Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We are on the road, traveling abroad,
Speaker 1: and that's part of why we have had a lot
Speaker 1: of classic episodes to share with you lately. This one,
Speaker 1: this one, I think speaks to us as well as
Speaker 1: our guest producer, Matt the Madman Stillo Ben.
Speaker 2: Have you ever thought about flights as just being another
Speaker 2: form of cargo shipping where humans are the cargo.
Speaker 1: I think about most forms of transit with humans as
Speaker 1: the cargo, people moving right, Yes, yes, just like a podcast.
Speaker 3: Cargo ships move people. Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: And there are many, many, very interesting and varying in
Speaker 2: in provenance and accuracy conspiracy theories around the world, the
Speaker 2: wide world of shipping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me be honest with you, guys. Noel, Matt,
Speaker 1: Rachel back here.
Speaker 3: We we got to give Rachel and nickname.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we have think about this, but
Speaker 1: after a long journey, especially returning home, I can look
Speaker 1: at the most mundane of objects, say maybe a handwritten
Speaker 1: note of places to visit and cutter, and just marvel
Speaker 1: at how far this thing traveled to arrive at my hand.
Speaker 1: You know, it reminds me of the scene and no
Speaker 1: country for old men right where Sugar is talking to
Speaker 1: the gas station attendant. Sugar, Yeah, and they have a
Speaker 1: They weirdly enough, don't talk about a strange haircut. Instead,
Speaker 1: they talk about how far this quarter traveled through toime.
Speaker 2: Well, it's true, I mean pocket change. Especially when you
Speaker 2: look at you know, coins that are quite old. You
Speaker 2: think about the story behind it and all of the
Speaker 2: places and people's possessions that it's been in over the years,
Speaker 2: and there's a whole story to that. But shipping and
Speaker 2: the logistics of shipping in and of itself, it's obviously
Speaker 2: a very ancient, you know, profession and has come a
Speaker 2: very very long way and determined the course of civilization
Speaker 2: as we know it. Make no mistake, folks, current civilization,
Speaker 2: this whole group project we call humanity, will collapse if
Speaker 2: people stop shipping things. We literally just did an episode
Speaker 2: of our other show, Ridiculous History about the US camel
Speaker 2: Core and how during the Civil War logistics of moving
Speaker 2: supply supply chain was absolutely crucial to the war effort.
Speaker 1: Yes, and if you look at our previous episodes on
Speaker 1: things like freeports, which we did after tonight's classic episode,
Speaker 1: you will see that the world is not just inundated
Speaker 1: with shipping routes, some of very ancient provenance, like the
Speaker 1: Silk Road. Later now the precedent for the Belton Road
Speaker 1: initiative being built across the world via China. What you
Speaker 1: will see is that there's this whole regime of laws,
Speaker 1: and they are complicated, they are in a ven diagram,
Speaker 1: they're weirdly connected, and everybody breaks those laws.
Speaker 3: Which that was a really good post, by the way,
Speaker 3: very intense.
Speaker 2: He just looked directly into the camera when he said that,
Speaker 2: and he was kind of moving his hands around some
Speaker 2: invisible orb of energy.
Speaker 3: I loved it. Thank you, Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: So. In twenty nineteen, we got together with our brother
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and we asked, why are there so many conspiracies,
Speaker 1: specifically about shipping stuff around the world.
Speaker 3: Remember the Wayfair conspiracy. Sure did we talk about that
Speaker 3: in this episode. We can't remember mention.
Speaker 2: It may have been outside of the scope of Rider
Speaker 2: hadn't happened yet.
Speaker 1: There was furniture as a code, Furniture.
Speaker 2: As a code, the idea that this company Wayfair, that
Speaker 2: ship's kind of ikea fied furniture, you know, sort of
Speaker 2: faux mid century modern types.
Speaker 3: That I've got some.
Speaker 2: Wayfair stuff that they were in the human trafficking trade, right,
Speaker 2: the idea that certain certain specific brand names may indeed
Speaker 2: be an indicator for villains in the know, and that
Speaker 2: they were actually per seeing human cargo. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: mean just the human trafficking aspect of it is fascinating
Speaker 2: in and of itself. There's a whole season of the
Speaker 2: fantastic HBO series The Wire that revolved around sex workers
Speaker 2: being trafficked into the United States in chipping containers and
Speaker 2: a horrific situation involving many of them passing away because
Speaker 2: they were deprived of oxygen and they were, you know,
Speaker 2: sitting on a loading dock for an undetermined amount of time.
Speaker 2: And that was sort of the inciting action of that season.
Speaker 2: And it really speaks to the crime aspect of shipping
Speaker 2: and moving cargo and of course people.
Speaker 1: And to put it in an even simpler use case,
Speaker 1: here another conspiracy that is completely legal. This one is
Speaker 1: afore all the vexillologists out there on the bans of flags. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is completely legal to have a ship that is
Speaker 1: flagged as a ship operating under the auspice of one country. However,
Speaker 1: the crew is from a conglomeration of other countries. However,
Speaker 1: the people who built the ship or from a different country. However,
Speaker 1: the folks that in the origin and destination are from.
Speaker 3: Look machinations within machinations.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, there's a lot of sandbox to play in,
Speaker 1: and we want to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2: And a lot of sands to these very very real conspiracies,
Speaker 2: in addition to some that maybe hold a little bit
Speaker 2: less sand. But Ben, before we roll this tape, I
Speaker 2: do have to ask, since you said vexillologists, we were
Speaker 2: having a little moment outside getting some air at this
Speaker 2: conference here websumm at Qatar, and you hipped me to
Speaker 2: another term for people who collect matchbooks, voluminousvolluminists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. So let's get into the episode
Speaker 1: of good. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies.
