From: Rebecca Langford <mailto:beckyoregon@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 11:08 AM
Subject: Amazing duck story!

Something really amazing happened in Downtown Spokane this week and I had to share the story with you. Our friend works downtown in a second story office building, overlooking busy Riverside Avenue. Several weeks ago he watched a mother duck choose the cement awning outside his window as the uncanny place to build a nest above the sidewalk. The mallard laid nine eggs in a nest in the corner of the planter that is perched over 10 feet in the air. She dutifully kept the eggs warm for weeks and Monday afternoon all of her nine ducklings hatched.





He worried all night how the mama duck was going to get those babies safely off their perch in a busy, downtown, urban environment to take to water, which typically happens in the first 48 hours of a duck hatching. Tuesday morning, he came to work and watched the mother duck encourage her babies to the edge of the perch with the intent to show them how to jump off!



The mother flew down below and started quacking to her babies above. With disbelief he watched as the first fuzzy newborn toddled to the edge and astonishingly leapt into thin air, crashing onto the cement below. He couldn’t imagine how this might play out. He dashed out of his office and ran down the stairs to the sidewalk where the first obedient duckling was stuporing near its mother from the near fatal fall.



He looked up. The second duckling was getting ready to jump! He quickly dodged under the awning while the mother duck quacked at him and the babies above. As the second one took the plunge, Joel jumped forward and caught it with his bare hands before it hit the cement. Safe and sound, he set it by the mamma and the other stunned sibling, still recovering from its painful leap.



One by one the babies continued to jump to join their anxious family below. Each time our friend hid under the awning just to reach out in the nick of time as the duckling made its free fall. The downtown sidewalk came to a standstill. Time after time, he was able to catch the remaining 7 and set them by their approving mother.



At this point he realized the duck family had only made part of its dangerous journey. They had 2 full blocks to walk across traffic, crosswalks, curbs, and pedestrians to get to the closest open water, the Spokane River. The onlooking office secretaries then joined in, and hurriedly brought an empty copy paper box to collect the babies. They carefully corralled them, with the mother’s approval, and loaded them up into the white cardboard container. Our friend held the box low enough for the mom to see her brood. He then slowly navigated through the downtown streets toward the Spokane River, as the mother waddled behind and kept her babies in sight.



As they reached the river, the mother took over and passed him, jumping into the river and quacking loudly. At the water’s edge, the Sterling Bank office staff then tipped the box and helped shepherd the babies toward the water and to their mother after their adventurous ride.



All nine darling ducklings safely made it into the water and paddled up snugly to mamma duck. He said the mom swam in circles, looking back toward the beaming bank workers, and proudly quacking as if to say,



‘See, we did it! Thanks for all the help!





Thankfully, one of the secretaries had a digital camera and was able to capture most of it (except theactual mid-air catching) in a series of attached photographs. Please join me in celebrating with — Our Downtown Duck Hero!

Rick Bogle — 7/15/2008 5:15 pm

Dear Editor:

I had to chuckle at Phil Haslanger’s understatement that the Dalai Lama’s beliefs can’t be stuffed into tidy boxes.

While the Dalai Lama’s position on Tibet and China appears confused, even more so does his position on compassion for all sentient beings, a hallmark of Buddhism. After his visit here in 2007, he went to Milwaukee and dined on veal.

Madison celebrity Richard Davidson often cites the Dalai Lama’s support for animal experimentation — such as Davidson’s own invasive brain experiments on monkeys — when asked about these experiments during his own public lectures.

It just isn’t clear what the Dalai Lama believes; one day it’s one thing, the next something else. Sometimes he calls for everyone to be kind to animals, and then he turns around and eats them and condones harmful experiments on them.

His beliefs certainly don’t fit into tidy boxes, even the box of compassion.

Rick Bogle

Madison

7/15/2008 5:15 am

http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/296154

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: July 13, 2008

If you caught your son burning ants with a magnifying glass, would it bother you less than if you found him torturing a mouse with a soldering iron? How about a snake? How about his sister?

Does Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — the Guantánamo detainee who claims he personally beheaded the reporter Daniel Pearl — deserve the rights he denied Mr. Pearl? Which ones? A painless execution? Exemption from capital punishment? Decent prison conditions? Habeas corpus?

Such apparently unrelated questions arise in the aftermath of the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans.

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

If the bill passes — the news agency Reuters predicts it will — it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden.

The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated.

What’s intriguing about the committee’s action is that it juxtaposes two sliding scales that are normally not allowed to slide against each other: how much kinship humans feel for which animals, and just which “human rights” each human deserves.

We like to think of these as absolutes: that there are distinct lines between humans and animals, and that certain “human” rights are unalienable. But we’re kidding ourselves.

In an interview, Mr. Singer described just such calculations behind the Great Ape Project: he left out lesser apes like gibbons because scientific evidence of human qualities is weaker, and he demanded only rights that he felt all humans were usually offered, such as freedom from torture — rather than, say, rights to education or medical care.

Depending on how it is counted, the DNA of chimpanzees is 95 percent to 98.7 percent the same as that of humans.

Nonetheless, the law treats all animals as lower orders. Human Rights Watch has no position on apes in Spain and has never had an internal debate about who is human, said Joseph Saunders, deputy program director.

“There’s no blurry middle,” he said, “and human rights are so woefully protected that we’re going to keep our focus there.”

Meanwhile, even in democracies, the law accords diminished rights to many humans: children, prisoners, the insane, the senile. Teenagers may not vote, philosophers who slip into dementia may be lashed to their beds, courts can order surgery or force-feeding.

Spain does not envision endowing apes with all rights: to drive, to bear arms and so on. Rather, their status would be akin to that of children.

