While most of America was still reeling from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Carnival Corporation – the world’s largest cruise line company – reported a better-than-expected third quarter profit last year of $1.3 billion.

Over the same period, revenues reached $4.1 billion, amounting to a 32 percent profit margin and generous shareholder returns. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Micky Arison called the figure “an achievement” given the “global economic environment” and a “testament to the power of our global brands.”

Last month I appeared on Fox News Network’s morning show, Fox and Friends, to talk about airline security. Normally such appearances end up as clips on the Fox News Web site. Granted, the Steve Doocy interview was hardly groundbreaking, but that is seldom a criterion for feeding the beast that is a major cable network news Web site. Curiously, I was quoted in a written piece on the site that got a fair amount of pick-up, but no video.

It was not until a few days later that I learned what may have been behind the absence of a video clip on the Web site. I had said to Doocy that Saudi Arabian money was still financing Al Qaeda. Doocy did not react to my comment. But ten days later I learned that Fox’s parent company, News Corporation, was, at the time of my interview, negotiating with a Saudi prince to vastly increase his stake in the company.

Despite their reliance on natural resources to sell cruises, the cruise line industry defends its right to treat the oceans like a sewer and a waste dump.

On a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a few years back, Shauna and David Schober were snorkeling off the coast with a tour company that took them by boat to explore some underwater caves. But their snorkel excursion was cut short when less than a mile away a cruise ship discharged its septic tanks.

Had President Obama been aware of what the CIA did to the government of New Zealand in 2006 he might have been even more angry at his national security team. John Brennan, his counterterrorism advisor, conducted an investigation that failed to connect some old CIA dots that would have gone a long way in explaining why the CIA does not like to share information, even with the President of the United States.

When Brennan expressed surprise that Yemeni Al Qaeda operatives had advanced to the point of being capable of attacking the US homeland, it seemed inexplicable since they had orchestrated the attack on the USS Cole on October 12, 2000. Yemen, a known hotbed of Al Qaeda activity, has a long history of hosting the terrorist organization. Maybe Brennan was surprised because the last time the CIA let a known Yemeni Al Qaeda operative fly, it only resulted in political embarrassment.