Category: Middle East

Relief aid reaches animals in Gaza

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2009:
Livestock, working animals, and the surviving animals at
the Gaza Zoo on January 29, 2009 received food and veterinary
supplies donated by ANIMAL PEOPLE readers and the World Society for
the Protection of Animals. Thirty truckloads of oats, hay, and
medicines reached Gaza after the Israeli charity Let The Animals Live
won special authorization for the relief convoy from the Israeli
defense ministry. Distribution of the food and supplies in Gaza was
coordinated by Imad Atrash of the Palestine Wildlife Society. “This
collaboration between us and the Palestinians is proof that the
animals are not part of the political conflict,” said Let The
Animals Live spokesperson Eti Altman. “I am hoping that through the
animals we will be able to draw the two sides closer together.”

Trying to help animals in Gaza

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2009:
GAZA–Networking with animal rescuers near Gaza, in both
Palestine and Israel, collecting money for animal relief in the
combat zones, ANIMAL PEOPLE president Kim Bartlett helped to start a
rescue effort less than 10 days after the shooting began on December
27, 2008–long before there was any clear sign of when the fighting
might end, despite rumors that Israel would pull back troops from
Gaza before the January 20, 2009 inauguration of new U.S. President
Barack Obama.
“We are now working with the Israeli charity Let The Animals
Live to help us get medicine and supplies into Gaza,” reported
Palestine Wildlife Society executive director Imad Atrash. “There
some of our friends with the ministry of agriculture, the veterinary
department, and with other nonprofit organizations will help us,”
Atrash hoped.

Read more

What Iraqi shoe-tosser really said about dogs

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2009:
BAGHDAD–Did Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, 29, insult
dogs on Dec-ember 14, 2008, or just U.S. President George W. Bush?
According to The New York Times account of the incident, as
Bush spoke at a Baghdad press conference, Zaidi “rose abruptly from
about 12 feet away, reared his right arm, and fired a shoe at the
president’s head while shouting in Arabic: ‘This is a gift from the
Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!'”
Bush ducked and the shoe missed him. Zaidi then threw his
other shoe, missing again, shouting “This is from the widows, the
orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!”
Zaidi was then subdued and taken into custody. He was still
jailed, facing up to seven years in prison, as ANIMAL PEOPLE went
to press.

Read more

Dogfighting resurfaces in Iran

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2008:
(Actual publication date 11-5-08.)
TEHRAN A fluffy white lap dog displayed at the Farzi web site Meydan Dog might hint that Iranian hostility toward dogs is lifting. But multiple muzzle views of fighting dogs send a different message.
Meydan Dog belongs to someone who sells puppies and fighting dogs in Iran, Center for Animal Lovers founder Fatehmah Motamedi told ANIMAL PEOPLE. There were people in Iran who arranged dog fights in secret, but now they are advertising.

Read more

Live cattle exports from Down Under to Egypt resume–new fatwa may help

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2008:

CAIRO, CANBERRA–Austral-ian agriculture
minister Tony Burke on May 9, 2008 authorized
resumption of live cattle exports to Egypt.
Previous agriculture minister Peter
McGuarin on February 26, 2006 suspended cattle
exports to Egypt, after the Australian edition
of the television magazine show 60 Minutes aired
video of abuses at the Bassetin slaughterhouse
near Cairo.
Taken in January 2006 by Animals
Australia investigator Lyn White, the video
showed workers poking out the eyes of cattle and
cutting their leg tendons before subjecting them
to a version of hallal slaughter that clearly
flunked the goal of the animals not suffering.

Read more

Updates from Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, & Bangladesh

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
A female suicide bomber killed 69 people and wounded 140 at
the al-Ghazl pet market in Baghdad on February 1, 2008–the fifth
attack on the market since June 2006. Half an hour later, a second
female suicide bomber killed 29 people and wounded 67 at the New
Baghdad pet market. Four of the al-Ghazl attacks appear to have been
the work of al-Qaida. A November 2007 attack was attributed to
Shiites, who feigned an al-Qaida attack to increase public support
for Shiite militias.

Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar, Afghanistan,
attributed to the Taliban a February 17, 2008 bombing that killed at
least 80 spectators at a dogfight and wounded 90 more. The Taliban
suppressed dogfighting, but it has regained popularity since the
U.S. ended Taliban rule in late 2001.

Read more

Could the Giza Zoo become a rescue center?

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
CAIRO–Little changed in 117 years, the
Giza Zoo is either the best of zoos or the worst
of zoos, according to many noisy authorities,
and may actually be a bit of both.
The animal collection is distinctly
idiosyncratic and of little value from a
conservation perspective, since most of the
examples of rare species represent inbred genetic
lines.
Yet the zoo does include enough lions,
elephants, hippos, zebras, giraffes, and
monkeys to satisfy most visitors. The animal
care attracts far more complaints than the
variety.

Read more

Editorial feature: What is the future of Islamic animal sacrifice?

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:
Editorial feature

What is the future of Islamic animal sacrifice?

At each of the past two Eids, the Feast
of Sacrifice that culminates the Haj or Islamic
season of pilgrimage to Mecca, ANIMAL PEOPLE
publisher Kim Bartlett and son Wolf Clifton were
in cities where many Muslim people practice
animal sacrifice in honor of the occasion:
Mumbai, India and Luxor, Egypt.
Also in Egypt for the 2007 Eid was Animal
People, Inc. alternate board member Kristin
Stilt, an Islamic legal historian on the faculty
of Northwestern University law school in
Evanston, Illinois. Stilt had been in Jordan
the two days prior to the Eid, helping with an
Animals Australia investigation of the livestock
trade, but had returned to Cairo by the time the
Eid began. It was not her first Eid in the
Middle East.

Read more

What did the Prophet Mohammed really say about dogs?

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2008:

What did the Prophet Mohammed really say about dogs?

Commentary by Merritt Clifton
CAIRO–Will the status of dogs rise in the Islamic world as
improved sanitation eliminates street dog habitat, the threat of
rabies recedes, and rising affluence enables more people to keep
pets?
Or, is prejudice against dogs so thoroughly built into
Muslim culture that the Middle East will remain the part of the
inhabited world with the fewest pet dogs per capita, despite having
the longest recorded history of keeping dogs?
Cairo, Damascus, Istanbul, Karachi, Tehran, Kuwait, and
Dubai all appear to have reached approximately the socio-demographic
transition point at which dog-keeping began exponential growth in the
U.S. and more recently China, and began more restrained growth in
western Europe.

Read more

1 … 3 4 5 6 7 … 19