up to me and said, “if you’re serious about this class action suit, I’d like to join it.

“But I wasn’t sure whether you were kidding.”

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Which Political Magazine's Cruise Looks the Most Horrible?

If you haven't yet completed your Christmas/Solstice shopping, you're probably considering getting a loved one the opportunity to spend a week on an unescapable cruise ship being talked at by professional talker-atters about politics.

If you haven't yet completed your Christmas/Solstice shopping, you're probably considering getting a loved one the opportunity to spend a week on an unescapable cruise ship being talked at by professional talker-atters about politics. The release of The Weekly Standard 's new video promotion for its 2014 cruise prompted us to take a look at which excursion will best serve as suitable punishment for your unlucky gift recipient. ("Oh, it's, um, a cruise with Bill Kristol. Uh, thanks.")

We've assessed each magazine's cruise on four metrics: the details of the cruise (cost, location, etc.), the strength of its YouTube pitch, the quality of its content, and its cruise website. As in the game of golf that many of these cruise participants enjoy, the lowest combined score of those things gives us our winner for Most Horrible Cruise™. (We also included each magazine's political leaning, in case you 1) didn't know and 2) wanted to use that information to make your gift especially painful for someone.)

The Weekly Standard

Philosophy: Conservative

Cruise details: 4 points

• Length: One week, March 2014
• Cost: $2,976 to $12,834
• Destination: The Caribbean

The most expensive trip, going to the same place as the other two, for a week in a month when the weather isn't that bad.

This nearly three-minute-long ad includes zero people of color — none, except wait staff in a dining scene. ( Update: Weekly Standard  Senior Editor Victorino Matus notes that he is in the still frame shown in the video, and he is a person of color. So we added one point.) It is almost entirely older white people — which is fine! My parents are older white people! — but it should give a sense of what to expect. One couple praises the fact that they get to hear from the young writers on staff, none of whom is "young," exactly.

The past customers who offer their testimonials (in front of very poorly-executed green-screen images of "cruise life") praise the content, including getting to hear from Bill Kristol for longer than a 20-second clip. "I'm among 200 or so people who think, politically, exactly like I do," one older white man says. "There's no such thing on this cruise as a politically incorrect statement." So that sounds fun.

Cruise content: 7 points

The scheduled line-up for the cruise includes "William Kristol, Fred Barnes, Stephen Hayes" and, you know, other people to come! The downloadable brochure adds radio host Hugh Hewitt and various other writers from the magazine. But mostly the brochure shows spas and beaches and amenities and the sorts of things that might sound more appealing than sitting in a dark room in the middle of the ocean listening to a conversation about "entitlements."

Cruise website: 8 points

The site, TWSCruise.com , is nicely put together and has all the info you'd want. The photo at right, however, is the only one from the 2013 gallery that is taken outside. It features Bill Kristol, chilling.

Overall horribleness score: 21 22 points

Philosophy: Liberal

Cruise details: 7 points

• Length: One week, December 2014
• Cost: $1,807 to $9,364

Cheaper than the other two, plus it goes to the Caribbean in December, which will appeal to New York City liberals.

The video actually starts with a guy playing a mandolin, so it definitely knows its audience. ( Update : As Ryan Kearney notes  that it appears to be Steve Earle .) The song provides the background for the video, so you can mute it if you want.

While the Weekly Standard 's pitch focused on professionally-lit interviews with old white people, The Nation 's does exactly the opposite, with lots of footage shot in dark rooms of a much-more-diverse audience. There is an emphasis on humor, but the video doesn't contain any jokes. There is almost no footage of the fun parts of the cruise, because you are there to learn , dammit.

Cruise content: 1 point

There are two people signed up as speakers so far: the past and present editors of the magazine. Therefore, we gave the cruise content a "1" out of a possible "10."

Cruise website: 4 points

The funny thing about The Nation 's cruise website —  NationCruise.com — is that it is exactly the same as the National Review 's, below. Only the logo and the speaker line-up really differs; we found the prices for The Nation 's cruise by duplicating the URL from NR 's. The cruises take place on different boats, though.

