BOOKS: Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Mrs. Chippy’s Last Expedition:
The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton’s Polar-Bound Cat
by Caroline Alexander
Harper Collins Publishers (10 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022-5299), 1997.
148 pages, hardcover, $16.00.

Read with clear eyes, the saga of
Antarctic exploration is––like most sagas––a
dismal record of vanity, cruelty, stupidity and
greed, whose protagonists exhibit heroic
attributes chiefly after their own foolishness
puts them in peril of their lives.

Read more

OBITUARIES

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Diana, Princess of Wales, 36,
killed August 30 with her companion Emad
Mohamed al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul in a
Paris car crash, was recalled by fine arts portrateur
Elaine Livesay-Fassell as “The first
person in the British royal family who would
not hunt, shoot, or wear fur, the first who
spoke out about kindness to animals” since
Queen Victoria endorsed the Royal SPCA
and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
at request of Prince Albert in the 19th century.
“It was unfortunately not mentioned in
all the tributes to Diana,” Best Friends
Animal Sanctuary cofounder Michael
Mountain told the 1997 No Kill Conference
in his plenary address, “that the very first of
the rifts in the royal family that led to her
divorce came when she refused to hunt, and
did not want her sons to hunt.” Diana was
reputedly a vegetarian by inclination, with
frequent lapses, and PETA published a note
from Buckingham Palace affirming her opposition
to fur as part of an anti-fur ad, but
ANIMAL PEOPLE was unable to find documentation
of any specific statements she
might have made about animals, nor of her
direct participation in animal causes. “Diana
was widely rumored to dissapprove of bloodsports,”
said Kevin Saunders, chair of the
League Against Cruel Sports, “and it was
thought she was unhappy with Prince Charles
for introducing their sons to all known legal
forms of blood sport, but it was never more
than a rumor. Diana, to the best of my
knowledge, never involved herself in any
animal welfare work, not even with the
Royal SPCA,” as the RSPCA confirmed.

Read more

BOOKS: And No Birds Sing

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

And No Birds Sing:
A True Ecological Thriller Set in a Tropical Paradise
by Mark Jaffe
Barricade Books (150 Fifth Ave., Suite 700, New York, NY 1OO11), 1997.
283 pages, paperback, $12.00.

On a small island, thousands of
miles across the Pacific, the birds have all
but disappeared. And No Birds Sing, paced
like a page-turning mystery, seeks the
answer. Mark Jaffe chronicles prolonged
governmental and scientific ineptitude in
responding to an event that had no recognized
model: the annihilation of birds on
Guam by the accidental import of the brown
tree snake. Jaffe centers on the story of
Julia Savidge, a doctoral candidate at the
University of Illinois, hired to do research
by the Guam Division of Aquatic Wildlife
Resources, who had the courage to fight
bureaucracy and bogus “scientific rules” for
years in order to prove the impact of the
snake, which she had deduced from field
observation, interviews with local people,
and archival research.

Read more

BOOKS: Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Animal Experimentation:
A Harvest of Shame
by Moneim A. Fadali, M.D.
Hidden Springs Press
(POB 29613, Los Angeles, CA 90029), 1996.
233 pages, paperback, $14.95.

Mark Twain once said, “Man is the only animal capable of
blushing…but he is the only one who has plenty of reason to do so.”
The subject of Dr. Fadali’s treatise makes it abundantly clear that
blushing is the least man can do.
Animal Experimentation: A Harvest of Shame overflows
with the author’s anti-vivisectionist sentiments. The author’s heart is
obviously in the right place, but judicious editing and a more rigorous
scientific approach could have streamlined the presentation to the
point that it could not fail to impress a reader unconvinced of the ultimate
futility of animal experimentation. It also would have won a
wider audience. Compelling facts are within these pages, yet require
fortitude to glean.