Ingrid Newkirk, a founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, considers Spain’s vote “a great start at breaking down the species barriers, under which humans are regarded as godlike and the rest of the animal kingdom, whether chimpanzees or clams, are treated like dirt.”

Other commentators are aghast. Scientists, for example, would like to keep using chimpanzees to study the AIDS virus, which is believed to have come from apes.

Mr. Singer responded by noting that humans are a better study model, and yet scientists don’t deliberately infect them with AIDS.

“They’d need to justify not doing that,” he said. “Why apes?”

Spain’s Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals. One said such thinking led to abortion, euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.

But given that even some humans are denied human rights, what is the most basic right? To not be killed for food, perhaps?

Ten years ago, I stood in a clearing in the Cameroonian jungle, asking a hunter to hold up for my camera half the baby gorilla he had split and butterflied for smoking.

My distress — partly faked, since I was also feeling triumphant, having come this far hoping to find exactly such a scene — struck him as funny. “A gorilla is still meat,” said my guide, a former gorilla hunter himself. “It has no soul.”

So he agrees with Spain’s bishops. But it was an interesting observation for a West African to make. He looked much like the guy on the famous engraving adopted as a coat of arms by British abolitionists: a slave in shackles, kneeling to either beg or pray. Below it the motto: Am I Not a Man, and a Brother?

Whether or not Africans had souls — whether they were human in God’s eyes, capable of salvation — underlay much of the colonial debate about slavery. They were granted human rights on a sliding scale: as slaves, they were property; in the United States Constitution a slave counted as only three-fifths of a person.

As Ms. Newkirk pointed out, “All these supremacist notions take a long time to erode.”

She compared the rights of animals to those of women: it only seems like a long time, she said, since they got the vote or were admitted to medical schools. Or, she might have added, to the seminary. Though no Catholic bishop would suggest that women lack souls, it will be quite a while before a female bishop denounces Spain’s Parliament.

But we’re drifting from that most basic right — to not be killed for food.

Back to the clearing. As someone who eats foie gras and veal (made from tortured animals) and has eaten whale (in Iceland), I don’t know why I suddenly turned squeamish when offered a nibble of primate. On reflection, I probably faked that too. When I was young, my family used to drive over Donner Pass each year to go camping, and my mother would regale us with the history of the Donner Party. Even as a child, I had no doubt that, in extremis, I would have tucked in.

On our drive back to Cameroon’s coast, my guide insisted that some of the local Fang people, well known for cannibalism in the 19th century, still dug up bodies to eat. I believed him partly because in South Africa, where I then lived, murder victims were often found missing the body parts needed in traditional medicine.

Cannibalism is repugnant to the laws of all countries. But that repugnance is not written in the extra tidbits of DNA that separate us from chimps. Quite the opposite: “pot polish” on human bones found in various archaeological sites suggests that some of our ancestors exited this world as stew. That too puts us in the “community of equals” with apes; female chimpanzees are known to eat rivals’ babies.

But when human law does intervene in this primate-eat-primate world, it is also on a sliding scale. Even animal cruelty laws have a bias toward big mammals like us. For example, in a slaughterhouse, chickens are sent alive and squawking into the throat-slitting machine and the scalding bath.

But under the federal Humane Slaughter Act, a cow must be knocked senseless as painlessly as possible before the first cut can be made.

Which raises an interesting moral dilemma for the righteous Spanish Parliament: What about bullfighting?

As in all great struggles separating man from beast: a lot of it’s in the capework. Olé!

www.nytimes.com

By Jonathan Brown
Thursday, 10 July 2008

A man found guilty at the end of the longest animal rights trial in legal history has launched an appeal, claiming the judge should not have heard the case because of his interest in blood sports.

Sean Kirtley, 42, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for his part in a prolonged campaign against Sequani Ltd by Judge Peter Ross at Coventry Crown Court earlier this year.

The case, which has been unreported until now, has become a cause célèbre among anti-vivisection campaigners after the activist became the first person to stand trial accused of conspiring to interfere with an animal research establishment under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

In addition to the custodial sentence, he received a five-year antisocial behaviour order, which will come into effect on his release. But Kirtley’s supporters claim it was impossible for him to receive a fair trial after the judge disclosed in a letter to lawyers that “one of my hobbies is game shooting”.

Inviting submissions ahead of the case, Judge Ross concluded: “I do not consider that I should disqualify myself from hearing this case and believe that I can give all parties the fair hearing that they are entitled to.” He enclosed a copy of his Who’s Who entry detailing his background interests as a keen shot, smallholder and fisherman.

Mike Schwarz, Kirtley’s solicitor, said yesterday that the judge’s hobbies would form a key plank of the appeal against the sentence and conviction. Campaigners say that the case raises serious concerns over the right to legitimate protest following the introduction of the Act in 2005.

Speaking at the conclusion in May of the 18-week trial, Detective Inspector Dave Williams of West Mercia Police described Kirtley, of Malvern, Worcestershire, as “a dedicated animal rights activist who devoted a significant part of his life to leading an organised, systematic and sustained campaign to target Sequani Ltd with the ultimate aim of closing the company down”.

But supporters say the prosecution failed to establish that Kirtley was guilty of anything more serious than running a website publicising legal protests.

The investigation, Operation Tornado, which involved 120 officers, and the subsequent trial cost more than £4.5m. Of 14 people charged in connection with the long-running protests at Sequani, in Ledbury, Worcestershire, seven stood trial. Only Kirtley and a second man, Daniel Griffiths, 39, who admitted two charges of interfering with the contractual relationships of an animal research establishment, were convicted. Griffiths received a 30-week jail term suspended for two years.

