Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
Appalling Animal Rights Records of Romney, Clinton, Huckabee, McCain
When Clinton was forced to divest her portfolio for the election,
it showed slaughterhouse, vivisection, war profiteering. Romney as
CEO of Bain Capital did the same. Huckabee and Clinton have
both helped Tyson to become the nation's biggest butcher
it showed slaughterhouse, vivisection, war profiteering. Romney as
CEO of Bain Capital did the same. Huckabee and Clinton have
both helped Tyson to become the nation's biggest butcher
US CANDIDATES AND OTHERS' RECORDS ON ANIMAL RIGHTS
We have no right to judge the motives
of anyone. All we can assess is
the effect of their actions on the
voiceless and vulnerable animals. No matter what any of us
have done, we are all temples of the Indwelling God who
answers to all names by which called.
Every Republican but Ron Paul
wants to continue the bombing
of Iraqi and Afghan animals, and
in some cases of Iranian ones
as well. Clinton and Obama want
to continue the bombing of Afghan
animals.
ROMNEY'S VIOLENCE TO ANIMALS
Mitt Romney's Bain Capital has heavily invested in
the animal genocide and global devastation of
the cattle industry, from steakhouses to slaughterhouses. His quarter billion dollar fortune
is made from the blood of innocent animals and
the the oppression of sweatshops as well as the
felling of earth's trees. He is also invested in vivisection.
Why was Romney selected by the CIA to be the
governor of Massachusetts? To consolidate the hold
of the pharma military industrial complex on the state,
which receives more vivisection dollars than any other.
Romney's Bain Capital is scheduled
to buy Clear Channel, which
set new records for animal torture.
http://www.petitiononline.com/lovepigs
The news has carried the story of Romney's sons' dog being
put on the roof of his car for an 8 hour trip from Massachusetts
to Michigan, during which time the perhaps terrorized dog
defecated. Romney hosed him off within his cage.
http://wbztv.com/local/local_story_180132351.html
The Mormon church owns the biggest cattle ranch in the
US with its consequent animal agony, correlation to
heart disease, cancer, food poisoning, global heating,
energy waste.
Utah is a haven for concentration camps for captive
animals.. called factory farms.
The virtually compulsory tithing of Mormons has caused
the Mormon church to be one of the biggest investors
in corporate terrorism.
Romney has been willing to kill animals in order to
appeal to hunters, whose numbers decline every year. He
participated in a canned hunt in 2006 in Georgia.
A canned hunt is one in which the animals have no means
of escape, confined behind high chain link fences.
Romney's promotion of expanded war in Iraq and Afghanistan
has bombed and burned and maimed animals as well as people.
**
CLINTON
Hillary Clinton was invested in
slaughterhouse and vivisection stocks
when forced to put them in a 'blind'
trust last year. She had invested in cattle
futures, (the cattle she invested in have no future), helped Don Tyson become the nation's
biggest butcher of animals, one whose Washington slaughterhouse
says the Washington Post has skinned animals alive. He was her client at the Rose Law
Firm of which she was a partner. Walmart, killer of billions
of little gold fish, seller of whale meat in Japan, living ducks
in China, was her client. She wants to double the vivisection
budget of NIH. (It is interesting that she was on the board of
Walmart, the company which had a glass ceiling for millions of
women employees, 1.6 million of whom sued). Clinton is a sponsor
of Heifer International, the brutal cattle industry program disguised
as charity which kidnaps baby animals terrorized and sends them
aboard ships to lives of slavery and slaughter, the effects of
which advance deforestation and global warming.
Her husband allowed
Dan Glickman and Espy to muzzle the truth
about Mad Cow, Mad Pig, Mad Chicken,
Mad Deer, Mad Fish, Mad Sheep
and other spongiform encephalopathy
diseases.
She has consistently voted to bomb the animals of
Iraq and Afghanistan.
*
OBAMA
Obama's wife has been the spokesperson for vivisecting
Univ of Chicago
*
HUCKABEE
Huckabee shot a bird in front of reporters the other day
and like Hillary helped Don Tyson with his mechanized
slaughter.
Huckabee's son hanged a a stray dog when he, the son, was 17.
