Mood:  chillin'

Z3 readers I found this article about our frinds on the Sea Shepherd that was published on a right wing website.

Here is where the original article is located:

http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/oid/347 

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
P.O. Box 2616, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
Phone 310-456-1141 | Fax 310-456-2488 | Email seashepherd@seashepherd.org 



“We’re not a protest organization, we’re a policing organization,” Paul Watson has said of his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS). A pirate organization is more like it. Sporting the skull and crossbones, his black or battleship-gray ships sail menacingly through the waves. They are painted with the names of the boats Watson has rammed and sunk.

The ships are fitted with water cannons, a concrete-filled bow made for ramming, and an attachment dubbed the “can opener” that can tear open a boat’s hull. In his book Earth Warrior, David Morris writes that Watson wears a long bowie knife at his side and carries AK-47s on board. He blasts Richard Wagner’s rousing “Ride of the Valkyries” to herald his arrival and terrify his victims.

SSCS’s mission is to stop fishing of which it disapproves. Its preferred methods? Ramming and sinking fishing ships, throwing butyric acid on their decks, and firing machine guns. Watson argues that United Nations resolutions authorize him to commit violent acts. But he regularly interferes with fisherman and hunters who are committing no crime. He serves as judge, jury, and executioner -- while enjoying the same tax-exempt status as universities and churches.

Some of the animal-rights movement’s most notorious terrorists got their start with SSCS. One of them, convicted arsonist Rodney Coronado, had Watson’s approval to plan and execute an attack on Iceland’s whaling industry. He and a colleague sank two of the fleet’s four ships and destroyed a processing facility.

The Birth of Violence

SSCS is run with an iron fist by its founder, “Captain” Paul Watson. “When this ship becomes a democracy,” he likes to say to his crew, “you’ll be the first to know.” Watson is a dyslexic who “progressed from deckhand to able seaman without knowing how to tie a knot” with the Canadian Coast Guard and Norwegian and Swedish merchant marines.

In Vancouver, Watson joined a group of anti-war activists who attempted to forcibly shut down American nuclear tests. These radicals branched out into environmental activism and became Greenpeace, of which Watson was a founder. But Watson’s violent tactics became too much for Greenpeace, which kicked him out in 1977, after he assaulted seal hunters. Watson now assails his old comrades for being too wimpy, calling Greenpeace “the Avon ladies of the environmental movement.”

Soon after Watson’s eviction from Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd and its ship-ramming philosophy were born. SSCS’s band of pirates have disrupted the legal Canadian seal hunt, attacked whaling ships and fishing boats using driftnets, and taken credit for spiking (inserting large nails into) thousands of trees. The group has sunk at least ten ships in Iceland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, South Africa, and the Canary Islands. Watson has even sunk his own ships rather than let the authorities take them. And he has spent time in the jails of Canada and the Netherlands. “Any whaling ship on the ocean is a target for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,” he has said.

Watson’s love for marine life doesn’t stop him from eating fish. “Paul, who likes hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches equally, interprets veganism as a form of philosophical lunacy,” David Morris writes in Earth Warrior. Morris’s book details often-hilarious disputes between Watson and the vegan crewmembers. One standoff ensued when Watson ordered the vegans to retrieve a driftnet left by an escaped fishing vessel. The crew took an agonizingly long time, trying to free every squid caught in the net, about which Watson couldn’t care less. He didn’t even mind profiting from the work of the ship he threatened -- Morris reports that he later sent his chef over to the net to “requisition a few squid for dinner.”

On the Fringe

Paul Watson has used his aggressive and illegal tactics to further other political causes. In 1992, replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria retraced Columbus’ voyage on its 500th anniversary. Watson, with Canadian Indians aboard his ship, confronted the Spanish fleet and demanded a written apology -- threatening to sink the Santa Maria if the Spaniards didn’t comply. Watson received his written apology from the terrified captain.

Watson also controls two covert groups under the SSCS umbrella. He established the Oceanic Research and Conservation Action Force (O.R.C.A. FORCE) with his ex-wife Lisa DiStefano (a former Playboy model). This shadowy undercover group damages and destroys ships at dock. Their agents have scuttled ships in Taiwan and Norway.

Watson’s second group, the Coeur du Bois (Heart of the Wood), is an underground group of tree-spikers. Watson claims to have invented tree spiking, whereby activists hammer large nails into trees about to be logged in an effort to hurt lumberjacks. Watson claims the group has spiked over 20,000 trees. In 1987, a California mill worker was horribly disfigured after his blade struck two spikes in a tree, almost severing his jugular vein. But Watson is unrepentant. “Those loggers don’t give a damn for future generations,” he said. “And if they don’t have any compassion for the future, I don’t have any compassion for them.”

