A n i m a l W r i t e s © sm
The official ANIMAL
RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher ~ EnglandGal@aol.com
Issue # 02/02/03
Editor ~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ ParkStRanger@aol.com
~
MichelleRivera1@aol.com
~ sbest1@elp.rr.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1 ~ The Regular Poop From Yellowstone By Greg
Lawson
2 ~ Neo-McCarthyism, the Patriot Act, and the New Surveillance
Culture
By Dr. Steve Best
3 ~ SpayDay USA - Feb. 25th
4 ~ Dog Beach By Michelle Rivera
5 ~ Two Reasons to Celebrate the Great American Meatout By Robert Cohen
6 ~ Rest In Peace
7 ~ Memorable Quote
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~1~
The Regular Poop from
Yellowstone
By Greg Lawson - ParkStRanger@aol.com
This
last week, CNN reported that park officials at Yellowstone National Park were
"steamed" about the Metamucil commercial currently being
televised. The commercial shows a group of visitors at Old Faithful
asking a Ranger what makes the geyser so regular. The scene changes to
the Ranger secretly pouring a glass of Metamucil into the geyser.
Yellowstone Ranger Al Nash was quoted as saying, "It suggests that it's OK
to pour some substance into a thermal feature. We've spent decades trying
to educate visitors about the fact that it's harmful to the feature and that
it's dangerous for anyone to take an action like that."
The makers of Metamucil responded that park officials should chill out, that
the commercial was obviously a joke.
Also this last week, on Wednesday, January 29th, park rangers assisted the
Montana Department of Livestock to capture and send to slaughter two bull
bison. The National Park Service has assisted these cattle ranchers to
kill thousands of bison in the last couple of decades using the excuse that
bison might pass the disease brucellosis to cattle.
There won't be cattle grazing on the public lands near Yellowstone until June,
and theoretically, only infected pregnant female bison could pass this disease,
but there has never been a case of bison passing brucellosis to bison in the
wild. These bulls were killed for no good reason. One of the most
important "features" of Yellowstone, the last wild free roaming bison
are being killed for no good reason.
And park officials are worried that visitors will be inspired by a joke
commercial to pour a laxative into a geyser? Come on.
The National Parks and Conservation Association, a watchdog group on National
Parks, just released its list of the ten most endangered parks in our
country. Yellowstone made it again. I have forgotten how many years
it has been on the list. Yellowstone faces incredible noise and air
pollution from snowmobile traffic which pollutes the air and endangers the
wildlife. Rangers at the entrance gates often wear gas masks and have
fresh air pumped into their booths because of the carbon monoxide.
The Clinton administration tried to ban snowmobiles in the park but the Bush
regime has overturned that ban. The town of West Yellowstone, Montana, is
the snowmobile capital of the world. There are snowmobile rental places
on every block. Everyday during the winter, an average of 800 of these
loud, smoky vehicles enter the park. The proposed Bush regulations places
a "limit" of 1100 snowmobiles per day to enter the park. Gee,
an increase of 300 machines doesn't sound very "limiting" to me.
And park officials are worried people might pour laxatives into geysers?
Perhaps Yellowstone park officials need a good dose of Metamucil to flush their
heads out of their @$$#$.
To learn more about the Yellowstone bison situation, go to the site of the
Buffalo Field Campaign (my favorite activist group) at
www.wildrockies.org/buffalo
Buffalo Field Campaign
The BFC recently received a matching grant for their work to stop the
slaughter. If you can afford a donation, write the word "Match"
on your check. If the National Park Service is unable to protect the
animal which is its own symbol, maybe with our help these brave activists can.
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~2~
Neo-McCarthyism, the Patriot Act,
and the New Surveillance Culture
Part 1
By Dr. Steve Best - sbest1@elp.rr.com
“They that can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Ben
Franklin (inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty)
Welcome to post-Constitutional America. While lip service is paid to freedom,
basic liberties such as the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and
association, the Fourth Amendment right prohibiting illegal search and
seizures, and the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy and public trial are
increasingly jeopardized. George Bush, John Ashcroft, the Justice Department,
and the FBI have tossed the Constitution into the shredder as they perversely
redefine concepts such as democracy, patriotism, terrorism, and security. While
Americans continue to be entertained by the weapons of mass distraction, the
country moves ever more quickly toward tyranny. With the dystopias of both
Orwell’s 1984 (overt state domination) and Huxley’s Brave New World (insidious
thought control and intense normalization) on the horizon, the gravest threats
to freedom today stem not from the Al Quaeda, but rather from our own
government.
The
State of the Nation
“The State … is the most flagrant negation,
the most cynical and complete negation of humanity.”
