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Viñas Diéguez y Gago, El impacto de los microplásticos y nanoplásticos

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plastos
Fibras Microplásticas identificadas en el ambiente marino. Wikimedia foto por M.Danny25.

Cómo se comportan los pélets
de plástico en el medio marino

por Lucía Viñas Diéguez y Jesús Gago — Instituto Español de Oceanografía

Se estima que cada año se vierten al océano entre 52 000 y 184 000 toneladas de pélets de plástico debido a una mala gestión en su cadena de producción y transporte. Estas pequeñas esferas, que estos días están llegando a las costas gallegas, tienen entre 2 y 5 mm de diámetro y se componen, generalmente, de un porcentaje elevado de polímero (polietileno, polipropileno, etc.) y un menor porcentaje de aditivos (estabilizadores UV, retardantes de llama, etc.).

Los pélets son sólidos, persistentes, no solubles, no emulsionantes, no biodegradables y la mayor parte son flotantes.

Estas partículas se usan generalmente como materia prima en la fabricación de artículos de plástico. En este proceso se diferencian dos fases principales: en la primera se elabora el polímero (conteniendo ya diferentes proporciones de aditivos) y se presenta en forma de pélets y en la segunda, partiendo de estos pélets y por diferentes procesos industriales (moldeado, inyección, etc.), se les da la forma final para su uso.

En 2019 se produjeron 460 millones de toneladas de pélets de plástico y se estima que en 2040 se producirán 540 millones de toneladas si no hay acciones para reducir su producción.

Del agua a las playas

La composición concreta del pélet va a determinar su densidad y ésta es la que determina su comportamiento una vez en el agua. Si son menos densos que el agua de mar (alrededor de 1,025 g/ml), flotarán en ella, y si son más densos, se hundirán.

En el caso de los pélets que se han vertido cerca de la costa gallega, se trata de polietileno. Este material tiene una densidad inferior a la del agua de mar (alrededor de 0,9 g/ml) y, por tanto, flotan en el agua y son arrastrados por corrientes y mareas pudiendo viajar grandes distancias en el medio marino.

Cuando llegan a la costa, estas partículas se ven arrastradas a tierra impulsadas por las mareas y olas. Lo más habitual es encontrarlas mezcladas con otros residuos que quedan en la zona más alta que alcanzó la marea.

Debido a sus características fisicoquímicas, los pélets pueden volver a ser transportados por el viento dentro de la playa o bien volver al agua con la siguiente marea. También es posible que por efecto de las olas o por las propias pisadas de la gente puedan ser enterrados en la arena.

¿Van a desaparecer con el tiempo?

Una de las características del material plástico es su alta durabilidad. Son materiales que resisten bien el paso del tiempo y son difícilmente degradables. Si, además, como parece que ocurre en el caso del material vertido estos días, el pélet tiene un tratamiento para evitar degradación por los rayos UV, es de esperar que su degradación sea más lenta.

Lo que suele ocurrir es que se van degradando y rompiendo en partículas más pequeñas. En este caso es de esperar que se formen microplásticos más pequeños y finalmente nanoplásticos a partir de los pélets.

Cualquier sustancia, partícula o energía que llegue al medio como consecuencia de la actividad humana se considera contaminación y es, en principio, un problema medioambiental.

Además, según la composición de la sustancia concreta podemos tener un problema de toxicidad.

Los polímeros, de modo general, son materiales en principio inertes y de ahí su baja degradabilidad. Pero que el polímero sea inerte no lo libra de posibles efectos nocivos como pueden ser la obstrucción del aparato digestivo de los animales que los ingieran

Por otro lado, en un plástico además de polímeros tenemos uno o más aditivos que pueden ser más o menos nocivos según su composición. Por eso es importante conocer la composición de los aditivos concretos de los pélets vertidos.

¿Cuál es su impacto en el medio marino?

Los pélets pueden producir varios impactos en el medio marino:

  • La fauna marina los puede confundir con comida y provocarles asfixia o acumularse en el estómago, y entrar en la red trófica.

  • Pueden tener un impacto ecotoxicológico en el ecosistema (toxicidad de la sustancia sobre un ecosistema). Esto va a depender principalmente de los aditivos.

  • Pueden funcionar como vector de transferencia de sustancias tóxicas adsorbidas del medio y de patógenos que se puedan adherir a los pélets, como virus o bacterias.

  • Además, pueden tener un impacto socioeconómico como cierre de playas, impacto en instalaciones de acuicultura o deterioro visual de hábitats, entre otros.

Pero mas allá del impacto de este vertido concreto, que dependerá de la cantidad de pélets así como de su composición, lo importante sería que nos concienciásemos del impacto medioambiental de los microplásticos y nanoplásticos y empecemos a tomar medidas para evitar su llegada al medio ambiente.The Conversation

Lucía Viñas Diéguez, Investigadora Científica. Contaminacion marina, Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO – CSIC) y Jesús Gago, Cientifico titular en basuras marinas, Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO – CSIC)

Este artículo fue publicado originalmente en The Conversation. Lea el original.

 

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An editorial page delayed by illness…

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burn
Is this election year’s smash-and-grab season prematurely becoming a trash-and-burn event? Here we have a footpath, a common area, being burned to make way for private automobile parking – no permit, no environmental study, no public consultation of any sort. Yes, a PRD government headed toward defeat may talk about things like this – with copious beer can litter left behind – as “decentralized development.” Forget that. Choose well among the remaining alternatives. Photo by Eric Jackson.