Anyway, the website is kind of crummy. The worst thing on it is in the photo gallery , which shows a "group sing-along," and  can you imagine .

Overall horribleness score: 16 points

National Review

Cruise details: 8 points

• Length: Six days, May 2014
• Cost: $1,799 to $10,199
• Destination: Bermuda

Shorter than the other two, which alone is enough to make it better.

We couldn't find a video for the upcoming Bermuda trip, so we used this one, from an August schlep to Norway. It's only 30 seconds long, which is nice, but, man! That line-up! We refuse to believe that's the best photograph they could find of John Sununu (right), but maybe it is. Also, Allen West is the headliner. The fjords look nice, but Bermuda doesn't have many fjords.

Cruise content: 8 points

The National Review 's speaker line-up is the most fully-fleshed out. Bush torture advocate John Yoo! Moral crusader Kathryn Lopez! Someone named "Bing West"! Jonah Goldberg!

Most of this was covered in the Nation 's section above, but we will note the addition of this particular paragraph, which is on the first page of NRCruise.com .

Bermuda shorts were originally borrowed in the early 20th century from the British military's uniform for hot climes. Although often colourful - pink is a favourite - do not mistake shorts as informal. They take their shorts so seriously, the law reads: no shorts shorter than six inches above the knee.

The idea of older conservatives being hauled off to jail for showing a little knee is, unquestionably, an amusing one.

Overall horribleness: 22 points

Therefore, you should buy that Republican uncle you hate a trip on The Nation 's cruise, given both the content and its winning Horribleness Score™. Christmas shopping, done.

Travel | Baltimore cruise industry hopes Key Bridge…

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Travel | baltimore cruise industry hopes key bridge channel reopens in time for busy june.

In 2023, Maryland Port Administration spokesperson Richard Scher said, 444,000 passengers boarded cruises in the terminal, the highest total since 2012.

Eight cruise ships are scheduled to depart in June.

“We are expecting our channel to be reopened by the end of May,” Scher said.

The Dali, a cargo ship with thousands of containers aboard, has sat in the Patapsco River since it struck one of the Key Bridge’s support piers March 26, collapsing the span into the water and killing six construction workers. Crews plan to use explosives Monday to remove bridge and roadway wreckage that has been lodged on top of the ship. Removing the ship is a major step toward reopening the 50-foot-deep shipping channel, which authorities have said will be usable by the end of May.

The cruise terminal primarily services ships from Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, and the Norwegian Cruise Line also occasionally uses the terminal. Typically cruises are round trips, although there are some one-way transatlantic offerings. Neither Carnival nor Royal Caribbean responded to a request for comment.

Royal Caribbean cruise ships left Baltimore on a 13-night trip March 15 and a 12-night trip March 23, and both ships returned to Norfolk, Virginia, where buses took passengers back to their cars in Baltimore, according to the Cruise Maryland Terminal 2024 schedule. Royal Caribbean also had cruises originally scheduled to leave from Baltimore on April 4 and 12 rerouted to Norfolk and has two more trips originally scheduled to leave Baltimore on May 25 and 30.

A Carnival cruise ship left Baltimore on March 24 for a seven-night trip and returned to Norfolk, according to the Cruise Maryland Terminal 2024 schedule. Carnival also had cruise ships scheduled March 31; April 7, 21 and 28; and May 5 and 12 that left from Norfolk instead.

“The incident began on March 26 and each cruise scheduled since then to leave from Baltimore has instead left from Norfolk,” Scher said

Norwegian Cruise Line did not have any ships scheduled to depart Baltimore until September.

Cruise terminals require customs and border protections and security, as well as luggage and cleaning services. Scher said the Maryland Departments of Commerce and Labor have instituted financial assistance and worker retention programs for port workers

Stephen Kirkland, executive director of the Norfolk cruise terminal, which boarded around 125,000 passengers in 2023, said the city primarily works with Carnival but originally did not have any cruises scheduled for this spring and summer because of construction on the terminal.

“Demolition on that project wasn’t due to start until June, when we got the calls from Royal Caribbean and Carnival that they needed to reroute, we had an available terminal because of construction,” Kirkland said.

