Maggie's Madness Drug War Chronicles Baja California
A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
Meanwhile, check out the trend and how people are cashing in on the plight of 841:
Bumper stickers:
Lots of tee shirts:
Hats....
Stickers...
Go over to Etsy, there are tons and more I couldn't upload.
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Okay, I was told I cannot take any more vitamins or the Voltaren (75mg usually at this point 3 to 4 times a day for pain) before knee replacement surgery, so I am a basket case and just not able to blog. Monday I have two appointments and one more lab to do, worn out. But you guys have the links, and keep an eye on the Wagner boyz hanging out around Poland, bad news.
Luckily it hasn't been really hot here but it has been muggy. The more I read about Hawaii, the more I am turned off. Pro Publica did a series of reports on Hawaii which you might be interested in; in some cases, their reports inspired government intervention:
If you go to a search on google street views, you can pretty much scout out the neighborhoods, and it is shocking how many of them are below poverty level, some even worse than they are down here. The drugs and crime are problematic, and of course, the traffic is ridiculous. Oh brother.
So maybe I'll go back to looking at Santa Cruz again. I also got some creepy feelings looking at some very old houses, like they were haunted and I would never be comfortable visiting the Plantation Museum in Oahu where so many people suffered as slave laborers. Aloha.
Problem is, I think the locals might be pissed off at me up in Santa Cruz because I think 841 probably needs to go to the Monterey hospital and be checked out.
Wish me luck, should be back in a couple of weeks.
All last week plus a couple more days, I was swamped with Doctor appointments and Vet appointments. Actually, I'm not doing any of the driving due to my knee, Mike does it all, as you know, I just hobble along.
But there is good news, I go in for a pre-op the end of next week, and so far the knee surgery is set up (can you believe it ) for Friday, August the 4th. After all this time in knee limbo this is shocking news. Don't know all of the details but when I find out, I'll let you know.
Bernie in Vermont after the deluge
So, the blog is really behind, sorry. I'm just going to put up a couple of reports and come back to the real nitty gritty asap. First though, I've been following weather in the States and Hawaii. Mike desperately needs some new shorts (10") - his are threadbare. The faves are the ones at the Vermont Country Store, but I didn't want to bother them with the intense and horrid flooding. So, he will have to wait.
More flooding on the way in Hawaii due to Tropical Storm Calvin. If you happen to be looking for real estate there make sure the real estate agent has a flood indicator. I'm ready to give up, the housing is so expensive, and every house I like is destined to be flooded out. Look at this one - but no backyard plus I would have to rob a bank.
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Precious
Quickly, because I'm overdue for a voltaren, check this out from Zeta:
"The president of the United States, Joseph Biden, urged, on July 17, 2023, the Mexican government to intensify conservation efforts for the vaquita and totoaba, two endangered species, threatening possible trade sanctions if they do not there were results in the same month next year.
In a letter addressed to the US Congress, the US president explained that he had ordered various federal agencies in his country to hold a high-level meeting with the Mexican government, to "address the steps to follow to reduce illegal trafficking of totoaba and ensure the conservation of the vaquita”.
At this meeting, the US government will urge its Mexican counterpart to "strengthen the implementation" of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, in addition to establishing a calendar to review progress in the protection of both species.
Biden also instructed the Government that he heads, to support Mexico in the tasks of combating the trafficking of the aforementioned species and to train the Mexican authorities in the event that they so request.
In his letter, the US president explained that at the moment no trade sanctions would be imposed on Mexico for this matter, but he instructed his Administration to submit a report to him in July 2024 to decide whether or not to adopt restrictions.
However, the US president expressed the opinion in his letter that the government headed by the politician from Tabasco had to "do more" to protect both species or else "the totoaba population will continue to decline and the vaquita will soon become extinct."
The United States Department of the Interior expressed its concern in May 2023 about "totoaba trafficking and the inadequate conservation" of said species. In February of the same year, the US Government considered that Mexico was violating the environmental chapter of the T-MEC.
While the non-governmental organization Sea Shepherd, which works for the preservation of these species in collaboration with the governments of both countries, registered at the beginning of June 2023, the existence of between 10 and 13 specimens of vaquita porpoise.
On June 24, 2023, the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) of the Government of Mexico announced changes to the Zero Tolerance Zone polygon, where the vaquita and totoaba live, following a 79 percent reduction. percent of illegal fishing in that area.
Through a statement, SEMARNAT informed that these modifications would be analyzed with the experience of the fishing sector and civil society, since the updating of the loading and unloading sites was also pending, as well as the schedules for the fishing activity.
One of the changes was to expand the Zero Tolerance Zone to four kilometers "on two sides of the aforementioned polygon adjacent to the coastline so that in October of this year 216 cubes will be added to the 193 existing ones."
As well as "strengthening operations with maritime, land and air patrols, with manned and unmanned units during the months of September and October corresponding to the shrimp fishing season."
Similarly, SEMARNAT assured that these actions would be carried out by the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), under its supervision, in order to have scientific evidence of how the vaquita contributed to changes in the flow of the Colorado River and the salinization of the ecosystem.
