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| Courtesy Greenpeace |
Although IBT entitles their report "Mexico Announces New Plan to Protect Near Extinct Porpoise",
AP cuts to the quick:
~ From AP via KAMC:
Mexico Abandons Fishing-Free Zone For Endangered Porpoise
"MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government officially abandoned the policy of maintaining a fishing-free zone around the last 10 or so remaining vaquita marina.
The measure announced Wednesday replaces the fishing-free “zero tolerance” zone in the upper Gulf of California with a sliding scale of punishments if more than 60 boats are seen in the area on multiple occasions.
Given that Mexico has been unable to enforce the current restrictions — which bans boats in the small area — the sliding-scale punishments also seem doomed to irrelevance.
Environmental experts say the move essentially abandons the world’s most endangered marine mammal to the gill nets that trap and drown them. The nets are set for totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder is a delicacy in China, and sells for thousands of dollars per pound (kilogram).
Alex Olivera, the Mexico representative for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the rules establish a sliding scale of responses to a situation that shouldn’t be allowed to occur in the first place. For example, the Agriculture and Fisheries Department says it will use 60% of its enforcement personnel if 20 fishing boats or less are seen in the restricted area.
“This is stupid. They are waiting to count boats in an area designated as ‘zero tolerance,’ where there shouldn’t be a single boat,” Olivera said. “They are letting in dozens of boats.”
“This is the end of the concept of zero tolerance,” Olivera said. “There is just going to be dissuasion.”
One conservation expert who is familiar with the case, but who cannot be quoted by name for fear of repercussions, said the new rules “imply not protecting the vaquita.”
“It appears that fisheries authorities want to drive the vaquita to extinction,” the expert said.
Two ships from the conservationist group Sea Shepherd have worked with Mexican marines to try to grab banned fishing nets from the area, but they are frequently outnumbered and attacked by fishermen, who have no fear at all of the marines.
In January, two fishermen rammed their small boat into a larger vessel used by Sea Shepherd to haul out nets. Sea Shepherd said its vessel, the Farley Mowat, was pulling illegal gill nets out of the waters of the gulf, also known as the Sea of Cortez, when people on a group of about a half dozen small, open fishing boats began tossing gasoline bombs at the vessel, setting the bow and another part of the ship afire.
The nets confiscated by Sea Shepherd vessels are expensive, so fishermen often harass the conservationists’ boats to try to get them back. The fishermen claim they have not received compensation from the Mexican government for lost fishing income. Groups representing fishermen were not immediately available to comment.
The upper Gulf of California is the only place the vaquita lives.
Mexico’s Environment Department had previously said the drop in the number of vaquitas and the area where they have been seen in recent years justified reducing the protection zone, which in theory once covered most of the upper Gulf.
Formally known as the vaquita “reserve,” that zone starts around the Colorado river delta and extends south past the fishing town of San Felipe and near Puerto Peñasco.
But as vaquita numbers dwindled to a few dozen, and then to less than a dozen, scientists and environmentalists decided to make a last-ditch stand in the ‘zero tolerance’ zone, a far smaller area where the last vaquita were seen.
Their numbers are confirmed by subaquatic listening devices that graph the squeaks and squeals the animals make, even as visual sighting become rare."
Haven't seen anything on this from Zeta, yet.
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Don't mean to make matters worse than they already are....but it is possible that all of us are doomed along with the precious Vaquita:
~ From Truthout:
Trump Supporters' Anti-Science Crusade Is Threatening Us All
"The number of new COVID-19 infections in the country topped 26,500 yesterday, a two-week increase of 111 percent. Experts broadly agree the reasons behind this new infection spike are twofold: (1) The Delta variant of COVID is highly infectious and on the verge of becoming the dominant strain in the U.S.; (2) Millions of people continue to refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks.
Note well, there are plenty of people who remain unvaccinated for very comprehensible reasons: They live in areas where the shot is still difficult to obtain, or they are prevented from doing so for unavoidable work/life requirements, or they have vaccination hesitancy that is deeply rooted in an understandable distrust of medical experts who have grossly abused their communities for generations.
The problem, however, is that millions of people remain unvaccinated — and won’t wear masks — because they think Donald Trump won the 2020 election, because Trump says he did. The way they have chosen to combat the ocean of criticism earned by the Trump presidency is simple, and utterly lethal: If Trump is good, that means science is bad, so screw science and screw you, too. If this self-destructive practice is not interrupted, we may be in for another long and brutal winter.
“Vaccines have been available to most Americans for months,” reports CNN, “but still only 48.2% of the country is fully vaccinated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — and the rate of new vaccinations is on the decline. Meanwhile, case rates have been going up dramatically. In 47 states, the rate of new cases in the past week are at least 10% higher than the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Of those, 35 have seen increases of over 50%. Officials and experts have said disinformation is largely to blame for the high number of unvaccinated Americans, a group which is now seeing the largest impacts of the pandemic.”
Matters are becoming dire enough to spur the largest nurses’ union in the U.S. to urge the reinstatement of the mask mandate. National Nurses United executive director Bonnie Castillo transmitted a letter to the CDC warning, “The Covid-19 pandemic is far from over.” The letter goes on to lay out a swath of terrifying infection numbers. “NNU strongly urges the CDC to reinstate universal masking, irrespective of vaccination status, to help reduce the spread of the virus, especially from infected individuals who do not have any symptoms,” pleads the concluding message.
