Random and Disturbing News

Disturbing and Disgusting

Dolphin Raid
Here's a story that's so grotesque and seemingly far-fetched that it's hard to believe.

For the first time ever, graphic feature-length footage of the annual slaughter of some 2,500 dolphins in Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, has been captured during a unique yearlong covert operation.

The secret filming by members of the U.S. conservation group Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) — equipped with state-of-the-art technology and financed to the tune of $5 million by Netscape founder Jim Clark — is being turned into a major documentary feature film destined for worldwide release this summer (although distribution in Japan is at present not certain).

The story of how this film of the barbaric killing and subsequent butchering of dolphins was made — together with the resulting sale of their meat that massively exceeds Japanese and international limits for mercury content — is told here, exclusively, for the first time anywhere in print.

That's right; an eco-group with big money backing staged what can only be described as a Black Op to get extensive documentary evidence of a secretive dolphin slaughter in Japan.

Just the still photographs are horrifying. But quite frankly, to me, the sheer scale of this operation is more interesting than the abject cruelty.

I mean, we live in a world chock full of abject cruelty.

The footage of the annual seven-month dolphin "drive fisheries" (as they are known in Japan), and of the brutal practices involved in them — as well as the complicity in the killings by various dolphin trainers and officials from Taiji Whale Museum — is sure to shock the world. But whether Japanese people themselves will be able to see the film and arrive at their own conclusions is still by no means certain.

The annual dolphin slaughter at Taiji, a town with a population of some 3,500 in the beautiful Yoshino Kumano Kokuritsu Koen national park, follows a regular pattern.

First, hunter boats from the Taiji Isana Union (numbering at most 13 skiffs, with two crewmen each) head out to sea and surround pods of dolphins or pilot whales (which are actually large dolphins). Then they drive them into a "capture cove" by banging on long metal bell-ended poles placed in the water to disrupt the dolphins' sonar, causing them to become completely disorientated and panic.

After these animals have spent a night supposedly relaxing in the netted-off capture cove (in an attempt by the whalers to make their meat more tender), they are driven to the neighboring "killing cove." There, behind huge blue tarps strung across the cove to keep prying eyes away — in much the same way that Japanese police cordon off crime scenes — the dolphins meet their gruesome predawn end.

Terry Pratchett says something about the nature of evil in Carpe Jugulum, I forget the exact quote, but the sentiment was that the worst sort of evil isn't the kind that goes on in the dead of night, but the sort that plods methodically, dispassionately forward in grey, daylight monotony. In the book he's referencing, amongst other things, the Nazis, but the analogy holds here too. Truly nasty, inhuman behavior reaches its apex not with the lunatic carving up prostitutes, but with the commandant running the camps, or here, the whalers mutilating semi-sentient creatures to make toxic food.

From their base in Boulder, Colorado, the OPS group made six trips to Wakayama Prefecture, where they were constantly followed by local police and stalked and harassed by Taiji "whalers." Despite this, their mission was successful. Their high-tech film gear was covertly inserted in the "killing cove" and extracted 16 times thanks to the efforts of the film's assistant director, Charles Hambleton, and three members of the OPS team. Their hidden, high-definition (HD) cameras successfully recorded the horror that unfolded behind Taiji's blue tarps. And what they saw was beyond their belief.

Captured dolphins were filmed writhing in pain as Taiji whalers speared them repeatedly or cracked their spines with spiked weapons. Stricken dolphins are also shown thrashing about wildly, blood pouring from their wounds until they finally succumbed. Meanwhile, a number of dolphin trainers and officials from the Taiji Whale Museum are shown cooperating in the slaughter — some even laughing — as the killing cove's bloodied, ruby-red water swept round into the adjacent capture cove.

But perhaps the most iconic scene is one in which a baby dolphin leaps to its death on the rocks after its mother is killed. This really was a surreal and incredibly sad sight to see.

Surreal doesn't begin to describe it.

The lengths they had to go to in order to produce the documentary are equally surreal, to my mind.

With funding from billionaire conservationist Clark, the team was able to use the most sophisticated equipment money could buy. Among their weapons of choice were a battery of HD cameras. Some of those cameras were encased in fake rocks sculpted out of high-density foam by movie-model makers with Kerner Optical (formerly George "Star Wars" Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic Shop). These disguised cameras were strat- egically positioned inside the killing cove.

