Bangor Daily News, Oct. 18
It is a bit simplistic to blame federal fisheries regulations for the sinking of the Candy B II, as the boat’s owner did Wednesday. The 46-foot boat was fishing for scallops when it disappeared last week in 200-foot deep water 50 miles southeast of Nantucket. The cause of the boat’s sinking remains a mystery, although some report it was hit by a passing ship and others say it was not seaworthy.

Four crewmen from Midcoast Maine were lost at sea. …

“The government pushed us into something we didn’t want to do,” Scott Knowlton, the owner of the Candy B II, told the Portland Press Herald. He was forced to use the craft to drag for scallops off the coast of Massachusetts, the Waldoboro fisherman said, because he couldn’t make a living groundfishing. …

The sinking of the Candy B II comes as federal and regional regulators are revising fishing rules, known as Amendment 13. A federal court judge ruled in 2001 that the National Marine Fisheries Service was not adequately protecting New England’s groundfish stocks such as cod, haddock and flounder. She ordered the agency to come up with better rules to stop overfishing. The rules are to take effect next May.

To comply with the judge’s order, the New England Fisheries Management Council drafted four possible solutions. One would be to reduce fishing days by as much as 65 percent. Others would lower cod catch limits and require gear changes, develop catch quotas for specific areas based on the number of fish found there or implementing total allowable catch quotas that would shut down areas once the quota is reached.

These options imperil fishermen at the expense of fish, Sen. Olympia Snowe said before the Candy B II incident. …

Finding the right balance, especially given the judge’s order that the rules be made tougher, will be extremely difficult. But if it prevents another tragedy like the sinking of the Candy B II, it will well be worth the effort.
Remember the casualties
Florida Today, Melbourne, Oct. 20
Sgt. Maj. James D. Blankenbecler, Pfc. Analaura Esparza Gutierrez, Spc. Spencer T. Karol, Spc. James H. Pirtle. Who are they, you ask?

Just four of the U.S. soldiers recently killed in the war in Iraq. …

The ongoing debate about the legitimacy of the intervention and its enormous monetary costs – a debate very necessary in our democracy – has diverted focus from the human suffering buried in those casualty figures.

That cannot be allowed to happen. …

Like the soldiers giving their lives almost daily in Iraq, the wounded deserve the nation’s deepest gratitude, including reassurance they’ll receive the governmental support and aid they’re due as veterans. …
Celebrating the pope
Birmingham (Ala.) Post-Herald, Oct. 21
They came – 50,000 of them – to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City last week. The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the election of Pope John Paul II, a man who is ailing but whose Christian career has been spent trying to make the world well and whole. He has had success. …

The pope has been described as someone who fits neatly in no ideological camp, someone quick to condemn both socialists and capitalists when their systems threaten the dignity of the individual. When he has decried the “culture of death,” he has had in mind more than abortion. He has also had capital punishment in mind. His overall message has been one of love and care as reflected in his faith, and he has inspired people worldwide. …

Some fault him as being insufficiently strong as the Catholic Church in America has been hit by scandal, and it is conceivable that in his younger, more robust days, he would have acted with more vigor to institute reform. He has not put the institution of the church above the principles of the institution, though, as was shown when he asked for forgiveness of church sins over the past two millennia. …

He clearly believed in repentance as crucial to accomplishing greater moral good. And greater moral good is what this pope has so magnificently fostered over the past quarter of a century.
Cover story for despots
Politiken, Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 21
It must now be clear … that the so-called war on terrorism includes big risks for both civil rights around the world and international stability.

At the same time that Russia now seems to be ready to follow the path of the United States and introduce “pre-emptive attacks” in its declared war on terrorism, a new U.N. report about the Arab world … points out that Arab leaders also use “the war on terror” to restrict the rights of its citizens.

It is not so much about Islam as a source to terrorism as western populists love to portray it, but despotic leaders who use the terror fight as a cover to pursue political opponents – whether they are Muslims or not.