FROM THE CROWE'S NEST

Another Unnatural Disaster

Massachusetts legislators Frank and Tierney who filed suit in U.S. District Court against the catch shares agenda have taken the first substantial step toward getting another look at catch shares.

Politics is not new to the industry, but fishing may never have been as politicized as it is today. There are plenty of reasons why. There are no more new fishing grounds. No more new species to fish. It is an enormously important and valuable resource.

But most of all, public enemy Number 1 wants the resource. Wall Street, which in the last hundred years has brought us economic calamities which include the Great Depression, the savings and loan collapse, the current world economic crisis, and the bogus mortgage shell game.

The terrorists have gone to the beach. Wall St. is realizing their goals for them.

The administration in Washington has turned a deaf ear to the plight of American fishermen. Doctor Jane Lubchenco, former vice-chair of the Environmental Defense Fund, a major force behind the privatization of the fisheries for investors, is listening to someone. She met with ENGO’s before anyone else at the 2010 ICCAT meeting in November.

David Festa, Vice President at the Environmental Defense Fund, has laid out and pressed forward his plan for getting fishing out of the hands of fishermen and into the hands of investors. Could it be Jane never met Dave while working at the EDF and knows nothing at all of the investment bank solution to fisheries management?

Representative Barney Frank and Representative John Tierney have spent enough time in Congress to know what’s going on. Fishermen are already seeing the effects of the agenda ENGOs and Lubchenco put in place.

The finance industry and the oil industry are just the biggest non-partisan corrupting influences in congress. The consolidation of corporate power and its control over our tax dollars and the elected officials who spend it, not only make fisheries management barely possible, it makes the changes the planet desperately needs to survive yet more impossible.

With EDF, a corporate wolf in sheep’s clothing driving the agenda, the head of NOAA a shill for their corporate commodity dreams, and Wall Street their agent,the American people are being set up for another unnatural disaster being dumped in their laps.