Idaho.......
 

Day 48: The Legislature puts down a pair of animal fighting bills, and looks at privatizing some state programs

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Committee kills cockfighting, dog fighting bills

The House Judiciary and Rules Committee killed two bills Friday that would have made it felonies to be involved with cockfighting or dog fighting in Idaho.

The changes would have upped the penalties for cockfighting and dog fighting in Idaho from up to six months in jail and a fine of $100 to $5,000 for the first conviction, and a year in jail with up to a $9,000 fine for three or more convictions. The new penalties would have been up to two years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

Middleton resident Clint Davison said he raises and sells gamecocks and has taken them to states where it's legal to fight them — just Louisiana and New Mexico now. He said he agreed with banning dog fights and said cock fighting bans would work to eliminate the gamecock species.

Though the fights themselves are illegal, the code says "nothing in this section prohibits any customary practice of breeding or rearing game fowl, regardless of the subsequent uses of said game fowl."

 
Source: http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050226/NEWS06/502260343/1001/NEWS
 
 
Cockpit is first structure to rise in ravaged town

By Tonette Orejas
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A1 of the Feb. 27, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines -- Three months after typhoons and landslides wiped out the town of Dingalan in Aurora province, the first structure to rise was -- not a house nor a school -- but a cockpit.

A cockpit (sabungan) is being constructed, right in the middle of the buried village of Paltic where at least 40 people, most of them children, died in the series of landslides in November and December last year.

Dingalan Councilor Shiela Taay said the reconstruction of the cockpit and the coming cockfights reflect the insensitivity of Mayor Jaime Ylarde and establishment owner Sammy Tarucan.

Rushed for March 9 derby

Landslides took 191 lives and injured 104 people in Dingalan, according to a report from the municipal disaster coordinating council. Damage to public infrastructure, private properties, crops, livestock and fisheries reached P134.47 million.

As workers rushed to put the finishing touches to the arena in time for the March 9 derby, Taay said not a single house for the 1,008 families left homeless by the series of landslides had been completed.

"Wood has been abundant because logs were drifting in the rivers and the coast. While the resettlement of victims is taking too long, the construction of the arena went very fast and a lot of energy and attention were put into it by some local officials," Taay said in a telephone interview from Dingalan on Friday.

Shocked

The cockpit, she said, would encourage people to gamble. Scant personal resources would be wasted on gambling, instead of using them to revive farms and other enterprises, she added.

Gov. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo, in a separate interview, said she was "shocked" that a cockpit was the first structure to rise in Dingalan.

While the cockpit was privately owned and the municipal council granted it a permit to operate in 1998, a local government official had been assisting in its construction, Taay said.

The galvanized iron roof of the town's slaughterhouse, which was destroyed by the landslides, had been lent to Tarucan and was now being used as the cover of the cockpit in Purok Mulawin, Taay said.

She added that lumber was obtained from drifting logs and were sawn in the cockpit's compound.

Ylarde, reached by phone on Friday, said construction work had begun for at least 12 houses in Barangay Caragsakan. At least 150 houses would be built on a 1.5-hectare property there with the assistance of Gawad Kalinga.

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Source: http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=28781
 
 
......So, if you want to kill a chicken, break its neck and eat it......
 
Poor Dan, Just Another AR Labeled Pious Ignorant Animal Abuser
Who Doesn't Even Know His Turn Hasn't Come YET?
 
 
Making a bird fight your battle? What're you, chicken?

By Dan Shingler
Tribune Columnist
February 26, 2005

Making a bird fight your battle? What're you, chicken?

It's time to stop making chickens fight for us.

It's disgusting, strapping knives on innocent birds and making them slice each other to pieces.

And it ruins the meat.

In some places, when people want a knife fight, they just do it themselves. Still bad, but at least it limits the violence to animals with a choice in the matter.

But wait, they say, it's a tradition, a part of the local culture. Can't mess with that, right?.

Wanna bet? On something other than a chicken?

Plenty of horrible, now-outlawed practices used to be a cherished part of someone's culture. The Italians used to love to spend afternoons watching lions eat screaming Christians, for, uh, pete's sake.

Slavery was just a good ol' way of life in the South - depending on whose life you were talking about.

And in jolly old Anglo England, bear-baiting used to rank right up there with Shakespeare as your best bet for weekend entertainment. You know, the sport where they tie a bear up and watch trained dogs rip it apart.

Good times. Dark ages.

Today, the Coliseum is closed and slavery is pretty much confined to the backwaters of the Sudan. Bear-baiting is condoned only in rural Pakistan, according to the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

And that's the point. You want to be like rural Pakistan? Where you're more likely to see Osama Bin Laden than indoor plumbing? Hey, who has time to flush a toilet when you're late for a bear baiting?

Or slavery in Sudan? You want to stay in the 1600s with the Sudanese?

Lately, I've heard that some folks have told the state Legislature cockfighting is an economic development engine. People apparently keep the economy afloat by spending thousands on new knives for their chickens.

