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Bestiality sex tourism busted at Exitpoint Stallions
Seattle Times
(4/16/10)

Felon accused of running animal-sex farm in Whatcom County

A Whatcom County man’s friendship and aggressive support for a man convicted in the infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case led to his arrest this week for allegedly operating a bestiality farm just south of the Canadian border, federal prosecutors said Friday.

Douglas Spink, 39, a one-time dot.com millionaire, convicted drug smuggler and horse trainer, was quietly living on rural property south of Sumas when he connected with James Tait, who was in a Tennessee jail on a bestiality charge.

Tait had earlier been convicted of trespassing in 2005 in the Enumclaw case, in which a Gig Harbor man died after having sex with a horse.

The two men’s communications set in motion an investigation that resulted in Spink’s arrest Wednesday at the Sumas farm for suspicion of violating his federal probation for drug smuggling. Federal prosecutors and Whatcom County sheriff’s officials say Spink also allowed people to come to the farm and have sex with animals.

He was “promoting tourism of this nature for bestiality,” Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said Friday.

When county deputies and federal investigators searched the property they found videotapes that included images of a man, who was visiting the property, having sex with several large-breed dogs.

The man, a 51-year-old British national, was arrested for investigation of four counts of bestiality, Elfo said. He is being held in the Whatcom County Jail in lieu of $150,000, Elfo said.

On Wednesday, authorities took several animals, including horses and large-breed dogs, found on Spink’s property into protective custody, Elfo said. Several mice were euthanized, he added. “At this point, we don’t know how many people visited this location or how many engaged in illegal conduct,” the sheriff said. “We’ll see as the federal investigation unfolds.”

The property, Exitpoint Stallions, is reportedly owned by Spink’s mother.

Nazi chased from rally by rock-throwing counterprotesters
Los Angeles Times
(4/17/10)

White supremacist rally ends with five arrests and two assaults, police say

A white supremacist rally on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall ended with a handful of arrests Saturday afternoon as counter-protesters showered police and white supremacists with rocks, bottles and other debris.

A rally by 40 members of a group calling itself the National Socialist Movement drew hundreds of counter-protesters from throughout the region. In the hours leading up to the rally, where members called for the removal of all nonwhites from America’s southwest, counter-protesters scuffled with people perceived to be sympathizing with the white supremacists’ message.

One man, who sported Nazi tattoos, was severely beaten near City Hall while another man, who carried a confusing sign about religion with a scribbled swastika, was pummeled by a mob of people on Spring Street between 1st and 2nd.

The Los Angeles Police Department went on tactical alert during the event and took responsibility for escorting the white supremacists to and from the demonstration site. Earlier in the week the group had obtained a permit for the demonstration.

At the end of the rally, after 2:30 p.m., police escorted the white supremacists to the criminal courts building parking lot to get in their vehicles. However, one car failed to start. A crowd of counter-demonstrators ran to the lot and began hurling rocks and bottles into the parking lot’s southwest corner, hitting cars and shattering glass. As some of the white supremacists held shields emblazoned with swastikas over their heads to protect them from the projectiles, others attempted to jump-start the car.

The LAPD then order the crowd to disperse and reopened the streets.

Texas factory’s black workers harassed, threatened
The Dallas Morning News
(4/15/10)

Black workers at East Texas plant were harassed with nooses, death threats, federal officials find

Federal officials in Dallas have found that a group of black employees at a Paris, Texas, pipe factory were harassed with nooses, Confederate flags and death threats while white employees who refused to participate in the abuse were fired.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s finding, issued late last month, requires that the employees and their attorneys sit down with management of Turner Industries to reach a settlement on the matter. If that stalls, the employees have the option of filing a civil rights lawsuit.

The company, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, says it investigated the employees’ allegations and found no wrongdoing at the oilfield pipe fabrication plant.

“Turner Industries has zero tolerance for any behavior in the work place that disparages any employee,” general counsel John Fenner said in a written statement. “While we are disappointed that the EEOC has issued this determination and strongly disagree with its findings, we plan to meet with the EEOC to address all concerns.”

Current and former employees, their lawyers from New York and Austin, and civil rights activists from Dallas announced the EEOC findings today at a news conference in downtown Dallas.

“Our clients faced an environment that was hostile,” said Robert J. Valli Jr., a New York attorney representing the employees. “Nothing was done to stop it.”

Employees and their lawyers said that in addition to the intimidation, company management limited blacks to low-wage laborer positions while promoting less qualified white workers. Employees began complaining to the EEOC a year ago, but the abuse had gone on much longer, some said.

“I’ve been called colored boy, coon, monkey,” said Dontrail Mathis, 33, a painter’s helper at the plant in Paris who began highlighting racist conditions in December 2006. “When Obama won, they went off. My superiors said ‘If he ain’t white, it ain’t right.’

“I saw nooses, swastikas on the wall,” said Mathis, a father of three. “It was horrible.”

He said that despite the abuse, he still works for the company to help support his family, even though his sister and mother have been threatened.

• Photos of the racist images at Turner Industries are in the Texas Observer story,  “Paris, Texas: ‘Mississippi 50 Years Ago’.”

