#Division for ocean affairs and the law of the sea | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fatehbaz · 4 years ago

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While dominant understandings of a land-sea binary were codified by international law, Maori cosmologies and mythologies do not share this Western ontology, nor necessarily divide natures -- materially, practically or politically [...]. One account, central to Maori mythology, offers some insight into the smooth exchange of materials, bodies, and narratives between the hydro and geo spheres by the shared origin account of kauri and whale.

[Endemic] to New Zealand, kauri (Agathis australis) are towering trees upwards of 50 meters high. [...] Due to their incredible size, both [tree and whale] are esteemed [...]. Due to its combustibility, Maori long used kauri resin for cooking and lighting, similar to how spermaceti, the oil of the sperm whale (Physeter microcephalus), was used in early western industrial nations. Colonizing Europeans harvested and sold kauri timber, known for its resistance to seawater and sturdy, straight-grained lumber for masts and spars. Used for various wares domestically and abroad, this tree, like the whale, was exploited to near collapse in the nineteenth century.

Other Maori narratives also bridge land and sea, employing human and more-than-human entities that openly exceed or exchange categories. [...]

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Focusing on disputed uses of offshore spaces necessarily confronts the ambiguity of the social and political process of partitioning watery space [...].

As Maori traditions instead draw lines of connection, instituting cuts between land/sea, human/non-human, creating discrete, bounded entities, goes against [...] whakapapa. The legislative implementation of these cuts in the form of baselines and offshore resource appropriation by the New Zealand national government led to widespread protest. [...]

In a contemporary context, borders of nation states and the spatial category of sovereign territory are often imagined as predominantly fixed. Politically constructed boundaries can be concealed as wholly technical, or even scientific affairs, as if a coastline were an essential and stable object. Yet, current events are reminders of how national boundaries are produced and in flux [...].

Intrinsic to defining ocean boundaries are baselines, the technical division between land and sea. [...] While represented as natural, as an approximation of the coastline, baselines create meaning through social-material practices of boundary making, they enact “cuts” that fashion land and sea spaces into discrete entities. They are the foundational technical and political apparatus used by UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982 ratification] to partition the ocean. To consider the political technologies used to bound offshore territories, the materiality and mobility of ocean spaces and beings must be addressed. Yet, the national government in New Zealand has struggled to legislate around these issues, and the partitioning of land and sea through the implementation of baselines and nationalization of the seabed provoked passionate demonstrations in response. [...]

Controversies persist as seabed mining projects seek to commodify ocean minerals. The Foreshore and Seabed Act (2004) claimed all submerged lands and associated resources as property of the Crown, subsuming them under national authority. The dispute initiated a UN Special Rapporteur report on human rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous people (United Nations 2006), and instigated the formation of an independent Maori parliamentary party. [...] Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) formed in 2004 in reaction to a proposal to extract iron-sands off the coast of Taranaki Bight on the North Island, which is also home to the world’s rarest, and critically endangered, Maui’s dolphin [...].

As Steinberg and Peters (2015) highlight, the ocean is not a fixed Euclidean space within which power is exercised, but a turbulent material volume of Lagrangian flows with multiple and nonlinear temporalities. [...]

Epeli Hau’ofa (1994) offers some broader Pacific context when he writes that, “Continental men, namely Europeans . . . introduced the view of ‘islands in a far sea’ . . . tiny, isolated dots in a vast ocean . . . our ancestors, who had lived in the Pacific for over two thousand years, viewed their world as ‘a sea of islands’ rather than as ‘islands in the sea’” (153). This continental gaze forms the dominant hegemonic view of oceans as seen from land, drawing lines of division between land and sea, between kauri and whale.

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Images, captions, and text by: Katherine G. Sammler. “Kauri and the Whale: Oceanic Matter and Meaning in New Zealand.” As published in a draft from 2019, available through California State University via ScholarWorks. Photos by Katherine G. Sammler. [Some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

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hisimperialmajestyemperordawlove · 5 years ago

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latinbossboy9 · 3 years ago

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Akhondi, Mahmoud. Criminal Procedure. Tehran: Samt Publication Organization, 2011.

Shapiro, Martin. The Globalization of Law. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 1, 1, 1993, Article 3. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol1/iss1/3

Law of the Sea: National Legislation on the Exclusive Economic Zone. New York: Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, Office of Legal Affairs, United Nations, 1993.