Michael Bakunin
As defined within anarchist political theory, the state is inherently a system
of domination. Historically, the state evolved as a bureaucratic apparatus and
power system in its own right, and its goal was to thwart all self-organization
among members of society. The state is the usurpation, alienation, and
concentration of the power of the community. Surveillance has always been a key
function of the state, beginning with the invention of writing. In modern
times, Marxists argued that the state is nothing but the ruling political arm
of the hegemony of the dominant economic class, the bourgeoisie. Critics point
out that the state has a relative autonomy and that the state and capitalist
class sometimes are at odds with one another.
That said, it nevertheless is true that the modern democratic state largely is
a vehicle to sanctify the profits and property rights of capitalists, and that
laws often are but legal expressions of economic power, protecting particular
not universal interests. The flip side of state protection of corporate
hegemony is the suppression of peoples’ interests and their civil liberties.
Thus, the realm of law and the domain of justice rarely overlap, and the state
uses both legal and paralegal (e.g., force and repression) means of
suppression.
Just as the CIA has been nothing but a tool to destroy democracies outside our
borders, the mission of the FBI has been to squelch dissent from within. The
worse excesses of the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) --
whereby from 1956 to 1971 it monitored, infiltrated, and disrupted sundry
religious and political organizations -- are resurfacing as the intelligence
agencies are collecting and sharing data on American citizens. Despite the
Church Committee reports of the mid-1970s that documented abuse of power by
U.S. intelligence agencies, nothing has changed except that we are losing more
liberties.
On few occasions was state power and anti-democratic agendas so evident than during
the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy led a Cold War crusade
against First Amendment rights. It is no exaggeration to say that we are
entering a neo-McCarthyist period. The terms and players have changed, but the
situation is much the same, with the Communist threat being replaced by the
Terrorist threat, and John Ashcroft taking the place of Joseph McCarthy. Both
then and now, the country demonized a foreign “Other” who threatened the
American way of life. Government and media employed simplistic scripts of good
and evil, with the U.S. defined as being unambiguously good and the foreign
enemy being unqualifiedly evil. Like before, the government identified
dangerous enemies everywhere, not only outside our country but also, more menacingly
they want us to believe, ensconced within our borders. The attack on the
foreign Other allows targeting the Other within, and the domestic Other is any
and every citizen expressing dissent.
Origins
of the Patriot Act
“I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and to
revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the
country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.” Henry
David Thoreau
According to the U.S. government, the main domestic enemies are not sleeper Al
Quaeda cells, but rather animal and earth liberation groups, namely the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and Stop Huntingdon
Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Because of their many arson attacks, including the
spectacular hit on a Vail ski lodge in 1998 (which the government called “the
largest act of eco-terrorism in US history”), the FBI has identified the ELF as
“the largest and most active U.S.-based terrorist group.” According to FBI
testimony to Congress in February 2002, the ALF and ELF together committed over
600 “criminal acts” that inflicted over $43 million in damage to animal
industries.
But all three animal and earth liberation organizations are major targets of
state suppression as they are officially identified as “domestic terrorist
groups.” Indeed, not only the state has stigmatized these groups as domestic
terrorists, but in the creeping rightward political direction, so too have
otherwise progressive groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, some
mainstream animal and environmental groups, and much of the mass media. Indeed,
even the Humane Society of the United States has come under fire by animal
exploitation industries as a “terrorist organization.”
After the 9-11 attack, the Bush administration declared a permanent state of
emergency against terrorism. With America in a panic, members of the Bush
administration quickly went to work to draft new anti-terrorist legislations
and on October 26th, less than one month after the attacks, President Bush
signed into law the USA Patriot Act.
One of the most important pieces of legislation in American history, this
342-page tome was pushed through Congress before few could even read it, and
only a handful of politicians dared to challenge it. Certainly the cleverest of
all government acronyms, the USA Patriot Act is short for “Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism Act.” The designator “Patriot” is painfully ironic, of
course, for in the Orwellian doublespeak of the Bush administration patriotism
means tyranny and the act aims to dismantle the very freedoms for which true
patriots profess to die. Framed as legislation to combat terrorists, the Patriot
Act proposes bold new measures to undermine the Constitution. It is a mishmash
of provisions to augment state power, with some changes eliminating existing
legal loopholes that mitigate government authority, some updating laws for the
age of the Internet, and some granting the Justice Department powers previously
proscribed by Congress but passed because of the urgency of 9–11. The Patriot
Act dissolves the system of checks and balances that support the Constitution,
as the Executive Branch of government seizes control of legislation and the
courts. Power is becoming increasingly centralized in the Leviathan of the
contemporary state as other branches of the state become rubber stamp
mechanisms and alibis for totalitarianism.
