Just another nerd.
The Associated Press reports that Austria-based Four Paws Foundation recently paid several Bulgarian families small grants (the AP doesn’t report how small) in order to buy the freedom of 13 brown bears used in dancing bear street acts.
The bears will be relocated to a 12-hectare sanctuary on Mount Rila. The sanctuary cost $2.4 million and was created in collaboration with the Brigitte Bardot Foundation.
Source:
Animal rights activists buy freedom bears. Associated Press, June 7, 2004.
On May 27, the Austrian parliament unanimously approved one of Europe’s toughest animal protection laws.
Among other things, the new Austrian law: bans confining chickens to small cages; outlaws the use of wild animals, such as lions, in circuses; makes it illegal to restrain dogs with chains, choke collars or invisible fences that administer mild electrical shocks; makes it illegal for dog owners to clip their pets’ ears or tails; and makes it illegal to bind cattle with ropes.
Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said the law set a “pioneering example” for the rest of the world and said that he would press the European Union to adopt similar legislation.
Source:
Austria enacts strict animal rights laws. William J. Kole, Associated Press, May 27, 2004.
In a stunning turnaround due in large part to a misunderstanding over procedural maneuvers, the International Whaling Commission voted 19 to 18 this month to readmit Iceland.
Iceland quit the commission in 1992 and has had its efforts to rejoin the commission blocked by countries angered at Iceland’s plan to recommence commercial whaling in 2006. According to the New York Times, Iceland’s readmittance was largely the result of the Swedish delegation misunderstanding a procedural challenge by Antigua and Barbuda. In its confusion, the Swedish delegation ended up mistakenly voting in favor of a motion that led to Iceland’s readmission.
“We were not prepared in substance to accept Iceland as a member,” Carl Erik Ehrenkronoa of the Swedish Foreign Ministry told the Times, “but it happened anyway.”
As the Times notes, whaling countries are using the same tactics that anti-whaling forces used to enact the worldwide ban on whaling. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, numerous anti-whaling countries joined the commission and the result was the ban.
Now Japan and other pro-whaling countries are encouraging (and, in some cases, outright bribing them) to join and tip the scales the other way. In the lead up to the ban, it was countries such as Switzerland and Austria who joined and tipped the balance toward the ban on whaling. Now countries like Benin, Gabon and Mongolia are joining, and all are solidly in the pro-whaling camp thanks to Japan’s promises of aid to such countries in exchange for their votes on the commission.
Iceland’s readmittance is a likely turning point, given that Iceland says that in 2006 it will join Norway in openly defying the worldwide ban on commercial whaling.
Overturning the ban on whaling is a long way off, given that it would take a 3/4 vote of the commission, but Rune Frovik, spokesman for a Norwegian whaling association told the Times that there was still a lot of value in just a simple majority,
You can do a lot with a simple majority. For many years, the commission has passed what we call hate resolutions calling on Norway and Japan to stop whaling. Soon they might not be able to pass those resolutions.
This change should make the next meeting of the IWC a bit more interesting.
Source:
Iceland joins whale panel, giving whalers stronger say. Walter Gibbs, The New York Times, October 20, 2002.
On June 11 the European Parliament approved a proposal to not only ban cosmetics testing on animals, but also to ban the import of any new cosmetics product that has been tested on animals anywhere in the world.
The proposal defined 14 specific tests used on new products in the European Union. For 11 of those tests, any new cosmetic sold in Europe after December 31, 2004 would have to have been tested in an animal alternative (no word on exactly how strict that standard is given that many animal alternatives in fact utilize animals). For the other three tests, companies would have until 2008 to develop alternative tests.
Great Britain, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany already ban the testing of cosmetics products on animals within their borders, but the proposed ban on the importing of products tested on animals will meet stiff resistance from the European Commission, especially from France, where most European cosmetics animal testing occurs, and Great Britain, which argues that the law would violate international trade agreements.
In 1993, the European Parliament approved a similar ban which was later rejected by the European Commission.
Source:
Strasbourg votes to ban cosmetics tested on animals. Stephen Castle, The Independent (London), June 12, 2002.
Policy and politics: MEPs ban cosmetics tested on animals. Andrew Osborn, The Guardian (London), June 12, 2002.
Austria’s new Women’s Minister made international headlines in October largely because the minister happens to be a man. Herbert Haupt was in the news again in February after he announced he would create a men’s division of the women’s ministry.
Haupt told reporters that women’s liberation movements had ended sexism against women in Austria and now it was men that were discriminated against. Haupt said that the men’s division would produce studies of mens-related issues.
Feminists were quick to fire back, with Social Democrat Martina Ludwig saying that, “instead of balancing out his deficits, he choose to swap women’s affairs for male affairs” and Green Member of Parliament Madelein Petrovic calling Haupt’s announcement “chauvinistic whining.”
The far right party that controls Austria is bad for both men and women, but it’s kind of amusing to see feminists get hot when somebody throws their own rhetoric back in their faces. Rather than pushing for departments and special rules that alternatively benefit one sex or the other, free thinking people should push for general principled rules that treat men and women equally.
Source:
Austria minister of women to fight for men. Jon Henley, The Guardian (UK), February 27, 2001.