Jewish protesters against Trump’s ICE injured


This 16 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Guard Strikes ICE Protesters With Car

A correctional officer came dangerously close to running over protesters with his car. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.

“The protesters were sitting on the pavement to block staff from parking at a Rhode Island prison that works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement when a black pickup truck swerved toward them. The protesters shouted as the driver laid on the horn, and the truck briefly stopped.

And then, the driver hit the gas.

In a viral video captured by bystanders, the protesters screamed and jumped out of the way. Several were struck, according to organizers of the Wednesday night demonstration at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I. Some were treated at a hospital, though none were severely injured.

“It was terrifying because we didn’t know what exactly his intention was”, Amy Anthony, a spokesperson for Never Again Action, a Jewish activist group that planned the protest, told The Washington Post. “It certainly appeared he was trying to hit us.”

By Trévon Austin in the USA:

Protesters pepper-sprayed outside Rhode Island ICE facility after officer drives truck into crowd

16 August 2019

An Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer was placed on administrative leave after driving his pickup truck through a group of Jewish protesters Wednesday night outside of the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, Rhode Island. A 64-year-old man, identified by protesters as Jerry Belair, suffered a broken leg, internal bleeding and a possible back injury in the assault.

The suspended officer was identified in a statement released by the ICE facility as Captain Thomas Woodworth. Representatives would not confirm whether Woodworth was behind the wheel of the truck, but a video of the incident showed protesters shouting Woodworth’s name as they surrounded the vehicle.

The episode unfolded as Woodworth allegedly accelerated towards protesters sitting peacefully on the ground outside of the facility’s employee parking lot. The video shows a truck nearly ramming into a line of people while the driver honked his horn. The group of protesters stood and surrounded the vehicle, shouting “shame” at the truck driver. An individual also jumped into the truck’s cargo bed to try to dissuade the driver from moving. The driver then accelerated again before stopping shortly after and screaming is heard.

Soon after, police officers approached the scene and demanded the group move away from the truck while protesters chanted “The whole world is watching.” One of the officers claimed to be a federal official. After about 45 seconds, one agent is seen unleashing a cloud of pepper spray, causing the group to disperse. About a dozen people were treated for irritation due to pepper spray and one other went to the hospital for minor injuries.

The protest outside the facility was organized under the banner of the Never Again protest movement, which has drawn parallels between the Trump Administration’s treatment of migrants and that of the Jewish people during the Holocaust by the Nazis. Similar demonstrations organized by Jewish groups have been held outside ICE offices and detention centers nationally this summer.

Protesters have been at the Wyatt center since July, but they say it is the first time any of their demonstrations ended in violence.

The group released a statement Thursday, saying, “Last night we experienced a small example of the violence that ICE uses against our immigrant neighbors every day. As Jews, our families taught us the lessons of the Holocaust, and we promised that we would speak out and act if we ever saw a group of people being targeted, dehumanized, and rounded up.

“We are answering the call of our ancestors to sound the alarm: #NeverAgainIsNow. Every person in the United States needs to join the fight to close the concentration camps, shut down ICE, and secure permanent protection for all undocumented people in the U.S.”

J. Aaron Regunberg, a former Democratic state representative who has been participating in the demonstrations, reported in a statement on Facebook that local police at the scene declined to intervene on behalf of the protesters, arrest Woodworth, or even take witness statements from protesters.

“I also want to make very clear that literally dozens of us from tonight’s protest asked, clamored, demanded that the police take witness statements about the attack, and they actively refused to do so,” Regunberg wrote. “What kind of violence is someone like that willing to regularly unleash on powerless detainees, inside a prison where there are no cameras and no accountability?”

Rhode Island’s attorney general’s office and state police announced Thursday that an investigation would be opened into the attack.

By Ben Sales, Jewish Telegraph Agency, August 15, 2019:

Truck Drives Into Jewish Protestors At ICE Detention Center

(JTA) — A pickup truck drove into a row of Jewish protestors demonstrating at the street entrance to an ICE detention center in Rhode Island on Wednesday night. …

Protesters were then pepper-sprayed, according to people present at the protest.

Hundreds of Jewish protestors had gathered at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Central Falls, and risked arrest by blocking the center’s entrance. The protest was the latest demonstration by Never Again Action, a new Jewish group protesting ICE and United States immigration policy by getting arrested at its detention facilities.

At around 9:45 p.m., according to an eyewitness and social media posts from the protest, a black pickup truck driving 10 to 15 miles per hour drove into a group of about 30 people who were sitting in a row and blocking the street that fed into the detention center’s parking lot.