Skipping a beat in the alternation?

The norm for the past few generations is that the party that holds the executive gets smashed in the next general elections. The last period in which that was disrupted, at the end of dictatorship time, there was a slow-moving disaster with a stole 1984 presidential election, an attempt to annul a lost 1989 election and atop all of the other damage, the blood-soaked catastrophe of the US invasion. With the latter came an “It’s OUR TURN to steal!” crowd and Panama has had factions of those ever since.

Usually, at this time in the political cycle the partisan appointees in government are stealing or extorting or selling what they can, with the expectation that this time next year they won’t be on the government payroll. But there are, as usual, these incumbent party bosses who think that they have all of the angles figured.

The ridiculous Gaby Carrizo carrying the banner of a PRD split into three pieces, Ricardo Martinelli with a more than 10-year prison sentence hanging over his head – and these are the men upon whom the “smart money” is betting?

Add in a debilitating drought and a crushing public debt, and we are into instability times. Most probably, improbable things will happen.

And in the face of all of that YOU – your sense of moral rectitude, your judgment about what’s tolerable and what isn’t, the examples of your deeds far more than what you say – are the nuts and bolts that can keep this society from falling apart. Hold strong.

 

Gaza boys
When all-out war broke out again in October, there were more than a million underage Palestinians living in Gaza. With bombs, bullets, starvation, water and electricity cutoffs, the Israelis have killed thousands of these. A great many have been forced into exile. However, the great majority of Gaza kids survive, haunted by memories that will make them into adults with whom Israel will not want to deal, no matter if the improbable war aim of eliminating Hamas is achieved. Photo of Gaza boys by Suhair Karam – IRIN.

Israel’s victory in the Gaza War will not be televised

One hundred days of one history’s most ferocious military assaults on a civilian population, more than three months of all-out war between the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas, and guess what?

Hamas is still in the field, offering organized armed resistance. The war has spread to other places in the region. Israel and its backers have been isolated in world opinion. The prime minister of Israel is deeply despised by his own constituents and his most important foreign backer, the president of the United States, is in political trouble over his support for Israel.

The Israeli victory won’t be televised because there won’t be one. Israel has lost the Gaza War.

 

her
Marianne Williamson, from her website.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

Marianne Williamson

 

Bear in mind…

 


Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

Aldous Huxley

 

You fail to see
The dignified persona
Of a woman wrapped in maturity.
The scarf on my head
Does not cover my brain.

Uzma Jalaluddin

 

‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.

Dag Hammarskjold

 

 

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Darar, What will the airstrikes against Yemen really do?

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Houthi growing up
2019: A child looks on the war damage of his home town, Yemeni capital Sana. The Yemenis endured years of such US-backed Saudi and Emiraiti pounding, so look on the Israel massacre in Gaza with different eyes than a lot of other people do. Photo by Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency, via Shutterstock.

US – UK airstrikes risk strengthening Houthis’ position in Yemen and the region

by Mahad Darar, Colorado State University

The US- and UK-led strikes on the rebel Houthi group in Yemen represent a dramatic new turn in the Middle East conflict – one that could have implications throughout the region.

The attacks of Jan. 11, 2024, hit around 60 targets at 16 sites, according to the US Air Force’s Mideast command, including in Yemen’s capital Sanaa, the main port of Hodeida and Saada, the birthplace of the Houthis in the country’s northwest.

The military action follows weeks of warning by the US to the Houthis, ordering them to stop attacking commercial ships in the strategic strait of Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea. The Houthis – an armed militia backed by Iran that controls most of northern Yemen following a bitter near-decadelong civil war – have also launched missiles and drones toward Israel.

As an expert on Yemeni politics, I believe the US attacks on the Houthis will have wide implications – not only for the Houthis and Yemen’s civil war, but also for the broader region where America maintains key allies. In short, the Houthis stand to gain politically from these US-UK attacks as they support a narrative that the group has been cultivating: that they are freedom fighters fighting Western imperialism in the Muslim world.

For Houthis, a new purpose

The Israel-Gaza conflict has reinvigorated the Houthis – giving them a raison d’etre at a time when their status at home was diminishing.

By the time of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants in Israel, the Houthis’ long conflict with Saudi Arabia, which backs the Yemeni government ousted by the Houthis at the start of Yemen’s civil war in 2014, had quieted after an April 2022 cease-fire drastically reduced fighting.

Houthi missile strikes on Saudi cities ceased, and there were hopes that a truce could bring about a permanent end to Yemen’s brutal conflict.

With fewer external threats, domestic troubles that surfaced in Houthi-controlled areas – poverty, unpaid government salaries, crumbling infrastructure – led to growing disquiet over Houthi governance. Public support for the Houthis slowly eroded without an outside aggressor to blame; Houthi leaders could no longer justify the hardships in Yemen as a required sacrifice to resist foreign powers, namely Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

But Israel’s attacks in Gaza have provided renewed purpose for Houthis. Aligning with the Palestinian cause has allowed Houthis to reassert their relevance and has reenergized their fighters and leadership.

By firing missiles toward Israel, the Houthis have portrayed themselves as the lone force in the Arab Peninsula standing up to Israel, unlike regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The militia is presenting to Yemenis and others in the region a different face than Arab governments that have, to date, been unwilling to take strong action against Israel.

In particular, Houthis are contrasting their worldview with that of Saudi Arabia, which prior to the October Hamas attack had been looking to normalize ties with Israel.