Mr Schwarz said he was deeply concerned over the implications of the case. “This is an unfair law which deviates from normal principles of criminal justice and the result is that what many people might see as conventional protesting becomes criminalised at all levels,” he said. He said that the jury was also prevented from seeing evidence of the work carried out at Sequani after it was ruled inadmissible.

The company, which assesses the safety of healthcare products and has been the target of demonstrations for nearly two decades, said it welcomed the use of the Act, which it said “sent out a clear message… to the extremists that their behaviour would not be tolerated in a democratic society”.

A spokesman for the Judicial Communications Department, which represents judges, said: “We cannot comment on matters that are the subject of appeal.”

The two men involved in the case

Sean Kirtley

Currently serving a four-and-a-half-year prison term at HMP Blakenhurst. The 42-year old from Malvern, Worcestershire is a lifelong opponent of animal testing who has also campaigned against shooting. Supporters say prosecution witnesses conceded that while Kirtley had been present at the demonstrations he had been “silent and peaceful” throughout. In the appeal submitted last month, lawyers claim Judge Ross should not have presided over the case to “prevent the appearance of bias”.

His Honour Judge Peter Ross

The 55-year-old former director of the Office for Supervision of Solicitors has been a circuit judge since 2004 and hears most of his cases at Coventry Crown Court. Judge Ross’s entry in Who’s Who details his hobbies as “shooting, smallholding, gardening and fishing”. In a letter issued during the trial, he said he considered his interest did not disqualify him from presiding over a fair trial.

http://www.independent.co.uk

by Rick Bogle

http://primateresearch.blogspot.com/2008/06/pressure-cooker.html

I am occasionally criticized and challenged for my lack of condemnation of the more extreme tactics used by some activists in light of my claim that I care about humans and other animals equally. Because I don’t condemn the vandalism of Edythe London’s home, I must not care about her and thus, I am a hypocrite. In other words, it is claimed that I don’t think we should harm animals, but I think harming her is ok.

But it’s not that I don’t have concern and respect for Edythe. If she came to my door begging for food, I’d feed her; if she were thirsty, I’d give her water. I would defend her in certain circumstances, even with my life. If she were living her life without intentionally hurting others, anti-cruelty activists would never have noticed her.

We have a responsibility to speak out and even intervene in situations where people are seriously harming others for personal gain, be it economic, political, or any other reason. I think we had a responsibility to intervene in Rwanda that we shirked; I don’t think it is wrong to use violence in some cases when other means have failed or even without trying other means in especially dire circumstances.

In the case of the animals, I hope we can invent new means to address the problem since everything tried to date has pretty much failed to stem the terror and carnage.

When other means have failed, and we can find no new means to try, in some cases, especially in cases where much harm is occurring even as we stand by and wonder what else we can do, violence might be the only choice. Sometimes there isn’t a choice.

Choiceless choices

Animal rights activists, not surprisingly, are frequently big fans of ahimsa. As a group, they are quick to condemn occasional property-damaging direct action such as the flooding and subsequent fire at the home of Edythe London. Such action evokes criticism and condemnation. This is understandable and would be a laudable normal response in a sane world.

But this isn’t a sane world.

If you can, put yourself in the place of a Jewish woman in 1942 with her child and ten or so other people hiding in a boat’s false bulkhead and trying to make it to safety. A Nazi cruiser comes alongside and soldiers board the boat looking for stowaways. Your baby starts to whimper. If they hear her everyone will be discovered.

The horrific fact is that during the course of the Holocaust similar scenarios forced people to do things that under any normal situation would be completely unimaginable. Parents suffocated their children to keep them silent.

Lawrence L. Langer coined the term “choiceless choices” as a name for the impossible decisions made by Jews and others in Nazi Germany that under normal circumstances would have been absolutely unthinkable. Choiceless choices are options between one form of abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that is not in one’s control or of one’s making.

There are circumstances when violence might be the most reasonable abnormal response available.

Right now, millions of animals are suffering and being killed because we like the way they taste, like their skin, fur, or enjoy seeing them killed, or believe that hurting and killing them will help us somehow. Millions. Right now.

This isn’t rhetoric. According to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, in 2007 there were 9,031,035,000 chickens slaughtered in the U.S. That’s almost twenty-five million a day, a million an hour. And that’s just the chickens.

Commercial cattle slaughter during 2007 totaled 34.3 million head, up 2 percent from 2006.

Commercial calf slaughter totaled 758,100 head, 7 percent higher than a year ago.

Commercial hog slaughter totaled 109.2 million head, 4 percent higher than 2006.

Commercial sheep and lamb slaughter, at 2.69 million head, was down slightly from the previous year.

262,791,000 turkeys were slaughtered in 2007.

It is estimated that 30 million animals are killed in research labs every year and that fails to account for the large number of mice produced during the production of exotic mutants.

In 2007, there were 8 billion pounds of fish landed by the US commercial fish industry and 667,443,000 pounds of crustaceans. No one takes the time to count the individual animals.

And then there is recreational hunting and fishing, the zoos, the puppy mills, the circuses, the rodeos, the cock fights…

To those who believe that animals’ lives and experiences matter to them and should matter to us, these numbers mean something much different than they might to an agricultural economist. When you consider what these incomprehensibly large raw numbers represent, when you consider the cows too sick to stand who are drug to slaughter behind a tractor, and the monkeys strapped into chairs while chemicals are pumped into and sucked out of their brains, the situation is accurately understood to be bleak and overwhelming. When you listen to the industry’s excuses and propaganda, see the public sleepwalking through life, oblivious to the cries and moans, you could come to believe that the human species is insane.

