"Fish poaching" and "illegal fishing" may sound like misdemeanors, on the cosmic scale of crime, but they provide an astonishing mass of the fish people eat around the world. And they amount to a uniquely self-destructive problem that might one day solve itself by collapsing fish populations. “China is the largest fisher in the world, and the illegal fishers would come second,” an EU fisheries commissioner, Joe Borg, memorably told the BBC in 2009. “We are speaking of a very, very big problem.” This winter, a new proposal went before the U.S. Senate to help fight illegal fishing. ... Read More
Something’s Fishy About That Red Snapper
January 11, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
High-seas fish poaching is more than just a matter of sneaking marine life out of a restricted corner of the ocean; it’s an organized industrial crime that can strip coastal fishing grounds bare and deny even subsistence livelihoods to local fishermen. Foreign ships poaching in African waters, for example, have been a problem for years in Africa, east and west, and the crime fuels piracy, as well as illegal immigration. “The high seas today are like the American Wild West of the 19th century,” said the Pew Environment Group in 2011, “only the bandits are huge factory fishing ... Read More
Neo-Nazis and ‘Defensive Democracy’
November 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The weird revelations in Germany this month about a small group of neo-Nazi terrorists who killed at least nine foreigners and survived “underground” for 13 years by knocking over the occasional bank have, understandably, embarrassed a number of law enforcement officials. It’s even more confusing to Germans that the group managed to kill a policewoman in 2007 and plot against a very specific list of 88 politicians and public figures without coming to the attention of “Verfassungsschutz” authorities — Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV. The BfV ... Read More
America Edges to Brink of Armed Police Drones
November 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
A county north of Houston made news in Europe at the end of October by taking delivery of a new “weaponizable” drone, a squat remote-controlled helicopter called a ShadowHawk that can fire Tasers or beanbags at people on the ground. Police in Montgomery County say the drone would chase drug smugglers or escaping criminals. Alarmed Europeans wondered if some aspect of drone warfare — so far a problem only for terrorists and other strangers in poor and distant countries — had come home to the First World. “In the end the police have the same consideration as the military,” writes ... Read More
Oklahoma Earthquakes and the Wages of Fracking
November 9, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When towns to the east of Oklahoma City jiggled over the weekend with two of the state’s strongest-ever earthquakes, some people asked an obvious question: Does the recent expansion of “fracking” for natural gas in Oklahoma — shooting water and chemicals and sand into shale deposits to free trapped methane — account for the trembling ground? Maybe. Oil and gas exploration has caused minor earthquakes in the U.S. since the ’30s, and a new report from Britain suggests that fracking itself can cause small quakes. It was “highly probable,” according to the report, that a ... Read More