Huckabee's promotion of expanded war in Iraq and Afghanistan
has bombed and burned and maimed animals as well as people.
Huckabee's metaphors are violent and include
"better to kill a snake than treat a lot of snakebites".
While Michael Vick is going to jail for dogfighting, Huckabee
says 'don't ask how big is the dog in the fight but how
big is the fight in the dog'. After executing 19 Arkansas
prisoners Huckabee called his band "Capital Offense".
Huckabee says he is the Christian candidate but Jesus
prevented the execution of someone in John 8:7 and
prevented the murder of animals in the temple.
*
Ron Paul has been opposed by HSUS because he
has a philosophical opposition to legislation about
treatment of animals.
However, Ron Paul wants to end all the wars..
to shut down the animal harming USDA, NIH,
HHS, FDA, CDC, etc.
Mikw Gravel opposed all wars, but his record with
animals in Alaska as senator is not known by this poster.
May your conscience be the guide.
Poster welcomes your additions and corrections.. this is only
an infinitesimal fraction of the data on this subject.
MCCAIN
John McCain was bombing women in a light bulb factory and animals in its surroundings when shot down,
has a 0% animal rights voting record. Water buffalo, birds
and countless other animals were burned bombed and maimed by the
napalm, by machine gun fire, etc. He wants to continue
his 41 year history of supporting the murder of people
and animals in illegal and violent wars. Bomber pilots
are the most removed from the beings they kill maim and
burn since they rarely come face to face with their victims.
McCain is endorsed by neocon Sulzberger family Boston Globe,
neocon Murdoch's Boston Herald as well as by indicted
war criminal Henry Kissinger and warmonger Joe Lieberman.
MILITARY
All Republican candidates but Paul want illegal violent
war continued against Iraqis and Afghans. Dogs are used
as minesniffers. Recently WGBH and the BBC interviewed
a Dutch woman traveling the world on a tractor. She is
promoting the scam of using rats a minesniffing victims.
Giuliani's wife Judy was employed
by US Surgical, a dog vivisecting
company which has a history of
jailing animal rights protesters.
RACCOONS SQUIRRELS CHIPMUNKS
The Bush regime's rollback of
environmental protection has
destroyed millions of acres of
animal habitat.
Squirrels, chipmunks and thousands
of other species have been burned
alive as the USDA's and DOI's controlled burn
policy has caused even more fires
with windchanges.
BIRDS
The Bush regime has polluted even
the Peace Corps. College students
are encouraged to take poultry
science and other animal agriculture
slavery courses.
Antonin Scalia who has serially killed
prisoners with his pen as weapon
went hunting with Dick Cheney
where besides killing birds they
illegally discussed cases before the
court.
Chuck Grassley (as well as Feingold
and Harkin) changed the way
baby chicks are shipped. Their
humane legislation protections
have been removed. They are shipped
often in flimsy cardboard containers
.. they can be smashed or die
of heat or thirst or cold sitting on
loading docks. These baby chick
females and males have been
classified as commercial mail.
George Voinovich introduced
legislation to allow the hunting
of federally protected migrating birds
John Cornyn, senator from Texas,
helped Dick Cheney kill over 400
birds in 1 day in Rolling Rock Pennsylvania where cage raised
birds were released in nets directly
in front of Cheney's hunting party.
"Shooting fish in a barrel" does not
describe this action.
PRIMATES
Anthrax bioterror weapon
research (and in some cases
development) is occurring at over
300 sites in the US funded by
your tax dollars.
Primates have been irradiated
at the CDC, Barnes Air Force Base,
have been killed in the thousands
for anthrax weapons testing at
Ft Detrick.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index....ext=va&aid=6131
http://www.primatefreedom.com
BEARS
Maryland's Diebold installed
governor Ehrlich tried to pass
bear hunting in the state and
was defeated.
The slaughter of bears is allowed
in several states. Please ask
Gov. Spitzer of NY to end the bear hunting
which Pataki promoted.
http://161.11.121.121/govemail
WOLVES
Republican senators Stevens and
Murkowski of Alaska facilitated
the shooting of wolves from
helicopters by hunters.