What choices should a sane caring person make in such an impossible situation?

If one believes that at least some of the billions of animals we frighten, hurt, and kill every year might be suffering in ways not unlike the ways we might suffer in similar circumstances, what we might call an abnormal response begins to look reasonable and understandable.

Silence seems abnormal. Repeating the same behavior over and over again does too, and it can be a symptom of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mental illness seems a not altogether unlikely response to an understanding of the widespread evil. Letters, lobbying, petitions, protests, bumper stickers, donations, tabling, and all the other non-violent means are understandable reactions to the reality of our role in the animals’ suffering, but the problem remains unsolved. Yet another letter must seem futile or unreasonable to a growing number of people. Some of them must be questioning whether peaceful means will ever slow the growth of this massive global horror.

What should a sane and reasonable person do? In the face of suffering on such an incomprehensible scale, it doesn’t seem abnormal or wrong to me to decide to stick a hose in someone’s window. I understand why some people might feel like they don’t have a choice. People who publicly criticize this sort of behavior should suggest a rational alternative.

The current situation, growing worse by the day, is a sort of pressure cooker. Society must find a way to relieve the pressure. In the past, some pressure has been vented through regulatory means. Bans on animal fighting, laws governing animal slaughter, experimentation, hunting regulations, etc., have been occasional pressure-relieving events. But the fire under the pot has never been turned down, and once the effect of regulation was widely understood to have led to no fundamental change in our grotesque relationship with other animals, the pressure began increasing once again.

The response from those who control the flame has been to reinforce the pot. They have done this by passing laws that make public protest more difficult. They have established new penalties for formally legal forms of protest. They have made secrecy easier for labs and other animal enterprises to maintain and defend. And all the while, the heat is increasing.

Reducing the pressure is a responsibility we all share.

KINSHIP CIRCLE PRIMARY

Photos courtesy of Molly Wald, Best Friends Animal Society.
http://www.bestfriends.org
http://flickr.com/photos/mollywald/sets/72157605698148806/

When Kinship Circle began working with Iowa Dept. of Agriculture/Veterinary
Response to coordinate volunteers for Iowa animal flood victims — we soon
learned about the pig tragedy. Hog farms had filled with water, with pigs
trapped in crates and others adrift over a wide swath of southeast Iowa. As
many as 40,000 pigs were evacuated. An estimated 4,000 pigs died. Still
others swam for their lives in rapid waters. Some managed to hoist their
bodies atop levees, only to be shot dead by officials concerned they’d
destroy sandbags. Residents and officials herded some on to barges, to ferry
them back to owners. Many carcasses remain as waters recede.

But pigs are smart. And some escaped to dry ground. Reports came in daily:
Pigs spotted by churches, in homes, near levees, on rooftops. Early during
this operation, Kinship Circle called Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading
farm animal protection organization, to ask if their Emergency Rescue Team
could come to Iowa. Within 24 hours, they were on the road from Watkins
Glen, New York to Oakville, Iowa.

On conference call with state officials, we learned that pigs currently
stranded, when found, could be taken to a temporary holding area… And once
in Farm Sanctuary’s custody, receive immediate care and transport to
sanctuary. That’s right: sanctuary.

Kinship Circle Animal Disaster Aid Network volunteers have assisted Farm
Sanctuary rescuers. See below, to donate to FS Emergency Rescue Fund.

======================================================

1. Iowa Pig Tails
======================================================

 
Exhausted from their ordeal, dry pigs finally rest… Bob Rude, of Kinship
Circle Animal Disaster Aid Network, comforts some of the pigs he, David
Halperin, and Cheri Deatsch helped Farm Sanctuary rescue from flooded areas
in Oakville, Iowa. Photo credit: Cheri Deatsch, Kinship Circle

6/24/08: Farm Sanctuary catches three scared and weary pigs the evening of
6/23. The next morning Kinship Circle volunteers help Farm Sanctuary
rescuers lure a spooked pig from the bushes. They manage to ease him out,
but the pig isn’t happy about going into an enclosure. After a bit of
thrashing and some apparent pig indigestion, rescuers guide him into Farm
Sanctuary’s straw-lined trailer. One pig is so relieved to finally find
comfort, he burrows beneath the straw for a long nap…

A fifth pig plays “hard to get,” leading rescuers on a panicked chase
through the woods before guided to safety inside Farm Sanctuary’s trailer.

6/24/08: Aerial surveillance of flooded Iowa regions shows live pigs still
stranded on 16 different levee systems. Also spotted on levees: deer,
pheasants, coyotes, fox… Pigs begin to show signs of severe sunburn.

6/25/08: Data and mapping for pig locations is sent to Farm Sanctuary and
IFAW, also working in Iowa with FS. Many county and state agencies must
provide clearance in order for rescuers to get on levees…

Pigs escaped from a flooded Iowa farm and made it to a levee. But they were
shot and killed by authorities who said they threatened to weaken the barrier.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/pigs-shot-to-protect-flood-levee/20080619070009990001

======================================================

2. Help Farm Sanctuary’s Emergency Rescue Fund
======================================================

STRANDED PIGS NEED URGENT HELP:
http://www.farmsanctuary.org/actionalerts/alert_erf_pigs08.html
Flood waters have ravaged the Midwest, and farm animals need immediate
rescue! The recent flooding has hit largely agricultural areas, leaving
pigs, cattle and other animals stranded.

Hundreds of factory farm pigs have been left trapped and drowning in crates,
or freed only to be swept away by rapid currents…trying desperately to
survive on area levees.

Farm Sanctuary dispatched a rescue team with our large animal rescue trailer
last week and we are currently on the ground in Iowa and Illinois to save
drowning and stranded pigs.