Higgins, George E. Criminological Theory. Wolters Kluwer, 2016.

Tohidifar, Mohammad. "The Process of Globalization of Criminal Penal Law". Modarres Journal, 5, 4, 2001. 37-58. Available at: https://www.sid.ir/fa/journal/ViewPaper.aspx?id=18238

Jahed, Mohammed Ali. The necessity of decriminalization in Iran's criminal law. Master's thesis. Mazandaran University, 2005.

Habibzadeh. Mohammad Jafar and Zeinali, Amir. "Income on Certain Practical Limitations of Criminality (The Need for Assessing the Benefits and Constraints of Creating a Crime)". Name Mofid, 49, 2006. 93-120. Available at: http://ensani.ir/fa/article/download/262940

Hosseini-Nezhad, Hossein Gholi. International Criminal Law. Ch1, Tehran: Ketabkhane Ganj Danesh, 1995.

Delmas-Marty, Mireille. Comparative Legal Studies and the Internationalization of Law. Translator Liz Libbrecht, 2003. Available at: https://books.openedition.org/cdf/3878?lang=en

Saffari, Ali. "Critical Remarks on Situational Crime Prevention". Journal of Legal Research. 2010, 35-36, 193-234. Available at: http://lawresearchmagazine.sbu.ac.ir/article_56556.html

Ziae Bigdeli, Mohammad Reza. "General International Law". Ch. 31, Tehran: Ketabkhane Ganj Danesh, 2008. Available at: http://ensani.ir/fa/article/download/7156

Farhadpour, Mahmud. The Age of Globalization. First Edition. Tehran: Mehriar Publishing, 2009.

Fouzi, Reza. International Criminal Law. 1st Edition. Tehran: Tehran University Press, 2007.

Qari Seyyed Fatemi, Mohammad. Human Rights in the Contemporary World. Ch. 1-2, Tehran: Legal Studies and Research Institute of the City of Knowledge, 2009.

Kashefi Esmaeilzadeh, Hasan. "Return Movement in Criminal Policy of Western Countries". Journal of Theology and Law. 15-16, 2005. 258-298. Available at: http://ensani.ir/file/download/article/20120326104626-1100-121.pdf

Mosafa, Nasrin and Nabiolahi, Ebrahim. "Human Rights Position in International Relations Theories". Faslname Siasat. 38, 4, 2008. 259-277. Available at: https://jpq.ut.ac.ir/article_27714_64c98ea6565a660a1033ab293c596247.pdf

Miller, David. On Nationality. Published to Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003, https://doi.org/10.1093/0198293569.001.0001

Najafi Abrandabadi, Ali Hussein, Khaleghi, Ali and Zeinali, Amirhamze. "Criminal Protection of Children against Sexual Tourism: From Worldwide Prohibition to Internal Criminal Responsibility". Journal of Legal Research. 50, 2009. 81-121. Available at: https://www.sid.ir/fa/journal/ViewPaper.aspx?id=167809

Nowruzi, Maryam. "Governmental commitments to protect fundamental human rights". Journal of Law and Political Science. 60, 2004. 265-288. Available at: http://ensani.ir/fa/article/download/16207

Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice. Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing World-System. 1991. Available at: https://books.google.hu/books?isbn=0521406048

Walid, Mohammad Saleh. Summary of Law (General Penal Law). Ch 1. Tehran, 2000.

Glen, Patrick James. Towards the Criminalization of Dictatorship: A Draft Proposal for an International Convention on Dictatorship. Buffalo Human Rights Law Review, 14, 1, 2008. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1409204

Scherer, Andreas Georg and Palazzo, Guido. Globalization and Corporate Social Responsibility. The Oxford Handbook Of Corporate Social Responsibility, A. Crane, A. McWilliams, D. Matten, J. Moon, D. Siegel, eds., 413-431, Oxford University Press, 2008. Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=989565.

