———- Forwarded message ———-
From: In Defense of Animals - takeaction [at] idausa.org
Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 4:25 PM
Subject: Fourth of July Animal Safety Tips

Keep Your Animals Safe On July 4th!

Photo via Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

The Fourth of July can be one of the most dangerous and frightening holidays for animals. Loud explosions are terrifying to animals who don’t understand them.

With proper planning and some common sense, your companion animals can remain safe and secure on Independence Day. Here are some tips:

* First and foremost, leave your companion animals at home when you go to see fireworks! Resist the urge to take them to fireworks displays.

* Before you leave home for the fireworks, make sure your animals are indoors in a sheltered, quiet area. Some animals become destructive when frightened, so be sure that you’ve removed any items that your companion animal could destroy or that would be harmful if chewed or swallowed. Leave a television or radio playing at normal volume to keep him/her company.

* Make sure your animals are wearing identification tags (and it’s even better if they’re also microchipped!) so that if they do become lost, they can be returned promptly.

* Do not leave an animal in your car. With only hot air to breathe, your animal friend can suffer serious health effects, even death, in a few short minutes. Partially opened windows do not provide sufficient air or cooling, but they do provide an opportunity for your animal to be kidnapped.

* If you know that your animal becomes seriously distressed by loud noises, consult with your veterinarian before July 4th for ways to help alleviate the fear and anxiety he or she will experience during fireworks displays.

* Never leave your animals outside unattended, even in a fenced yard, and especially not on a chain. With explosions occuring, animals who normally wouldn’t leave the yard may escape and become lost, or become entangled in their chain, risking injury or death. (There are lots of other reasons to never leave your dog chained! Contact us if you want more information about the negative effects of chaining dogs.)

* If you find somebody else’s companion animals running at-large, either take them to the address on the tag, if you feel comfortable doing so, or bring them to the local animal shelter, where they will have the best chance of being reunited with their human families.

(More below the fold…)

Here, finally!, is my review of Strategic Action for Animals: A Handbook on Strategic Movement Building, Organizing, and Activism for Animal Liberation (Melanie Joy, 2008). At 2,000+ words, it’s perhaps my longest book review yet. Towards the middle, I kind of wander off the book review path, discussing issues of “mainstreaming”, violent vs. non-violent tactics and intersecting oppressions. Some of these are central to Strategic Action for Animals, while others are just touched upon. They all struck a chord with me, though, maybe because they’ve been floating around the internets lately. But bear with me, it’s all related.

By the by, I posted a condensed review on Amazon, so if you’d like the short of it, go here (or here, if you prefer LT).

Otherwise, onward.

(More below the fold…)

Anthrozoology, A to Z

In Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader, editor Clifton P. Flynn has assembled a diverse selection of writing and research on the topic of Human-Animal Studies (HAS).

HAS (also called anthrozoology) is, quite simply, the study of human-animal interactions. Because of its multidisciplinary approach, HAS is a vast and varied field; human-animal interactions can be examined through a multitude of lenses, including psychology, sociology, ethology, anthropology, zoology, veterinary medicine, health science, history, philosophy, women’s studies and ethnic studies. Consequently, scholarship in this field represents a motley body of work.

Social Creatures both reflects and embraces the heterogeneity of Human-Animal Studies. The thirty-one pieces in this hefty volume are grouped into nine topics: An Emerging Field; Studying Human-Animal Relationships; Historical and Comparative Perspectives; Animals and Culture; Attitudes towards Other Animals; Criminology and Deviance; Inequality - Interconnected Oppressions; Living and Working with Other Animals; and Animal Rights - Philosophy and Social Movement. A number of subjects are touched upon, including the human-animal bond; religious perspectives on animal rights; animal rights philosophy; the effects of gender on attitudes towards animal rights and participation in animal rights activism; correlations between support for animal rights and other social causes; grief in companion animal caretakers and shelter workers; and links between cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence, including child and partner abuse, to name but a few.

