Sobe a classe média

Up, Down.

Sobe a classe média (The middle class is rising),
aka, Classe média numa boa (Middle class on a roll).



All of this on or about Dia Mundial do Orgasmo / International Orgasm Day, July 31.
(Tive orgasmo uma vez e vou casar com ele. Estou largando isso aqui. / I had an orgasm one time and I am going to marry him. I'm leaving this.)

1. Opinião - Classe média numa boa, José Sarney, 8 agosto.
2. OUR RAVAGED SEAS, Thomas Schulz, August 8.
3. Trawler 'Atlantic Peace'.
4. Corpo-a-corpo na Vila Mimosa, Marcelo Migliaccio, 01 de agosto de 2008.
5. Rio Prostitution, photos of Vila Mimosa by Lorenzo Moscia.
6. Tasering of disabled native decried, Terri Theodore, May 30.
7. Decapitated bus passenger, man was 'totally calm', Joe Friesen, July 31.
8. Eye-witness accounts of bus slaying, Cody Olmstead & Garnet Caton, July 31.
9. Beheading victim 'never got into a single fight ...', August 1.
10. Beheaded man identified, Gabrielle Giroday and Ian Hitchen, July 31.
11. Alleged bus butcher quiet in court, Joe Friesen, August 1.
12. Suspect called friendly, reliable employee, Josh Wingrove, August 1.
13. 'Please kill me,' accused pleads, Joe Friesen, August 5.

Malvados - André Dahmer:
Children in the suburbs killed like cockroaches. Poverty becomes a crime and the State has to come out and hunt them.

But even in times of horror the middle class fulfills their historical role ...

... and stand firm, collecting their little cups of cream cheeze.

Everybody wants into the middle class. Chinese, Brasilians, everybody's lining up. There's probably not enough to go around anyway, and what there is will vacuumed up and gone within a few generations so the people standing in line may not get any, oh well, ho hum. They may get upset. There may be wars, but then maybe it's relative. Perceptions and expectations change more quickly than you think. Within a generation or two whatever is going on will seem normal however nasty it may look from here. All good.

Meanwhile I would be quite happy to be out of the middle class, or at least away from it. Outside shitter, bit of a well for water, garden to dig in ...

(Coming up on post #500, also coming up on 30,000 visitors. I think it's going to stop.)

José Sarney is no better than the nitwit who said to me once, "Well, you can't stand in the way of progress." No, you can't, more's the pity. The guy was a town councillor and I was asking who benefitted from covering all the farm lanes with asphalt. Luddite.

Sarney says, "O passaporte definitivo para o bem-estar e para o desenvolvimento de nosso país passa pela educação e pelo melhor consumo de cultura." / The definitive passport to well-being and development of our country is through education and better consumption of culture. Nevermind that the sentence is nonsense - it embeds the myth of development sold to an eager and expanding middle class - ai ai ai!

And if you do take the time to read the story about the fish disappearing soon - keep in mind that this Captain Hartmann, pitiful exhausted Sensitive New Age Guy, is running a DRAGGER - this boat called 'Atlantic Peace' is a fucking DRAGGER! Someone may come here and see these things that I post and perhaps think that I somehow agree or concur or some such thing but quite often the sensibility appalls me, and I post it here as an object lesson.

Maybe a look at the gritty grimy streets and tiny rooms of Vila Mimosa will tweak your sensibility, or the story of Aeron Hall.

Or, finally, the story of Tim McLean & Vince Weiguang Li, a beheading on the Trans k-k-Canada Highway.


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Opinião - Classe média numa boa, José Sarney (ex-presidente da República), 8 agosto.

Entre as notícias de crise no mundo inteiro, com os Estados Unidos comandando os receios de recessão, o Ipea e a Fundação Getulio Vargas trazem as boas notícias de que a classe média já é maioria na população brasileira, chegando a 51,89% das pessoas, e que 3 milhões de brasileiros deixaram a faixa da pobreza absoluta. É uma importante etapa vencida e uma grande mudança, causada pela queda do desemprego, pelo aumento do número de trabalhadores com carteira assinada, pela melhoria do salário mínimo e pelos grandes programas sociais.

Como a unanimidade não existe – parafraseando o nosso sempre lembrado Nelson Rodrigues, de irresistível memória – alguns economistas de uma universidade do Rio de Janeiro reconhecem que houve melhoria de renda, mas afirmam que o processo de aferição dos números divulgados não é tão confiável.

Vamos ficar com o bom senso e reconhecer que, com métodos de pesquisa confiáveis ou nem tanto, a vida melhorou e a melhor pesquisa está nos nossos olhos. A demanda aumentou, come-se melhor e cada vez mais gente ingressa no mundo da sedução dos anúncios de produtos sofisticados, outrora fora do alcance das pessoas. Lula agora colhe o que plantou.

Fala-se numa nova classe média, a exemplo do que Clinton diagnosticou, ao designar como nova economia o advento da bolha das companhias pontocom. E então somos chamados a pensar o que essa mudança significa para o Brasil. Primeiro, viramos um país de classe média, como sentenciou um grande jornal brasileiro. Segundo, a classe média sempre foi uma força social e uma alavanca para insatisfações e desejos. Seu primeiro sonho, ao ganhar mais dinheiro, é render-se ao consumismo hedonista e incorporar a seus hábitos celular, carro, viagens, grifes e toda essa parafernália milagrosa que é anunciada nas polishops. Outro sonho é possuir uma conta bancária que desfrute de status especial, fora da vala comum dos depositantes que são perseguidos pelo vermelho. Para não falar daquele que é um dos hábitos históricos da classe média: malhar o governo.

Mas com a diminuição das classes D e E, a boa notícia também chega para os ricos, que cresceram em número de 11,61% para 15,52% da população e passam a sonhar, não com carros, mas com lanchas e temporadas de esqui nos Alpes Suíços. Pelos dados divulgados da economia, estamos no melhor dos mundos. Mas não soltemos foguetes. Os números dizem muito e mostram pouco. Escondem o flagelo da insegurança, o medo da sociedade acuada pelos bandidos e o desespero das filas da saúde. O passaporte definitivo para o bem-estar e para o desenvolvimento de nosso país passa pela educação e pelo melhor consumo de cultura.


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OUR RAVAGED SEAS, Thomas Schulz, August 8.

Part 1: Globalization Is Destroying the World's Oceans

The oceans are a primary source of food for mankind, and fishing provides 200 million people with income, as meager as it may be. But growing demand and the industrial-scale exploitation of the seas are destroying global fish populations. The European Union's quota system is partly to blame.

Dawn creeps across the horizon as the Pinkis brothers' cutter returns to the harbor at Kühlungsborn. The Baltic is still calm, but wind from the northeast has already picked up sharply, a sign of the storms in the evening forecast. The Pinkis brothers and their crew have been out since 2 a.m., 10 nautical miles off the coast of northeast Germany's Mecklenburg region, in a spot where they had staked hundreds of nets into the sea floor the previous afternoon, hoping the fish would come.

The brothers' cutter is small, less than 10 meters (33 feet) long, with a tiny bridge on top and a large fish tank in the hold below. Two stake-net fishermen stand on the deck, wearing bright orange oilcloth clothing. The boat has hardly docked at the wharf before they begin shoveling the catch from the hold, mostly flounder and codfish, even a lone turbot. The catch amounts to 200 kilograms (440 lbs), the fruits of a day's labor -- a day that can sometimes last 20 hours. Six days a week.

They're the only fishermen docked in Kühlungsborn harbor this morning, a lone cutter among sailboats and yachts. The fishing harbors along Germany's coast have been emptied. There are about 3,700 ocean fishermen left in Germany today, many of them getting on in years. The Pinkis brothers are among the youngest members of the Wismarbucht fishing cooperative. Uwe Pinkis is 45, and his brother Klaus is 42. Fishing, in Germany, is a dying profession.

When Klaus Pinkis is asked whether it's possible to make a living from 200 kilos of fish a day, he puts down his dip net, pushes his cap up from his forehead and takes a deep breath. He looks at his brother for a long moment and says: "We're doing well, but there are others, many, in fact, who are getting really nervous and are on the verge of qualifying for welfare."

The Pinkis brothers are their own supply chain. They catch, process and sell the fish themselves in the courtyard behind their tidy little house just off the beach in Rerik, a town in the Salzhaff region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in the northeasten corner of Germany. "The more you do, the more you keep," says Klaus Pinkis. His brother nods. The two men are proud of what they do for a living.

Together, they gross €60,000 ($93,000) a year. No one does this just for the money, says Uwe Pinkis. The work is too grueling, especially in bad weather, when the cutter "rocks back and forth like crazy all day long" and when the brothers "consume nothing but magnesium all evening" to deal with cramps in their calves. Fishing is not just a dying profession but a difficult one.

Overfished, Overexploited

About one-fourth of all known fish populations are already overfished to the brink of extinction, including once-abundant species cod and tuna. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), another 50 percent are considered completely exploited. No one can, or is even willing, to predict the consequences for the complex ecosystem, and yet it is clear that the oceans are gradually being ravaged.

Is this all just fear-mongering? Environmentalist propaganda? No, not at all.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel soberly expressed what scientists have been convinced about for years: If the oceans continue to be ransacked the way they are today, fish populations, and fishing along with them, will disappear -- completely, worldwide -- by the middle of the century.