Hmmm . . . nope, not buyin' it.

Wouldn't those folks spend that money on something else if there was no cockfighting? They'd have to have another hobby, right? Let's say it's fishing. Wouldn't they promote economic development just as much by buying bait and tackle?

And what about the moviemakers who won't come here to make films because they're protesting cockfighting? No one knows how many there are, if any. But I bet one feature film makes up for a whole lot of cockfighting supply sales in terms of economic development.

Then there was the young man who told the Legislature that without being able to watch chickens hack each other up, he'd have done drugs for sure. Wow.

If you need chicken-on-chicken violence that badly, you might have bigger problems to sort out.

Who's to say cockfighting is better than drugs anyway? Who says abusing your own body is worse than forcing animals to abuse theirs?

I guess, technically, New Mexico does.

But 48 other states have laws against both abuses. Actually, they have legal drugs in the form of booze and cigarettes, but no cockfighting, so they must think cockfighting is worse than drugs.

But most of all, I'll admit, I'm just personally opposed to cockfighting. Not because I'm a bleeding heart liberal; far from it. I was raised to hunt, gut, slaughter and eat, and I still do all four. People used to ask me why I killed deer, and I replied, "Because it's just plain mean to eat them alive."

My old man was Appalachian farm stock - folks not afraid of the heights at the top of the food chain. But I was taught to respect an animal, even if I was going to eat it. An animal in my care, or in my sights, was my responsibility.

"Don't kill it slow, if you can kill it fast," the Old Man said. Don't make it suffer for nothing. Surely don't make it suffer just for your entertainment.

So, if you want to kill a chicken, break its neck and eat it. Don't make some other chicken do your dirty work for you - and ruin the meat in the process.

 
Source: http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/sp_columnists/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19871_3578867,00.html
 
 
 
 
Could We Call This One........
 
Here You Got Dan, Pious Ignorant Animal Abuser, Get Your Ignorant Head Out Of The Sand Before The AR Get Your Pious A$$?
 

 

Animal-rights activists doggedly oppose hunting as cruel

MARTHA MENDOZA
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - The videos they show at the training camp for animal activists aren't for the squeamish. Students grimace and cringe - some start to sob - as images of trapped and wounded animals flash on the screen.

At the camp sponsored by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, would-be activists are taught about the horrors of hunting, trapping and breeding animals for fur. Then, they learn the tools - from writing letters to the editor to staging rowdy protests - that PETA uses to try to shut them down.

"If you approach the hunters, in a nonconfrontational way and just talk to them in a reasonable and level way, you can really change a lot of minds," facilitator Don Shannon said. "I see it happen all the time."

They haven't changed the mind of John Jackson, who has hunted for the past 30 years and chairs the Metairie, La.-based Conservation Force, a hunting and wildlife advocacy organization. He's encountered so many animal rights activists, he knows some by their first names.

"They bandy about like chickens. I'd like them to go find something better to do," he said.

The nation's leading animal protection groups have taken aim at hunting since they were formed in the 1970s, dedicating millions of dollars and thousands of hours to the cause.

They cite some victories: A bison hunt in Montana was canceled in January after Gov. Brian Schweitzer expressed misgivings about the potential bad publicity, and in December the New Jersey Supreme Court barred a bear hunt after activists argued that the state lacks a proper management program for the animals. In the past year, about a dozen hunts - for deer, pigeon, dove and Canada goose - were canceled after pressure from animal rights groups.

"People who like making wildlife dead have less bravado these days. They realize they're going to get less applause than they used to for driving home with a dead deer tied on their roof rack," said Priscilla Feral, president of Darien, Conn.-based Friends of Animals. She claims their anti-hunting magazine advertisements, billboards, legislative lobbying and protests have made hunting less popular.

The overall numbers of hunters certainly are declining. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's most recent survey, the number of people hunting in the United States dropped 7 percent between 1991 and 2001, to about 13 million overall. But surveys by the U.S. Sportsmens Alliance suggest the decline is due to the aging of the hunting population and the steady disappearance of land where people can hunt, said Rick Story, vice president of the Ohio-based organization.

"It's not that people are not hunting because they're listening to the animal rights movement," he said. "It's that our society, in the last four generations, has shifted from life on the farm to life in the big city."

Story said the protest campaigns are misguided. "They characterize us as boorish louts with a bellyful of beer, which we take umbrage and issue with," he said.

Steve Hindi, an animal rights activist from Elburn, Ill., hunted and fished for 30 years, mounting his biggest trophies and hanging them on the wall even as he took in stray animals and loved his pets. Then he began reading magazines from animal rights activists, and he visited a pigeon shoot in Pennsylvania where he was surprised and upset by the way wounded birds were treated.

He began talking to friends, colleagues and activists who opposed hunting. Eventually he said he couldn't quell the "nagging voice suggesting that killing animals, especially those much smaller than me, was not completely defensible as a hobby."