"It is expected to have evidence, through isotopes, of the environmental conditions to which the population of the vaquita has been historically subjected in the last seven or eight decades," said SEMARNAT, which also announced that it was working on a community project for the installation of a totoaba farm, so that said species could be commercialized and its illegal fishing could be avoided.
On May 25, 2023, SEMARNAT announced that it was working on an action plan with seven lines and 34 goals, to prevent illegal fishing and trade in totoaba and protect the vaquita.
SEMARNAT indicated that said plan was approved by the General Secretariat of the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) on April 13, 2023 and was immediately launched.
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION WILL RESTORE FLORA AND FAUNA TRADE WITH MX,WITH PLAN TO PROTECT TOTOABA
The General Secretariat of the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), approved the action plan presented by the Government of Mexico, to prevent illegal fishing and trade of totoaba, In addition to protecting the vaquita, as reported on April 13, 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER).
The fishing of this endemic fish of the Gulf of California, with a high value in Asian markets, has caused the incidental capture of the vaquita or cochito, a species of odontocete cetacean of the Phocoenidae family, one of the seven species of porpoise, which is about to become extinct.
The prohibition fell on 3 thousand 148 species registered by the National Commission for the Knowledge and use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) before CITES, 2 thousand 513 of plants and 635 of animals. The Convention is an international agreement between 184 governments.
According to his own description, CITES - which was signed in Washington, DC, on March 3, 1973, and entered into force on July 1, 1975 - has the purpose of ensuring that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants, does not constitute a threat to the survival of the species.
With this measure, the recommendation to member countries to suspend all trade with Mexico in species of flora and fauna included in its appendices will be withdrawn. The approval came after a delegation of representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs (SRE), Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), the Navy (SEMAR) and SADER, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, on March 27, 2023. to hold a meeting with CITES representatives.
At said meeting, the action plan was reviewed and adjusted according to the observations of said international organization. The endorsed plan considers compliance with all decisions and resolutions issued by CITES and contemplates seven lines of action and 34 goals, SADER said in a statement.
Among the agreed lines of action are those of preventing the entry of vessels to the Zero Tolerance Zone (Zo) of the Upper Gulf of California, as well as keeping it free of gillnets and strengthening intelligence actions to combat organized crime. transnational that controls the illegal traffic of totoaba.
Likewise, the plan of the Government of Mexico -approved by the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora- has the goals of installing long-range video surveillance, intensifying maritime, land and air patrols, and destroying networks found in ribbon.
"Our country recognizes the willingness of CITES to work with the Mexican delegation and reiterates its commitment to the communities that inhabit the area of the Upper Gulf of California to achieve their well-being and sustainable development, as well as to the families that sustainably use flora species. and fauna, helping to conserve our country's biodiversity," said SADER.
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION PROHIBITS FLORA AND FAUNA TRADE WITH MEXICO, FOR NOT PROTECTING THE TOTOABA
The International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), prohibited, on March 27, 2023, all trade in flora and fauna with Mexico, due to the deficient Action Plan that the Mexican Federal Government presented, the February 27 of this year. to combat totoaba trafficking.
The fishing of this endemic fish of the Gulf of California, with a high value in Asian markets, has caused the incidental capture of the vaquita or cochito, a species of odontocete cetacean of the Phocoenidae family, one of the seven species of porpoise, which is about to become extinct.
The prohibition falls on 3,148 species registered by the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO) before CITES, 2,513 of plants and 635 of animals. The Convention is an international agreement between 184 governments.
According to his own description, CITES - which was signed in Washington, DC, on March 3, 1973, and entered into force on July 1, 1975 - has the purpose of ensuring that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants, does not constitute a threat to the survival of the species.
Recognizing the ban, the Mexican Federal Government announced, on March 26, 2023, that it would send a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to meet with CITES representatives and the requested comments on its work plan.
“The Government of Mexico considers an inequitable treatment towards our country by not taking into account the effort that has been made and that CITES has publicly recognized, but despite this, it is open to dialogue and willing to attend to the observations of that body. ", he claimed.
“The Government of Mexico considers an inequitable treatment towards our country by not taking into account the effort that has been made and that CITES has publicly recognized, but despite this, it is open to dialogue and willing to attend to the observations of that body. ", he pointed.
“Mexico showed its goodwill by submitting a preliminary version of the Action Plan in advance to receive comments, which were addressed in the final document. For its preparation, there was a broad participation of 10 institutions at the highest level that are committed to following up and complying with the actions proposed before the international instance, ”said the Mexican Government.
"This resolution indicates that even though the CITES General Secretariat recognizes the commitment of our country, it considers that it does not have all the necessary elements for proper monitoring, which is why it issuing a recommendation to member countries to suspend all trade with Mexico of species included in its Appendices, which will remain in force until it receives an Action Plan that it deems appropriate," it detailed in its statement.
