Dear Reader,

This year the Canadian government promised a more humane hunt.

They said “Canada’s seal hunt is humane, sustainable and responsible.” They lied. Thanks to your support, IFAW Hunt Observers have been on the ground and in the air documenting the hunt since it opened on the 28th of March. Only days into the hunt they have captured on camera instances where animals were shot and clearly left to suffer on the ice…in one case for over a minute. They have witnessed live seals being hooked and dragged across the ice.
And in one of the more disturbing moments they watched as a sealer wrote an expletive on the ice while a recently clubbed seal behind him started to move...obviously still alive.
Is this the Canadian government’s idea of a more humane hunt? Observing and documenting the hunt is not easy work.
It means hours of anxiously scanning the gulf region looking for sealing boats - because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans won’t release specific coordinates of where hunting is taking place.
It means watching hours of tape to make sure we document every violation that we captured on film.
But without this footage the world would have no idea of the kind of cruelty really taking place.

Please join with us in expanding the global community of activists needed to end the slaughter.
Visit the seal blog today to read the latest diaries from IFAW monitors at the hunt.
See the latest footage from the scene of the hunt and listen to IFAW monitors describe in their own words the cruelty they are documenting first hand.
And if you can, please consider making a donation to help in the fight to end this cruel and senseless hunt.
Of every dollar spent around the world by IFAW during the past three years, more than 83 cents went directly to animal welfare programs and institutional costs.
Your gift enables IFAW to document the cruelty of the seal hunt, fight for more seal product bans in Europe, conduct vital research to help save seals and works to end the exploitation of animals around the world.
The Canadian government will continue in their attempt to justify the seal hunt – both in Canada and abroad.

But no matter how the truth is distorted, it cannot change the fact that the seal hunt is terribly cruel and unneccesary. Your support is today is more critical than ever.

Thank you for standing with IFAW and with the seals.

Sincerely, Fred O’Regan President and CEO


P.S. Go to www.stopthesealhunt.org today for the latest news from the ice and to take action for the seals.


 

Hoppy: The Story of Wolf 253

Wolf 253 was one of the first casualties as the federal government stripped Endangered Species protections for gray wolves in the northern Rockies. But this particular wolf was unique.

---

He was known by the nicknames of "Limpy" or "Hoppy," depending on who you talk to; the name comes from an old injury that left him crippled for life. His official designation was Wolf 253, part of the wolf population brought back from the verge of extinction in the Northern Rockies, and one of 1,500 gray wolves that lost federal protections in March when the federal government "delisted" wolves from the Endangered Species Act.

And on March 28, he was shot dead.

Hoppy wasn't just any old wolf. His distinctive gait, walking on three legs, made him one of the more easily recognized wolves in Yellowstone. Among his pack, too, he was unique: he was taller than Wolf 21, his father and the alpha male of the Druid pack that roamed the open fields in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley.

Wolf-watchers in the northern Rockies say Hoppy grew up charging after elk at the same speed as the rest of his pack, despite the injury that hobbled him as a pup. He played an important role in the Druid pack, tending to pups and defending the pack's main den from bears.

As a young male, Hoppy left the safety and security of the Druid pack and struck out on his own. He trotted south out of Yellowstone Park, and traveled across southern Wyoming until he crossed the Utah border. A trapper chasing coyotes in the mountains 20 miles from Salt Lake City caught Hoppy in one of his traps. It was November, 2002, and the first confirmed wolf sighting in Utah in 70 years.

Once, hundreds of thousands of wolves roamed the great expanse of the northern Rockies. Decimated by decades of unregulated slaughter and persecution, gray wolves were pushed to the brink of extinction. In 1973, gray wolves became one of the first animals to appear on the Endangered Species list. With the help of legal protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, wolves in the northern Rockies had begun making a comeback when Hoppy arrived.

The wolf trapper called the US Fish and Wildlife, who sent a man down from Wyoming to fetch Hoppy. The injured wolf was loaded in the back of a truck and driven to the far northern stretches of Grand Teton National Park, where he was released back into the wild two days later.

"He was a hell of a wolf," recalls one veteran wolf-watcher. "After he was released with a hurt foot from the coyote trap, he crossed the territories of probably four hostile wolf packs in order to rejoin his old pack in Yellowstone Park."

No one witnessed Hoppy's reunion with the Druid pack; it happened under cover of darkness. But the next morning, when one avid wolf-watcher and local photographer spotted Hoppy back with his former pack, he was stunned.

"He was in bad shape," recalled the photographer. "Must've been down to two and a half legs."

Survival is a strong instinct, and so is the natural inclination of wolves to live in close-knit families and packs. Hoppy was welcomed back to the Druid pack, and resumed the life he'd known years before.