(More below the fold…)

All I know is that, when I went out into the chicken yards early yesterday morning, I actually staggered, made drunk by the intensity of a floral scent that filled up all of the air in my head, sending my brain into paroxysms of surprised delight. Can you imagine: A chicken yard that smells like a perfume factory? Even though it happens every year, I kept looking around for the source of the scent, almost unable to believe that I could be lucky enough to experience something like this accidentally.

Maybe that was nature’s way of bracing me for what was coming. My favorite bird had died the day before and I had to face the first morning of doing my chores accompanied by her absence. […]

“Broiler” hens are like wild blooms, having a ragged beauty that you sometimes must look closely to perceive and always living less long than you would like. Bred by the poultry industry to have heavy flesh that burdens their organs and stresses their skeletons, they often perish abruptly due to heart attacks, heatstroke, or the enigmatic cause of sudden death known as “flip over syndrome.” The metabolic acceleration that allows the industry to “grow” birds to slaughter weight in only six to eight weeks continues throughout their lives. […]

The New Mosselle was older than two, a great achievement for a “broiler” hen. At first, she had no way of knowing I had a special affection for her, as I tend to dote on all of the “broiler” chickens (by, for example, bringing treats right to them so that they won’t have to compete with with the faster birds). But as she got older, I started whispering, “you’re my favorite” whenever she happened to be close by. On what I had no idea would be her last day, I told her that first thing in the morning and again when I happened to pass her resting by a water bowl at midday. A couple of hours later, when I went out to put straw in the coops, I saw her sleeping in the shade and then looked more closely and realized she was dead. I howled.

That was Monday. Today is Wednesday. My favorite hen is buried with some blueberries and a sprig of honeysuckle underneath the plantain she and her friends so loved to munch. Right up the road, thousands of birds like her are choking in crowded sheds. They will never smell honeysuckle or taste a blueberry.

Go read the whole damn beautiful thing.

And, if you can, consider sending some money pattrice’s way. She cares for hundreds of discarded “food” animals at the Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary, dontchaknow.

(Crossposted from.)

——————–

Tagged: quotables verbatim animals animal rights animal welfare pattrice jones eastern shore sanctuary eastern shore chicken sanctuary poultry chickens hens roosters spring companion animals grief mourning superweed

Save the Lobsters, Save the World

In his debut novel, Stephen Evans has created a quirky – yet touching – story about love, loss and our moral responsibility to our fellow earthlings, human and non.

Lawyers Nick and Lena are the titular couple in THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS. On a whim, law school student Lena enrolled in Nick’s environmental law course, and by term’s end, the two had fallen head-over-heels in love. After they married, Lena joined Nick’s law firm, and the two became crusaders for human and environmental rights. In time, Nick’s seemingly tenuous grasp on reality unraveled, as did his marriage to Lena. When Nick’s increasingly erratic behavior became too much for Lena to bear, the two divorced; she bought out his half of the house and firm, and set up a bank account for his living expenses…which he promptly squandered on a “guerilla activist” prank involving 144 lobsters, the mayor’s swimming pool and the Minnesota Zoo.

In addition to costing him upwards of $250,000, Nick’s latest eco-prank is also threatening his very freedom. Enter Lena, who agrees to defend him in court – against her new beau, one Preston Winter. (Awkward!) Without revealing too much of the plot, suffice to say that the brilliant Lena succeeds in saving Nick from both jail and psychiatric commitment – that is, if he can manage to complete his court-ordered community service and mandatory counseling without incident. Given that the volunteer work is to take place at the local animal shelter, Nick’s chances don’t look good.

(More below the fold…)

Speaking of the disappearing honeybees, one Dennis van Engelsdorp of the Apiary Inspectors of America says:

“For two years in a row, we’ve sustained a substantial loss. […] That’s an astonishing number. Imagine if one out of every three cows, or one out of every three chickens, were dying. That would raise a lot of alarm.”

Dude, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but somewhere upwards of 99.99999% of American cows and chickens are dying. To the rate of roughly 10 billion per year. To break it down even further, that’s about 9 billion chickens and 25 million cows. Per year. In America. America alone.

Dennis, you don’t even need to imagine such a thing. Look no further than your dinner plate.