Houthi’s PR machine

The US and UK strikes were, the governments of both countries say, in retaliation for persistent attacks by Houthis on international maritime vessels in the Red Sea and followed attempts at a diplomatic solution.

The aim is to “disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ capabilities,” according to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

A blurry picture shows an aircraft at night.A UK military aircraft takes off en route to Yemen on Jan. 11, 2024. UK Ministry of Defence via Getty Images

But regardless of the intent or the damage caused to the Houthis militarily, the Western strikes may play into the group’s narrative, reinforcing the claim that they are fighting oppressive foreign enemies attacking Yemen. And this will only bolster the Houthis’ image among supporters.

Already, the Houthis have managed to rally domestic public support in the part of Yemen they control behind their actions since October 2023.

Dramatic seaborne raids and the taking hostage of ships’ crews have generated viral footage that taps into Northern Yemeni nationalism. Turning a captured vessel into a public attraction attracted more attention domestically.

Following the US-UK strikes on Houthi targets, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree has said the group would expand its attacks in the Red Sea, saying any coalition attack on Yemen will prompt strikes on all shipping through the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects to the Arabian Sea at the southern end of the Red Sea.

Weaponizing Palestinian sympathies

Meanwhile, the Houthis have successfully managed to align the Palestinian cause with that of their own. Appeals through mosques in Yemen and cellphone text campaigns have raised donations for the Houthis by invoking Gaza’s plight.

The US-U.K strikes may backfire for another reason, too: They evoke memories of Western military interventions in the Muslim and Arab world.

The Houthis will no doubt exploit this.

When US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin initially announced the formation of a 10-country coalition to counter Houthi attacks in the Red Sea on Dec. 18, 2023, there were concerns over the lack of regional representation. Among countries in the Middle East and Muslim world, only Bahrain – home to the US Naval Forces Central Command and the US 5th Fleet – joined.

The absence of key regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti – where the US has its only military base in Africa – raised further doubts among observers about the coalition’s ability to effectively counter the Houthis.

Muslim-majority countries were no doubt hesitant to support the coalition because of the sensitivity of the Palestinian cause, which by then the Houthis had successfully aligned themselves with.

But the lack of regional support leaves the US and its coalition allies in a challenging position. Rather than being seen as protectors of maritime security, the US – rather than the Houthis – are vulnerable to being framed in the region as the aggressor and escalating party.

This perception could damage US credibility in the area and potentially serve as a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations like al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and similar groups.

The US’s military and diplomatic support for Israel throughout the current conflict also plays into skepticism in the region over the true objectives of the anti-Houthi missile strikes.

Reigniting civil war?

The Houthis’ renewed vigor and Western strikes on the group also have implications for Yemen’s civil war itself.

Since the truce between the two main protagonists in the conflict – Saudi Arabia and the Houthis – fighting between the Houthis and other groups in Yemen, such as the Southern Transitional Council, the Yemen Transitional Government and the National Resistance, has reached a deadlock.

Each group controls different parts of Yemen, and all seem to have accepted this deadlock.

But the US-UK strikes put Houthi opponents in a difficult position. They will be hesitant to openly support Western intervention in Yemen or blame the Houthis for supporting Palestinans. There remains widespread sympathy for Gazans in Yemen – something that could give Houthis an opportunity to gain support in areas not under their control.

The Yemeni Transitional Government issued a statement following the US-UK strikes that shows the predicament facing Houthi rivals. While blaming the Houthis’ “terrorist attacks” for “dragging the country into a military confrontation,” they also clearly reaffirmed support for Palestinians against “brutal Israeli aggression.”

While Houthi rivals will likely continue this balancing act, the Houthis face no such constraints – they can freely exploit the attacks to rally more support and gain a strategic advantage over their local rivals.

An emboldened Houthi group might also be less likely to accept the current status quo in Yemen and seize the moment to push for more control – potentially reigniting a civil war that had looked to be on the wane.

The Houthis thrive on foreign aggression to consolidate their power. Without this external conflict as a justification, the shortcomings of the Houthis’ political management become apparent, undermining their governance. During the civil war, Houthis were able to portray themselves as the defender of Yemen against Saudi influence. Now they can add US and UK interference to the mix.The Conversation

Mahad Darar, Ph.D. Student of Political Science, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Monday is Martin Luther King Day in the USA, but for Americans living abroad…

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busted
King was bipartisan mistreated in his time. Since then most white supremacists migrated to the Republican Party, most of the old black Republicans who voted that way because the GOP was the party of Lincoln became Democrats and today’s black Republicans are a different ideological and social phenomenon. Don’t be an idiot — take US history and politics in its full complexity and understand. And VOTE. Here, in 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. was taken into custody by police in the Democrat-run city of Montgomery, Alabama. Wikimedia photo by Charles Moore — Montgomery Advertiser. 

Monday is International Voter Registration Day for Americans

a note by Eric Jackson

Federal law generally gives every adult US citizen the right to vote in the place in the USA where she or he last resided. State laws about convicted felons voting are some of the few exceptions, and in many cases for Americans who have never lived in the USA they can register and vote in the last place in the United States where a US citizen parent lived. Generally overseas voters have to re-register every election year, even if some jurisdictions will let people slide on that. (And in a voter assistance information event long ago when they had such things at the US Consulate in Panama, the consular officer reminded people that the law as written and as enforced may be different things, with wild cards like that you may not know who the present city or county clerk who handles voter registrations might be.)

Does it all sound confusing? There are groups and institutions designed to help cut through that. Plus, if you register in January and some clerk gives you a hassle, there can be time to consult one of the voter defense groups and litigate that if need be by November.