Keenan, Patrick J. "The New Deterrence: Crime and Policy in the Age of Globalization". Iowa Law Review. 91, 2005, 505. Available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11212/1116

The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Social Responsibility. Editor Andrew Crane, Dirk Matten, Abagail McWilliams, Jeremy Moon, and Donald S. Siegel. Oxford University Press; 1st Edition (October 18, 2009). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199211593.001.0001

José Luis de la Cuesta. "Criminal Justice System in a Global World". Annales. XLV, 62, 3-28, 2013. Available at: http://dergipark.gov.tr/download/article-file/7069

Darugari, Saeid and Varvaii, Akbar. "The Position of Decriminalize Principle in Iran's

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lifestylesbi · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

To these walls may be applied the words in which Mr. Gladstone appraised the value»of the services rendered by the Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula, in a similar connection. “ They are like a shelving beach that restrained the ocean.

That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves; it is laid desolate; it produces nothing; it becomes perhaps nothing save a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed. But it is a fence behind which the cultivated earth can spread and escape the incoming tide. … It was that resistance which left Europe to claim the enjoyment of her own religion, and to develop her institutions and her laws.

Although inferior as military works to the other portions of the landward walls, great historical interest is associated with the fortifications between the Wall of Manuel and the Golden Horn, for they guarded the Palace of Blachemae, the favourite residence of the Byzantine Court from the time of Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118) until the fall of the Empire. As already intimated, the palace stood on the terrace buttressed by the Tower of Isaac Angelus and the chambered wall to the north of the tower, where the Mosque of Aivas Effendi is now found.

The terrace was almost level with the parapet-walk of the fortifications, commanding fine views of the Golden Horn, and of the hills at the head of the harbour; and there the most splendid Court of the Middle Ages long displayed its wealth and pomp. What with the Crusades, and what with the relations, hostile and friendly, between the Italian Republics and the Government of Constantinople during the period of the Palaeologi, it was in that palace that Western and Eastern Europe came into closest contact for good or for evil On the hills and in the valleys seen from the western windows of the palace, the armies of the First Crusade encamped.

To that residence came Peter the Hermit, Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, Bohemond, Tancred, “the mirror of knighthood,” Count Robert of Paris, to wonder at the marvels of Byzantine Art, and to attempt the co-operation of the East and the West, in the great political and religious undertaking of the times. On the hill immediately in front of the walls the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade pitched their tents, and thence Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut, Henry his brother, Louis of Blois and Chartres, and Hugo of Saint Paul, led four divisions of the army against the wall erected by Leo the Armenian.

Ville Hardouin

The wall was held by Varangian troops, the imperial body-guard, recruited from England, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. “The assailants,” to quote the words of Ville-Hardouin, a witness of the combat, and the historian of the Crusade, “ placed two scaling-ladders against an outer wall near the sea; the wall was furnished with Englishmen and Danes, and the attack was strong, and good, and hard. And by sheer force some knights and two sergeants mounted the ladders, and became masters of the wall Fully fifteen reached the wall, and they fought hand to hand with axes and swords.

And the men within returned to the charge and drove them (the assailants) out, right rudely, even taking two of them prisoners. And those of our men who were captured were led to the Emperor Alexis, and he was very highly delighted tour packages balkan. So ended the attack by the French. And there was a considerable number of men wounded and of maimed; and the barons were very angry about it”

The recovery of Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 did not diminish Italian influence over the life of the city. On the contrary, from that time to the close of Byzantine history that influence, modified indeed by the rival force of Ottoman power, grew stronger and stronger. Commercial interests, political necessities, schemes of ecclesiastical union, literary sympathies, possibilities of aggrandisement at the expense of an Empire hastening to ruin, made Italy, especially Genoa and Venice, take a most active part in the affairs of New Rome. A Western atmosphere, so to speak, then enveloped Constantinople, very much like that which surrounds the City of the Sultans to-day.

But the portion of the walls about which the greatest and most pathetic interest gathers is where Sultan Mehemet delivered his fatal blow upon the Byzantine Empire, and won the title of “the Conqueror.” It is the portion which stretches from Top Kapoussi (Gate of S. Romanus) to Edim£ Kapoussi (Gate of Charisius), across the ravine through which the little stream of the Lycus, on its way to the Sea of Marmora, enters the city. Owing to the depression of the ground and the impossibility of constructing a deep moat there, this was the weakest point in the Theodosian fortifications, and here the bravest of the defenders, under Gius- tiniani of Genoa and the Emperor Constantine, manned the walls to oppose the best troops under the command of the Sultan.

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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istanbul-history · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

Ville Hardouin

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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lifestylehealthplan · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

Ville Hardouin

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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worldtunaday · 8 months ago

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The United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement.

