Day: June 27, 2003

Another Art Installation Featuring Fish in Oregon Draws Protesters

Southern Oregon University adjunct professor Shawn Busse probably did not imagine his art exhibit featuring nine half-gallon fishbowls, each containing a single goldfish, placed atop concrete pillars would receive as much attention as it has. But then he probably did not imagine animal rights activists Barbara Rosen’s reaction when she came across the exhibit on a day when a few of the fish had died.

According to a news story in the Mail Tribune,

Soon after Busse’s work opened on May 2, animal rights activist Barbara Rosen happened on the display.

Some of the fish — originally sold as food for larger aquarium fish — were floating belly up in their bowls. Overwhelmed with emotion, Rosen left the museum and cried.

“To me, it’s frivolous,” she said. I love art. I’ve seen every art exhibit there. When art causes living creatures to suffer, that’s where I draw the line. Freedom of expression ends right there, as far as I’m concerned.

After that Rosen began protesting outside the museum almost daily holding a sign reading, “Stop the Animal Torture.” She has also been gathering signatures on a petition to ask the museum to ban live animals in its exhibits.

The goldfish originally had a pretty high mortality rate because the water in their bowls was only being cleaned weekly. Now, however, the fish bowls are being cleaned daily and the fish are housed in an aerated, filtered tank when the museum is closed. SOU biologist Michael Parker told The Associated Press that it is his judgment that the fish are being properly cared for.

Which, of course, has done little to deter Rosen. In June, according to the Associated Press, she “put on a yellow fish costume this week and imitated a dying fish in front of the museum.”

The University also issued a statement denying some of Rosen’s claims about the exhibit. The Associated Press reported,

An animal rights protester has incorrectly stated that the purpose of the exhibit is for the fish to die,” the university’s statement said.

Moreover, SOU officials said “the issue has been sensationalized by comments about ‘death chambers’ and ‘internment camps.’ The implication that fish are being intentionally mistreated or killed is inappropriate and incorrect.

Sources:

Dead goldfish spark art museum protests. Jennifer Nitson, Mail Tribune, June 6, 2003.

Goldifsh protests escalate at Oregon university art exhibit. The Associated Press, June 14, 2003.

Don’t Try to Control Dave Winer — Try to Control Jon Udell Instead

Dave Winer on May 5, 2002 (emphasis added),

So lighten up guys, enjoy life more, and don’t bother fighting battles that you can’t win. Make a contribution, do something positive, switch products if you want, but don’t try to control what I say. It won’t work.

Dave Winer on June 27, 2003 (emphasis added),

Now, Udell criticizes me personally in his piece, as Bray dismissed me (in a very humiliating way, not appropriate for a person of his stature) and I asked Udell not to do it, but he insisted it was his right.

Can’t imagine where he got that idea.

PETA Complains about Using Chickens as Sentinels for West Nile Virus

The Washington Post ran a story in early June about an ongoing project in Virginia to use chickens as a sentinel species to provide advance warning of West Nile virus. Maryland abandoned a similar project in 2000 in large part due to protests by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals along with concerns that the program was ineffective, and PETA’s not to happy about West Virginia’s program.

The $300,000 program has chickens situated throughout the state waiting to be bitten by mosquitoes. Officials take blood samples from the animals twice a month looking for the presence of antibodies to West Nile virus. Chickens do not get sick from West Nile, but any animal that tests positive for the antibodies is euthanized.

PETA, of course, thinks this is incredibly cruel. The Post quoted PETA research associate Cem Akin as saying,

Given the caged confinement endured by sentinel chickens and the painful blood samples taken regularly and the often sub-part conditions these animals are kept in, coupled with the complete ineffectiveness of such testing in general, we think other methods should be used to monitor for West Nile virus, such as monitoring dead bird populations, dead crows specifically.

Cyrus Lesser, chief of the mosquito control section of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, told the Post that Maryland abandoned its sentinel chicken program largely to avoid protests from animal rights activists,

We didn’t want to be on the defensive against another issue. In mosquito control, we have issues of pesticides, disease. We’ve even had people who are inquiring who think mosquitoes have rights, too.

Well, do not forget that PETA thinks ants “are sentient beings” so they would probably be defend the rights of mosquitoes as well.

Source:

Fighting a disease with hidden hens. Annie Gowen, Washington Post, June 6, 2003.

The Omaha World-Herald's Anti-SHAC Editorial

The Omaha World-Herald ran an excellent anti-Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty editorial in early June. Citing the revulsion that many Americans had at the extremist turn that the anti-abortion movement began to take, the Omaha World-Herald points out that animal right activists have gone way beyond the tactics used by the anti-abortion extremists.