The news from last week alone was alarming: US authorities had, for the first time ever, imposed a ban on salmon fishing along the country's entire Pacific coast. The European Union also banned tuna fishing in the Mediterranean, while experts recommended banning cod fishing in the North Sea.

Even the Institute of the German Economy, not exactly a leftist bastion of environmentalism, has issued urgent warnings that an entire "branch of industry is literally threatened with extinction."

Billions of people depend on fish as a staple food and need it to survive, especially in parts of the Third World, where fish makes up 20 percent of the diet and is thus the key source of animal protein. Fishing provides an income for close to 200 million people.

The demand for fish has been rising steadily and steeply for decades, and fisherman do nothing but satisfy that demand. As boats have become larger and more efficient, the worldwide catch volume has grown more than sevenfold between 1950 and 2005, to more than 140 million tons a year.

The consequences were recognizable early on, especially in the waters of industrialized nations, with their well-equipped fleets and well-heeled consumers. In the North Sea and Baltic Sea, for example, herring populations were in dramatic decline by the 1960s.

Germans, in particular, have felt the effects. Today there are only half as many ocean fishermen in a united Germany as there were in West Germany alone in 1970. In the '80s, fewer than 30 deep-sea fishing vessels from Germany ventured to Greenland (instead of fishing off the North Sea and Baltic Sea coastlines). Today there are seven, and only one is not owned by foreign corporations.

That vessel, the "Atlantic Peace," is 57 meters (187 feet) long, has a crew of 24, and is currently wedged between two container ships along the quay wall. Streaks of rust mar the ship's once gleaming, blue-and-white paint finish. This last German deep-sea fishing boat is no attractive cutter, but a steel vessel so powerful that its crew can even work in eight-meter (26-foot) waves.

The morning lights of Reykjavik shimmer through wisps of fog in the background. It took the "Atlantic Peace" two days to struggle back from its fishing grounds to the Icelandic capital, the base for North Atlantic fishing vessels, in storm-force winds.

Captain Klaus Hartmann, his face showing signs of exhaustion, stands on the bridge. It is six a.m. and raining heavily. "When is the container finally going to get here?" he asks, staring at the rear deck. A crane lifts pallets from the hold, each tightly packed with boxes full of black halibut. The catch totals more than 400,000 fish, cleaned and trimmed, frozen and packaged for sale. The "Atlantic Peace" is a factory ship.

It was at sea for 70 days, a highly efficient catching and processing machine that only docks in the harbor to spit out cargo as quickly as possible. It will sail again in three days, headed for fishing zone XIVb off the coast of Greenland once again, where the Germans have traditionally had large quotas.

Why Greenland, of all places? "Because Germans have always fished there," says Hartmann. The European Union pays Greenland more than €40 million ($61 million) each year so that they can continue to do so.

Documented catches from earlier days are the basis of the quota system. Because the British caught the most cod in the North Sea before there were any regulations, the EU assigns them the largest quotas each year. And because the Spaniards have always fished for anchovies in the Mediterranean, they are permitted to do so today.

When a fish species suddenly turns up in ocean regions where there was no quota for that species in the past, it sets off a mad rush. Last year, for example, a new ocean perch population was discovered northeast of Iceland. The relevant regulatory agency issued a quota for 15,000 tons. Then the race began. It's called "Olympic fishing." Whoever manages to catch the most fish as quickly as possible emerges as the winner -- two times over, because future quotas for individual ships are based on this first catch.

Part 2: 'Everything Was Gone'

More than 70 boats descended on the schools of ocean perch. "Everything was gone within two weeks," says Hartmann, who disapproves of the practice.

Hartmann is also the chairman of the Association of German Deep-Sea Fisheries. He is familiar with the problems surrounding the current reputation of fishermen, including their supposedly relentless greed for the catch and their lack of concern for the environment.

This is why he spends a lot of time talking about fishing practices designed to preserve populations and about the need to cooperate with scientists and environmentalists. He says restrictions are indispensable, "for reasons of conscience," but also for economic reasons. "I still want to have this job in 20 years. That'll only happen if there are still fish."

When he talks about such changes, Hartmann uses expressions like "paradigm shift" and "ethical necessity." He is not your stereotypical seaman, not someone who, with a deeply tanned face and hands battered by the elements, likes to tell fishermen's yarns. Sometimes he seems almost out of place on the bridge, peering at his laptop through his angular designer glasses. There is a stark contrast between Hartmann and his surroundings where, despite the open doors, there is an unbearably rancid stench, a fatal mix of fish, machine oil and old sweat.

Hartmann didn't even grow up on the coast, but in Cologne. He bought his first cutter in 1977 for 100,000 German marks, using money borrowed from friends. Since then his ships have become a little larger every few years. The "Atlantic Peace," which Hartmann bought used seven years ago for 18 million German marks, is his crowning achievement.

But Hartmann hasn't gone out himself in years. These days he prefers to leave the fishing up to his partners. The "Atlantic Peace" is a limited partnership consisting of three captains. One has to stay on land, says Hartmann, "to make sure that we weren't put out of business, as a one-ship operation." The threats to his business include the EU bureaucracy, competitors who often operate dozens of ships, and market fluctuations that stopped having anything to do with daily prices at the fish auction in the port city of Bremerhaven long ago, but instead are determined by exchange rate fluctuations between the yen and the dollar.

Two weeks before the "Atlantic Peace" entered the port of Reykjavik, Hartmann had sold its entire catch -- 19,851 boxes of black halibut, with a little ocean perch mixed in -- for a price of €1.4 million ($2.14 million), negotiated with a Danish wholesaler that primarily supplies Asian food companies.

Hartmann does well when fish is in short supply in Japanese supermarkets, because he's paid more money for his halibut. His business does poorly when the Chinese economy falters, because that prompts the Chinese to shift from buying Hartmann's expensive ocean perch to cheap fish from Vietnam. But one thing is constant: Not a single fish caught by the last German deep-sea fishing vessel goes to Germany.

Globalization has reached the fishing industry in full force. "Anyone who doesn't recognize this," says Hartmann, "is quickly out of the picture."

Germans Prefer it Frozen

For most domestic fishermen, selling their catch in Germany is no longer worth the trouble. These days they supply only 15 percent of the fish on German supermarket shelves. This is not for any lack of demand: Germans are eating more fish every year, with per capita consumption up to 16 kilos (35 lbs.), a 20-percent increase over ten years ago. But Germany is a country of inexpensive fish, where even twice-frozen packaged fish, once spurned, is a top seller. One variety is Alaskan pollock, caught by Russian trawlers, frozen, sent to China to be filleted, refrozen and then shipped off to German supermarkets.

Hartmann gets €3.37 ($5.16) for a kilo of halibut. This is decent, but less than the going rate for cod, which has become rare. Because cod can only be sold in filet form, two-thirds of the catch volume is discarded. In the case of halibut, on the other hand, heads and fins are used. "The Chinese go for that," says Hartmann.

These factors make it worthwhile to target black halibut, "even though it's damned hard to fish." Black halibut swims at great depths, down to 1,500 meters (4,920 feet), and it takes an experienced captain as well as sonar, plotters and 3D underwater monitors to fish it up.

The bridge of the "Atlantic Peace" is reminiscent of a navy frigate more than a fishing boat. Deep-sea fishing today is equal parts high tech and manual labor: Hardly any fish in the ocean is safe anymore.

Traveling at two or three knots, the "Atlantic Peace" drags a long (70-meter) net across the ocean floor, even through drifting ice and during storms. Halibut sweeps into a giant net opening, which is 30 meters (98 feet) wide and 12 meters (40 feet) tall. After only half an hour, up to 20 tons of fish can be crowded into the end of the net. The net has to be reeled in after four hours, "otherwise the fish are quickly limp and descaled."

A giant stern winch pulls up the net. The process can take up to 30 minutes, and then the catch -- tens of thousands of fish squeezed into the green net, with mesh no smaller than 140 millimeters, to let young fish escape -- is brought on deck. The crew quickly opens the net and lets the fish slide down to their deaths. The entire lower deck of the "Atlantic Peace" is a processing factory consisting of metal conveyor belts and flashing circular saws.

When the fishing is good, the machines run 24 hours a day, performing an endless cycle of beheading, gutting and freezing. There is no daylight on the lower deck. It's a cold, crowded space with an unsteady floor. Working in this on-board processing plant is a back-breaking job, no matter how much technology there is to make it easier.

A seaman can earn €5,000 ($7,650) a month for the work -- good money, and yet the industry lacks new blood. "The aging workforce is a problem" says Hartmann, adding that some ships are practically manned with retirees.

Meaningless Quotas

There is still money to be made in fishing. The "Atlantic Peace" grosses about €8 million ($12.2 million) a year, while returns fluctuate between one and 15 percent. The industry will remain profitable for as long as the quotas exist, but that could change any year. Hartmann always carries around the EU's most current quota distribution list, in the form of a huge Excel table, dozens of columns that reflect, in condensed form, EU fishing policies.

There is a number for every country, every fishing zone, every fish species and every boat or fleet. According to the table, the "Atlantic Peace" is entitled to a quota of 4,500 tons of halibut, cod, Pollock, ocean perch and shellfish.

