Vegan fired for not pushing meat

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

COSTA MESA, California––Bus
driver Bruce Anderson, 38, an ethical vegan
for two years and a five-year employee of the
Orange County Transportation Authority,
was ordered off his bus in mid-route on June
4 and fired from his $16.60-an-hour job on
June 7 for refusing to hand out coupons to
riders good for free hamburgers at Carl’s Jr.
restaurants.
“I told them that I don’t eat dead
cows and no one else needs to, either,”
Anderson recounted to Los Angeles Times
reporter David Haldane. “I told them that I
wouldn’t support Carl’s Jr. in slaughtering
cows. I’m paid to drive a bus, not sit there
and hand out coupons for something I don’t
believe in.”

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The faithful do sheep

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Traditional celebrations of the Islamic version of the
Feast of Sacrifice were held in more U.S. and European communities
than ever before this year––and apparently provoked
more protest, too.
More as a matter of custom than of religious teaching,
the feast is marked by male heads of households slashing
the throats of sheep, reprising Abraham’s slaughter of a ram
instead of his son Isaac, who is said to have been sire of both
the Hebrew and Arab people. Extra meat is supposed to be
given to the poor, but so many sheep are killed at pilgrimage
sites that most of the meat reportedly goes to waste.
In France, Islamic leaders called Brigitte Bardot
“racist” for her annual criticism of the practice. Responded
Bardot, “If tomorrow Muslims stop slitting sheeps’ throats, I
will find them the most wonderful people in the world.”

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Religion & animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

The first deed of the shortlived Hindu fundamentalist
government of India, inaugurated May 24 only to
resign five days later, was to introduce a bill to ban cow
slaughter. Killing cows is against the Hindu religion, practiced
by 750 million Indians, but 110 million Moslem citizens
eat beef. Paradoxically, though Moslems are only 14%
of the total Indian population of 930 million, 10% of all the
Moslems in the world live in India; only Pakistan has more.
The Shaolin Temple, in central Henan province,
C h i n a, on June 6 won a lawsuit against the Luohe Canned
Food Factory, which had used actors depicting the Buddhist
monks of Shaolin in a TV plug for ham. Devout vegetarians,
the Shaolin monks devised and still teach the martial art of
kung-fu to avoid using lethal weapons in self-defense.

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Hopi eagle sacrifice offends Navajo

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona––Members of the
Hopi Tribe must report their eaglet and hawk gathering activities
every five days to federal judge Earl Carroll and the
Navajo Nation until June 30, Carroll ruled on June 13, reaffirming
his May 8 preliminary verdict––and may take no
more than 12 golden eaglets and two red-tailed hawks from
Navajo land.
Carroll also refused a Hopi request to drop individual
criminal complaints against each of 11 Hopis who were
cited on May 2 for collecting two eaglets at Twin Horn Butte
without a permit from the Navajo Fish and Wildlife bureau.
The Hopi had asked Carroll for unlimited eaglet and
hawk gathering privileges. At issue were the customs and
ceremonies surrounding traditional Hopi eaglet and hawk sacrifice,
abhored by many Navajo, which may have begun
before recorded history in connection with Hopi resistance to
Navajo predation. The Hopi, descended from the cliffdwelling
Anasazi, are the northernmost people of the Aztec
linguistic family. The Navajo, related to the Shoshone, were
nomads before European settlement, who frequently raided
Hopi villages. The Navajo were and are by far the larger and
politically more powerful tribe.

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Religion & animals

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1996:

A Sarajevan mob for reasons
unknown assaulted a Hare Krishna street
procession on April 20, injuring two members
from Britain, one from Australia, and a
young Bosnian recruit. “The clash was unexpected,”
reported Reuter. “The Hare Krishna
movement was very active in Sarajevo
throughout the war, performing their dance
and songs in the city streets even during the
worst of the shelling and winning sympathy
for their courage from the beseiged residents.”
In Sarajevo, Grozny, and other
wartorn cities behind the former Iron Curtain,
Hare Krishnas are also known for their bakeries
and vegetarian soup kitchens. “There
may be places in the world where simply seeing
a bunch of Hare Krishna members would
make people turn tail and run. But Grozny
isn’t one of them,” New York Times correspondent
Michael Specter recently reported.

