thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
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,
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."*************************************************************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, area de prostituicao na Praca da Bandeira, teria sido a mesma sujeira, mau cheiro, mulheres deprimidas, clientes sujos e musica alta se o candidato a prefeito Vinicius Cordeiro (PTdoB) nao aparecesse para um rapido corpo-a-corpo. Estou visitando a cidade que ninguem ve disse Cordeiro, enquanto entregava um panfleto a Michele, "26 anos", barrigao de sete meses.Depois de pegar o folheto, ela saiu apressada. Nem quis ouvir a pregacao 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 e deficiente criticou o politico, que garantiu, no entanto, nunca ter estado ali antes.Vivian, "30 anos", duas filhas e tres carnavais na Vila, tinha outra reivindicacao ao improvavel futuro prefeito, um dos lanternas nas pesquisas. Deveriam fechar a rua e cobrar entrada. Tem homem que so vem para olhar, passar a mao na gente e encher o saco.Ao seu lado, a silfide Carla, pele e cabelos judiados mas belos olhos concorda: Fechar a rua seria bom, passa crianca e ve gente bebada, mulher com peito de fora...Da Baixada, Carla, "23", sustenta a filha ali ha tres anos. Mas so venho porque estou desempregada.Cordeiro garante que nao sabia que havia agendado a visita a tradicional zona de meretricio no Dia do
Orgasmo. Foi coincidencia. Espero que os cidadaos que frequentam este lugar tenham outra especie de orgasmo quando o virem recuperado. E o outro tipo de orgasmo? perguntou alguem ao candidato, que mostrou a alianca 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 expressao amarga delas, orgasmo ali, so masculino. As vezes ate acontece, mas e raro, nao e 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, so Vinicius Cordeiro, que comentou as pesquisas antes de ir embora: Ja passei o Filipe Pereira e agora vou atras do Molon.Foi bom pra voce?*************************************************************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."*************************************************************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.*************************************************************Eye-witness accounts of bus slaying, Cody Olmstead & Garnet Caton, July 31.Cody OlmsteadI 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