But with the exception of the total catch volume, the numbers are meaningless. Fishermen trade with one another, depending on what types of fish they specialize in. Hartmann, for example, has just traded his 800 tons of cod off the Norwegian coast for 600 tons of halibut from an Icelandic vessel off Greenland.

The quotas are revised each year, in months of negotiations among the EU countries and with their neighbors. "We never know what'll happen," says Hartmann, "and if things don't go our way, we can end up with only half as much fish the next year."

Part 3: Pirate Fishermen and Big Multinationals

Unlike Norwegians or Icelanders, EU fishermen are not involved in the negotiations. Politicians and bureaucrats get together to set the quotas.

In 2007, German fishermen were allotted 225,000 tons. The quota, which belongs to the German government and not the fishermen, is essentially lent to them.

In Iceland, as in many other fishing nations, this is handled differently. The Icelandic quota is owned by the fishermen, which gives them competitive advantages when it comes to planning and securing financing. Icelandic fishing companies have expanded for years, buying up bigger and bigger fleets and increasing their market share.

Deutsche Fischfang Union, based in the northern German port city of Cuxhaven, was once Germany's largest deep-sea fishing company. Today it belongs to Samherji, an Icelandic company, which also owns fleets in Poland, England and Spain. A slow but constant wave of consolidations has rolled across the fishing industry for years. The number of players is decreasing, but those that remain are getting bigger, more global and more powerful. This is bad news for the millions of small family fishing operations. Today, one percent of the world fishing fleet is already responsible for 50 percent of the catch.

Last summer Samherji acquired a fleet of six factory ships just so that it could fish the West African coast. The EU pays Mauritania more than €80 million ($122 million) a year so European industrial fishing companies can drain the African coastal waters of fish. In many cases, this doesn't leave Mauritanian fisherman with enough to make a living. Others, like the Dutch fishing corporation Parlevliet & Van de Plas, are already sending their ships to locations deep in the South Atlantic and off the coasts of Chile and Peru.

More and more often, the global struggle for dwindling resources is turning violent. French longline fishermen are attacking Spanish drift net fishermen with Molotov cocktails, accusing them of depleting their fishing grounds. English fishermen have taken to throwing frozen fish at Icelandic coast guard vessels. And German stake-net fishermen are at each other's throats in the Baltic for fishing to close to one another.

But at least all can agree that they have one common enemy: pirate fishermen. They catch without licenses, without quotas and without paying any heed to a global fisheries policy designed to preserve populations. The so-called IUU, or "illegal, unregistered and unregulated" fishing industry, already pulls about one third of the world's annual catch from the sea.

"Unfortunately the IUU is in fact out of control in some areas," says Stefán Ásmundsson. He is the chairman of the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), whose members include the EU and most of the other countries that fish in this ocean region. Similar multinational organizations also exist in other ocean regions. They represent an attempt to manage fishing in largely unregulated international waters. This only works if countries abide by the rules, but many don't.

"The problem is that, under international maritime law, enforcing the rules is up to the flag state of the fishermen," says Ásmundsson. And many deliberately enforce no rules at all. More than 1,200 fishing trawlers are registered under flags of convenience -- Cambodia, say, or Honduras. Another 1,600 trawlers, the pirate fishermen, sail the oceans under no flags at all.

Many pirate fishermen are known and their ships are on blacklists. But in international waters they can simply forbid inspectors from coming on board.

This is why the international community is increasingly trying to forbid the pirates access to ports, make it impossible for them to unload their fish, and deny them food and diesel fuel. But even these sanctions don't always work.

The five biggest trawlers owned by Piro-Fisch, a German-Russian charter company, were long known as impudent pirates when they entered the port of Rostock in northeastern Germany in the fall of 2005. They are on all relevant blacklists. But the ships remained untouched -- despite the fact that even the Icelandic foreign minister asked the EU Commission to prevent them from leaving the port. The trawlers left Rostock in March 2006, unobstructed and with their supplies on board. In April, after another raid, they entered the Russian seaport of Kaliningrad, where they were promptly detained.

Even in legal fishery, politicians often fail to live up to their responsibility. The EU's cod quotas, for example, are still 50 percent higher than the catch volumes scientists consider barely justifiable. Sharp disputes keep erupting in the EU because some countries, instead of fishing less, push to have their quotas raised.

The problem stems from the fact that in traditionally strong fishing nations, like France and Spain, no politicians want to alienate whole coastal regions. The recommendations of experts, like those with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, are all too often ignored. In the world struggle for resources, fish are usually the losers.

Many German fishermen are now searching for environmentally justifiable methods, to avoid being vilified as "fish murderers" or "environmental pigs" -- the sorts of names they are repeatedly called on coastal esplanades. For more than five years, the German fishing industry and seafood retailers have supported the Marine Stewardship Council's eco-label, which identifies seafood caught legally and in an environmentally responsible way.

There is also a growing trend to provide more exact details about the origin of fish, such as whether halibut was caught off the coast of Iceland or Norway. This can make a big difference, because a fish species can be virtually wiped in one ocean region while flourishing in another.

In addition, organizations like the NEAFC are attempting to establish an international monitoring regime. But the oceans are enormous and there are few inspectors.

Germany has three fisheries protection vessels to monitor its territorial waters in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, as well as to take part in international patrol to places as far away as the Arctic and Canada.

Monitoring on the High Seas

Shortly before midnight, the "Seeadler" slips out of a naval base near Warnemünde on the Baltic Sea. The German authorities have learned that dozens of Polish fishermen, who exceeded their quotas long ago, are on their way to German territorial waters. When the ship reaches the open sea, its main diesel engines roar into action as the massive, 72-meter (236-foot) coastguard ship heads toward the island of Usedom at full speed. But by the next morning there are no Poles in sight. False alarm.

Instead, the "Seeadler" has set its sights on a Danish trawlnet cutter. The inspectors could force the fishermen to haul in their net for inspection immediately, but not without reason. "We don't want to obstruct fishing," says Raik Thomas, the Seeadler's captain. On its tours through the Baltic, each lasting about two weeks, the unarmed "Seeadler" typically completes about 30 inspections.

The Danish ship agrees to bring in its net, voluntarily, and then things move very quickly. Four men put on survival suits and jump into an escort speedboat, which is suspended from a crane above the "Seeadler' deck. Within seconds the inflatable boat is hoisted overboard and dropped the last few meters, hitting the water with a slapping noise. It rushes across the gray waves of the Baltic toward the 15-meter (49-foot) cutter, blue light flashing through the drizzling rain and spray.

The German inspectors have hardly stepped on board before the net emerges from the water. A sack full of plaice and codfish gasping for air hangs above the deck, gills wide open and their mouths pushing through the mesh. The fishermen and inspectors wade, knee-deep at times, through 150 kilos of fish flapping around on the deck. The "Seeadler" team inspects nets and mesh sizes, licenses, fish species and the bycatch. It takes all of 45 minutes for the Germans to give the "Line Charlotte" a seal of approval. "In truth, we rarely run into any problems," says Captain Thomas.

But environmental groups like Greenpeace disagree. They argue the inspections are inadequate. According to Greenpeace officials, too much of what happens on the ocean goes unpunished, and worldwide fishing capacities should be reduced by 50 percent. Greenpeace wants to see conservation zones where fishing is banned altogether established in many ocean regions.

Greenpeace repeatedly tries to deliver at least symbolic messages. This is the case as the "Rainbow Warrior II" sails in the Mediterranean near Naples in the midsummer heat. Its goal is to address one of the most dramatic chapters in the overfishing debate -- the threat of eradication of bluefin tuna. Mediterranean fishermen made a living catching the predatory fish for two millennia, but now it has all but disappeared from the region.

The craving for sushi is the main reason behind this threat to the tuna population. Nowadays some are even willing to pay more than $100,000 (€65,000) for special specimens. The tuna business alone turns over €4 billion ($6.1 billion) in annual revenues.

The combination of high profits and illegal methods has attracted the underworld, too. The Japanese and the Italian mafia are believed to be deeply involved in the tuna business. Horror stories are making the rounds in the fishing community about EU fisheries inspectors who found return air tickets in their hotel rooms upon arriving in Sicily, or the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) activist who found a white lily on her bed -- a mafia death threat.

The tuna farms that have begun to appear off many Mediterranean coasts in recent years also play a growing role in the industry. Young fish caught in the wild are fattened in farms until they're big enough for slaughter. Many of these farms are operated illegally. "It usually isn't clear who exactly is behind these operations. In many cases they are backed by bogus companies," says Alessandro Gianni, a fisheries biologist on board the Rainbow Warrior.

'It looks like "The Swarm" Down Here'

For documentation purposes, Gianni wants to send a diving team into a farm off the Neapolitan coast. But before the Greenpeace boats can reach the underwater cages, they are surrounded by the Italian coast guard. Nevertheless, the Greenpeace team decides to make the dive.

Three men disappear into a cage, where thousands of tuna are crowded together, frantically swimming around in a circle. Even the experienced divers are outraged. "It looks like 'The Swarm' down here," one of them calls out.

Despite such excesses, fish farms could be the salvation of worldwide fish population. Aquaculture, or artificially raising fish and seafood, is one of the world's fastest-growing forms of food production. The industry has grown by an average of 10 percent a year since the early 1990s.

Scientists are already alluding to a "blue revolution" similar to the "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1950s, when new methods quadrupled food production within a short period of time.