Another issue, especially but not only for younger adults of the Democratic persuasion

Polling hardly exists among overseas Americans, but stateside the polling shows a great many Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents who are disenchanted with the Biden administration for supporting Israel’s Gaza War. Surely this tendency is more pronounced among Americans outside of the United States.

Joe Biden is set to be renominated, but there will be a Democrats Abroad primary in which, regardless of whether any debate will be allowed, genocide will be an issue. Down the ballot, the massacre in Gaza WILL BE a huge issue, even if right-wing lobbies loyal to a foreign power such as AIPAC may say that the millions they spend against antiwar members of Congress and political candidates has nothing to do with the massive revenge killings of noncombatant civilians. Antiwar voters would be foolishly self-destructive to concede the down-ballot races to bloodthirsty corporate types by abstaining from this year’s elections.  

2
Vote From Abroad is one of the main institutions working to register and mobilize the votes of overseas Americans. They are having a weekend of events for this coming right up. Contact them for help or to volunteer here.

3
The Federal Voter Assistance Program began as a program to inform and assist US military personnel and dependents who might be stationed anywhere in the world to register and vote. They now serve any American living overseas. Plus, their website is a treasure trove of voting information about things that you won’t hear about in media outside of the USA. See the FVAP here.
 

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¿Wappin? To be a Washington fan / Ser fanático de Washington

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don't eat yellow snow
A great football team, coming out of the shards of the PAC-10, they made it to the national championship game but ran into the mighty Michigan Wolverines. NOT a slink away with tail between legs moment.
Watch out where the Huskies go – don’t you eat that yellow snow. ¡No te comas la nieve amarilla!

On the Friday when the playlist is on time, but he not Monday’s editorial page
(Lista de reproducción del viernes de una semana de estar enfermo)

Billy Cobham, John McLaughlin et al – Awakening
https://youtu.be/xF9yiydDg08?si=S47OF7ESfX6yXjDW
Larissa Liveir – Careless Whisper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg1dXHUhT-c
Shakira & Bzrap – Pa’ tipos como tú
https://youtu.be/ueljXmtxGdU?si=vMXKwuWtuDdl3Uvr
The Trashmen – Surfin’ Bird
https://youtu.be/jqN8OMtrBl8?si=_RJZLHUN9lhTeat-
Lana Del Rey – Say Yes To Heaven
https://youtu.be/MiAoetOXKcY?si=IzZJcS_ALfmwJE_3
Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth
https://youtu.be/hBoh6CO80tk?si=Ght4h_m_mbbcRK4R
Peter Gabriel – The Rhythm of the Heat
https://youtu.be/gennp5TwDOM?si=gaaAgXdmDpN-e2aa
Frank Zappa – Yellow Snow Suite (Capitol Theater 1978)
https://youtu.be/0elpH46dOyQ?si=2mXdgnsqh6FlcGCU
A-YEON – The Eagle Flies Alone
https://youtu.be/1M14H5CNHhY?si=KGV8mv2f06-i_n9H
Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now
https://youtu.be/nvnqcagHrCc?si=l8Yej8HCPZ3iIv3o
Rubén Blades et al – Mama Chi
https://youtu.be/ss-EVGOpf_g?si=r9Yc1-0X_JMy-hcD

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Raynor, Mapping out-of-sight ocean activities

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trawler on a golden sea
Many commercial fishing boats do not report their positions at sea or are not required to do so. A trawler on a golden sea. Wikimedia photo from KNOW MALTA by Peter Grima.

We used AI and satellite imagery to map ocean activities that take place
out of sight, including fishing, shipping and energy development

by Jennifer Raynor – University of Wisconsin-Madison

Humans are racing to harness the ocean’s vast potential to power global economic growth. Worldwide, ocean-based industries such as fishing, shipping and energy production generate at least US$1.5 trillion in economic activity each year and support 31 million jobs. This value has been increasing exponentially over the past 50 years and is expected to double by 2030.

Transparency in monitoring this “blue acceleration” is crucial to prevent environmental degradation, overexploitation of fisheries and marine resources, and lawless behavior such as illegal fishing and human trafficking. Open information also will make countries better able to manage vital ocean resources effectively. But the sheer size of the ocean has made tracking industrial activities at a broad scale impractical – until now.

A newly published study in the journal Nature combines satellite images, vessel GPS data and artificial intelligence to reveal human industrial activities across the ocean over a five-year period. Researchers at Global Fishing Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea, led this study, in collaboration with me and our colleagues at Duke University, University of California, Santa Barbara and SkyTruth.

We found that a remarkable amount of activity occurs outside of public monitoring systems. Our new map and data provide the most comprehensive public picture available of industrial uses of the ocean.

A world map shows large areas where industrial fishing activity is not publicly tracked or recorded.Data analysis reveals that about 75% of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are not publicly tracked, with much of that fishing taking place around Africa and South Asia. Global Fishing Watch, CC BY-ND

Operating in the dark

Our research builds on existing technology to provide a much more complete picture than has been available until now.

For example, many vessels carry a device called an automatic identification system, or AIS, that automatically broadcasts the vessel’s identity, position, course and speed. These devices communicate with other AIS devices nearby to improve situational awareness and reduce the chances of vessel collisions at sea. They also transmit to shore-based transponders and satellites, which can be used to monitor vessel traffic and fishing activity.

