A Small Alaskan Town Is Invaded
Residents Wake Up To Find Cruise Ship Passengers In Their Homes
September 5, 2007
You are having a great night's sleep when you are awakened by a horrendous sound of any anchor dropping from a huge cruise ship that has arrived in town. Puzzled, you put your robe on and head to the livingroom to investigate. Imagine how surprised you will be when you see strangers inside your home. They are cruise ship passengers.
This is not some island village with a sign outside a shop that says "Cruise Ship Passengers Welcomed", this is a small town in Alaska, in the United States Of America.
The town of Tenakee Springs, Alaska, has a population 104 as of the 2000 U.S. Census. They fought off the cruise industry and won. But, it wasn't easy with the cruise line deliberately deceiving the town, arriving 7 hours ahead of schedule to catch the town off guard. The town has one store.
The cruise line thought invading this small town would be a piece of cake. But, they discovered that these 104 residents had something other towns lacked, moxy.
Cruise ship passengers think they are supporting small towns with their visits, but this too is actually circumvented by the cruise industry that visits Alaska. Businesses, transportation services and resorts are actually owned by cruise lines in these small town, and profits all leave town, benefiting no residents, at all.
In another small town, Labadee, the town loses out and Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines wins. When is a private island not an island at all? When it is actually a small town in Haiti with a barbed wire fence around it, no more an island than Denver, Colorado is, used exclusively for the cruise industry.
Wild Watery Frontier
The Cruise Industry Plows Ashore
A Small Town Fights Them Off
The barbed wire portion of the town, a small beach area has a water filtration plant, while outside the barbed wire fence families and children wash clothing and bathe in the same water battling diarrhea on a daily basis from poor drinking water. This beach is portrayed as an island, paradise, and nothing could be further from the truth.
The town is seperated much like Berlin, Germany was many decades ago, with a fence that kept the "bad" side of town away from the "good" side of town. The "bad" side is where residents live in poverty, and are considered a liability to the image of a island paradise the cruise line is trying unethically to promote, hidden so tourists will not see them.
Listen to Part 2 of the BBC 4 radio show, the Price Of Fun.The radio show is two parts; the second part aired last week. The second part is now available to you, thanks to the International Cruise Victims, and their tireless effort to bring education and the truth to travelers around the world, and some of their members contributing to the show.
Listen today, and take the topic with you to your favorite water cooler tomorrow.
Satellite images shows Labadee on the map. It looks like it is a tiny island. All of the markers on this map promoting Labadee cruises show it off shore of a large mainland area.
On close inspection, we see that is no island, it is a RCCL cruise ship off shore of Haiti, tendering in passengers.