—————–

Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare food meat bees cows chickens clueless

Since I’m in the middle of writing a rather substantial essay, not to mention devouring all my wonderful new books, I haven’t had as much time to blog as I’d like. So I thought I might dig into the archives - like, way back, as far as my pre-blogging days - and post an older book review that I wrote for Amazon in 2003 (in other words, this book review was actually quite current when I first wrote it!). Dominion is an older book and, as you’ll see from the review, not explicitly pro-animal rights, but it’s still one I’d recommend, as it’s for the most part a powerful animal-friendly piece.

easyVegan.info (my AR blog) actually started out as a Yahoo Group, and for a short time we had a nice little book club going. When I say “a short time”, I think this was our only selection. ‘Twas fun while it lasted, though!

(Crossposted from.)

(More below the fold…)

Great feminist-minded country dominated my mp3 player yesterday, so I’m in a hardy candy kind of mood today. Here are three of my favorite country songs (mostly oldies, the newer stuff generally doesn’t do it for me): Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill”, Jeannie C. Riley’s “Harper Valley PTA”, and The Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl”. You’ll have to excuse the awful misogynistic video for “The Pill” - ’twas the only listen-able video I could find. Well, not so much “excuse” as “ignore” or “don’t watch, just listen”.

And to round out to selection, NOFX’s “Clams Have Feelings Too”. I think this is one of the songs NOFX initially wrote to mock the concept of animal rights, but the band’s singer did go veg in the late ’80s, and the track is included on PETA’s compilation album, Liberation: Songs to Benefit PETA. And really, I think it’s a relatively animal-friendly song either way.

(More below the fold…)

Hunting is not “fun” or “enjoyable“, nor is it a “sport”;

If hunting was just about honing your shooting skills - challenging yourself, your aim, steadiness and sight - and hitting a target (stationary or not), then you could shoot at non-sentient targets - pieces of paper, bottles, clay discs.

If hunting was just about the joy of tracking, finding and surprising an animal in its natural habitat, you could shoot your targets with a camera.

But it’s not, so you don’t.

Hunting is about asserting your power over the less powerful, about dominating “others”, about getting your rocks off through sadism, in a legally and culturally sanctioned way.

It’s about taking your lack of power out on creatures less powerful than yourself. What better way to relax at the end of a long workweek than to gun down unsuspecting woodland creatures, all the while pushing thoughts of the abuses inflicted on you by the evil megatheocorporatocracy to the back of your mind.

Hunting isn’t about “having a good time”; it’s about exerting control when you might otherwise have none (or less so) at the expense of others. It’s about lashing out at those with less voice than your own, much like so many forms of human-on-human violence that we abhor today.

But Hillary, you’re right when you say that hunting is “part of culture…part of a way of life.”

Spousal abuse, child abuse, hate crimes against racial, ethnic, and sexual/gender minorities; all used to be “part of [our] culture…part of [the American] way of life”, yet time has proven(or perhaps more accurately, is proving) them barbaric, inhumane, unacceptable.

Like these, hunting will one day be seen as the patriarchal pathology it is.

That is all.

(Crossposted from.)

———————

Tagged: hunting hillary clinton 2008 elections guns parallel oppressions the patriarchy animals animal rights animal welfare

Friday Activist Vlogging = Friday Veggie Vlogging, but with extra awesome inclusiveness. In addition to animal-friendly musak, I’ll be posting feminist, green, pro-GLBT, anti-racist, -sizeist and -ageist, and otherwise librul/progressive songs. Hopefully in multiples every Friday.

Fridays through Sundays are also awfully mofo busy for me, so this should be much easier than trying to cram in a substantial post or a link roundup. Again, we’ll see how long this lasts. And if you don’t hear from me again ’till Sunday, it’s because I’m busy doing first time homeowner stuff, like cleaning up the junk pile the old owners left in the back of the property. (There’s literally a kitchen sink back there, no lying.)

Suggestions? Send ‘em to me! Dog knows I could use ‘em.

This week’s entry is inspired by the site Stuff White People Like and, more specifically, Elaine’s series of posts on their posts on veganism, dog-love and other so-called white yuppie concerns. Because, like, only privileged white people can be bothered to exercise compassion through their food choices.