Kirkland said Norfolk still plans to start construction in June.

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Cruise ship sails into New York City port with 44-foot dead whale across its bow

NEW YORK (AP) — A cruise ship sailed into a New York City port with a 44-foot (13-meter) dead whale across its bow, marine authorities said.

The whale, identified as an endangered sei whale, was caught on the ship’s bow when it arrived at the Port of Brooklyn on Saturday, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries spokesperson Andrea Gomez said.

A spokesperson for MSC Cruises said the whale was on the MSC Meraviglia, which docked at Brooklyn before sailing to ports in New England and Canada.

Related: Also on the high seas

“We immediately notified the relevant authorities, who are now conducting an examination of the whale,” officials with the cruise line said in a statement.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of any marine life,” the officials said, adding that the Geneva-based MSC Cruises follows all regulations designed to protect whales, such as altering itineraries in certain regions to avoid hitting the animals.

The dead whale was relocated to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, and towed to shore there to allow for better access to equipment and to conduct a necropsy, Gomez said.

The necropsy, an autopsy on an animal, was conducted on Tuesday, Gomez said. Samples collected from the whale will help biologists determine whether it was already dead when it was struck by the ship, she said.

Sei whales are typically observed in deeper waters far from the coastline, Gomez said. They are one of the largest whale species and are internationally protected.

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Royal Caribbean recruiting up to 10K workers in 2024 to meet record cruise demand

R oyal Caribbean is looking to recruit as many as 10,000 workers worldwide this year to staff its ships and private destinations as demand for ocean cruises hits fresh records.

The number of people taking cruises hit an all-time high in 2023, and with the surge in demand and larger vessels, labor needs are growing.

Tourism boards and port operators from around the world said Royal Caribbean — which already has a workforce of close to 100,000 — is looking to hire worldwide.

The company confirmed to Reuters that it’s anticipating hiring around 10,000 workers this year.

According to the company’s annual filing, its sea-based workforce last year — which comprises of staffers on its cruise ships — totaled about 88,700 employees, 6% lower than the year prior.

The giant’s land-based workforce, meanwhile — which is comprised primarily of port operations and corporate office roles — including at its private destinations consisted of approximately 9,500 full-time employees in 2023, up 17% from the year prior.

“The recruiting strategy follows the business strategy of moderate capacity growth,” a company spokesperson told Reuters.

The British Virgin Islands (BVI) in April was reportedly approached by Royal Caribbean in regards to recruitment and hiring, a request it hadn’t received in the past, said Natasha Chalwell, BVI Port Authority marketing director.

But the cruise giant isn’t only focused on the Caribbean: The company also approached West Africa’s Gambia Tourism Board in April with an interest in hiring more workers, a spokesperson said.

For reference, Royal Caribbean currently employs about 700 workers from the nation, which is the smallest on mainland Africa.

Royal Caribbean’s influx in hiring comes at a time when it’s adding three new ships to its fleet, the company rep added.

Earlier this year, the company debuted the world’s largest cruise ship, dubbed Icon of the Seas .

The $2 billion behemoth reportedly  lived up to the over-the-top  hype surrounding its launch, which included buzz that it spans 20 stories and boasts eight distinct neighborhoods.

Icon of the Seas can accommodate nearly 10,000 passengers and crew at full capacity, who are invited to enjoy a 17,000-square-foot on-board water park or book an upscale reservation at the 38-seat Empire Supper Club, an eight-course dinner complete with cocktail pairings and live jazz. 

All the while, the gargantuan ship is sailing on week-long itinteraries from Miami to Caribbean destinations like Puerto Rico, St. Kitts and Nevis and Cozumel, Mexico, among others.

Come July, Utopia of the Seas is scheduled to sail every Friday and Monday from Port Canaveral, Fla., to Perfect Day at CocoCay in The Bahamas. 

The forthcoming ship can accommodate 5,668 guests at capacity and offers 21 dining options, five pools, a zip line, ice-skating rink, basketball court and two rock-climbing walls.

Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas, meanwhile, is anticipated to set sail in the summer of 2025.

