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Music & Mass for Christmas Eve / Música y Misa de Nochebuena

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Christmas Eve 2022

Paz y alegría para el mundo
Peace and Joy to the World 

London Symphony Orchestra – Christmas Classics
https://youtu.be/EtImBXmBQEY

Navidad con Gilberto Santa Rosa
https://youtu.be/yYTOCK4B3P0

A Motown Christmas
https://youtu.be/ewu0-3G_-8Y

Ginette Reno chante Noël
https://youtu.be/udwQ_NLLjog

Irish Christmas
https://youtu.be/9IUl0LzdA3s

Gracias Choir 2021 concert
https://youtu.be/2UxUDByeovc

Midnight Mass, Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
https://youtu.be/znfeYhiD_Hk

 

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Pussy Riot, “Mama Don’t Watch TV”

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Sensitive stuff: From graphic depictions of war to lewdness, this Russian feminist punk rock song is sure to offend or shock a lot of people. If you are one to be offended or sickened by such material, you should probably not watch this.
 

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Crewe, The stuff that young female leaders face

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Sanna
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. Wikimedia photo by Laura Kotila — Valtioneuvoston kanslia.

From Queen Elizabeth to Sanna Marin, young women
in politics have always faced prejudice

by Emma Crewe, SOAS, University of London

Two prime ministers meeting to discuss relations between their countries is standard practice in international politics. But New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Finland’s Sanna Marin had to defend a recent summit after a reporter asked whether they met because they are both young, female leaders.

As prime ministers, Ardern and Marin have indeed broken barriers in politics. But the prejudice demonstrated by this question has a long history. Young women have always faced scepticism about their experience and ability to rule.

This was even true of the late Queen Elizabeth II. Questioning 15 prime ministers in weekly private sessions for 70 years surely gave her insight into the challenges of government. But when she first took the throne, Winston Churchill thought she was “just a child” and too inexperienced for the role, according to historian Kate Williams. We have to wonder whether he would have said that about a 25-year-old king.

UK society has a complicated relationship with age. Older people are seen as wise and experienced, but also out of touch and mentally and physically in decline. Younger people are seen as inventive but unreliable, or even reckless.

These are merely generalizations, of course. But they still have an impact on workplaces and political institutions, making it easier for older people to establish themselves as experts. It is partly for this reason that the UK parliament remains dominated by older people.

This is certainly true in the House of Lords, which retains 92 places for hereditary peers. Hereditary political positions are extremely risky and, of course, unfair. They privilege a tiny number of families, and especially the older generation because you only become eligible when the peer before you (usually your parent) dies.

The rest of the peers are appointed after establishing their careers, so the age of the House of Lords is high to begin with. But as people increasingly marry and die later, it is skewed even further – this year, the average age was 71.

The House of Commons is slightly younger – the average age of MPs was 51 in 2019. In the last 50 years, we have seen an increase in the number of MPs aged 60-69 up to 105. Although those aged between 18-29 have also risen, they still only number 21 MPs.

Young women in the UK parliament

The few young people in the House of Commons are patronized, particularly the women. Prejudice is perpetuated by unthinking negligence as much as active hostility. For decades, MPs and peers of color (especially women) have reported to me over and over again in interviews that security officers, and even other politicians, assume they are staff or visitors. If you are already struggling with imposter syndrome, which many politicians do, imagine how off-putting it is when people assume you are automatically out of place.

Young women in politics are also frequently targets of horrifying online abuse. In a debate asking the House to consider misogyny a hate crime in 2018, Mhairi Black, the youngest MP ever to be elected aged 20, explained:

There is no softening just how sexualized and misogynistic the abuse is … I’ve been assured multiple times that I don’t have to worry because I am so ugly that no one would want to rape me. All of these insults have been tailored to me because I am a woman.

Even when the abuse is patronizing rather than violent, it can be seriously undermining. Just months before her meeting with Ardern, Finland’s leader Marin (at 37, one of the world’s youngest heads of state) was criticized over a video showing her dancing and singing during a night out. The international backlash and political pressure led to Marin taking a drugs test (it was negative). Still, her behavior was associated with the frivolity of youth – all the more so because she was a good dancer rather than a clumsy one.