Eventually, Hoppy left the safety of Yellowstone and headed south again. He spent a year near an elk refuge near Jackson, then moved on toward Pinedale, feeding on elk, an occasional deer, and probably a smattering of jackrabbits and mice.

Hoppy must have known that elk could be found around man-made feeding grounds, where elk are concentrated and disease is easily transmitted. Hoppy was one of many wolves who preyed on elk grazing the land, helping keep the populations in check and thinning the herds of the sick and weak.

Hoppy had, however, crossed into Sublette County, where local grocery stores sell bumper stickers that read "Wolves — Government-sponsored terrorists!" Some ranchers and farmers don't hold much love for wolves, which they see only as predators… despite the fact that many animals are, by their very nature, predators. It's a brutal fact of nature. It's how they survive.

In the end, Hoppy's venture outside the safety of Yellowstone Park's official boundaries proved fatal. After eight years spent traveling over thousands of miles, he was shot — along with another male and a female wolf — near the elk feeding ground a few miles outside Daniel, Wyoming on March 28. He became one of the first casualties in a resurrected war against wolves that began the day the federal government stripped Endangered Species protections from gray wolves across the northern Rockies.

Hoppy's death was reported to the state, as required under new Wyoming wolf rules, and word of his killing quickly spread across the Internet. The Salt Lake City Tribune picked up the story, and talked with several people who were fans of the old wolf with the bum leg.

"He died for nothing," lamented Salt Lake City resident Marlene Foard. "If there was a reason to kill him, I could live with that. But there wasn't."

Another reader wrote in an e-mail, "I think they have no idea what they have done by killing this particular wolf."

And Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said people knew wolves had been hanging around the feeding ground, but none had been seen attacking cattle herds or destroying human property. As Camenzind told the Salt Lake City Tribune, Hoppy was "a good wolf. He covered thousands of miles and didn't cause any trouble."

Come fall, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana expect to approve formal, legalized wolf hunts. Right now, except for a small area just outside Yellowstone in Wyoming, all you need is just a gun and a steady aim to legally shoot a wolf. 

But there's still hope for the rest of the wolves in the northern Rockies. In the past, Earthjustice has opposed several previous versions of Wyoming's plans to declare wolves enemies of the state, and this time around we're heading back to court to press for reinstating ESA protection for gray wolves in the region.

Our goal is to get the federal government to come up with a more realistic wolf recovery plan… something that recognizes recent science findings about a species that fought for 30 years to recover from nearly a century of devastating slaughter. The current plan could allow Idaho, Wyoming and Montana to hunt down wolves far and wide, and reduce a population of 1,500 wolves across three states to a mere 300 survivors.

Sadly, Hoppy won't be among their numbers.

Published on Thursday, February 28, 2008 by ABC News

ACLU: 900,000 Names on US Terror Watch Lists

The FBI now keeps a list of over 900,000 names belonging to known or suspected terrorists, the American Civil Liberties Union said today.

If that number is accurate, it would be an all-time high, exponentially more than the 100,000 names on the list several years ago. But the number needs to be taken with a grain of salt: after all, the ACLU doesn’t keep the list, the FBI does, and the bureau doesn’t generally like to talk about it. (Indeed, the FBI has not yet responded to a request for comment for this post.)

But if the ACLU’s figure isn’t accurate, it’s also unlikely to be off by that much. Last September, the ACLU notes, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reported the FBI watch list was at 700,000 names, and growing at 20,000 names per month.

The ACLU says they “extrapolated” from those figures to determine the list’s current size. ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt added that the group had spoken privately with people familiar with the watch list, who told them the 900,000 figure was not outlandish.

In the past, The FBI has told ABC News that the size of its watch list is classified. Despite that, both the bureau and the DoJ Inspector General have published the total figure in unclassified reports.

There’s no doubt the FBI’s list is growing: just last June, ABC News reported it was at 509,000 names, based on information in an unclassified FBI budget document.

But strangely, the list may be growing not because of swelling legions of foreign terrorists. Instead, it appears the FBI may be adding tens of thousands of names belonging to U.S. persons it suspects of being domestic terrorists — people who have no known ties to international terrorist organizations.

A separate entity, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), keeps a list of all names believed to belong to terrorists linked to international terror groups. That list, which was at 100,000 names in 2003, grew to 465,000 names by last June - but since then has grown only modestly, according to NCTC spokesman Carl Kropf. Today, Kropf said that list stands at roughly 500,000 names. (Unlike the FBI, the NCTC does not maintain that the size of its watch list is classified information.)

The FBI takes that list and adds to it a new collection of names which belong to U.S. persons believed to be domestic terrorists: people who have links to terrorism but not to any international group.

