Category: Activists & Organizations

McDonald’s “wins” McLibel case ––but is “culpably” cruel to animals

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

LONDON – – Justice
Roger Bell technically found for
McDonald’s on June 19, ending
the second longest trial in British
history, but the $98,000 defamation
award against penniless defendants
Dave Morris, 43, and Helen
Steel, 31, cost the fast food firm
$16 million to win, enabled Morris
and Steel to distribute millions of
copies of the 1990 London
Greenpeace pamphlet Whats
Wrong With McDonald’s? that
started it all, and established that
several of their many allegations
against McDonald’s were true.

Read more

CHARC APPEALS WAUCONDA RODEO VIOLENCE TO THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

WAUCONDA, Illinois––
Demonstrating more faith in the
court of public opinion than in the
justice system of Lake County,
Illinois, the Chicago Animal Rights
Coalition is challenging the
Wauconda Rodeo and all rodeos this
summer with a 40-minute video,
Bucking The Rodeo, by Robyn
Douglas of Earth Network News.
Wwhatever an authoritarian-leaning
viewer might say about
the allegations the video raises of
police brutality against anti-rodeo
protesters, the arrogance of police
who incorrectly claim it’s illegal to
videotape them, and the perjury of
police whose courtroom testimony
the cameras belie, the violence
toward animals is self-evident.

Read more

Paul and the pirate

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

BREMERHAVEN––A pirate whaler is at large in the central
Atlantic, Captain Paul Watson is out of jail, and the Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society has a ship and crew at Bremerhaven, Germany, almost
ready to sail. “We don’t know if we’ll be able to find it,” Watson told ANIMAL
PEOPLE from Washington D.C., after addressing the Animal Rights
‘97 conference and attending a banquet in honor of Animal Rights
International founder Henry Spira, “but we’re going that way anyway to chase
some driftnetters, and we might as well have a look.”
The Portuguese Navy was reportedly already looking with a warship––but
the last time there were pirate whalers in the region, the Portuguese
Navy protected them. The most notorious was the S i e r r a, operating from
Lisbon with impunity. On July 16, 1979, Watson, Peter Woof, and Jerry
Doran overtook the Sierra with the original Sea Shepherd vessel, then rammed
her twice as she ran for the protection of a Portuguese destroyer. The destroyer
apprehended the Sea Shepherd after a high seas chase, but Watson, Woof,
and Doran all eventually escaped, while inspired Sea Shepherd sympathizers
sank the damaged Sierra and three other whalers. The rest left the Atlantic.

Read more

Editorial: White hats and black hats

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

Humane Society of the Tennessee Valley executive director Vicki Crosetti has for a
year now endured a nightmare of harassment, just for doing her job.
Until mid-1996, Crosetti was best known as an early leader in borrowing adoption
techniques from the North Shore Animal League, including opening a downtown adoption center
that displays animals more attractively and conveniently than the aging HSTV shelter, and
sending adoptable puppies for whom there was no local demand to the North Shore adoption
center on Long Island. Adopting through satellite facilities and transporting animals to meet
demand in lieu of killing are fast becoming standard procedure, but just five years ago were so
controversial that some conventional shelter operators derisively accused Crosetti of trying to
turn HSTV into a “no-kill,” meaning either an overcrowded, diseased animal collection, or a
“turnaway,” which would not help problem animals.
It is thus ironic that Crosetti is now routinely sizzled by Knoxville tabloids and talk
shows as a purportedly needle-happy animal killer hellbent on an anti-no-kill vendetta, and has
been sued for euthanizing animals whom she as a veterinary technician believed to have little or
no chance of being recoverable within the limits of HSTV resources.

Read more

Suit vs. BLM horse program keeps an ace for wild jacks

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1997:

RENO––Suing the Bureau of Land
Management on June 19 for alleged maladministration
of the 1971 Wild and Free-Roaming
Horse and Burro Act, the Fund for Animals
and Animal Protection Institute dropped at the
last minute a much discussed request for an
injunction to halt BLM wild horse and burro
roundups pending program reform.
As filed, Fund attorney Howard
Crystal told ANIMAL PEOPLE, “The pending
motion before Judge Howard McKibben
strictly concerns the matter on which Judge
McKibben ruled [in favor of the Fund and
A P I ] ten years ago––the adoption program.
Plaintiffs are requesting that the Court modify
its longstanding permanent injunction against
the BLM to require the agency to affirmatively
inquire into the intentions of adopters, rather
than continuing to implement a policy which
one Justice Department attorney refers to as
‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ In addition,” Crystal
said, “plaintiffs are seeking other changes in
the adoption program to help ensure that adopted
animals end up in the hands of people who
intend to care for them, rather than sell them.”