Farm Sanctuary is working with other organizations to transport surviving
pigs to a temporary holding area, and once pigs are in our custody, Farm
Sanctuary will be ensuring their immediate care and transport to sanctuary.

DONATE TO FARM SANCTUARY EMERGENCY RESCUE FUND TO SAVE STRANDED PIGS:
https://secure2.vegsource.com/farmsanc/fs/donate_erf_pigs08_alert.html

HOMES NEEDED:
Farm Sanctuary is also in urgent need of adoptive homes for rescued pigs. If
you are able to provide a loving home to a brave survivor of the Midwest
Flood Disaster, please call 607-583-2225 ext. 223.

======================================================

3. Pig Press
======================================================

IOWA FLOOD PIGS IN THE NEWS:
Days in the Midwest rescuing pets, farm animals
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2008/06_25-28/CSC

Mr. Rude, who along with his wife, Kathy, runs Rude Ranch Animal Rescue, a
small animal welfare outfit in south county, got the call June 16 from
Kinship Circle, a national network of animal disaster responders, to head to
Iowa to provide assistance to animals displaced by massive Midwest
flooding… Working with other rescue volunteers, Mr. Rude has spent the
past four days rescuing cats, dogs, pets and farm animals. One of the
hairiest rescues was of a pig. “He was a challenge. Pigs don’t like being
told what to do. A lot of strength and gumption, but we got it done…”

Concerns leveled over polluted floodwaters in Midwest
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/floods/2008-06-18-Floods_N.htm
More carcasses may be found as hog barns dry out… “We can deal with as many
(carcasses) as we have. We can bury thousands, if necessary.”

Iowa Floods Wreak Havoc on Farming Communities
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/jan-june08/farmloss_06-20.html
One of our trips — I think it was our first trip out this morning, about
5:30 — we saw, as we were driving by, we saw the pigs, the little pink
dots, all along this one barn over here. So we swung in there and, sure
enough, it was just loaded with probably close to 250 to 300 pigs. After
five days in the water, hundreds of pigs were dead, but others had managed
to survive. The difficult, dirty and dangerous job of getting the pigs out
of the highly contaminated river water began. Richard Crook, Best Friends

Iowa farmer makes a sorrowful choice
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-hog-farmersjun18,0,4678357.story
The 450 abandoned sows and 400 hogs were still alive. In hopes some might
survive, Lanz opened the shed doors, giving the animals a chance of swimming
to safety — despite the treacherous currents and the general unfitness of
swine for swimming. When Lanz visited a patch of high ground Monday, he
found roughly 30 pigs had survived.

Pigs perish on submerged farmland
http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/Flood-Oakville-061908
With dry land miles away, a hog swims in circles near a hog enclosure while
straining to survive the Iowa River floodwaters, southeast of Oakville. Many
residents were forced to leave their possessions and, in some cases
livestock, behind Saturday after the levee broke. Matt Ryerson/ The Hawk Eye

Deputies shoot pigs to save levee, land
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/18/midwest.flooding.pigs.ap/index.html
Officials said they killed the pigs over worries that they would weaken the levee.

Precious pets reunited with worried owners
http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/Flood-Oakville-062108
…Rescue workers from Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society and volunteer
group Kinship Circle Animal Disaster Aid Network have picked up dozens of
cats and one dog from flooded homes, barns and on top of trees in the
Oakville and bottoms area…. The groups, which have been boating back and
forth in the area since Tuesday, have been asked to come in by officials at
the Iowa Department of Agriculture, mainly to recover stranded pets.

========================================================

Kinship Circle Animal Disaster Aid Network
was enlisted by Iowa Agriculture Dept/State Veterinary Response to send
volunteers for animal flood victims. During disasters, we are on phone, fax,
and Internet 24/7. The cost to keep our tiny staff on-call is immense. Any
donations are greatly appreciated at this time. Kinship Circle is a 501c3
nonprofit organization. All contributions are tax-deductible.

DONATE ONLINE: http://www.kinshipcircle.org/donation/

DONATE BY MAIL: Kinship Circle
7380 Kingsbury Blvd.; St. Louis, MO 63130


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June 10, 2008

The WSPA DART team remains in Myanmar, delivering aid and working with the FAO and local people to improve the health of animals that survived Cyclone Nargis. The team provided us with an update today.

The WSPA vets have seen cases of pneumonia and diarrhea in draft animals, which could be a result of infectious diseases. There are also instances of Foot and Mouth (FMD) and sporadic cases of Anthrax.

To combat these problems, the team is working on assessment and interventions with the government livestock department, pairing our vets with theirs to provide extra expertise and kits for treating the animals. To date, WSPA has delivered $10,000-worth of veterinary medicine to Myanmar.

Dr. Ian Dacre, Disaster Management Director for WSPA Asia, commented on the animals’ health: “If you consider what these animals have gone through and the considerable stress that they are under they are more susceptible to disease. We will be looking to vaccinate. Following further samples we will see what the needs are for parasite control.”

To battle weakness and malnutrition, 4,600 animals have been fed so far using 120 metric tones of feed.

The DART team reported seeing primarily healthy dogs and cats that are well-loved by their owners; abandonment of companion animals is not a problem in the villages and townships they have visited so far. They have not observed feral dogs and rabies is not currently an issue.

The WSPA team will soon be joined by four vets from Humane Society International (HSI), who will work with us to bring immediate aid and to promote the long-term recovery of animals and the communities that rely on them.

http://www.wspa-usa.org/pages/2426_animal_recovery_continues_in_myanmar.cfm

FROM KINSHIP CIRCLE ANIMAL DISASTER AID NETWORK

IF YOU GO, PLEASE EMAIL YOUR IOWA FLOOD PHOTOS TO:
kinshipcircle@accessus.net
Include your name + brief description of photo (where it was taken)
We’ll include your photos on our website… Thank you!