However, AIS systems have blind spots. Not all vessels are required to use them, certain regions have poor AIS reception, and vessels engaged in illegal activities may disable AIS devices or tamper with location broadcasts. To avoid these problems, some governments require fishing vessels to use proprietary vessel monitoring systems, but the associated vessel location data is usually confidential.

Some offshore structures, such as oil platforms and wind turbines, also use AIS to guide service vessels, monitor nearby vessel traffic and improve navigational safety. However, location data for offshore structures are often incomplete, outdated or kept confidential for bureaucratic or commercial reasons.

Fishermen wade into the ocean, pulling large nets.Fishermen haul their nets by hand from the beach in Muanda, Democratic Republic of Congo. Unregulated fishing by foreign trawlers and other factors have depleted fishing stocks and impoverished local fishermen. Alexis Huguet/AFP via Getty Images

Shining a light on activity at sea

We filled these gaps by using artificial intelligence models to identify fishing vessels, nonfishing vessels and fixed infrastructure in 2 million gigabytes of satellite-based radar images and optical images taken across the ocean between 2017 and 2021. We also matched these results to 53 billion AIS vessel position reports to determine which vessels were publicly trackable at the time of the image.

Remarkably, we found that about 75% of the fishing vessels we detected were missing from public AIS monitoring systems, with much of that activity taking place around Africa and South Asia. These previously invisible vessels radically changed our knowledge about the scale, scope and location of fishing activity.

For example, public AIS data wrongly suggests that Asia and Europe have comparable amounts of fishing within their borders. Our mapping reveals that Asia dominates: For every 10 fishing vessels we found on the water, seven were in Asia while only one was in Europe. Similarly, AIS data shows about 10 times more fishing on the European side of the Mediterranean compared with the African side – but our map shows that fishing activity is roughly equal across the two areas.

For other vessels, which are mostly transport- and energy-related, about 25% were missing from public AIS monitoring systems. Many missing vessels were in locations with poor AIS reception, so it is possible that they broadcast their locations but satellites did not pick up the transmission.

We also identified about 28,000 offshore structures – mostly oil platforms and wind turbines, but also piers, bridges, power lines, aquaculture farms and other human-made structures. Offshore oil infrastructure grew modestly over the five-year period, while the number of wind turbines more than doubled globally, with development mostly confined to northern Europe and China. We estimate that the number of wind turbines in the ocean likely surpassed the number of oil structures by the end of 2020.

World map with locations of wind turbines, oil and gas platforms and other structures highlighted along coastlines.Researchers combined machine learning and satellite imagery to create the first global map of offshore infrastructure, spotlighting previously unmapped industrial use of the ocean. Graphic by Global Fishing Watch, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0  CC BY-ND

Supporting real-world efforts

This data is freely available through the Global Fishing Watch data portal and will be maintained, updated and expanded over time there. We anticipate several areas where the information will be most useful for on-the-ground monitoring:

– Fishing in data-poor regions: Shipboard monitoring systems are too expensive to deploy widely in many places. Fishery managers in developing countries can use our data to monitor pressure on local stocks.

– Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing: Industrial fishing vessels sometimes operate in places where they should not be, such as small-scale and traditional fishing grounds and marine protected areas. Our data can help enforcement agencies identify illegal activities and target patrol efforts.

– Sanction-busting trade: Our data can shed light on maritime activities that may breach international economic sanctions. For example, United Nations sanctions prohibit North Korea from exporting seafood products or selling its fishing rights to other countries. Previous work found more than 900 undisclosed fishing vessels of Chinese origin in the eastern waters of North Korea, in violation of U.N. sanctions.

We found that the western waters of North Korea had far more undisclosed fishing, likely also of foreign origin. This previously unmapped activity peaked each year in May, when China bans fishing in its own waters, and abruptly fell in 2020 when North Korea closed its borders because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Better monitoring may help nations coordinate offshore activities in busy regions like the North Sea.

– Climate change mitigation and adaptation: Our data can help quantify the scale of greenhouse gas emissions from vessel traffic and offshore energy development. This information is important for enforcing climate change mitigation programs, such as the European Union’s emissions trading scheme.

– Offshore energy impacts: Our map shows not only where offshore energy development is happening but also how vessel traffic interacts with wind turbines and oil and gas platforms. This information can shed light on the environmental footprint of building, maintaining and using these structures. It can also help to pinpoint sources of oil spills and other marine pollution.

Healthy oceans underpin human well-being in a myriad of ways. We expect that this research will support evidence-based decision-making and help to make ocean management more fair, effective and sustainable.

Fernando Paolo, senior machine learning engineer at Global Fishing Watch; David Kroodsma, director of research and innovation at Global Fishing Watch; and Patrick Halpin, Professor of Marine Geospatial Ecology at Duke University, contributed to this article.The Conversation

Jennifer Raynor, Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

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Gaza: Nightmare times that won’t go away anytime soon

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Israeli soldiers
See https://en.ypagency.net/313926

Dreams that no sane nation wants

by Eric Jackson

For years, starting when I was 12, I had frequent trauma nightmares. They eventually went away.

Today, during the REM-stage slumber before fully awakening, trauma crossed my mind again, but in a different context, to different people.

War propaganda is usually designed to create deep emotional impressions, and so it has with respect to that of both sides in the Gaza War.

One particular argument that has gone back and forth on that front is with respect to women who serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, or whom Hamas suspects of such. Early on, the Netanyahu government accused Hamas of reneging on a promise to release women held hostage, but Hamas responded that the women it retained were Israeli soldiers.