Like, um, this guy:

Who’s “kickin’ it” to a song by…dead prez, “a critically acclaimed underground hip-hop duo…they are largely known for their hard-hitting style combined with Socialist and pan-Africanist lyrics, focusing on revolution, institutional racism, critical pedagogy, police, capitalism, education in the United States, prison systems, religion, activism against governmental repression, and corporate control over the media, especially hip-hop record labels.” [Via Wiki]

Oh, and a vegetarian lifestyle, borne from the silly idea that “oppression is oppression.”

(More below the fold…)

Say it with me now: Awwwweeeee!

ME WANTS!!!!!1!!!1 ME WANTS NOW!!!!!1!!!1

Because CNN apparently does not allow embedding of “their” videos (Zum, iReports, anyone? Not really “theirs”!), you’ll have to go to CNN to experience the cuteness. Here’s a direct link. Which I could only retrieve by emailing the video to myself. Seriously, WTF CNN? Even Comedy Central has hopped onto the embedding bandwagon. It’s 2008, for dogsake.

(Crossposted from.)

————–

Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare video cnn dog canine sheep pet companion animal ethology animal behavior animal emotions love interspecies bonding animal rescue

Y’all might remember that I reviewed Mark Hawthorne’s Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism a few months ago. How I raved and raved?

Well, PETA is giving away five copies of the book. (I know, I know, five copies doesn’t make for good odds, but still.) You can enter to win here. Deadline is May 9 - my birthday!

G’luck.

(Crossposted from.)

——————

Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare contests peta people for the ethical treatment of animals mark hawthorne striking at the roots books activism

(Crossposted, without comentary, here.)

Sigh. Over the years, I’ve posted about countless injustices perpetrated against animals and the earth at easyVegan.info. So few of them make their way over here, because…well, because there are so. fucking. many. of them. Each case is as brutal as the next…routine abuses on factory farms, puppy mills, circuses, etc., etc. etc., all dismissed as “business as usual”; the abandonment of companion animals en masse in the wake of war, natural disasters and the mortgage crisis; seals clubbed to death for their fur, wolves shot from the air to “protect” cattle, “poultry” suffocated in the midst of bird flu scares. It’s fucking endless. Each issue is so fucking heartbreaking that, taken as a whole, a particular story has to be damn near crushing before I feel like posting on it over here, on my non-AR blog. Jax’s murder is such a story.

On April 14, New Orleans Police Officers were responding to a (false, it turns out) burglary alarm in the Lakeview neighborhood. While canvassing the area, they invaded the home of Jax and Scarlett, two Doberman Pinschers. They pumped eight bullets into 4-year-old Jax, with the justification that he lunged at them first. Problem is, Jax had recently undergone spinal surgery; his vet testified that it would have been impossible for Jax to “lunge” at anyone.

Neighbors called Jax’s guardian, Dr. Patrick Coleman, who rushed home to find Jax dying in his backyard. Rather than aid in CPR, the NOPD officers ordered Coleman to “restrain” Jax’s sister Scarlett - again, in their own fucking home. Scarlett was terrified, cowering in the corner of her home, watching her companion die. Jax bled to death while the officers allegedly laughed and snickered. And then, rather than call another set of officers to investigate the incident, the officers involved in the shooting collected all the evidence themselves. Coverup, anyone? (Not that a coverup is especially necessary; animal abuse is like rape in that the perpetrators are very rarely bought to justice. Animals and women, disposable objects in a disposable society. Men hate you and your dog.)

I very rarely get emotional while reading and posting about animal issues; I try to disassociate a bit, otherwise I think I might be crippled by the sorrow and helplessness. Not just in regards to animal issues, but especially in regards to animal issues - in the “Oppression Olympics”, non-human animals win, paws down. For all my silly beliefs about who should have which rights, I most often get mocked for my support of animal liberation causes. I mean, pffft. You think allegedly “liberal” men disdain feminists, GLBT allies, anti-racists, et. al.? Try being an animal advocate in liberal circles. Even members of the other marginalized groups don’t get - don’t want to see - how their own oppression is linked to that of animals.

