Mates on a mission

Say no more.

Activists on board anti-whaling ship The Steve Irwin pelting the Nisshin Maru with rotten butter

The environmental group Sea Shepherd says it doubts its attack on a Japanese whaling ship off Antarctica yesterday injured anyone.

The group threw 24 litres of rotten butter onto the Nisshin Maru whaling ship.

Meanwhile, the Taipei Times reports:

“Militant environmentalists hurled stinging acid for more than an hour onto a Japanese whaling ship off Antarctica yesterday, hurting three crew members, Japanese government officials said.”

But the Sea Shepherd’s founder, Paul Watson, does not believe the claims.

‘We certainly didn’t injure anybody because we saw where every container hit — it was fully videotaped,’ he said.

‘The Japanese videotaped it and I’m sure that if we had have hit somebody they’d have it on their website, which they do not have.

‘My understanding is that the three injuries were three guys who got sick from the smell and just threw up.

‘So three guys chundering on the deck, really that’s the extent of it.’

The past bites Bill Clinton on the arse with some advice for those who can’t decide between his wife and Barack Obama:

According to this story in the New York Times, the United States prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

(Via Zanetti’s web site)

A picture worth a thousand sad words from Sierra Magazine.

Ocean-borne trash plagues the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The stomach of this dead albatross held more than a half pound of plastic.

They captioned it with this damning quote from Art Buchwald — written in 1970:

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate and the disposable bottle, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy his food all in one place and he could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use.

And pretty soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles, and there was nowhere left to sit down or to walk.

And Man shook his head and cried, ‘Look at all this God-awful litter’.

(Via Sierra Magazine)

Again. Watch and weep.

Only about 4% of the world’s oceans remain undamaged by human activity, according to the first detailed global map of human impacts on the seas.

A study in Science says climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors have exacted a heavy toll on almost half of the marine waters.

Only remote icy areas near the poles are relatively pristine, but they face threats as ice sheets melt, they warn.

The authors say the data is a ‘wake-up call’ to policymakers.

Lead scientist, Dr Benjamin Halpern, of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, US, said humans were having a major impact on the oceans and the marine ecosystems within them.

‘In the past, many studies have shown the impact of individual activities,’ he said. ‘But here for the first time we have produced a global map of all of these different activities layered on top of each other so that we can get this big picture of the overall impact that humans are having rather than just single impacts.’

(Via BBC News)

Sorry. Finally.

GetUp’s Executive Director Brett Solomon reflects upon Monday’s candle ceremony.

Laid out before the most powerful institution in the country, the Australian Parliament, 4000 candles flickered spelling out the words ‘Sorry, the first step’.

Over fifty GetUp members in Canberra spent the day laying out the candles on the 60m x 80m lawn. Hard work on a hot day, but as new volunteers arrived with fresh enthusiasm, we managed to prepare the site in time for sunset.

The first candle was lit by Lorna Fejo, a Warumungu woman and member of the Stolen Generations who was taken from her family at 4 years old. As she lit the candle she said, ‘A big relief…at least I’m alive to hear it, I’m one of the lucky ones’.