Watson claims his group was the first to produce videotaped evidence that U.S. tuna seiners were killing dolphins, and he argues that commercial fisheries are callously emptying the seas. He recently called for governments to prohibit the catch of fish to feed livestock and pets. And he is collaborating with Indian groups in British Columbia to oppose all salmon farming.

Ultimately, he advocates the total shutdown of the global fishery industry. “There is only one solution to the problem of over-fishing and the collapse of the fisheries worldwide,” reads one Sea Shepherd press release. “The answer is simply to say ‘no to fish.’”

One of Watson’s latest escapades has landed him in some serious trouble. According to The Tico Times, Central America's foremost English-language newspaper, Costa Rica is investigating him for attempted murder after Costa Rican fishermen said he attacked them when he tried to force their boat into a Guatemalan port in April 2002. A judge ordered him to stay in Costa Rican territory. A defiant Watson instead fled the country.

Questionable Donors

Where does Watson get the funds for his exploits? In part, from an eclectic cadre of shadowy personalities.

That includes Susan Bloom, a long-time donor to the most extreme factions of the environmental and animal-rights movement. Bloom was the founder and main financier of the British Columbia animal-rights group Bear Watch, which employed David Barbarash, a former “spokesman” for the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Paul Watson has hosted at least one Bear Watch fundraiser.

Ann Johnston gave SSCS almost $2.7 million in stock in 1997. Her husband, Pritam Singh, is a real estate developer and a member of SSCS’ financial and management advisory board. According to the Key News Journal, he’s under investigation by the FBI for his questionable business dealings. One Key West attorney has also filed a civil lawsuit against Singh, alleging almost 20 years of criminal activity -- including racketeering and fraud. Singh was fined $1.2 million by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision in 1995. And he quietly settled a lawsuit filed by members of his sales staff who said he illegally withheld their commissions.

Johnston’s 1997 stock donation included shares of a company named Northern Development Associates, a for-profit business which is now 100-percent owned by Sea Shepherd.

Corporate records show that the company’s officers include Watson’s ex-wife Lisa DiStefano and longtime associate Michael Kundu. Northern Development’s mailing address is the same as Pritam Singh’s Key West Golf Club. Watson and DiStefano also serve, with Singh, on the board of something called the Sea Trek 2000 Foundation. The mailing address for that group is the same as one of Singh’s Miami lawyers.

Paul Watson craves attention. His dramatic physical attacks are designed to gain maximum media exposure. He has written that “The hint of romance and piracy or the possibility of violence guaranteed coverage.”

In addition to taking credit for inventing tree-spiking, Watson says he was the first to put his body between a whale and a harpoon. Indeed, he is known in the environmental movement as something of a show-off. Even long-time terrorist colleague Rodney Coronado joked, “If lightning struck a whaling ship, Paul would accept responsibility for it.”

Of course, the money doesn’t hurt, either. Crewmembers are charged $1,000 for the honor of working long hours on an expedition. Watson has long claimed (as recently as his 2002 memoir) that he has kept his vow to “never accept a single dollar for myself from charitable donations.” The group’s 2001 tax return, however, indicates Watson was paid $40,000 as president and CEO. He also makes money from lectures, books, and teaching at the Arts College of Design in Pasadena.

But neither fame nor fortune is really Watson’s primary motivation. He’s a misanthrope who prefers porpoises to people. “I couldn’t understand her compassion for humanity,” he says of an old girlfriend. “She chose people and I chose the Earth, and thus we began to drift apart.” He likes to accuse those who care about people of being “anthropocentric.” And he constantly refers to humans as mere apes.

Watson also has a seething hatred of the people whose livelihood he threatens. He’s an elitist who, despite his upbringing among maritime fishermen, has no sympathy for those who make their living from the ocean. He begins his book Seal Wars by calling Canadian sealers “the uneducated and the institutionally unemployed,” “barbarians,” and “piss-drunk on cheap booze.” Western Canadians who support a wolf control program are likewise branded “rednecks.”

Of his native Canada, Watson has said he “despise[s] its government and dislike[s] its people.” Scandinavians, meanwhile, are “the children of the rapers of Ireland and executioners of the Celts.” The “bloodlust of these Viking offspring” who hunt whales made him “ashamed” of his Danish ancestry. And Watson once shouted through a megaphone at Makah Indians on a whale hunt: “Just because you were born stupid doesn’t give you any right to be stupid.”