“It is important to point out that in the problem of illegal totoaba trafficking there is an international co-responsibility of transit and destination countries. Likewise, it is necessary to comply with the offer of CITES to finance studies in attention to the Upper Gulf of California. The Government of Mexico reiterates its willingness to work together to reverse this decision and specifically address the specific issues that are required of it, "he concluded.
MEXICO PRESENTS PLAN AGAINST TOTOABA TRAFFICKING
The Government of Mexico delivered, on March 1, 2023, its action plan to combat totoaba trafficking, which it had promised to present to the International Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, for its acronym in English).
The plan is part of the measures requested to protect the vaquita in the Upper Gulf of California. According to a statement from the Ministry of the Environment (SEMARNAT), it was presented by the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the United Nations (UN) and other international organizations based in Geneva, Switzerland, with corrections to a first version delivered at the beginning of February. of 2023.
The Government of Mexico proposed among its lines of action to prevent the entry of vessels to the zero tolerance area in said region, as well as to keep it free of gillnets. Likewise, it undertook to monitor the effective compliance of the authorized loading and unloading sites, in addition to a program for marking and monitoring fishing equipment for small vessels.
The action plan also provides for the monitoring of the vaquita population, the establishment of a contact group for law enforcement, as well as financial intelligence to combat totoaba trafficking.
CITES, and other international organizations, had called on the Government of Mexico to urgently adopt more effective measures to curb totoaba trafficking and protect the vaquita.
The delivery of the action plan was agreed within the framework of the nineteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-19) and the 75th meeting of the Standing Committee (SC-75) of CITES, which were held in Panama in November 2022.
"The Action Plan, whose reception has already been confirmed, complies with the guidelines agreed at COP19, with the recommendations of SC75, and with the determinations of the report on the results of the Visit-Mission (carried out by a group of CITES experts )”, indicated SEMARNAT.
“Takes into account the considerations expressed by the international community in other forums and instruments of a regional and multilateral nature, with the purpose of generating synergies that allow strengthening the results of the actions that the Government of Mexico carries out in the Upper Gulf of California. ”, added the institution, whose owner is MarÃa Luisa Albores González.
THE TOTOABA CARTEL, WHICH AFFECTS VAQUITA MARINA, IS DISarticulated, SEMAR SAYS
Likewise, the head of SEMAR pointed out that said criminal organization was engaged in the illegal trafficking of totoaba, a fish also known as "cocaine of the sea", whose crop is sold for up to 5 thousand dollars per kilo, from the coasts of Baja California to the Asian market.
In addition, during the presidential morning press conference -carried out from the Treasury Room of the National Palace-, the federal official added that the arrest of seven elements of said Cartel was achieved and they are already in prison.
“In the upper Gulf of California, in front of San Felipe, there was a cartel called the Totoaba Cartel. The totoaba was linked to the issue of the vaquita porpoise, and it was possible to dismantle that cartel, seven elements were arrested, who are already in prison, "explained Ojeda Durán.
According to the admiral, in view of this and to rescue said mammal, SEMAR carries out permanent surveillance and monitoring in the zero tolerance zone, as well as maritime and air patrols. Ojeda Durán also indicated that the recovery of gillnets was implemented, the installation of the 'Rinus' radar and the arrest of the leader of the Cartel del Mar.
In addition, it revealed the total seizures that were carried out in the area, from 2019 to 2022, of which the following stood out: 744 nets recovered and 142 thousand lengths of nets recovered. Regarding inspections, the following was registered: 2 thousand 42 vessels; 12 thousand 314 small vessels; 6 thousand 539 vehicles; 39 thousand 500 people; and 37 facilities or warehouses.
“It is an action that is carried out with various dependencies. Collaboration agreements were signed and the culture of denunciation was promoted", emphasized the head of SEMAR, regarding the relationship with institutions such as the National Commission for Aquaculture and Fisheries (CONAPESCA), as well as the secretariats of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) and Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT)."
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Hmmmmmm......gosh, I heard there weren't any totoabas or vaquitas left in the northern Sea of Cortez, that they are history. Has anyone heard of the Cartel del Mar? Are they the guys shrimping in the contaminated water in front of us ? When were all of these arrests and seizures ? Anyone ? Truth is, AMLO no matter what he says, is simply not an environmentalist, he never has been.
Contact:
Marjorie Fishman, Animal Welfare Institute, margie@awionline.org, (202) 446-2128
Sarah Uhlemann, Center for Biological Diversity, suhlemann@biologicaldiversity.org, (206) 327-2344
Alejandro Olivera, Center for Biological Diversity, aolivera@biologicaldiversity.org, +52 (612) 104 0604 (en español)
Biden Declines to Embargo Products From Mexico Despite Vaquita Violation
Critical Tool Could Have Helped Save Imperiled Species
"WASHINGTON— President Biden announced today that he will not embargo products from Mexico despite the country’s failure to halt illegal wildlife trade threatening the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.
The decision responds to the U.S. Interior Department’s recent certification under the U.S. Pelly Amendment that Mexico has “diminished the effectiveness” of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora by not stopping the illegal fishing and trade of totoaba, an endangered fish poached for its swim bladder.
