Brainwashing Taiwan: BIG-GROUP OUTREACH CAN BE MISGUIDED

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

I read with a mix of hope and intense disgust the January/February 2000 ANIMAL PEOPLE feature about overseas animal shelters trying to avoid repeating U.S. and European mistakes.

Especially interesting to me were the remarks of Wu Hung, founder of the Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan. Until recently Wu Hung chaired the Life Conservationist Association of Taiwan, a group which in name was active, but by way of activity did little more than publish pamphlets. I have talked with Wu Hung on occasion during my six years in Taiwan, and your article brought home to me the true evil that many of the large, rich organizations of conventional outlook are wreaking on animal rescue overseas.

“Welcome to the monkey-house” & other Y2K stories

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

As the first month of the new millennium ended, ANIMAL PEOPLE had heard of only three “Y2K crisis” items involving animal protection.

One was the usual New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July surge in numbers of dogs running at large, terrified by fireworks. But even the news on that front was unusually good, as the South African National SPCA on January 25 won agreements from the U.S.-owned retail chains Toys R Us and R e g g i e ’ s that they would no longer sell fireworks at any of their 41 South African stores.

South African campaigners were on a streak, as 51,000 South Africans reportedly signed a Beauty Without Cruelty petition asking that the legal status of animals be changed from “chattel” to “sentient beings.”

PEOPLE

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

The Kane County Chronicle, of Geneva, Illinois, in mid-January devoted a three-part series to the civil liberties aspects of Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon’s ongoing attempt to prosecute S H A R K founder Steve Hindi for felony eavesdropping. Hindi in July 1999 taped a police officer who was refusing, in front of a crowd of 10,000, to arrest several rodeo performers for acts of cruelty which Hindi had documented on film. Kane County Chronicle reporter Brenda Schory found that the law Hindi is accused of breaking was passed by the Illinois legislature after members were embarrased during the 1960s by public disclosure of various vulgar remarks they made while on the floor but not actually at the podium.

Molly Fearing, who as a teacher at Graham High School in Champaign County, Ohio, unsuccessfully pressed a cruelty charge last year against a fellow teacher for having a student bash a piglet’s head against the parking lot, is now working in a Honda assembly plant after accepting a buy-out offer to leave the school district. She would like to return to teaching, D o n Baird of the Columbus Dispatch recently reported, but because of the local unpopularity of her stand for animals, she would probably have to relocate to find another classroom job.

ALF, ELF suspects raided, arrested

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

Investigators from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and U.S. Forest Service on February 2 raided the Liberation Collective house in Portland, Oregon, home of frequent direct action spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh, 27. Rosebraugh was also subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury on February 29. Rosebraugh was previously subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in September 1997. Identified by Robert Sullivan of The New York Times Magazine in December 1998 as “The Face of Eco-Terrorism,” Rosebraugh has since June 1997 often been the first person to publicize actions attributed to the Earth Liberation Front, including the October 1998 Vail ski lift arson and a New Year’s Eve fire at the Michigan State University Hall of Agriculture. Rosebraugh has also publicized some actions attributed to the Animal Liberation Front, but insists he does not know who the ELF and ALF perpetrators are. Rosebraugh served on the steering committee for the 1999 Primate Freedom T o u r, along with longtime activists Rick Bogle and Linda Howard. It was reputedly a shaky alliance, in part due to strong differences over the use of clandestine tactics. Rosebraugh’s presence on the bus is believed to have caused BATF and the Wisconsin Justice Department Division of Criminal Investigation to extensively search it when a stop at Madison coincided with two nearby alleged ALF actions against mink ranchers.

COURT CALENDAR

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

Appeals

The Tennessee Court of Appeals on February 4 overturned a 1999 Roane County chancery court ruling that Tiger Haven, of Kingston, Tennessee, is in violation of zoning. Tiger Haven aggressively raised funds during 1999 on the premise that it might soon have to move. Tiger Haven was founded in 1993 by Joseph Donovan Parker, 52, and his wife Mary Lynn Parker. Accused of skimming $50,000 in proceeds during 1986 and 1997 from charity bingo games, Joe Parker drew a reduced sentence on lesser charges after turning prosecution witness in a joint federal/state probe of alleged corruption in bingo gambling that apparently led to the December 1989 suicide of Tennessee secretary of state Gentry Crowell. Parker eventually served three months in a halfway house for conspiracy and tax evasion.