The United Nations Agreement for the Implementation of the Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982 relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks (UNFSA) is an international agreement that regulates key fisheries that, because of their transboundary nature, require international cooperation for their conservation and management. Its objective is to ensure the long-term conservation and sustainable use of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks through effective implementation of the relevant provisions of the Convention. The Agreement sets out principles for the conservation and management of those fish stocks and establishes that such management must be based on the precautionary approach and the best available scientific information.

#tunafish #Division for ocean affairs and the law of the sea #Fish Stocks #Highly Migratory Fish Stocks #unfsa

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allifestylemusic · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

Ville Hardouin

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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foodtravels · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

Ville Hardouin

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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christianlifestylebg · 3 years ago

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Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

Ville Hardouin

#Christian populations of the Balkan Peninsula

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awesometeennews · 5 years ago

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Indonesia rejects China's claims in the South China Sea; says not bound by claims contravening international law

Indonesia rejects China’s claims in the South China Sea; says not bound by claims contravening international law

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Indonesia has rejected Chinese claims in the South China Sea in a letter written by Indonesia’s permanent mission to the United Nation to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Division of Ocean Affairs and Law of the sea of the body.

The letter as seen by WION said, “Indonesia reiterates that the nine-dash line map implying historic rights claim lacks international legal basis and is…

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#Indonesia #International law #South China Sea #wionews.com #World News

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thumbkenya76-blog · 6 years ago

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US sends B-52 bombers ripping through the contested South China Sea twice in less than a week as tensions soar

A U.S Air Force B-52 is seen through the window of another during a training mission in the United Kingdom's airspaceREUTERS/Andrew Winning

Twice in just three days, the US sent heavy bombers through the disputed South China Sea, sending a message to US rivals in the region.

The US did the same last month, sparking criticism in Beijing, which claims the vast majority of the South China Sea.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis argues that these flights would not mean a thing to anyone if China had not militarized the waterway.

The US Air Force sent B-52H Stratofortress heavy long-range bombers through the South China Sea twice this week, sending a message, intentional or not, to challengers in the region.

A single B-52 bomber assigned to the 96th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron conducted training in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean on Sunday, Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs told Business Insider on Wednesday. Two days later, another B-52 bomber conducted a training mission in the South China Sea.

"U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's Continuous Bomber Presence (CBP) operations have been ongoing since March 2004," PACAF told BI, adding that these recent missions are "consistent with international law and United States's long-standing and well-known freedom of navigation policies."

"The United States military will continue to fly sail and operate wherever international law allows at a times and places of our choosing," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn told Business Insider on Tuesday.

While Beijing has yet to criticize the bomber flights, Secretary of Defense James Mattis stressed Wednesday that if China has a problem with these flights, it will be because China made it a problem through its activities in contested waters.

"If it was 20 years ago and had they not militarized those features there it would have been just another bomber on its way to Diego Garcia or wherever," the secretary explained. "There's nothing out of the ordinary about it."

Last month, the US sent B-52s through the East and South China Sea four times, twice in each waterway. The US also sent B-52s through the South China Sea in April and June, prompting the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to accuse the US of "running amok" in the region.

The latest flights come at a time of rising tension between Washington and Beijing.

Not only are the US and China locked in an escalating and intensifying trade war involving tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in goods, but tensions are also causing military-to-military relations to deteriorate.

Last week, the US sanctioned a procurement division of the Chinese military for purchasing Russian weapons systems in violation of sanctions, namely the advanced Su-35 fighter jet and the S-400 surface-to-air missile system. China then suddenly canceled a meeting between Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong and his US counterpart, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson. Beijing also rejected a request by the US Navy to permit a port call by the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp in Hong Kong.

Analysts and experts suspect that it will be a long time before military ties recover.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.de/us-sends-b-52-bombers-ripping-through-south-china-sea-twice-in-a-week-2018-9?r=US&IR=T

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/united-states-of-america/how-trumps-trade-war-kept-russian-fish-sticks-in-us-school-lunchrooms/

How Trump's trade war kept Russian fish sticks in US school lunchrooms

For years, Alaskan fishermen have been frustrated by foreign competition from Russia, particularly in the lucrative pollock market. Caught in Russian waters, this cold-water cousin of the cod is processed in China before being sold in the US for use in frozen and breaded fish products, as well as imitation crab meat.