"It was in talking to animal rights activists that I decided I was fighting on the wrong team," he said.

These days, Hindi can be seen driving his so-called "Tiger Truck" at rodeos, sports shows and other events. The converted delivery truck has projection screens mounted on the sides and back, usually airing videos of animals being hurt at bullfights, hunts and other events.

"I like to think that people are simply evolving, but I think that animal organizations have played a significant role," he said.

ON THE NET

PETA: http://www.peta.org

U.S. Sportsmens Alliance: http://www.ussportsmen.org

Friends of Animals: http://www.friendsofanimals.org

Conservation Force: http://www.conservationforce.org/

Source: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/11001458.htm

 
 

Acton woman must pay $371,000 for keeping 200 dogs

Associated Press

LANCASTER, Calif. - A woman who kept more than 200 Chihuahuas and was convicted of animal cruelty must pay approximately $371,000 in restitution to Los Angeles County for the cost of gathering and sheltering the animals, a Superior Court judge ruled Friday.

Emma Regina Harter must make restitution to the county Department of Animal Control.

Harter's 235 dogs, along with some 60 birds, were seized in November 2002 from her five-acre property in Acton. Authorities said some dogs were so ill they had to be killed.

Animal control officers also seized 23 dead dogs and nine dead birds.

Most of the dogs eventually were turned over to Chihuahua rescue groups.

Harter, who is in her 70s, was convicted last year of animal cruelty and four misdemeanors, including assault on an officer.

She was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to undergo psychological counseling. She also was barred from owning or handling animals for five years.

Source: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/10997605.htm
 
Arson surveillance tape found in suspected eco-terrorist's home

SACRAMENTO A 21-year-old alleged eco-terrorist charged with attempting to burn down buildings in three Northern California towns had surveillance videotape of one of the structures.

Investigators raided the home of Ryan Daniel Lewis of Newcastle after attempted firebombings in Lincoln, Auburn and Sutter Creek.

The search also turned up accelerants and materials similar to those used in the incendiary devices.

A passage on Lewis' computer was identical to one in letters to newspapers claiming responsibility on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front for the first two attacks.

Authorities say another phrase was from a song Lewis had written.

The F-B-I says the shadowy E-L-F has caused more than 100 (m)million dollars in damage since 1996.
 
 
 

Animal protester jailed for attacks

Published on 26 February 2005

AN animal rights extremist who caused £40,000 of damage in "military style" attacks on cars of Huntingdon Life Sciences employees has been jailed for six- and-a-half years.

Sarah Gisborne carried out a shocking campaign of hate against people linked to animal experiments, a court was told. She was caught after she was filmed carrying out an attack in St Ives by security cameras, which also identified the hire car she was using.

Peterborough Crown Court heard that Gisborne, 39, and accomplices carried out five raids in two nights last summer, including homes in St Ives and Cambridge, in which paint and paint stripper was sprayed on cars which also had their tyres punctured.

Gisborne sprayed expanding foam into exhaust pipes and painted the word ALF (Animal Liberation Front) on one victim's dining room window.

Police said they found a list of Huntingdon Life Sciences' employees, including e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers and postal addresses, inside the leg of a TV stand in Gisborne's lounge.

Gisborne, of Pond Crofts, Yatley, Hampshire, admitted conspiracy to cause criminal damage.

Judge Nicholas Coleman said: "It seems to me a deterrent sentence is required."

He said statements from victims of the attacks made "chilling" reading.

Judge Coleman also imposed a two-year Anti-Social Behaviour Order to come into effect when she is released, and banned her from driving for three years. The ASBO prevents her going near the premises of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Japanese firm Yamanouchi and contacting staff.

Angela Rafferty, prosecuting, said: "This was a well-planned and efficient set of actions carried out with almost military precision."

She told the court attacks were aimed at people linked to organisations which Gisborne disapproved of as an animal rights campaigner involved with the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) pressure group.

Miss Rafferty said Gisborne, then living in Surrey, hired a car and on July 15 carried out three attacks on vehicles at homes in Surrey and Hampshire.

The following night she went to Chaucer Road, Cambridge, where she attacked a Saab and a BMW belonging to friends of the householder who had spoken at a meeting in the city. Both cars were written off.

Gisborne then went to an address in Nursery Gardens, St Ives, where cars belonging to the owner, who worked for HLS, were attacked.

Miss Rafferty said the family was targeted for more than four years by animal rights activists. She told the court two security cameras recorded two females attacking the vehicles and the presence of the hire car. Police went to the hire centre and arrested Gisborne when she returned the vehicle.

Miss Rafferty said traces of paint on clothing and the car linked Gisborne to the attacks.

Gisborne has nine previous convictions and has served two prison terms, one for an attack on the home of the brother of HLS boss Brian Cass.

Timothy Greene, for Gisborne, said: "She very strongly believes it is wrong for human beings to cause suffering to animals, however good the motives."

Source: http://w3.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/huntingdon/story.asp?StoryID=69739