The Pelly Amendment authorizes the president to act, including by imposing trade sanctions, against countries determined to be violating international conservation treaties such as CITES. Instead of issuing sanctions today, Biden called for a high-level dialogue between the United States and Mexico on protecting the vaquita from trafficking and directed U.S. agencies to reassess Mexico’s efforts by July 2024 with the potential for trade sanctions at that time.
“I’m disappointed in the U.S. government for doing so little to save vaquitas from extinction," said Sarah Uhlemann, international program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These are the rarest marine mammals in the world, and yet the United States has let the Mexican government off the hook again. Mexico has a long, painful history of failed promises on protecting these little porpoises. The United States needs to apply the strongest pressure and ban seafood from Mexico until there’s real enforcement on illegal fishing in their habitat. The last 10 vaquitas are at stake.”
The vaquita is the world’s most critically endangered porpoise, with as few as 10 to 13 animals remaining. Vaquita become entangled in illegal gillnets set to catch totoaba, shrimp and other species in Mexico’s Upper Gulf of California. Totoaba swim bladders are trafficked primarily to China, where they are sold at exorbitant prices to make soup with purported medicinal benefits.
For decades, Mexico has failed to adequately enforce its fishing and wildlife trade laws in the Upper Gulf, causing the vaquita to decline from nearly 600 animals in 1997 to only around a dozen today.
“Seven years ago, Mexico promised the United States that it would permanently ban the use of gillnets in all fisheries throughout the vaquita’s range,” said Zak Smith, director of global biodiversity conservation at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “Today, gillnets are still routinely used in vaquita habitat and the species’ population has plummeted to around 10 individuals. The United States should be using all the tools at its disposal, including an embargo on targeted products, to compel Mexico to meet its international obligations and save the species.”
In 2014, in response to Mexico’s failures, conservationists petitioned the Interior Department to certify Mexico under the Pelly Amendment. In May 2023, after nine years and a federal lawsuit filed by conservation groups, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland certified that Mexican nationals are diminishing the effectiveness of CITES by “engaging in taking and trade of the totoaba fish and the related incidental take of vaquita.” Following such certification, the Pelly Amendment required the president to decide whether to embargo Mexican wildlife products to prompt Mexico’s compliance.
“With only a dozen vaquita remaining, the Biden administration must remain vigilant, and ensure that Mexico does not continue to evade its CITES responsibilities,” said DJ Schubert, a wildlife biologist at the Animal Welfare Institute. “We believe that strong sanctions against Mexico are warranted, and we will continue to demand that the United States exercise all options to ensure Mexico does everything in its power to save the vaquita. The U.S. public will not tolerate our government being complicit in the extinction of a species.”
Although some evidence suggests a reduction in illegal fishing in the “zero tolerance area” — core vaquita habitat — recent reports show illegal fishing continues in the Upper Gulf, including in the vaquita refuge and gillnet prohibition area. Mexico’s September 2020 regulations, which were supposed to meaningfully address illegal fishing, have not been fully implemented or enforced.
Without the removal of illegal gillnets from the entire vaquita habitat, the species will – at best – remain on the brink of extinction."
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Meanwhile,you've probably already heard or read about this one.
Nightie night y'all.
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P.S. I am being told there will be about a six months recovery time period...so maybe next year?
Lower Trestles, end of last month...watch out for the ShARks !
We are sort of at an impasse here, unsure whether or not it is intentional that Zeta has not reported last months totals of homicidios dolosos (executions) and seems to be avoiding the everyday day to day murders of the drug war between the cartels to a very large extent.
Considering that the Mayor of Tijuana, Montserrat Caballero Ramirezhas been holed up at the Army Barracks for " protection" since last month after her body guard was attacked and her claim to having received threatening messages, makes you kind of wonder. Zeta however does recently pose some questions as to her new living arrangement. The news focus now seems to be more on the political level and we wonder if Montserrat isn't a part of that during her internment at the barracks. Not to worry, Daddy's got your back hon.
During the Holiday weekend, Rosarito was flush with mucho touristas, not the white eyes, but Mexican-American young people who overall seemed well behaved. No one seemed particularly anxious or fearful and concerned.
I was disturbed because a neighbor took pictures of shrimp boats in front of us, three of them, fishing for shrimp. I decided not to publish the pictures of these boats catching the shrimp in the massively contaminated waters (right in the damn plume already) bound for local markets and restaurantes, slightly worried how the Shrimp|Squid Mafia would react. So, looks as though we are in a hear no evil, speak no evil or see no evil dilemma all the way around. Everything's Okay, right ? Still, I'm working on the stats.
Meanwhile, here is a link to goings on in the Ukraine; Steve Brown tickled me (although the comments didn't quite go along with this perspective) explaining the concept of Maskirovka which I initially thought was behind the the entire Putin escapade...and after his report, I thought - yep. It all ties in how Winston Churchhill in 1939 defined Russia: " a riddle, wrapped in mystery, inside an enigma." (oh so you thought that was from"JFK"...)
