Independent counsel should probe whole Bruce Babbitt regime, says Cockburn

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

WASHINGTON D.C.– – Attorney
General Janet Reno in mid-February asked a
three-judge panel to appoint an indpendent
counsel to probe allegations that Interior
Secretary Bruce Babbitt improperly intervened
in 1995 to keep three Chippewa tribes from
converting a dog track into a gambling casino
that would have competed against casinos
operated by five other tribes. The opponents
were represented by well-placed Democrats,
including reputed longtime Babbitt pal Paul
Eckstein, who met with Babbitt shortly before
the Chippewa bid for a casino permit was
denied. The opponents in 1996 gave $230,000
to the Democratic National Committee.

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Coon hunt benefit for St. Jude goes on

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

M E M P H I S––The 22nd annual World’s
Largest Coon Hunt, a United Kennel Club-licensed
event, will be held on April 9-11 at Parsons,
Tennessee, sponsored by Ralston Purina, to benefit
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital of Memphis.
Contestants’ dogs are not allowed to kill
raccoons, but must keep each raccoon treed until
the animal’s presence is confirmed by a judge, and
as a whole the event promotes coonhunting, in
which raccoons are routinely dismembered by dogs
or are shot out of trees and thrown to dogs.
St. Jude has often denied culpability for
the event, but has reportedly accepted $1.5 million
from it over the years without objecting to the
hunters’ use of the St. Jude name. The host organization
was incorporated in 1984 as Decatur CountySt.

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COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Circuit judge Dennis P.
M a l o n e y of Lakeland, Florida, on
January 24 sentenced Frederick Martin
III, 36, to serve five months in jail, and
also convicted his wife, Janet Martin,
33, who will be sentenced this summer,
for falsely testifying in September 1997
that their son Freddie Martin, 13, had
no previous arrest record. Freddie
Martin and David Clark Elliott, 11,
were charged with felony animal cruelty
for hanging a neighbor’s dog from a tree,
then killing her with a lawn trimmer. In
fact, Freddie Martin was a fugitive from
justice in Ossipee, New Hampshire,
where he was charged in October 1996
for stabbing four pigs, who survived,
and sexually mutilating a sheep, who
died. The Martins moved to Florida after
two hearings in the New Hampshire case.

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Oprah beats beef, emu ranchers v. Honda next

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

AMARILLO––A federal jury in
Amarillo, Texas, on February 26 ruled that
TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey did not
libel beef when she exclaimed she would
stop eating hamburgers while interviewing
vegetarian activist Howard Lyman about
“mad cow disease” in April 1996.
The core of the case failed on
February 17, when Federal District Judge
Mary Lou Robinson held that the plaintiffs
hadn’t proved the food libel charge during
four weeks of testimony. The case continued
on a claim of common-law business disparagement,
which required the ranchers to
prove Winfrey intended malice.

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“Science fiction” comes true

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

The current global ecological catastrophe is no surprise
to ANIMAL PEOPLE. Publisher Kim Bartlett and web
site manager Patrice Greanville recognized the threats of global
warming and climate change to animals at least as far back as
June 1988, when they were editor and editor-at-large, respectively,
of The Animals’ Agenda magazine.
I was then a Quebec-based environmental freelance,
whom they soon afterward hired as Animals’ Agenda news editor.
Knowing I had written extensively for more than a decade
about global warning and related climate issues, mostly for
rural newspapers and specialized environmental media, Bartlett
and Greanville asked me to discuss the effects of global warming
on animals. They published my response in November
1988 as a guest installment of Greanville’s “Dateline:

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Great sportsmen & women

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

New Hampshire Wildlife
Federation  on executive director Mary
Barton, 55, pleaded innocent on March
4 to a poaching charge––but admitted she
used her tag on a moose shot by New
Zealand hunting preserve owner Alan
Stewart in October 1997, while she was
not present. Two other men were
charged as accessories, including former
New Hampshire state legislator and Fish
and Game Commissioner Herbert
Drake.
Wendell Locke, 61, president
of the Portland chapter of the 5,000-
member Oregon Hunters Association, is
reportedly facing possible expulsion for
participating in burning a cross on the
lawn of Oregon Humane Society director
Sharon Harmon after the 1996 passage
of a referendum ban on using dogs
to hunt bears and pumas. Locke pledged
to write a letter of apology and do community
service at the humane society
instead of facing criminal charges,

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Horsethief too?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

WASHINGTON, D.C.––Former Humane
Society of the U.S. vice president of investigations
David Wills not only allegedly misappropriated as
much as $211,000 from HSUS but is also a deadbeat
dad and, in effect, a horsethief, charges an
objection to Wills’ application for Chapter 13
bankruptcy filed on January 30, 1998 by HSUS
counsel Robert Plotkin.
Wills, wrote Plotkin, “admitted that a paternity
judgement was obtained against him by the
State of Washington on behalf of a child Wills
fathered with a woman who was not his wife…In
calculating his personal expense obligations,” to
shelter assets and income under the bankruptcy filing,

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AUTHENTIC “SOUL FOOD” IS VEGETARIAN

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

NEW YORK, N.Y.––”In the wake of
the Oprah Winfrey beef victory,” Animal Rights
International announced on March 4, “new
research reveals that nearly two-thirds (63%) of the
public think the meat, poultry, and egg industries
should be held liable for illnesses and deaths
caused by their products.”
Commissioned by ARI, the telephone
survey of 1,006 adults was conducted in late
February 1998 by Opinion Research Corporation
International, of Princeton, New Jersey.
“Also reacting to the Centers for Disease
Control’s findings that 4,500 Americans die each
year from tainted meat, poultry and eggs, and that
five million more become ill,” the ARI release
continued, “two out of five (43%) agreed that
meat, poultry, and eggs should be labeled ‘potentially
hazardous,’ with warnings similar to those
required on tobacco products.

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LETTERS [April 1998]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

Street dogs
Thank you for your articles
about Help In Suffering. I have always
believed that our program is part of a
much greater whole. India is the only
country in the world with such a large
number of vegetarians by choice, and
India still has the tradition of recognizing
the animal’s right to live, even if the animal
is sometimes a nuisance. E.g., yesterday
I was watching people feeding
flocks of pigeons, which were pooing
everywhere. Pigeons are considered
sacred here, but in Sydney, Australia,
my home town, they are poisoned.
Examples are many, and street
dogs are one of them. The street dogs are
definitely sometimes a nuisance, but generally
people respect their interests,
except where the people have become
modernized and westernized, and want
clean streets devoid of animals.

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