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Well, one attitude was that it was an ingenious use of labour and machinery to extract a living from the environment, and who was I, a well-fed tourist, to criticize a people for this practice. Another was horror at the efficiency with which a landscape could be sterilized.

In "The Conversation" a Canadian online journal, I found this introduction to the practice of bottom trawling:

Bottom trawlers extract one-quarter of the world’s fisheries catches by weight and raise significant ecological, economic and social concerns.

Bottom trawling is widespread and problematic. Gears operate by dragging large weighted nets across the ocean floor (some as wide as a 45-storey building is tall), sweeping up most of the life they encounter along the way and destroying habitat.

That is the reality of a fishing technique and it's bad. In a social context there is an analagous process of "phishing" to gather data on people's private information for criminal purposes. That's wrong too and should be as rigorously policed as its ecologically-dangerous relative. Then there are the trolls, bots, algorithms, dis and mis-information activities that people willingly subscribe to and post laudatory comments on the home pages of. I call it social bottom-trawling and it's perfectly legal.

It scoops up all the bottom feeders of society - the ones with axes to grind, the partly educated, the sycophantic followers of power figures, the radicalized believers in the justice of whatever vengeful activities their leaders encourage. Into the nets or networks of such cliques fall the angry, the disillusioned, the believers in retribution against some element in society that they believe has disenfranchized them or has been given some unearned benefit while they were passed over. It may even operate in a journal near you.

Look at these two articles describing a judicial finding by the United Nations Int'l. Court of Justice, (red text emphasis is mine) first from the Simon Weisenthal Centre:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), released a statement today in response to the South African government's accusation presented to the International Court of Justice that Israel is guilty of genocide:

“It is no surprise that Hamas supporter, South Africa has turned to the International Court of Justice to demonize and de-legitimize Israel. This court has a panel of judges from countries like Russia, China, Lebanon, and Somalia that themselves should be in the docket for their violation of fundamental human rights and in some cases are guilty of crimes against humanity," Rabbi Cooper stated

"It is unclear if the Jewish State has any chance of winning its case on the justice of its actions or will yet again be the victim in a kangaroo court," he warned.

"Still, Israel will do its best to refocus an uncaring world on who the true victims are and who is responsible for loss of life and property in Gaza. It will document Hamas’ litany of crimes against humanity, its barbaric killings, beheadings, dismemberment, rape and other crimes targeting Israeli civilians in sovereign territory of the Jewish state.

This is from the International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) July advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is a landmark ruling. The ICJ’s findings are legally and morally persuasive, and set out obligations on all states, and on the United Nations itself. Two of its important conclusions are with respect to apartheid and reparations.

The court found Israel’s measures in the West Bank that impose and maintain separation between Palestinians and Israeli settlers are a breach of Article 3 of the UN treaty prohibiting racial discrimination.

Though the court’s language is a compromise, limited to separation, the finding means that Israel is responsible for apartheid. … Two of the ICJ’s 15 judges disagreed and said the court should not find apartheid. One of these, Judge Georg Nolte, asserted a standard of intent for apartheid that would be nearly impossible to prove, and said the court should not find racial segregation either.

And legal matters aside, here's the review of a film that predated the Oct. 7, 2023 incident:

from Israel-friendly StandWithUs:

The film “Israelism” is a complaint against the organized American Jewish community’s approach to Israel education in Jewish day and religious schools.  The film indicts the entirety of what it describes as the “American Jewish Establishment” for its “indoctrination” of Jewish youth to be “soldiers for Israel.” The core message: a new radical Jewish generation is rising to challenge the “old men” of the “Jewish establishment.” Apparently, ageism does not bother the filmmakers.

The main protagonists in “Israelism” are Simone Zimmerman and an American former IDF soldier identified only as Eitan. Zimmerman is a graduate of a Jewish day school education who started college at UC Berkeley as a pro-Israel activist, but eventually became an anti-Zionist. She is a co-founder of the anti-Israel group IfNotNow.

While “Israelism” includes interviews with supporters of Israel, their only purpose is to demonstrate American Jewish blindness to the actual “truth” of Israel’s guilt. None of them are given the opportunity to challenge the film’s central argument. Instead, they are only exploited to promote the film’s anti-Israel narrative.

“Israelism” studiously avoids nuance and complexity, opting for a simplistic and one-dimensional representation of American Jewish education as being in direct service to AIPAC. AIPAC is a bipartisan organization that works with both Democrats and Republicans to support the U.S.-Israel alliance. However, in the film the group is dishonestly associated solely with former President Trump and even white nationalists. The message: American Jewish youth are being brainwashed into white supremacy against their own interests.