The Patriot Act radicalized powers available to the government already on the
books from Title 18 of the United States Code, which defines criminal policy
including actions against property, people, and the state. In addition, the
first institutional threats to animal liberation can be found in the Animal
Enterprise Protection Act of 1992. This involved a joint study between the
attorney general and the secretary of agriculture on “the extent and effects of
domestic and international terrorism on enterprises using animals for food or
fiber production, agriculture, research, or testing.” This is perhaps the first
time the word “terrorist” was applied to the U.S. animal liberation movement,
which began in the late 1970s.
Perhaps most importantly, the Patriot Act builds on laws created by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a secret court created in 1978. The
purpose of FISA was to review requests for surveillance on suspected spies,
terrorists, and other foreign enemies of the U.S. in order to collect intelligence
information. Unlike other courts, the FISA court did not require probable cause
that a crime is being committed to obtain a warrant. Ashcroft tried to argue
that the Patriot Act grants the authority to use FISA to conduct a criminal
investigation and expand the powers of the executive branch accordingly. This
would in effect override the Fourth Amendment that “no warrant shall issue, but
upon probable cause.” The seven members of the FISA court -- which denied
only one out of 12,000 surveillance requests over two decades of its existence
-- unanimously rejected the Patriot Act aas an abuse of government authority and
denied Ashcroft its approval in August 2002, as it chastised the FBI for
misleading them on over 75 occasions. But Ashcroft argued the FISA court
exceeded its authority, and an appeals court overturned its decision.
Thus, the Patriot Act shifts the focus of FISA from foreign to domestic
intelligence; it thereby targets not only spies and terrorists but also
American citizens. By weakening the already permissive nature of FISA and by
applying these diminished standards to domestic criminal investigations, the
Patriot Act reendows the government with COINTELPRO-like powers to spy, invade,
disrupt, and violate constitutionally protected rights. To use FISA secret
courts and procedures for domestic investigations, the FBI need only claim that
foreign intelligence gathering is a “significant” but not necessarily the
“primary” purpose of investigation, that any request it makes is related
somehow to its investigation.
<><><> Next week, in Part 2 of this article, I will explore
some of the repressive implications of the Patriot Act, and I will discuss its
implications for animal rights and direct action in the current era.
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~3~
SpayDay USA - Feb. 25th
Spaying and neutering is the most effective way
of curbing the companion animal overpopulation problem. For more
information about how you can promote SpayDay USA in your community, check out
the following website:
Doris
Day Animal Foundation: Spay Day USA 2003
http://www.ddaf.org/SpayDay/
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~4~
Dog Beach
By Michelle Rivera - MichelleRivera1@aol.com
Here
in Jupiter, Florida, there is a beautiful beach. A four-mile section of this
beach was set aside many, many years ago as "Dog Beach." Here,
well-behaved dogs may come and play off leash and it is the only beach of it's
kind for miles around. My dog has enjoyed this beach tremendously over the past
ten years. I enjoy watching him enjoy!
Being in Florida, there are a lot of people we affectionately call "Snow
Birds" who live in New York, New Jersey, Michigan and elsewhere six months
out of the year and live here the other (coldest) six months. It is
during those six months that they are here that the fight begins. Every
year, they go to the town council to try to prohibit dogs from going to the
beach. Every year, the town council denies their request. A group called
"The Friends of Jupiter Beach" are behind the efforts to keep the
beach open to dogs. They provide wooden stations with doggy bags, they hold
beach clean-ups every first Saturday and they generally fight efforts by
Snowbirds to restrict the beach. This fight has been going on for years. There
have been times during the years that I worked on the side of the "dog
people" and through those efforts I met a wonderful woman, the force
behind the effort to keep the beach dog friendly and the founder of Friends of
Jupiter Beach, Anita Lankler. I would run into her from time to time here
and there and she would always ask me to attend one of the beach clean-ups and
the breakfast party that followed. I sent checks and received their newsletters
but for years, I never could make the time to go. But my new year's
resolution for 2003 was to become involved in the monthly beach clean-ups and
become more helpful to keep the beach dog-safe. So this Saturday, I went.
I couldn't wait to see Anita and tell her that I finally made it after all this
time.
Anita died ten days ago. I never got to tell her that I was coming. All these
years I kept putting it off and when I finally got there it was too late to
work side by side with this wonderful lady. She never knew how much of a
mentor, friend and inspiration she was to me all these years. She fought battle
after battle for the dogs and their beach but she couldn't win the battle with
cancer. There is a lesson here. Take it to heart.
