sea lions vs. hicks

these are the sea lions killed last weekend..... one was already killed in captivity...why did they just let them sit there...


so you think portland is a progressive town? we are surrounded by all sides with zombies. both the department of fish and wildlife, and ignoramus small town inbred idiots. go 20 minutes in any direction and you will find these people. please, do what you can. i myself am ready to organize a boat to go out and permanently disrupt these asshole's fishing spot.



National Call In Day for Sea Lions (Monday)!!!

Please distribute far and wide!

6 Sea Lions were just murdered (2 Endangered Stellar
Sea Lions were
among the victims) by someone at the Bonneveille Dam
while they could not
escape the traps they were in. One has died at a Zoo
in Tacoma at the
hands of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
after trapping,
stressing, branding, and anethesizing numbers of sea
lions that are
supposed to be protected, but instead are being sold
to Sea World in Florida.
The Murder and the Trapping Needs to Stop!!!!

Please call the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA),

the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW),
and Governor Kulongoski Friday and Monday.

Let them know that you want the trapping to stop
completely and not
continue because you don't want anymore Sea Lions
killed!
LEAVE THE SEA LIONS ALONE!!!!
We are their voice!!!!
Call many times!


Monday
9:00am - 11:00am
NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service NW Regional
Office: 206-526-6150


1:00pm - 3:00pm
Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife Director's Office:
503-947-6044

3:00pm - 5:00pm
Governor Kulongoski: 503-378-4582


Please also contact Washington governor Gregoire, who
is in a position
to stop this slaughter, and who may be responsive to
our calls.
Governor's Office (360) 902-4111

Also, contact the Washington Dept of Fish ad Wildlife,
because they are
as culpable as the Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife,
and they should
be hearing about our outrage at the killing of a sea
lion in their
custody. THis is the phone number for their director:
360-902-2200.

Your calls matter. Make them. There's no excuse not
to. If you care
about this issue, take a moment and call. Even if you
can't call at the
times mentioned above, call. It's important.

From In Defense Of Animals:

The "Art" of Animal Cruelty

Tell San Francisco Art Institute to remove snuff video exhibit from gallery!!!
Walk into the Walter and McBean Galleries in San Francisco's posh Russian Hill neighborhood, and you may be shocked to see what passes for contemporary "art" these days. Six televisions display video images of six different animals -- a doe, a goat, a horse, an ox, a pig, and a sheep -- being bludgeoned to death with a large sledgehammer by "artist" Adel Abdessemed of Paris. Entitled "Don't Trust Me," this sick exhibit is Abdessemed's and the Institute's self-serving attempt to pass off the brutal abuse and killing of animals as legitimate artistic creation.
What such "artists" and their patrons overlook is that animals are living beings who feel and suffer just like we humans -- and we are no more justified in taking their lives at will than we have the right to kill another person. Such abuse of animals may elicit horror and disgust in viewers, but that does not qualify it as art. Far from it -- in fact, "Don't Trust Me" represents the very worst impulses of the human imagination.
It takes no artistic talent or ability to kill animals, and Abdessemed should have never been given a venue for his sickening "work" in the first place. To their great discredit, the San Francisco Art Institute agreed to sponsor this exhibit, lending it an air of credibility, but what makes matters worse are the obscene rationalizations this venerable institution of learning and culture offers in defense of the sleazy snuff films. These include pedantic claims that such killings "regularly take place...in the real world, on a regular basis," and that the installation "(makes) typical moral and cultural constraints seem beside the point."
Such statements betray not only a lack of compassion and basic human decency, but also a fundamental confusion of true artistic creation with the destruction of life. Abdessemed's work is of no artistic value, and rather than raise people's consciousness about the cruelties committed against animals every day, it will encourage them to accept animal abuse as a way of gaining attention and notoriety.
To call someone who murders animals an "artist" is an insult to every real artist who refuses to rely on violence and shallow, sensationalistic gimmicks to express his or her vision. While the work of such murderers will surely not endure, their antics may encourage and incite others to torture and kill animals, so it is crucial that people of conscience voice our outrage over this monstrous display of cruelty.


Here’s his address:

President Charles Bratton
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94113

Have fun.

rutka laskier

Rutka's Notebook - January-April 1943

girl from Bedzin, Poland, age 14, the same age as the Dutch teenager Anne Frank, kept a diary for a few brief months in 1943.

The outside world slowly closed down on her, but these few sheets of paper - some 60 handwritten pages in a notebook – reflect both the horrors of the Holocaust and the entire universe of an adolescent Jewish girl in the shadow of death.