Watson has wrangled with Sierra Club head Carl Pope, asking why the group wasn’t more concerned about human population growth, particularly in the U.S. He has no sympathy for immigrants wishing to leave behind the horrid conditions of third-world countries to make a better life here. In fact, the desire to eat and have leisure time is almost a crime for Watson: “When an immigrant becomes an American citizen, they increase their rate of resource consumption by a factor of twenty.”

To Watson, saving seals is more important than saving human beings.

Though self-named a “Conservation Society,” Sea Shepherd is a violent organization. Its purpose is to ram and sink ships. Earth Warrior author David Morris details one such voyage in search of driftnetters. Even in this gushing account, Morris notes, “The gunfire that accompanied our attack on the Japanese ships was not defensive.” So it’s no surprise that Sea Shepherd’s expeditions have served as a fitting training ground for other animal-rights militants.

Rodney Coronado has long been involved with criminal groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which the FBI has identified as the country’s most dangerous domestic terrorist threat, and the special-interest ALF subset known as SHAC. He was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison for the 1992 arson of a Michigan State University research laboratory. He admitted to at least six other arsons in a November 30, 2002 speech. In January 2003, he demonstrated to a group gathered at American University the “correct” way to build a firebomb out of household materials. And Paul Watson gave him his start.

Coronado joined SSCS immediately after graduating from high school in 1984. Two years later, he proposed a plan to covertly attack Iceland’s whaling industry. He and David Howitt, a British bicycle mechanic, destroyed a whale-processing facility there, and sank two of the Icelandic whaling fleet’s four ships. Watson supported the plan and SSCS took responsibility for the destruction.

In the mid-’90s, Coronado again wanted to join a SSCS expedition. But he was wanted for questioning by the FBI and Watson said no. Watson was regretful, however, calling him “an excellent crew member and the best damn activist I ever had.” These words give the lie to Watson’s claim that “we have absolutely no links with the so-called Animal Liberation Front.”

SHAC organizer and spokesman Joshua Harper has also served as a SSCS crewmember. Harper describes his goal as “the complete collapse of industrial civilization.” A young man with an impressive criminal record, Harper was jailed in 1997 for assaulting a police officer, and in 2001 for violating a summons to testify regarding ALF and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He was also incarcerated in 1999 for attacking Native Americans on a whale hunt; Paul Watson’s ex-wife Lisa Distefano, and current wife, Allison Lance Watson, were also charged in that attack.

In April 2002, Allison Lance Watson was ordered to appear before a federal grand jury along with a number of other animal-rights activists. Former ELF spokesman Craig Rosebraugh issued a press release announcing her subpoena. Watson’s attorney was Stuart Sugarman, the same lawyer who represented Rosebraugh when he appeared before a U.S. House of Representatives committee in 2002 and refused to answer questions.

Alex Pacheco is another activist who started his career with SSCS, in the late 1970s. He now serves on one of its advisory boards. Pacheco is co-founder and former chairman of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization whose leaders openly advocate terrorist violence. “Arson, property destruction, burglary, and theft are ‘acceptable crimes’ when used for the animal cause,” he once said. Pacheco is rumored to be a “commander” of ALF and has been subpoenaed in connection to ALF activities.

Watson once held a fundraiser for the “Kentucky Fried Five,” a group of animal-rights activists who vandalized a fast-food outlet in Toronto in 1987, claiming they were “scapegoats.” An empty KFC chicken bucket was passed around for donations. The hooligans pleaded guilty to mischief resulting in willful damage, and possession of burglary tools and stolen property. Two of the five were also accused of possessing explosives, carrying weapons, and vandalizing the Toronto University dentistry school, but those charges were dropped as part of a plea-bargain. One of the latter two, David Barbarash, has served as an ALF spokesman, and The Oregonian said the group was an ALF cell.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:02 PM PDT

Updated: Friday, 19 June 2009 4:03 PM PDT

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Mood:  incredulous

Fake Rape Photos Re-Emerge Again To Discredit Real Torture Scandal

Staged photos lifted from porn websites purporting to be images of U.S. troops raping female detainees at Abu Ghraib are again circulating at the height of the torture scandal, discrediting the very real and admitted accounts of rape described in Major General Antonio Taguba’s military report into the Abu Ghraib prison.

Despite the fact that these photos were vehemently discredited and proven to be taken from porn websites when they first emerged in 2004, they are again being erroneously cited as examples of photos showing rape that the Obama administration is blocking from public release - providing debunkers with ammunition to dismiss the validity of the torture scandal altogether.

