Brand of violence may not be ALF

December 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 1999:

LONDON––Channel 4 TV
reporter Graham Hall, 43, claimed on
November 6 that elements of the Animal
Liberation Front had abducted him at
gunpoint on the night of October 25 and
branded the letters “ALF” on his back.
The claim helped build support
for a new British anti-terrorism bill,
unveiled on November 17 by Home
Secretary Jack Straw. The bill would
permit the government to bring civil
suits against alleged terrorists, much as
the Racketeering-Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations statute does in the U.S.
Hall said he was attacked in
retaliation for his 1998 broadcast I n s i d e
The ALF, which included footage of
activist Gaynor Ford describing how she
allegedly vandalized a laboratory.

Pork barrel politics

November 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1999:

Corporate Hogs at the Public
Trough, a new Sierra Club report slamming
government subsidies to factory hog farms,
was released on September 15 in Kansas City
and September 17 in Oklahoma City. “This
money is not creating economic development;
it’s creating environmental destruction,”
said Missouri chapter director Ken
Midkiff. Added Sierra Club president
Chuck McGrady, “God never intended for
100,000 pigs to poop in the same place.”

Russians halt beluga whale killing for sale to Japan

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

HOKKAIDO––Russian whalers on
September 10 reportedly delivered to Japanese
buyers 13 metric tons of whale meat from at
least 36 and perhaps as many as 50 belugas
killed a week earlier in the Okhotsk Sea,
which lies between the Kamchata Peninsula
and Sakhalin Island.
It was the first Russian commercial
whale slaughter since 1986, and its first in
northern waters since 1979.
It will not be repeated, the Russian
government decreed four days later after a
cabinet-level review of the deal in Moscow.
Said International Fund for Animal
Welfare director of commercial trade and
exploitation Karen Steuer, “Reopening the
international trade in whale meat would have
set a dangerous precedent. The Russian decision
shows that Russia sees commercial whaling
for what it i ––an outmoded practice with
no place in modern society.”

Ireland fights EU over animal welfare

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

DUBLIN––Scientists warned
Ireland in August that by mid-year it
had already exceeded the national
“greenhouse gas” emission limits set by
the European Union and United Nations
under the 1997 Kyoto Agreement to
limit global warming––despite special
dispensation allowing Ireland a 13%
increase in emissions by 2010.
Since nearly half of all Irish
“greenhouse gas” comes from cattle,
the warning meant in effect that Irish
farmers must find a way to reduce
bovine flatulence. Or else.

Let me tell you about the bats and the birds and the beetles and the turds…

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

LONDON––Trying to bring a rare
bird called the clough back to Cornwall, the
National Trust on advice of English Nature in
1996 banned the use of avermectin-class vermicides,
including Ivermectin, in cattle who
graze NT pastures. Residues from the wormkillers
were believed to be inhibiting the reproduction
of dung beetles, the clough’s chief
food source. About 100 farms were affected.
There are still no cloughs in Cornwall
––but the rare greater horseshoe bat has become
more numerous within the 100-farm area than
anywhere else in England, and the even scarcer
hornet robber fly has appeared as well.
Even with the Cornwall bat boom,
there are still fewer than 4,000 greater horseshoe
bats in Britain, among just a handful of
colonies. English Nature and The Bat
Conservation Trust hope to persuade other
farmers to forgo the use of avermectins.
“And I thought the new highly efficient
parasiticides only eradicated parasitologists,”
said World Health Organization epidemiologist
Martin Hugh-Jones.

Trouble in the Balkans––and Asia Minor

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

LONDON–– Two border collies
named Kelly and Gemma symbolize to the
British public the frustration of trying to
help animals––and humans––in the
Balkans and Asia Minor.
Kelly and Gemma are trained
sniffing dogs, thoroughly vaccinated,
who were dispatched to Izmit, Turkey, by
the Gloucester-based disaster response
group Rapid U.K. after the August 17 predawn
earthquake that fatally buried as
many as 45,000 Turks in the rubble of
their collapsed homes.
Kelly and Gemma saved at least
six human lives. But because rabies
occurs in Turkey, they were locked into
quarantine immediately upon their return
home, their vaccination records not withstanding
bureaucratic constipation.

Ruthless meat trade flogs hormones east and west

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

SEOUL, BRUSSELS, LONDON,
WASHINGTON D.C.––An estimated
50 members of the Korean Animal
Protection Society rallied against dog-eating
and cat-eating on August 16 in front of
Myoungdong Cathedral in central Seoul.
Sympathy rallies occurred in many
other cities around the world, attracting
media coverage in the U.S., Canada, Great
Britain, and South Africa as well as Korea.
But the protests did not deter Grand
National Party legislator Kim Hong Shin and
20 cosponsors from introducing a bill into the
Korean Parliament that same day to repeal six
unenforced prohibitions on dog-eating issued
since 1978 by adding dogs to the list of livestock
species regulated by the Korean
Agriculture Department.

BLOODLUST THWARTED

October 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1999:

FLAGSTAFF, ALBANY, HEGINS,
LONDON––Acknowledging that the
public no longer tolerates thrill-killing, even
thinly disguised, the Arizona Game and Fish
Commission on September 11 voted 3-2 for a
new state regulation stating, “A person or
group shall not participate in, promote, or
solicit participation in any organized hunting
contest for killing predatory animals, fur-bearing
animals, or nongame mammals.”
The newly adopted ban on mammalkilling
contests evolved from outrage erupting
in early 1998 over a “Predator Hunt Extreme”
promoted by two hunters who wanted to knock
down populations of pumas, coyotes, foxes,
and bobcats so as to have less competition in
killing deer and pronghorn.

Greenpeacers shot at as whaling season ends

September 1, 1999 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

Deb McIntyre, 28, of Pambula, Court calendar
New South Wales, “was shot at and later
arrested by the Norwegian Coast Guard” on
June 12 after approaching a wounded whale
in Norwegian waters, Greenpeace Australia
reported. McIntyre’s inflatable powerboat
was punctured by the shot, allegedly fired
from the whaling vessel K a t o, but she was
not hurt.
Reporting either different particulars
of the same incident or describing a separate
but similar confrontation, the London
M i r r o r reported one day later that
Greenpeace activists Dave Thoenen of the
U.S. and Ulvar Anhaern, 32, of Norway
were “shot at with a semi-automatic rifle”
from a distance of about 60 feet as they tried
to prevent a Norwegian whaling vessel from
harpooning a minke whale 120 miles off the
Norwegian coast, and “jumped for their
lives as the bullet ripped a gaping hole in the
side of their inflatable.”

« 1 … 33 34 35 36 37 … 69 »