Rutka shared the diary with her friend Stanislawa Sapinska. The two met after Rutka’s family moved into a home owned by Sapinska’s family that had been confiscated by the Nazis so that it could be included in the ghetto.The two became friendly and when Rutka told her that she felt she would not survive, Stanislawa offered to hide the diary in the basement under one of the floorboards. At the end of the war, Stanislawa returned to the house and found the hidden diary. She kept the diary in her home library for more than 60 years and recently decided to make it available to the public.

The last entry is from 24 April 1943. In August, Rutka and her family were deported to Auschwitz. She is believed to have been murdered upon arrival. Rutka’s father, Yaakov, was the family’s only survivor. He moved to Israel where he began a new family, a family who has now been given the rare opportunity to get to know a sister and an aunt who was murdered long before they were born.

From the Diary
“I have a feeling that I’m writing for the last time. There is an Aktion in town. I’m not allowed to go out and I’m going crazy, imprisoned in my own house […] For a few days, something’s in the air […] The town is breathlessly waiting in anticipation, and this anticipation is the worst of all. I wish it would end already! This is torment, ; this is hell. I’m trying to escape from these thoughts, of the next day, but they keep haunting me like nagging flies. If only I could say, it’s over, you only die only once… But I can’t, because despite all those these atrocities I want to live, and wait for the following day. It That means, waiting for Auschwitz or labor camp. I must not think about this so now I’ll start writing now about private matters.” (February 20, 1943)



please, do not wait until the diaries from 14 year old girls in iraq are posted....

abu ghraib

click here if you still support our government.

robin, can i have one of your wellbutrins...


Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Beginning in 2004, accounts of abuse, torture, sodomy[1] and homicide[2] of prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (also known as Baghdad Correctional Facility) came to public attention. The acts were committed by some personnel of the 372nd Military Police Company of the United States, and possibly additional American governmental agencies.[3]

As revealed by the 2004 Taguba Report, a criminal investigation by the US Army Criminal Investigation Command had already been underway since 2003 where multiple recruits from the 320th MP Battalion had been charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with prisoner abuse. In 2004 articles of the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel abusing prisoners, came to public attention, when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the story.[4] Janis Karpinski, the commander of Abu Ghraib, demoted for her lack of oversight regarding the abuse, estimated later that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent.[5]


A man claiming to be Satar Jabar standing on a box with wires connected to his body.
Lynndie England and Charles Graner posing with prisoners ordered to form human pyramidThe U.S. Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and seven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and September 2005, seven soldiers were convicted in courts martial, sentenced to federal prison time, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison, respectively, in trials ending on January 14, 2005 and September 26, 2005. The commanding officer at the prison, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was demoted to the rank of Colonel on May 5, 2005. Col. Karpinski has denied knowledge of the abuses claiming that the interrogations were authorized by her superiors and performed by subcontractors, and that she was not even allowed entry into the interrogation rooms.

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib was in part the reason that on April 12, 2006, the United States Army activated the 201st Military Intelligence Battalion, the first of four joint interrogation battalions.[6]

blue uniforms=adult children

perhaps this poor lady should have done her homework before deciding she wanted to be a wonderful member of 'those who uphold the law'...
from the portland mercury website:


The Thick Blue Line—Portland Cop Fired For “Snitching?”
Posted by Matt Davis on Wed, Feb 27 at 8:25 PM
A former Portland cop plans to sue the city over allegations she was terminated in retaliation for “snitching” on an officer who was supposed to be training her.

The former cop is making potentially explosive allegations against a specific officer, but more worryingly, she describes a culture of silence permeating the bureau’s culture as a whole.
SERPICO: 1973 movie about a cop ratting out his fellow officers…

Lawyers for former probationary Officer Lyndsay Hunt filed a tort claim with the city last October saying Hunt plans to sue for violations of the Oregon Whistleblower Law, ORS 659A.203, and gender discrimination law. To avoid a lawsuit they have given the city a deadline of Friday, February 29 to settle out of court.

Hunt was hired as a Portland cop on July 27, 2006, and had been on the force for approximately one year when the alleged events occurred, according to her tort claim—which the Mercury obtained this afternoon from the city’s Office of Management and Finance under the freedom of information act.

On May 23, 2007, Hunt was assigned to Northeast Precinct under a new training coach, Officer Quency Ho, after completing Portland’s 16 week “Advanced Academy” training.

New cops in Portland go through 13 weeks of state training in Salem before hitting the streets for three months with a coach. Hunt had successfully completed three months’ coaching with Officer Leslie Pintarich between October 2006 and January 2007, before completing four months of advanced academy and arriving in NE precinct with Ho.

