Category: Culture

Smart investigation should have looked at histories of animal abuse

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003:

SALT LAKE CITY–Karen Dawn of Pacific
Palisades, California, was not surprised to
read in the March 24 edition of Newsweek that
accused kidnapper and rapist David Brian Mitchell
had a history of cruelty to animals. As an
active distributor of online action alerts, via
<www.dawnwatch.com>, Dawn long since became
familiar with the frequent association of
violence toward animals with violence toward
humans–especially women and children.
Dawn was surprised, however, that the
linkage involving Mitchell seemed to be so little
remarked by news media–and unrecognized by the
Salt Lake City police.

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Chronology of humane progress (Part 1 of two parts: from Moses to Walt Disney)

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003:
Chronology of humane progress
(Part 1 of two parts: from Moses to Walt Disney)
by Merritt Clifton

1300 B.C. — Hebrew law as proclaimed by
Moses includes provisions for humane slaughter
and care of work animals.

740 B.C. — Rise of Isaiah, the most
prominent of the Hebrew vegetarian prophets, and
the prophet who most emphasized opposition to
animal sacrifice.

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Progress at the Kabul Zoo

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

KABUL, Afghanistan–“The bear Donatella’s nose is looking
much better,” Whipsnade Wild Animal Park senior curator Nick Lindsay
reported to Kabul Zoo relief effort coordinator David M. Jones on
December 20, 2002.
That is not the latest information ANIMAL PEOPLE has from the
Kabul Zoo by far, nor the most important in terms of the future of
Afghan animal welfare, but it answers the question most asked about
the war-torn zoo and the resident animals, who became familiar to TV
viewers worldwide during the military campaign that ousted the former
Taliban government of Afghanistan in December 2001, then dropped out
of sight after the fighting mostly ended and most of the visiting
news media returned to the U.S. and Europe.

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Slaughter in the streets

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

MULTAN, Pakistan–“I have been much in vexation since
February 11, 2003,” Animal Save Movement Pakistan founder Khalid
Mahmood Qureshi e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on February 16, seemingly
speaking for the world.
Al Qaida terrorist attacks were anticipated, following the
annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca by the Muslim faithful and appeals for
strikes against the U.S. by Islamic militant leader Osama bin Laden.
A U.S. military effort to depose Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein was
imminently expected as well.
But the violence vexing Qureshi had already occurred.
“Millions of cows, camels, oxen, sheep, and goats were
slaughtered on the day of Eid Ul Azha, after the day of Haj in
Saudia Arabia,” Qureshi wrote. “It is a religious custom,” in
which male heads of households attempt halal slaughter with often
haphazard and bloody results, “but it is a tyranny and cruelty,”
Qureshi continued. “I see it as a genocide of animals. The Animal
Save Movement of Pakistan not only strongly protests this terrible
and uncivilised operation, but wants to abolish it.

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Editorial: Fighting the fur-clad spectre of Attila the Hun

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

The importance of fur-wearing, apart
from the lives of up to 40 million animals killed
for fur each year, is that after meat-eating it
is the most visibly conspicuous public symbol of
attitudes toward animals. Mass media and the
general public began to view animal advocacy as
an authentic socially transformative force after
fur garments abruptly vanished from the streets
of much of the U.S. and Europe in 1988-1989-and
perceive the cause as waning if they see more
fur, whether or not fur is actually the focus of
much active campaigning.
Today more fur is visible, and that should be cause for worry.
U.S. retail fur sales fell from a high of
$1.85 billion in 1987-1988 to $950 million in
1991-1992. In 2000 and 2001, sales recovered to
$1.69 billion, then dipped to $1.53 billion.
Adjusted for inflation, the real increase from
the low point to the recent high was barely 20%,
and the trend is apparently again downward, but
perhaps mostly because of two years of economic
recession.

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Immunocontraception comes of age

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

BILLINGS, RENO, WHITEHORSE–Immunocontraceptives for dogs,
cats, and deer are still not quite here yet, but widespread
applications and planned deployments involving bears, elephants,
wolves, and wild horses indicate that immunocontraception of
wildlife may at last be close to losing the qualifying adjective
“experimental”– at least in the species that are easiest to inject
and keep track of.
New Jersey Department of Environ-mental Protection
commissioner Bradley Campbell announced in November 2002 that his
agency hopes to test immunocontraceptives to control bears this
spring. The New Jersey bear population has increased from an
estimated 100 in 1970, when the state last opened a bear hunting
season, to as many as 2,500 according to much disputed official
figures. An attempt to resume bear hunting in 2000 was quashed by
adverse public opinion.

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High-energy post-Soviet activists do everything but raise money

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

MOSCOW, KIEV, KHARKOV-A sociologist or political scientist
probably could not design a better comparative experiment in starting
an animal advocacy movement than is now underway in Moscow, the
largest city in Russia, and Kiev and Kharkov, the two largest
cities in the Ukraine.
Russia and the Ukraine are neighbors, the most prominent
remnants of the former Soviet Union, sharing parallel history,
ethnicity, and standards of living, and post-Soviet birth rates
that are among the seven lowest in the world, but have active
rivalries dating back more than 1,000 years.
Their ancient kings conquered each other, their forced
alliances held Napoleon and Hitler at bay, and they are now racing
into economic development and social/political westernization at a
breakneck pace.

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Tongdaeng the street dog reawakens Thai sense of duty toward animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2003:

BANGKOK–For the second time in five years a street dog has
grabbed the attention and affection of Thailand,  reminding Thais
that kindness toward animals is a national tradition as well as a
Buddhist teaching and moral obligation.
Among modern nations,  only India has a longer documented
history of acknowledging duties toward animals.  At that, the
difference is slim.  The animal-loving Indian emperor Asoka sent
missionaries to Thailand to teach Buddhism in the third century B.C.,
only 250 years after the Buddha died.

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BOOKS: Welfare Ranching

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

Welfare Ranching:
The Subsidized Destruction of the American West
edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson
Island Press, (P.O. Box 7, Covelo, CA 95428), 2002.
346 pages. $75.00 hardback, $45 paperback.

As a southerner now living in the West, I am intrigued by
the similarities between what is happening today to the Western
cattle culture and what happened more than a century ago to the old
Southern plantation culture.
Both were products of an entrepreneurial spirit that
exploited people and the environment for economic gain. Both
developed romanticized veneers that appealed to Americans trying to
formulate a national identity–but Southern genteel society attempted
to mimic European aristocracy, while the rugged individualism of
pioneering Westerners symbolized, to some degree, an escape from
Old World trappings.

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