LETTERS [Aug/Sep 1996]

August 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Help Agudo
As ANIMAL PEOPLE
readers know, Venezuelan biologist,
researcher, and environmentalist
Ignacio Agudo was cruelly harassed,
persecuted, and charged with treason
due to his campaign (together
with professor Aldemaro Romero)
against the killing of dolphins for
bait. He and his family spent two
years in hiding. In December 1994,
Agudo’s father killed himself rather
than risk betraying their location
under repeated intense interrogation,
and in April 1995 Agudo’s wife
Saida died because she could not get
medication for a chronic heart condition.

Letters

Editorial: Who got the March money?

August 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Observers of the June 23 March for the Animals in Washington D.C. and the preceding
World Animal Awareness Week may be reminded of The Producers, the 1968 Zero
Mostel/Gene Wilder film about two schemers who persuade an outlandish number of
investors to fund a deliberate Broadway flop. The idea is to fail so miserably that all
investors assume their money is lost, and don’t ask embarrassing questions. Mostel and
Wilder stage the most tasteless musical script they can find, called Springtime for
Hitler––only to have it succeed as a farce, sending them to Sing-Sing when the investors
ask for their promised cuts of the gate, adding up to far more than 100%.
But the March was no surprise success. And it might embarrass the cause of animal
protection less if it was in fact a fraud instead of just a public failure.

Makah don’t get quota: SEA SHEPHERDS FIND REPUBLICAN FRIENDS

August 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

ABERDEEN, Scotland– – Striking
another surprise blow for whales, this time
through Congressional politics, the Sea
Shepherd Conservation Society on June 26
sunk Japanese and Norwegian hopes for
expanded legal whaling––at least for this year.
Eighteen years after Captain Paul
Watson established the Sea Shepherds’ reputation
as what he calls “good pirates” by ramming
the outlaw Portuguese whaler Sierra, 14
years after the International Whaling
Commission declared a global moratorium on
commercial whaling, the ban held at the 48th
annual meeting of the IWC, as under pressure
from the House Resources Committee the U.S.
delegation on June 26 withdrew an application
to allow members of the Makah tribe, of Neah
Bay, Washington, to kill five grey whales.

No fish, no rain, no bees

August 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Reform of the Magnuson Act, governing U.S. fisheries
management, is stalled in the Senate after passage by the House due to conflict between
Republicans Slade Gorton of Washington and Ted Stevens of Alaska over whether fishing
quotas should be bought and sold like private property. Stevens and the House majority
oppose individual transferable quotas. Gorton favors them.
While the Senators dispute over whether what’s good for the fishing industry in
their own states will be good for the nation, fish are in desperate trouble the world over
––and so are the other animals and people who depend upon them for food.
Even scarier, the fish crisis looms as just one of a triad of disasters bringing global
famine closer than at any time since the Dust Bowl ravaged the midwest 60-odd years ago
while millions starved during Soviet forced collectivization.

Candidates hunt the hook-and-bullet vote

August 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

WASHINGTON D.C.––Secret Service agents on July 11
questioned James Carl Brown, 21, of Camarillo, California, on suspicion
that he may have been gunning for President Bill Clinton. Port
Hueneme police arrested Brown earlier in the day for allegedly shooting
three ducks with a crossbow. They found a target scrawled on a
newspaper photo of Clinton, about 20 automatic rifles and handguns,
and “militia-type paraphernalia and propaganda” in a search of his
apartment, according to police sergeant Jerry Beck.
Fellow hunters may wonder about Brown. While Clinton
and vice president Albert Gore avidly court their votes, the National
Rifle Association is figuratively gunning for opponent Robert Dole,
the former Senator from Kansas, who told CBS News on July 12 that
he would veto a Congressional attempt––supported by most of the
House Republican majority––to repeal the ban on assault weapons
signed by Clinton in 1994.

Wishing for an end to bear hunting

July 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1996:

In Silver City, New Mexico, Juliette Harris, age 7, on
May 13 voluntarily began receiving a $1,500 series of painful postexposure
rabies shots, to spare the life of the eight-pound bear cub
she found on May 5. The mother might have abandoned the cub due
to a drought that made food scarce, or might have been killed by a
poacher. Whatever the case, Harris lugged him home despite having
been bitten on the finger, and saw to it that he was delivered to
Western New Mexico University biology professor Dennis Miller, a
member of Gila Wildlife Rescue.
“I just didn’t want that cute baby bear to die,” Harris said.
“He’s so small.
In Howie-In-The-Hills, Florida, Stuart McMillan, 14, on
May 15 climbed a 32-foot extension ladder, hoping to retrieve his
beloved cat from the top of a 36-foot power pole. He touched a
7,600-volt wire and either was electrocuted or killed on impact when
he fell headfirst to the ground.

OBITUARIES

July 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Ellen Porter, 80, died June 4 in
Rutland, Vermont. Porter graduated c u m
laude from Syracuse University and began
a career as a dietician in 1937, spending
1939-1942 at the U.S. Army Pine Camp
Hospital in Watertown, New York.
Married to Lt. Jg. George T. Hollrock in
1942, she changed careers after his 1943
death, running a book store 1944-1978.
She married Arthur B. Porter in 1968; he
died in 1978. With Olive Smith, she
cofounded the Rutland County Humane
Society in 1959, serving as treasurer until
1976 and remaining on the board of directors
until 1991. She also organized the formation
of the Addison County Humane
Society, serving on that board; was a
board member of the Vermont Federation
of Humane Societies; and was past president
of the New England Federation of
Humane Societies. “In the 1970s,”
remembered the Rutland Herald, “Mrs.
Porter was instrumental in updating the
laws for animal cruelty.” Added Rutland
animal control officer Craig Petrie, “Ellen
Porter was responsible for getting a building
just for animals built in 1968. She
helped update and support my animal control
program, which I started in 1979.”

Obituaries

REVIEWS: Pet Food

July 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Pet Food
Investigative report by the Animal
Protection Institute of America,
free from API (916-731-5521 or
POB 22505, Sacramento, CA 95822).
16 pages, 1996.

The Animal Protection Institute
holds that the $9-billion-a-year pet food
industry is committing legal consumer fraud.
“Regulation of the production of pet food is
almost nonexistent,” API charges, calling
“for new state and federal regulations that set
standards similar to those of foods for
humans, truthful labeling of pet food ingredients,
and prosecution of pet food companies
who falsely advertise the health benefits of
their product.”
The API view may be debated––but
even if commercial pet food is generally good
for pets, opposite to the API contention, it’s
hard to argue against more accountability.

BOOKS: Making A Killing: An End-Of-The-World Black Comedy

July 1, 1996 Archivist Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:

Making A Killing: An End-Of-The-World Black Comedy
by William M. Johnson.
The Book Club Guild (25 High Street, Lewes, Sussex, U.K.); 1996.
382 pages, 15 pounds. (U.S. price not yet announced.)

The world’s high muckety-mucks—thinly
disguised caricatures of Ronald Reagan, the
Pope, the British royal family, and various
minions—hold a summit on strategy to save
the world, in politically troubled but picturesque
Caribbean San Pimente.
Through a series of painfully protracted
scenarios, we are informed that the game plan
is sustainable exploitation: conserve the plants
and animals that humans find economically
useful, and let “nature take its course” with
the rest, even if it means extinction. The more
monetarily useful plants and animals will be
“made to pay their own way,” as profits from
their harvest and use go toward sustaining
them, and of course to genetically designing
better and more productive breeds.

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