The company’s website touts the ship as having “over 40 ways to dine and drink,” plus “six record-breaking waterslides” and “seven splashy pools.”

Royal Caribbean said its bookings hit a record in the first quarter of 2024, boosting quarterly revenue to $3.73 billion, up 29%.

At the same time, the Miami-based company’s stock price has doubled over the past year to hit a new record.

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The Tiny Nation at the Vanguard of Mining the Ocean Floor

Below the waters of the Cook Islands, population 15,000, lie minerals used to power electric cars. Extracting them could bring riches, but many say it’s a bad idea.

By Pete McKenzie

Reporting from Rarotonga, Cook Islands

Two ships arrived in the Cook Islands in the South Pacific in March of last year. One was a familiar sight: a massive cruise ship, bringing hundreds of tourists to the pristine shores of this nation of 15,000 people. The other, a neon-orange vessel hauling complex scientific equipment, was more unusual.

On a nearby wharf, Prime Minister Mark Brown and many other prominent citizens had gathered to celebrate the smaller boat’s arrival. To Mr. Brown, the cruise ship represented his country’s troubling dependence on tourism. He described the other vessel, owned by an international mining company, as a harbinger of incredible wealth.

The Cook Islands is at the vanguard of a quest to mine the ocean floor for minerals used in electric car batteries. Mining these deposits has never been attempted on a large scale, but their reserves are so vast, proponents argue, that extracting them could power the world’s shift away from fossil fuels.

It would be a transformation for the Cook Islands, as well: Seabed mining could generate tens of billions of dollars for the tiny country, according to a 2019 study . Its per capita income is about $11,000.

But seabed mining faces stiff opposition from environmentalists, who worry that it would harm the ecology of the deep sea. More than 800 scientists have called for a moratorium on the practice, as have France, the United Kingdom and major companies like Google and BMW.

For two years, mining companies have been surveying the feasibility of seabed mining in the Cook Islands’ waters. The government is poised to decide in 2027 whether to allow it, and it faces rising pressure at home and overseas from critics who say it is rushing to embrace an untested practice.

“The government is aggressively promoting deep sea mining,” said Duncan Currie, an adviser to the High Seas Alliance and other international conservation organizations. “They seem to be pursuing seabed mining regardless of adverse effects.”

Mr. Brown insisted that the Cook Islands has not committed to mining.

The criticism “can be annoying, at times,” he said in an interview. Exploring the possibilities of seabed mining, he said, “is part of our journey of sovereign independence.”

In the past, he has pushed back against critics more forcefully.

“The very countries that destroy our planet through decades of profit-driven development, and who to this day continue their profit-driven actions, and neglect their climate change responsibilities, are making demands,” he said at a 2022 conference. “It is patronizing and it implies that we are too dumb or too greedy to know what we are doing.”

The Cook Islands, a 15-island chain that was once a colony of New Zealand, has been self-governing since 1965. Soon after achieving that status, which is short of full independence , international research vessels began exploring the country’s territorial waters, which cover about 756,000 square miles, roughly comparable to Mexico’s landmass.

The researchers found a seabed carpeted with avocado-sized rocks, or nodules, rich in cobalt and manganese. Each nodule grows the thickness of a credit card, roughly, every million years. Until recent technological advances, these rocks were unreachable.

Over the last decade, the Cook Islands has pursued those nodules in fits and starts. In 2012, it created an agency to solicit mining proposals for its own waters. In 2022, it issued permits to three companies to survey the waters and test mining technology.

Other countries that have taken steps to survey their seabeds include Japan and Norway. Most private enterprise is focused on mining in international waters, but regulations to allow this are still being hammered out.

Scouring the ocean floor, supporters argue, is the best way to obtain more of the minerals used in electric vehicle batteries and reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. They add that extracting nodules from the ocean floor with proper controls would cause less environmental harm than open-pit surface mines, which often also disrupt surrounding communities.

Seabed mining — which involve crawling machines scouring the seabed, sucking up rocks and venting silt plumes — terrifies Teina Rongo, a marine biologist who runs an environmental N.G.O. in the Cook Islands’ capital, Avarua, on the island of Rarotonga.