6/19 UPDATE: IOWA FLOODS
Kinship Circle Animal Disaster Aid Network still has a request for
volunteers to report to Johnson County Fairgrounds, the staging area for
Iowa City under Misha Goodman. However, this is ultimately YOUR
decision…based upon information we receive. We are in conference calls
daily with Iowa Dept. of Agriculture/Veterinary Response:

1. JOHNSON COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS needs hands-on disaster sheltering support.
The intake/outtake of animals is constant, which means she may have from
60-100 “flood animals,” in addition to pre-flood animals. If you don’t want
to clean cages and other emergency sheltering duties (under Misha’s
direction) please do not go.
**Johnson County Fairgrounds has indoor facility with cots for volunteers.
**Call Misha Goodman to tell her your firm arrival date: 319-621-3274

2. OAKVILLE FLOOD: Yesterday (6/18) a Kinship/Best Friends boat crew got on
the water for the first time, to assess how many animals may be trapped.
About 25 animals were rescued from flooded areas and five were reunited with
their families. Rescued Oakville animals were brought to Mediapolis
Veterinary Clinic and Des Moines County Animal Shelter, in Burlington, Iowa
area. Neither shelter is in overflow yet.

Boat rescuers expect to wrap-up in Oakville some time tomorrow (6/20). They
anticipate heading to Lee County Fairgrounds staging area to assess animal
situation in Burlington, Iowa (below).

3. BURLINGTON FLOOD: Burlington filled with water only yesterday, making it
too dangerous to go in on boats. We believe KC/BF boat team will leave
Oakville tomorrow to set up in Burlington area for assessment and rescue.
**We do not know full scope of need here.
**If at Johnson County Fairgrounds, you are on STANDBY to help in Burlington.
**GROUND CONTACTS TO INQUIRE IF HELP IS NEEDED:
ROBYN URMAN: 201-450-5992, 201-371-8711
Robyn is a KC volunteer helping with intake. Her cell phone is currently the
only one that works. Explain you are already in Iowa at Johnson County
Fairgrounds, calling to check if help is needed in Oakville or Burlington.
ETHAN (Best Friends): 435-689-1604
You may also try boat rescuers in Iowa, but may fail due to poor reception:
RICH CROOK: 435-689-1162
BARB DAVIS: 308-379-3234

4. OAKVILLE PIGS: A hog factory with 1500 pigs flooded. The owner was able
to evacuate most pigs, but 500 had to be released into waters. Some
drowned…Others who swam for their lives and managed to hoist their bodies
atop levees where SHOT by officials…because their hooves damaged sandbags.
Most remain trapped in a water-surrounded area. As of 6/18, Iowa Ag has not
been able to rescue them. Kinship Circle has contacted Farm Sanctuary, a
rescue/advocacy group that helped farmed animals after Katrina.
Deputies shoot pigs to save levee, land
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/18/midwest.flooding.pigs.ap/index.html
**We DO NOT have specifics yet.
**But if Farm Sanctuary’s team and trailers arrive in Iowa, we MAY NEED to
pull some of you (especially any with large/farm animal experience) to
assist with the pig rescue.

–  DO NOT GO TO IOWA UNLESS WILLNG TO REMAIN FLEXIBLE.

–  You are an “independent rescuer.” You are responsible for decisions made
about traveling to Iowa. Kinship Circle receives information directly from
Iowa Dept. Of Agriculture’s Veterinary Response Coordinator, Iowa county
coordinators…and volunteer rescuers on ground right now.

–  You are responsible for your own transportation and personal needs.

Brenda Shoss, Kinship Circle — desk: 314-863-9445; cell: 314-795-2646; kinshipcircle@accessus.net
Terri Kelley, Kinship Circle — hm: 765-374-3361; cell: 765-274-9601; pawsitivedirections@yahoo.com

###############################################

IOWA FLOOD VOLUNTEERS WITH FIRM PLANS:
Print/take contacts below with you.
If you’ve NOT told us your IOWA ARRIVE/DEPART DATES, email to kinshipcircle@accessus.net
Contact Misha Goodman, 319-621-3274, to let her know when you’ll arrive.

VOLUNTEERS REPORT TO: Johnson County Fairgrounds
CONTACT MISHA GOODMAN when your travel plans are firm: 319-621-3274

PHYSICAL ADDRESS:
Johnson County Fairgrounds; 4265 Oakcrest Hill Road; Iowa City, Iowa 52246
CONTACT MISHA GOODMAN to find alternate routes to road closures: 319-621-3274

COMING FROM NORTH
From Cedar Rapids airport, get on Hwy 380 south
380 just south of I-80 turns into Hwy 218
Exit on Riverside Drive (rt) and will be traveling north
Johnson County Fairgrounds is 1/4 mile on left side of road

COMING FROM WEST
Take I-80 to Hwy 218
Exit on Riverside Drive (rt) and will be traveling north
Johnson County Fairgrounds is 1/4 mile on left side of road

###############################################

SUGGESTED PERSONAL SUPPLIES / GENERAL TRAVEL INFO
LIST DEVELOPED DURING KATRINA RESPONSE:
current Hepatitis vaccinations (suggestion, not mandatory)
current Tetanus shot
hand sanitizer
insect repellent
sunscreen
first aid kits

thick “bite-proof” work gloves
sturdy, waterproof (rubber) work boots/shoes
hip-waders
change of shoes
long sleeve shirts (for coverage, but lightweight)
long pants (for coverage, but lightweight)
extra socks

belt (to hang gears/supplies from)
mouth coverings (surgical masks, bandannas)
eye protection (sunglasses)

flashlights
D batteries
cash
toilet paper
pillow and blanket
water, Gateraid
other personal-care items