A little less than a third of the 1.2 million tons of farmed salmon sold worldwide comes from the farms of the Norwegian company Marine Harvest, the world's largest fish producer, with 7,500 employees in 18 countries. "It won't stay that way," says Leif Frode Onarheim, the company's acting president and CEO. "We have big ambitions."

Marine Harvest's model salmon farm is about an hour by boat from Stavanger, a city on Norway's west coast. A small red, wooden building and 14 cages, each of them 24 meters (79 feet) long, 24 meters wide and 30 meters (98 feet) deep, float in a fjord that is 400 meters (1,312 feet) deep. The cages contain 800,000 salmon, at a market value of about €10 million ($15.3 million).

Salmon are relatively easy to farm. They are well developed by the time they hatch, and they can be fed with industrially produced dry feed, which consists primarily of fish meal. Onarheim is convinced that successes with salmon can be repeated with other species, such as halibut, the South American tilapia and red snapper. The industry is also becoming more adept at dealing with the environmental problems of fish farming.

It takes one year to grow the fish from 100 grams (3.5 oz.) to five kilos (11 lbs.), when they are ready for slaughter. The salmon are pumped out of the cages and into transport ships, which take them to the processing factory at the other end of the fjord. A counter that hangs above the slaughtering machinery provides a running tally of the number of salmon that have been processed on a given day. The red digital numbers change every few seconds: 7,904, 7,905. It is only 11 a.m.

But for Onarheim this is still not fast enough. "We compete with chicken and beef," he says. He wants to see the farms enlarged, producing more and increasingly farther out to sea. Onarheim envisions annual production levels of two or three million fish -- per farm.

This is the reverse of the world of the northern German Pinkis brothers, for whom all of this must be lunacy -- the Pinkis brothers, with their daily catch of 30 or 40 cod, lined up in crates on their garden wall, between rosebushes and a neatly trimmed lawn. A kilo of the Pinkis's codfish sells for €2.50 ($3.83), cheaper than a Big Mac. The Pinkis brothers, who pluck each fish individually from the net and work at temperatures as low as -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit), when it's so cold that the codfish are frozen to the net.

No, says Klaus Pinkis, fish will not die out on their account. The brothers have trouble understanding why the people "over in Brussels," the ones who set the quotas, make their lives so difficult. Why can't they just be allowed to fish, without all the rules and regulations? They would know when to stop, would know the right amount of fishing so that both sides, the fisherman and the fish, could survive.

"It's such a wonderful profession, and I don't regret it for a minute," says Pinkis. "But I can't say whether anyone will be doing it after us."


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Corpo-a-corpo na Vila Mimosa, Marcelo Migliaccio, 01 de agosto de 2008.



Ontem foi o Dia Mundial do Orgasmo, mas a rotina na Vila Mimosa, área de prostituição na Praça da Bandeira, teria sido a mesma – sujeira, mau cheiro, mulheres deprimidas, clientes sujos e música alta – se o candidato a prefeito Vinícius Cordeiro (PTdoB) não aparecesse para um rápido corpo-a-corpo.

– Estou visitando a cidade que ninguém vê – disse Cordeiro, enquanto entregava um panfleto a Michele, "26 anos", barrigão de sete meses.

Depois de pegar o folheto, ela saiu apressada. Nem quis ouvir a pregação que o candidato fez a clientes e profissionais durante cerca de meia hora.

– Quando chove, as ruas aqui enchem por causa das galerias entupidas. Como em toda a cidade, a limpeza urbana é deficiente – criticou o político, que garantiu, no entanto, nunca ter estado ali antes.

Vivian, "30 anos", duas filhas e três carnavais na Vila, tinha outra reivindicação ao improvável futuro prefeito, um dos lanternas nas pesquisas.

– Deveriam fechar a rua e cobrar entrada. Tem homem que só vem para olhar, passar a mão na gente e encher o saco.

Ao seu lado, a sílfide Carla, pele e cabelos judiados – mas belos olhos – concorda:

– Fechar a rua seria bom, passa criança e vê gente bêbada, mulher com peito de fora...

Da Baixada, Carla, "23", sustenta a filha ali há três anos.

– Mas só venho porque estou desempregada.

Cordeiro garante que não sabia que havia agendado a visita à tradicional zona de meretrício no Dia do Orgasmo.

– Foi coincidência. Espero que os cidadãos que freqüentam este lugar tenham outra espécie de orgasmo quando o virem recuperado.

– E o outro tipo de orgasmo? – perguntou alguém ao candidato, que mostrou a aliança com um sorriso de colegial.

Nas biroscas da Vila Mimosa, mulheres de todos os tipos oferecem seus corpos – nunca suas bocas – por R$ 40. Pela expressão amarga delas, orgasmo ali, só masculino.

– Às vezes até acontece, mas é raro, não é uma coisa muito profissional – confirma Vivian.

A sorte, entretanto, parece ter batido em sua porta.

– Tive orgasmo uma vez e vou casar com ele. Estou largando isso aqui.

Mais otimista, só Vinícius Cordeiro, que comentou as pesquisas antes de ir embora:

– Já passei o Filipe Pereira e agora vou atrás do Molon.

Foi bom pra você?


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Tasering of disabled native decried, Terri Theodore, May 30.

VANCOUVER — Aeron Hall admits he'd had a few drinks before walking home one spring night four years ago in Merritt, B.C. But Mr. Hall, 35, who is disabled, said it was his limp and not intoxication that attracted the attention of the RCMP and set off a chain of events that ended with him being tasered seven times, including once to the testicles.

His experience has angered the head of the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities, which wants police better trained.

Mr. Hall had a brain aneurysm as a child and his weak leg swings as he walks. He is on a government disability pension. He says that on his way home from drinking beer with friends in June of 2004 he was confronted by a female police officer in front of the Merritt RCMP detachment and taken in. He was told to remove his clothing and jewellery, but the native man wouldn't take off one necklace because his spiritual adviser had told him never to take it off.

He says two large, male officers approached him. "One was holding a taser behind his back and they reached for my necklace to rip it off. I stepped back and he pulled out the taser ... and I started defending myself. ... They started tasering me in my privates and on my back and my legs."

Mr. Hall was released the next day without charge. His mother, Norma, later received a copy of a police report that concluded the officers had done nothing wrong. The story angers Margaret Birrell, executive director of the B.C. Coalition of People with Disabilities. "What is this intolerance about? she asked. "If we heard about this in another country, we'd be appalled. It's abuse of power."


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Decapitated bus passenger, man was 'totally calm' during attack, Joe Friesen, July 31.

BRANDON, MAN. - A young man travelling on a Greyhound bus was stabbed to death and beheaded by a stranger in a horrifying act of apparently random violence.

The incident occurred on a bus travelling from Edmonton to Winnipeg just before 10 p.m. Wednesday.

A man of about 18 who was sleeping with headphones on was attacked by his seat mate, according to the man who sat in front of them.

He was stabbed repeatedly with a large hunting knife, sending blood spraying across the interior of the bus. The driver quickly pulled over and passengers fled out the front door.

The attacker then sawed off the victim's head and carried it to the front of the bus.

The two did not apparently know one another. The victim boarded the bus in Edmonton, one witness said, and the attacker boarded in Manitoba.

A standoff with police ensued until about 1 a.m. local time.

A 40-year-old man was taken into custody.

Garnet Caton, 26, was sitting in the seat in front of the attacker.

"I was just reading a book and all of a sudden I heard a guy screaming. I turned around and the guy sitting right beside me was standing up and stabbing another guy with a big Rambo knife," he said.

"Right in the throat. Repeatedly."

The man wielding the knife had a shaved head and was wearing sunglasses, he said.

"He looked totally calm. He didn't say a word I don't think to anybody on the bus ... nothing. Just totally calm."

Mr. Caton said most passengers were sleeping at the time and didn't realize what was happening.

"I screamed 'stop the bus!' ... Everybody got the hell off, and people at the front of the bus didn't really understand what was going on. It almost turned into a trample scene there, everybody trying to get off the bus. But the guy didn't care at all. He wasn't concerned with anybody but the guy he was stabbing.

"The guy was totally calm. When he brought the head he looked at us and dropped it. It was like he was having a day at the beach. He couldn't be bothered by anything else."

Passenger Cody Olmstead from Kentville, N.S., said he had just smoked a cigarette with the victim at the last stop in Brandon. He said he believed the victim had gotten on the bus in Edmonton.

"We just left the town of Brandon and we were watching Zorro and the next thing I know I hear somebody scream and I look back and there's some big guy holding this little fellow up between the bathroom door and the seat," Mr. Olmstead told CBC News.

After passengers fled the bus and braced the door to keep the attacker inside, he returned with the victim's head, Mr. Olmstead said.

"His hand come out the door with the knife," he said. "He went back on the bus and then they [passengers] brace the door and he come back standing in the doorway with the head, looked at them, dropped the head, went back and started cutting buddy back up."

As night fell and police surrounded the bus, the suspect taunted police officers, Mr. Olmstead said.

"He comes up and he picks the head up and he's waving it in the window. I just smoked a cigarette with this man [the victim] earlier, the head, and he's shaking it back and forth at the window and it's ... intense right, it's sickening."

