Category Archives: Cruelty

Celebrities Want to Tie Trade Pact to Dolphin Hunt

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http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/celebrities-tie-trade-pact-dolphin-hunt-22385320

WASHINGTON February 6, 2014 (AP)

Associated Press

A group of American celebrities and other activists want President Barack Obama to refuse to sign an international trade agreement until Japan bans the capture and slaughter of dolphins in the fishing town of Taiji.

Backing the effort are Oscar-winning performers Sean Penn, Cher, Susan Sarandon, Jennifer Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Charlize Theron as well as TV stars Ellen DeGeneres and William Shatner, and many others.

The Oscar-winning 2009 documentary “The Cove” chronicled the dolphin roundup in Taiji and helped spark protests over the annual hunt and ensuing slaughter. Japanese law allows a hunting season for dolphins, and fishermen defend it as a tradition.

In a letter dated Wednesday that included dozens of names, hip-hop producer Russell Simmons asked the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy, to urge Obama not to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, until Japan bans the hunt. Kennedy recently tweeted that she was deeply concerned about the dolphin hunt, which has drawn widespread news coverage.

Simmons’ letter said those signing don’t oppose the TPP but seek to make stopping the dolphin hunt a key factor in negotiations. The free trade agreement is being negotiated by 12 nations that account for about 40 percent of global gross domestic product.

The letter said that corporations have spent the past two years crafting language in the TPP “to serve their interests.”

“Should human compassion not be afforded the same privilege as business interests?” the letter stated. It added: “The world is looking to you, Ambassador Kennedy, and to our government to send a clear message to Japan that this atrocity must be banned now.”

After Kennedy’s tweet, a State Department spokeswoman told reporters that the U.S. was “concerned with both the sustainability and the humaneness of the Japanese dolphin hunts.”

Simmons said more than 600 dolphins have been slaughtered since the hunting season360_yangtze_dolphin_0810 began Sept. 1. Anti-hunt activists reported that dozens of fishermen helped to herd about 250 dolphins into a cove one day last month. Of those, about 40 were eventually killed for their meat. At least 50 others were kept alive for sale to aquariums and others, and the remaining dolphins were released.

“Humane Slaughter,” “Ethical Hunting” Both Oxymoronic

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After forty-some years in the business, fourth generation Montana cattle rancher Howard Lyman finally saw the light. Now, the author of the bestselling books, Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won’t Eat Meat and No More Bull: The Mad Cowboy Targets America’s Worst Enemy: Our Diet, spends his days promoting veganism.

For the sake of our health and humaneness, for the planet and for the wolves, adopting a cruelty-free vegan lifestyle is a challenge we all must face together. As Mr. Lyman tells us: ”The question we must ask ourselves as a culture is whether we want to embrace the change that must come, or resist it. Are we so attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to counter the arbitrary laws of eating taught to us in childhood by our misinformed parents, that we cannot alter the course they set us on, even if it leads to our own ruin? Does the prospect of standing apart or encountering ridicule scare us even from saving ourselves?”

Read More here: https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/fourth-generation-montana-cattle-rancher-now-promotes-veganism/

Raccoon killer won’t be prosecuted

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[This is the kind of cruelty behind Joe Namath’s fur coat:]

BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 3 (UPI) — Animal rights activists said a Colorado college student who admitted killing a raccoon with a baseball bat got off with a “slap on the wrist.”
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said his office declined to prosecute Jace Roberts Griffiths, 20, on a felony animal cruelty charge after Griffiths admitted killing the animal so he could “take its hide.”

Griffiths, a University of Colorado student, holds a valid state hunting license Garnett said permits him to hunt animals for their fur — which is, legally speaking, what he was doing when he killed the raccoon, the Boulder Daily Camera reported.

But Rita Anderson of the Boulder chapter of In Defense of Animals said Garnett’s office is misreading the law. The Colorado statute sets out to define legal methods of hunting animals. In the case of raccoons, the law permits shooting the animals with a shotgun, handgun or crossbow, or trapping them.

The law later states, “any method of take not listed herein shall be prohibited” — and that, Anderson said, justifies prosecution on the animal cruelty charge.

“Bludgeoning or whacking or batting is not listed,” Anderson said. “I do believe animal cruelty charges could have been brought. The hunting excuse was utterly absurd.”

Garnett, who defended his department’s handling of animal cruelty cases, said no legal precedent exists for moving forward with the charges.

“We looked very closely at that case and could not find any charges that we felt were appropriate,” Garnett said. “We had no evidence the animal was not killed quickly and painlessly.”

That didn’t satisfy Anderson or other animal rights supporters.

“We have repeatedly in group meetings spoken to [Garnett] about how cruelty to animal cases have not been given what we believe to be the right consideration,” Anderson said. “These people are getting a slap on the wrist.”

© 2014 United Press International

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2014/02/03/Raccoon-killer-wont-be-prosecuted/UPI-12091391464801/#ixzz2sNds1wsY

Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Wildlife Photography Copyright Jim Robertson

Connections of animal and human suffering

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http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/pets/dr-fox/connections-of-animal-and-human-suffering/article_0d7de883-b56e-587a-bc67-516db2cddce1.html

by Dr. Michael Fox

Dear Readers • Humans, like other animals, have so-called mirror neurons in their brains that instantly process the emotional state of another deciphered through their facial expressions, vocalizations and body language. This happens to facilitate communication and appropriate action/reaction.

When signals of distress and suffering are processed, empathetic concern is evoked, as is fear. Sociopaths and psychopaths may respectively feel nothing or some perverse pleasure. Empathetic concern, which can include sympathy, outrage, remorse, anger, guilt and disbelief, can lead to denial or appropriate action to help, save, protect and defend by direct action.

While the print and TV media increasingly limit public exposure to extreme human suffering, there are even greater limits imposed, at least in America, on showing documented cruelties and suffering of animals. Ironically, some newspapers —1474693_10202436592133870_578596781_n including my local edition — have no qualms publishing photographs of a 12-year-old girl with a deer she had shot and a wildlife biology student grinning with a wolf he had shot draped around his shoulders. This establishes a culturally accepted norm, but images of animal suffering and cruelty — of animals in traps, in factory livestock and fur farms, puppy mills and slaughterhouses — are rarely shown by the mass media. We should ask why, and who is protecting whom.

Censorship of animal cruelty and suffering by the mass media parallels the atrocious record of state and federal law enforcement agencies of anti-cruelty laws. Janelle Dixon, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Animal Humane Society, recently reported how her organization spent $225,000 caring for dogs from a puppy mill, while the operator of this commercial dog breeding operation received a charge of a year’s probation, a 90-day suspended jail sentence and a $50 fine.

Clearly, America must wipe its mirror clean when it comes to animal and human suffering caused by how, as a culture, we choose to do our business. And the media must begin to act responsibly rather than entertain, distract and continue to promote consumerism and biased information.