All politicians are vulnerable to opponents leaking damaging material, but the specificity of this criticism was significantly shaped by her being a young woman. It was presumably designed to chime with the prejudice that young women tend to be fun-loving and unserious. Politics is serious, and still seen as the preserve of men in most countries around the world.

Prejudice in parliaments

Sociologist Nirmal Puwar has pointed out that women – especially young, minority ethnic and working-class women – are seen as invaders into political spaces that have been occupied by white men for centuries.

Societal inequalities around age and gender are often amplified in spaces like parliament, where representatives engage in intense power struggles. Prejudice based on these issues is used as a weapon by politicians (and their supporters) against each other to patronize, make allegations and exclude.

But the opposite of prejudice – a sense of common, shared experience – can be an antidote. In solidarity with Marin, women in Finland and Denmark uploaded videos of themselves dancing, a riposte to misogyny and ageism that did no harm to anyone.

At a time when older people are increasingly struggling to keep up with the digital world and lack a sense of urgency about climate change (the effects of which will hardly affect them), they may need to make way for more young people in the political world, whether we like it or not. We just need to figure out a way to make being in the public eye more bearable for these young politicians.The Conversation

Emma Crewe, Professor of Social Anthropology, SOAS, University of London

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

 

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¿Wappin? Conciertos pre-Navidad / Pre-Christmas concerts

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Sandra Sandoval
Sandra Sandoval. Wikimedia photo by Ayaita, cropped by The Panama News.

Have a happy musical weekend

Que pase un feliz fin de semana musical

The Specials 30th Anniversary Tour (official compilation)
https://youtu.be/u9GnGMQz22A

Carla Morrison’s Tiny Desk Concert
https://youtu.be/aKWV7b3j5P0

Lou Reed’s full Rock n Roll Animal Show
https://youtu.be/Cp336aLOuxM

Danny Rivera y Yomira John – Concierto Siempre Amigos
https://youtu.be/1pku4P1M7pg

Romeo Santos – Viña del Mar 2015
https://youtu.be/LRlXkhqam3M

Mon Laferte’s Tiny Desk Concert
https://youtu.be/Dy4pEFFbFsA

Samy y Sandra Sandoval – Concierto en Honor a la Patria
https://youtu.be/dKVVIyN_ik4

 

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STRI, La ciencia del Smithsonian y la proteccion de los mamíferos marinos

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Guzman
El grupo de trabajo de Áreas Protegidas de Mamíferos Marinos de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN) invita a grupos de biólogos marinos a proponer Áreas Importantes de Mamíferos Marinos. La nueva IMMA a lo largo de la costa ecuatoriana dará lugar a una cascada de actividades científicas diseñadas para proteger no solo a los mamíferos marinos, sino a todo su hábitat. Científico de STRI Héctor Guzmán. Foto por Sean Mattson.

La ciencia del Smithsonian impulsa el establecimiento de una
nueva área importante de mamíferos marinos en Ecuador

por STRI

Más de 7,000 ballenas migran cada año a través de un tramo poco profundo frente a la costa de Ecuador. Científicos como Héctor M. Guzmán del Instituto Smithsonian de Investigaciones Tropicales (STRI) están celebrando la reciente decisión del Grupo de Trabajo de Áreas Protegidas de Mamíferos Marinos de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN) de aceptar su propuesta para designar a la cordillera submarina de Carnegie, un área que abarca más de 450,000 kilómetros cuadrados (casi 174,000 millas cuadradas) desde el archipiélago de las Galápagos hasta el continente, como Área Importante de Mamíferos Marinos (IMMA por sus siglas en inglés).

“Estamos encantados de que la UICN haya aceptado nuestra propuesta de designar el área de la cordillera submarina de Carnegie como IMMA y esperamos que conduzca a una mayor protección de los mamíferos marinos y su hábitat”, comentó Guzmán, “Se necesita investigación de ballenas para proporcionar la base para comprender la adaptación a escenarios de cambio climático y la mejora de la conexión entre Galápagos y el continente e identificar actividades potenciales que amenazan su capacidad para migrar pacíficamente a zonas de alimentación y reproducción. En otras IMMA, la gente ha trabajado con la Organización Marítima Internacional para regular el transporte marítimo y evitar choques letales con buques como hicimos en Panamá y Costa Rica, y algo que hemos intentado sin éxito en las costas de Perú y Ecuador. Esperamos proporcionar la ciencia para dar esperanza a estos animales”.