Speaker 1: History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
Speaker 1: now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben, and you're joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission Control Decat Most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are here and that makes this stuff They don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. A question for you guys at the
Speaker 1: top of the show, have either of you all started
Speaker 1: ordering holiday gifts things of that nature.
Speaker 4: No, I have not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm one of those last minute is the best
Speaker 1: minute types myself when it comes to this. But we
Speaker 1: know that we are entering one of the busiest shipping
Speaker 1: periods in the year for at least the domestic US
Speaker 1: and a lot of other countries where in the Christian
Speaker 1: celebration of Christmas is common, right, And the weird thing
Speaker 1: is that although we always think about shipping and the
Speaker 1: passage of letters and goods during this time of year,
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing, twenty four to seven, three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five days a year operation and it's huge. The
Speaker 1: evidence about the enormity of this industry is all around you. Specifically,
Speaker 1: you look around as you're listening to this episode. Where
Speaker 1: does all this stuff around you come from? We are
Speaker 1: today recording in the legendary stuff you should know studio,
Speaker 1: I say legendary.
Speaker 3: Can we say legendary?
Speaker 4: Yeah? It is certainly. Yeah, first show to hit a
Speaker 4: billion downloads, it's a legend. And we're looking at pictures
Speaker 4: of Josh and Chuck all around us.
Speaker 3: Mmmmmmmm.
Speaker 1: And there are a couple of a couple of cameos
Speaker 1: of other non SISK people here. Let's say, I think
Speaker 1: that's Jonathan Strickland there the back left of Yeah.
Speaker 4: And all of these were shipped to our offices.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct. And if you look around your neck
Speaker 1: of the Global Woods, whatever room or environment you find
Speaker 1: yourself in today, it's strange to think about how much
Speaker 1: of this stuff came from so far away. You see,
Speaker 1: centuries ago, most of the possessions the average person had
Speaker 1: would probably be locally made. But nowadays even the most
Speaker 1: mundane items may come from halfway across the planet. We're
Speaker 1: talking towels, chess sets.
Speaker 4: Any consumer good really that is created out of either
Speaker 4: plastic or metal.
Speaker 1: And Matt, you and Paul and I went through a
Speaker 1: period a few years back where, for reasons we don't
Speaker 1: need to get in the weeds about, we were getting
Speaker 1: a lot of technological stuff from China, from a place
Speaker 1: called Monoprice. Remember that I do recall, and I would
Speaker 1: be so baffled because some of this was relatively sophisticated equipment.
Speaker 1: I would be so baffled to think that the economy
Speaker 1: was so complicated it was cheaper for us to buy
Speaker 1: something from China oceans away that it was to buy
Speaker 1: something from say, California. It's true, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to look into shipping today, but perhaps not in the
Speaker 1: way you might assume. And to get us to the dark,
Speaker 1: murky exploration of today's episode, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: start with things that are absolutely true. So here are
Speaker 1: the facts.
Speaker 4: So the Post Office nowadays, on podcast ads and other
Speaker 4: places alike, is often maligned, though the ads have lessened
Speaker 4: quite a bit in the past few years. But you know,
Speaker 4: when you imagine the post Office and going to visit
Speaker 4: there to send something out, that's one thing. But then
Speaker 4: when you imagine the orchestration that is required to get things,
Speaker 4: whether it's just a simple letter or package of weighs
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty pounds from one place to another,
Speaker 4: it's an incredibly difficult task that they're faced with, and
Speaker 4: they do it every day. Before the United States Post Office,
Speaker 4: you have to imagine you were putting things on a
Speaker 4: railcar a lot of times and then sending it off.
Speaker 4: You were putting it on a person who was riding
Speaker 4: horseback for a long time.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Before these state levels shipping institutions existed,
Speaker 1: moving goods from one place to another was a just
Speaker 1: one long trust fall. You'd have to find a private courier.
Speaker 1: That courier would have to make their own way from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. We're talking, you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking like European history, the history of ancient empires. This courier,
Speaker 1: if they made it from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: would take a long time, especially if it wasn't from
Speaker 1: if point A was in a different city, country, or
Speaker 1: region than point B. If you were lucky months later,
Speaker 1: then we get back to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember. All that includes personal security of the courier.
Speaker 1: Right right. It depends upon that, and it depends upon
Speaker 1: the trustworthiness the dependability of the courier. If this courier
Speaker 1: disappeared for one reason or another, your sol as everybody understands,
Speaker 1: this is a family show. And thus that stands for
Speaker 1: sorely out of luck. In the US, the gold Rush
Speaker 1: and the westward expansion led to a fundamental shift in shipping.
Speaker 1: Things like the pony Express that you mentioned earlier, Matt.
Speaker 1: Those things failed, they were bought up or they simply
Speaker 1: went away. Other giants rose, like Wells Fargo, which some
Speaker 1: people may not know. Wells Fargo did not begin as
Speaker 1: a bank. It began as a shipping interest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they brought carriages into the mix.
Speaker 1: They also retained that logo iconic. What colors are those?
Speaker 1: Yellow and red?
Speaker 3: Orange?
Speaker 4: I just see the red, okay, just see the red.