Update on US candidates' positions on animals
(When Republican candidates are noted, may it be remembered
that they represent a tiny segment of the population. 55%
are unregistered. 60% of the remaining 45% are 3rd party
or independent. Of the remaining 18% over 2/3 are Democrats. Registered
Republicans are a single digit
percentage of the US populatio
n.
CANDIDATE POSITIONS ON ANIMALS
Romney and Huckabee, but not
McCain and Paul are in favor
of 'exhanced interrogation techniques'
a code word for torture.
All but 1 of the 10 announced Republican candidates define
themselves as prolife, by which they mean only human fetal life, not
support of prisoners' right not
to be deprived of life through execution.
. In
the area of humans many Republicans exempt prisoners
from their prolife positions.
CLINTON
Her husband allowed
Dan Glickman and Espy to muzzle the truth
about Mad Cow, Mad Pig, Mad Chicken,
Mad Deer, Mad Fish, Mad Sheep
and other spongiform encephalopathy
diseases.
She has voted for vivisector money
and for campaigns in which people
and animals were bombed
Her position is that the US should
keep some troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan. She announced in
Iowa in late august 2007 that
she wanted to double NIH's animal
torture research, research designed
to give new pricegouging ineffective
products to multinational pharmaceuticals.
BARACK OBAMA
Barack Obama like Clinton supports
an escalation of the war in Afghanistan,
for which purpose Tom Hanks' neocon
film was released. Like most Illinois politicians he has a cozy relationship with unionbuster
McDonald's which he has praised. His wife is a spokesperson for vivisection as a VP
of Univ of Chicago Hospitals.
He has said the bombing of
Aghanistan was not off the table.
Like Clinton he favors state murder
(capital punishment) which is
banned in 2/3 of the world's
countries.
MCCAIN
bombed animals in Vietnam, has a 0% environment voting
record, is in favor of continued bombing of animals in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
HUCKABEE
Huckabee is a hunter and murdered in the name of the state
several Arkansans.
WIVES:
Mrs Obama, Mrs Giuliani, and
Mrs Romney have all been employed
by vivisectors or fundraise for
vivisectors. Mrs Obama has worked
for Univ of Chicago Hospitals
as a spokesperson. Mrs Giuliani
worked for US Surgical, and
Mrs Romney campaigns for animal
killing multiple sclerosis researchers.
Mrs Obama has purchased ant traps.
What you have done to these
the least of My brethren you have
done unto Me.
*
Senators' animal rights, peace and other positions
GIULIANI HAS WITHDRAWN
Judy Giuliani worked for US Surgical which carves up
dogs, a company which cooperated in the framing of animal
rights activists. Her husband ridiculed animal rights activists
on a New York talk show. Type in 'ferrett and Giuliani'
in search. Giuliani is a 911 profiteer who wants to continue
the bombing of Afghan and Iraqi animals
Senators' animal rights, peace and other positions
please multipost any part of this.. and please suggest additions
or corrections
http://votesmart.org/issue_rating_d...?sig_id=002847M
DEFEAT ALL 21 REPUBLICANS RUNNING
FOR THE SENATE.. EVERY ONE OF THEM HAS
VOTED MONEY FOR THE BOMBING OF PEOPLE AND
ANIMALS AND BIRDS REPTILES TREES AND PLANTS
THE WORST:
ALASKA: Is there any senator
who has killed more animals in his
own state than Ted Stevens who
has promoted the aerial shooting
of wolves etc. etc. etc. Ted
Stevens was in the Senate when it
voted 94 to 0 to club the Pribilof
Island seals.
TEXAS John Cornyn.. this warmonger senator
helped Dick Cheney kill over 400 birds
in 1 day.. cage raised birds released
directly in front of the 2 shooting
fish in a barrel avicidal maniacs.
KENTUCKY
Soldiers at Ft Campbell have had FOUR tours of duty.
Mitch McConnell is on the way out.
Ft Campbell was the site in which the Army sprayed tens of
thousands of blackbirds with detergent so that they would
freeze to death in winter... the heat from their bodies
rose into the air.. as their souls arose above their dying
forms. Ann Free publicized the slaughter. McConnell has promoted
Kentucky cow slaughter.