Uniradio Informa reports in the first week of this month of July, TIJ has had 32 homicidios dolosos (executions) which brings the YTD total in TIJ up to 983 dead:
Uniradio Informa in their 06/29/23 report, 182 Homicidios Dolosos (executions) in TIJ during the month of June which brings the YTD total in TIJ to 951 dead:
Well, this was rough. Paris wanted "The Battle of New Orleans" because "hounds" were mentioned several times, but I had to explain to her that that was a depiction of events in 1812-1815, although it is a very cool song and one of Johnny Horton's bestest.
So, let's go with this...and hope your spirits are high this Independence Day. God bless America.
I had to take down the Paris meme, "Sergei...Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are" and replace it with Gerasimov due to developing reports that General Sergei Surovikin is being detained:
Where are you laying your bets ? That the Wagner Rebellion will have curbed Putin's blood thirst for power, that he has been weakened? Or, is it more"... likely he will take the path of escalation"?
Am I embarrassed? Well, a little even though I still believe anything is possible especially concerning the gangster Russians... and I was spot on regarding Lukashenko. As far as Prigozhin and for that matter Defense Minister Shoigu where the heck are they ?
The most important thing at this point is the accepted notion of the dire instability the entire world is now faced with given Putin's position after the "coup that wasn't". Here are a couple of links, R037 has some interesting video and links:
Here are some links with video as to what the State Department, Biden, Prigozhin & Putin have had to say this Monday - everything is still as puzzling in Russia as before, no change:
Nothing down here at all, nothing at all pure zip on the local level regarding the Russian monsters and AMLO's boyfriend. But wait a minute, first Putin lets Prigozhin off the hook, now so he says, he is after him again. It's a seesaw, Kabuki Theater ! So, who's drivin the boat anyway?
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Update/edit 06/27:
1. Visual this morning on CNN Live News: Putin lets Prigozhin off the hook yet again, can't seem to make up his mind. Two jets spotted in Belarus, belonging to Prigozhin. From AP.
2. US Intelligence KNEW this ordeal was going to go down - from late yesterday, early this morning. Hilarious, well AMLO looks like your ass was left out of the loop entirely gee I wonder why.
Actually Mike, another devil in the world, Prigozhin could be worse than Putin (two war criminals) and he even looks like a demon. Mike also says, "This could be good for Ukraine"; well maybe in the short term, but it also could backfire...I don't trust either one of them. Let's look at the breaking news, but first though, hopefully y'all made it through the recent Titanic disaster, and what a disaster it was. Someone needs to explain to me who was doing the "banging" at thirty minute intervals (which happened way after the implosion...spooky).
Meanwhile, I have had a horrible stomach bacteria for nearly a week from eating fresh wild caught and frozen Argentina shrimp (which was on sale) in a recipe we found over on the Washington Post. I think it was undercooked, just recovering now. BLAH !
Here's what I am picking up so far, need to run over to Kos and see what they are reporting; turn your tubes on live news:
For the past few hours we've had the news on TV, listening in almost disbelief of the "outcome" of this phoney coup. Although no one so far has alluded to this, Mike does agree that Putin's power role has been diminished, I'm not so sure.
Prigozhin back tracts and announces he is not going all the way to Moscow, it seems he has been forgiven by Putin and sent off to Belarus after a deal brokered by Lukashenko. That Lukashenko could broker anything is a red flag, he's an idiot.
Okay to cut to the quick because I need a nap, I think the whole enchilada was bullshit. I think this was straight out of a Russian Play - that Putin and Prigozhin knew exactly what they were doing and going to say regarding each other, it was all bluster, it was all a show. I think they wanted to see for themselves how many top brass and foot soldiers would defect and join the Wagner Group.
And, perhaps smoke the rats out - for example, Defense Minister Shoigu and his entourage of Russian Military Top Leadership. Could it be possible that Shoigu or any one of his Generals were the ones who held back ammunition for the Wagners and did Shoigu and his team order the hit(s) on the Wagners in the field? We have been reading that this band of hoodlums have been feeding Putin misinformation for months now on troop readiness and victories, if we can believe what we are reading, but it makes sense.
Pretty simple, but then, I'm not an expert. Just an old surfer. We'll see, right ?
end edit. Paris wants her nappies.
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BTW, the lyrics for "Dark Eyes" ( a Russian Cabaret song) were written by the Ukrainian Poet Yevhen Hrebinka cerca 1843:
You will never be able to compare carting off Secret National Documents for a person's egotistic personal needs and making the documents public to protect the public, save countless innocent lives, and expose grand lies. They say that Daniel Ellsberg strongly suspected he would be thrown into prison for a lifetime for what he was about to do, but he never went, and we all prevailed. Although he was Richard Nixon's Public Enemy Number One, in fact, he was a National Hero.
"NEW YORK (AP) — Daniel Ellsberg, the history-making whistleblower who by leaking the Pentagon Papers revealed longtime government doubts and deceit about the Vietnam War and inspired acts of retaliation by President Richard Nixon that helped lead to his resignation, has died. He was 92.