Speaker 1: But because of these things, soon it was possible to
Speaker 1: reliably send goods and letters from one end of the
Speaker 1: continent to the next, and the rise of the transcontinental
Speaker 1: railroad played a huge role in that in this country,
Speaker 1: and ever since then, shipping and transportation have evolved in
Speaker 1: step with one another, and eventually this created the massive
Speaker 1: interconnected trade sphere we all enjoy the benefits and drawbacks
Speaker 1: of today. This sphere ranges across public entities and private companies.
Speaker 1: Things are carried by automobile, aircraft, cargo, ship, on foot,
Speaker 1: and even occasionally here in twenty nineteen, via livestock.
Speaker 4: Nice like beast a burden I mean too bad for
Speaker 4: the beast, I guess, which feels like a derogatory term,
Speaker 4: but the animals. And think about it this way, there
Speaker 4: is a very very much distinct possibility that the components
Speaker 4: the things that make up the electronics you're using right now,
Speaker 4: your laptop, whatever it is you're using your phone, maybe
Speaker 4: to listen to this. They have traveled further around the
Speaker 4: world than you may ever.
Speaker 3: That's true. That's true. They came a long way to
Speaker 3: see you.
Speaker 1: Also, we're in a situation such that it makes more
Speaker 1: economic sense for these long trips to occur, more so
Speaker 1: than you would think. One famous example concerns fish in Scotland.
Speaker 1: It is economically more feasible for fish to be caught
Speaker 1: in Scotland shipped to China for processing, you know, to
Speaker 1: filet of the fish and so on, and then shipped
Speaker 1: back to Scotland than it does to have the fish
Speaker 1: processed in Scotland.
Speaker 4: It's weird, right, yeah, that it boggles the mind.
Speaker 1: It does. And one of the primary players in this
Speaker 1: story is something called containerization, which I know sounds like
Speaker 1: a buzzword, made up term, but it describes this process.
Speaker 1: We've all seen those looming rectangular containers on the backs
Speaker 1: of tractor trailers on train cars, rusting away in weird
Speaker 1: industrial areas, or maybe being repurposed to be a chic
Speaker 1: hipster cocktail bar or something those things are ubiquitous, They're everywhere.
Speaker 1: Each one of these shipping containers is a tiny vital
Speaker 1: piece forming the backbone, or perhaps the circulatory system of
Speaker 1: the world's trade economy. Containerization basically, it's a system that
Speaker 1: standardizes these containers such that they can fit on the
Speaker 1: majority of things that will transport them. You can fit them,
Speaker 1: You can fit x amount of them on a cargo ship.
Speaker 1: From there, you can break up that load of containers
Speaker 1: to ship some via tractor trailers. We have a ton
Speaker 1: of truckers in our audience and people who work in shipping.
Speaker 1: So first off, you are unsung heroes. Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for keeping this strange house of cards from collapsing.
Speaker 4: Absolutely and also shout out to all you lorry drivers out.
Speaker 1: There and lorry drivers as well. So this concept of containerization,
Speaker 1: this great standardization of shipping containers, dates back centuries, right,
Speaker 1: goes back to the seventeen hundreds. I want to say,
Speaker 1: in the coal mining regions of England it really hits
Speaker 1: its boom, and it goes worldwide after World War Two,
Speaker 1: and this boom has continued. We have the numbers to
Speaker 1: prove it.
Speaker 4: Yes, in the world of shipping, the cargo ship stands
Speaker 4: ahead above all others. It is the king. According to
Speaker 4: the International Maritime Organization, ninety percent of everything shipped in
Speaker 4: the world, everything shipped in the world, is on a
Speaker 4: cargo vessel at some point.
Speaker 1: That's bizarre. Ninety percent of every everything, not ninety percent
Speaker 1: of tickle me elmos, not ninety percent of your favorite
Speaker 1: vinyl reissues, ninety percent of everything. There are over twenty
Speaker 1: million shipping containers in the world. We actually don't know
Speaker 1: how many there are anymore, because we built them so quickly.
Speaker 1: They're somewhere right now as you listen to this, between
Speaker 1: five or six million that are on the road or
Speaker 1: on the ship at sea, all across the planet. In total,
Speaker 1: these cargo containers, as individual boxes, make about two hundred
Speaker 1: million trips per year they get around. This works out
Speaker 1: to more than eleven billion tons of stuff. Etches, sketches, volvos, grain,
Speaker 1: different cereals, oil, pictures of Christopher walkin, whatever you can
Speaker 1: imagine it has been on a cargo ship at some point.
Speaker 4: All those stuff they don't want you to know, t shirts.
Speaker 1: Right, they're out floating somewhere by Diego Gard as we speak, right.
Speaker 1: So there are some downsides though, because we mentioned everyone
Speaker 1: enjoys the benefits of this, but we also just briefly
Speaker 1: alluded to some drawbacks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are certainly downsides to this whole system. About
Speaker 4: ten thousand containers get lost at sea every year. Imagine
Speaker 4: that just it fell over the side. Guys, I don't
Speaker 4: know what to tell you or all that ship, Eh,
Speaker 4: we can't find it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we see different examples of this in economic anecdotes.
Speaker 1: Sure one of them would be the story of the
Speaker 1: rubber Ducks. Did you ever hear about this?
Speaker 4: I've read that book, The Small The Short Book by
Speaker 4: Carl No. I can't remember who wrote it, but it's
Speaker 4: a book about ten little rubber ducks that fell overboard
Speaker 4: when they were being shipped across the sea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit less than twenty nine thousand rubber
Speaker 1: ducks were lost in nineteen ninety two because a cargo
Speaker 1: ship container tumbled into the North Pacific. I think the
Speaker 1: number was around twenty eighty eight hundred, and the rubber
Speaker 1: ducks were packaged with other bath toys. They were headed
Speaker 1: from China to the US, but the currents took them
Speaker 1: and they actually provided a great deal of insight for oceanographers,
Speaker 1: people who study ocean currents and Arctic geography, and they
Speaker 1: were able to learn more about how currents functioned because
Speaker 1: they just had to follow the ducks.