In light of the Pentagon and the White House’s bizarre efforts to deny the reality of their own internal investigation and pull a crude bait and switch yesterday in claiming that the blocked photos do not show rape, it can only be assumed that these fake photos are again being pushed as a means of discrediting the proven instances of U.S. prison guards and others raping women and children at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities.

“New photos obtained by Press TV have revealed alleged sexual harassment and rape of Iraqi prisoners at US-run Abu Ghraib detention center by American soldiers. The alleged pictures illustrate American soldiers raping and sexually harassing Iraqi detainees,” states the report.

However, the photos do not illustrate American soldiers at all, the uniforms worn by the men in the images are clearly not those worn by U.S. troops in Iraq, they are cheap military fatigues that anyone could find at Wal-Mart or any other discount clothing store.

Furthermore, it was admitted five years ago that the photos were taken from porn websites after they were first published by the Boston Globe.

“Graphic photos appearing on Arabic websites of U.S. servicemen raping and sexually abusing Iraqi women were actually taken from American and Hungarian pornography sites,” reported World Net Daily.

The photos, which were published under the headline “The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos,” by a Tunisian website, were lifted from an American porn website called “Babes in Iraq,” as well as a Hungarian porn website called “Sex in War.”

The websites were registered under the HotSpotCity.com domain, which hosts “cheap unrestricted adult XXX porn websites” and is a subsidiary of MacNew Enterprises. Owner Linda MacNew told World Net Daily that the photos had originated from the porn websites and they were subsequently shut down.

The Boston Globe later had to apologize for publishing the fake photos.

The fact that the photos are being cited as proof of rape at Abu Ghraib when they are clearly lifted from amateur porn websites, a point that was confirmed no less than five years ago, makes it highly suspicious that these images are again circulating as the torture scandal reaches new heights and threatens to embroil top Democrats, who are complicit because they gave their approval for the Bush torture program in the first place.

It seems that every time the torture scandal escalates, fake images, video and testimony is released to poison the well and convince the public that the whole issue is a hoax.

In May 2006, a video emerged in which a self-proclaimed Army Ranger called Jesse MacBeth claimed that his unit was told to kill Iraqi men, their wives and children indiscriminately if they didn’t explicitly follow orders. The video became wildly popular on the Internet but soon turned out to be a hoax, there was no record of MacBeth being an Army Ranger.

As soon as the video was declared a hoax, neo-cons like Michelle Malkin jumped on the issue to claim that accounts of Iraqis being indiscriminately killed were all fraudulent, despite the fact that a BBC News interview with soldiers who had served in Iraq, in which the troops admitted to witnessing war crimes, proved the allegations of indiscriminate murder to be true.

Similarly, at the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal in May 2004, the London Mirror published photos of British soldiers allegedly urinating on detainees in Iraq. The images were later proven to be fraudulent and the hoax was exploited by the corporate media and the government to discredit other proven cases of torture and abuse carried out by British soldiers in Iraq.

We see the same pattern over and over again - every time the torture scandal escalates, fake images are released to poison the well and dampen outrage about the very real torture and sexual abuse of women and children that is documented in the U.S. military’s own internal report into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

The fact that Press TV and the individual quoted in the article have fallen for this simplistic propaganda yet again is beyond belief. It’s a case of ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.’ We have alerted them to the hoax and hope to see the story removed as soon as possible before people like Michelle Malkin cite it as proof that the very real rape scandal is non-existent.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:38 PM PDT

Updated: Wednesday, 17 June 2009 11:43 PM PDT

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Mood:  energetic

Here are 10 work habits that you should try to break:

1. Procrastination A lot of people work best under pressure, or at least they say so. With everyone having a different personality, you can't say a strict schedule works best for all employees. Putting tasks off until the last minute, however, invites plenty of problems, even if you think the final result will be glorious.When you leave yourself no wiggle room to complete a task, you run the risk of encountering an unexpected obstacle that makes you miss the deadline. Even if the situation is out of your hands, everyone will be left wondering why you didn't plan better and account for last-minute emergencies.

2. Being a sloppy e-mailer E-mails are second nature to most people these days, and in informal communications they've become a digital Post-it note. We type out a message and send it without proofreading or double-checking the recipients. That's a recipe for disaster.If you haven't learned your lesson by now, the day will soon come when you accidentally "Reply All" to an e-mail and a slew of unintended readers receive a silly note you intended only your co-worker to read.

3. Confusing informal with disrespectful In many workplaces, the boss might be the decision maker, but he or she isn't the stern, humorless caricature you saw on TV. Using your supervisor's first name and going for some drinks after work are common in many industries. Still, you are the employee and the boss is the boss -- the one who can fire you and tell you what to do. Don't cross the line by talking to her as if you're talking to one of your direct reports or even your best friend. You need to show some respect for her authority.