This orphan kid from Mecca, where local society of that ancient time had little regard for widows and orphans, Muhammad, the son of Abdullah and Amiina, managed to grow up to be an international merchant. In his working life he moved goods on the backs of domesticated animals among markets of the Middle East. It’s said that he spoke only Arabic, which would be a strange thing among today’s Middle Eastern merchants.

The legends – or divinely revealed truth if you confess to that faith – had The Angel Gabriel appearing to Muhammad and telling him to “Arise and warn.” He went on to become first an outcast thought mad and driven out of Mecca, then king of Medina, then conquering warrior king to took much more than Mecca and founded a religion, al-Islam – the surrender to God’s will – that swept across much of the world.

With the spread of Islam came the incorporation of tribes and nations in which the status of women was very low, and some of their practices and attitudes, after the life of the prophet, became notorious to others as examples of inherent Muslim sexism.

But Muhammad taught respect for widows and orphans that he didn’t see much of when he was growing up. As a warrior king approaching Jerusalem, from whence it is alleged that he sprang to heaven on a white horse from what is now the Dome of the Rock (al-Aqsa) Mosque, he forbade his troops to attack women, children or elderly people, and told his soldiers not to mutilate the bodies of slain enemy warriors.

The more enlightened and historically informed strains of modern Islam take into account who fought and who did not fight in those times, and have it from that order that it’s a violation of Islam’s Sharia law, it’s a war crime as far as they are concerned, to attack noncombatant civilians. My late friend, the imam and former Black Panther political prisoner Ahmad A. Rahman, argued this point in response to the al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that took place on September 11, 2001. He was not isolated in this regard within the Muslim world.

And about the rights of women, and widows in particular? Consider suttee, one of the practices once common among many Hindus, in which widows were expected to immolate themselves on the funeral pyres of their departed husbands. The coming of Islam to the Indian subcontinent was surely seen as a liberating force for many women there.

Anyway, back to the Gaza War. Are the allegations that Hamas fighters raped captive Israeli women true? The Israeli propaganda machine spins plenty of lies, but there are enough allegations that these stories are not to be routinely dismissed. And from the Hamas side, if they are true, have fighters from that organization been disciplined by their own commanders and comrades-in-arms for that? In the smoke and fog of war, these questions I can’t definitively answer. By whatever definition, we would be talking about serious war crimes, as common as they are in the modern world and have been down through history.

And back to the trauma stories. Israel drafts women as soldiers, generally deploying them in combat support roles but sometimes sending them into combat.

Here we get a Houthi take on a Haaretz story, to be taken with however many boulders of salt. But you look at the devastation of Gaza, and at photos and videos of Israeli soldiers fighting, or working combat support roles, in it, and despite the biases of Houthi media a ring of truth comes through. Witnessing such carnage is an awful trauma and those who appear unaffected are perhaps the sickest of all the troops.

If you are an Israeli military commander with a conscience, or if you are a Hamas military commander with a conscience, you’d have to be noticing the suffering of many of those troops serving under you – and not just those with guilty consciences for awful things that they have done.

Yemen’s Houthis illustrate the story with a photo of mostly female Israeli soldiers, but the numbers would surely show more male IDF troops affected.

Stop the war for the sake of the women? For the sake of the children? For the sake of the affected senior citizens? Well, yeah, those are the antiwar talking points and they are sound ones. But maybe for the sake of the fighters themselves, on both sides, of whatever gender. When will the wisest commanders decide that this bloodbath has gone on for too long? When will the Israelis and Palestinians decide to cut the psychological losses of their respective nations?

 

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“A matter of conscience”

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Ro
“This is going to be seen as like the Iraq War,” the California Democrat warned. “Were you for a permanent cease-fire or did you just condone Netanyahu’s bombing of women and children in Gaza?” Ro Khanna at a November 2019 international summit on Internet goverance in Libon, Portugal. Archive photo by Stephen McCarthy.

“A matter of conscience”– Khanna urges Biden, Congress to back Gaza cease-fire

by Jessica Corbett – Common Dreams

As members of Congress return to Capitol Hill next week, US Representative Ro Khanna will continue his fight for a lasting cease-fire in Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 22,600 Palestinians.

“We need this war to stop. It is a humanitarian catastrophe,” the California Democrat told Common Dreams in an interview Friday, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his fourth trip to the Middle East in three months.

“So many of the people killed in Gaza are children,” Khanna said. “I have heard stories in my district of folks who have relatives in Gaza and they talk about families that have lost multiple children.”

“It is a matter of conscience,” he argued, noting that Palestinians in Gaza face not only Israeli bombs and bullets but also the risk of starvation and spreading disease. “Every international humanitarian organization is begging the United States for the war to stop.”

We’re isolating ourselves from moral leadership in the world.

Recalling when US President Joe Biden pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2021 and then-US President Ronald Reagan’s 1982 call to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Khanna stressed that “we have a lot of leverage.”

The United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid. Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, Biden has asked Congress for an additional $14.3 billion package that lawmakers are debating amid concerns about the war and broader spending negotiations.

“I have expressed my views very bluntly to the administration that the time has come for the president to call for a cease-fire,” said Khanna, who is seen as a potential presidential candidate for 2028 or beyond.

While legal scholars and other world leaders have increasingly condemned the Israeli assault on Gaza as “genocide,” the Biden administration has twice bypassed Congress to enable arms sales to Israel and opposed cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations.

“We should not have vetoed the resolution in the United Nations that called for a permanent cease-fire and a release of all the hostages,” Khanna said of the administration’s early December action. “We’re isolating ourselves from moral leadership in the world.”