SHELTER: Bring a tent or trailer/RV type vehicle to live in.
air mattress or cot
SLEEPING BAG

###############################################

The Eastern Iowa Airport
2121 Arthur Collins Pkwy SW; Cedar Rapids, IA
319-362-8336
http://www.eiairport.org

Airline Carriers for The Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids
Allegiant Air
http://www.allegiantair.com
Flies Non-stop to Las Vegas, Orlando and Phoenix-Mesa

American Airlines
American Eagle
AmericanConnection
http://www.aa.com

Delta
Delta / Comair
http://www.delta.com

Northwest Airlines
Northwest Airlines
Northwest Airlink
http://www.nwa.com

United Airlines
http://www.united.com

Auto Rental Available at the Airport
Avis
9505 18th St SW; Cedar Rapids, IA 52404
319-366-4926

National Car Rental
2121 Wright Brothers Blvd W; Cedar Rapids, IA 52404
319-363-0249
http://www.nationalcar.com

Hertz Rent A Car
9505 18th St SW # 1; Cedar Rapids, IA 52404
319-365-9408
http://www.hertz.com

Bed And Breakfast
The Golden Haug
517 E. Washington St.; Iowa City, IA 52240
319-354-4284
http://www.goldenhaug.com
2.6 miles from Johnson County Fairgrounds

Inn & Suites
Alexis Park Inn & Suites
1165 S. Riverside Drive; Iowa City, Iowa  52246
Toll Free: 888-9ALEXIS (888-925-3947)
Local:  319-337-8665
1.5 miles from Johnson County Fairgrounds Travel time to the fairgrounds
approximately 5-10 minutes due to detours around flooding. Otherwise only a
couple of minutes.

Motel
Motel 6
810 1st Ave; Coralville, IA 52241
319-354-0030
http://www.motel6.com


Action Campaigns I Literature I Animal Disaster Aid Networking
info@kinshipcircle.org or kinshipcircle@accessus.net
http://www.KinshipCircle.org * http://www.kinshipcircle.org/disasters/

PLEASE DONATE TO KINSHIP CIRCLE (It’s tax-deductible):
http://www.kinshipcircle.org/donation/

***************************************************************************************************
SUBSCRIBE:
Kinship Circle Primary: subscribe@kinshipcircle.org
Action campaigns on animal cruelty issues worldwide
TELL US: SUBSCRIBE TO KINSHIP CIRCLE PRIMARY

Kinship Circle Animal Aid Network: kinshipcircle@accessus.net
Animal rescue coordination/news in disasters + companion animal alerts
TELL US: SUBSCRIBE TO KINSHIP CIRCLE ANIMAL DISASTER AID NETWORK

9 percent of scientists in sample report seeing instances of misconduct

By Will Dunham
updated 7:12 p.m. PT, Wed., June. 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - Research misconduct at U.S. institutions may be more common than previously suspected, with 9 percent of scientists saying in a new survey that they personally had seen fabrication, falsification or plagiarism.

The survey of 2,212 mainly biomedical scientists at 605 universities and other research institutions, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, also showed that researchers are very reluctant to report bad conduct.

Thirty-seven percent of cases of suspected misconduct were never reported to the institution involved for investigation, perhaps due to fear of reprisals for turning in a colleague or a desire to protect the flow of research money.
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“There’s more misconduct, or potential for misconduct, out there than probably anyone has appreciated before. And a good part of that goes unreported,” said James Wells, director of the Office of Research Policy at the University of Wisconsin, who helped conduct the survey.

“Usually what happens is that somebody very close to the research has to observe this going on. And they have to step forward and report it to their institution in order for something to happen. And they can very often be jeopardizing themselves,” Wells added in a telephone interview.

Wells did the survey with two experts from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Research Integrity.

Concern growing
The findings come at a time of concern among U.S. lawmakers and others about research integrity in the United States and abroad, financial conflicts of interest by scientists who get paid by drug companies, and study results being warped by the influence of research funding from the pharmaceutical industry.

For example, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has accused prominent Harvard University psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman and others of failing to fully disclose payments from drug companies.

Wells said the newly published survey, conducted in 2006, did not look specifically at such financial conflicts of interest. Instead, it asked scientists to state whether they had seen acts that would meet the government’s definition of research misconduct — fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in conducting research, reporting findings or seeking grants.

In all, 192 scientists — 8.7 percent — said they observed or had direct evidence of researchers in their own departments committing suspected research misconduct over the past three academic years. They described 265 incidents of bad conduct.

Wells and colleagues then evaluated the allegations, and found that some did not meet the threshold of the federal definition of misconduct, leaving 201 cases of misconduct stated by 164 scientists, or 7.4 percent of the respondents.

2,300 cases … or two dozen?
The findings indicate that more than 2,300 cases of misconduct may be occurring each year at U.S. research sites.

Examples of misconduct reported by the survey respondents include changing data to “improve” findings, submitting false data to win a grant and misrepresenting findings.

Wells and his colleagues wrote that the HHS research integrity office receives only about two dozen reports of research misconduct a year, a mere “tip of the iceberg.”

Merrill Goozner, who heads the Integrity in Science Project at the activist group Center for Science in the Public Interest, said, “It’s really the universities’ responsibility to police this. And as we’ve seen in the [financial] conflict-of-interest field, they do a very poor job.”