Also included in the formidable lineup of high-tech gear for this covert operation were standard-size HD cameras, $50,000 military-grade HD forward-looking infrared (FLIR) P-645 thermal cameras (to detect anyone the whalers had on lookout); hydrophones and HD underwater cameras (to record the dolphins' underwater throes); unmanned gyro-stabilized helicopters; a number of "shotgun" microphones disguised as tree branches; walkie-talkies; and a host of ancillary equipment.

The mission objective was to produce a well-balanced, full-length documentary feature for general worldwide release encompassing all facets of the Taiji dolphin cull and its health risks.

"We succeeded," Psihoyos said, "but we also came back with an epic horror film resembling a Steven King novel more than a documentary."

...

To make this possible, OPS called on Mandy-Rae Cruickshank, a seven-time world free-diving champion, and her famed coach and husband, Kirk Krack, to plant the devices. (Cruikshank recently broke her own world record by free-diving down to 88 meters and back in 2 min. 48 sec.) Both eagerly accepted the risky challenge.

"Good to go Mandy," crackled through the two-way. It was 3 a.m. The OPS support group on land had just completed a thermal-imaging sweep of the capture and killing coves. No security was detected. As the OPS van dropped the two off above the holding cove's small beach, and sped away, the free-diving pair, clad in wet suits, entered the water. The moon was full, helping them to see obstacles.

"Tensions were high . . . we had to get around a barbed-wire fence and hike down over some boulders to get into the water," Mandy said. "Then we swam around to the killing cove. It was about 40 feet (12 meters) deep. We had an underwater camera and hydrophone, and we used a flashlight to get a reference point so we knew where to retrieve them from after we made a reconnaissance, but we had to turn it on and off quickly to escape detection. Then Kirk and I put down the devices fairly easily."

...

Meanwhile, Psihoyos' team was embedded in their camera blinds on overlooking hillsides, sometimes for as long as 17 hours a day. Dressed in full camouflage gear and wearing face paint, they looked like military sniper teams. Black masking tape covered reflective surfaces on their cameras to avoid detection. For over 3 1/2 weeks, the OPS team survived on a daily ration of 3 hours' sleep. When filming from the camera blinds, they subsisted on energy bars and water. Whaler security men, always wary of outsiders monitoring their hunts, constantly scanned the high terrain, the bushes and undergrowth surrounding the two coves, their flashlights searching for intruders.

Psihoyos recounted his attempt in setting up the initial camera blind in a spot overlooking the killing cove.

"It was a moonless night and I had a full-size def (HD) camera in tow with a large tripod. I scaled a cliff and descended on a rope and perched on a shelf as big as an average office desk — but at a slope of about 30 degrees.

"I braced my feet against a small tree and didn't move them for the next 15 1/2 hours," he said, adding, "the lagoon was filled with pilot whales — they made a protective circle around their young. I shot frantic clips from my unstable perch as I saw whales killed and dragged away."

The whole thing is worth a read. These people put our National Intelligence to shame, that's for sure.

Source: The Japan Times

White Stickers
This is a combination of truly sad/pathetic and hilarious.

Two narcotics officers were demoted from an elite strike force and suspended without pay because of racially offensive stickers found inside a police department locker.


Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey this week punished officers Scott Schweizer and Eric Dial, transferring the pair out of the Narcotics Strike Force to routine patrol in districts where they started as rookies. The officers were also each suspended for 20 days without pay and prohibited from using vacation days toward the unpaid leave.

Two racist stickers were found inside Schweizer's locker. One sticker read: "White Power." The other depicted a cartoon of a man, half as an officer in uniform and half as a Klansman, with the words "Blue By Day — White By Night."

...

An Internal Affairs Bureau investigation concluded that Dial created the stickers and put them on Schweizer's locker in the narcotics strike force headquarters in the city's Bridesburg section, Ramsey said.

White Power... stickers?

Excuse me?

Is this what the white supremacist movement is reduced to? STICKERS?

That's progress.

Source: Raw Story

Wowser
This was sort of inevitable.

North Dakota State University is investigating the NDSU Saddle and Sirloin Club and sorority Alpha Gamma Delta after a racially charged performance at the Mr. NDSU Pageant. The performance featured a student in black face depicting presidential candidate Barack Obama receiving a lap dance while two students dressed as cowboys mimicked anal sex in the background. The Saddle and Sirloin Club, a club for students at the Fargo campus interested in animal agriculture, performed the lip-synching number in front of an audience of 500 people.