Speaker 4: That's amazing because it's literally the story of Eric Carl's
Speaker 4: ten Little rubber Ducks. Well, this story I've been reading
Speaker 4: to my son forever.
Speaker 1: Well, it appears it is nonfiction, or at least based
Speaker 1: on a true story. There's another drawback, which is that
Speaker 1: these cargo ships generate a great deal of pollution. They
Speaker 1: emit an estimated seven hundred nine ninety six million tons
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide that was in twenty twelve, and while
Speaker 1: the number, while people are working to bring that number down,
Speaker 1: it's it's a hard economic cost. There's not really way
Speaker 1: to move around it. Because you see, despite those drawbacks,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that we lose ten thousand containers at
Speaker 1: least of stuff a year, it's still more efficient to
Speaker 1: move it that way than it is by shipping it
Speaker 1: via land or air.
Speaker 4: Just the way.
Speaker 1: It's geography, it's the way the continents work.
Speaker 4: It's geography, and it's mass. Like if you even if
Speaker 4: you have giant airplanes that can carry a proportion of
Speaker 4: what would be on a shipping container ship. That's so
Speaker 4: weird to say you couldn't carry as you know, you
Speaker 4: couldn't get as much across for the price. It's it's obvious,
Speaker 4: and you obviously can't get to certain parts of land
Speaker 4: from other parts of land when there's a giant ocean
Speaker 4: in between.
Speaker 1: Right until we create a global road network, Yes, this
Speaker 1: is a possibility, but it's still very very much not plausible.
Speaker 1: One day, one day it's yeah, it's it's strange because
Speaker 1: compared to the energy expended moving stuff via plane or truck,
Speaker 1: shipping is actually far less damaging in terms of greenhouse
Speaker 1: gases released when you ship stuff via cargo ship. If
Speaker 1: you send a container from say Shanghai to France, you
Speaker 1: emit fewer greenhouse gases than the truck that takes the
Speaker 1: container from one place in France to another. Wow, it's
Speaker 1: weird when you think about it. It's it's again it's
Speaker 1: a problem of scale, and there is absolutely no question, folks,
Speaker 1: this is a massive, gargantuan industry. It employs millions of
Speaker 1: people and it moves billions of dollars. The world economy
Speaker 1: as we know it would be gone without global shipping,
Speaker 1: right we would enter a dark age.
Speaker 4: It is the backbone right now of our society, whether
Speaker 4: whether we want to believe that or not.
Speaker 1: It's weird, yeah yeah, just as the US economy would
Speaker 1: collapse without shipping companies or state institutions like the usps UPS, FedEx,
Speaker 1: of course, and so on. But here's our question for today,
Speaker 1: and it's a question we encounter anytime we contemplate any
Speaker 1: system of this size. What if there's more behind the curtain.
Speaker 1: What doesn't the shipping industry want you to know?
Speaker 4: And we'll get to it right after a word from
Speaker 4: our sponsor and we're back. Then let's get in to
Speaker 4: the people who want to either take stuff away from
Speaker 4: our shipping containers or smuggle something through our shipping systems.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. This industry is cartoonishly crooked.
Speaker 1: It is so crooked and so corrupt. And let's look
Speaker 1: at a couple of specific examples here. First, smuggling. Doubtlessly,
Speaker 1: smuggling is one of the first things we think of
Speaker 1: when we think of crime and the transportation of goods.
Speaker 1: It's a big business, and business is great for smugglers
Speaker 1: and traffickers. Whether we are talking the smuggling of drugs,
Speaker 1: the smuggling of weapons, the tragic and heartbreaking trafficking of people.
Speaker 1: It's probably not going to stop. With the sheer volume
Speaker 1: of activity occurring at every single second, at every single
Speaker 1: level of the global trade network, authorities are at the
Speaker 1: very least hard press to discover, apprehend, and prosecute the
Speaker 1: criminals involved. It doesn't help right that, unlike street level dealers,
Speaker 1: groups or individuals with the capital to operate international smuggling
Speaker 1: rings are not only overwhelmingly well off, they're often connected
Speaker 1: to state level actors or enormous private entities also known
Speaker 1: as the same people who are tasked with on paper
Speaker 1: stopping these crimes from recurring.
Speaker 4: Or even low level people within those systems that they
Speaker 4: know are at certain strategic places. Yikes. So let's consider
Speaker 4: a specific story to kind of look closer into this.
Speaker 4: So let's go back to July twenty eleven, the Guyan,
Speaker 4: which is a ship. It was seized by US customs
Speaker 4: after authorities found twenty tons twenty tons of cocaine aboard.
Speaker 1: Or was it eighteen tons?
Speaker 4: Oh, it makes a massive difference, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: This is so this happens pretty frequently in drug busts,
Speaker 1: and I think it's hilarious, and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people listening are going to agree with us here.
Speaker 4: Why would two to go missing?
Speaker 1: Have you ever noticed? Have you ever noticed when there's
Speaker 1: a large bust of illicit drugs the numbers get kind
Speaker 1: of kind of fudgy real quick.
Speaker 4: It was twenty, but you know, we just reweighted it
Speaker 4: was just eighteen. I guess we made an error.