Desde el 2016, el grupo de trabajo ha identificado 160 IMMAs, aproximadamente un tercio del área oceánica del mundo. Las IMMA no son Áreas Marinas Protegidas y no tienen estatus legal, y se definen como “porciones discretas de hábitat, importantes para las especies de mamíferos marinos, que tienen el potencial de ser delineadas y administradas para la conservación”. Pero grupos independientes de expertos, libres de presiones políticas y económicas, siguen criterios claros para proponer áreas específicas de hábitat de mamíferos marinos como IMMA, con la esperanza de que las iniciativas de conservación nacionales o internacionales sigan su ciencia a través de un cronograma de acción claro.

Los participantes en la Conferencia Shipstrike de 2014 en Panamá discutieron por primera vez la idea de establecer las IMMA como base para futuros esfuerzos de conservación, tema que se desarrolló más en un taller en Grecia en el 2019. Los investigadores esperan que este proceso de proponer IMMA candidatas, respaldándolas con ciencia y luego avanzar hacia el establecimiento legal de Áreas Marinas Protegidas y acuerdos internacionales para establecer redes de Áreas Marinas Protegidas, catapultará la conservación de los océanos a un espacio nuevo y más efectivo.

“La IMMA de la cordillera submarina de Carnegie subraya la importancia crítica de la geografía submarina en la configuración de la biología en el Pacífico Tropical Oriental”, comentó Joshua Tewksbury, director de STRI, “las Cordilleras marinas de Cocos, Carnegie, Coiba e incluso la Bahía de Panamá, son todas definidas por su geografía submarina, y juntas forman la columna vertebral del Corredor Marino del Pacífico Oriental Tropical. Hay pocos lugares en el mundo donde la conectividad biológica, la biodiversidad y la voluntad política se unen para impulsar la conservación de manera más efectiva que en esta región”.

Los mamíferos marinos dependen del hábitat tanto superficial como profundo a lo largo de la cordillera submarina de Carnegie, un área de corteza oceánica engrosada que se extiende desde el punto clave en las Galápagos hasta algún lugar debajo del continente de América del Sur, como un trampolín a medida que migran miles de millas.

La nueva IMMA de la cordillera submarina de Carnegie cumplió con los criterios: como hábitat sensible para la migración y reproducción de ballenas azules y cachalotes en peligro de extinción y como hogar de mamíferos marinos: la ballena de Bryde, Balaenoptera edeni; delfines comunes, Delphinus delphis; ballenas jorobadas, Megaptera novaeangliae; el zifio pigmeo, Mesoplodon peruvianus; orcas, Orcinus orca; falsas orcas. La IMMA de la cordillera submarina de Carnegie incluye la mayoría de las Zonas Económicas Exclusivas de Ecuador y Perú, y aguas internacionales entre el archipiélago y el continente.

Las ballenas azules alcanzan casi 30 metros o 100 pies de largo y viven entre 80 y 90 años. Los científicos pueden saber de dónde son las ballenas azules porque porque tienen distintos llamados o cantos. La caza de ballenas azules se prohibió en 1966, pero las ballenas aún están en peligro de extinción, estresadas por el ruido causado por la exploración petrolera, la contaminación y el cambio climático. Por lo general, migran entre zonas de alimentación cerca de los polos y zonas de reproducción en los trópicos. Las orcas pueden atacar a las ballenas azules y sus crías.

Los cachalotes, las ballenas dentadas más grandes, también migran a lo largo de la costa de Ecuador. Viven hasta los 70 años y tienen el cerebro más grande que cualquier animal en la Tierra con un peso de 7.8 kg o 17 libras. La caza comercial de ballenas, como se describe en la novela Moby Dick, casi acaba con los cachalotes por el uso del aceite de esperma para velas y lubricantes, y el ámbar gris, un ingrediente en los perfumes. Las cámaras llenas de aceite de esperma en las cabezas de las ballenas juegan un papel misterioso, probablemente amplificando los chasquidos tanto para la ecolocalización como para la comunicación.