RCMP Sgt. Steve Colwell provided few other details at a press briefing Thursday afternoon. He referred to the crime as a stabbing, but refused to confirm whether or not the victim had been decapitated. Sgt. Colwell said the suspect was arrested just before 1:30 a.m. when he tried to escape through a broken bus window after a prolonged standoff with police.

Sgt. Colwell said the suspect, who has yet to be charged, is believed to have been from out of province. He refused to name him or the victim. He also refused to confirm the victim's age or where he is from.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the violent attack is a "horrific" incident and his heart goes to the family of the victim.

However, Mr. Day played down the possibility of enacting tough security measures in Canada's bus terminals, similar to what already exists in airports.

“People should always be open to looking at precautionary measures. But let's keep in mind that as bizarre and tragic as this is, it is extremely rare,” Mr. Day said.

He also dismissed talk by some opposition MPs of a “knife registry,” saying that millions of them are bought each year simply for kitchen use. He added that there are already provisions in the Criminal Code against crimes and assaults.

Speaking at a Conservative caucus meeting, Mr. Day said he does not want to jeopardize the investigation, but added he wants to see the killer “convicted in court.”

“We want to make sure that the process is followed as aggressively as possible, a full legal process, and the perpetrator is definitely dealt with the full force of the law,” he said.

Greyhound called the event tragic but isolated.

A company spokeswoman said bus travel is the safest mode of transportation, despite the fact bus stations do not have metal detectors and other security measures used at airports.

“Due to the rural nature of our network, airport-type security is not practical. It's a very different type of system,” Abby Wambaugh said from Greyhound's corporate offices in Texas.


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Eye-witness accounts of bus slaying, Cody Olmstead & Garnet Caton, July 31.

Cody Olmstead

I was sitting on the bus and we just left the town of Brandon and we were watching Zorro and the next thing I know I hear somebody scream and I look back and there's some big guy holding this little fellow up between the bathroom door and the seat. And he was moving. It kind of looked like a fight but somebody said a knife, so we all run off the bus – he was getting stabbed. So I'm making sure everybody's okay right outside and these other guys are containing the door. Then they went back on the bus and come off the bus and told everybody to get back 'cause they thought he was coming out. His hand come out the door with the knife, looked like it was trying to cut their... He went back on the bus and then they brace the door and he come back standing in the doorway with the head, looked at them, dropped the head, went back and started cutting buddy back up.

So they make us leave and go up by the tractor trailer and I'm standing by the tractor trailer and it's starting to get dark and the cops are there and he comes up and he picks the head up and he's waving it in the window. I just smoked a cigarette with this man [the victim] earlier, the head, and he's shaking it back and forth at the window and it's ... intense right, it's sickening.

Garnet Caton

He put his bags in the overhead compartment. He didn't say a word to anybody. He seemed totally normal. He had sunglasses on. He sat down. And then, about a half an hour later, we heard this blood-curdling scream and turned around and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, repeatedly, like, I dunno, must have been 40, 50 times in the neck and in the chest area. When he was attacking him, he was calm as like, it was like he was at the beach. He (was) totally calm, he didn't say anything. There was no rage or, or anything. He was just like a robot stabbing the guy.

We exited the bus. Everybody got off the bus. But a few of us, me and the trucker and one of the Greyhound drivers went back on the bus to go see what was going on and that's when we saw ... he had the guy on the ground, he was cutting his head off and pretty much gutting him.

That trucker ... he had a crowbar and we ran and got a hammer and stuff. Me and the other bus driver, there, tried to guard the door; put our bodies up against the door and, you know, waiting for him to come out and whatnot.

And he went back and brought the head to the front and pretty much, you know, displayed it to us like that and then dropped it on the ground in front of us. Very calmly, all very calmly, he was wearing sunglasses and like, you know, it was no big deal to him.


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Beheading victim 'never got into a single fight in his whole life', August 1.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, MAN. — A man accused of beheading a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus uttered not a word in court Friday and the victim's friends were still at a loss as to how anyone could have attacked someone they say never hurt a soul.

"There was nothing in the world that could set him off or [make] him do anything wrong to anybody," said William Caron, who knew Tim McLean, 22, since Grade 7.

"As far as I've known him, he'd never got into a single fight in his whole life."

The victim of the vicious attack on a Greyhound bus has not officially been identified. But friends have started a Facebook memorial group that includes his name, Tim McLean, and this photograph. (From Facebook)

Police had no answers Thursday as to what prompted a man on a Greyhound bus to suddenly stand up and repeatedly stab his seatmate and behead him in front of horrified passengers.

There were no answers from a courtroom in Portage la Prairie, Man., where Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, made his first court appearance on a charge of second-degree murder.

Mr. Li — his face bruised, one hand bandaged and his legs shackled — quietly shuffled into the room with his head bowed. He did not make eye contact with anyone the entire time he was before the judge.

He would not even reply when the judge asked him if he was going to get a lawyer and only nodded slightly when asked whether he was exercising his right not to speak.

The accused, wearing a grey T-shirt and prisoner's vest, appeared to be about five-foot-eight or nine with a stocky build.

Passengers had described Mr. McLean's attacker as a big man who weighed at least 200 pounds.

The Crown asked for a psychiatric assessment, but the judge said he wanted to give Mr. Li a chance to talk to a lawyer about that.

"It's early and I think the judge just wants to respect his rights to ... speak to counsel and he's giving him that opportunity," Crown prosecutor Larry Hodgson said outside court. "I don't think it will be very long that they'll allow him to do that [be without a lawyer]."

Mr. Li was charged after Mr. McLean died in a gruesome attack on a Greyhound bus that was travelling from Edmonton to Winnipeg.

Police did not release details about his death. But passengers said the young man died in an appalling attack in which his seat-mate silently stood up and repeatedly stabbed him before severing his head and carving up his body.

Friends say they simply cannot understand why anyone would attack the thin young man, just five-feet, five inches tall, and by all accounts easy-going.

"He was just such an amazing guy. He had a great personality," Mr. McLean's long-time friend and Mr. Caron's wife, Jodi Lang, said on the lawn of their Winnipeg home.

Mr. McLean had been working at carnival booths and was coming home from Edmonton to be with his family. He led a mostly quiet life, preferring to spend time playing cards and the board game Risk, Mr. Caron said.

His friend liked to travel, which was the reason he spent three summers working the carnival circuit, Mr. Caron added.

"He never cared for sitting around, unless it was for a weekend with the guys playing Risk. He was always big on travelling. He didn't like to sit in one place."

Mr. McLean and Mr. Caron got their first tattoos together. Mr. Caron opted for a ghost riding a motorcycle. Mr. McLean chose a joker — a theme he would use for his Myspace web page under the name Jokawild, where he described his interests as "playin vids, chillin', havin a good time."

Mr. Hodgson couldn't offer many details about Li.

"I know he was from Edmonton. I don't know why he was on the bus. That's still under investigation."

The RCMP said Mr. Li has no known criminal record.

Mr. Hodgson said if Mr. Li doesn't get his own lawyer, the court could appoint one or the case could proceed anyway.

Mr. Li's next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday in Portage la Prairie.

Meanwhile, tributes to the victim were pouring into social networking and media websites. A Facebook website called "R.I.P. Tim" quickly sprang up after news of the attack.

"I can't believe this is happening," wrote Leah Dryburgh of Winnipeg. "Tim, you were the best guy ever. You didn't deserve this at all."

It was on Tuesday night that Greyhound bus 1170 rolled across the darkening prairie. Passengers were dozing off as The Legend of Zorro played on the television screen.

A man of about 20, making his way home to Manitoba from Edmonton, was sitting on his own in the back row, headphones covering his ears, sleeping with his cheek resting on the window pane.

He barely acknowledged the 40-year-old man in sunglasses who, having boarded the bus in Brandon, first sat near the front, then walked down the aisle, slid his bags into the overhead bin, and sat down next to him.

The strangers sat together in silence for a half hour or more, said Garnet Caton, a 26-year-old seismic driller who was in the row ahead.

Then the calm of an otherwise unremarkable bus ride was shattered by a sound so chilling it could only be described as somewhere between a dog howling and a baby crying.

"It was a blood-curdling scream," he said. "I turned around and the guy sitting right [behind] me was standing up and stabbing another guy with a big Rambo knife … Right in the throat. Repeatedly."

Mr. Caton said the attack was utterly unprovoked.

He watched in horror as the man, described as tall and well-built with close-cropped hair, plunged his hunting knife into the victim eight or nine times, sending blood spraying across the back of the bus.

The driver, hearing the screams, pulled to the side of the road and opened the doors, allowing passengers to flee. They scrambled over one another and, in their haste, knocked an elderly woman to the floor. One mother, who was seated near the back, threw her toddler forward several rows to get the child away from danger, a witness said.

Mr. Caton, who served five years in the Canadian Forces and was closest to the attacker, paused before leaving, torn momentarily between concern for his own safety and the thought of abandoning the bleeding victim. He turned to another man nearby and asked for his help.

"I said, 'Give me a hand and let's get this guy.' And the other guy took off," he said.

It was only moments later that the victim's screams went silent. Mr. Caton knew he was too late.

Mr. Caton jumped off the bus, and was met by a trucker who had stopped after seeing the commotion. The trucker grabbed a crowbar and Mr. Caton got a hammer and they tried to contain the attacker on the bus. The attacker swung his knife at them through the partially closed bus door.