Ellsberg, whose actions led to a landmark First Amendment ruling by the Supreme Court, had disclosed in February that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. His family announced his death Friday morning in a letter released by a spokeswoman, Julia Pacetti.
“He was not in pain, and was surrounded by loving family,” the letter reads in part. “Thank you, everyone, for your outpouring of love, appreciation and well-wishes to Dan in the previous months. It all warmed his heart at the end of his life.”
Until the early 1970s, when he disclosed that he was the source for the stunning media reports on the 47-volume, 7,000-page Defense Department study of the U.S. role in Indochina, Ellsberg was a well-placed member of the government-military elite. He was a Harvard graduate and self-defined “cold warrior” who served as a private and government consultant on Vietnam throughout the 1960s, risked his life on the battlefield, received the highest security clearances and came to be trusted by officials in Democratic and Republican administrations.
He was especially valued, he would later note, for his “talent for discretion.”
But like millions of other Americans, in and out of government, he had turned against the yearslong war in Vietnam, the government’s claims that the battle was winnable and that a victory for the North Vietnamese over the U.S.-backed South would lead to the spread of communism throughout the region. Unlike so many other war opponents, he was in a special position to make a difference.
“An entire generation of Vietnam-era insiders had become just as disillusioned as I with a war they saw as hopeless and interminable,” he wrote in his 2002 memoir, “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.” “By 1968, if not earlier, they all wanted, as I did, to see us out of this war.”
The Pentagon Papers had been commissioned in 1967 by then-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, a leading public advocate of the war who wanted to leave behind a comprehensive history of the U.S. and Vietnam and to help his successors avoid the kinds of mistakes he would only admit to long after. The papers covered more than 20 years, from France’s failed efforts at colonization in the 1940s and 1950s to the growing involvement of the U.S., including the bombing raids and deployment of hundreds of thousands of ground troops during Lyndon Johnson’s administration. Ellsberg was among those asked to work on the study, focusing on 1961, when the newly-elected President John F. Kennedy began adding advisers and support units.
As much as anyone, Ellsberg embodied the individual of conscience — who answered only to his sense of right and wrong, even if the price was his own freedom. David Halberstam, the late author and Vietnam War correspondent who had known Ellsberg since both were posted overseas, would describe him as no ordinary convert. He was highly intelligent, obsessively curious and profoundly sensitive, a born proselytizer who “saw political events in terms of moral absolutes” and demanded consequences for abuses of power.
As much as anyone, Ellsberg also embodied the fall of American idealism in foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s and the upending of the post-World War II consensus that Communism, real or suspected, should be opposed worldwide.
The Pentagon Papers were first published in The New York Times in June 1971, with The Washington Post, The Associated Press and more than a dozen others following. They documented that the U.S. had defied a 1954 settlement barring a foreign military presence in Vietnam, questioned whether South Vietnam had a viable government, secretly expanded the war to neighboring countries and had plotted to send American soldiers even as Johnson vowed he wouldn’t.
The Johnson administration had dramatically and covertly escalated the war despite the “judgment of the Government’s intelligence community that the measures would not” weaken the North Vietnamese, wrote the Times’ Neil Sheehan, a former Vietnam correspondent who later wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book on the war, “A Bright Shining Lie.”
The leaker’s identity became a national guessing game and Ellsberg proved an obvious suspect, because of his access to the papers and his public condemnation of the war over the previous two years. With the FBI in pursuit, Ellsberg turned himself in to authorities in Boston, became a hero to the antiwar movement and a traitor to the war’s supporters, labeled the “most dangerous man in America” by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, with whom Ellsberg had once been friendly.
The papers themselves were seen by many as an indictment not just of a given president or party, but of a generation of political leadership. The historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt would note that growing mistrust of the government during the Vietnam era, “the credibility gap,” had “opened into an abyss.”
“The quicksand of lying statements of all sorts, deceptions as well as self-deceptions, is apt to engulf any reader who wishes to probe this material, which, unhappily, he must recognize as the infrastructure of nearly a decade of United States foreign and domestic policy,” she wrote.
The Nixon administration quickly tried to block further publication on the grounds that the papers would compromise national security, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the newspapers on June 30, 1971, a major First Amendment ruling rejecting prior restraint. Nixon himself, initially unconcerned because the papers predated his time in office, was determined to punish Ellsberg and formed a renegade team of White House “plumbers,” endowed with a stash of White House “hush money” and the mission of preventing future leaks.
“You can’t drop it,” Nixon fumed privately to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. “You can’t let the Jew steal that stuff and get away with it. You understand?”
Ellsberg faced trials in Boston and Los Angeles on federal charges for espionage and theft, with a possible sentence of more than 100 years. He had expected to go to jail, but was spared, in part, by Nixon’s rage and the excesses of those around him. The Boston case ended in a mistrial because the government wiretapped conversations between a defense witness and his attorney. Charges in the Los Angeles trial were dismissed after Judge Matthew Byrne learned that White House “plumbers” G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt had burglarized the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in Beverly Hills, California.