4. Taking advantage of leeway Some companies are strict about the time you clock in and out. Others have guidelines but no hard rules, so you can arrive at 8:35 a.m. and no one cares. If over time you're arriving at 9:10 a.m. and leaving at 4 p.m. (with plenty of breaks in between), your reputation will suffer.This also goes for dress codes. Business casual is up to interpretation, but ripped jeans and concert tees probably don't fall under your company's accepted definition.

5. Refusing to mingle Plenty of wisdom lies in the advice not to mix personal and professional lives. However, refusing to take part in any social activity -- such as the office potluck or a happy hour -- will not help your career. You don't need to be the resident party animal, but being personable with your colleagues helps build camaraderie. You get to know other people better and they get to know you as more than the person they pass in the halls.

6. Always running late This isn't the same as abusing leeway; this is a matter of trust. If you're late to work, to meetings and with projects, your boss and colleagues will associate that trait with you.  When it's time for a promotion or to deal with an important client, everyone will think twice before giving you the opportunity. Who wants to trust the person who can't manage his or her time?

7. Being rigid One of the unfair aspects of the working world is that sometimes it seems you can't win. If you're hired to do a job, most bosses don't want you passing the day by reading your favorite book. The reason: You were hired to do a job, so do it. But if the boss comes to you with a new project that's outside the parameters of your usual duties, it's still yours to do. "You don't pay me to do that" isn't something you want to tell your supervisor.

8. Acting as the resident contrarian We all love your spirited personality, but try not to be the person in the meeting who always has a better idea and can tell you why everyone else's idea is dumb. Voices of opposition are often missing in many workplaces because too many eager employees want to be "yes" men and women. But too much negativity grates on nerves and makes people dread hearing your voice. Continue to be a critical thinker, but make sure you're doing what's best for the company and not just trying to be the loudest voice in the room.

9. Badmouthing the company With blogs, Facebook, Twitter and a host of other sites, you have plenty of opportunity to vent your frustration with life. If you're going to complain about how dumb your boss is and how much you hate your job, keep those rants private. The Internet is public domain and comments have a way of finding their way back to all the wrong people. If you wouldn't stand outside your boss's office and tell a co-worker how ready you are to quit, don't express the same thoughts in an open forum.

10. Politicking Office politics are often unavoidable, and sometimes having a grasp on what's going on can benefit you, but you shouldn't spend more time masterminding office warfare than you do working. Getting caught in the crosshairs of a workplace controversy can be out of your control, but if you're the one instigating the drama, you're earning a bad reputation. You're the person who starts trouble and whom no one trusts. That's the kind of notoriety that follows you from one workplace to another. 

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:25 AM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 16 June 2009 12:09 PM PDT

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Mood:  don't ask

By Dan Collyns
BBC News, Bagua Chica, Peru June 10 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8093729.stm

The removal by Peruvian riot police of thousands of native Amazonian protesters from a road they were blocking was the worst violence the country had seen in a decade.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PDT

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Mood:  bright

You seen it hear first Z3 Readers....

I can just see my new address ....

www.JoeAnybody.joe-anybody ^<example>

 http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE5576DM20090609?feedType=nl&feedName=ustechnology

By Paul Sandle

LONDON (Reuters) - Two thirds of businesses are unaware they will be able to use their own name in place of domain extensions such as .com, .org, or .net when Internet domains are liberalized next year, according to a survey.

The change would let the likes of Nike or Microsoft control their own domain and better exploit their brands, and also counter cyber-squatters who use variations of brands on the 280 or so existing domain extensions.

"If you have '.nike', for example, you can create real and specific branded Websites, like 'running.nike' or 'runlondon.nike'," Joe White, chief operating officer of domain registrar Gandi.net, told Reuters in an interview.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees domain names, is expected to start taking applications for new top-level domains early next year, said Future Laboratory, which conducted the research.

But the move is not on the radar of a majority of companies, the survey for Gandi.net found.

"(Companies) are generally completely unaware of this change coming down the line," said White. "This change has not yet permeated into the mainstream for businesses or consumers."

"However, those businesses which are aware actually see the prospect as being quite exciting," he said.

The price of $185,000 will initially limit applications to the largest corporations and organizations, said Tom Savigar, Strategy and Insight Director at The Future Laboratory.

ICANN is expecting 300-500 applications when it opens its doors in the first quarter of next year, he said.