“Officials and experts have said disinformation is largely to blame for the high number of unvaccinated Americans,” reported CNN. But why? Qui bono? Who benefits? As it turns out, the same old right-wing hucksters are the ones who benefit the most, the ones who will say anything in order to dent the conversation and increase their own power, no matter how many of their own people they trick into an early, gasping grave. Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg News explains it:
It works like this. A fringe group of the party seeks to differentiate itself from the mainstream. To do that, its members set out to prove that they are the True Conservatives and everyone else is a wishy-washy Republican in Name Only at best, and a collaborating liberal at worst. However, by now the mainstream of the party has become so conservative that there are no easy moves to make that involve pushing one or another policy preference….
The key point here is that there is no counter move available to the rest of the party. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can say that they oppose such-and-such a policy because they are liberals, not socialists. There’s no parallel move for the Republican congressional leaders, Kevin McCarthy in the House or Mitch McConnell in the Senate. That doesn’t mean that mainstream conservatives always go along, but within the norms of the party they’re not allowed to call anyone too conservative, let alone any more negative characterization.
How do you set yourself outside and above the conservative pack? Start by refusing to wear a mask. Follow that by refusing to get vaccinated. Not long after, begin making spurious claims that the vaccinations are deadly, and when people don’t die in sufficient numbers to support that egregious lie, downshift to the argument that vaccinations and masks are the newest iteration of Nazi fascism.
I do not see an easy solution to this problem, especially in a country that prides itself on freedom of opinion, even monstrously self-destructive opinion. How do you fix this when the governor of Florida is selling t-shirts attacking Anthony Fauci, the government’s lead COVID expert, even as that state endures 3,000 new COVID hospitalizations a day? New infections in Florida are up 429 percent over the last two weeks, a number only matched by Tennessee, where the government has all but declared the topic of coronavirus to be off limits.
The way things are headed, we could soon be forced back into our masks for all occasions, back into seclusion, and worse, forced to bear witness to a segment of the population as it kills itself in the culmination of 40 years of nihilistic Republican ideology. One wonders if it really could have ended any other way."
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Mike is against mandating the vaccination, I think it should be mandated. Kind of reminds me of when General Patton (who was unfortunately an extreme racist but a great commander) wanted to keep on and push the Russians all the way back to Russia. Too bad he was a racist.
~ From Hollywood !
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Finally , a tally of Tijuana execution stats from June & July:
~ From Zeta:
June High Numbers:
Reportan Seis Homicidios Mas en Tijuana
Destacados Redacción Zeta miércoles, 30 junio, 2021 1:27 PM
"With the death of six more people in the course of Tuesday and the morning of this Wednesday, June 30, the statistics of intentional homicides swelled to 189 victims in June and 1,033 so far in 2021.
Among the violent events that occurred yesterday, the discovery of a charred body in the vicinity of the Pedregal de Santa Julia neighborhood stands out, in addition to the remains a threat written on a cardboard was left.
The report originated around 6 in the morning, when it indicated that on a stretch of dirt road on Francisco I Madero Street and Libramiento Sur there was a body under the flames, and next to the body, his perpetrators left him a cardboard with a message that said: " THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ALL THE FUCKING PEOPLE KE ANDE DE CHAPULÍN IN EL PEDREGAL, LET'S GO FOR YOU PABLITO ATTE: LA MERA VERGA."
Later, inside a house located in Lino Rocha and Albino García alley, Guerrero neighborhood, a man of approximately 45 years of age was found dead. The victim, unidentified, had tattoos on his head, abdomen, arms and legs; He had a lesion on the left cheekbone. Four casings were found at the crime scene.
While in the facilities of the General Hospital of Tijuana, a man between 45 and 50 years old died. It is unknown where he was attacked.
Finally, this Wednesday the 30th around 11 in the morning, the cowering body of a woman was found inside a white van, of recent model, California plates, which was abandoned on Cañón de la Pedrera street, in the neighborhood of El same name.
In none of the events are detained persons reported."
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Just about midpoint this month:
Encuentran Restos Humanos en Tambo en la Colonia Independencia
"From 11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 14, residents of the Independencia neighborhood in Tijuana notified the police authorities that unknown persons had abandoned a blue colored plastic container on Juan Aldama Street and San Antonio de los Buenos Avenue that gave off foul odors and had traces of blood.
However, according to residents of the area, police elements arrived at the scene eight hours later and confirmed that it was the mutilated body of a male person.
“Since they left the container it was reported to the authorities; but hours passed and nothing happened, the government came. One came closer and it smelled very strong and there was blood. The police just said they were on their way and nothing. There was an operation in the Independencia neighborhood, downtown area, but no one was arrested, ”one of the residents told ZETA.
According to the police report, inside the container which was lying on the road, there was a black plastic bag and a blue blanket and human remains inside. Elements of the Prosecutor's Office processed the crime scene around 9:00 p.m.
Another of the violent events recorded yesterday Wednesday was the discovery of the body of a person on a dirt road between the Vía Rápida and Alamar in the Alamar neighborhood. The deceased was wrapped in blankets and covered with black plastic bags. So far the identity of the victim is unknown as well as the events that caused his death.
So far in July, 92 intentional homicides have been registered and 1,108 in 2021."
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Don't miss all of the news & reports from Zeta.
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Meanwhile, the Australian Dream Cream really isn't doing anything great for me . So, it is slow going. See you guys later.