Video of the incident shows people screaming and running as the car moves slowly into the crowd. The crowd then broke out into a chant of “The whole world is watching.” Protesters then surrounded the truck.

“The truck came in and people ran,” Lex Rofeberg, a protester who was not in the car’s path, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. …

A person taking video of the event said “Everybody is OK, thank you for asking. I don’t think anyone was hurt,” though the person later added that someone may have been hurt.

Never Again Action tweeted that the car belonged to a guard at the detention center.

“Oh my god”, the group tweeted. “An ICE Detention Center guard just drove their truck straight through a line of us sitting peacefully to block the parking lot. … still assessing the situation, police are moving in on us now.”

Minutes later, guards at the detention center pepper-sprayed the protesters.

“All of us who were in the vicinity caught some of the tear gas,” Rofeberg said.

“It was shocking, it was unexpected,” he added. “There’s some amount of risk when you go to an action like this. You don’t expect it to unfold like this.”

Forty Jews were arrested at a New York City protest against Amazon’s work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement; August 12, 2019, by Ben Sales.

American Jews Divided On Israel Are Uniting — In Anti-ICE ‘Never Again’ Protests; July 16, 2019. By Aiden Pink and Ari Feldman.

This 15 August 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

An ICE official runs over civilians, who are peacefully protesting. John Iadarola breaks it down on The Damage Report.

By Alyssa Fisher, August 15, 2019:

Several Hospitalized After Truck Drives Into Jewish ICE Protestors

Several people were taken to the hospital Wednesday evening after a pickup truck drove into a row of Jewish protestors blocking an entrance at an ICE detention center in Rhode Island.

Some injuries were caused by the truck and others from the affects of being pepper-sprayed by detention officials, said Matthew Harvey, a spokesperson for Never Again Providence who was at the protest.

Between 400 and 500 people gathered in an attempt to shut down the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Central Falls. At about 9 p.m., the crowd thinned a little and moved to the entrance of the guard parking lot, coinciding with the center’s staff shift change. The protestors linked arms and continued chanting, singing and praying, Harvey said.

At about 9:45 p.m., a pickup truck swerved into the row of protestors. Some jumped up out of the way and others tried to block its process. The driver was in a detention center’s uniform, with a badge and walkie talkie, according to Harvey, and at one point he revved his engine. After a few minutes of idling, a few more officials arrived and pushed protestors. About half a dozen people were on the ground from being pepper-sprayed. EMT aids were on site to help until ambulances arrived.

Some left without being admitted, but others, like a man in his 70s who suffered a broken leg, stayed the night. Several told Harvey on Thursday that they still felt the effect of the pepper spray, and one person had to return to the hospital to seek treatment.

The group protested once before at Wyatt on July 2, which ended peacefully. On Wednesday night, the crowd was “shocked, horrified,” Harvey said, and left “shaken up and scared.” But he said it mostly heightened fears at the worse treatment the immigrants must be getting behind the center’s walls. The violence proved to him that the group is having an effect and is being seen as a threat.

“We’re not going to be deterred,” Harvey said. “We’ll be back.”

ICE Officer Who Drove Truck Into Jewish Protesters Won’t Be Charged: here.

Facing Jewish Protest, ICE Detention Center Moves Public Meeting To Shabbat: here.

ICE off our buses: End Greyhound collaboration with ICE: here.

First ever beluga whales in Rhode Island, USA


This video from Canada is called Discover the Beluga Whales at Arctic Watch.

From ABC in the USA:

First ever beluga whale sighting in Rhode Island

Posted: Jul 03, 2014 4:28 PM Updated: Jul 03, 2014 4:28 PM

by Shannon O’Hara

The first ever sighting of beluga whales in Rhode Island were reportedly seen in Naragansett Bay and the Taunton River, according to oceanographer’s from URI.

These creatures normally reside in the arctic region and the closest beluga population to Rhode Island is up near Nova Scotia.

Marine scientist Robert Kenney of URI states that beluga whales are known to travel south, with previous sightings being in Long Island, New Jersey, and occasionally in Cape Cod, but never before in Rhode Island.

A local fisherman in Narragansett Bay first spotted the whale on June 15. Another whale was also spotted that same day in Assonet River, but is believed to be a different beluga. Additionally, a third whale was spotted near Gloucester, Massachusetts

These three whales are not believed to be in danger or unhealthy. Kenney says the whales are “probably getting healthier food than they would in the St. Lawrence, where most belugas carry very high loads of toxic chemicals from eating contaminated fish.”