"You'll see the big global corporations getting there early to own more of their online space," he said.

"(Owning their domain) could secure a higher level of credibility and recognition."

Smaller businesses will be able to use more specific extensions to match their business sector or geography such as ".london" or ".paris," he said.

The Future Laboratory surveyed 100 e-commerce managers; 50 from high-street companies and 50 from small and medium businesses online.

(Editing by Dan Lalor)

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PDT

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Mood:  down

6.2.09.... Hello Family Friends and faithful readers of the Z3 Report this article will make you sick to your stomach ... well the technology that is discussed will.  But I myself find this type of weaponry to be uncalled for and is Pandora's box of potential tools to be used on innocent people by the authorities.  Nasty toys in the hands of nasty people is not going to be of any service to our society.  Z3 Readers this type of technology (sic) is leading us down the slippery slope:

US firm says

handheld puke ray is ready to go

Pistol style chunder-gat

and

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PDT

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Mood:  don't ask

origanal article is here

http://tinyurl.com/pe9mgm 

BEIJING 2009 — In Tiananmen Square, police were ready to pounce at the first sign of protest. In Hong Kong, a sea of candles flickered in the hands of tens of thousands who vented their grief and anger.

Two starkly contrasting faces of China were on display Thursday, the 20th anniversary of the military's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators — from Beijing's rigid control in suppressing any dissent, to freewheeling Hong Kong, which enjoys freedoms all but absent on the mainland.

Tiananmen Square was blanketed by uniformed and plainclothes security officers who were ready to silence any potential demonstration, and there were few hints that the vast plaza was the epicenter of a student-led movement that was crushed on June 3-4, 1989, shocking the world.

Police barred foreign journalists from entering the square and threatened them with violence, even barring them from covering the daily raising of China's national flag.

Chinese and foreign tourists were allowed in Tiananmen as usual, although security officials appeared to outnumber visitors.

Dissidents and families of victims were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping government efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.

But in Hong Kong's Victoria Park, a crowd chanted slogans calling for Beijing to own up to the crackdown and release political dissidents. Organizers estimated its size at 150,000, while police put the number at 62,800.

"It is the dream of all Chinese people to have democracy!" the throng sang.

Hong Kong is one of the few places in China where the events of June 1989 are not off-limits, because the territory — returned by the British 12 years ago — operates under a separate political system that promises freedom of speech and other Western-style civil liberties.

"Hong Kong is China's conscience," Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Cheung Man Kwong told the demonstration.

In the candlelight, speakers recalled the terrifying events in Tiananmen, where a military assault killed hundreds who had gathered for weeks in the square to demonstrate for freedom and even erect a makeshift statue of liberty. Those killed were eulogized as heroes in the struggle for a democratic China, their names read aloud before the crowd observed a minute of silence.

"Hong Kong is the only place where we can commemorate, and we have to repeat this every year so our younger generations don't forget," said Annie Chu, 36, a Hong Kong tourism worker who says she has attended every vigil for the last 20 years.

Earlier in the day, the central government ignored calls from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and even Taiwan's China-friendly president for Beijing to face up to the 1989 violence.

The extraordinary security in Beijing came after government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr and blacked out CNN and other foreign news channels each time they showed stories about Tiananmen.

"We've been under 24-hour surveillance for a week and aren't able to leave home to mourn. It's totally inhuman," said Xu Jue, whose son was 22 when he was shot in the chest by soldiers and bled to death on June 4, 1989.

Police were also stationed outside the home of Wang Yannan, the daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathizing with the pro-democracy protesters, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Wang has never been politically active.

But Zhou was celebrated in Hong Kong. Tape recordings of Zhou recalling Tiananmen, used for his recently released posthumous memoir, were played over loudspeakers next to his portrait. One former student leader, Xiong Yan, stirred the crowd with predictions that "democracy will arrive in China."

Another student leader from 1989, Wu'er Kaixi, was forced to return to Taiwan on Thursday after flying to the Chinese territory of Macau the day before in an attempt to return home.

In Washington, Clinton said Wednesday that China, as an emerging global power, "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou urged China to lift the taboo on discussing the crackdown. "This painful chapter in history must be faced. Pretending it never happened is not an option," Ma said in a statement.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang attacked Clinton's comments as a "gross interference in China's internal affairs."

"We urge the U.S. to put aside its political prejudice and correct its wrongdoing and refrain from disrupting or undermining bilateral relations," Qin said in response to a question at a regularly scheduled news briefing.

Qin refused to comment on the security measures — or even acknowledge them.

"Today is like any other day, stable," he said.