Then the incident became even more macabre. The attacker returned to the victim's side and began sawing through his neck. A few moments later, he walked to the front of the bus holding a decapitated human head, displaying it to the 34 passengers and the bus driver standing outside.

"I got sick after I saw the head thing," Mr. Caton said. "Some people were puking, some people were crying, some people were shocked."

The killer, meanwhile, appeared unfazed.

"He just looked at us and dropped the head on the ground, totally calm," Mr. Caton said.

Reports from the scene indicate the man then ate pieces of the corpse.

It was at that point that the RCMP arrived and a standoff developed, with armed officers surrounding the bus.

For more than three hours the man taunted police, moving around the bus and cutting away at the corpse. Around 1:30 a.m. local time, he broke a window and tried to jump out but was quickly arrested.

At the scene Staff Sergeant Steve Colwell could offer no explanation for what prompted the attack, and had no information on whether the attacker was known to police or had a history of violence or instability.

Police did not release the victim's name because they had not been able to notify his family. But CTV reported Friday that his family learned of the attack through the media.

Police praised the reaction of the bus driver and passengers, which they say may have averted further injuries.

"They were very brave. They reacted swiftly and calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured," Staff Sgt. Colwell said. "It's not every day that someone gets stabbed on a bus. I imagine it would be fairly traumatic for the other passengers on the bus and the way they reacted was extraordinary."

The passengers were eventually taken to an RCMP station in Brandon to be questioned, and then put up for the night in a local hotel. Most stayed up late, bleary-eyed strangers gathering in small groups, talking through a horrifying event that defied rational explanation.

"I tried to lay down at 4 o'clock this morning and I was up 10 minutes later, because every time I close my eyes I see this man in the window with some guy's head I just smoked a cigarette with an hour before," said passenger Cody Olmstead, who was on his way home to Nova Scotia.

Mr. Olmstead may have been the last person to speak to the victim before he was killed. He said they exchanged pleasantries, but not much more. The young man, who was about 5 foot 8 and 150 pounds, was dressed in baggy, hip-hop clothing, passengers said.

"He seemed to be all right. I didn't get to know him," he said. "He just told me where he was going. I told him where I was going."

At first, Mr. Olmstead said, he thought it was a regular fistfight. But when somebody yelled "knife," everyone started to run.

"What can you do when a man's got a knife the size of, you know, it's a big knife. So we just tried to stay out of the way," he said.

He said he didn't notice any tension between the two men beforehand, or even a minor incident that could have sparked a confrontation.

"No, there was no tension. The guy got on the bus, sat down beside the fellow. The fellow offered him the seat, woke up, said, 'Yeah, go ahead,' fell back asleep. Next thing you know, he's getting stabbed repetitively," he said. "And then I guess he cuts buddy's head off, and he walks up to the door, holds the head in the door and just looks at him, crazy like, and just drops the head."

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called Thursday's incident horrific and said his heart goes to the family of the victim. However, he played down the possibility of enacting tough security measures in Canada's bus terminals, similar to what exists in airports.

"People should always be open to looking at precautionary measures. But let's keep in mind that as bizarre and tragic as this is, it is extremely rare," Mr. Day said.

He also dismissed talk by some opposition MPs of a "knife registry," saying that millions of them are bought each year simply for kitchen use. He added that there are already provisions in the Criminal Code against crimes and assaults.

Speaking at a Conservative Party caucus meeting, Mr. Day said he does not want to jeopardize the investigation, but added he wants to see the killer "convicted in court."

Grief counsellors from the Brandon Regional Health Authority were made available to the passengers at the hotel Wednesday night. They were eventually allowed to complete their journey to Winnipeg, even though all their possessions had to be left on the bus while police continued their search of the crime scene.

Greyhound paid for them to buy clothes Thursday, and later transported them into Winnipeg, where some were reunited with anxious family members late in the afternoon.

The bus remained parked at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway Thursday, about 20 kilometres west of Portage La Prairie, as forensic teams sifted through evidence.

With reports from Joe Friesen in Winnipeg and Daniel Leblanc in Lévis, Que.


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Beheaded man identified, Gabrielle Giroday and Ian Hitchen, July 31.

BRANDON, Man. - Screaming passengers fled in terror from a Greyhound bus as an unidentified fellow passenger suddenly stabbed a man sleeping next to him, decapitated him and waved the severed head at horrified witnesses standing outside.

The apparently unprovoked assault left 36 men, women and children stranded Wednesday night on the shoulder of the darkening Trans-Canada Highway near Portage la Prairie, Man., about 85 kilometres west of Winnipeg, watching while the bus driver and a driver of a nearby truck shut the crazed attacker inside the bus with the mangled victim.

A number of tribute groups on the social networking website Facebook identified the victim as 22-year-old Tim McLean.

Tim McLean, 22, has been identified in various Facebook tribute pages as the victim in Wednesday's stabbing and beheading aboard a Winnipeg-bound Greyhound bus in Manitoba. This photo is from Maclean's myspace page.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, RCMP confirmed they have a suspect - who is not believed to be from Manitoba - in custody, but offered few new details about this baffling homicide. The suspect is expected to be formally charged Friday.

"By the time the police arrived, the driver and the remaining passengers had all safely exited the bus," said Sgt. Steve Colwell.

He said officers could see the man walking around inside the bus, but said he refused to exit. The standoff lasted for hours.

"At 1:28 a.m., the suspect . . . attempted to jump out of the bus after breaking a window. He was immediately subdued and arrested without incident and is currently in RCMP custody," Colwell said.

The suspect's name has not been released.

"He didn't do anything to provoke the guy. The guy just took a knife out and stabbed him, started stabbing him like crazy and cut his head off," said Garnet Caton, 26, a passenger on the Edmonton-to-Winnipeg bus.

"Some people were puking, some people were crying, other people were in shock. . . . Everybody was running, screaming off the bus."

Caton said the attacker was only on the bus for a brief time, after boarding in western Manitoba.

Passenger Cody Olmstead said he had been watching a movie on the bus just before the attack began.

"We were watching Zorro; next thing I know, I hear someone screaming."

Olmstead, 21, told reporters he had smoked a cigarette earlier in the trip with the victim, who got on the bus in Edmonton.

He said the victim said he was going to Winnipeg.

After the bus pulled over and the terrified passengers fled, Olmstead said the attacker was taunting those outside with the victim's severed head.

"He came back, standing in the doorway with the head, looked at him, dropped the head and went back and started cutting buddy back up."

He said when police showed up, the taunting continued.

"He come up and picks the head up and he's waving it in the window. I just smoked a cigarette with this man earlier - like, the head. He's shaking it back and forth in the window."

Caton said he and other passengers prevented the attacker from getting off the blood-soaked bus by threatening him with makeshift weapons - a hammer and a crowbar.

"We were telling him, 'Stay put, stay put, stay there, don't try to come out.' He tried to get the bus working and the bus driver disabled the bus somehow in the back. I'm not sure how he did it, and at that point, I think the police showed up," he said, adding officers rushed them away.

Caton and other passengers said the attacker and his victim, who was listening to music on headphones, were sitting together at the rear of the bus, and the attack appeared to be unprovoked; no words were exchanged.

He told a TV station the attacker had actually changed seats to sit next to his victim just before the killing.

Caton described the man who attacked the passenger as bald and wearing sunglasses. He seemed oblivious to others when the stabbing occurred, said Caton, adding he was struck by how calm the man was.

"There was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy," he said.

Caton said the victim boarded in Edmonton, was wearing hip-hop clothing and appeared to be around 20 years of age.

After the killing, the other passengers were later taken to Brandon, Man., to be interviewed by police and to stay overnight at a hotel there.

Crisis counsellors were also at the hotel to provide support to the passengers, and counsellors could be seen chatting with them outside the hotel as groups went out to local stores for snacks or to smoke cigarettes.

One small boy, who was with an adult man and woman, was given a plush teddy bear by a crisis health worker.

"The first thing I heard was something like a terrible type (of) yowl, and that was from the guy who got stabbed," said an elderly woman on the bus, from Winnipeg.

The woman and her adult daughter said they were three or four rows in front of the man when the attack began.

"(My daughter said) 'Oh my God,' and everybody else started screaming," she said. "They had terror in their eyes."

Two other passengers on the bus, a 22-year-old man and a 21-year-old woman from France, said they were heading to Winnipeg after visiting the woman's father in Whitehorse. The 22-year-old man said in French that he saw a man holding a long knife repeatedly stab another passenger. He and his girlfriend said they were shocked by the attack, and the isolation in the middle of the prairie when it occurred.

"There was nowhere to go," she said.

Speaking in Quebec City, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the issue of safety on buses may need to be examined more closely once the legal process of this case is over.

"We're never closed to looking at how Canadians can be more safe and more secure," Day told reporters in Quebec on Thursday. "This particular incident, as horrific as it is, is obviously extremely rare."

Greyhound spokesman Eric Wesley, speaking from Texas, said drivers are trained to get help as soon as they can when incidents occur.

"This is very rare, unique occurrence. Bus transportation is one of the safest modes of transportation. This is highly unique that something like this happened," he said. "Our drivers are trained to provide the safest travel for all our passengers, and every time an incident occurs, they know to pull the bus over and call 911."

Wesley said counselling will be provided and monetary compensation will be determined on an individual basis.