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BOOKS: Rabbis and Vegetarianism

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1996:

Rabbis and Vegetarianism: an evolving tra –
dition, by Roberta Kalechovsky. Micah
Publications (255 Humphrey St., Marblehead, MA
10945), 104 pages, $10.00.

As founder and director of Jews for Animal Rights,
and as director of Micah Publications, Inc., Roberta
Kalechofsky has made major contributions to the animal
rights/vegetarian causes, especially with regard to connections
to Jews and Judaism.

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RELIGION & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

Brigitte Bardot “was the picture
of elegance,” for a September 27 audience
with Pope Jean Paul II, a day before her
61st birthday, Reuter correspondent Jude
Webber reported, “clad in a tight brown
trouser suit, low-cut pink top, wearing flowers
in her upswept long hair.” Said Bardot
after visiting the Pope, “We talked of animals,
of course. He told us he thought of
them, and they need our help.” Bardot quit
her film career in 1973 to devote herself to
animal protection.
Monsoon floods inundated the
temple at Pathum Thani, Thailand, in
early October, revealing to newspaper
photographers an elephant named
D i a m o n d whom abbot Pra Kru Udom
Pawana-pirat has kept chained to a tree for
nearly 20 years to attract worshippers. The
temple sells the visitors food to give
Diamond––but he rarely gets enough.
Diamond “is skinny, bony, and not healthy,
especially mentally,” said Friends of the
Asian Elephants Foundation representative
Leutchai Kladsri, who tried unsuccessfully to
buy him. Objected Pawana-pirat, “I never torture
him.”
Radio “sex doctor” Ruth
Westheimer read from a prayer book in
Brooklyn on October 3 while a friend swung a
live chicken over his head in a Hassidic Yom
Kippur rite called “shlug kaporos.” After the
swinging, the chickens are killed according to
kosher law and given to the poor.
Faith healers caught a male and
female crocodile on September 30 in
Yaounde, capital of Cameroon; dressed the
male in a fake beard and pants; painted the
female’s claws with red nail polish; and
burned both alive as “bewitched.”

COURT CALENDAR

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1995:

Crimes against wildlife
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on
September 5 for the second time denied Miami
monkey dealer Matthew Block’s attempt to overturn
a 13-month jail sentence he received in April
1993 after pleading guilty to felony conspiracy in
the “Bangkok Six” smuggling case. The “Six”
were baby orangutans whom Block attempted to
have shipped from Singapore to Belgrade in
February 1990, along with two siamang gibbons.
Tightly packed into a crate marked “Birds,” they
were intercepted at the Bangkok airport. Four of
the six orangs died from complications of the conditions
of their transport.

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RELIGION & ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1995:

Self-styled Santerian priest Rigoberto
Zamora, 58, was charged July 18 with four counts
of felony cruelty for killing 11 birds, three goats, and
a lamb in his Miami Beach apartment on June 26,
1993. Zamora, whose priestly credentials are chal-
lenged by other Santerians, staged the slaughter to
celebrate a U.S. Supreme Court ruling two weeks ear-
lier that bans on animal sacrifice per se violate the
First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The
court left intact anti-cruelty statutes, which may
affect where and how sacrifices are made, without
prohibiting them outright.
Afflicted with an inflamed stomach,
Shin, a 10-year-old Himalayan snow leopard who
lives at the San Francisco Zoo, hadn’t eaten in two
weeks as of June 10, when she was visited by 11
Tibetan monks from Gyuto Tantric University in
Tenzin Gang, India. The monks performed a five-
minute puja for her––a healing chant. Reported Jorge
Aquino of Religion News Service, who photographed
the event, “As the monks began their blessing, Shin
came down from her 15-foot perch and sat down to
face the monks. She watched and listened, apparent-
ly transfixed.” Shortly after the chant ceased, she
resumed eating her regular rations.

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