Mood:  surprised

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdtLTyNOB0A

Posted by Joe Anybody at 6:56 PM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  blue

Was Fukushima too big to fail?

A blog by Tom Hastings:

Posted: 04 Jun 2011 08:11 AM PDT

When George Bush started bailing out corporations and Barack Obama continued we were told that those corporations were too big to fail. The dangers of massive corporations dragging down all of us were noted, they were bailed out, and were they then downsized? Nope. What is up with that?

Fukushima was out of the control of the Japanese government. It was big and the tsunami was bigger. It failed. So, put up your hand if you learned anything from that. Germany? Yes, we see you learned. Japan? We hope so! The US? No hand?

We have just been told today that the economy is tanking again in part because of Fukushima. A Japanese disaster is an American disaster these days. We have 110 nuclear reactors in the US. How many could suffer massive damage like Fukushima before we wreck our economy for many years to come? "Only" four of these plants are in similar earthquake and tsunami zones? Well, what else might surprise us? What if a nuclear power plant gets hit by a massive tornado? Lucky thing there was no nuke in Joplin, Missouri. How many 200 mph trucks flying through the air would it take to breach a reactor? What happens when floods overwhelm a nuke on the Mississippi River? Can't happen? Right. Neither could Fukushima. I've been to the Prairie Island nuclear power plants and on-site storage of massive amounts of high-level nuclear waste. They are smack in the floodplain of the biggest river in North America. The potential exists there to poison that river for generations. All it takes is one bad hand from Mother Nature, one demented terrorist in a small airplane loaded with explosives, one human operator error.

The reality is that nuclear power has always been for too risky, so it cannot exist without government exemption from liability. The risks are just plain stupid.

And, of course, the nuclear executives and p.r. people are quick to claim that it's 70 percent of the emissions-free base load. Well, it's 100 percent of the radioactive baseload. Baseload? Bonneville Power Administration literally cannot even give away electric power right now, the hydro base is so rampant. Shut down the nukes and buy it cheap from BPA! No hydro, wind or solar disasters can come close to a nuclear disaster. Insurance companies will happily handle solar and wind without government shields.

If our economy and our ecology--in the long run, they are the same--are too big to fail we should stop using nuclear power.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 9:05 PM PDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  irritated

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

(Even when it’s not out of sight)

Blog entry posted by Dahr Jamail, August 8th, 2010

_{http://dahrjamailiraq.com/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-even-when-it’s-not-out-of-sight}

Story by Dahr Jamail
Photography by Erika Blumenfeld

Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010

 

Since BP announced that CEO Tony Hayward would receive a multi-million dollar golden parachute and be replaced by Bob Dudley, we have witnessed an incredibly broad, and powerful, propaganda campaign. A campaign that peaked this week with the US government, clearly acting in BP’s best interests, itself announcing, via outlets willing to allow themselves to be used to transfer the propaganda, like the New York Times, this message: “The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”

The Times was accommodating enough to lead the story with a nice photo of a fishing boat motoring across clean water with several birds in the foreground.

This message was disseminated far and wide, via other mainstream media outlets like the AP and Reuters, effectively announcing to the masses that despite the Gulf of Mexico suffering the largest marine oil disaster in US history, most of the oil was simply “gone.”

Thus, it’s only what is on the surface that counts. If you can’t see it, there is not a problem.

 

This kind of government cover-up is nothing new, of course.

“It is well known that after the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet government immediately did everything possible to conceal the fact of the accident and its consequences for the population and the environment: it issued “top secret” instructions to classify all data on the accident, especially as regards the health of the affected population,” journalist Alla Yaroshinskaya has written.

In 1990 Yaroshinskaya came across documents about the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe that revealed a massive state cover-up operation, coupled with a calculated policy of disinformation where the then Soviet Union’s state and party leadership knowingly played down the extent of the contamination and offered a sanitized version to the public, both in and out of Russia. To date, studies continue to show ongoing human and environmental damage from that disaster.

When the disaster at Chernobyl occurred, it was only after radiation levels triggered alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden that the Soviet Union admitted an accident had even occurred. Even then, government authorities immediately began to attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster.

Sound familiar?

In late April, after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank into the depths and the Macondo well began gushing oil, BP and the complicit Coast Guard announced no oil was being released.The Gulf Restoration Network flew out to the scene and saw massive amounts of oil and sounded the alarm, which forced BP and the US government to admit there was, indeed, oil. Such has the trend of BP/US Government lying, countered by (sometimes) forced accountability, then to more lying, been set.

These most recent, and most blatant of the BP/US Government propaganda gems are easily undermined by countless facts. Reality and truth always, given time, find a way to surface…just like BP’s dispersed oil.