VIRGINIA
Hopefully, John Warner will not run
again. When he was Secretary of
the Navy hideous things were done
to animals at Bethesda Naval and
elsewhere. Primates were stuck
in restraining chairs for months. Their legs cramped or atrophied.
They had to sleep sitting up. They could not defecate except
in Navy provided bags.
Dolphins were used as minecarriers,
etc. etc. Warner became a senator
when his primary opponent died
in a plane crash.
NEBRASKA
Chuck Hagel like virtually every senator in Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Texas etc. has promoted
the slaughter of mammals and the cattle concentration camps of
Nebraska. He was CEO of ESS, a Republican owned vote manipulation
company, before he became
senator from Nebraska. His company
helped in the fraudulent installation
of the unelected Bush and in other
races.
KANSAS: Pat Roberts, operative
for Kansas cattle concentration camps.
TENNESSEE Lamar Alexander has facilitated
Battelle of Tennessee which received 1 billion from the CIA
to develop weaponized anthrax and primates from Ft
Detrick which had already sacrificed over 4000 primates in just
1 anthrax experiment. Alexander has been helped by vivisector
Bill Frist, the senator who shielded vivisectors from liability lawsuits
and carved up cats at Harvard.
Lamar Alexander's voting record
http://www.vote-smart.org/voting_ca...can_id=BZZ57901
OKLAHOMA Jim Inhofe, pawn of
cattle concentration camp operators,
introduced a bill with Coburn to
criminalize economic boycotts of
animal butchers. The Senate and House
passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism
Act.
ALABAMA
Jeff Sessions of the FBI harrassed
and criminalized the activity of
nonviolent animal rights activists
NORTH CAROLINA:
Elizabeth Dole has been silent
about the hideous Smithfield
and other pig and chicken
concentration camps in her state,
as well as silent about the war
in Iraq. Though one of her first lawsuits was on behalf of a lion
at the Washington Zoo, she has let down the animals since.
OTHERS:
OREGON
Mormon Gordon Smith will do
better for the world going back
to his vegetable frozen food business
than continuing to vote war
appropriations.
WYOMING: Michael Enzi has
advanced the murder of cows
in Wyoming. That's the job he was
elected to do.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Katrina Swett has been forced to
withdraw her support for Joe Lieberman
but New Hampshire Democrats want
someone else to run against Diebold
installed Sununu.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/votefraud.html
ALABAMA FBI chief Jeff Sessions
while another Alabama senator Richard
Shelby
ran as a Democrat and then immeidately after the election
switched to the Republican Party
and was immediately awarded with
powerful Senate committees.
ARIZONA: Pete Domenici
sought to obscure rampant Bush
violations in the 2006 and 2004
elections by asking US attorneys
to come up with hard to find
Democratic vote fraud.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
COLORADO: Allard was installed
by Diebold fraud though Strickland
was elected.
GEORGIA has 2 Diebold installed
senators. One is Saxbe Chambliss.
MINNESOTA
Diebold installed Coleman in Minnesota
though the highly popular Vice President
Walter Mondale was ahead 9 points
2 days before the election.
OTHERS:
Retiring? Thad Cochran (R) of Mississippi
Retiring? Larry Craig (R) of Idaho
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
UP TO YOUR OWN CONSCIENCE AS ARE ALL OF THESE
MAINE
http://www.jeanhaybright.us/
Susan Collins is a henhawk Republican
who faces defeat. Poster does
not know if Jean Hay Bright will
run against her. Collins has a good record in terms of humane
legislation, but has not used her influence to end bear hunting
nor lobsters being boiled alive
in Maine nor the burial of bears in
Afghani caves created by US regime
bombs.
http://votesmart.org/issue_rating_c....php?can_id=379
Father Mother God we pray for
all those listed above... that they
receive your grace as You simultaneously
cause the Republican Party to
disappear in 2008 or before,
to be replaced by strong Green,
Socialist, Libertarian and other parties.
God destroy the Rove votefraud quiver of 1000 varieties of
crime.