In collaboration with the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals, a Quebec-based non-profit, Kenney is keeping a close monitoring of the whales.

Photos are being taken to investigate if they can match them to known beluga individuals in their photo catalog.

Whales under threat as US approves seismic oil prospecting in Atlantic: here.

Tagged bluefin tuna recaptured after sixteen years


This video says about itself:

Behind the Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna Trade | Pew

18 Oct 2011

Mind the Gap, an analysis of worldwide trade in Mediterranean bluefin tuna, shows a significant gap in the trade of bluefin tuna, compared to what can be caught legally every year. In 2008, the gap between the trade and quota was 31 percent. By 2010, that gap grew to 141 percent. But solutions exist. Pew is calling for an electronic catch documentation system to replace the current paper system, to allow for better tracking and monitoring of the bluefin tuna trade. To learn more, visit here.

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the USA:

Tagged Bluefin Tuna Recaptured After Sixteen Years at Large

By tagging fish for NOAA’s Cooperative Tagging Program, fishermen have contributed greatly to our scientific understanding of many valuable species.

Al Anderson, a charter boat captain out of Point Judith, Rhode Island, participates in the NOAA Fisheries Cooperative Tagging Program, which provides free tags to fishermen so they can contribute to our scientific understanding of fish. One of the fish he tagged, a bluefin tuna, was recently recaptured after 16 years. In the history of the program, only two recaptured fish had been at liberty so long.

That bluefin weighed a mere 14 pounds when Anderson caught it in the Mudhole east/southeast of Block Island in 1997. When a Nova Scotia fisherman recaptured it late last year, it weighed more than 1,200 pounds.

Anderson started tagging 45 years ago when he was a graduate student in fisheries biology at the University of Rhode Island. But ask him today why he tags so many fish, and he’ll cite the career he ultimately settled into. “I’m a fisherman,” he said. “I want to know where the fish go.”

Scientists want to know as well. That’s why NOAA provides fishermen with tags to put on fish they catch and release, including highly migratory species like tunas, sailfish, and marlin. After tagging a fish, they send the tag number to NOAA Fisheries, along with date, location, length and weight. If the fish is recaptured, the fisherman can read the number and call it in. That allows scientists to track migration patterns and estimate growth and mortality rates for these valuable species.

Bluefin tuna travel widely and fast. Anderson once recaptured a bluefin off Rhode Island that had been tagged ten days earlier near New Orleans. In that brief time the fish traveled at least 1,600 miles. And bluefin tuna that Anderson first tagged have been recaptured off the coasts of Turkey and France.

These conventional tags provide snapshots of data when the fish is tagged and again when it’s recaptured. For a more detailed picture, scientists also deploy PSATs— pop-up satellite archival tags.

“They’re basically a flash drive that you attach to the fish,” said Derke Snodgrass, a biologist at NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center. Those devices record temperature, depth, and light intensity every ten seconds, with the timing of changes in light intensity used to estimate latitude. The PSATs detach after a year or less, then float to the surface and transmit summary data via satellite. When possible, scientists or other boaters recover the PSATs so its gigabytes of data—too much for satellite transmission—can be retrieved.

Pop-up satellite archival tags provide a huge amount of data on habitat preference, movement, and diving behavior, but because they’re costly there’s only so many of them. Conventional tags provide less data per tag, but fishermen with the Cooperative Tagging Program have put them on roughly 270,000 fish of almost 80 different species since the program began in 1954.

“That gives us a lot of statistical power,” said Snodgrass. Data from conventional tags has helped scientists identify distinct stocks of fish, an important step in managing them. And long-term recaptures like the bluefin that Al Anderson tagged 16 years ago provide valuable data on longevity and help to refine age and growth models for the species.

Some of those species have declined in number over the years. “When I started tagging bluefin, there were so many they were a pain in the neck,” said Anderson. “I would put lures in the water for striped bass, and schools of small bluefin would leave me with no line on my striper outfits.”

That was in the early 1970s, when there was little market for bluefin tuna. Today they’re prized for their fatty flesh, and a single bluefin can net a fisherman over ten thousand dollars.

“We see a lot fewer of them today,” Anderson said.

Over the years, Anderson and his charter clients have tagged tens of thousands of striped bass, almost five thousand bluefin, and 1500 sharks.

Anderson keeps a record of who caught which fish, and he notifies the client if their fish is recaptured. Many of his clients are conservation-minded, and they enjoy contributing to the science.

 

North American carnivore mammal comeback


This video is about fisher “cats”.