Las ballenas jorobadas, que también atraviesan la nueva IMMA, pueden migrar 8,000 kilómetros entre las áreas de alimentación y reproducción en el Pacífico sureste.

 

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Las ballenas azules (Balaenoptera musculus) alcanzan casi 30 metros o 100 pies de largo y viven entre 80 y 90 años. Los científicos pueden saber de dónde son las ballenas porque tienen distintos llamados o cantos. Foto por David Slater, bajo licencia Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Genérico.

 

La cordillera submarina de Carnegie, un área que abarca más de 450,000 kilómetros cuadrados (casi 174,000 millas cuadradas) desde el archipiélago de las Galápagos hasta el continente, como Área Importante de Mamíferos Marinos (IMMA) más reciente.

 

 

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Bauman, The senior citizens’ vote in the USA

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Bowser
In 2023, Democrats must stand with seniors and people with disabilities by protecting our earned benefits from Republican attacks. Jon “Bowser” Bauman speaking at a rally for a Democratic candidate in Arizona. Wikimedia photo by Gage Skidmore.

In 2022 seniors voted to protect Social Security

by Jon Bauman — Common Dreams

What were the most important issues for swing voters in this year’s midterm elections? You probably won’t be surprised to hear that two of them were abortion and inflation. The third, which got far less media attention, was Social Security and Medicare.

That data matches what I saw on the ground in the months leading up to the election. I’m best known as “Bowzer” from the band Sha Na Na, but these days I’m President of Social Security Works PAC. In that capacity, I traveled to 35 swing districts from coast to coast where I did more than 50 events on behalf of candidates who support protecting and expanding Social Security. The crowds at those events were large, well-informed, and passionate about protecting and expanding our earned benefits.

The people at these events were filled with righteous anger, for good reason. In the past, Republicans have usually been coy about their plans to cut Social Security, using euphemisms about “saving” the program. Not this year.

Republicans like Rick Scott and Ron Johnson openly released plans to put Social Security and Medicare on the Congressional chopping block. The Republican Study Committee, a group that counts about 75 percent of House Republicans as members, released a budget that would decimate middle class benefits and raise the retirement age to at least 70.

Democrats responded by making protecting Social Security a top campaign issue. President Joe Biden mentioned Scott and Johnson’s plans in nearly all of his major campaign speeches, even handing out copies of them. In the final week before the election, 15 percent of Democratic TV ads mentioned Social Security. Democrats spent a total of $23 million on midterm election ads that focused on Social Security.

Voters listened! According to Navigator Research, 31 percent of “winning swing” voters said Social Security/Medicare was a top issue in determining their vote, a top three issue along with abortion and inflation. Navigator also found that 56 percent of Black voters over age 65 ranked Social Security/Medicare as their most important issue — the number one issue by a 22-point margin! Among Hispanic voters, 55 percent cited “the future of Social Security and Medicare” as a reason to support Democrats — tied with abortion as the top reason.

Not only did voters prioritize Social Security, they also voted accordingly. AARP found that, contrary to the stereotype of older Americans as conservative, voters over 65 in swing congressional districts backed Democrats by 3 points. Voters who ranked Social Security as one of their top two issues backed Democrats by a whopping 59 points!

The polling firm Data for Progress tested messaging across twelve different issue areas. The highest performing? Social Security. They found that voters were very concerned about Republican threats to Social Security, and responded enthusiastically to Democratic promises to defend Social Security’s earned benefits.

Data for Progress also found that messages from Democrats about expanding Social Security polled extremely well, and helped them draw a clear contrast with Republicans. Many of the most successful Democratic candidates in the midterms, including Senator-elect John Fetterman, campaigned on expanding Social Security.

Thanks in large part to seniors who voted to protect Social Security, Democrats defied the predictions of the pundit class. They had one of the best ever midterm performances for a party that controls the White House. The lesson is that when Democrats run on protecting and expanding Social Security, they win.