Speaker 1: You know, heat of the moment.
Speaker 4: Cheez, that's a yeah. We're not accusing anyone here, We're
Speaker 4: just saying, maybe it's a bit of a pattern.
Speaker 1: I'm not accusing, I am observing a pattern. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one ever. You never see a drug bust where
Speaker 1: someone says, oh, we thought we we thought we found
Speaker 1: five hundred pounds of marijuana, but actually it was five
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty. Yeah. No, the number never goes up.
Speaker 1: It always fudges down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyhow, So let's get back to that twenty or eighteen
Speaker 4: tons of coke.
Speaker 1: Right, For comparison, eighteen tons of cocaine, that's about the
Speaker 1: size of three full grown African bull elephants, And that
Speaker 1: translates the cocaine, not the elephants, to an estimated street
Speaker 1: value of over over one billion dollars us yi. So
Speaker 1: yay for customs. They caught this, right, they caught this.
Speaker 1: They seize the craft.
Speaker 4: The what is it called, the Mediterranean Shipping Shipping Company's Guyan.
Speaker 1: The MSc Guyang. Things got complicated very quickly. You see,
Speaker 1: the MSc Guyan is a Liberian flagged vessel. That means
Speaker 1: it sales under the flag of the country Liberia. But
Speaker 1: it is not owned nor operated by a Liberian company. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's operated by that company. You just give a shout
Speaker 1: out to Matt the Mediterranean Shipping Co. They are a
Speaker 1: Switzerland based global shipping conglomerate.
Speaker 4: Hold on a second, So it's the Mediterranean Shipping Company
Speaker 4: with a Liberian flag.
Speaker 1: Based in Switzerland, Okay, and they only sort of own it, right,
Speaker 1: It gets sketch and sketcher as we ascend the ladder
Speaker 1: of ownership and profit. The vessel was financed by JP Morgan,
Speaker 1: who what you may recognize from some earlier episodes.
Speaker 4: In New York City.
Speaker 1: Right, the two companies structured the purchase of this vessel
Speaker 1: such that the ship was quote, we'll have to unpack
Speaker 1: this owned by client assets in a transportation strategy fund
Speaker 1: run for JP Morgan's asset management arm. What right exactly
Speaker 1: who really owns this at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: Where does the check get sent to? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Where does it whose bank account ultimately collects
Speaker 1: whatever margin of profit is here. It's a strange question.
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, by the way, has at the time of recording,
Speaker 1: refused to release a public statement regarding this.
Speaker 4: And look, we don't know where all that coke came from,
Speaker 4: but it was not us.
Speaker 1: Right, and said, yeah, look guys, we had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with that twenty six tons of cocaine. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we thought it was eighteen.
Speaker 4: They go, oh, interesting.
Speaker 1: Wrong number.
Speaker 3: Uh this is J. D.
Speaker 1: Horgan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's not the one you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're technically a river bank, not a financial institution.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure you're looking for HSBC. They're they're the ones.
Speaker 4: It's HSBC, is what I said It HSBC.
Speaker 1: I can't hear you, so I hope that's how it works.
Speaker 1: You know, at some point in history there was someone
Speaker 1: who was part of an otherwise legitimate financial institution, maybe
Speaker 1: in the days of like telegraphs or something, who totally
Speaker 1: faked that their equivalent of a phone wasn't working. Yep,
Speaker 1: oh sorry, we thought it was a then a dot, then.
Speaker 4: A dash, our dinner daughter was just not working.
Speaker 1: And then the great depression. But it's true they've been
Speaker 1: tremendously cagey about this because we see this interlocking system
Speaker 1: of ownership which, without profiling too hard, I want to say,
Speaker 1: it feels very much like a shell game. It feels
Speaker 1: very much like a way to maximize profit while avoiding liability, sure,
Speaker 1: which is what companies do well.
Speaker 4: And they just happened to get caught.
Speaker 1: They just happened to get caught. Yeah, this single bust
Speaker 1: is part of an ongoing investigation, so we don't know
Speaker 1: all the details about it. You can see some low
Speaker 1: level and some pretty high level crew members who were
Speaker 1: implicated in bringing a board parcels of cocaine off the
Speaker 1: coast of Peru, but as far as the person who
Speaker 1: organized brokeered the whole deal. The reason the coke interest
Speaker 1: in Peru knew where the ship was going to be,
Speaker 1: and the reason people in the ship got I think
Speaker 1: one guy got just as little as fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for helping load it on, which sounds like great money
Speaker 1: until you know you're going to jail. Yea, these people
Speaker 1: have been implicable. There's no one has found the puppet
Speaker 1: master yet. And while this was a big bus, this.
Speaker 2: Was not.
Speaker 1: Anomalous by virtue of simply being a drug bust because
Speaker 1: the US Customs and Border Protection claims that they are
Speaker 1: busting people left and right every day.
Speaker 4: The US Customs and Border Protection claim that they sees
Speaker 4: an average or seized an average of four thousand, six
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty seven pounds of narcotics every day. That's
Speaker 4: a lot, not quite eighteen tons, but it's a lot.
Speaker 4: And again we've talked about this before. It really is
Speaker 4: just one of those things that cannot occur without help
Speaker 4: from somebody somewhere, some kind of corruption.
Speaker 1: Right, this leads us to another dark side of the industry,
Speaker 1: and we'll dive into it after a word from ours sponsor.
Speaker 3: We're back.