Byrne ruled that “the bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case.”
Meanwhile, the “plumbers” continued their crime wave, notably the June 1972 break-in of the Democratic Party’s national headquarters, at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. The Watergate scandal didn’t prevent Nixon from a landslide reelection in 1972, but would expand rapidly during his second term and culminate in his resignation in August 1974. U.S. combat troops had already left Vietnam and the North Vietnamese captured the Southern capital, Saigon, in April 1975.
“Without Nixon’s obsession with me, he would have stayed in office,” Ellsberg told The Associated Press in 1999. “And had he not been removed from office, he would have continued the bombing (in Vietnam).”
Ellsberg’s story was depicted in the 2009 documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.” The movie had its West Coast premiere only a few blocks from the Rand Corp. headquarters in Santa Monica, Ellsberg former workplace. He sent college students with fliers to urge old colleagues to attend the screening, but none attended.
Ellsberg was born in Chicago in 1931, to Jewish parents who converted to Christian Science. His father was an unemployed engineer in the early years of the Great Depression and the family later moved to suburban Detroit, where his father worked in a plant making B-24 bombers. Daniel held vivid memories of learning that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, and of reports of the Nazis bombing London and the U.S. bombing Germany and Japan.
In his teens, Ellsberg found himself in agreement with Harry Truman and other “Cold War liberals,” believing in civil rights and economic justice at home, and containing the Soviet Union overseas. He was also shaped profoundly by personal tragedy. During a car trip in 1946, his father nodded off at the wheel and crashed into a sidewall, killing Ellsberg’s mother and younger sister. Ellsberg would look back with a sense of loss and mistrust — his father, the authority figure, had failed to keep his family safe.
With thoughts of becoming a labor organizer, Ellsberg won a scholarship to Harvard University and graduated summa cum laude. He served in the Marines as an act of defiance against his Ivy League background, but eventually returned to Harvard and earned a doctorate in economics. In 1959, he became a strategic analyst at the Rand Corp., a global policy think tank based in Santa Monica, California, and consulted for the Defense Department and the White House on nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans and crisis decision-making. Ellsberg spent two years in the mid-1960s with the State Department in Vietnam, where he learned first-hand how casually military and political officials lied and became convinced the conflict was unwinnable, in part through the firefights with the North Vietnamese that he survived.
Encouraged by a close friend from Rand, researcher Anthony J. Russo, Ellsberg had decided by the fall of 1969 that the Nixon administration would continue the policies of other presidents and that the McNamara study needed to be seen. His life would soon resemble an espionage thriller.
Ellsberg removed some of the bound, classified volumes from his safe in the Rand offices, placed them in his briefcase and walked past security guards and a sign reading “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” With Russo’s girlfriend owning an advertising agency, Ellsberg spent months copying the documents on an office Xerox machine, sometimes helped by his teenage son Robert. On occasion, the office alarm would mistakenly ring, police would show up, and leave soon after. Ellsberg became so worried that he began slicing off the “Top Secret” markings from the papers, in case authorities wanted to inspect more closely.
Leaking to the Times was not his first choice. He had hoped that government officials, including Kissinger, would read the study and realize the war was hopeless. Legislators turning him down included Sen. William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, the longtime chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, who in 1972 would run for president as an antiwar candidate.
A final plot twist was unknown to Ellsberg until decades later. He had showed some of the report to Marcus Raskin and Ralph Stavins of the liberal think tank the Institute for Policy Studies before approaching Sheehan. Only in the early 2000s did he learn that Raskin and Stavins, who had recommended that he speak with Sheehan, had already given some of the papers to the Times reporter. Sheehan, who died in 2021, also defied Ellsberg’s request not to make duplicate copies and did not give him advance notice before the first Times report ran.
“It was just luck that he didn’t get the whistle blown on the whole damn thing,” Sheehan later said of Ellsberg, whom he regarded as “out of control.”
In his later years, a spry, silver-haired Ellsberg became a prominent free speech and anti-Iraq war activist, drawing parallels between U.S. involvement in Iraq and Vietnam, and called for impeachment of President George W. Bush. He expressed similar fears about Afghanistan during the Obama administration, saying it had the potential to become “Vietnamistan” if the U.S. increased troops there.
He was active in campaigns to prevent nuclear arms proliferation and drew upon his history in government for the 2017 book “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner,” in which he included a once-top secret document showing that the U.S. had considered launching nuclear attacks on the Chinese in 1958. He also defended other leakers and whistleblowers, among them WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the government contractor who disclosed details of secret U.S. surveillance programs and is now living in Russia.
“Many of the people whistle-blowers work with know the same things and actually regard the information in the same way — that it’s wrong — but they keep their mouths shut,” Ellsberg told The New York Times in 2023.
On Friday, Snowden tweeted that he had spoken with Ellsberg last month and found him more concerned about the world’s fate than about his own.