Now, Democrats need to keep their promises to voters. Republicans have made it clear that they plan to use the debt ceiling as leverage to demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Democrats need to stand unified against even a single penny of benefit cuts.

In 2022, seniors and people with disabilities voted for Democrats to protect Social Security. In 2023, Democrats must stand with seniors and people with disabilities by protecting our earned benefits from Republican attacks.

Jon Bauman is the president of Social Security Works PAC. He is best known as “Bowzer” from the hit TV series and musical group “Sha Na Na.” Since 2004, he has traveled the country acting as a surrogate on senior issues for dozens of political campaigns.

 

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Cortés acquittal reversed: Will Martinelli go to a Plan C?

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Don Ricky's sub
By way of Twitter, Ricardo Martinelli designated attorney and former labor minister Alma Cortés to run for president in his stead if a criminal conviction prevents him from running himself. But now, on the eve of a national day of mourning when hardly anyone was paying attention, it was announced that a misappropriation of government funds case against Cortés and five co-defendants has been revived on appeal from a trial court ruling. Her exposure to prison might be avoided by payment of a fine, but the possible suspension of political rights could prevent her from running. 

The architect of many legal delays and a notoriously
anti-labor former labor minister may see her streak end

by Eric Jackson

Alma Cortés was a criminal defense lawyer for white collar thugs and upscale racketeers, never a labor lawyer. But she has been for years a member of Ricardo Martinelli’s inner circle, a weaver of countless dodges and delays in the many cases against him.

Her “day job” while Martinelli was president was as Minister of Labor Development. In that post she carried out policies aimed at smashing the labor unions. Since Martinelli left office she has largely dedicated herself to keeping him out of prison. The architect of countless delays, judges are ever more weary of doctors’ notes for herself, fellow members of the Martinelli defense teams, or for the former president or his co-defendants.

Will that streak hold up? So far she put things off for as long as she could. It hasn’t worked to prevent him from being called to trial next year on two sets of charges. One is for taking kickbacks from Odebrecht public works construction projects. The other is for taking different kickbacks from other public contractors and then elaborately laundering the proceeds in order to buy control of the EPASA newspaper chain. (That’s El Panama America, La Critica and Dia a Dia.)

Meanwhile, nine years ago Cortés led a delegation to Geneva for an International Labor Organization gathering. It seemed to be mainly an expensive vacation in Switzerland at government expense, but she says it only looked that way because of some paperwork errors. In any cases the money was paid back, so no harm, no foul, right? 

A pickpocket or a shoplifter doesn’t get that sort of way out, but this is a respected professional here. And last September somehow or another a trial court judge was convinced to accept that and dismiss the charges against Cortés and her co-defendants.

The prosecution appealed and on December 19 it was announced that the Superior Court of Appeals had reverse the lower court decision to throw out the charges. Now SHE is bound over for her own trial next year.

If the book gets thrown, she could be sentenced to two year and eight months in prison. Under the Panamanian criminal justice system, one can generally buy a get out of jail pass for sentences of under four years. It would be peanuts for Martinelli to cover. HOWEVER, with a prison sentence there usually also comes a suspension of political rights that is not avoidable by way of a fine. If it’s 32 months, imposed next year, she would be disqualified from running for president in 2024.

Lots and lots of ifs, but since his two sons pleaded guilty in a US federal district court to laundering some $28 million of their dad’s Odebrecht bribes, Martinelli’s legal fortunes seem to have turned. It’s an embarrassment to judges and prosecutors if they take dives for Team Martinelli, and they risk members of their families being barred from setting foot in the United States for such stuff on top of the disrepute.

But “alleged.” She’s innocent unless proven guilty, and even then a judge or a panel of judges might ignore any and all proofs. We shall see. Maybe, after Plan A and Plan B get thwarted, Plan C for a Martinelli comeback?

 

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Welch, When fishing boats go dark at sea…

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busted for illegal fishing
Panama’s National Aeronaval Service (SENAN) moves in to bust a fishing boat off of Anton. It had been detected fishing in a restricted zone. SENAN photo.