Khanna’s current effort to sway Biden—who is seeking reelection this year—and Congress comes after his own evolution on the issue, as Israeli forces ravaged the Palestinian enclave governed by Hamas.

He was not among the 13 House progressives—led by Representatives Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in Congress—who in mid-October unveiled a resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire. That led Khanna’s campaign political director, Adam Ramer, to resign. According to messages the ex-staffer shared with The New Yorker, the congressman told him: “You are a man of conviction. I respect that.”

In the weeks that followed, as Khanna publicly stressed the need for humanitarian aid in Gaza but also voted for a bipartisan resolution that expressed support for Israel “as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists,” a Palestinian-led, multifaith, multiracial coalition pressured him to call for a cease-fire, occupying his offices in California and on Capitol Hill.

On November 21, Khanna called for an end to the war, saying on social media that “the cease-fire should be permanent so all hostages released, aid gets in, the violence ends, October 7 perpetrators face justice, and the rebuilding begins.”

Khanna’s comments came as the Israeli government and Hamas agreed to a temporary pause in fighting mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. During the truce, which lasted a week, Israel freed some prisoners and the Palestinian group released some hostages taken on October 7, and much-needed humanitarian aid entered Gaza.

Explaining his shift, Khanna told Common Dreams, “I believe that Israel had the right to defend itself from the brutal Hamas attacks.”

“But once there was degradation of a lot of Hamas’ military capability and a clear sense that the Qataris could get a deal on hostage release, I said, ‘Why aren’t we now having a permanent cease-fire and calling for the release of all hostages?'” he continued. “I also had grown, by then, very concerned about the indiscriminate bombing.”

Khanna was part of a congressional delegation that visited Israel in 2022, just months before the election that led to the nation’s most far-right government in history. That trip, he said, “influenced my sense that we need two states—we need a Palestinian state with equal rights living side-by-side with an Israeli state—that we need an end to the expansion of settlements that’s been the policy of the Netanyahu government, that we need a lifting of the blockade.”

“But the biggest thing I came away with is that America has to be involved in the Middle East and standing up for equal rights for Palestinians and a diplomatic solution,” he added. “We can’t wash our hands of it and just hope that the Palestinian issue goes away.”

Since the brief truce in Gaza ended just over a month ago, Israel’s bombings and raids have made the besieged enclave “uninhabitable,” as the United Nations relief chief put it Friday. In that time, Khanna has urged the Biden administration to “change policy now,” reiterated the need for humanitarian aid, supported journalist Mehdi Hasan as his MSNBC show was canceled, and joined progressive lawmakers and labor leaders for a Washington, DC event demanding a cease-fire.

So far, a few US senators and over 60 House members have called for a cease-fire, according to Win Without War’s tracker.

Along with making the case for a lasting end to the violence on social media and national television, “I am talking privately to many colleagues,” Khanna told Common Dreams. “We need to get 100 members of Congress calling for a permanent cease-fire.”

In the long term, Khanna predicted, “this is going to be seen as like the Iraq War, a dividing issue with the Democratic coalition. Were you for a permanent cease-fire or did you just condone Netanyahu’s bombing of women and children in Gaza?”

The window is rapidly closing to be on the right side of history.

Politicians’ support for devastating wars tends to haunt them. During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest, the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—for which Khanna was a national co-chair— repeatedly called out Biden for voting to authorize the US invasion of Iraq when he was a senator.

As a congressman, Sanders opposed the Iraq authorization, but Representative Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) “was the only person in the House to vote against the war in Afghanistan,” he acknowledged at a debate, adding: “She was right. I was wrong. So was everybody else in the House.”

Sanders has recently faced criticism from progressives for not demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. However, he has forcefully criticized Netanyahu’s government and opposes Biden’s request to give Israel over $10 billion in unconditional aid to continue a war that “has been grossly disproportionate, immoral, and in violation of international law.”

Lee has been calling for a Gaza cease-fire since October. She is running for the US Senate against two other House Democrats from California: Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. Khanna considered joining the race, which fueled 2028 speculation, but he ultimately endorsed Lee in March.

“I have concluded that despite a lot of enthusiasm from Bernie folks, the best place, the most exciting place, action place, fit place, for me to serve as a progressive is in the House of Representatives,” Khanna said at the time. “I’m honored to be co-chairing Barbara Lee’s campaign for the Senate and endorsing her today. We need a strong anti-war senator and she will play that role.”

Now, Khanna is using his role in the House to rally support for a cease-fire in Gaza. He is warning colleagues that “this is going to be a dividing issue for the Democratic Party for the future, like the Iraq War was… And I think the window is rapidly closing to be on the right side of history.”

 

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American insolence and Joe Biden at Valley Forge

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   In the comments to the right of this official White House video, see how conflicted the responses are, a reflection on how divided the American people are.
   (If you are only partly deaf and can both hear what is said and pay attention to the subtitles, see how crude the Artificial Intelligence that the White House is using can be. Don’t want to let China steal a march on The USA there! Who gets the jobs, and who becomes the butt of crude jokes, are at stake. Meanwhile Joe ought to pay for some American labor with human intelligence and an editor to oversee things to get the captions right. No, it’s DAUPHIN County, not “Dolphin,” where the pastor who introduced the president serves as a county commissioner.)

Joe Biden at Valley Forge, and responses

Joe Biden’s speech, with responses and counters to those by Eric Jackson and others

At a difficult time, with a divided nation and a divided party, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. went to Valley Forge.