Wells noted that there have been no previous comparable national surveys into U.S. research integrity, meaning it is hard to say whether the problem is getting worse, or whether it is any worse in the United States than elsewhere.

One of the most prominent examples of research fraud in recent years involved South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who admitted in 2006 to fabricating stem cell data.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25253128

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/05/animalwelfare.austria

Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 12:43:23 +0200

Bonjour,

Here is a letter written by Martin Balluch, 3 days ago.

Buteo

http://www.vgt.at/presse/news/2008/news20080604_en.php

Appeal from Dr Martin Balluch, still in prison

Vienna 4th June 2008
12 days ago in the night, in my own home, I was attacked and robbed by
a group of armed, masked men. This is an unending nightmare. To this day I
am still sitting in a tiny cell and stare all day long at the same desolate
wall, and cannot take a single step in privacy, nor can I read the newspaper
or see my friends and family.

This is the 13th day of my hunger strike. Having been attacked and
locked away without even the smallest reasonable suspicion of having
committed a crime, I found myself forced to use the last of my autonomy to
make a protest: I refuse to eat. 13 days without food is very painful. The
sensations of hunger drill down into all levels of my consciousness. My body
is visibly deteriorating. I have already lost 18 kilos. Every movement is
awful and exhausting, and I have frequent severe muscle and stomach cramps.

I read in the mile-high file on my case that the police have been
listening in on my life without interruption for more than a year now,
listening in on every private and intimate conversation that I have. And
even so they have not found even one single bit of proof that would show I
had broken the law. The only “proof” against me that is mentioned are my
convictions, convictions that are evidenced in private conversations and in
interviews with and reports about me in the media. Yes, animal protection is
terribly important to me and I have dedicated my life to it. Yes, I believe
that the horrific treatment of animals in laboratories and animal factories
is not irrelevant in general or to my life, but is instead comparable to the
torture and abuse of people. But this does not make me a criminal. For 25
years now I have been active for animal protection and not once have I ever
been convicted of a crime. In this country we have the freedom to express
our opinions and the freedom to think as our conscience leads us to. At
least that is what I used to believe until very recently. The civil and
human rights guaranteed by the Austrian Constitution forbid persecuting,
abusing and locking away someone for their beliefs. But indeed, exactly that
is what is happening to me.

In the two-and-a-half decades in which I have been active for animal
protection, I had great successes especially in recent years. I was able to
personally contribute significantly to the prohibition of fur farms, wild
animals in circuses and above all to the end of battery chicken farms, so
that in Austria today we have the best animal protection in the world. But
it’s exactly that - especially the end of the battery chicken farms - that
seems to have soured some of the powerful. Since 2004 there has been
increasing harassment from the authorities, culminating in false testimony
about the Association Against Animal Factories being made by the then
Minister of the Interior before the Austrian Parliament. A suit filed for
revocation of his remarks met with no success because of his parliamentary
immunity, but he was forced to admit to the federal Ombudsman Board
(Volksanwaltschaft) that he had “been wrong.” He did not even react then to
newspaper ads in which the Association against Animal Factories stated that
he was a liar.

But, as it says in my file, a Special Commission against animal
protection was instituted and it has eavesdropped on me and many other
animal protection activists and associations since approximately April 2007.
However, since obviously no real suspicion could be founded despite spying
on all of these many conversations and emails, something had to happen. The
Special Commission couldn’t be dissolved without any results. So it was
decided to undertake a major raid and house searches in a dramatic way, in
the hopes of digging up some kind of circumstantial evidence.

According to my file there were 23 searches made on 21 May, targeting
animal protectionists’ private spaces, including five offices of animal
protection associations (also the Association against Animal Factories
offices in Vienna and Graz) as well as the VGT materials storage area. 24
animal protectionists were arrested by the police and questioned, including
8 VGT activists.

As cause for the action, since there were no specific suspicions, the
vaguest and most unspecific accusation had to be found. It was decided to
choose Section 278a of the Criminal Code, dealing with the establishment of
a very large criminal organization. Since it had been planned from the
beginning to put 10 people into investigative custody, Section 278a with its
significantly worse punishment for large criminal associations was chosen
instead of the “smaller” Section 278. Despite the fact that, as the police
file itself says, I had personal contact of any kind ever with only 6 of the
other 9 detainees.

In order to justify this brutal police action against animal
protection to the public, the elite ‘WEGA’ force was sent to carry out the
raids with weapons drawn, and then rumours regarding suspected arson and gas
attacks were spread. There’s nothing about this in the file, though. Never
has there been a gas attack in Austria having anything to do with animal
protection, and the last case of animal-protection related arson lies six
years back. The fact of the matter is that damage to property in the name of
animal protection is extraordinarily rare in Austria compared to other
countries. This is certainly due to the great animal protection successes of
recent years in Austria. We were able to bring about change in Austria.
Accordingly, the frustration level is low in Austria, frustration levels
being the main trigger for such actions where they are high.

Why then am I not set free now? It’s quite simple. The entire action
was politically motivated and probably directed from the top. If I were set
free now, then the public would see it as an admission that the whole action
and all the work of the Special Commission had not resulted in any useful
results whatsoever. So I have to remain in this cell and slowly starve, so
that the Minister of the Interior can save face. It wouldn’t surprise me if
it were being planned to set us free during the decisive EuroCup games in
the hopes of avoiding press coverage.

This scandal cannot be tolerated. I ask everyone who cares about
animal protection and human rights to take action now to prevent this crime.
This kind of police arbitrariness against NPOs is something we might
recognize in dictatorships, but not in a democracy. Please stand up strong;
stand against this outrageous injustice. My life depends on it.

Dr Martin Balluch
Chairman of the Association against Animal Factories