U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann on February 3 reaffirmed his own March 1999 ruling that the Bureau of Indian A f f a i r s need not do an environmental impact study of an 859,000-hog confinement farm now being built on Rosebud Sioux land by Richard Bell, of Wahpeton, North Dakota. The Humane Farming Association, South Dakota Peace & Justice Center, Prairie Hills Audubon Society, and C o n c e r n e d Rosebud Citizens had sued seeking to stop the project. But it may yet be stopped. Former Rosebud Sioux tribal council president Norman Wilson, who backed the hog farm, was ousted in late 1999, and the current Rosebud Sioux council on January 5 resolved that the work should stop pending further review.

BOOKS: The Rainbow & Other Stories

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

The Rainbow & Other Stories by Maneka Gandhi Puffin Books (India ), 1999.

Distributed in the U.S. by the Jiv Daya Committee (1718 E. Jeter Road, Bartonville, TX 76226.)

68 pages, hardcover. Illustrated.

Offered as premium for $30 donation to help the People for Animals street dog project in Bombay; the Jiv Daya Dharma Donkey Sanctuary and Education Center, also in India; and spay/neuter projects by Ahimsa of Texas

As federal minister for social justice and empowerment in India since August 1998, a portfolio which includes oversight of animal welfare, Maneka Gandhi holds the most influential public office attained by any outspoken animal rights advocate.

Guest column: New approach needed in foreign outreach by Pat Kyriacou

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

It has been interesting to watch ANIMAL PEOPLE expand your international focus, analysing what you find, questioning the status quo, speaking out against the animal welfare establishment when necessary.

I too have been observing some of the large animal welfare organisations as they expand their activities abroad. Here in Cyprus, in the southeast Mediterranean, primarily British organisations have become involved. This is probably because Cyprus is a former British colony. Cyprus hosts millions of British tourists, plus thousands of resident British retirees, who often contact large British organisations when they are concerned about animal abuse.

It is interesting to contrast the approaches taken to animal advocacy in developing countries by ANIMAL PEOPLE and some of these large British organisations.

ANIMAL CONTROL AND SHELTERING

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

The Humane Society of Utah, working with Best Friends and other shelters in a concerted drive to make Utah a no-kill state, in 1999 placed 68% of the dogs it received and 61% of cats. Director Gene Baierschmidt told Douglas D. Palmer of the Desert News that the humane society killed 35,000 animals in 1975, but cut the toll to 2,500 in 1999, achieving a 21% reduction from 1998, and aims to go even lower.

The Western Pennsylvania Humane Society on February 1 became the third major shelter in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to join a pact to make Pittsburgh a nokill city within five years. The A n i m a l Rescue League and Washington Area Humane Society announced their commitments to no-kill in late 1999. The Alleghany County shelter killing rate is 15.8 animals per 1,000 residents, low enough to suggest that the goal is realistic.

Shelter killing: how low can you go?

March 1, 2000 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:

SAN FRANCISCO––”Total dog and cat euthanasias dropped below 3,000 for the first time in San Francisco history,” SF/SPCA president Ed Sayres told ANIMAL PEOPLE on January 20.

The 1999 toll ended at 2,916, Sayres said––2,834 at the city Department of Animal Care and Control, and 82 at the SF/SPCA.

And in San Francisco, “euthanasia” really means what the dictionary says it does: a death administered to relieve pain and suffering. Healthy dogs and cats have not been killed in San Francisco since 1994, when Sayres’ predecessor Richard Avanzino negotiated the Adoption Pact with the SF/DACC, to guarantee a home to every healthy dog or cat whom the SF/DACC cannot rehome or place.

« 1 … 113 114 115 116 117 … 250 »