But I started blubbering like a baby when I read this one. I have five dogs and a cat, all of whom are loved like children by their otherwise childfree parents. They’re my babies. I’d do anything to protect them, to keep them safe and happy. And so did Dr. Coleman, even installing an alarm system to look after his Jax and Scarlett when he couldn’t. And it was that alarm system that brought the officers who murdered (yes, murdered) Jax. It hurts my heart to think what that must feel like.

As I write this, the libertarian douchebag and I are hunting around for alarm systems right now for that very purpose. We live in a small town that hasn’t seen a murder in dog knows how long, and break-ins are rare. Yet I hate leaving the animals alone; what if there’s a fire? Who will rescue the dogs? Four-legged children aren’t exactly a top priority in an emergency situation. There are some heroic firefighters who might risk their own lives for those of Ralphie, Peedee, O-Ren, Kaylee, Jayne and Ozzy, but I wouldn’t bet their lives on it.

And yet Jax was shot, murdered in his own backyard. On his own property. In his home. I get the fear that so-called “dangerous” breeds engender in some people (”bigots” would be the proper term…if dogs were given human consideration, that is), but Jax was on his own fucking property. Certainly a dog should be safe in his own backyard?

By the by, this isn’t the first dog shooting scandal to hit New Orleans. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, St. Bernard Parish Deputy Sheriff Mike Minton and Sergeant Clifford “Chip” Englande were videotaped shooting companion animals whose guardians had been forced - sometimes at gunpoint - to leave them behind. Charges against both have been dismissed. This is not be to confused with another case, in which companion animals left (supposedly in safety) in four schools elementary in St. Bernard Parish were gunned down, execution style. The case(s?) is still open.

If you’d like to learn more - and I hope you do - all of the relevant alerts are available on easyVegan.info. Search for “St. Bernard Parish“.

Please also email NOPD, Mayor Nagin, etc., and demand that Jax’s killers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that measures are put in place to stop such an atrocity from happening again. Jax, Scarlett and their father deserve as much. This was a needless, senseless killing. A tragedy. And it could happen to any one of us, our animals, our children, our family.

And then put down that burger, because the cow you’re eating had a family, too.

————————-

Update, 4/18/08:

After doing some further research on the case - because, as I mentioned at Elaine’s place, I can’t stop blubbering about it - I want to correct two mistakes, one minor, one not so much.

The officers fired eight shots at Jax, but according to his vet, only four hit their mark. Minor quibble.

Now for the more significant correction. The shooting apparently started in Dr. Coleman’s fenced backyard, where the officers first found Jax and Scarlett. Once the officers started firing bullets at the dogs, they ran into the house through the dog door. The officers either followed the dogs inside, into their home, their refuge, and kept pumping bullets into poor Jax, or somehow fired into the house from outdoors, as shell casings and/or bullets were allegedly found inside the home as well as out.

When Dr. Coleman arrived on the scene, he found Jax crumpled in a corner of his home (the living room?; in any case, not the backyard as I previously stated), bleeding to death beside a terrified Scarlett. It’s unclear from the new reports whether the officers were inside the home when Dr. Coleman arrived, or if they followed him inside. In any case, it’s at this point that the officers prevented Dr. Coleman from performing CPR in order to “restrain” Scarlett.

Which begs several questions: if they were so freaking scared of Jax and/or Scarlett, why follow them inside, into their own home, into a confined space? Likewise, if Scarlett was acting in a threatening manner while Dr. Coleman was trying to save Jax, why not just leave the fucking house instead of pester the no doubt hysterical and otherwise occupied Dr. Coleman? I mean, even if Dr. Coleman’s efforts to save Jax were futile, couldn’t you at least let the poor man be with his beloved companion in his final moments?

Heartless fucking monsters. How I wish I knew their names, because they need to be slurred far and wide.

As far as I can tell, the incident is under investigation - but not the shooting, just the officers’ conduct (coverup) afterwards. Whether this was a “justified” shooting or a clear case of animal abuse is not even up for discussion. Which means we have to make it an issue.