Lower taxes for Americans mean high price and poor service
New America Media
(4/15/10)

What Americans Get in Return For Their Taxes

The fact is, in return for their taxes, Europeans are receiving a generous support system for families and individuals for which Americans must pay exorbitantly, out-of-pocket, if we are to receive it at all. That includes quality health care for every single person, the average cost of which is about half of what Americans pay, even as various studies show that Europeans achieve healthier results.

But that’s not all. In return for their taxes, Europeans also are receiving affordable child care, a decent retirement pension, free or inexpensive university education, job retraining, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, ample vacations, affordable housing, senior care, efficient mass transportation and more. In order to receive the same level of benefits as Europeans, most Americans fork out a ton of money in out-of-pocket payments, in addition to our taxes.

For example, while 47 million Americans don’t have any health insurance at all, many who do are paying escalating premiums and deductibles. Indeed, Anthem Blue Cross announced that its premiums will increase by up to 40 percent. But all Europeans receive health care in return for a modest amount deducted from their paychecks.

Friends have told me they are saving nearly $100,000 for their children’s college education, and most young Americans graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. But European children attend for free or nearly so (depending on the country).

Child care in the United States costs more than $12,000 annually for a family with two children, but in Europe it costs about one-sixth that amount, and the quality is far superior. Millions of Americans are stuffing as much as possible into their IRAs and 401(k)s because Social Security provides only about half the retirement income needed. But the more generous European retirement system provides about 75 to 85 percent (depending on the country) of retirement income. Either way, you pay.

Americans’ private spending on old-age care is nearly three times higher per capita than in Europe because Americans must self-finance a significant share of their own senior care. Americans also tend to pay more in local and state taxes, as well as in property taxes.

Americans also pay hidden taxes, such as $300 billion annually in federal tax breaks to businesses that provide health benefits to their employees.

When you sum up the total balance sheet, it turns out that Americans pay out just as much as Europeans — but we receive a lot less for our money.

Israel targets whistleblower, reporter following revelations
American Prospect
(4/19/10)

The Whistleblower’s Story

Now that the Tel Aviv District Court has lifted its gag order on the Anat Kam affair, Israelis don’t need foreign news sites to learn about the ex-soldier who allegedly leaked digitalized reams of classified documents to a reporter. That makes life easier for those whose English is weak, but the difference in public awareness probably isn’t significant. The gag order had already insured intense curiosity. What the increased access should do is stir a serious debate about balancing freedom of the press and whistleblowing with secrecy and security — a debate every democracy needs regularly.

What’s reliably known is this: Kam is 23. (In news photos, she looks 15 and terribly innocent — possibly an image designed by her lawyers.) During her required army service, she worked as a clerk in the office of Gen. Yair Naveh, then-head of the Israel Defense Force’s Central Command. When she completed her service, she took home CDs to which she had copied many classified documents. Later she passed information to Uri Blau, an investigative reporter for Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily that has been most ready to criticize government policy in the occupied territories. In November 2008, using some of Kam’s material, Blau published a long article titled “License to Kill.” It alleged that the IDF had deliberately ignored an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that barred targeted killing of suspected terrorists when it was possible to arrest them. A source whom I consider quite reliable tells me that far more people have read Blau’s article online in recent days than when it was originally published.

Months later, investigators from the domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, reached an agreement with Blau, in which he consented to return classified documents and the agency agreed not to use them to find his source. Kam was arrested last December and has been under house arrest since. Blau and the Shin Bet each accuse the other of breaking their agreement. At last report, Blau is wanted by the Shin Bet and is waiting in London while lawyers negotiate his return.

One more crucial detail, which to the best of my knowledge has not been previously published: According to that same quite reliable source, Kam’s trove included the so-called Spiegel Report, a secret military document detailing illegal construction and theft of Palestinian-owned land in West Bank settlements. In January 2009, Blau published an article on the contents of the report, along with extensive excerpts in Hebrew. As former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer explains in a recent essay — with characteristic diplomatic understatement — the Spiegel material shows that “even with respect to settlements authorized by the Israeli government and supposedly in compliance with Israeli law, there were systematic violations of the law.” The Spiegel Report is essential to any reasoned debate in Israel about the settlements’ future.

• In Middle East Online, past This is Hell! guest Jonathan Cook writes an article on the subject headlined, “Case exposes dark underbelly of Israel’s security state.”

Earthquake insurance too expensive for small businesses
Los Angeles Times
(4/19/10)

Firms find cost of earthquake insurance too big a jolt

Like small-business owners across Southern California, Hilario Sanchez knows all too well the shaking, the damage and, of course, the inevitable cleanup after an earthquake.

But, he says, he has never seen the need for earthquake insurance — a pricey decision facing small companies each year …

The Baja California quakes and the images of damaged businesses in the California border city of Calexico are just the latest reminders of the sudden damage that can confront merchants and other small companies.

Although they may have caught the attention of small firms in the Los Angeles area, the temblors are unlikely to spur many to sign up for earthquake insurance, experts say.

The greatest obstacle is the price of a disaster policy: a $5,000 premium for $2.5 million in property coverage is a typical example for a small business, insurance brokers said.