And this much I know. If there are no dogs allowed in heaven, then the powers
that be in heaven are in for one big fight, because if it is up to Anita, she
will open heavens' doors to friendly dogs and it will be a better place for it.
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~5~
Two Reasons to Celebrate
the Great American Meatout:
By Robert Cohen - i4crob@earthlink.net
www.notmilk.com
Reason
number 1: Compassion to animals.
Reason number 2: Compassion to your own body.
On this coming vernal equinox of March 20th, 2003, help to celebrate the 19th
annual "Great American Meatout!"
http://www.meatout.org
You can join thousands of other Americans who will be sponsoring small, medium,
and large events. Join celebrities such as Mary Tyler Moore and Ed Asner.
Nineteen years ago, when Alex Hershaft of Farm USA hosted the first meatout,
his passion was to teach people a gentler way of living. Today, the same
reasons motivate Alex, but there now exists enormous scientific evidence to
support plant-based diets as the healthiest of lifestyles.
Why are meat & dairy products dangerous to eat? It's all about the
sulfur.
Sulfur-based amino acids have been identified as the key to heart disease.
Nations eating the greatest amounts of meat and dairy products have the highest
incidences of athersclerosis and cardiovascular events, such as strokes and
heart attacks:
http://www.notmilk.com/h.html
Sulfur-based amino acids are also the key to bone disease.
In June of 1993, after citing supporting studies, the Nutrition Action
Newsletter concluded:
"Countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis, such as the United
States, England, and Sweden, consume the most milk. China and Japan, where
people eat much less protein and dairy food, have low rates of
osteoporosis."
More evidence that nations eating the greatest amounts of meat and dairy have
the highest rates of osteoporosis, and why:
http://www.notmilk.com/o.html
Imagine the smell of rotten eggs infusing into your bloodstream. Animal
proteins contain more sulfur-based amino acids than do plant proteins.
Methionine and cystine are very rich in sulfur. USDA lists amino acid
contents of various foods:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR15/sr15.html
One glass of cow's milk contains 30% more sulfur-based amino acids than a glass
of soymilk.
One portion of chicken contains 6 times more sulfur-based amino acids than does
an equal portion of tofu.
The following is a list of sulfur (in milligrams) contained in 100 gram
portions (about 3.5 ounces) of various foods:
Soymilk - 0.087 grams
Whole Milk - 0.113 grams
Mori-Nu Silken Firm tofu - 0.206 grams
Hard Boiled Egg - 0.604 grams
Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese - 0.777 grams
Canned Salmon, drained - 0.825 grams
Porterhouse Steak, (0% Fat), broiled - 0.920 grams
Beef, Ground, (95% lean), broiled - 0.971
Fresh Cooked Salmon, Dry - 0.979 grams
Fresh Bluefish, Broiled - 1.035 grams
Canned Tuna (in water) - 1.028 grams
Fresh Trout, Broiled - 1.073 grams
Chicken, dark meat, roasted - 1.107 grams
Chicken, breast meat, roasted - 1.256 grams
So, what can you do to change the world? Work towards that special day in
March, the first day of spring. Write letters to newspapers. Call talk radio
stations. Cook a vegan meal for your friends. Send vegan snacks into school for
your kids and their entire classes. Work with your school systems & make
presentations. Become an activist! Sponsor a Great American Meatout event in
your community.
To register:
http://www.meatout.org/activist.html
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~6~
Rest In Peace
In
memory of Jerry Layne, a fine activist, a terrific voice for the animals.
Jerry led the campaign to stop the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers in this
nation's shelters. In his memory, please carry on the fight to stop this
cruel practice in your local shelters.
Jerry, you are now with them, continuing your efforts in a better place than
this cruel world. Rest in peace our dear friend:
PLEASE
When my time comes
to climb the golden stair,
Please send a little bird
to meet me there.
Please let me feel the touch
of silky fur,
And listen to the music
of a purr.
Please let me watch a deer
at setting sun
Stand free and unafraid
of hunter's gun.
Please let me catch a glimpse
of wagging tail,
And know, at last, that kindness
will prevail.
So many lives are lived
in pain and fright.
So many never know
but the darkest night.
So many wander hungry
and alone.
I long to know they, too,
are welcomed home.
I know it's joy supreme
to be with YOU.
I want so much for them
to share it, too.
If there's a bit of heaven
meant for me,
Let them be there, Dear Lord,
Please let it be.
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~7~
Memorable Quote
"The future belong to those who believe in the beauty of their
dreams."
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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Susan Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl 33673-7053
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/1395/
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&
Advisory Board Member, Animal Rights Network Inc.,
not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda Magazine
http://www.animalsagenda.org/
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Animals' Agenda Magazine: WebEdition
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