Hunt alleges that on May 24, 2007, she and Ho responded to a call regarding a potential altercation at a residence in the area of 60th and Sandy Boulevard. Another officer was on the scene, and took the lead in talking to the neighbors who called the police, as well as to the suspect who was alone in his ground floor apartment watching television.

Based on his conversations with the neighbors and with the cooperative suspect, the other officer found a lack of probable cause and thanked the suspect for his time, according to the tort claim.

“After the suspect shut his door,” the claim continues, “Offer Ho began trying to kick the door down. Ms.Hunt stopped Officer Ho. Officer Ho then drew his firearm and walked to the side of the apartment to an open window, and pointing his gun at the suspect, demanded he unlock the front door.”

“As the suspect began unlocking the front door, Officer Ho forced upon the door and attacked the suspect, slamming him against the wall and putting him in a choke hold,” the tort claim continues. “After roughing him up for a while, Officer Ho left. There was no legal basis for this action. Ms.Hunt demanded that Officer Ho stop his illegal activity but was ignored.”

The other officer, Officer Thoman, is alleged to have remained at the scene during the entire incident, but did not enter the apartment with Officer Ho.

“Despite Ms.Hunt’s plea that Officer Ho refrain from needlessly beating up civilians and that Officer Ho, at the very least, needed to fill out a use of force report for drawing a firearm, Officer Ho responded, ‘If no one finds out, we won’t get caught. Look the other way’,” the claim continues. “Ms.Hunt was stunned by Officer Ho telling her to keep quiet about the incident.” More after the jump…

The tort claim also alleges Officer Ho refused to let Hunt hand in an accurate police report that contradicted his own “false account of the events” at another call, the following day.

Responding to a call about a suspect armed with a knife and an possible victim in a parking lot at 915 NE Schuyler, Hunt and Ho found the suspect there with his knife still extended, the claim alleges. Numerous witnesses were present, but the alleged victim had fled, leaving a bicycle behind. Hunt apprehended the knife-wielding suspect and handcuffed him, but Ho intervened.

“Since there’s no victim, there’s no crime,” Ho is alleged to have told Hunt, before telling her to leave the bicycle at the scene, and asking one of the witnesses to dispose of the knife. On returning to the station, he is alleged to have handed in the false report.

The tort claim makes several other allegations about Officer Ho, including that he took goods several times without payment from the 7-11 at NE Weidler and 3rd, and told Hunt to do the same. He is also alleged to have told Hunt she was not “manly” enough, and to have criticised her manner in dealing with one suspect, saying, “you’ve got to leave those girl emotions on the side. You’ve got to play like a boy out here.”

Ho is also alleged to have said: “It’s a boy’s world and this is a boy’s club. You’ve got to act like a boy if you’re going to survive.”

Hunt reported her concerns to the cops’ training division on Friday May 26, 2007. Sergeant Parman, a supervisor in the department, and Field Training coordinators Bill Hubner and Joe Schilling, are alleged to have responded that they “knew there was a recurring problem in Northeast Precinct because a disproportionate number of female officers either quit or were fired very soon after joining the Precinct.”

Hunt was told by Officers Hubner and Schilling to “look the other way” as to what she saw, and was told “you can have all the integrity you want in six months when you are no longer on probationary status if you keep your mouth shut,” according to the tort claim.

Hunt was then allegedly told by Hubner that she was no longer physically safe and that if she ever needed backup, no Portland Police Officer would respond for her because she was a “snitch.” Hubner allegedly told Hunt, “you started a rebellion in Northeast precinct.”

As a result, Hunt was transferred to Central Precinct on May 30, 2007. But she alleges Officer Schilling did not disagree when she told him she believed she would not be safe there either, and that he told her to turn in her badge, guns, and uniforms, and to fill out resignation paperwork to “make things official.”

Hunt alleges she was contacted by Sergeant Brumfield and Captain Hendricks, who reiterated that they hoped she would return to the force, but that to do so she would need to “look the other way” until she was no longer on probationary status.

Following Hunt’s alleged termination, her reputation as a “snitch” is alleged to have spread quickly through the police bureau because of defamatory statements made by cops, and in particular in an article in the July 2007 issue of the cop paper, the Rap Sheet.

“The article defamed Ms.Hunt, misrepresented the facts surrounding her dismissal and portrayed her in a false and negative light,” reads the tort claim.

The article, by Officer John Brogan, does not refer to Hunt by name, but alleges “a trainee at Northeast Precinct recently quit after only 3 or 4 days with her coach.” Her reasons, described by Brogan, included “such things as her coach didn’t wear his seatbelt, drove with his lights off (while looking for prowlers) and accepted a free coke from a 7-11.”