“He assessed the risk of a nuclear exchange to be escalating beyond 10%,” Snowden wrote. “He had hoped to dedicate his final hours to reducing it, for all those he would leave behind. A hero to the end.”
Ellsberg is survived by his second wife, the journalist Patricia Marx, and three children, two from his first marriage. He and Marx wedded in 1970, the year before the Pentagon Papers were made public. In a New York Times wedding announcement, he was identified as a “senior research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, where he was writing a critical study of United States involvement in Vietnam.”
___
Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker and Nomaan Merchant in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story, which includes biographical material compiled by former AP reporter Louise Chu.
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 3:35 PM EDT, Tue June 13, 2023
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Be back later, have to take a wild kitty to the vet. If we can capture him, he's a big boy.
You guys want more Beatles? That was a groove last time.
Well, you can never get enough Beatles, or for that matter, Daniel Dale. Think back to October 6, 1968 - this video was first aired in the USA on the Smothers Brothers TV show. Remember? I remember watching it then, pure magic. Still is. Enjoy....
This is going to be quick, and will return with go get em Jill Biden's comments, everyone's hero Daniel Dale's infamous fact checks, and a rundown on events of Trumps' arrest manana.
Noted on some of the comments that the bathroom also had a copy machine although I didn't see it...oh whoopsie, and never forget, not ever guys...it also had a freakin window ! 😄 With no lock !
"Former President Donald Trump is no slouch when it comes to the media. Even his harshest critics would have to admit that he is effective at commanding attention — so effective that he might be in a league with Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy as masters of their presidential campaign images.
But he lost one very large and important battle this week in the war of images that has been taking place since his 37-count indictment from the Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith was unsealed Friday. And he lost it to static photos of a bathroom and ballroom stage.
Trump has been working overtime since the indictment trying to project images of strength, power, defiance and control. There he was over the weekend at the GOP conventions in North Carolina and Georgia strutting onstage and preening at the podium.
Monday and Tuesday, our screens were filled with images of Trump coming off his plane and riding in a motorcade of big, black SUVs like he was still president of the United States.
After his arraignment Tuesday in a Miami courtroom where no cameras were allowed — and thus no perp walks shown — Trump was seen waving through the tinted window of one of those SUVs as it left the federal courthouse.
More I’m-your-beloved-leader optics followed as Trump stopped at a packed Versailles restaurant in Miami where he posed for cameras and was surrounded by supporters.
“Food for everyone,” Trump called out.
And then, the night-time rally on the brightly lit, American flag-festooned portico of his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he showed more defiance of what he again labeled the department of “injustice,” and Smith, whom he called a “thug.”
All in all, it was a pretty impressive display of image-managing for someone who was charged with 37 felonies for the alleged mishandling of classified documents, obstruction of justice and making false statements.
Given the lack of any Trump-in-chains imagery, you could almost call the visual battle a triumph for Trump, except for one thing: those frontstage-backstage, behind-closed-doors, down-and-dirty photographs of boxes and boxes of documents piled in a bathroom, a shower and a ballroom stage at Mar-a-Lago.
For all the Trump imagery I have absorbed since Friday, those are the images that stick in my mind and continue to resonate.
I see the bathroom image as a symbol of the sloppiness, lack of social responsibility, messy, make-it-up-as you-go-along and utter chaos of the man and his presidency. The boxes stacked behind and almost hidden by a cheap-looking shower curtain suggest the mind of a hoarder who has no sense of priorities or value, who can no longer (if he ever could) determine what matters and what doesn’t.
Coupled with the chandelier and the sconce in the bathroom, we have an image that suggests a world of glitz and glitter out front intended to hide the secrets, decay and darkness behind closed doors.
Visuals are more powerful than words — whether it is a TV, computer, tablet or smartphone screen on which they are seen. We are primarily a visual culture. We have been, at least, since the arrival of television in our living rooms in the 1950s.
We connect with words intellectually. But we connect with images viscerally and emotionally. We feel the meaning we make of them in our hearts, guts and bones.
These images of boxes — some of which allegedly include classified documents, piled up in a bathroom and shower seemingly ripe for mildew and mold — are what matter. They are the visual takeaway from the last five days, not all the I-am-in-control strongman postures that Trump constructed of himself to fill our screens."
In case you haven't had the chance, here is the Indictment (annotated) to read, and by all means, please do read it. You might not be able to sleep afterwards, I couldn't. I had nightmares all weekend.
By Zachary B. Wolf and Curt Merrill, CNN
Published June 9, 2023
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So far, nothing in yet from Zeta on this. Maybe they are waiting for Tuesday.
...here's a gloomy frightful thought...tonight Mike reminded me;'Well, they arrested Hitler for treason, gave him five years and he served something like eight months...then the shit hit the fan' I don't think that was an immature analogy, in fact given that the United States is swirling in a cesspool of "God, Guns and Country" true believers, Trump loyalists and ranking GOP leadershipTrump support, it's pretty appropriate.
Interestingly, if you clicked that link and read it, who does Georg Neithardt remind you of ?