Two captains of so-called “vessels of opportunity” helping with the cleanup recently told Times-Picayune reporter Bob Marshall that they saw more oil at South Pass on Tuesday than they have during the entire crisis.

“I don’t know where everyone else is looking, but if they think there’s no more oil out there, they should take a ride with me,” charter captain Mike Frenette said.

Another captain, Don Sutton, saw floating tar balls for 15 miles from South Pass to Southwest Pass. “And that wasn’t all we saw. There were patches of oil in that chocolate mousse stuff, slicks and patches of grass with oil on them,’” he said.

Yesterday I spoke with Clint Guidry, a Louisiana fisherman who is on the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and the Shrimp Harvester Representative on the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force created by Executive Order of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

“Right now, there is more oil in Barataria Bay than there has been since this whole thing started on April 20,” Guidry told me.

BP oil is now turning up under the shells of post-larval blue crabs all across the northern Gulf of Mexico. Nearly all the crab larvae collected to date by researchers, from Grand Isle, Louisiana all the way over to Pensacola, Florida, have oil under their shells. Further analysis is showing that the crabs likely also contain BP’s Corexit dispersant.

On August 5th it was reported that a pair of fishermen in Mississippi “made an alarming discovery that has many wondering what’s happening below the surface” of the Gulf of Mexico. They found several full-sized crabs filled with oil.

In Hancock County, Mississippi, Brian Adam, the EMA director, reported, “We’re still seeing tar balls everyday, and I’m not talking just a few tar balls. We’re seeing a good amount everyday on the beaches.”

According to Adam, a rock jetty near Waveland became covered in one thousand pounds of tar balls in only three days time. Keith Ladner, owner of Gulf Shores Sea Products and a longtime supplier of seafood, said this of some full-sized crabs he found near the mouth of Bay St. Louis: “You could tell it was real slick and dark in color so I grabbed it, and opened the back of the crab, and you could see in the ‘dead man’ or the lungs of the crabs…you could see the black.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report from Wednesday claims that 33 percent of BP’s oil in the Gulf has been either burned, skimmed, dispersed, or directly recovered by cleanup operations. NOAA goes on to claim that another 25 percent has evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in the water, and another 16 percent has been naturally dispersed. Of the remaining 26 percent, NOAA claims that amount is either washed ashore, been collected from beaches, is buried along the coasts, or is still on or just below the surface.

University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander says these estimates are “ludicrous.” Of the NOAA report, Hollander says, “It’s almost comical.”

Other scientists also immediately expressed their doubts of the validity of the NOAA report, while toxicologists expect to be busy tracking the effects of BP’s toxic dispersants “for years.”

Giant plumes of BP’s sub-surface dispersed oil are floating around the Gulf of Mexico, as confirmed recently by researchers from the University of South Florida.

It was also recently revealed that the worst dead zone in 25 years has been recorded in Gulf of Mexico waters. Of course it’s likely a given that this is due to BP’s liberal use of dispersants.

“To judge from most media coverage, the beaches are open, the fishing restrictions being lifted and the Gulf resorts open for business in a healthy, safe environment,” environmental activist Jerry Cope wrote recently, “We, along with Pierre LeBlanc, spent the last few weeks along the Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida, and the reality is distinctly different. The coastal communities of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have been inundated by the oil and toxic dispersant Corexit 9500, and the entire region is contaminated. The once pristine white beaches that have been subject to intense cleaning operations now contain the oil/dispersant contamination to an unknown depth. The economic impacts potentially exceed even the devastation of a major hurricane like Katrina, the adverse impacts on health and welfare of human populations are increasing every minute of every day and the long-term effects are potentially life threatening.”

Cope continued:

“In May, Mother Nature Network blogger Karl Burkart received a tip from an anonymous fisherman-turned-BP contractor in the form of a distressed text message, describing a near-apocalyptic sight near the location of the sunken Deepwater Horizon — fish, dolphins, rays, squid, whales, and thousands of birds – “as far as the eye can see,” dead and dying. According to his statement, which was later confirmed by another report from an individual working in the Gulf, whale carcasses were being shipped to a highly guarded location where they were processed for disposal.”

“Local fisherman in Alabama report sighting tremendous numbers of dolphins, sharks, and fish moving in towards shore as the initial waves of oil and dispersant approached in June. Many third- and fourth-generation fishermen declared emphatically that they had never seen or heard of any similar event in the past. Scores of animals were fleeing the leading edge of toxic dispersant mixed with oil. Those not either caught in the toxic mixture and killed out at sea, or fortunate enough to be out in safe water beyond the Source, died as the water closed in, and they were left no safe harbor. The numbers of birds, fish, turtles, and mammals killed by the use of Corexit will never be known as the evidence strongly suggests that BP worked with the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, private security contractors, and local law enforcement, all of which cooperated to conceal the operations disposing of the animals from the media and the public.”

