Sea Shepherd news- anti-whaling activists plan to upgrade their fleet

Andrew Darby in Madiera, Portugal
June 26, 2009
JAPAN has asked Australia to prevent the Sea Shepherd ship Steve Irwin leaving port to harass its whalers in the Antarctic next summer, but the plea may have little effect.
The anti-whaling activists plan to upgrade their fleet from an ageing, former North Atlantic fisheries patrol boat to include another ship - something out of the future. The global speedboat Earthrace would head south under Sea Shepherd colours next summer, the group's leader Paul Watson said.
"It looks like a spaceship. It can do 40 knots and dive under waves completely. We'll be using it to intercept and block harpoons."
In 61 days last year Earthrace circled the globe fuelled by biodiesel. The New Zealand owner/skipper, Pete Bethune, said he decided to become involved because "this is happening in my backyard and it really pisses me off. I'm going to make a stand."
He said he was adding half a tonne of Kevlar to the vessel to toughen it against the ice. It had the endurance to go half way round the world on a tank of fuel.
"They won't get away from me," he said.
Earthrace's role was unveiled as the International Whaling Commission heard that Sea Shepherd's protests endangered the lives of whalers in the Southern Ocean last summer when the Steve Irwin was involved in two collisions.
"These are highly dangerous, and it can only be described as a miracle that there has been no death or large-scale accident to date," said a Japanese delegation member, Jun Yamashita.
"We cannot tolerate such audacity," Mr Yamashita told the commission. "We ask for
all appropriate measures, including a ban on the ship from leaving port, so that we can prevent these acts from being repeated."
Mr Watson, who is not permitted inside the meeting, said the Steve Irwin was soon to leave Brisbane for Hobart after a $500,000 refit. Its buckled hull plates had been repaired, and it was fitted with a powerful water cannon on the bow to match the whalers'.
He dubbed next summer's campaign Operation Waltzing Matilda and has adopted a symbol with a kangaroo wearing a pirate's eye patch.
An official from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, David Dutton, told the 71-nation meeting in Madeira that the Rudd Government was deeply concerned about clashes in the Southern Ocean.
Australian Federal Police were conducting an official investigation, so no further comment could be made because it was possible the case would come before a court, he said.
Mr Watson said the federal police had returned videotapes taken from the ship in a raid in Hobart in February but still held the ship's log book. He said he had not been contacted recently by the federal police or Dutch authorities, under whose flag Steve Irwin sails.

Fish

Canned hunting' of captive lions banned in South Africa

The controversial sport of "canned hunting", in which trophy hunter tourists pay to shoot specially-bred captive lions, has been banned in South Africa.


London, June 13 (ANI): The controversial sport of canned hunting, in which trophy hunter tourists pay to shoot specially bred captive lions, has been banned in South Africa. According to a report in the Telegraph, the South African government welcomed the move, which followed attempts by lion breeders to block the banning of their trade.
The South African government welcomed the move, which followed attempts by lion breeders to block the banning of their trade.
"We need a clean hunting industry, free from unacceptable behaviour which could damage the country's image," said Albi Modise, a spokesman for South Africa's forestry department.
Until its ban, South Africa was one of the world's canned hunting capitals, with more than 1,000 lions killed every year by foreign hunters.
Around 120 lion breeders are active in the country, supplying animals for tourists arriving from across the globe in an industry worth almost £1 million a year.
But government proposals put forward in 2007 threatened to crush the industry by ruling that lions bred in captivity could not be hunted until 24 months after they were released into the wild.
Angry breeders challenged the crackdown in court and argued that the regulations should allow captive animals to be shot within a few days of being released from their breeding cages.

read more http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/5516764/Canned-hunting-of-captive-lions-banned-in-South-Africa.html

Torturing Pigs

CDC Confirms Ties to Virus First Discovered in U.S. Pig Factories
Factory farming and long-distance live animal transport apparently led to the emergence of the ancestors of the current swine flu threat.

A preliminary analysis of the H1N1 swine flu virus isolated from human cases in California and Texas reveals that six of the eight viral gene segments arose from North American swine flu strains circulating since 1998, when a new strain was first identified on a factory farm in North Carolina.

Save The Human Don’t Eat The Planet

Cruelty to chickens

Battery cage conditions do nothing to deny 'ancestral memory': 'Chickens in Battery cages which have wire floors....can often be seen to go through all the motions of having a dust bath. If such dust-deprived birds are eventually given access to something in which they can have a real dust-bath....they go in for a complete orgy of dust-bathing. They do it over and over again, apparently masking up for lost time...' Through Our Eyes Only, Dr. Maraian Stamp Dawkins, Department of Zoology, Oxford University (WH Freeman, Spektrum, 1993) read more

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

Growing climate change may escalate ME conflict

JERUSALEM, June 3 (UPI) -- Growing climate change and lack of water could spur further conflict and security concerns in the Middle East, a Danish environmental report warns.
Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territories have suffered from more than 60 years of "bloody conflict", the International Institute for Sustainable Development, IISD, report states, noting: " Climate change -- by redrawing maps of water availability, food security, disease prevalence, population distribution and coastal boundaries -- may hold serious implications for regional security," if the situation is left unchecked.
The report lists six main threats the region will be forced to contend with because of the ever changing climate. The scarcity of water resources may complicate any peace efforts. The intensifying of food scarcity could spur "the return or retention of occupied land." Changes in the climate could slow down economic growth and worsen poverty, causing social instability. Climate changes could also lead to increased tensions over refugee populations, and the diminishing of natural resources in the region could increase militarization of strategic natural resources.
Failure to act could encourage further mistrust and resentment by Arab countries toward Israel and the Western world, the report warns.
The 42 page report dubbed "Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate Change and the Risk Of Conflict in the Middle East" was published by the IISD, an independent environmental policy research institute.