By Meghan Kavanaugh, Valley Breeze Staff Writer in Rhode Island, USA:

10/3/2012

Once nearly extinct, fisher cat population increasing

LINCOLN – Centuries ago, when forests were cleared for farming, fisher cats were virtually extinct in New England.

The name “fisher cat” is misleading, as these animals are martens, not felines. They are called “fishers” as well (though they usually don’t eat fish, but land animals).

But as Lincoln resident Tracey Chartier discovered while walking her dog in her Highland Street back yard last week, the critters are back, and their population is increasing.

Chartier spent days in the hospital and received shots for rabies after her bare foot was bitten when she tried to shoo what she thought was a raccoon away from her dog.

She later identified the animal as a fisher, a black- or brown-colored relative of the weasel that can measure between 36 and 48 inches long, and weigh between 4 and 15 pounds.

Charlie Brown, wildlife biologist for the Department of Environmental Management Division of Fish and Wildlife, said the animals have become more populated throughout all of southern New England over the past several decades, though he said it is impossible to know a specific population number.

While they may have died out around Rhode Island, source populations remained in New York, Maine and New Hampshire. They gradually repopulated themselves and traveled throughout the region around the 1980s, he said, especially to the Providence, Kent and Washington counties.

There have been no reintroduction programs led by humans to get them back, he said. Genetics testing, done after each fisher is killed by a car or trapper, have confirmed that most Rhode Island fishers come from the White Mountains area of New Hampshire, Brown said.

There are more forests than farms in the state today, he said, making for suitable habitats.

Fishers eat mostly small mammals, like grey and red squirrels and birds, but Brown also called them scavengers as they forage for fruits and vegetables, as well. They have also been known to steal pet food and trash from yards.

Licensed trappers have been allowed to harvest a limited number of fishers since 2000, Brown said, but the species is otherwise protected, as are all furbearers.

“They are an important component of the ecosystem,” Brown said.

As such, he explained that their population is regulated by the population of their prey and the size of their habitat, which may be shrinking with development projects.

“So who knows where we’re going to be in 25 to 50 years?” Brown said. “They’re only going to be where there’s available habitat.”

Plant-eating mammals sport bigger bellies than meat eaters. Body cavity volume of 126 animals shows herbivores have larger bellies than carnivores. By Emily DeMarco, 7:00am, November 30, 2016: here.

USA: Abu Ghraib torture and artist Daniel Heyman


This video from the USA says about itself:

Abu Graib Detainee Interview Project

13 Jan 2010

Artist Daniel Heyman interviewed former Iraqi prisoners held at Abu Graib. While the subjects unfolded narratives of humiliation, Heyman drew them and incorporated their testimony into his images. This exhibit runs through May 4th, 2008 at the Depaul University Art Museum (museums.depaul.edu).

From The Phoenix in the USA:

July 26, 2006

Which is why it’s so jarring to look at Provincetown artist Daniel Heyman’s watercolors and drypoint prints, on display this month at the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown.

In March, Heyman — who teaches at Rhode Island School of Design and the Tyler School of Art — was invited to Amman, Jordan, by Burke Pyle, LLC, which is helping to gather evidence for a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Abu Ghraib detainees.

Heyman sat in with American Prospect senior editor Tara McKelvey while she interviewed former prisoners.

He set to work, using a metal stylus to etch the detainees’ portraits into a copper plate, and then filled the space around their faces with words.

The nature of the printmaking process required him to write backward.

In the words crowded around the images, every once in a while there is a misprint, which, in a way, helps convey the immediacy of the prisoners’ stories and the surreality of what they endured.

One father and son were forced to enact a macabre spectacle, for instance.

“[The American soldiers] knew that in Muslim culture respect for your parents is absolute, and so they asked the father to hit his son,” says Heyman.

“Then they tried to force the son to hit his father, and he wouldn’t do it.

So they made the father and the son dig a hole in the middle of the prison compound, and they made the son get in it, and they made the father bury him up to his neck.

Then they made the son get out of the hole.

They were both naked, and then they made the father ride on the back of his son around the compound for an hour.”

Another group of men were forced to dance, naked and hooded, for 12 straight hours.

When they tired, they were beaten.

Another man was taunted by a soldier who kept repeating “Guantánamo Bay” and drawing his finger across his throat like a knife.

And still another asked for a drink of water and was given a glass of piss. …

“None of these people were ever accused of anything; they were all just eventually released,” he says.

But despite the perverse injustices visited upon them, they all told their stories with “incredible dignity.”

This video is called US exhibit Botero’s Abu Ghraib art.