Speaker 1: So the shipping industry, probably since the first boat was made,
Speaker 1: or the first moon, not the first boat, since the
Speaker 1: first laws were made by some authority saying thou shalt
Speaker 1: give me a cut right of whatever this pie is
Speaker 1: in question. Ever since that moment, corruption has existed every
Speaker 1: time somebody makes let's think of it as light and
Speaker 1: shadow right. Every time somebody makes a law that exists
Speaker 1: in the light, a law with transparency, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, there is another practice, an analog to that,
Speaker 1: a shadow law that will exist in the criminal community
Speaker 1: or in the underground. That's why we have all these
Speaker 1: old tropes about honor among thieves and whether or not
Speaker 1: it exists. That's why you hear MAF you also talk
Speaker 1: about a code of one sort or another. Because human
Speaker 1: beings inherently attempt to impose order upon any sort of
Speaker 1: interaction with the world around them or with the people
Speaker 1: they meet. The shipping industry is going to be cursed
Speaker 1: with corruption for the foreseeable future because of a few
Speaker 1: very easily explained reasons. First, the crews in these vessels
Speaker 1: have a really tough job. They make thousands of stops
Speaker 1: at ports all around the world every year, and these
Speaker 1: ports are in numerous countries, very very different countries. Every
Speaker 1: single one has its own distinct set of laws and
Speaker 1: legal systems, and as anyone can assure you, the rule
Speaker 1: of law is not the same in every country. Like
Speaker 1: here in the US, if you are not wealthy, then
Speaker 1: the rule of law is pretty secure. Odds of getting
Speaker 1: in trouble for murdering someone are pretty high. Again, if
Speaker 1: you're not wealthy. If you are wealthy, then you have
Speaker 1: a different set you have a set of shadow laws,
Speaker 1: just like we described before. But these folks, these captains
Speaker 1: and crews of these ships will not only go to
Speaker 1: places with vastly different sets of laws, social mores, legal systems,
Speaker 1: things like that, different institutions they have to interact with,
Speaker 1: they also encounter tremendous bureaucracy, right.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean in all kinds of different ship inspections.
Speaker 4: Every time, or mostly when they go into port, there's
Speaker 4: going to be some kind of inspection, some kind of
Speaker 4: immigration or customs that they have to deal with just
Speaker 4: by even entering a port. And there are also you know,
Speaker 4: different environmental concerns in the varying countries that you're going
Speaker 4: to encounter as well. And you have to imagine, you know,
Speaker 4: during these inspections, right, you're on this ship, you're the captain,
Speaker 4: you're the crew. You show up. Now, this whole other
Speaker 4: team comes through and runs these inspections, right, and a
Speaker 4: lot of times, just to get through that inspection, or
Speaker 4: maybe even to have someone look the other way, that's
Speaker 4: just hypothetically about some discrepancy in the weight of certain cargo.
Speaker 1: Sure, are the screams coming from a container?
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe that too. But you would have to bribe
Speaker 4: this team of people coming in from whichever country you're
Speaker 4: going to.
Speaker 1: And even if you are not shipping anything illicit, even
Speaker 1: if you're not doing anything illegal, you may still have
Speaker 1: to participate in this bribery system just to get through
Speaker 1: your date. Because refusing to pay these I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep calling you seeing shadowy. Refusing to pay these shadow
Speaker 1: taxes will lead to at the very least delays, sometimes
Speaker 1: huge delays. And you have to understand when these people
Speaker 1: are operating, that last port of call that they just
Speaker 1: went to is one in a series of ports, so
Speaker 1: there's a very very high chance of a domino effect
Speaker 1: if they don't get to leave on time. They are
Speaker 1: also punitive fines that will be legally defended by the
Speaker 1: country in which the port exists, and these finds. Can
Speaker 1: you know, It's like they used to say about law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers in the US that if an l e
Speaker 1: O wants to write you a ticket for something, they
Speaker 1: will find something. While that may not be one hundred
Speaker 1: percent true, it's absolutely true, and a lot of these ports.
Speaker 1: The worst case scenario is that refusal to participate in
Speaker 1: this bribery system can result in physical harm to the crew,
Speaker 1: maybe even fatalities. The typical euphemism for bribery, we hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy this, and we hope you have examples of
Speaker 1: your own is a facilitation payment. A facilitation payment?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, you doing No, that's right, that's great. We're
Speaker 4: gonna get you out of here like aty split. We
Speaker 4: just got to get this little facilitation payment going first.
Speaker 4: What I mean, I'm just gonna hold my hand out
Speaker 4: here and wait for you to facilitate.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, I'm facilitating in the payment. I thought you were.
Speaker 1: I thought this was a payment for you to facility.
Speaker 4: You don't understand. This is my this is my job,
Speaker 4: and what I'm saying is in order for me to
Speaker 4: do my job, I need a little facilitation.
Speaker 3: Oh you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, now, this is my first time in the
Speaker 1: Porto Lago, sir, But I.
Speaker 4: Has nothing in my hand still.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh oh gosh, okay, hang on, let me
Speaker 1: let me make a phone call real quick. But actually
Speaker 1: it would probably be much.
Speaker 4: Smoother than Yeah, yeah, it really would be.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a decide to a friend of
Speaker 1: mine whom I will not identify, actually did participate in
Speaker 1: low level smuggling from Russia to the US. Not for
Speaker 1: not for some sort of nefarious reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was snowting right. He was just coming back
Speaker 4: to see some people in life.
Speaker 1: Again, this friend of mine actually was getting some pre
Speaker 1: communists takeover children's literature. Okay, because this friend of mine
Speaker 1: is a nerd, so snowden right, And this friend of
Speaker 1: mine had never broken a law in the US of
Speaker 1: which I am aware, and this friend of mine had
Speaker 1: never broken a law in any country, but they said
Speaker 1: it was very easy to break the law in Russia.