Last June, the NCTC was responsible for putting 465,000 names on the watch list, and the FBI appeared to add an additional 44,000. By September, extrapolating from the DoJ Inspector General’s report, the FBI’s contribution appears to have grown to somewhere north of 200,000 names.

Today - if the ACLU is to be believed - the FBI’s contribution may be as high as 417,000 names. Which would raise a new question: Where are so many domestic terrorists coming from? Or do they simply use more aliases than foreign terrorists?

Update: The FBI responded late Wednesday afternoon. Spokesman Chad Kolton did not dispute the ACLU’s figure, but noted that the watch list contains names, aliases and name variations for individuals. The number of people on the watch list, he said, was around 300,000, and only 5 percent are U.S. persons. Kolton noted that the list is “regularly reviewed for accuracy.” Last year the bureau removed 100,000 records “related to people cleared of any nexus with terrorism,” Kolton said.

© 2007 ABC News

 

Published on Thursday, January 4, 2007 by the New York Daily News

W Pushes Envelope on US Spying New postal law lets Bush peek through your mail

by James Gordon Meek

WASHINGTON - President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans' mail without a judge's warrant, the Daily News has learned. The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington   The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people's mail under emergency conditions. That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it. Bush's move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise. "Despite the President's statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people's mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill. Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail. "The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington. "The danger is they're reading Americans' mail," she said. "You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush's claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we've ever known." A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It's something we're going to look into." Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval. Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances." Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection." White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority. "In certain circumstances - such as with the proverbial 'ticking bomb' - the Constitution does not require warrants for reasonable searches," she said. Bush, however, cited "exigent circumstances" which could refer to an imminent danger or a longstanding state of emergency. Critics point out the administration could quickly get a warrant from a criminal court or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge to search targeted mail, and the Postal Service could block delivery in the meantime. But the Bush White House appears to be taking no chances on a judge saying no while a terror attack is looming, national security experts agreed. Martin said that Bush is "using the same legal reasoning to justify warrantless opening of domestic mail" as he did with warrantless eavesdropping. © 2007 Daily News, L.P.

Military, Homeland Security, Bush White House strategy sharpen knives against anyone critical of the "war on terror"

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | October 17 2006

Recent scientific polls that show around 84% don't believe the government's explanation behind 9/11 and others confirming the fact that support for the war in Iraq is at an all time low have led the Bush administration to sharpen their knives against the new breed of perceived "enemy propagandists," bloggers, journalists and online activists who dissent against the "war on terror."

As Raw Story reports, CENTCOM announced earlier this year that a team of employees would be "[engaging] bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information."

So when you're wasting your time arguing the finer points of the collapse of Building 7 or the quagmire in Iraq with someone who seems unable to grasp basic principles, your foe could well be sat behind a plush U.S. government desk in a uniform.

CENTCOM is infiltrating blogs and message boards to ensure people, "have the opportunity to read positive stories,"presumably about how Iraq is a wonderful liberated democracy and the war on terror really is about protecting Americans.

The CENTCOM website features a useful section, "What Extremists Are Saying," which provides a full catalogue and showcases the diatribes of US government agents Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and their sympathizers - rhetoric that CENTCOM hopes surfers will seek out in order for them to grasp a true understanding for the necessity of bombing the shit out of another broken backed defenseless country in the name of "freedom."

The jaw-dropping hypocrisy of a regime and its military attack arm that has engaged in the most gargantuan of deceit and propaganda purges against the American people then pointing the finger at inquisitive bloggers for "aiding the enemy," is alarming to behold.

E Electronic Quiver is Here! Get Your Quiver Together Forever Autumn Wear September Featured Product Electronic Quiver Hooded Sweatshirt $27.99

In This Issue: RazeeWear Sweatshirt Time of Year Also, Do Not Forget 1. RazeeWear Sweatshirt Time of Year Step over here and purchase a nice Electronic Quiver sweatshirt from Razee Ink and Razee-TV, just in time for autumn. Link: http://www.cafepress.com/razeeink 2. Also, Do Not Forget That you need a pair of boxers, teddy bear, and thong that match! Link: http://www.cafepress.com/razeeink Thank you, and as always, we appreciate your business.

