Category: Human Rights

SEX, MONEY AND POWER IN HUMANE WORK: WOMEN EXECS ARE FEWER, PAID LESS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1999:

BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA,
CULLOWHEE, N.C.––Ten years after
accusing the Massachusetts SPCA of genderbased
discrimination, Marjorie C. McMillan,
DVM, in July 1999 collected a $428,000 settlement:
$150,000 in back pay, plus interest.
Hired by the MSPCA as an animal
care technician while still a university undergraduate,
McMillan earned her veterinary
degree in 1974 and by 1989 was head of radiology
at Angell Memorial Hospital, the flagship
of the MSPCA chain of three animal hospitals
and eight regional shelters.

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Apology to the animals from Brother #2

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 1999:

“Known as Brother Number Two to the
late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Nuon Chea was
architect of the brutal forced evacuation of
Cambodian cities in 1975,” Seth Mydans of T h e
New York Times reported on December 29 from
Phnom Penh. “Chea later had command responsibility
over a wave of purges in which many thousands of
people were tortured and killed.”
Now 71, Chea was asked by Englishspeaking
reporters at a news conference following his
surrender to the government of current Cambodian
prime minister Hun Sen if he had apologies to make.

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Action but no whaling––yet

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1998:

NEAH BAY, Washington– – Makah
Tribal Council plans to kill grey whales
appeared in disarray in mid-November––but the
hunt was still definitely on, Makah Whaling
Commission president Keith Johnson told
increasingly skeptical media.
“Instead of engaging its first whale in
70 years,” Seattle Times reporter Lynda V.
Mapes wrote on November 9, “the tribe has
only tangled with whaling opponents and the
press. Instead of answering questions about the
hunt, the tribe is being grilled about arrests by
tribal police of whaling protesters on November
1. Tribal members are asked why their youngsters
threw rocks at nonviolent whaling protesters.
And they are questioned about their police
chief’s fitness for duty.”

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Help Sea Shepherds stop Makah whaling by Michael Kundu

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

Two centuries ago, gray whales migrating
north past Neah Bay in Washington State were
harpooned by Makah tribal whalers. The killing,
done from cedar canoes with wooden harpoons,
was a tradition. Trading oil from the gray whale
made the Makah prosperous. But over time, the
gray whale population dwindled. Then, for many
decades, the killing stopped.
This October, 76 years after the Makah
last killed a whale, the Makah Whaling
Commission intends to resume whaling, within
waters now part of the Olympic National Marine
Sanctuary. The killing will signal an international
escalation of illegal commercial whaling. Pirate
whaling nations, primarily Japan and Norway,
have furtively promoted this and other so-called
indigenous whale hunts the world over.

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Fixing for a fight of Leviathans

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1998:

NEAH BAY, Wash.; NEWPORT,
Ore.––If the media drama underway in the
Pacific Northwest was a professional wrestling
match, it would be billed as the Makah
Harpooners vs. Willy the Whale, alias Killer
Keiko, orca star of the hit films Free Willy!,
Free Willy II, and Free Willy III.
Scrapping for air time, they might
make a show of enmity, and their partisans
might fall for it, but more cynical viewers
would suspect they were working for the same
syndicate.
But who might own the syndicate––
Hollywood, or Japan?
Whoever wrote the “Keiko-vs.-
Makah” script, literal or figurative, seems to
have worked for four years to bring about an
autumn battle of Leviathans. Captain Paul “The
Pirate” Watson and fellow voyagers of the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society will try to put
themselves between the Makah whalers and
migrating gray whales. The Free Willy/Keiko
Foundation, led by David Phillips, also head of
Earth Island Institute, will meanwhile prepare
Keiko to become the first of his species ever
returned to the ocean after prolonged captivity.
The real struggle will come through
your TV and mailbox, as their causes vie for
public interest and donations.

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GREENPEACE GETS A WHALE

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

NOME––”Alaskan Inuit give warm
welcome to Greenpeace,” the Nunatsiaq News
headlined on August 8. “Members even
helped some villagers get a bowhead whale,”
added a subhead, “as a group of Greenpeace
activists visit Yu’ik and Inupiat villages to
gather information about global warming.”
Continued Nicole M. Braem of the
Arctic Sounder, as a guest contributor to
Nunatsiaq News, “One representative
explained the group does not oppose whaling
or subsistence hunting, and that they wanted
to hear about any changes in sea ice patterns,
snowfall, and animal abundance. ‘We’re here
to stop pollution, not whaling,’ Greenpeace
campaigner Sally Schullinger explained,”
according to Braem. “A community meeting
was postponed until the next day when
Gambell whalers decided to go get a dead
bowhead several miles from the village. The
village requested assistance from Greenpeace,
and crewmen in two inflatable rafts helped an
umiak skin boat tow the whale back to shore.”

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REFUGE OR NO-MAN’S LAND?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

BURMA––”About 300 Karen
civilians fled into the Mae Sarieng district” of
Thailand, the Global Response environmental
and human rights electronic mail network
alerted 6,500 members on August 21, “after
Burmese soldiers torched six villages in
Burma’s Doi Kor province,” torturing relatives
and friends of the refugees who were
captured, according to interviews with the
escapees and relief workers published by the
Burma News Network and Bangkok Post.
The refugees, like many other
Karen fleeing the dictatorship of Burma over
the past several years, were interned at a
Thai government camp for displaced persons.
Especially problematic for human
rights advocates was that the incident came in
association with the establishment of the
Myinmoletkat Nature Reserve.

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What did John Muir think of whaling?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

SEATTLE––Ingrid Hansen, conservation
committee chair for the Cascade Chapter of the
Sierra Club, apparently lost a battle but won a war
July 19 when the executive committee rejected her
motion that the Washington-based chapter should
“support the Makah Tribe’s proposal to take five
gray whales per year,” but also defeated executive
committee member Bob Kummer’s counter-motion
that the club should “oppose all taking of whales.”
As Hansen explained in an April 9 letter
to Makah Whaling Commission member Ben
Johnson Jr., national Sierra Club positions tend to
follow the recommendations of the local chapters
closest to the issues. The San Francisco-based
national office of the Sierra Club last spring asked
the Cascade Chapter if it had a position on Makah
whaling. A nonposition, if precedent holds, could
keep the influential Sierra Club on the sidelines as
the Clinton/Gore administration advances the
Makah application to whale before the International
Whaling Commission this October.

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Licensed to kill

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

WASHINGTON D.C.––You probably
think the Endangered Species Act, Marine
Mammal Protection Act, and Migratory Bird
Treaty Act protect wildlife.
What they actually do is require special
permission to kill or harass wildlife––and
spot-checking recent requests for permits and
exemptions, ANIMAL PEOPLE and Friends
of Animals’ special investigator Carroll Cox
quickly confirmed that the permitting and
exempting procedures are easily and often
manipulated.
“Permitting and exemptions are the
Achilles heel of wildlife law enforcement,”
says Cox, a former special investigator for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and game warden
for the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife. “With the right permit or an exemption,
you can do anything.”

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