Read more

BOOKS: Disposable Animals

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

Disposable Animals:
Ending the Tragedy of Throwaway Pets
by Craig Brestrup
Camino Bay Books (POB 1945, Leander, TX 78646-1945), 1997.
220 pages, paperback, $14.95.

In February 1994, after 20 years in mental health
work, Craig Brestrup became executive director of the
Progressive Animal Welfare Society in Lynnwood,
Washington. Like Richard Avanzino, who 18 years earlier
became executive director of the San Francisco SPCA with a
background as a pharmacist and attorney, Brestrup was
shocked to find himself in a milieu where life itself was
devalued in the name of humane ideals. Like psychologist
Alan Beck, 15 years earlier, Brestrup discovered that the
culture of animal shelters often centers on dispensing death.
As in elite military units, efficient killers enjoy the highest
prestige; becoming a killer is the universal rite of passage.

Read more

Watson awaits verdict on Norwegian extradition attempt

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

AMSTERDAM––Judge Van der Pijl of the
Haarlem District Court in the Netherlands on May 26 rejected
Norway’s April 18 request to extradite Captain Paul
Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,
to face charges of alleged “reckless navigation” and “illegal
entry into Norwegian waters” during a July 1994 clash with
the Norwegian patrol ship Andennes during which the
Andennes rammed Watson’s vessel, the Whales Forever.
Watson remained at the Lelystad prison pending a
ruling on a further charge of allegedly sending a false distress
signal. A ruling is due by June 10.
“Even if he’s found guilty of that charge,” Sea
Shepherd international director of operations Lisa Distefano
said, “the public will be reminded that Norwegian commandos
dropped four depth charges, fired on our boat with cannon,
and sheared the bow off our ship by ramming us.”

Read more

Friends of Animals, Predator Defense Institute sue feds over coyote killing, refuge grazing

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

TACOMA, Washington––Accusing the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service of mismanaging the endangered Columbia whitetailed
deer to the verge of extinction at the southern Washington
refuge created for the species 34 years ago, Friends of Animals and
the Predator Defense Institute on May 27 sued Interior Secretary
Bruce Babbitt, the Interior Department, and Julia Butler Hansen
National Wildlife Refuge manager James Hidy in the U.S. District
Court for the Ninth Circuit.
Friends of Animals, of Darien, Connecticut, has more
than 100,000 members nationwide, and partners with the Interior
Department in projects including wolf reintroduction and protection
of African elephants from poaching. The Oregon-based Predator
Defense Institute, involved in wildlife policy review, is best
known for exposing allegedly misrepresented Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife reports of puma activity.

Read more

COURT CALENDAR

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1997:

The late April trials of U.S. activists Steve
Hindi and Ben White for alleged assault and resisting
arrest at a September 1, 1996 protest outside Marineland
of Niagara, Ontario, ended with split verdicts. All
charges against Hindi were dropped; White was fined $500.
Hindi, founder of the Chicago Animal Rights Coalition,
hoped to present video evidence to a jury a month later in
Wauconda, Illinois, on behalf of CHARC member Greg
Campbell, that police captain Frank Winans faked an
alleged assault against him by Campbell during a protest
against last year’s Wauconda Rodeo. The same video,
made by a freelance news team, earlier cleared CHARC
member Chris Grushas of allegedly obstructing justice.
However, the judge strictly limited the video the court
could see, and Campbell was convicted of two misdemeanors.
Hindi said an appeal is likely. Mike Durschmidt,
not a CHARC member but a frequent participant in CHARC
protests, is meanwhile contesting his arrest for disrupting a
children’s sheep-riding event at the same rodeo on grounds
of necessity. Vermont neutering specialist Peggy Larsen,
D V M, also an attorney and former rodeo performer, is
scheduled to testify at a June 23 trial that the cruelty to the
sheep outweighed the charges.

Read more

1 … 155 156 157 158 159 … 250