"We are going to do whatever we need to provide the passengers with counselling or any other measures to make sure they're taken care of."


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Alleged bus butcher quiet in court, Joe Friesen, August 1.

PORTAGE LA PRAIRIE, MAN. -- The man accused in the beheading of a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba uttered not a word when he made his first court appearance Friday.

Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, his feet shackled, shuffled into a courtroom in Portage la Prairie, Man., with his head bowed. He did not make eye contact with anyone the entire time he was before the judge.

He would not even reply when the judge asked him if he was going to get a lawyer, and only nodded slightly when asked whether he was exercising his right not to speak.

The Crown asked for a psychiatric assessment, but the judge said he wanted to give Li a chance to talk to a lawyer about that.

“It's early and I think the judge just wants to respect his rights to ... speak to counsel and he's giving him that opportunity,” Crown prosecutor Larry Hodgson said outside court. “I don't think it will be very long that they'll allow him to do that.”

Mr. Hodgson said if Mr. Li doesn't get his own lawyer, the court could appoint one or the case could proceed anyway.

Mr. Li's next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday in Portage la Prairie.

Mr. Li is charged with second-degree murder in the gruesome slaying of Tim McLean, 22, on a Greyhound bus that was travelling from Edmonton to Winnipeg. Police have not identified the victim, but friends say it was Mr. McLean.

Passengers say the young man was stabbed repeatedly before he was beheaded and his body carved up. Police have only confirmed that a man was stabbed.

Some passengers also described Mr. McLean's attacker as a big man who weighed at least 200 pounds.

The man who appeared in court Friday wearing a grey T-shirt and prisoner's vest appeared to be about five-foot-eight or nine with a stocky build.

Mr. Hodgson couldn't offer many details about Mr. Li.

“I know he was from Edmonton. I don't know why he was on the bus. That's still under investigation.”

The RCMP said Mr. Li has no known criminal record.

Meanwhile, tributes to the victim were pouring into social networking and media websites. A Facebook website called “R.I.P. Tim” quickly sprang up after news of the attack.

“I can't believe this is happening,” wrote Leah Dryburgh of Winnipeg. “Tim, you were the best guy ever. You didn't deserve this at all.”

Friends described Mr. McLean as a quiet, easy-going carnival worker who was heading home to Winnipeg after a job in Edmonton.

It was on that night that Greyhound bus 1170 rolled across the darkening prairie. Passengers were dozing off as The Legend of Zorro played on the television screen.

An aboriginal man of about 18 or 20, making his way home to Manitoba from Edmonton, was sitting on his own in the back row, headphones covering his ears, sleeping with his cheek resting on the window pane.

He barely acknowledged the 40-year-old man in sunglasses who, having boarded the bus in Brandon, first sat near the front, then walked down the aisle, slid his bags into the overhead bin, and sat down next to him.

The strangers sat together in silence for a half hour or more, said Garnet Caton, a 26-year-old seismic driller who was in the row ahead.

Then the calm of an otherwise unremarkable bus ride was shattered by a sound so chilling it could only be described as somewhere between a dog howling and a baby crying.

“It was a blood-curdling scream,” he said. “I turned around and the guy sitting right [behind] me was standing up and stabbing another guy with a big Rambo knife … Right in the throat. Repeatedly.”

Mr. Caton said the attack was utterly unprovoked.

He watched in horror as the man, described as tall and well-built with close-cropped hair, plunged his hunting knife into the victim eight or nine times, sending blood spraying across the back of the bus.

The driver, hearing the screams, pulled to the side of the road and opened the doors, allowing passengers to flee. They scrambled over one another and, in their haste, knocked an elderly woman to the floor. One mother, who was seated near the back, threw her toddler forward several rows to get the child away from danger, a witness said.

Mr. Caton, who served five years in the Canadian Forces and was closest to the attacker, paused before leaving, torn momentarily between concern for his own safety and the thought of abandoning the bleeding victim. He turned to another man nearby and asked for his help.

“I said, ‘Give me a hand and let's get this guy.' And the other guy took off,” he said.

It was only moments later that the victim's screams went silent. Mr. Caton knew he was too late.

Mr. Caton jumped off the bus, and was met by a trucker who had stopped after seeing the commotion. The trucker grabbed a crowbar and Mr. Caton got a hammer and they tried to contain the attacker on the bus. The attacker swung his knife at them through the partially closed bus door.

Then the incident became even more macabre. The attacker returned to the victim's side and began sawing through his neck. A few moments later, he walked to the front of the bus holding a decapitated human head, displaying it to the 34 passengers and the bus driver standing outside.

“I got sick after I saw the head thing,” Mr. Caton said. “Some people were puking, some people were crying, some people were shocked.”

The killer, meanwhile, appeared unfazed.

“He just looked at us and dropped the head on the ground, totally calm,” Mr. Caton said.

Reports from the scene indicate the man then ate pieces of the corpse.

It was at that point that the RCMP arrived and a standoff developed, with armed officers surrounding the bus.

For more than three hours the man taunted police, moving around the bus and cutting away at the corpse. Around 1:30 a.m. local time, he broke a window and tried to jump out but was quickly arrested.

At the scene Staff Sergeant Steve Colwell could offer no explanation for what prompted the attack, and had no information on whether the attacker was known to police or had a history of violence or instability.

Police did not release the victim's name because they had not been able to notify his family. But CTV reported Friday that his family learned of the attack through the media.

Police praised the reaction of the bus driver and passengers, which they say may have averted further injuries.

“They were very brave. They reacted swiftly and calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured,” Staff Sgt. Colwell said. “It's not every day that someone gets stabbed on a bus. I imagine it would be fairly traumatic for the other passengers on the bus and the way they reacted was extraordinary.”

The passengers were eventually taken to an RCMP station in Brandon to be questioned, and then put up for the night in a local hotel. Most stayed up late, bleary-eyed strangers gathering in small groups, talking through a horrifying event that defied rational explanation.

“I tried to lay down at 4 o'clock this morning and I was up 10 minutes later, because every time I close my eyes I see this man in the window with some guy's head I just smoked a cigarette with an hour before,” said passenger Cody Olmstead, who was on his way home to Nova Scotia.

Mr. Olmstead may have been the last person to speak to the victim before he was killed. He said they exchanged pleasantries, but not much more. The young man, who was about 5 foot 8 and 150 pounds, was dressed in baggy, hip-hop clothing, passengers said.

“He seemed to be all right. I didn't get to know him,” he said. “He just told me where he was going. I told him where I was going.”

At first, Mr. Olmstead said, he thought it was a regular fistfight. But when somebody yelled “knife,” everyone started to run.

“What can you do when a man's got a knife the size of, you know, it's a big knife. So we just tried to stay out of the way,” he said.

He said he didn't notice any tension between the two men beforehand, or even a minor incident that could have sparked a confrontation.

“No, there was no tension. The guy got on the bus, sat down beside the fellow. The fellow offered him the seat, woke up, said, ‘Yeah, go ahead,' fell back asleep. Next thing you know, he's getting stabbed repetitively,” he said. “And then I guess he cuts buddy's head off, and he walks up to the door, holds the head in the door and just looks at him, crazy like, and just drops the head.”

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called Thursday's incident horrific and said his heart goes to the family of the victim. However, he played down the possibility of enacting tough security measures in Canada's bus terminals, similar to what exists in airports.

“People should always be open to looking at precautionary measures. But let's keep in mind that as bizarre and tragic as this is, it is extremely rare,” Mr. Day said.

He also dismissed talk by some opposition MPs of a “knife registry,” saying that millions of them are bought each year simply for kitchen use. He added that there are already provisions in the Criminal Code against crimes and assaults.

Speaking at a Conservative Party caucus meeting, Mr. Day said he does not want to jeopardize the investigation, but added he wants to see the killer “convicted in court.”

Grief counsellors from the Brandon Regional Health Authority were made available to the passengers at the hotel Wednesday night. They were eventually allowed to complete their journey to Winnipeg, even though all their possessions had to be left on the bus while police continued their search of the crime scene.

Greyhound paid for them to buy clothes Thursday, and later transported them into Winnipeg, where some were reunited with anxious family members late in the afternoon.

The bus remained parked at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway Thursday, about 20 kilometres west of Portage La Prairie, as forensic teams sifted through evidence.

With reports from Joe Friesen in Winnipeg and Daniel Leblanc in Lévis, Que.


*************************************************************
Suspect called friendly, reliable employee, Josh Wingrove, August 1.

It was last summer when Vince Weiguang Li first gave Vincent Augert a call.

Mr. Li was responding to an advertisement for Vinco Newspaper Distribution, a company contracted to deliver newspapers in Edmonton. He was looking for part-time work to supplement his income from another job at a local McDonald's restaurant.He got the job, delivering to homes in the city's northeast end.

Mr. Li was a “quiet” man who spoke quickly, often making his English difficult to understand, Mr. Augert, 42, remembered. But he was friendly and a reliable employee.

Mr. Li, 40, showed up dutifully in the wee hours each morning for 13 months.

“He just came, picked up his papers, didn't talk to anybody. Picked up his papers, and did his things,” Mr. Augert said.

In early July, he asked Mr. Augert for a day off at the end of the month, for a job interview.

“ …He indicated he'd need a day off at the end of the month, and he had to go to Winnipeg for an interview, and he would get back to me when he knew the day.”