Beijing has never allowed an independent investigation into the crushing of the protests in 1989, in which possibly thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens were killed. In one famous moment of resistance, a lone man holding shopping bags defiantly stood in front of a column of tanks on a street near the square.

Young mainland Chinese know little about the events, having grown up in a generation that has largely eschewed politics in favor of raw nationalism, wealth acquisition and individual pursuits.

But the issue still resonates with Hong Kong's younger generations.

"It's time for China to take responsibility for the killings," said Kin Cheung, a 17-year-old Hong Kong student who attended the yearly vigil for the first time Thursday. "They need to tell the truth."

___

Bodeen reported from Beijing, Marquez from Hong Kong. AP Writers Min Lee and Dikky Sinn in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:45 PM PDT

Updated: Thursday, 4 June 2009 4:27 PM PDT

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Mood:  energetic

Hey there  Z3Readers...  

You knew it was coming...you smelled the smoke before the fire.... hell I have been saying this or "years" .... sit back relax ...get mellow and read this three part article on "Leagalize It"

By John Dyer, MSN Money

^{http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/StockInvestingTrading/a-budget-cure-marijuana-taxes.aspx#pageTopAchor}

(click link for origan article and a video)

Definitive figures on the size of the untapped marijuana market don't exist. It's a gray market, after all. But there are plenty of studies indicating we are not talking about chump change.

In a 2007 study, Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, valued the American marijuana trade at $113 billion annually. Between drug enforcement and potential taxes, the federal government and the states were losing almost $42 billion a year by keeping marijuana illegal, the study indicated. Gettman is a former staff member of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a nonprofit that lobbies on Capitol Hill for marijuana legalization.

"It's a very large, significant economic phenomenon, and it is diverting an incredible amount of money from the taxable economy," Gettman said.

Miron says he is interested in the topic as a libertarian who believes the government shouldn't ban any drugs. He offers more-conservative numbers, estimating that federal and state treasuries would gain more than $6 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like alcohol or tobacco. At the same time, relaxing laws against use of marijuana would save nearly $8 billion in legal costs, he says.

The Obama administration seems to be inching toward a more permissive stance on marijuana. Last month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced he would end raids on clubs like Stein's, fulfilling a pledge Obama had made on the campaign trail.

"It's a major break from the 'just say no' mentality," said Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of NORML, referring to Holder's announcement.

Stein is somewhat relieved. The raids had been wreaking havoc on California's budding marijuana industry, he says. Two years ago he was forced to move one of his clubs, The Higher Path, to a new location on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, after the Drug Enforcement Administration sent his landlord a letter saying agents could seize the building.

"Medical marijuana is very, very satisfying, but it's very nerve-racking and dangerous," Stein said.

 St. Pierre says 13 states have adopted laws to allow medical marijuana, while an additional handful have decriminalized possession, meaning the penalties associated with marijuana are negligible.

Of course, critics of decriminalization are also vocal. Calvina Fay, the executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, says Gettman, Miron and others fail to account for marijuana's adverse side effects, from lethargy to impaired driving to tendencies among weed smokers to try more-serious drugs. "Those who are using drugs are less productive than those who aren't," Fay said.

A spokesman for the drug policy office declined to comment, saying the office wanted to wait until the Senate has confirmed Obama's drug czar nominee, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske.

But according to the FBI's most recent data, approximately 870,000 people nationwide were arrested on marijuana violations in 2007. Nearly 15 million Americans use marijuana on a monthly basis, according to the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The same study found that more than 100 million Americans had tried marijuana at least once in their lives. Advocates of decriminalization say those statistics argue against the vision of mass lassitude put forward by their opponents.

"Most people either did the drug themselves or their friends did," Miron said. "They know those extremes are not right."

California has come closest to outright legalization of the marijuana industry. Sacramento already collects around $18 million in sales taxes a year from $200 million worth of medical-marijuana purchases, according to data supplied by California's State Board of Equalization. Now Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco Democrat, is sponsoring new legislation that would legalize marijuana completely -- and tax it. The state estimates the proposal could generate $1.3 billion a year.

"The war on drugs has failed," Ammiano said. "It seems to me there is across both aisles that assessment, and California is in an egregious economic abyss. The economic situation makes (legalization) viable."

The pro-marijuana lobby argues that U.S. agriculture could expand significantly if farmers were allowed to openly cultivate weed. In a 2006 study, Gettman calculated that marijuana was one of the biggest cash crops in the U.S., with 56 million plants worth almost $36 billion.

