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POPSTrawlermen Cling on as Oceans Empty of Fish - And the Ecosystem Is Gasping
I saw what the trawles and longliners did to the tuna fishery in Hawaii. It would, of course, be better for everyone if these unsustainable practices could be shut down gently without the need for a crisis or the loss of jobs, but this seems to be more than human nature can bear. The EU has a programme for taking fishing boats out of service - the tonnage of the European fleet has fallen by 5% since 1999 - but the decline in boats is too slow to overtake the decline in stocks. Every year the EU, like every other fishery authority, tries to accommodate its surplus boats by setting quotas higher than those proposed by its scientific advisers, and every year the population of several species is pressed a little closer to extinction. The fishermen make two demands, which are taken up by politicians in coastal regions all over the world: they must be allowed to destroy their own livelihoods, and the rest of us should pay for it.
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POPSSan Quentin's Paradox: 360 Inmates in 1 Cell Nobody deserves to live this way: Within 10 years, California's prison population has doubled. Now all of California's prisons are at twice or three times their capacity. 360 inmates live in the gym because there's no room anywhere else. For anyone to say this is not a frightening type of experience is wrong. 70% of California's inmates return to prison within 3 years, mostly for parole violations. To someone outside the system, parole may seem easy: Show up to appointments, don't drive on a suspended license, tell your parole officer if you move, don't do drugs. Parole can be tricky: Their lives are chaos with little education, few life skills and usually nowhere to live. Parole violations are expensive. California will cut back the education budget to supplement the $8 billion prison budget. To prevent parole violations inmates need counseling, job skills and drug treatment programs - now there isn't any money or room.
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POPSFishing In Nigeria Captions are unnecessary here...but I do think this is some sort of festival looking at the turnout anybody who can add some light?! I do believe in this case the fish caught a lot of people!!
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POPSWar Photographer "Disembedded The Marine commanders who saw the photograph were not happy, saying it violated a "trust" between the military and journalists. The reason the Marines gave--that Zoriah had "provided the enemy with specific information on the effectiveness of the attack and the response of U.S. and Iraqi forces to the attack"--was nonsense. Now, I don't like seeing dead Americans at all. But if the country is going to fight a war, then the population needs to see the cost. What's next? Should we also ban combat-wounded paraplegics, amputees, and burn victims from going out in public after they return home? Is it just too shocking? Would not banning them from public allow the terrorists to achieve a victory on our own soil by inflicting dangerously low morale on the American public? Would it help al Qaeda with their battle damage assessments? And we certainly don't want the kids to see that kind of stuff--like Purple Heart awardees walking around without body parts.
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POPSDo US Internment Camps Really Exist? The really big question is which one of us reading this will be interned in one of these camps? Considering the size and scope of the ones we know about, compared with the already 1 in 100 prison population we currently have, you have to imagine that the near future will see a much higher ratio. Can you imagine 1 in every 50 citizens in a camp or prison? Hell, even 1 in 75 would be astounding. With a ratio that high you can be assured you are someone you know will be classified an "Enemy Combatant." Also, since REX 84 handed us over to NORTHCOM, we no longer have any sovereignty any way. It's all very frightening when you start questioning the reasons behind this sort of wholesale US sell out.
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POPS'Devil-proof' fences to save Tassie icon The cancer affecting Tasmanian devils is infectious. In areas where the disease is present, up to 95% of the population of devils have been killed. According to the Save the Tasmanian Devil program the disease is now present across more than 60% of Tasmania.
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POPSEnglish language in the future In China, this sort of free-form adoption of English is helped along by a shortage of native English-speaking teachers, who are hard to keep happy in rural areas for long stretches of time. An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.
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POPSGOP Senator: Republicans are Running Scared The question here is what lesson do Republicans think they've learned -- will they conclude that they're unpopular because their ideology has been pretty thoroughly been disproved or will they just assume they've got some sort of marketing problem with "messaging" and "branding?" That's the question to ask if you want to know when they're getting out of this hole. If they assume the latter, they'll remain sunk.
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POPSThe Fattest US States Sadly, Tennessee made the list. At least we are ahead of MS and AL! (As if that were something to be proud of!)
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POPSThe coming famine "In light of all these hurdles, as I see it, the challenge is to double world food output by 2050 using less land, far less water and fewer nutrients – all in the teeth of increasing rates of drought. And we need to do it sustainably." "I believe we are quite capable of solving these issues through good science and good policy. In the first instance, we need to massively increase global public investment in agricultural research and development. Then we need to make sure the fruits of that research reach farmers everywhere. I also think that commercial wild harvests, such as fishing and forestry, should be phased out in favour of sustainable farming that dovetails with the local environment."
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POPSMore Delays With Iraq SOFA A majority of the Iraqi parliament wrote to the US congress last week rejecting a long-term security deal with Washington if it is not linked to a requirement that US forces leave. "The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the United States that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq," the letter to the leaders of Congress said. A majority of the Iraqi population does not want a long term military presence in Iraq, and Iraqi politicians are mindful of this as election time nears. At the same tine, the US is also approaching elections, and the war in Iraq is extremely unpopular among the majority of the American people.
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