And because the insurance is designed to cover only catastrophic losses, the deductibles are high, ranging from around 10% to 20% or more of the cost of any damage.

“A little retail store is not going to be generally interested in a $4,000 to $5,000 premium” for earthquake insurance, said Scott Hauge, president of Cal Insurance & Associates in San Francisco and head of the Small Business California lobbying group.

Insuring for a natural disaster such as an earthquake is not easy for a small-business owner. Quake damage is not covered by standard business insurance policies: Most insurers don’t sell it as a stand-alone product. A small business has to already have a policy with the company. And there can be important exclusions to coverage.

A small business that owns its building is more likely to spring for earthquake insurance than those that don’t, brokers said.

Microsoft’s Chinese sweatshop
Daily Mail
(4/18/10)

The image Microsoft doesn’t want you to see: Too tired to stay awake, the Chinese workers earning just 34p an hour

Showing Chinese sweatshop workers slumped over their desks with exhaustion, it is an image that Microsoft won’t want the world to see.

Employed for gruelling 15-hour shifts, in appalling conditions and 86f heat, many fall asleep on their stations during their meagre ten-minute breaks.

For as little as 34p an hour, the men and women work six or seven days a week, making computer mice and web cams for the American multinational computer company.

This photo and others like it were smuggled out of the KYE Systems factory at Dongguan, China, as part of a three-year investigation by the National Labour Committee, a human rights organisation which campaigns for workers across the globe.

The mostly female workers, aged 18 to 25, work from 7.45am to 10.55pm, sometimes with 1,000 workers crammed into one 105ft by 105ft room.

They are not allowed to talk or listen to music, are forced to eat substandard meals from the factory cafeterias, have no bathroom breaks during their shifts and must clean the toilets as discipline, according to the NLC.

The workers also sleep on site, in factory dormitories, with 14 workers to a room. They must buy their own mattresses and bedding, or else sleep on 28in-wide plywood boards. They ‘shower’ with a sponge and a bucket.

And many of the workers, because they are young women, are regularly sexually harassed, the NLC claimed.

The organisation said that one worker was even fined for losing his finger while operating a hole punch press.

Microsoft is not the only company to outsource manufacturing to KYE, but it accounts for about 30 per cent of the factory’s work, the NLC said. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech and Asus also use KYE Systems.

Microsoft, which exports much of the hardware made at the factory to America, Europe and Japan, said that it is taking the claims seriously and has begun an investigation.

Hedge fund manager in Goldman Sachs fraud case hosted GOP fundraiser six days ago
POLITICO
(4/19/10)

Goldman figure Paulson hosted Romney, Steele last week

Republicans Mitt Romney and Michael Steele headlined a Republican National Committee fundraiser six days ago at the home of the hedge fund titan at the center of the Security and Exchange Committee’s fraud charges against Goldman Sachs.

A spokesman for the RNC confirmed the Tuesday evening event at the Manhattan home of John Paulson, who made a fortune betting against the housing market, and whom Goldman is accused of working to structure products sold to unwitting investors.

Paulson appears not to be facing charges. The RNC spokesman declined to comment on the gathering and a Romney spokesman didn’t respond to an email on the topic.

Republicans have by and large fought regulations on derivative trading that would dramatically impact the businesses of hedge fund managers like Paulson.

The Goldman charges have sprayed a toxic political cloud out from one of Wall Street’s wealthiest corners, raising questions for politicians of both parties, like New York’s Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, who raised heavily from Goldman Sachs, and for the recipients  of contributions from the politically-active Paulson.

Obama allows militia to arm itself at DC protest
The Washington Post
(4/19/10)

Militia movement will be packing heat at gun rally on the Potomac

Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, is ready to “muster outside D.C.” on Monday with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park, and the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.

Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his polo-shirted shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent organized the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws and what he sees as President Obama’s insistence on and the Democratic Congress’s capitulation to a “totalitarian socialism” that tramples individual rights.

A member of several heretofore little-known groups, including Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and Oath Keepers — former and active military and law enforcement officials who have vowed to resist laws they deem unconstitutional — Almond, 31, considers packing heat on the doorstep of the federal government within the mainstream of political speech.

Others consider it an alarming escalation of paranoia and anger in the age of Obama.

“What I think is important to note is that many of the speakers have really threatened violence, and it’s a real threat to the rule of law,” Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said of the program for the armed rally. “They are calling health care and taxes that have been duly enacted by a democratically elected Congress tyrannical, and they feel they have a right to confront that individually.”

On the lineup are several heroes of the militia movement, including Mike Vanderboegh, who advocated throwing bricks through the windows of Democrats who voted for the health-care bill; Tom Fernandez, who has established a nationwide call tree to mobilize an armed resistance to any government order to seize firearms; and former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, who refused to enforce the Brady law and then won a Supreme Court verdict that weakened its background-check provisions.

Those coming to the “Restore the Constitution” rally give Obama no quarter for signing the law that permits them to bring their guns to Fort Hunt, run by the National Park Service, and to Gravelly Point on the banks of the Potomac River. Nor are they comforted by a broad expansion of gun rights in several states since his election.