Cope added, “The Gulf of Mexico from the Source into the shore is a giant kill zone.”

Earlier this week, marine biologist, toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor Dr. Riki Ott took a flight over southern Louisiana. Here’s some of what she wrote about it:

“Bay Jimmy on the northeast side of Barataria Bay was full of oil. So was Bay Baptiste, Lake Grande Ecaille, and Billet Bay. Sitting next to me was Mike Roberts, a shrimper with Louisiana Bayoukeepers, who has grown up in this area. His voice crackled over the headset as I strained to hold the window. “I’ve fished in all these waters - everywhere you can see. It’s all oiled. This is the worst I’ve seen. This is a heart-break…”

“We followed thick streamers of black oil and ribbons of rainbow sheen from Bay Baptiste and Bay Jimmy south across Barataria Bay through Four Bayou Pass and into the Gulf of Mexico. The ocean’s smooth surface glinted like molten lead in the late afternoon sun. Oil. As far as we could see: Oil.”

“When we landed after our 2-hour flight, our pilot told us that she sometimes has to wipe an oily reddish film off the leading edges of her plane’s wings after flying over the Gulf. Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathem documented similar oily films on planes he chartered for Gulf over-flights. Bonnie doesn’t wear gloves when she wipes her plane. She showed me her hands — red rash, blisters, and peeling palms.

If peeling palms are an indication of the oil-solvent stew, the reddish film on Bonnie’s plane and others means that the stew is not only in the Gulf, it is in the rain clouds above the Gulf. And in the middle of hurricane season, this means the oil-solvent mix could rain down anywhere across the Gulf.”

Dean Blanchard, one of the most important seafood purchasers in Louisiana, recently attended a Town Hall Meeting with a BP representative in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

In the meeting, Blanchard stands up and addresses the BP representative at length.

“Ya’ll didn’t give me enough money to pay my bills. I can show you. For the electric bill and everything. What I’ve collected from BP, so far since this started, is less than what I paid out in bills. And I’ve cut my things down to rock bottom. But how do you expect a man to live on less than 10 percent of what I was projected to make? I don’t believe there’s anybody in this country who could pay their bills with just 10 percent of their check. We borrowed money preparing for shrimping season and this happened at the worst possible time.”

Blanchard added, “I ain’t got no job, and no money, and Mr. Hayward gets $18 million and a new job. That’s hard to take. Let me tell you. Very, very hard to take.”

I should point out that from my first days Louisiana, I’ve been hearing from fishermen working on BP’s clean-up operations that BP is using night flights to drop dispersant on oiled bays. I’ve seen video taken by fishermen of a white-foamy substance in the marsh the morning after these flights took place.

Blanchard went on to say that he felt that BP did not want to clean up the oil, that it was more cost effective for them to leave it in the water than to clean it up, and then mocked the preposterous government claim that most of the oil is gone because you cannot see it from the air.

The BP rep, Jason, clearly nervous, later responds by saying, “We are doing over-flights, our task forces are looking for oil each day. We have a communications room where they are able to call in sightings of oil, from the boats, from the task forces. There is…I understand the anger and I understand the frustration. A couple of things that Dean said I have to take exception to. We do want to clean up this oil. I can understand frustration. I can understand seeing certain people getting certain amounts of money and some of the things that people see. But someone is going to have to explain to me why BP would not want to clean up this oil.”

Blanchard had clearly heard enough of BP’s propaganda. To the representatives’ request to have someone explain to him why BP would not want to clean up the oil, Blanchard angrily obliged:

“Because it’s more cost effective for ya’ll to come at night and sink the son-of-a-bitch! When the oil’s coming around, they call ya’ll, they tell ya’ll where the oil’s at, and the first thing ya’ll do is tell them to go the other way, ya’ll send the planes, and ya’ll fucking sink it! [Spray dispersants from the air] That’s what ya’ll are doing, come on man!” He sits back down angrily. “Let’s quit playing over here and tell the truth. Ya’ll are sinking the oil, Jason! You know ya’ll are sinking it. You know what ya’ll are doing. Ya’ll are sending all the boats, you’re putting them all in a group at night, we all hear the planes, and the next morning there’s nothing but white bubbles! What do you think, we’re stupid? We’re not stupid! Ya’ll are putting the oil on the bottom of my fishing grounds! Ya’ll not only messing me up now, ya’ll are messing me up for the rest of my life! I ain’t gonna live long enough to buy anymore shrimp!”

The lives of Gulf coast fishermen and residents are being destroyed. Scientists, environmentalists, and toxicologists are describing the Gulf of Mexico as a growing dead zone, a kill zone, and an energy sacrifice zone. As you read this, oil is everywhere around southeastern Louisiana, and continually washing ashore in Alabama and Mississippi.