“Our creation story is that the bottom of the ocean is where life began,” he said. “How many creatures are we going to destroy down there if we suck up all that sand?”

Mr. Rongo had just finished teaching a class about climate change for school children at a community center, where straw turtles adorned the walls and scuba gear dripped water onto the floor. Speaking to a reporter about what he called mining’s dangers, he pointed to Nauru, another tiny Pacific nation.

Rich deposits of phosphates, a fertilizer ingredient, once brought vast riches to Nauru, but mismanagement and alleged corruption plunged the nation into poverty. Now its people live in a desolate, strip-mined moonscape.

Alex Herman, the head of the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority, emphasized that her agency was taking a careful, science-based approach to seabed mining. “The Cook Islands is such a special place, our own paradise,” she said, “and we want to be very mindful about any unintended consequences or impacts arising out of the progression of this sector.”

Still, some critics say Mr. Brown’s government has gotten too cozy with the companies it has allowed to survey its ocean floor. “They’ve both got the same agenda,” said Kelvin Passfield, a director of Te Ipukarea Society, a local environmental group.

Mr. Brown rejected that accusation, but critics say there has been evidence of a revolving door between the two sides.

After the former head of the mining agency, Paul Lynch, resigned, a prospecting company, Cook Islands Cobalt, hired his wife, Shona Lynch, as its top executive in the country.

Ms. Lynch defended her appointment. “I’ve got my own qualifications,” she said. “I’m not a wife that sits at home.”

Then, last year, Mr. Lynch told a local newspaper that another prospector, Moana Minerals, had taken him on a holiday aboard its survey vessel as it sailed through the Panama Canal (he compared it to a “chance to go to the moon”). Mr. Lynch, who has said that he paid for his flights, declined to comment.

Mr. Brown said he was careful not to get close to mining industry leaders. But, he added, as you “set up here, you tend to become part of the family. It’s very personal, the relationships you would have with companies.”

The government says it has put independent observers on survey ships to ensure the reliability of the companies’ data, which officials say will inform the decision about whether to pursue seabed mining.

The public appears to be evenly split over the issue, said Rashneel Kumar, the editor of Cook Islands News , the country’s largest newspaper.

But many think they know what the decision will be. Teresa Manarangi-Trott, a cautious supporter of seabed mining, led a government committee that gathered residents’ views on the practice.

“The government has decided that it’s going to happen, irrespective of what anyone says,” she said.

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Peter M. Acland Foundation, a media charity based in New Zealand.

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World's largest private cruise ship docks in Penang

Sunday, 12 May 2024

GEORGE TOWN: The world's largest privately-owned residential cruise ship has docked in Penang for the next two days.

State tourism and creative economy committee chairman Wong Hon Wai said the cruise, dubbed "MS The World," would stay at the Penang cruise terminal for two days before departing for Langkawi on Tuesday (May 14) night.

He said the ship docked in Penang at 2pm on Sunday (May 12) and would depart at 11pm on Tuesday (May 14).

"This cruise serves as a lavish retreat for individuals and their families as it sails across the world's seas," he said.

"This extraordinary vessel houses 165 ultra-luxurious apartments, which arrived in Penang after it departed its last port of call at Koh Phi Phi, Thailand.

"Its next destination will be Langkawi," he said in a statement on Sunday (May 12).

Wong said its arrival was a momentous occasion in the state, marking a significant milestone for Penang.

"It solidifies our position as a premier destination for luxury maritime travel.

"Situated strategically in Southeast Asia, Penang stands out as a prime destination for cruise liners traversing the region.

"Serving as a key port city, the Swettenham Pier Cruise Terminal in George Town showcases Penang's dedication to providing world-class facilities and services tailored to cruise tourists," he said.

MS The World is a private residential cruise ship operated like a condominium complex, with large apartments that can be purchased. Residents from many countries can live on board as the ship travels.

Some residents choose to live on board full-time, while others visit periodically throughout the year.

Tags / Keywords: The World , Private Cruise Ship , Penang , Wong Hon Mai

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