*
Defeat 21 Republicans senators, elected
and unelected, whose terms expire
in 2008. At least 4 of them (Coleman, Sununu, Allard
and Chambliss) were installed
by Diebold despite the fact that
VP Walter Mondale, Governor Shaheen,
Strickland etc. got more votes). Impeach them earlier
if possible.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/votefraud.html
They see the numbers.. and know
the Bush war is hurting their chances.
CNN poll July 9, 07: 89% want US out of Iraq now.
************
Senator Larry Craig of Idaho voted to bomb
the animals of Iraq and Afghanistan,
has tried to gut the endangered species act, and has promoted
cow and sheep genocide in Idaho.
So has Senator Crapo.
HOW HAVE CATS BEEN TREATED
BY REPUBLICAN LEADERS?
President McKinley's wife drowned
2 angora cats (MSNBC Keith Olbermann
show)
Eisenhower ordered cats on the
White House grounds shot
Former Republican Senate majority (because of Diebold) leader Bill Frist
obtained cats by lying to Boston
animal shelters and then
carved them up at Harvard med school
before becoming a billionaire by
stealing from Medicare and Medicaid.
Frist is a Thompson supporter. He
also exempted vivisecting drug companies from lawsuits generated
by their causation of death or injury.
Republican appointees such
as Julie Gerberding at CDC, who supervises primate torture at the CDC before going to her Emory job.
At Emory, cats are tortured.
http://www.emorylies.com
HORSES
The two biggest horse slaughterhouses in the US are in Republican
run Texas
Republicans have engineered the rounding up of wild mustangs
(not an endorsement of the Democratic Senate and House)
COWS
Romney, Tancredo, Brownback
are linked to animal agribusiness
and cattle concentration camps
financially and politically. They support
the cowboys, not the cows.
Henry Paulson is now Secretary
of the Treasury. The former CEO
of Goldman Sachs and president
of Nature Conservancy used his
power to turn NC's wilderness
shrines into cattle ranches. This
has helped Texas Pacific and other
Goldman Sachs investments to
have a supply of murdered animals'
cadavers for their fast food outlets.
Goldman Sachs meat investments
are subtly managed still by Josh
Bolten, GS former employee and
present Bush chief of staff. John Bolton,
former meat lobbyist, has been moved
out by universal opposition.
Richard Nixon was given 1 million
by Ray Kroc of McDonald's and
in return exempted McDonald's
from minimum wage. The Congress
overturned his legislation.
http://www.mcspotlight.org
Inhofe and Coburn, Oklahoma
senators, began a campaign to
criminalize economic boycotts of
butchers and vivisectors and to
add further penalties to public
protests. This legislation was passed
by a majority of the Senate pawns
of abbatoir owners.
Giuliani promoted milk in milk moustache
ads.. and contracted prostate cancer.
Many physicians see a link between
the 2 because of the carcinogenic
hormones allowed in the US, banned
by the EU.
http://www.satyamag.com/novdec00/newkirk.html
MICE
All Republican candidates support
lab torture (vivisection) of animals
paid for with stolen tax dollars.
.
MUELLER
The FBI has made it a priority
to attack animal rights activists.
DEER
Republican governors Pataki, Taft,
Bush of Florida, Bush of Texas, Perry, Keating and others
increased canned hunting in their
states, hunting in which
animals huddle behind 9 ft. chain
link fences and are shot by trophy
seeking game hunters.
The Safari Club, rich trophy
seeking hunters who have shot
endangered species around the world,
is a group which gave awards
to both George H W Bush
and George W Bush.
Romney participated in a canned
hunt in Georgia in 2006 in which
all Republican governors were
invited to blast away at trapped quail.
Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister,
and Sam Brownback, Catholic
both are proud of their prolife
endorsements. Neither sees a dichotomy between that and their
frequent mentions that they are hunters
and fishermen. Both support the
bombing of Baghdad babies and
Afghan people and animals.
Norman Schwarzkopf, in charge
of the bombing of Desert Storm
which carpet bombed 250,000
Iraqi refugees fleeing in donkey carts
as well as whiteflagged surrendering
Iraqi soldiers, and then bulldozed
them into graves, is a member of
the Safari Club which signifies he
has killed 300 KINDS of animals.