(More below the fold…)

One of my least favorite things about presidential elections - aside from the bitter partisanship, the misogyny and racism, the fear of additional conservative Supreme Court Justices, and the loss of my very personhood, of course - is all the dogdamn pandering to the redneck hunting lobby. (C’mon, like anyone took this seriously. Pffft!)

This cycle, it’s Hillary who’s selling out her humanity for the “sportsmen’s” murderer’s vote. Clinton’s comments of this morning, made in response to Obama’s comments of April 6, are what set me off, but in searching for the exact quote on teh internets, I found quite a few references to her Duck Hunter days. (See, I can condemn the misogyny directed at Hillary without blindly throwing her my vagina vote. Nay, nay, nay boiz!)

Here’s Clinton on February 18:

“I’ve hunted. My father taught me how to shoot,” she told a crowd at the Labor Temple in rural northern Wisconsin. “I remember standing in the cold water. It was so cold, you know, at first light. I was with a bunch of my friends, all men.

“And they all were playing a trick on me, and said, ‘We’re not going to shoot, you shoot,’ ’cause you know what they wanted to do. They wanted to embarrass me.

“So the pressure was on. So I shot, and I shot a banded duck.”

Awww! Isn’t that special. I think I’ll vote for her, because she’s snuffed out at least one life in the name of sport. She’ll be perfect to take over the war in Iraq!

(More below the fold…)

I hope I don’t need to say as much, but just in case: the threats of violence were/are totally uncalled for, not to mention counterproductive. My “fillet o’ buhbie” comment was not in anywayshapeorform a threat, and should not be taken as such; rather, I was simply pointing out the discrepancy in how violence against human and non-human animals is viewed. You can say that this animal is teated better than that human subgroup ’til yer blue in the face, but repetition does not magically transform hyperbole into facts.

Also worth stating: I may rant a good game, but I’m fundamentally a pacifist, and don’t wish real harm on anyone. (Except those pesky feti. Always invadin’ my womb n stuff. What’s with that?)

Previous IDA alerts here and here.

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch - news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 1:28 AM
Subject: DawnWatch: Animal slaughter art exhibit closes under peaceful protest, then threats — SF Chronicle 3/30/08

Last week, a San Francisco art exhibition that included animal cruelty was in the news. This Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, included a lead article (by Ilana DeBare, pg B1) headed, “Art Institute halts exhibition showing killing of animals; Workers threatened; video unclear about why deaths filmed.”

The article opens:

“Citing threats of violence by animal rights activists, the San Francisco Art Institute said Saturday that it is canceling a controversial exhibition that included video clips of animals being bludgeoned to death, as well as a public forum it had scheduled to address the controversy.

“”We’ve gotten dozens of threatening phone calls that targeted specific staff people with death threats, threats of violence and threats of sexual assaults,’ said Art Institute President Chris Bratton. ‘We remain committed to freedom of speech as fundamental to this institution, but we have to take people’s safety very seriously.’

“The exhibit that sparked the controversy was a one-person show by Paris artist Adel Abdessemed called ‘Don’t Trust Me,’ which opened March 19.

“Along with a variety of other elements, the show included a series of video loops of animals being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer in front of a brick wall. The animals killed included a pig, goat, deer, ox, horse and sheep.”

While the headline and opening lines of the article suggest that the exhibition was removed only because of threats of violence, further on we read:

“Abdessemed’s show, one of about a dozen public exhibitions that the 650-student school hosts each year, had opened fairly quietly. But as word spread among animal rights groups, more than 8,000 people sent e-mails to the institute slamming the show. Institute officials temporarily closed the show Wednesday and scheduled a public forum for Monday.

“But then the tone of some of the e-mails turned violent, Bratton said, with threats against individual staff members, such as, ‘We’re going to gather up your children and bludgeon their heads.’ Officials decided to shutter the exhibition permanently, the first time in the institute’s 137-year history that a show was closed for safety reasons. They also canceled the forum.

“”Some of the people who said the most threatening things said they would be present at the forum,’ Bratton said.”

(More below the fold…)