Read more

Direct action crackdown

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Noel Molland, 36, of
Okehampton, Devon, Paul Rogers, 33, of
Southsea, Hampshire, Steve Booth, 38, of
Galgate, Lancashire, Saxon Birchnall
Wood, 24, of Sandhurst, Berkshire, and
Simon Russell, 33, of Pevensey, East
Sussex, pleaded not guilty on August 30 in
London, England, to allegedly conspiring
together and with previously convicted
Animal Liberation Front press officer
Robin Wood to incite persons unknown to
commit criminal damage between January
1991 and January 1996. All five, and Robin
Wood, were associated with Green Anarchist
magazine. Booth also produced his own magazine,
Lancaster Bomber, as did Molland,
who called his Eco Vegan. Burchnall Wood
allegedly distributed manuals on making
bombs and sabotaging vehicles, the Crown
said. Russell was for several years the electronic
voice of the British ALF. The group,
whose trial continues, are believed to have
been the core of the British ALF in the 1990s.
Attacks on some targets the defendants
allegedly directed activists toward continue.

Read more

Protest of bison killing took guts

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL
PARK––The Fund for Animals, Biodiversity
Legal Foundation, Ecology Center, Predator
Project, and individual coplaintiffs on
September 23 announced an out-of-court settlement
of a lawsuit against the National Park
Service for maintaining groomed snowmobile
trails in and out of Yellowstone National Park
each winter, which become corridors to
slaughter as bison follow the cleared, packed
routes north into Montana. More than 1,000
bison were shot last winter alone for entering
Montana, where ranchers fear the bison may
reintroduce brucellosis, undoing a long campaign
to eliminate the disease.

Read more

Counterattacks

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

U.S. District Judge Henry
Morgan, of Norfolk, Virginia, on
September 3 threw out an industrial espionage
charge that was part of a 21-count
lawsuit filed by Huntingdon Life Sciences
Inc. against PETA and undercover investig-
ator Michele Rokke. Huntingdon on
August 21 dropped four similar complaints
pertaining to alleged theft of trade secrets
and disruption of business. PETA and
Rokke still face 16 allegations that they
engaged in racketeering, trespassing, conspiracy,
and illegal wiretapping. Procter &
Gamble cancelled testing that had been
jobbed out to Huntingdon in June, soon
after Rokke and PETA displayed some of
the material at a press conference. Huntingdon
holds that the damaging information was
obtained under false pretenses, since Rokke
did not disclose her PETA affiliation when
she was hired to clean cages. Morgan ruled
in July that PETA had obtained information
about Huntingdon illegally, and enjoined
further release of the materials Rokke gathered
until after the case is decided.

Read more

COURT CALENDAR

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

WILLS BANKRUPT
Former Humane Society of the
U.S. vice president David Wills on August
22 filed for personal bankruptcy. Among his
17 listed creditors were H S U S, which in
October 1995 fired Wills and later sued him
for allegedly misappropriating $93,000; John
H o y t, president of HSUS and Humane
Society International from 1970 until last year,
who is believed to have personally loaned
Wills money; Sandra LeBost, of Royal Oak,
Michigan, to whom Wills agreed in June
1995 to pay $42,500 in restitution and damages
for nonrepayment of loans; and
William and Judith McBride, also of Royal
Oak, Michigan, who are believed to have
reached an out-of-court settlement with Wills
in a similar case involving alleged failure to
repay a loan of $20,000.

Read more

ANIMAL EDUCATION

Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

PHILADELPHIA––Aligned on
opposite sides of the school dissection issue,
the American Anti-Vivisection Society and the
American Physiological Society are taking
fundamentally different approaches to presentation
this school year, too.
American AV, building for the
future, has formed what it terms “the first
humane education certification program in the
U.S.,” described as “a one-to-two-year, offcampus
independent study program for both
teachers and activists.” Study modules cover
education, communication, and presentation;
environmental issues; animal issues; human
rights issues; and cultural issues.
American AV is also distributing the
AnimaLearn Frog Fact Kit, “designed to
encourage children to have empathy and
respect for frogs,” according to AnimalLearn
director Kat Lewis.

Read more

1 … 513 514 515 516 517 … 720