This was a place of terrible suffering not far from Philadelphia, where George Washington’s Continental Army endured terrible hardships — where some 1,000 men and women and some 1,500 horses died of hunger and hypothermia during the winter of 1777 and 1778. This was after the Continental Army’s stunning victories at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Trenton and Princeton, but when the British still controlled New York and Philadelphia. Were it not for a small group of wealthy men in Philadelphia, several of them Jewish, who donated what they could to the cause led by the freemason George Washington, the American Revolution might have died there.

But hope was kept alive by a then-obscure English writer and corset-maker, Tom Paine, who endured the hardships and wrote of the “times that try men’s souls” in what became the best-selling series of pamphlets, The American Crisis. At Valley Forge Paine penned volume 5 of that series, “to Gen. Sir William Howe.” It was a model of American insolence, disrespect and defiance of pompous authority that marks US culture to this day.

As has been the US norm for the past century, the most brilliant of Joe Biden’s insolent, disrespectful and defiant critics are within his own party. All of the greatest issues of that time were fought out within the Democratic Party — whether fundamentalist religion is properly enacted into public law, whether working people have a right to organize unions and bargain collectively, whether black people and women have any rights at all, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, now the Gaza War and so on. Biden may be a shoo-in for renomination, but he has to unify and inspire Democrats to win in the fall.

And the Republican critics? Meh. They are afraid of kids reading books with different points of view. their discourse is a dumbed-down echo chamber. Their versions of insolence, disrespect and defiance are corny, contrived imitations. To wit:

The above take on Trump’s cheap shot attempt at insolence is by Jon Baumann, staunch defender of Social Security who may be better remembered as Bowzer from the retro-rock band Sha Na Na, way back when. The Brooklyn native is uncle to the chair of the California Democratic Party and, whatever other Dems may say about some of his stands on some of the issues that divide Democrats, here he does a PROPER take on the American culture of political insolence.

 

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President Biden brings down the roof with his first speech of the 2024 election year, hammering Donald Trump and MAGA with the fiery fury of a man on the right side of history.

This is the kind of heroic salvo that ends up in the text books…

The president gave the show-stopping speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and marked the third anniversary of Trump’s Capitol insurrection.

Proving immediately that he is a better man and leader in every way, Biden said: “I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t. Political violence is never acceptable in the United States.”

This is not the kind of thing that someone running for American president should even have to say, but given what we saw on January 6th it’s a necessity.

But those weren’t even the harshest words that Biden had to share about his insurrectionist opponent. During one particularly powerful segment, he ripped into Trump’s blatant fascism.

“He calls those who oppose him vermin,” said Biden. “He talks about the blood of America as being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany. He proudly posts on social media the words that best describe his 2024 campaign: ‘Revenge,’ ‘power,’ and ‘dictatorship.’ There’s no confusion about who Trump is, what he intends to do.”

“All out war is what Trump wants,” said Biden. “And that’s why he doesn’t understand the most fundamental truth about this country. Unlike other nations on Earth, America is not built on ethnicity, religion, geography…”

“We’re the only nation in the history of the world built on an idea,” Biden went on. “Not hyperbole, built on an idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equally. It’s an idea declared in the Declaration, created in a way that we view everybody as equal and should be treated equal throughout their lives.”

“We’ve never fully lived up to that,” said Biden. “We have a long way to go but we’ve never walked away from the idea. We’ve never walked away from it before. I promise you I will not let Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans force us to walk away now.”

The crowd erupted in applause.

This is a winning message for 2024. Hope, not fear. Democracy, not fascism. Blue, not red.

 

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¿Wappin? Out of conflict, into uncertainty / Del conflicto a la incertidumbre

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Los Guerreros del Mar.

It’s never entirely over
Nunca termina del todo

Paul Brady & Iarla Ó Lionáird – Óró ‘sé do bheatha ‘bhaile
https://youtu.be/ncZc7GwpVXU?si=0wft5DwvmtBnyi_y

Eric Burdon – We Love You Lil
https://youtu.be/akZJR2twouw?si=vQYGbotzWDTyy072

Chrissie Hynde – Creep
https://youtu.be/z5YbycmxYxc?si=URZ5LAv0Dg_hKqnh

Silvana Estrada – Si Me Matan
https://youtu.be/oeU7rb-dBow?si=mWodtm-1l1XxcC7a

Sam Cooke – A Change Is Gonna Come
https://youtu.be/wEBlaMOmKV4?si=DZ9LpR67VP5vacbl

Rubén Blades en Mexico cierre de año 2023
https://youtu.be/NhMaRcT-fYQ?si=9g9Xnmas1ovu2qBm

Joss Stone – Jools Annual Hootenanny 2023-2024
https://youtu.be/sQaoZC8ZQKI?si=aUq3tuFf98MpMOIk

Miley Cyrus – Faithfully
https://youtu.be/qJwPUuCJRQE?si=vrJlNbLD5pv7_xfM

The Cranberries – Free to Decide
https://youtu.be/0WfUGjtg87M?si=c6OM5fel_zBJ1BDZ

Pink Floyd – The Gunner’s Dream
https://youtu.be/vBNzhXCB4dY?si=ZPc0r9DgZ-sOY3zg

Rosalía – Bizcochito
https://youtu.be/nD_AAQNFfmQ?si=-aBES9iJgxFAhVTq

Edwin Starr – War
https://youtu.be/SQSqDrozT4I?si=1UUOeslEluFoRBtb

 

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