“She was clearly looking for an excuse to quit,” Brogan wrote.

Hunt’s attorney, Matthew Ellis at Kell Alterman & Runstein, has declined comment on the tort claim or on the contents of the Rap Sheet article. But police oversight activists are concerned.

“It doesn’t surprise me that there is some form of corruption in the police bureau and that officers who try to expose that corruption are told that they have to go along with it,” says Dan Handelman of activist group Portland Copwatch. “If what Ms.Hunt is alleging is true, then it’s clear that officers are not encouraged to blow the whistle, and in fact, that it is dangerous for them to do so.”

“I am surprised at the extent of the behavior she alleges—particularly the officer busting back into an apartment that another officer had cleared to point a gun at the suspect and rough him up, and then saying they weren’t going to write a report,” Handelman continues. “If that is a true allegation, then there is a serious culture of silence that needs to be addressed.”

It is against the police bureau’s policy to comment on pending litigation.

www.treesit.blogspot.com

Road Kill: New Highway Blocked By Protesting “Raccoons”
author: Zoe Blunt e-mail: treesit@gmail.com
The Raccoons are a ragtag mob of irregulars holding back a major highway interchange project designed to service Bear Mountain, a sprawling golf resort in Langford, just west of Victoria B.C. A few dozen dumpster-diving, trash-talking, anti-authoritarians with a passion for undisturbed natural places have built a camp in the path of the new highway. Visitors are welcome! Check the map at http://treesit.blogspot.com
The barricade at the end of the road is decorated with freshly-planted poinsettias in a mound of earth. Yellow plastic sunflowers, two graffitied TV sets and an oversize truck tire line a meter-wide trench just past the pavement's end. They mark the boundary between the city of Langford and a protest camp occupied by feral humans.

These environmentalists bear no resemblance to the throngs of sandal-wearing, long-haired, peacenik hippy tree huggers seen at Clayoquot Sound in the 1990's and more recently at Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver. Vancouver Island is home to a whole new breed of forest defenders: the Raccoons.

The Raccoons are a ragtag mob of irregulars holding back a major highway interchange project designed to service Bear Mountain, a sprawling golf resort in Langford, just west of Victoria. A few dozen dumpster-diving, trash-talking, anti-authoritarians with a passion for undisturbed natural places have built a camp in the path of the new highway. The proposed interchange cuts through a pocket of forest packed with natural and cultural rarities: a sacred First Nations cave, a seasonal pond, garry oak meadows, arbutus bluffs, red-legged frogs and chocolate lilies.

Right now the Bear Mountain Tree Sit looks like a gloomy, swampy hobo camp, dotted with tents, tree forts at dizzying heights overhead, and a giant teepee covered with tarps. "A tarp-ee," notes one of the campers.

"This is the only example of eco-anarchist action in Canada right now," says Ingmar Lee, a Victoria environmentalist and camp supporter. "This is the grassroots, and it's a totally different kind of protest."

"Just because you fell and died,
Doesn't mean you didn't fly."
- graffiti on a tree platform 30 meters up

Almost all the campers and visitors are under 25, and some are veterans of the Cathedral Grove treesit protest, which lasted two years and ultimately defeated a BC Parks plan to cut down giant trees to build a parking lot. Here, the first platform went up in April. Five more followed, and they are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Kicking the protest camp off public property is a sticky legal issue, and so far no one has moved to start a court case. But Stewart Young, the gung-ho pro-development mayor of Langford, is ramping up his criticism. The mayor's rumblings peaked with Young accusing the campers of poaching deer and rabbits at the site.

Young said bylaw officers found a deer carcass near the camp in the woods. "We've respected their right to protest, but killing deer and rabbits is absolutely disgusting," Young told the Goldstream News Gazette in December. The city directed the RCMP and conservation officers to investigate and lay charges if they find out who is responsible. No one has been charged.

Two neighbours who live adjacent to the forest said it's not the campers who are killing animals. "There's been poaching in this area for decades," said an elderly neighbour on Goldstream Avenue who declined to give his name.

"We've called the conservation officers about deer carcasses a couple times a year ever since I've lived here," said Ron Rayner, a long-time resident who lives just north of the camp and the TransCanada Highway. "It's an ongoing problem."

Langford resident Bob Partridge is "skeptical" about the mayor's claims. He writes, "[J]ust now, as construction is supposed to begin on the Spencer Road Interchange, the protesters/activists who have previously been requesting donations of whole grains, have apparently suddenly become carnivores, slaughtering innocent animals in the woods of Langford?"

"Are we certain they are also not sleeping on duvets stuffed with spotted owl feathers?" Partridge asked sarcastically.