Meanwhile, Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, announced Friday that the company may not give up on its claims on the Macondo well. “There’s lots of oil and gas here,” he said, “We’re going to have to think about what to do with that at some point.”

Of this, Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro said it’s no secret that BP wants to drill again. In fact, he said, it has been part of his conversations with BP since the oil crisis began.

Let us be clear about who, and what, we are dealing with here.

posted by Dahr Jamail | August 8th, 2010

Posted by Joe Anybody at 3:53 AM PDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  energetic

http://www.galleryhomeland.org/wordpress/

Saturday, June 26th
11 am – 4 pm
@ galleryHOMELAND

Portland Oregon

Grand Detour and Research Club presents Grassroots Mapping:

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:26 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 29 June 2010 7:10 PM PDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  crushed out

Genetic Engineers in Germany Destroy Dandelion

 homepage: http://www.sporecollective.org

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:21 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 16 December 2009 7:24 PM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  loud

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/11/climategate

ClimateGate

.

— By Kevin Drum

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:01 AM PST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  not sure

Fish and Fish Oil Linked to Diabetes Risk

posted 8/14/09

A new Harvard study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition links fish and omega-3 oil consumption to type 2 diabetes. Following 195,204 adults for 14 to18 years, researchers found that the more fish or omega-3 fatty acids participants consumed, the higher their risk of developing diabetes. The risk increase was modest for occasional fish eaters, but rose to a 22 percent increased risk for women consuming five or more fish servings per week.

Prior studies have suggested that fat accumulation within muscle cells can lead to insulin resistance which, in turn, contributes to diabetes. People who eat no animal products have less fat in their cells and much less risk of developing diabetes. A low-fat vegan diet has been shown to improve type 2 diabetes.

Kaushik M, Mozaffarian D, Spiegelman D, Manson JE, Willett WC, Hu FB. Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, fish intake, and the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Jul 22. [Epub ahead of print]

Goff LM, Bell JD, So PW, Dornhorst A, Frost GS. Veganism and its relationship with insulin resistance and intramyocellular lipid. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005;59:291-298.

Barnard ND, Cohen J, Jenkins DJ, Turner-McGrievy G, Gloede L, Green A, Ferdowsian H. A low-fat vegan diet and a conventional diabetes diet in the treatment of type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled, 74-week clinical trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009;89:1588S-1596S.

Subscribe to PCRM's Breaking Medical News.

Breaking Medical News is a service of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 5100 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20016, 202-686-2210. Join PCRM and receive the quarterly magazine, Good Medicine.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:00 PM PDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Mood:  cheeky

Z3 Readers...

The following is an email I received from a (Right Wing) environment (as if they really care) (they don't) (profits first) Any way here is the article on Mercury in fish ...and their "spin"

Now I am no expert and I am trying to get to the truth so bear with me as I explore just what the hell is going on with the mercury / fish issue

Mercury in Fish: Not So Scary After All

This just in from The Miami Herald: “Most adults need not worry” about risks associated with tiny traces of methylmercury in seafood. And researchers from the University of North Dakota announced that, thanks to a nutrient called selenium, mercury levels in fish are “not as harmful as previously thought.” Hooray! Now, let’s file all of this news away under “we told you so.”

As scientists from Harvard University and the Food and Drug Administration have been saying, the nutritional benefits of omega-3 fatty acids in fish – including healthy hearts and smarter babies – far outweigh the hypothetical risks associated with mercury. The levels of naturally-occurring methylmercury in ocean-caught fish are so tiny that you could probably eat a hundred cans of canned chunk light tuna every week for a lifetime without getting mercury poisoning. (Click here to find out for sure.)

The reason why, as scientists from the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota are explaining this week, has a lot to do with selenium:

"Selenium is an essential nutrient in healthy brain development and protects the brain from oxidative damage," said Dr. Nick Ralston, an EERC Research Scientist involved with the studies. .. “The more selenium in the tissue, the less mercury toxicity occurs. Since fish in some areas have much higher levels of selenium than mercury, the consumer receives the healthy benefits of selenium and a natural defense against mercury."

In other words, as we put it in the title of a 2006 report, selenium is “The Flip Side of Mercury.” But overblown mercury warnings, along with a lack of public understanding about the protective effects of selenium, has had negative public health consequences since so many consumers have over-reacted by steering clear of the canned tuna aisle.

The verdict is in – again: Selenium, protein, and omega-3s in fish are your friend. Too bad we can’t say the same about seafood scaremongers.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:01 AM PDT

Updated: Friday, 26 June 2009 9:43 AM PDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

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

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink