'Ninety Percent' Author Unfairly Attacks Open Registries

The OGSR finds author Rose George unfairly criticizes open registries in her recent book Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, The Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate.

George makes statements such as, "The people who run open registries detest the term 'flag of convenience,' but there is no doubt that convenience is something an open registry offers in abundance." To which the OGSR responds, once again, that efficiency and quality are not inherently mutually exclusive, and refers our readers back to previous articles "American Coastal Waters and Shorelines Protection Act Misses the Point" and "Bergeron: 'Ship Registry Performance is Not Academic'" in which we address the familiar arguments made against open flags.

Even when acknowledging the arguments made in support of open registries, Rose cannot help herself in displaying her biases against them, such as in this recollection of a conversation with close OGSR contact Brad Berman, former general counsel for the Liberian Registry (we point out to Ms. George that Berman has not worked at the registry since 2011, two years before her book was published):

Liberia's general counsel, Brad Berman, wrote that Liberia, despite its desperate development statistics and GDP, "mandates that its registry is more than a small office manned by a clerk and a pet dog trained to carry registry documents to the local post office." Liberia is certainly no longer in the dark time of the war criminal and former president Charles Taylor, who diverted flag registry income for his personal use, namely to fund rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone. (That is, rebels like Issa Sesay, who I met inadvertently one evening in the Rwandan prison where he is serving a fifty-year sentence, and we had a polite conversation about his chicken supper before I realized I was talking to a man whose troops had amputated the arms and legs of babies. Then I hoped the chicken choked him.) (81)

While the OGSR acknowledges that some open registries have histories of substandard performance, we find Rose's tone to be in poor taste at times and are disappointed to see the same attacks made on the open registry system again and again for the sake of attracting readers. How long will this go on?