In the United Kingdom, where restrictions on marijuana research are less onerous than in the U.S., companies such as GW Pharmaceuticals are moving quickly to develop other drugs from the plant. In the company's 2008 annual report, GW executives said they had received approval to market Sativex, a cannabis-derived painkiller, in Canada. The report said the company is seeking approval of the drug from European regulators and is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well.

A spokesman for the company, John Dineen of the London public-relations firm Financial Dynamics, says executives would prefer not to be quoted in a story about the economic consequences of marijuana legalization.

David Goldman, a patron of the Green Cross, a medical-marijuana dispensary in San Francisco, had no such compunctions. To Goldman, medical marijuana looks like a godsend that should be studied and expanded. After groin surgery a few years ago, he found he had troubling reactions to other painkillers, and he turned to marijuana.

"The constant pain is something I need to accept and is something for which cannabis has been invaluable," he said. "Why should we cede medical cannabis research to the U.K. when some of the best minds in medicine are in this country?"

Produced by Elizabeth Daza

Published April 30, 2009

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PDT

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Mood:  chatty

Hey my friendly Z3 Readers... this was an email from Greg Pallast...he is spot on ...and reporting what isn't in your local Corporate News.... read on my friends, this is sickening!

Screw the autoworkers.

They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders - led by Morgan and Citibank - expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6 billion.

The way these banks are getting their $6 billion bonanza is stone cold illegal.

I smell a rat.

Stevie the Rat, to be precise. Steven Rattner, Barack Obama's 'Car Czar' - the man who essentially ordered GM into bankruptcy this morning.

When a company goes bankrupt, everyone takes a hit: fair or not, workers lose some contract wages, stockholders get wiped out and creditors get fragments of what's left. That's the law. What workers don't lose are their pensions (including old-age health funds) already taken from their wages and held in their name.

But not this time. Stevie the Rat has a different plan for GM: grab the pension funds to pay off Morgan and Citi.

Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replace by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock - or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada - $6 billion right now and in cash - from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

Preventive Detention for Pensions

So what's wrong with seizing workers' pension fund money in a bankruptcy? The answer, Mr. Obama, Mr. Law Professor, is that it's illegal.

In 1974, after a series of scandalous take-downs of pension and retirement funds during the Nixon era, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA says you can't seize workers' pension funds (whether monthly payments or health insurance) any more than you can seize their private bank accounts. And that's because they are the same thing: workers give up wages in return for retirement benefits.

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."

"The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits."

Every business in America that runs short of cash would love to dip into retirement kitties, but it's not their money any more than a banker can seize your account when the bank's a little short. A plan's assets are for the plan's members only, not for Mr. Dimon nor Mr. Rubin.

Yet, in effect, the Obama Administration is demanding that money for an elderly auto worker's spleen should be siphoned off to feed the TARP babies. Workers go without lung transplants so Dimon and Rubin can pimp out their ride. This is another "Guantanamo" moment for the Obama Administration - channeling Nixon to endorse the preventive detention of retiree health insurance.

Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

"...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses."

By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.

This is dangerous business: The Rattner plan opens the floodgate to every politically-connected or down-on-their-luck company seeking to drain health care retirement funds.

House of Rubin

Pensions are wiped away and two connected banks don't even get a haircut? How come Citi and Morgan aren't asked, like workers and other creditors, to take stock in GM?

As Butch said to Sundance, who ARE these guys? You remember Morgan and Citi. These are the corporate Welfare Queens who've already sucked up over a third of a trillion dollars in aid from the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Not coincidentally, Citi, the big winner, has paid over $100 million to Robert Rubin, the former US Treasury Secretary. Rubin was Obama's point-man in winning banks' endorsement and campaign donations (by far, his largest source of his corporate funding).

With GM's last dying dimes about to fall into one pocket, and the Obama Treasury in his other pocket, Morgan's Jamie Dimon is correct in saying that the last twelve months will prove to be the bank's "finest year ever."

Which leaves us to ask the question: is the forced bankruptcy of GM, the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs, just a collection action for favored financiers?

And it's been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler - indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the US taxpayer.

("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.

If you ran a business and played fast and loose with your workers' funds, you could land in prison. Stevie the Rat's plan is nothing less than Grand Theft Auto Pension.

It doesn't make it any less of a crime if the President drives the getaway car.

******

Economist and journalist Greg Palast, a former trade union contract negotiator, is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. He is a GM bondholder and card-carrying member of United Automobile Workers Local 1981.

Palast's latest reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now! are collected on the newly released DVD, "Palast Investigates: from 8-Mile to the Amazon - on the trail of the financial marauders." Watch the trailer here.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:21 PM PDT

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