Huntingdon Life Sciences, a New Jersey lab that tests pharmaceuticals on animals, is one target of such tactics. But the animal-rights activists in this case (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty or SHAC) are not targeting Huntingdon directly. They’ve gone after the employees of companies that simply do business with Huntingdon.

An executive of a computer software company that sold software to the lab, for instance: His neighborhood was plastered with photos of a mutilated dog. His home and work telephone numbers were posted on a Web site that exhorted activists to call him day and night.

. . .

SHAC and other activists say they oppose violence against any animal, including humans. But SHAC organizer Kevin Jonas said he wouldn’t condemn others who turn to property damage or violence: “I think there’s a time and a place for every action.” The group’s Web site posts home addresses of the targets and urgers protesters to try to embarrass them.

The Omaha World-Herald compares the activities of groups like SHAC to those of the anti-abortion Justice Files, except a major difference is that SHAC goes to much greater lengths to facilitate terrorism and reprisals against those it targets than the Justice Files ever did. The Justice Files ultimately won its case at the Supreme Court precisely because it never engaged in the sort of incitement activities that SHAC does on a regular basis. It is not likely to find courts as friendly to a First Amendment defense as the Justice Files folks ultimately did.

Source:

Scare tactics: Environmental activists’ new ploys are terrorism, not free speech. Omaha World-Herald, June 4, 2003.

Is Hunting the Moral Equivalent of Rape and Child Abuse?

Andrew Linzey, professor of theology at Oxford University and Great Britain’s most well-known animal rights theologian, recently argued in a report published by the Christian Socialist Movement that hunting foxes with hounds is equivalent to rape and torture.

According to Linzey,

Causing suffering for sport is intrinsically evil. Hunting, therefore, belongs to that class of always morally impermissible acts along with rape, child abuse and torture.

The Christian Socialist Movement is a left-leaning Christian organization that includes as its members Prime Minister Tony Blair and Minister of State for Rural Affairs Alun Michael.

Linzey is the author of several books including Animal Theology which its American publisher, the University of Illinois Press, describes thusly,

Animal rights is animal theology, in Andrew Linzey’s view. He argues that historical theology, creatively defined, must reject humanocentricity. He questions the assumption that if theology is to speak on this issue, “it must only do so on the side of the oppressors.” Linzey’s theological query investigates not only the abstractions of theory, but also the realities of hunting, animal experimentation, and genetic engineering. He is an important, pioneering, Christian voice speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves.

The reader gets a feel for Linzey’s approach from this excerpt of his writings published by the International Vegetarian Union in 1996 (emphasis in the original),

The first is that animals are God’s creatures: not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God’s sight. The second is the Christ-like suffering of animals. “Think then, my brethren”, preached John Henry Newman at Oxford in 1842, “of your feelings at cruelty practised on brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s Cross and Passion ought to excite within you.” Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.

. . .

It cannot be stressed enough that the picture of God exclusively concerned with human salvation and indifferent to the suffering of the non-human creation has become a source of moral despair. If Christians today care so little for animals, it is because the God they seem to believe in cares even less. For myself, I believe that if God is good and just and holy, it must follow that there will be redemption for each and every creature that suffers. Nothing less than that would make God a truly just God.

Christ died to redeem your cat!

Source:

Labour morality guru compares fox-hunting to rape. Kamal Ahmed, The Observer (UK), June 1, 2003.

The World’s First Professor of Theology and Animal Welfare. Andrew Linzey, International Vegetarian Union, Issue I-96.

HSUS Takes Out Ad Attacking Canadian Seal Hunt

The Humane Society of the United States took out a full page ad in the Monday, June 16 edition of the New York Times calling for a tourism boycott of Canada until that country agrees to lower its seal hunt quota.

The Canadian government recently announced that it would raise the quota of harp seals that can be killed to 975,000 over the next three years, with a maximum of 350,000 in any year. In 1970, there were only 1.8 million harp seals in the North Atlantic, but today estimates put the harp seal population at 5.2 million.

The ad criticized seal hunters for clubbing baby seals, but Steve Outhouse of the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans told the CBC that, in fact, most seal hunters use rifles to kill the animals.

Outhouse also disagreed with HSUS’ contention that the increase in the quota was driven solely by pressure from fisherman who believe seals are responsible for a decline in fish stocks. Noting the near tripling of the harp seal population since 1970, Outhouse told the CBC,

This is clearly a species that is doing well, it’s thriving, it’s growing in numbers. With an international demand, the market forces are calling for more seal products to be on the market.

Outhouse also disputed HSUS’ claim that the Canadian government was subsidizing the seal hunt.

Source:

Ottawa says seal protesters need better facts. CBC News, June 16, 2003.