Speaker 1: And they have following complaint. Again, Russian, Russian speakers, people
Speaker 1: have lived in Russia, please let us know if this
Speaker 1: jives with you, because Matt and Paul and I have
Speaker 1: never been right, Paul, you haven't been a okay, correct, correct?
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to check. So here's what this
Speaker 1: person says. This person says they heard that they could
Speaker 1: buy some of this literature, and technically it's illegal for
Speaker 1: them to take it out of the country. But again,
Speaker 1: they're not moving heroin, they're not moving weapons.
Speaker 3: Of war or anything.
Speaker 1: So they go to essentially a black market location to
Speaker 1: buy these books, these children's books, and they said it
Speaker 1: was the best customer service experience they had in the
Speaker 1: country because apparently at the time this person was there,
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of things we take for granted
Speaker 1: in the West, niceties that just do not exist there,
Speaker 1: and one of them is that here here, if you
Speaker 1: go to a business, they will make change. If you're
Speaker 1: paying for something that's ten dollars and thirteen cents and
Speaker 1: you just have a twenty dollars bill, they'll make change
Speaker 1: for you. In Russia, apparently that was not the case.
Speaker 1: You were expected to have exact change. Now again, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I cannot first verify this firsthand, but this
Speaker 1: person said when they went, no one would smile at
Speaker 1: them when they were, you know, in a legal transactional situation.
Speaker 1: But when they went to the black market thing, the
Speaker 1: people were all pretty nice and multi lingual, and this
Speaker 1: person speaks Russian, so anyway it shouldn't have mattered. And
Speaker 1: then they happily made change. Yeah, And the person said,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the black market just works better and
Speaker 1: more efficiently depending on where you are in the world.
Speaker 1: And as much as I hate to admit it, I
Speaker 1: think that person is onto something.
Speaker 4: I think the people whom your friend encountered were just
Speaker 4: reading him and or his or her compatriots who were
Speaker 4: with her or him, whoever it was. I think the
Speaker 4: smiling thing was just a tactic to read whether or
Speaker 4: not they were police.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, Maybe it's just reflection of energy too, right.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: So. So anyhow, we know that bribery exists and proliferates
Speaker 1: throughout the world. The shipping industry is no different, and
Speaker 1: anybody who has traveledively depend on where you've gone, you
Speaker 1: have found yourself in a bribery situation. Like in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world, it's just part of a police
Speaker 1: officer's job to propose and accept the bribes, and woe
Speaker 1: betide those who refuse to play the game. According to
Speaker 1: someone named Cecilia Muller tor Brand, who is the program
Speaker 1: director at the Maritime Anti Corruption Network or MACIN, a
Speaker 1: facilitation payment is a low level payment made to a
Speaker 1: low level official to perform a routine task, a task
Speaker 1: you were already entitled to. And this is so common
Speaker 1: that other countries you know that participate in the shipping
Speaker 1: industry have some names in slang for these sorts of payments,
Speaker 1: and frankly, several of them are pretty funny.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I very much enjoy China's which is tea money,
Speaker 4: lot of tea shipping, just give me that extra tea money.
Speaker 1: Or the one in Brazil, which is just called make
Speaker 1: me laugh.
Speaker 4: It sounds like a greeting like, ah, yes, hello, welcome
Speaker 4: to Brazil. We hope you're enjoying the port. Now make
Speaker 4: me laugh.
Speaker 1: And then, because we're an audio podcast, Matt here you
Speaker 1: extended your hand just like that port authority member in
Speaker 1: oh Okay, I thought it was Lagos.
Speaker 4: He was in Jersey.
Speaker 1: I misread the accent. So another you know, just for comparison,
Speaker 1: many of us might be more familiar with police bribes.
Speaker 1: In Guatemala. They say something like, well, you know, could
Speaker 1: you give me some money to help me buy some
Speaker 1: chick lits.
Speaker 4: I've heard that as well, actually weirdly specific. Huh yeah,
Speaker 4: wait where did you hear I've got some friends in Jersey?
Speaker 1: Now friends in Jersey also sounds like a euphemism, is it not, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got some friends in Jersey? I think it might
Speaker 1: be they said make me laugh, They said, you would
Speaker 1: make me laugh. So we want to hear your slang
Speaker 1: terms for this kind of bribery. In the meantime, we
Speaker 1: want to establish that while there are some states, many
Speaker 1: states honestly legitimately working to address the endemic corruption in
Speaker 1: the shipping industry, most of the burden of this falls
Speaker 1: on the gigantic private shipping conglomerates, and those conglomerates, in
Speaker 1: many cases themselves can benefit from these same corrupt practices
Speaker 1: that they may lament in public or forward facing literature
Speaker 1: or statements.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean?
Speaker 4: Well, I guess ultimately it means the official numbers that
Speaker 4: we all get to look at, the statistics, the estimates
Speaker 4: for global shipping trades are all at least somewhat inaccurate
Speaker 4: because we are not exactly sure and we cannot be
Speaker 4: definitely sure about how much stuff is being traded and
Speaker 4: how much it's all cost. We get the estimates from
Speaker 4: the conglomerates. Essentially, we don't.
Speaker 1: Know how much shadow money exists out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, stuff that is either willingly or unwillingly being traded
Speaker 4: and for how much money.