Russian pollock costs less than its US-caught equivalent. That’s helped it gain share of the roughly $200 million US market for frozen pollock, to the point that by 2017, about half the fish sticks served in US school cafeterias were made from fish caught in Russia and pumped with additives in China, according to the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers, a trade group that represents 14 different seafood companies.

Domestic fish producers thought President Donald Trump would fix all that. The administration’s move to slap a 10% tariff last year on thousands of imports from China was supposed to erase the price advantage enjoyed by Russian fish. But instead of fixing the problem, the Trump administration has made things worse for Alaskan fishermen.

Enter the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which ended up excluding Russian pollock from the tariffs, preserving its price advantage over domestic-caught fish. On top of that, China’s retaliatory tariffs against the US means that Alaska’s pollock producers are now subject to an additional 25% tariff, limiting their access to the growing Chinese market.

Sales of American pollock in China nearly doubled between 2016 and 2017, says Pat Shanahan, the program director of the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers. The industry was expecting even faster expansion in China in the coming years. But the trade war has dashed those hopes.

“The Chinese retaliatory tariffs have essentially closed the Chinese market for Alaska pollock,” says Shanahan.

Trade codes

At the center of the gaffe is confusing nomenclature and an arcane coding system that trade and customs officials use to label thousands of products that come into the US every day. The common name for the species, no matter where it’s caught, is “Alaska pollock,” though it’s also called “walleye pollock.” Up until 2015, pollock caught in Russian waters was still marketed as “Alaska” pollock. That year Congress legislated that only pollock from Alaska could be called Alaska pollock, at least in the US.

While that helped consumers trying to differentiate between foreign and American fish in the frozen food aisle, it wasn’t much help last year to bureaucrats having to navigate international customs codes. That’s because the tariff codes used by the USTR still identify the fish as “Alaska pollock” regardless of its origin.

The problem arose during last year’s public comment period on the administration’s new tariffs on China. The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, a group representing a broad range of commercial seafood interests, submitted a letter to the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, on Sept. 5 urging him to exclude a long list of Alaska-origin seafood processed in China, including products made from “Alaska pollock.”

According to Jim Gilmore of the pollock-focused At-sea Processors Association, who saw draft versions of the letter before it was submitted, the intent was to encourage the US government to exclude only seafood that had originated in Alaska.

But the wording of the letter was confusing, a “poorly conceived request,” Gilmore calls it, that failed to recognize that the international tariff codes did not differentiate a product’s country of origin. The administration failed to realize this, too.

At the same time, other Alaska fishing groups were expressing reserved support for tariffs on pollock from China. Nevertheless, the administration, based on the poorly-worded recommendation from ASMI, issued tariff exclusions for all “Alaska pollock” products from China, including fish originally caught in Russia.

Jeremy Woodrow, the interim executive director of ASMI, said he was unaware of the pollock industry’s opposition to the exclusions until after the public comment period had passed. “Had we known prior to the deadline, our request may have been different,” Woodrow says.

Some in the fishing industry have taken a dim view of the administration’s approach to trade policy.

“You had people trying to do the right thing, but in the mix of all this going on with tariffs, due diligence was not being done,” says one fish industry lobbyist who works closely with the Commerce Department. “It was just rolled out in a very haphazard way.”

Who’s in charge of the fix?

Two days after the public comment period closed on Oct. 9, essentially sealing the decision, a trio of seafood interest groups sent a letter to Lighthizer requesting the new exclusion on Chinese pollock imports be lifted.

So far, according to the At-sea Processors Association, one of the groups that signed the letter, neither Lighthizer nor his office have responded. A source at the Department of Commerce, which regulates the fishing industry, says that officials at the department’s International Trade Administration were aware of the problem, and at a meeting last year discussed “fixing” it, even bringing in Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Jim Gilmore says he’s been lobbying the administration to remove the tariff exclusion for Russian pollock, meeting with ITA officials on Nov. 15 and remaining in contact with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a division of the Commerce Department that oversees fisheries. But so far, he says, nothing has been done.

A Commerce spokesman confirms that pollock industry representatives sought guidance from the ITA on how to lobby for a reversal of USTR’s decision to grant the exclusion. But according to the spokesman, USTR informed the Department that no changes could be made because the public record on the matter had already closed. Ross spoke with Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, in early December to communicate USTR’s position.