Despite this leap in logic, “Israelism” won a number of awards – including from the SF Jewish Film Festival – and has been shown on numerous college campuses.

and from Al Jazeera News:

Israelism: The awakening of young American Jews

When two young American Jews raised to support Israel unconditionally witness the way Israel treats Palestinians, it changes their lives. They join a movement of young American Jews campaigning to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel and reveal a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity. Israelism sparked huge debate on American campuses even before the events of October 7, 2023.

It follows Simone Zimmerman, who visited Israel as a teenager, and Eitan who joined the Israeli army after graduating from high school as they discover the reality for Palestinians and radically revise their views. It includes interviews with academics and political activists, including Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Lara Friedman and a former director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abe Foxman.

Contributors suggest the narrative that young American Jews are fed almost entirely erases the existence of the Palestinians through education and advocacy, sometimes involving groups that organise free trips to Israel partially funded by the Israeli government. This film describes how influential this narrative is in shaping attitudes to Israel, not just in the United States but across the world.

So, I highlighted the words that designate attitude and I noted very aggressive, connotative terms in the first excerpts and more neutral or simply denotative ones in the second. Of course I chose the excerpts and so I have to acknowledge a process that reveals my own bias in the matter. Another way into a determination of the audience of postings is to scroll through some of the comments posted in response. It's not always a very uplifting experience, although sometimes a reader will provide excellent verifiable historical information to support their opinion.

We know that our personal data, from simple demographics to purchasing and political inclinations, will be harvested without our consent. Facebook users all know how the screen on which they paused will generate future presentations and also to never stop at any screen that has that small subtitle "sponsored". I am optimistic when I learn of school courses designed by teachers in an attempt to give students both warnings and avoidance strategies in the digital environment. With governments I have less confidence.

There is a bill currently before our Canadian parliament - Bill C-22  - which addresses the degree of public surveillance permitted to police agencies (including border protection). Parts of it have been criticized as being too invasive and warn against the possibility of data-sharing with US agencies. But the people doing the warning aren't all that immune from criticism themselves.

One of them is John Carplay who is a disbarred lawyer (Alberta & Manitoba), a member of the United Conservative Party of Alberta, a former member of the Wild Rose Party, an advocacy lawyer for churches in their legal bid to fight COVID-19 public health regulations and who was even criticized by Jason Kenney for describing the LGBT flag as a swatika. I don't give him a lot a credibility as an impartial commentator. He drags the bottom of the social seascape on some issues.

That doesn't mean Bill C-22 is benign. I'm going to stay tuned in to discussions on it and Commons debates, and I hear that parts of it have already been amended. But, back to the bottom trawlers.

If I promoted the views of John Carplay as a constitutional lawyer who has written for national news journals and I  listed him as the president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which he founded in 2010 and which describes its mission as one to defend "the constitutional freedoms of Canadians through litigation and education", it makes him look pretty sound. Only when you found out that he was disbarred in two provinces might you want to know a little more before trusting him as an unbiased source.

Beware the high-sounding names. Here's a list of news "sources" that need scrutiny before being granted our trust as pure news outlets. I came across them in a post and did some checking myself before putting them here for you to read. The source of my checks was most frequently https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s= ; I also, however, read some of the items published by these outets and the comments from some folk happily in their net. Beware!

Frontier Society

Rebel News

Canada Proud

True North / Juno News

Western Standard

The Post Millennial

LifeSiteNews

The Epoch Times

Canada First

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

The following is the type of report you get from mediabiascheck.com when you want to scrutinize these media sources. And for balance, they also critically analyze what we would call "left-leaning" journals and organizations. Here's their take on the last organization in the above list.

Launched in 2001, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, or FDD, is a Washington DC-based Neoconservative think tank focusing on national security and foreign policy. Clifford D. May is the founder and President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Mark Dubowitz is the CEO and also a former Trump adviser on Iran.

According to Financial Times, “Mark Dubowitz is an Iran hawk who advises the Trump administration, wants Mr. Trump to decertify the current deal to secure further leverage with Europeans.” The mission statement of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies indicates “to promote pluralism, defend democratic values and fight the ideologies that drive terrorism.”

Funded by / Ownership

According to a left-leaning ThinkProgress article dated July 19, 2011, about the major donors of FDD, “Most of the major donors are active philanthropists to ‘pro-Israel’ causes both in the U.S. and internationally. With the disclosure of its donor rolls, it becomes increasingly apparent that FDD’s advocacy of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, its hawkish stance against Iran, and its defense of right-wing Israeli policy is consistent with its donors’ interests in ‘pro-Israel’ advocacy.”

Well, you probably didn't have to read the whole entry to get an idea of the politics guiding that foundation, and we're both left wondering just how seriously they're defending democracy. And you're also probably as tired of my carrying on about these bottom trawlers as I am of writing about them, and so I'll go watch some news and retire to read Her Ladyship a bedtime story.

It's the weekend and the sun is shining in Victoria and my garden is happier than it's been in a long while. And in a month I'll be fishing myself.

With a fly rod.

On a beach.

For salmon.