When fishing boats go dark at sea, they’re often
committing crimes – we mapped where it happens

by Heather Welch, University of California, Santa Cruz

In January 2019, the Korean-flagged fishing vessel Oyang 77 sailed south toward international waters off Argentina. The vessel had a known history of nefarious activities, including underreporting its catch and illegally dumping low-value fish to make room in its hold for more lucrative catch.

At 2 a.m. on January 10, the Oyang 77 turned off its location transponder at the edge of Argentina’s exclusive economic zone – a political boundary that divides Argentina’s national waters from international waters, or the high seas. At 9 p.m. on Jan. 11, the Oyang 77 turned its transponder back on and reappeared on the high seas. For the 19 hours when the ship was dark, no information was available about where it had gone or what it did.

In a recent study, I worked with colleagues at Global Fishing Watch, a nonprofit that works to advance ocean governance by increasing transparency of human activity at sea, to show that these periods of missing transponder data actually contain useful information on where ships go and what they do. And authorities like the International Maritime Organization can use this missing data to help combat illegal activities at sea, such as overfishing and exploiting workers on fishing boats.

Illegal fishing causes economic losses estimated at $US10 billion to $25 billion annually. It also has been linked to human rights violations, such as forced labor and human trafficking. Better information about how often boats go dark at sea can help governments figure out where and when these activities may be taking place.

Countries can combat illegal, unreported and unauthorized fishing by
checking paperwork, verifying catches and sharing information across borders.

Going dark at sea

The high seas are the modern world’s Wild West – a vast expanse of water far from oversight and authority, where outlaws engage in illegal activities like unauthorized fishing and human trafficking. Surveillance there is aided by location transponders, called the Automatic Identification System, or AIS, which works like the Find My iPhone app.

Just as thieves can turn off phone location tracking, ships can disable their AIS transponders, effectively hiding their activities from oversight. Often it’s unclear whether going dark in this way is legal. AIS requirements are based on many factors, including vessel size, what country the vessel is flagged to, its location in the ocean and what species its crew is trying to catch.

A ship that disables its AIS transponder disappears from the view of whomever may be watching, including authorities, scientists and other vessels. For our study, we reviewed data from two private companies that combine AIS data with other signals to track assets at sea. Spire is a constellation of nanosatellites that pick up AIS signals to increase visibility of vessels in remote areas of the world. Orbcomm tracks ships, trucks and other heavy equipment using internet-enabled devices. Then, we used machine learning models to understand what drove vessels to disable their AIS devices.

Examining where and how often such episodes occurred between 2017 and 2019, we found that ships disabled their transponders for around 1.6 million hours each year. This represented roughly 6% of global fishing vessel activity, which as a result is not reflected in global tallies of what types of fish are being caught where.

World map showing zones where large shares of boats disable their transponders
This map shows the fraction of fishing vessel activity hidden by AIS disabling events from 2017 to 2019. Heavy AIS disabling occurred adjacent to Argentina, West African nations and in the northwest Pacific – three regions where illegal fishing is common. In contrast, the disabling hot spot near Alaska occurs on intensively managed fishing grounds and likely represents vessels going dark to avoid competition with other boats.
Photo by Global Fishing Watch, CC BY-ND

Vessels frequently went dark on the high-seas edge of exclusive economic zone boundaries, which can obscure illegal fishing in unauthorized locations. That’s what the Oyang 77 was doing in January 2019.

Laundering illegal catch

The AIS data we reviewed showed that the Oyang 77 disabled its AIS transponder a total of nine times during January and February 2019. Each time, it went dark at the edge of Argentinean national waters and reappeared several days later back on the high seas.

During the ninth disabling event, the vessel was spotted fishing without permission in Argentina’s waters, where the Argentinean coast guard intercepted it and escorted it to the port of Comodoro Rivadavia. The vessel’s owners were later fined for illegally fishing in Argentina’s national waters, and their fishing gear was confiscated.

AIS disabling is also strongly correlated with transshipment events – exchanging catch, personnel and supplies between fishing vessels and refrigerated cargo vessels, or “reefers,” at sea. Reefers also have AIS transponders, and researchers can use their data to identify loitering events, when reefers are in one place long enough to receive cargo from a fishing vessel.