“During and after the call, Secretary Ross and his team agreed to continue looking further into the matter to see if a solution can be found,” said the Commerce spokesman. Sullivan’s office did not reply to CNN a request for comment.

Friendly Fire

This isn’t the first time the President’s trade war has led to unintended consequences for US industry.

Last year, after the administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs went into effect, hundreds of American companies complained about the Commerce Department’s process of granting exclusions, arguing that requests were often caught in a bureaucratic limbo, forcing them to pay tariffs since no domestic producers could supply the kind of metal they needed. At the time, more than 37,000 steel tariff exclusion requests had been submitted, while just 2,550 had been approved and more than 1,800 had been denied.

Smaller companies also argued that the process favored big production companies which were often able to block their exclusion requests by objecting to them.

In September, Commerce announced it would amend the process to allow firms to respond to any objections filed to their exclusion requests.

In November, the inspector general at Commerce circulated internally its plans to audit the exclusion process after lawmakers publicly expressed frustration the process was “arbitrary,” according to The Hill.

Things have improved a bit. As of Feb. 4, Commerce had processed about 45 percent of the steel tariff exclusion requests it had received, 29,155 out of a total of 65,223.

While the pollock exclusion did not originate at Commerce, the Department has become a resource for seeking a tariff exclusion, says Gilmore. “Given USTR’s smaller staff they do seem to look to ITA’s analysts for support,” he says. “This is pretty arcane stuff.”

It doesn’t help that Commerce itself has staffing shortages. According to the Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service, 29 percent of the political jobs at Commerce are either still pending before the Senate or don’t even have nominees. The director of public affairs at the department’s International Trade Administration, who CNN tried to contact for this story, is vacant.

No end in sight

What worries some in the industry is that undoing the Alaska pollock screw-up may be as challenging for the administration as getting it right the first time, at least as long as the current trade negotiations between the US and China continue.

Until then, Russian pollock remains in the grocery aisle. Conagra, the Chicago-based packaged foods giant, uses cheaper Russian pollock for its Van de Kamp’s and Mrs. Paul’s frozen food brands, but not in what it sells to restaurants, dining halls and school cafeterias. “We do not sell pollock through our food service channels,” says Dan Hare, a spokesman for Conagra.

In addition, uninformed schools may continue to purchase cheaper fish sticks made from Russian pollock—hurting not just the domestic fishing industry but perhaps facilitating a violation of federal school lunch laws. The longstanding “Buy American” provision requires schools to use American-sourced food products whenever possible and feasible. Alaska’s Sen. Sullivan fought to include in last year’s farm bill a section directing the Secretary of Agriculture to “enforce full compliance” with Buy American.

As Sullivan told Alaska Public Radio in December, without full compliance, Russian-caught pollock processed in China has been sold in the US for purchase by school lunch programs.

“USDA is reviewing the recently passed bill and will work to efficiently implement its provisions now that our agency has reopened,” according to an Agriculture Department statement sent to CNN on Jan. 29.

Neither US Foods nor Sysco, two of the largest food services companies in the United States, responded directly to questions about whether they provide Russian-caught pollock to school lunch programs.

“We offer a variety of products to our customers, however, the National School Lunch Act requires participating schools to comply with the ‘Buy American’ provision and the program is subject to monitoring by school food authorities and local agencies to help ensure compliance,” said Sara Matheu of US Foods, when asked if the company sells Russian pollock to schools.

Sysco did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

#How Trump&039;s trade war kept Russian fish sticks in US school lunchrooms - CNNPolitics #Politics #united state news #us headlines #us latest news #us local news #us national news #US news

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westboast · 8 years ago

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This Again

For the past few nights, residents of Kyushu, the Japanese island just across the way from South Korea, have fallen asleep to the sounds of fighter jets circling overhead. I live close to the Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) infantry base located in the small town of Kusu, so I’m not sure where the jets originate or if they’re Japanese or American. The JSDF cannot make war in the way that other countries—like the United States—can. While Trump can pick up the phone and blow up a Syrian airfield, the JSDF can only fight under specific circumstances. These include an attack on Japanese soil, the imminent threat of one, or—following a slate of new defense laws passed in 2015—an attack on a Japanese ally. This setup is the result of the MacArthur-orchestrated, ostensibly pacifist, post-World War II constitution, which stipulates in Article 9 that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes” (this isn’t exactly true, but it’s certainly different than other militaries). The conservative prime minister, Shinzo Abe, would like to amend this part of the constitution (as opposed to a softer “reinterpretation”) and fully remilitarize Japan.