...

A pageant contestant from Saddle and Sirloin dressed as the woman from the popular Internet video "I Got a Crush on Obama" and performed for another student who was wearing dark makeup and an afro wig.

In the background, two male students dressed as cowboys simulated anal sex while holding an Obama sign that one student ripped at the conclusion of the 30-second performance.

Wow. Blackface, Obama with strippers... this is some classy school they've got in North Dakota, huh?

Source: Minnesota Monitor

Bowling for Morons
This is just surreal.

Summary: On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist repeatedly mocked Sen. Barack Obama's bowling performance -- which Scarborough called "dainty" -- at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania. Deriding Obama's score, Scarborough said: "You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man." He added, "You get 150, you're a man, or a good woman," to which Geist replied, "Out of my president, I want a 150, at least." After guest Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama's bowling showed a "humble" and "human" side to him, Scarborough replied, "A very human side? A prissy side."

It's also what you'd expect when you hire a former Republican congressman as a TV host. The stupid, it burns!

Seriously, what possible relevance does the bowling performance of a Presidential candidate have? Obama is apparently not much of a bowler, let alone a regular one. But even if he was, and sucked, who cares?

Is bowling a major component of Presidential work these days?

Give me a break. Yet again, Republicans try to feminize the Democratic candidate (or hyper-masculinize Clinton), playing the gender bashing card in a sad, outmoded attempt to sway the white male bigot vote.

Are we really supposed to believe St. John McCain, 72, is a star athlete? Even ignoring the damage to his arms from the POW camp, I mean, he's a decrepit mummy.

Source: Media Matters

Basketball?
Fresh from bashing Obama because he's bad at bowling (and thus a woman), MSNBC had another host, Chris Matthews, go on the air to state that Obama was bound to be good at basketball because he's black.

Summary: On Hardball, discussing Sen. Barack Obama's bowling performance at a campaign stop, Chris Matthews said to MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard, "You know, Michelle -- and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody, but the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder." While showing the video of Obama's bowling, Matthews asserted, "[I]t isn't the most macho form there."

Wow.

Just... wow.

Source: Media Matters

Lou Dobbs!
So Lou Dobbs got sick of, err, being told not to be a racist by uppity blacks.

Racial healer Lou Dobbs explains how he's sick of "cotton pickin'" black leaders telling him how he can and can't talk about race (he catches himself at the last minute -- sorta) ...

What is WRONG with Cable News these days?

Source: Talking Points Memo

Third Graders?!
Third Graders!

WAYCROSS, GA -- It's the type of news you don't expect to hear coming out of an elementary school. Nine third grade students suspended at Center Elementary in Waycross for an alleged plot to attack their teacher.

"This plot was uncovered at the point that something dangerous was brought to the school," says Lt. Dwayne Caswell with Waycross Police.

Police say the students were hatching a plan to harm their teacher Friday morning. They even brought items from home to carry out the plan.

"They had a broken steak knife, a crystal paper weight, toy handcuffs, several items and tape and stuff," says Lt. Caswell.

THIRD GRADERS?!

Also, before people get all upset about the 'degeneration of modern culture', it's worth noting that child soldiers and killers and what not are hardly an uncommon phenomenon or confined to the West. It's also worth noting that the kids had a mix of weapons and, err, toys.

Yeah.

Source: First Coast News

Circus Slaves
Now this is just bizarre stuff.

ROME (Reuters) - Police rescued two teenage Bulgarian sisters from a circus in southern Italy which forced one of them to swim with flesh-eating piranhas for the amusement of guests, police said.

While the 19-year-old sister swam in a transparent tank, the younger, 16-year-old was forced into a container where the circus staff tossed snakes at her. She was injured by one of the snakes, police said.

Police arrested three Italians who ran the circus south of Naples, in Salerno province, accusing them of forcing the sisters to live in virtual slavery.

The women were paid 100 euros ($155.8) per week and lived in a trailer that had previously been used to transport animals, they said.

I would ask how people could watch that, but honestly, circus performers often do some pretty bizarre or dangerous things. At the Dark Carnival we saw a guy (a highly paid professional there of his own free will, of course) put his face in a pile of broken glass and have an audience woman stand on the back of his head. Well, step on it at least.

Still, you'd at least worry about the poor snakes, right?

Source: Reuters