It’s not unusual to see fishing vessels disable their AIS transponders near loitering reefers, which suggests that they want to hide these transfers from oversight. While transferring people or cargo can be legal, when it is poorly monitored it can become a means of laundering illegal catch. It has been linked to forced labor and human trafficking.

Valid reasons to turn off transponders

Making it illegal for vessels to disable AIS transponders might seem like an obvious solution to this problem. But just as people may have legitimate reasons for not wanting the government to monitor their phones, fishing vessels may have legitimate reasons not to want their movements monitored.

Many vessels disable their transponders in high-quality fishing grounds to hide their activities from competitors. Although the ocean is huge, certain species and fishing methods are highly concentrated. For example, bottom trawlers fish by dragging nets along the seafloor and can operate only over continental shelves where the bottom is shallow enough for their gear to reach.

Modern-day pirates also use AIS data to intercept and attack vessels. In response, ships frequently disable their transponders in historically dangerous waters of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea. Making AIS disabling illegal would leave fishing vessels more vulnerable to piracy.

An electronic screen shows triangles, representing nearby ships, within concentric circles.
An AIS-equipped system on board a ship presents the bearing and distance of nearby vessels in a radarlike display format. Clipper / Wikimedia photo, CC.

Instead, in my view, researchers and maritime authorities can use these AIS disabling events to make inferences about which vessels are behaving illegally.

Our study reveals that AIS disabling near exclusive economic zones and loitering reefers is a risk factor for unauthorized fishing and transshipments. At sea, real-time data on where vessels disable their AIS transponders or change their apparent position using fake GPS coordinates could be used to focus patrols on illegal activities near political boundaries or in transshipment hot spots. Port authorities could also use this information onshore to target the most suspect vessels for inspection.

President Joe Biden signed a national security memorandum in 2022 pledging U.S. support for combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and associated labor abuses. Our study points toward a strategy for using phases when ships go dark to fight illegal activities at sea.The Conversation

Heather Welch, Researcher in Ecosystem Dynamics, University of California, Santa Cruz

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

 

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Editorials: Be happy and safe; and The pork barrel and the Congress to come

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Transito cop
A Transito cop stands guard during heavy holiday traffic. Archive photo by Eric Jackson.

Don’t drive like a jerk…

Leave your intoxicating substances in the trunk until you get where you are going.

Don’t drink on the bus and throw beer cans out the window.

Don’t pretend that the risk of COVID is over.

Don’t take a gun when you go to celebrate the glories of your religion with family and friends.

Don’t ignore the red “beach closed” and yellow caution flags that SINAPROC puts up on the beaches.

Avoid situations in which your poverty makes you feel ashamed in the presence of people who are geeked out on materialist displays.

Be kind to weirdos and outcasts, and don’t get all defensive about it if you happen to be one of these.

It’s supposed to be the season of peace and joy. Don’t be an unfortunate footnote in the tragedy accounts in the post-holiday newspapers. Enjoy your life, and the lives of those around you, with what you have.

 

HJ
Hakeem Jeffries, set to be the minority leader, may actually come to dominate the House agenda in the incoming Congress. With the Republican majority in disarray, he’s a centrist who got no concerted opposition from progressives in a Democratic caucus that’s set to move a bit to the left. His hard work is cut out for him, but he will have his opportunities to lead. Photo from a CSPAN video.

An omnibus pork barrel to offend everybody, but…

The people who get all gushy about the wonderful the omnibus spending bill just passed by the US Congress and signed by President Biden generate their geysers from shallow and tainted wells. Those who get the most indignant about it play to the most foolish and destructive elements of the American electorate.

There are flecks of pork for the Democrats – funding for the National Labor Relations Board at a time of an upsurge in union organizing, inclusion of reforms to the Electoral Count Act to prevent a repeat of Donald Trump’s coup attempt after the last presidential election and increased corporate merger fees intended to slow the concentration of wealth in American life to name three.