Matthew Scully, former Bush
speechwriter, left over animal
treatment by the White House.
http://www.matthewscully.com
PIGS
Former Governor Gilmore helped
Smithfield become the worst factory
farm in the nation, a pig concentration
camp, an Abu Ghraib for animals, which has filled the Atlantic
with pig waste
Sam Alito, nominated for an unelected
position on the Supreme Court (one
of last unelected high courts in the
world) bought much stock in
slaughterhouse invested Vanguard
and twice broke his promise to
recuse himself in Vanguard cases
before the court.
FERRETS
A tape of a Giuliani talk show in which
he is abusing a ferret pet companion
was played several times on network
tv. It is available many places on the
internet. Giuliani stings and stings
and stings again.
http://www.rudygiulianivideos.com/v...iuliani&index=8
http://www.peta.net/feat/military (one paragraph in the PETA report
is disputed).
RACCOONS SQUIRRELS CHIPMUNKS
The Bush regime's rollback of
environmental protection has
destroyed millions of acres of
animal habitat.
Squirrels, chipmunks and thousands
of other species have been burned
alive as the USDA's and DOI's controlled burn
policy has caused even more fires
with windchanges.
there are at least 150 million Americans who live with cats and dogs
.. we have political power! please spread the word! how many millions have
horses? birds? fishes?
ANIMAL AGONY DECADENCE AND DISEASE
College Republicans:
http://murepublicans.com/node/9
http://www.thenation.com/doc/200611..._gop_flames_out
wbzt.com and AP
excerpts
Romney's 'Dog On Roof' Story Sparks Outcry
(AP) BOSTON An example of Mitt Romney's crisis management skills has turned into something of a political problem for the Republican presidential contender.
Romney placed his family dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, into a kennel lashed to the top of his station wagon for a 12-hour family trip from Boston to Ontario in 1983. Despite being shielded by a wind screen the former Massachusetts governor erected, Seamus expressed his discomfort with a diarrhea attack.
Now the story, recounted this week in a Boston Globe profile of Romney, has touched off ..outrage from bloggers and animal rights activists.
When Romney's eldest son, Tagg, and his four brothers complained about the brown runoff down the back windshield, their father quietly pulled the car over, borrowed a gas station hose and sprayed down both the dog and the kennel before returning to the road.
"Massachusetts animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal `in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon,"' wrote Steve Benen in a post on the blog "Crooks and Liars."
Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told Time magazine's "Swampland" blog: "If you wouldn't strap your child to the roof of your car, you have no business doing that to the family dog!"
http://www.freedomisforeverybody.or...tatebystate.php
Dump Senator Graham, enemy
of animals
Animal Rights and Wildlife Issues
(hard these days to navigate
the following link
http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_rat...hp?can_id=21992)
2005-2006 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 40 percent in 2005-2006.
2005 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 20 percent in 2005.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Fund for Animals 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Humane Association 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Animal Protection Institute 0 percent in 2004.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Fund for Animals 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Humane Association 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Animal Protection Institute 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation 0 percent in 2003.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Fund for Animals 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Humane Association 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Animal Protection Institute 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2000 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2000.
2000 On the votes that the Society for Animal Protective Legislation considered to be the most important in 2000, Senator Graham voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time.
frugivore writes: "Animal rights was excluded entirely from virtually every debate
hosted by Time Warner's Wolf Blitzer, GE's Tim Russert
and Chris Matthews, Kevin Klose's NPR employees. Yet
as genocide it dwarfs every human catastrophe.
http://www.worldanimalnet.org"
Romney's connection to the Chinese Army through his
Bain Capital and Huawei, a Chinese computer company,
is illegal. It has been brought up but not answered by Romney
in televized debates and on the Loud Dobbs Show.
http://www.gohunter08.com/showpress.asp?artid=178
We have no right to judge the motives
of anyone. All we can assess is
the effect of their actions on the
voiceless and vulnerable animals. No matter what any of us
have done, we are all temples of the Indwelling God who
answers to all names by which called.
Every Republican but Ron Paul
wants to continue the bombing
of Iraqi and Afghan animals, and
in some cases of Iranian ones
as well. Clinton and Obama want
to continue the bombing of Afghan
animals.