On Tuesday the JSDF engaged in joint exercises with the American navy in the Sea of Japan. I don’t know if the Kusu division was involved in the exercises, but the sudden nighttime presence of the jets is new. I have an ear for these things, since I can’t escape the sounds of military equipment. I grew up near Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where heavy ordinance exploded daily and rattled the windows of my Catholic school. In Washington State I lived across the way from the Naval Air Station at Whidbey Island (NAS Whidbey), which sent jets on weekly drills and kept the residents of the otherwise serene Whidbey and Fidalgo islands awake at night.

This week’s jets are flying amid more troubling circumstances than usual. We are told that the behavior of the North Korean regime has reached a boiling point and that something must be done. A few weeks ago the American aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, along with a squadron of destroyers, kind-of-sort-of began its advance toward the Korean peninsula, though not before swinging through the Indian Ocean, contradicting a statement by its commander-in-chief. Soon after, Mike Pence visited Tokyo and then Kanagawa, declaring aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan that “the sword stands ready” for a poke at North Korea. It’s still not clear when this particular sword will arrive.

Meanwhile, South Korea is embroiled in a political crisis, following the impeachment and arrest of the conservative president Park Geun-Hye on corruption charges. An election is approaching and will be decided—thank God—on May 9 (two days after the French make up their own minds). After May 9, I imagine the North Korean “threat” will probably evaporate. If I’m wrong, I’ll be incinerated in a glorious ball of People’s Republic white-hot fire.

I recall the last “imminent war” with North Korea. It was in 2012, the year of the last South Korean election. This time around, Kim Jong-Un has seized on the South’s instability with renewed bluster about nuclear weapons. Accounts of daily life below the thirty-eighth parallel suggest that South Koreans are unfazed by this new chest-beating. They also suggest that “imminent war” has a funny way of coinciding with their elections.

It does seem unlikely that war will break out and especially unlikely that North Korea’s neighbors would strike first. China would suffer an estimated one million casualties in a fight with North Korea, while Seoul, home to twenty-four million, would be devastated. And if the North strikes first, the regime would be wiped off the map by American and South Korean forces. Japan, for the moment, cannot pick fights due to Article 9. The “wild card” here is the United States, but a war in the Sea of Japan would be devastating to trade in east Asia, not to mention to American bases in South Korea and Japan.

Trump has used this “crisis” as an opening to look tough. The promised arrival of the Carl Vinson (or at least mention of it), along with the Syrian bombing, has thrown off the scent of Russian treason for now (though a counter-narrative proposes that the Vinson order came from below Trump and without his knowledge). The Vinson affair notwithstanding, the Administration’s tough talk on North Korea might appear “presidential” to some people, possibly Brian Williams, who basically had an orgasm on air while footage of the Syrian Tomahawk strike rolled on MSNBC.

And then there’s Abe, exploiting the situation and warning lawmakers that “it’s possible that North Korea has the ability to hit [Japan] with a ballistic missile carrying sarin in its warhead.” This narrative of threatened security fits neatly into his efforts to amend Article 9. Footage of North Korean soldiers chopping bricks with their bare hands, shattering lightbulbs with their fingertips, and taking sledgehammers to the abs is all over the major networks in Japan. Meanwhile, the Japanese civil defense website has received an update, and officials throughout the country are taking a fresh look at their “ten-minute evacuation” plans in the event of a strike. As for me, I saw a new display in my beloved udon shop for the JSDF, and on Sunday, in the seaside city of Kitakyushu, JSDF soldiers stood around at a street fair, posing for photos and cooking ramen using a camp stove mounted on a humvee. One of them wore a cardboard tank on his head.

The winners here seem to be Kim, Abe, and Trump, who all get the chance to look tough while stoking the fear of war. The losers are the South Korean people, trudging through their own version of the 2016-17 global political crisis in which we have all been ensnared. If I’m right, we’ll all forget about this in two weeks. If I’m wrong, well.

—Hita, Oita prefecture, Japan

#japan #north korea #trump #south korea

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