Speaker 1: And there is genuinely no workable solution at this time
Speaker 1: legalizing drugs, of course is I think it's clear to
Speaker 1: say that would be one of the biggest, most profound
Speaker 1: steps toward crippling criminal cartels, at least in South America
Speaker 1: and in maybe a couple of maybe in the Golden Triangle.
Speaker 1: But that won't stop the bribery, because corruption and smuggling
Speaker 1: are not simply dependent upon illicit drugs. The problem is
Speaker 1: that no one is incentivized to play straight here. There
Speaker 1: are state level agencies and institutions doing their level best
Speaker 1: to staunch the bleeding. But this is a grievous wound.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, man, I feel kind of weird
Speaker 1: ending on just such a negative note. I mean, it's true.
Speaker 1: Everything we said is true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I'll give you one solution. Anyone and
Speaker 4: everyone working around that ship of containers has to be
Speaker 4: paid so much money that the thought of being able
Speaker 4: to be bribed to bring something onto that ship and
Speaker 4: then losing you know, their wealth that they get from
Speaker 4: working there, they would be incentivized to not break the rules.
Speaker 1: But wouldn't that cut into the profits for the conglomerates.
Speaker 4: Well maybe over you know, Yeah, you're right, it totally would.
Speaker 1: But what about the ports then, because that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of the corruption comes out.
Speaker 4: You're right, So you would need turrets that had an
Speaker 4: AI sophisticated enough to identify when a bribe was occurring.
Speaker 4: Oh nice, and then they could shoot sleep darts rapidly
Speaker 4: at any possible bribery.
Speaker 1: And we can do we can be adventurers and make
Speaker 1: a documentary about the death of the illegal shipping industry
Speaker 1: in Brazil and we can call it. No one laughs
Speaker 1: in Rio. I just like, I like the gravitas of that,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if it's accurate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it. No more laughter.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is too delving a little bit too
Speaker 1: far into psychology here, But just really briefly, over the years,
Speaker 1: you and I, in the course of research and in
Speaker 1: the course of experienced conversation, have pretty well and pretty
Speaker 1: definitively established that happiness is a comparative or relative term
Speaker 1: for this species. Multiple studies have shown us that below
Speaker 1: a certain financial threshold, people are not just happy. It's
Speaker 1: not enough to know that you make money or that
Speaker 1: you make a wage. People don't want to just be
Speaker 1: satisfied if they work in a group environment. They want
Speaker 1: to know that they have more than the other person,
Speaker 1: or at least as much. So if if you and
Speaker 1: Paul and I were were working in a totally different
Speaker 1: industry and we all have the same job, and we all,
Speaker 1: let's say, we all made I'm just fifty thousand a year,
Speaker 1: and we were happy as clams. I don't know where
Speaker 1: that saying comes from, but that's us. We're super happy.
Speaker 1: And then we find out that one of us makes
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand dollars a year, we are very much unhappy.
Speaker 1: Nothing for our personal experience has changed in any way whatsoever,
Speaker 1: save for the knowledge that someone else is doing a
Speaker 1: little better than us. And that is why, that is
Speaker 1: why I argue that bribery at this point will always
Speaker 1: exist because it's not enough for many people to be
Speaker 1: happy with themselves. They have to feel like other people
Speaker 1: are doing worse.
Speaker 4: Interesting point capitalism, baby, Yeah, I don't know if I
Speaker 4: don't know if that bears out for everyone.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you're right, it's too broad a brush many people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: So let's add just one more for fun. Because we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about the post office, but we
Speaker 1: didn't go into detail. Did you hear about the conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory proposed by President Trump back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: I did I heard tell via some tweets.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct, that's correct. The President in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: claimed that the company Amazon, with whom I think many
Speaker 1: of us are familiar, is costing the United Postal Service
Speaker 1: billions of dollars, and the US taxpayers are footing the bill.
Speaker 4: Bezos.
Speaker 1: He had one tweet about this, and then he doubled
Speaker 1: down a few days later and he said, quote, I
Speaker 1: am right about Amazon costing the US Post Office massive
Speaker 1: amount money for being their delivery boy. Amazon should pay
Speaker 1: these costs plus and not have them borne by the
Speaker 1: American taxpayer many billions of dollars. Post Office leaders don't
Speaker 1: have a clue, or do they. We looked into this,
Speaker 1: and luckily for the US taxpayer, the numbers don't seem
Speaker 1: to bear out. The US Post Service did lose two
Speaker 1: point seven billion dollars in twenty seventeen, that's per PolitiFact,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't because it was delivering stuff for Amazon. Actually,
Speaker 1: the opposites the case. Those kind of parcel delivery deals
Speaker 1: they make with private companies like Amazon, accounted for seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars of the nineteen point five billion dollars in
Speaker 1: revenue that the Post Office made during that time. So
Speaker 1: what that means is that those kind of companies are
Speaker 1: forming a large amount of the revenue generated for the
Speaker 1: post Office. Are they getting these price breaks that the
Speaker 1: ordinary human wouldn't get, Well, yeah, absolutely, because they're also
Speaker 1: bringing billions of dollars in business.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, losing two point seven billion to make nineteen point
Speaker 4: five billion. It's weird.
Speaker 1: Well you know again, it's the it's that high level
Speaker 1: math where it almost becomes imaginary.
Speaker 4: Oh, it all is, certainly if it's got a million
Speaker 4: or a billion. Okay, sure, whatever you say.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3: That's right. Let us know what you think.
Speaker 2: You can reach you to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
Speaker 2: we exist on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and
Speaker 2: TikTok or Conspiracy Stuff Show.
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