However, Washington also raised military spending not so much to keep American forces strong but to keep defense contractors rich. The Maine lobster fishery got ghost net protections that may well lead to the extinction of right whales. Some Republican tax cut proposals didn’t make it into the bill but the rich gained billions on their retirement bennies while the poor lost on the child tax credits. It will be blamed on the states, but huge Medicaid health care spending cuts are on the way.

It was an unsightly budget compromise that would make the stuff the goes on in sausage factories look beautiful. But then, it funds the government through next year, and the most reactionary MAGA Republicans in the House are vowing to wage war against the 19 Senate Republicans who “threw away” their opportunity to threaten government shutdowns before the 2024 campaign season gets going full blast. To top that off the more perverse partisans on the Democratic side of the aisle are treated to a pre-Christmas mud rassling show between MAGA congresswomen Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

So, two more years of this for the 118th Congress? Bad enough, but not as bad as some of the gridlock we have seen.

Plus, things won’t remain static. There are already a few special elections pending and as we see the laughable fraud that’s representative-elect George Santos collapse there will probably be another one on New York’s Long Island in short order. Then, although there will not be the votes in the House to keep pedophiles and insurrectionists from being seated on the Republican side, prosecutions and convictions may end up forcing the GOP hand in some of those cases.

We shall see how the combination of more specific local scrutiny but lower voter turnout will add up in by-elections. Probably ideology and identity will be more important, with influential national backing and idiocy from Fox News et al taking a back seat. The Republicans probably won’t lose their paper-thin House majority, but they already appear short of a working majority and that situation will probably get worse for them.

Are we about to see an interregnum of divided government – divided into four, rather than two? Corporate centrists versus progressives on the Democratic side, with MAGAs versus those whom the far right derides as RINOs in the Republican caucus – can that work? It probably actually can, albeit not as well as anyone would like it to work.

 

Queen B
A princess who used to be queen. Five-year-old official portrait by Jeroen van der Meyde.

Nature is under control but not disturbed.

Princess Beatrix, former Queen of The Netherlands

 

Bear in mind…

 

Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.

Frantz Fanon

 

Confuse the enemy. Keep him in the dark on your intentions. Sometimes what seems a victory isn’t really a victory and sometimes a defeat isn’t really a defeat. Whether in attacking, counterattacking, or defensive tactics, the idea of attacking should remain central, to always keep the initiative.

General Vo Nguyen Giap

 

It’s better to look ahead and prepare, than to look back and regret.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee

 

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Bernal, Los gorilas de entonces

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43 years later…

by Miguel Antonio Bernal V.

Today, Monday, December 19, marks exactly 43 years since I was savagely beaten by agents of the military dictatorship for protesting against the presence of the bloodthirsty Shah of Iran in Panama, as a guest of the prevailing militarism.

The peaceful demonstration convened that December 19, 1979 in front of the Don Bosco Church, gathered a hundred citizens and a short distance away, numerous radio patrols and motorcyclists of the Guardia Nacional, all with combat harnesses. Also present were countless agents of the G-2, disguised as civilians.

As we grouped together to march, more than 20 motorcycles advanced towards us. Panic ensued. The demonstrators ran towards the sidewalks. The motorcycles stopped a few meters from where I was. Megaphone in hand, I walked towards the guardia in order to parley. In seconds, with an unprecedented ferocity, hose in hand and shouting a whirlwind of vulgarities and shouting: “Here is Bernal, hit him, kill him.” They came at me, supported by numerous G-2 and other armed elements. They pushed each other in order to hit me. The hoses, punches and kicks fell on me with brutal fury. There were too many of them. I was this immense stain that they hit and hit without any scruple. They picked up their victim when I fell, to continue their blows.

The brutal beating also reached Victor Navas King, who intervened to try to pull me out of the mortal circle, as well as Doña Elvia Lefevre de Wirz and another unknown lady. The voices of the executioners repeated: “Hit him, kill him!” The fiercest of them all, the one who commanded the aggression, was Fritz Gibson Parrish, known by the nickname of “Sangre.”

Then, in a state of unconsciousness, I was taken to the Central Barracks and much later, to the Santo Tomás Hospital where the doctors gave me the assistance that would save my life.

Those directly responsible for the aggression were duly denounced to the judicial authorities in 1990. I am still waiting for justice.

 

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