BOOKS: Next of Kin

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Next of Kin
by Roger Fouts
with Stephen Tukel Mills.
Introduction by Jane Goodall
William Morrow & Co.
(1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York,
NY 10019), 1997. 420 pages, hardcover, $25.00.

Chimpanzees’ use of English seems childlike, the tools
they make are simple, and their cultures are somewhat basic.
When these statements are understood they become revolutionary.
What Dr. Roger Fouts explains to us in Next of Kin
is that chimpanzees are us. Whether the public is ready for this
message and will be able to understand what this means about
the way we should treat the great apes remains to be seen.

BOOKS: Generation React: Activism for Beginners

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Generation React:
Activism for Beginners
by Danny Seo
Ballentine Publishing (201 E. 50th St., New York,
NY 10022), 1997. 192 pages, paperback, $10.95.

Activism tends to be a young person’s game––but
Danny Seo, the 20-year-old author of Generation React,
wasn’t just playing when at age 12, in 1990, he quit eating
meat and founded Earth 2000 National. Swiftly winning
media note, Seo hit the bigtime even younger than most star
athletes and rock-and-rollers, converted fleeting attention to
enduring influence, and remains active and effective.

REVIEWS: Henry: One Man’s Way

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Henry––One Man’s Way
Documentary by Peter Singer
Distributed by The Great Ape Project
(POB 19492, Portland, OR 97280-0492), 1997.
Two hours. $15.00.

Even if Henry Spira had never taken up the animal
cause, he would still have had a formidable career in activism,
as maritime labor organizer, leftist through the McCarthy era,
and muckraking reporter who exposed the peccadillos and perversities
of longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover at the height
of Hoover’s power, traveled to Cuba to cover the first developments
after Fidel Castro ousted the CIA-backed dictator
Francisco Batista, and followed the Freedom Riders through
rural Mississippi.

BOOKS: Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition:
The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton’s Polar-Bound Cat
by Caroline Alexander
Harper Collins Publishers (10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022-5299), 1997.
148 pages, hardcover, $16.00.

Read with clear eyes, the saga of
Antarctic exploration is––like most sagas––a
dismal record of vanity, cruelty, stupidity and
greed, whose protagonists exhibit heroic
attributes chiefly after their own foolishness
puts them in peril of their lives.

OBITUARIES

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Diana, Princess of Wales, 36,
killed August 30 with her companion Emad
Mohamed al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul in a
Paris car crash, was recalled by fine arts portrateur
Elaine Livesay-Fassell as “The first
person in the British royal family who would
not hunt, shoot, or wear fur, the first who
spoke out about kindness to animals” since
Queen Victoria endorsed the Royal SPCA
and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
at request of Prince Albert in the 19th century.
“It was unfortunately not mentioned in
all the tributes to Diana,” Best Friends
Animal Sanctuary cofounder Michael
Mountain told the 1997 No Kill Conference
in his plenary address, “that the very first of
the rifts in the royal family that led to her
divorce came when she refused to hunt, and
did not want her sons to hunt.” Diana was
reputedly a vegetarian by inclination, with
frequent lapses, and PETA published a note
from Buckingham Palace affirming her opposition
to fur as part of an anti-fur ad, but
ANIMAL PEOPLE was unable to find documentation
of any specific statements she
might have made about animals, nor of her
direct participation in animal causes. “Diana
was widely rumored to dissapprove of bloodsports,”
said Kevin Saunders, chair of the
League Against Cruel Sports, “and it was
thought she was unhappy with Prince Charles
for introducing their sons to all known legal
forms of blood sport, but it was never more
than a rumor. Diana, to the best of my
knowledge, never involved herself in any
animal welfare work, not even with the
Royal SPCA,” as the RSPCA confirmed.

Obituaries

BOOKS: And No Birds Sing

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

And No Birds Sing:
A True Ecological Thriller Set in a Tropical Paradise
by Mark Jaffe
Barricade Books (150 Fifth Ave., Suite 700, New York, NY 1OO11), 1997.
283 pages, paperback, $12.00.

On a small island, thousands of
miles across the Pacific, the birds have all
but disappeared. And No Birds Sing, paced
like a page-turning mystery, seeks the
answer. Mark Jaffe chronicles prolonged
governmental and scientific ineptitude in
responding to an event that had no recognized
model: the annihilation of birds on
Guam by the accidental import of the brown
tree snake. Jaffe centers on the story of
Julia Savidge, a doctoral candidate at the
University of Illinois, hired to do research
by the Guam Division of Aquatic Wildlife
Resources, who had the courage to fight
bureaucracy and bogus “scientific rules” for
years in order to prove the impact of the
snake, which she had deduced from field
observation, interviews with local people,
and archival research.

BOOKS: Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Animal Experimentation:
A Harvest of Shame
by Moneim A. Fadali, M.D.
Hidden Springs Press
(POB 29613, Los Angeles, CA 90029), 1996.
233 pages, paperback, $14.95.

Mark Twain once said, “Man is the only animal capable of
blushing…but he is the only one who has plenty of reason to do so.”
The subject of Dr. Fadali’s treatise makes it abundantly clear that
blushing is the least man can do.
Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame overflows
with the author’s anti-vivisectionist sentiments. The author’s heart is
obviously in the right place, but judicious editing and a more rigorous
scientific approach could have streamlined the presentation to the
point that it could not fail to impress a reader unconvinced of the ultimate
futility of animal experimentation. It also would have won a
wider audience. Compelling facts are within these pages, yet require
fortitude to glean.

Direct action crackdown

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Noel Molland, 36, of
Okehampton, Devon, Paul Rogers, 33, of
Southsea, Hampshire, Steve Booth, 38, of
Galgate, Lancashire, Saxon Birchnall
Wood, 24, of Sandhurst, Berkshire, and
Simon Russell, 33, of Pevensey, East
Sussex, pleaded not guilty on August 30 in
London, England, to allegedly conspiring
together and with previously convicted
Animal Liberation Front press officer
Robin Wood to incite persons unknown to
commit criminal damage between January
1991 and January 1996. All five, and Robin
Wood, were associated with Green Anarchist
magazine. Booth also produced his own magazine,
Lancaster Bomber, as did Molland,
who called his Eco Vegan. Burchnall Wood
allegedly distributed manuals on making
bombs and sabotaging vehicles, the Crown
said. Russell was for several years the electronic
voice of the British ALF. The group,
whose trial continues, are believed to have
been the core of the British ALF in the 1990s.
Attacks on some targets the defendants
allegedly directed activists toward continue.

Protest of bison killing took guts

October 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL
PARK––The Fund for Animals, Biodiversity
Legal Foundation, Ecology Center, Predator
Project, and individual coplaintiffs on
September 23 announced an out-of-court settlement
of a lawsuit against the National Park
Service for maintaining groomed snowmobile
trails in and out of Yellowstone National Park
each winter, which become corridors to
slaughter as bison follow the cleared, packed
routes north into Montana. More than 1,000
bison were shot last winter alone for entering
Montana, where ranchers fear the bison may
reintroduce brucellosis, undoing a long campaign
to eliminate the disease.

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