He didn't get back to Mr. Augert. Then came Monday, the last day Mr. Li showed up for work. On Tuesday, wondering where his trustworthy employee had disappeared to, Mr. Augert called his cellphone. A woman called back saying she was Mr. Li's wife.

“Monday morning he picked up his newspapers, and that was it. He picked up his newspapers, and fell off the face of the earth,” Mr. Augert said.

Mr. Li didn't show up Wednesday or Thursday, the same day reports of a gruesome attack aboard an eastbound Edmonton-to-Winnipeg Greyhound bus began to surface. Thursday evening, Mr. Augert spoke again with the woman he believed to be Mrs. Li. “She basically just said that she didn't know where he was, and that he had told her he'd left out of town on an emergency,” Mr. Augert said.

Throughout Thursday, the bus investigation progressed. A man was thought to have stabbed another man dozens of times.

Mr. Augert and his fellow newspaper distributors recognized the name and photo of the alleged killer the next day, and couldn't believe it was the Mr. Li they'dworked with.

“It was just a total shock. I would have never thought this would ever happen,” Mr. Augert said. “There was nothing to believe or suggest that he would have it in him to do something like this.”

Mr. Li appeared in court Friday, his feet shackled, not uttering a word. His wife couldn't be reached for comment.


*************************************************************
'Please kill me,' accused pleads, Joe Friesen, August 5.

ERICKSON, MAN. — Vince Li stood in a Manitoba courtroom Tuesday pleading for it all to end.

“Please kill me,” he said quietly, in a court packed with journalists and members of the victim's family.

Mr. Li, 40, is accused of stabbing and beheading 22-year-old Tim McLean, a complete stranger, who was sleeping next to him on a Greyhound bus bound for Winnipeg on July 30.

The judge ordered a psychiatric assessment to determine whether Mr. Li is fit to stand trial and whether he can be held criminally responsible for his actions. He has so far refused to speak to a lawyer.

Court was told Mr. Li spent four days in a Canadian psychiatric facility at some point, but the Crown is still trying to determine where and when. Crown lawyer Joyce Dalmyn said Mr. Li has not yet offered any explanation for what occurred aboard Greyhound 1170.

“No explanation, no note, almost nothing verbal,” Ms. Dalmyn said. “There is nothing to indicate it's anything other than a random and unprovoked attack.”

Meanwhile, new details have emerged about how Mr. Li spent the 24 hours before Mr. McLean was killed, including that he spent a night on a public bench, sold a laptop to a teenager that contained personal letters and photos, as well as a note that expressed feelings of guilt at leaving China, and confusion about life in Canada.

Mr. Li first stepped off the Greyhound bus from Edmonton in the tiny western Manitoba town of Erickson, population 456, just before 6 p.m. last Tuesday, July 29.

He strode across the street from the convenience store, which doubles as a bus depot, carrying five pieces of luggage under his arms. He was wearing small black sunglasses, a green shirt and a hat, and looked perfectly put together, like a businessman, said Darren Beatty, a 15-year-old student who works at a local gas station.

“The whole time I seen him he never took off his sunglasses,” Mr. Beatty said.

He watched him sit down on a shaded wooden bench next to the Co-Op grocery on Main Street, arranging his bags around him and resting his arms as though he were sitting in an arm chair.

He didn't move for the next three hours.

Around 9 p.m., he walked into the M and M store, where David Dauphinais's husband Darren was working alone.

Mr. Li hung around for what felt like ages, making Darren extremely uncomfortable. He called his husband, saying he was afraid to walk home.

“He was really freaked out,” Mr. Dauphinais said. “He said there was something about this guy that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Darren's a treaty Indian. When Darren gets nervous about somebody, I listen.”

Mr. Dauphinais rushed back from a meeting, only to find that Mr. Li had left the store when another customer walked in.

That night neither could sleep, fretting about the mysterious stranger. Mr. Dauphinais got out of bed at 3 a.m. and went down to check on his store. He saw Mr. Li sitting across the street, bolt upright on the bench, eyes wide open.

The following morning, Mr. Beatty was riding his bike when he saw a laptop on the curb. The screen was open and a hand-written sign said “$600 for sale, or best offer.”

He circled on his bike, noted the brand-new Acer 4200, and approached Mr. Li.

He offered $100, then immediately lowered it to $50. Mr. Li contemplated for a moment.

“That's probably enough to get you a bus ticket,” Mr. Beatty said. They settled on $60, plus a bag.

“I just thought he was a guy having a hard time,” he said, adding he never felt threatened. “He seemed lost. As I was talking to him about [the laptop] he muttered something about America. He had a thick accent so it was hard to understand.

“He seemed really happy to get some money in his hand.”

Mr. Beatty brought the computer home, and, after returning to get the password from Mr. Li (it was 7777), he unwittingly opened a window on the world of a man who would soon become one of Canada's most notorious accused killers.

He found more than 20 resumes, each tailored to a specific job application. One was for a police service, one for McDonald's, one for Wal-Mart. He also found dozens of photos that he assumed were taken by Mr. Li, including several of a black military plane that he thought were taken by an amateur in mid-air. There were photos of a formal Chinese military parade, and others of Chinese models in clothes, and some of mountains in British Columbia.

There was a letter in Mandarin, translated with Google translator, which seemed to be addressed to someone back in China. It said he was happy to be free, living under beautiful, free skies, but that he felt guilty for leaving China, and that everything in Canada was not as he expected, Mr. Beatty said.

Mr. Li, who recently worked as a newspaper deliveryman, immigrated to Canada in 2001 under the federal skilled worker program, though it's not known whether it was Mr. Li or his wife Anna who qualified. He's believed to be a Canadian citizen.

On the morning after the attack, Mr. Beatty got a call from the RCMP at work, saying an incident had occurred involving the man who sold him his laptop. An officer visited his home and seized the computer, saying he might get restitution but wasn't likely to get the laptop back.

“I asked the cop, “Did he use my money to buy a weapon? But he said, ‘No, not that we know of,' ” Mr. Beatty said.

Mr. Li returned to the M and M store around 1:30 p.m. Mr. Dauphinais said he stood waiting in an alley behind the store for the next 41/2 hours for the bus to arrive.

Just before 6 p.m., he boarded the Greyhound in Erickson, not Brandon as several witnesses reported, and sat down near the front. After a cigarette break in Brandon, he moved to the back and sat next to Mr. McLean.

Court was told Tuesday that when he was arrested, Mr. Li was carrying a plastic bag containing a human nose, ear and part of a mouth, believed to be Mr. McLean's, and that police officers saw him hacking at and eating the corpse. During the ensuing standoff RCMP officers heard him say, “I have to stay on the bus forever.”

Mr. Li's next court appearance is Sept. 8.



The nut of the story, by my lights, is right here:

Mr. Li first stepped off the Greyhound bus from Edmonton in the tiny western Manitoba town of Erickson, population 456, just before 6 p.m. last Tuesday, July 29.
...
“The whole time I seen him he never took off his sunglasses,” Mr. Beatty said. He watched him sit down on a shaded wooden bench next to the Co-Op grocery on Main Street, arranging his bags around him and resting his arms as though he were sitting in an arm chair. He didn't move for the next three hours. Around 9 p.m., he walked into the M and M store, where David Dauphinais's husband Darren was working alone. Mr. Li hung around for what felt like ages, making Darren extremely uncomfortable. He called his husband, saying he was afraid to walk home. “He was really freaked out,” Mr. Dauphinais said. “He said there was something about this guy that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Darren's a treaty Indian. When Darren gets nervous about somebody, I listen.”
...
The following morning, Mr. Beatty was riding his bike when he saw a laptop on the curb. The screen was open and a hand-written sign said “$600 for sale, or best offer.” He circled on his bike, noted the brand-new Acer 4200, and approached Mr. Li. He offered $100, then immediately lowered it to $50. Mr. Li contemplated for a moment. “That's probably enough to get you a bus ticket,” Mr. Beatty said. They settled on $60, plus a bag. “I just thought he was a guy having a hard time,” he said, adding he never felt threatened. “He seemed lost. As I was talking to him about [the laptop] he muttered something about America. He had a thick accent so it was hard to understand. “He seemed really happy to get some money in his hand.” Mr. Beatty brought the computer home, and, after returning to get the password from Mr. Li (it was 7777), he unwittingly opened a window on the world of a man who would soon become one of Canada's most notorious accused killers. He found more than 20 resumes, each tailored to a specific job application. One was for a police service, one for McDonald's, one for Wal-Mart.
...
Mr. Li returned to the M and M store around 1:30 p.m. Mr. Dauphinais said he stood waiting in an alley behind the store for the next 4 1/2 hours for the bus to arrive. Just before 6 p.m., he boarded the Greyhound in Erickson, not Brandon as several witnesses reported, and sat down near the front. After a cigarette break in Brandon, he moved to the back and sat next to Mr. McLean.

1. There is a difference between the resume you give to Wal-mart and the one you give to McDonald's?

2. For a full 24 hours he sat on the street of a tiny prairie town and nobody engaged him beyond ripping off his computer?


These photographs by André Salcedo are anything but a litle cup of cream cheeze and they are also nothing at all like the thumbnails - click on the thumbnail for a higher resolution image, worth a closer look, more than mere boobage:


Down.