Published on Sunday, September 24, 2006 by Agence France Presse     US spy agencies have dropped a political bombshell six weeks before national elections, with the leak of a classified report concluding that the war in Iraq has spawned a new wave of Islamic radicalism and increased the global threat of terrorism. The intelligence document on Sunday rocked a central pillar of the Republican Party's campaign platform ahead of November elections: that the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein made America safer, not weaker. With opinion polls showing President George W. Bush's party possibly losing control of both houses of Congress in the the mid-term polls, in large part due to unhappiness over the war in Iraq, the report stating categorically the opposite will make for painful reading at the White House. Bush has argued repeatedly in pre-election speeches that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism and that demands for a US troop withdrawal from the country by the opposition Democrats underscores why the center-left party should not be trusted with the nation's security. "The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," Bush said in one speech on August 31. Such assertions were looking decidedly shaky Sunday after The New York Times and The Washington Post released details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, the most comprehensive assessment yet of the war, based on analyses of all 16 of America's intelligence agencies. The report, Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States, says "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse," an official familiar with the document told The Times. The Washington Post said the report described the Iraq conflict as the primary recruiting vehicle for violent Islamic extremists. "While the US has seriously damaged Al-Qaeda and disrupted its ability to carry out major operations since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, it noted, radical Islamic networks have spread and decentralized. Democratic leaders were quick to jump on the report's conclusions as clear evidence of the failure of Bush's policies. "This intelligence document should put the final nail in the coffin for President Bush's phony argument about the Iraq war," Senator Edward Kennedy said in a statement Sunday. "The fact that we need a new direction in Iraq to really win the war on terror and make Americans safer could not be clearer or more urgent -- yet this administration stubbornly clings to a failed 'stay-the-course' strategy," he said. The White House, while reiterating its traditional stance of not commenting on classified reports, said The New York Times story "isn't representative of the complete document." "We've always said that the terrorists are determined. Keeping the pressure on and staying on the offense is the best way to win the war on terror," a White House spokesman added. But the leaked intelligence report is hardly good news for Bush and the Republicans, coming on top of a messy revolt by top Republican senators against a Bush plan for legitimizing how the US interrogates and prosecutes terrorist suspects. The Senate rebels, who included possible candidates to succeed Bush in 2008, reached a compromise agreement with the White House late this week. But the unseemly row already diverted attention away from Republican efforts to present a unified front on the issue of national security during the final stretch of the election campaign. Republican leaders tried to brush aside the intelligence document, which they said they had not yet seen. "If it wasn't Iraq it would be Afghanistan; if it wasn't Afghanistan it would be other (issues) that they would use as a method of continuing their recruitment," Senator John McCain, a leading potential presidential contender, said on CBS's Face The Nation. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist expressed confidence US voters would not be swayed by the intelligence report. "I think the American people, when they read an article like that ... say, 'Listen, just keep me safe -- I just want to be safe in Nashville, Tennessee, I want to be safe in Memphis, New York City, Washington, DC,' that's what they want." © Copyright 2006 AFP

The members of all immigration rights organizations, and everyone who opposes turning the US into a police state should deluge the US Congress with phone calls on Monday opposing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, S. 3901 and H.R. 6054 .  This act, more correctly termed the Torturers Protection and Police State Act of 2006, emerged from the ”compromise” on detainee treatment. In fact it is simply what the Administration asked for in the first place.

It accomplishes two tasks of great importance to the Administration. First, it gives amnesty to all those who have ordered and committed torture, right up to President Bush himself.  At present, violations of the Geneva Conventions, including their prohibitions against torture and “inhuman and degrading treatment” of detainees, is prohibited by the War Crimes Act. Since Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and those who carried out their orders have grossly violated the Geneva Conventions, they are subject to the punishments of the War Crimes Act.

But the Military Commissions Act would gut the War Crimes Act; redefining violations of Geneva Conventions and torture to exclude the crimes that Bush and others have committed. The gross abuses committed at Abu Ghraib, for example, would no longer be punishable under the War Crimes Act, nor would water-boarding and or any of the other tortures ordered by Bush and others. It is, as the Washington Post wrote, a “get-out-of-jail card” for all who have committed these heinous crimes.

Equally important, the Military Commissions Act would give explicit Congressional approval to the Administration’s doctrine of enemy combatants. It would allow the President to order the detention of ANYONE ANYEHRE in the world (except US citizens) and to hold them indefinitely without any possibly of court review. In particular it would prohibit the use of habeas corpus motions for anyone the President designated, including all those at Guantanamo.

This means that any immigrant in the United States, including green-card holders, would be stripped of EVERY right and be subject to life imprisonment at the whim of the President.

Do not be fooled that if this laws passes it will not be used. And, of course, since the Administration does not discriminate between citizens and non-citizens in its use of the “enemy combatant doctrine", it leaves the door open to indefinite detention without trial of citizens as well—the imposition of a police state.

This atrocious bill can be stopped.  But we must absolutely overwhelm Congress with our protests. Let every Senator and Representative know that if they vote for this bill, or in the Senate, allow it to come to a vote, they will be held responsible for letting torturers and war criminals go free and for destroying the basis for democracy in the US. Tell your Senator to prevent S.3901 from coming to a vote! Tell your representative to vote against HR 6054!

Please re-post this appeal to your own organizational lists.

Eric Lerner

NJ Civil rights Defense Committee