Free Republic

Coming soon to a dystopia near you. A video out of China shows a citizen being publicly shamed and having his photo and ID card flashed up on a big screen for crossing the road on a red light.“Chinese facial recognition system to discourage minor traffic violations. Cross the road when you shouldn’t and a picture of you with your name, ID card number pop up on the big screen for everyone to see,” tweeted Matthew Brennan.The Communist country’s vast network of facial recognition surveillance cameras are being linked to citizen ID cards, producing the kind of dystopia that would...

New wave of censorship @ Paul Joseph Watson goes into some of the details (10:14 runtime).

The unfortunate drama surrounding the collision and sinking of the Ady Gil has finally reached a conclusion. An arbitrator last week ruled that the Sea Shepherd acted “wrongful” in their decision to scuttle the ship and not allow for proper salvage efforts. The trimaran, named for its benefactor and owner Ady Gil, a Hollywood TV businessman and animal activist, famously collided on January 7th, 2010 with a Japanese whaling vessel. The event, captured on film for Animal Planet’s “Whale Wars” reality series, drew international attention for both the conservation organization and its anti-whaling mission. While the Ady Gil was disabled...

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society agreed to pay $2.55 million to Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research on Monday as part of a settlement to resolve a long-standing legal battle over the anti-whaling group’s tactics against Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic. The settlement came the same day the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Sea Shepherd’s appeal of a federal court’s finding that the group was in contempt of a court order to stay clear of Japanese whaling ships. The activist group’s tactics at sea include throwing smoke bombs at Japanese whaling ships and using metal-reinforced ropes to damage propellers and...

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- The founder of Sea Shepherd left the environmental group's fleet of anti-whaling ships before they docked in Australia on Wednesday, though the government says it has no reason to arrest him at the moment. Three Sea Shepherd ships docked at the southern port of Williamstown after weeks of harassing Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Ocean during the annual whaling season. The Washington state-based organization, which the United States' largest federal court last month labeled "pirates," said [Paul] Watson, a 62-year-old Canadian, had left the fleet before it reached Australia for fear of arrest. His whereabouts have...

Video and slideshow at link. A federal appeals court panel has branded a Northwest anti-whaling group "pirates," ordering a halt to attacks on Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters. The outspoken opinion, which reads at times more like "Moby Dick" than a court decision, hands a victory to Miller Nash, a Portland law firm that took the controversial step of representing Japan's whale hunters . The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals opinion issued late Monday is also unusual for ordering the transfer of a lower-court judge from the case, finding that U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones made "numerous, serious...

The Sierra Club has announced its approval for a "one-time" use of civil disobedience. The civil disobedience is intended to step up their efforts to oppose the Keystone pipeline. Many of the other groups opposing Keystone have been engaging in civil disobedience as a tactic, including arson-based ecoterrorism. This will be the first time in the Sierra Club's history that they have approved violating the law.

“Whale Wars” seems to be sinking into a legal battle. According to TMZ, a new lawsuit claims Paul Watson, star of the Animal Planet series, lied about the fate of his ship, telling media that it sank after a run in with Japanese whalers. The ship’s owner Ady Gil alleges Watson actually ordered for the ship to be sunk in order to create publicity. The lawsuit, filed yesterday in a Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that while the ship—also named Ady Gil--- was indeed struck by a Japanese whaling boat, the damage could have been repaired, however Watson sabotaged the...

There is a "growing radicalized environmentalist faction" in Canada that is opposed to the country's energy sector policies, warns a newly declassified intelligence report. The RCMP criminal intelligence assessment, focusing on Canadian waters, cites potential dangers from environmental activists to offshore oil platforms and hazardous marine shipments, representing perhaps the starkest assessment of such threats by the Canadian security community to date. The report drew a sharp dismissal from Greenpeace — a prominent environmental group singled out in the document

The US-based Sea Shepherd group said Paul Watson had left Germany for an "undisclosed location". It is thought the captain, who handed his passport over to German authorities when he was arrested in May, may have exploited the Schengen zone to travel to France or the Low Countries. German authorities detained Captain Watson following a request from Costa Rica. The Central American country claimed that his behaviour during an incident on the high seas in 2002 had threatened the safety of the crew of a Costa Rican fishing vessel. The Sea Shepherd has also been involved in number of violent...