Some of the campers admit they eat deer, rabbits and even raccoons - but they insist they are not hunting . The meat is road kill collected from the TransCanada Highway, one tree sitter told A Channel News. Another pointed out the hypocrisy of building a highway that will mangle more animals, while simultaneously trying to cast the environmentalists as bunny killers. A third wondered aloud if Stewart Young was vegan.

RCMP and bylaw enforcement officers tell us the Raccoons are "guests of the city of Langford," and they even allow them to have a campfire without a permit. Back in April, Young huffed to reporters, "They are on provincial land right now and it's going to be a year or so before we get to the point of having to go there, so they can sit there as long as they want," The protestors took him at his word and set up a kitchen, where they cook raccoon stew, venison steaks, and bunny burgers.

No doubt the tree sit gives Young a royal pain in the ass, but the blustery mayor has bigger fish to fry. Langford City Council, in a "special" meeting convened two days after Christmas, made the unusual move of adopting two new bylaws, rather than just giving them first reading. One bylaw authorizes borrowing $25 million to build the interchange, while the second exempts the process from the usual counter-petition process, which gives citizens the right to challenge a decision.

The community's response is a roar of outrage. Many residents of Langford, it seems, are more irate about the apparent abuse of process than about the imminent loss of green space, wetlands, and rare species. Dozens of volunteers are joining forces to canvass the city with a (non-binding) petition to reject the bylaws.

Steven Hurdle of Langford is organizing the petition drive. "While Langford may have found a legal loophole in declaring the interchange a 'Local Service Area' to let them avoid the referendum, we can still win the political war," he writes. "Langford council might find this an albatross that's unexpectedly hanging around their neck as this issue drags on."

Back at the camp, tree sitters and visitors are critiquing the City of Langford's annual levy tour. Every New Year's, politicos across the region open up their offices to the public, with free booze and food for all.

Well, not quite all. "They only had bag lunches for like 25 people," one complains. "I got there at the end and there was no more food. So I took all the tea bags that were left."

Another camper pipes up, "That punch was weak."
"Yeah, the punch was watered down, so we had to drink more of it to get a buzz."
"Yeah, that's why we brought our own cups. We did it up proper with the cups."
"We asked if we could take their poinsettias with us, but they said no. Then after a while, they gave us the poinsettias so that we would leave."

what are u doing for valentines?

spending time with your loved ones?
i will be too...im bringing my two furry poms to this:
saturday, feb 9..
10 am
1137 SE Yamhill
shut down ungar furs
if u need another reason:::::
Nicholas Ungar Furs to Pay Fine of $40,000
author: IDA reposted by beagle
Resulting in a tip to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife by In Defense of Animals, Nicholas Unger Furs is fined for at least $40,000 for selling coats and other items made from pelts of endangered or banned species.
www.furkills.com
www.furisdead.org


speaking of that...
also from the indymedia site...
Final nail in Shumacher's coffin
author: Uma Spay
Shumachers have been ordered to pay a total of 97grand to those they accused of driving them out of their blood stained business.
A federal judge has ordered Schumacher's furriers to pay nearly $97,000 in legal fees to the animal-rights protesters he has accused of destroying his family business.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman ordered Gregg Schumacher and Schumacher Furs & Outerwear to cover $43,186 in legal fees to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; $34,735 to In Defense of Animals; and $18,950 to protester Kevin Mieras, court records show.

Schumacher and his wife Linda sued animal-rights protesters for a relentless campaign of Saturday protests that the couple maintains stepped over the bounds of free speech into crimes and violations of city ordinances.

But Mosman threw out such claims in a series of rulings last year. This week, he signed an order compelling the Schumachers to pay the protesters' legal fees in the case.

In his order, Mosman called the facts of the case "extraordinary" but said the Schumachers had abused the legal process.

"Although the (Schumachers) may have had meritorious claims against people whose names they did not know, or even against the City of Portland," Mosman wrote, "they sued people against whom they had no evidence for $6.6 million, sought to restrict their First Amendment rights, and disparaged their reputations with accusations of criminal conduct, terrorist affiliations and responsibility for 'shutting down' a business whose financial solvency was questionable before the protesting activities began."

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, one of the nation's most influential animal-rights organizations, hailed the decision.

"The court's decision is a victory for the First Amendment -- and for animals, who rely on groups like PETA to convey their pain and protest their slaughter for fur," the organization's legal counsel, Bonnie Robson said in a prepared statement released Friday.

"The judge stopped the Schumachers' scheme to silence anti-fur critics and ordered the furriers to pay PETA's attorney fees."