A FOUNDER of anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, has been arrested in Germany, the group has said. Captain Watson was arrested for the alleged violation of ships traffic in Guatemalan waters in 2002, over his involvement in interrupting the activities of a shark finning operation. A statement released by the group said Captain Watson had been given orders by Guatemalan authorities to intercept the boat, Varadero, and escort the crew to port to be prosecuted. "While escorting the Varadero back to port, the tables were turned and a Guatemalan gunboat was dispatched to intercept the Sea Shepherd crew," the...

A Japanese whale research group filed a lawsuit with a U.S. federal court Thursday against Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and founder Paul Watson, demanding they be ordered to cease disrupting its whaling activities. The Institute of Cetacean Research and another plaintiff, Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd., are seeking a court order to prevent Sea Shepherd and Watson from "engaging in activities at sea that could cause injuries to the crews and damage to the vessels," the research group said in a statement. Japan's whaling missions, conducted by the institute as part of what it calls research whaling, have often been obstructed...

VSO Day Victory in the Southern Ocean Day for the Whales Pilot Chris Aultman and crewmember Mark Cullivan in an emotional embrace. Photo: Barbara VeigaPilot Chris Aultman and crewmember Mark Cullivan in an emotional embrace. Photo: Barbara VeigaIt’s official – the Japanese whaling fleet has called it quits in the Southern Ocean, at least for this season. And if they return next season, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will be ready to resume their efforts to obstruct and disable illegal Japanese whaling operations. “The Nisshin Maru made a significant course change immediately after the Japanese government made it official that the...

The Sea Shepherd scout vessel Gojira found the illegal Japanese whaling ship Sea Shepherd calls the Cetacean Death Star at 2115 NZST on February 9th. The Nisshin Maru was caught in the process of unlawfully flensing a whale on their aft deck at the position of 74 degrees 16 minutes south and 149 degrees 2 minutes west. The Gojira immediately gave chase as the Nisshin Maru attempted to escape by entering a field of ice. The Gojira attempted to block the huge factory ship to buy time for the Bob Barker to arrive from some 28 miles away. Captain Locky...

Riding a Storm in Pursuit of a Black-Hearted Sun It is Day Seventeen since finding the Japanese whaling fleet, and it is a wee bit uncomfortable today after the whaling fleet supply vessel Sun Laurel decided to lead us into a storm to try and shake the Bob Barker and the Steve Irwin off its tail. We are now over 300 miles north of the Antarctic Treaty Zone Boundary and the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary as the Sun Laurel wanders northward and eastward hoping to unload her cargo of heavy fuel for the Nisshin Maru and diesel fuel for the...

JAPAN has attracted 27 countries to a summit of pro-whaling nations to be held next week. This comes as the Japanese whaling fleet prepares to leave port for its annual hunt in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese Fisheries Agency announced it would convene the summit after the collapse in June of international talks on a compromise plan to phase out the Antarctic whale hunt in return for a resumption of limited commercial whaling. The contentious Antarctic hunt - expected to again be the target of protests from the Sea Shepherd conservation group - is carried out under Japan's officially sanctioned...

The use of birth control has been an issue debated by ethicists in the United States for over a century. Until now, it’s been a moral issue, and few mainstream voices ever advocated the use of birth control for environmental reasons. On Scientific American’s website, an Oct. 11 article by David Biello argues that if we were able to lower the growth of the world’s population, the amount of carbon that is expected to be emitted into the atmosphere would significantly diminish. He cited a study from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research that explained demographic ties to the...

A former Sea Shepherd activist on Thursday accused the militant conservation group of deliberately sinking one of its own ships as a publicity stunt after a collision with a Japanese whaler. New Zealander Pete Bethune labelled Sea Shepherd's leadership "morally bankrupt" for allegedly ordering the hi-tech trimaran "Ady Gil" to be scuttled after it collided with a Japanese whaler last January in the Southern Ocean. Bethune, the Ady Gil's captain, said Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson ordered the ship's sinking to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV" in the publicity battle against Japan's Antarctic whaling program....

On January 6, 2010, Captain Hiroyuki Komura of the illegal Japanese whaling vessel the Shonan Maru #2 deliberately rammed and destroyed Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s vessel, the Ady Gil. Captain Komura almost killed six Sea Shepherd volunteer crewmembers and did not respond to the Ady Gil’s mayday distress signal. Japanese authorities refused to cooperate in investigations and declined requests by Australian and New Zealand maritime authorities to question Captain Komura. Instead, Captain Peter Bethune, the man who Captain Komura almost killed and whose ship was destroyed, was taken back to Japan literally as a prisoner of war abducted from the...

Hippies on Larry King Live!!! Watch stupidity in action!!!