ROMNEY'S VIOLENCE TO ANIMALS
Mitt Romney's Bain Capital has heavily invested in
the animal genocide and global devastation of
the cattle industry, from steakhouses to slaughterhouses. His quarter billion dollar fortune
is made from the blood of innocent animals and
the the oppression of sweatshops as well as the
felling of earth's trees. He is also invested in vivisection.
Why was Romney selected by the CIA to be the
governor of Massachusetts? To consolidate the hold
of the pharma military industrial complex on the state,
which receives more vivisection dollars than any other.
Romney's Bain Capital is scheduled
to buy Clear Channel, which
set new records for animal torture.
http://www.petitiononline.com/lovepigs
The news has carried the story of Romney's sons' dog being
put on the roof of his car for an 8 hour trip from Massachusetts
to Michigan, during which time the perhaps terrorized dog
defecated. Romney hosed him off within his cage.
http://wbztv.com/local/local_story_180132351.html
The Mormon church owns the biggest cattle ranch in the
US with its consequent animal agony, correlation to
heart disease, cancer, food poisoning, global heating,
energy waste.
Utah is a haven for concentration camps for captive
animals.. called factory farms.
The virtually compulsory tithing of Mormons has caused
the Mormon church to be one of the biggest investors
in corporate terrorism.
Romney has been willing to kill animals in order to
appeal to hunters, whose numbers decline every year. He
participated in a canned hunt in 2006 in Georgia.
A canned hunt is one in which the animals have no means
of escape, confined behind high chain link fences.
Romney's promotion of expanded war in Iraq and Afghanistan
has bombed and burned and maimed animals as well as people.
**
CLINTON
Hillary Clinton was invested in
slaughterhouse and vivisection stocks
when forced to put them in a 'blind'
trust last year. She had invested in cattle
futures, (the cattle she invested in have no future), helped Don Tyson become the nation's
biggest butcher of animals, one whose Washington slaughterhouse
says the Washington Post has skinned animals alive. He was her client at the Rose Law
Firm of which she was a partner. Walmart, killer of billions
of little gold fish, seller of whale meat in Japan, living ducks
in China, was her client. She wants to double the vivisection
budget of NIH. (It is interesting that she was on the board of
Walmart, the company which had a glass ceiling for millions of
women employees, 1.6 million of whom sued). Clinton is a sponsor
of Heifer International, the brutal cattle industry program disguised
as charity which kidnaps baby animals terrorized and sends them
aboard ships to lives of slavery and slaughter, the effects of
which advance deforestation and global warming.
Her husband allowed
Dan Glickman and Espy to muzzle the truth
about Mad Cow, Mad Pig, Mad Chicken,
Mad Deer, Mad Fish, Mad Sheep
and other spongiform encephalopathy
diseases.
She has consistently voted to bomb the animals of
Iraq and Afghanistan.
*
OBAMA
Obama's wife has been the spokesperson for vivisecting
Univ of Chicago
*
HUCKABEE
Huckabee shot a bird in front of reporters the other day
and like Hillary helped Don Tyson with his mechanized
slaughter.
Huckabee's son hanged a a stray dog when he, the son, was 17.
Huckabee's promotion of expanded war in Iraq and Afghanistan
has bombed and burned and maimed animals as well as people.
Huckabee's metaphors are violent and include
"better to kill a snake than treat a lot of snakebites".
While Michael Vick is going to jail for dogfighting, Huckabee
says 'don't ask how big is the dog in the fight but how
big is the fight in the dog'. After executing 19 Arkansas
prisoners Huckabee called his band "Capital Offense".
Huckabee says he is the Christian candidate but Jesus
prevented the execution of someone in John 8:7 and
prevented the murder of animals in the temple.
*
Ron Paul has been opposed by HSUS because he
has a philosophical opposition to legislation about
treatment of animals.
However, Ron Paul wants to end all the wars..
to shut down the animal harming USDA, NIH,
HHS, FDA, CDC, etc.
Mikw Gravel opposed all wars, but his record with
animals in Alaska as senator is not known by this poster.
May your conscience be the guide.
Poster welcomes your additions and corrections.. this is only
an infinitesimal fraction of the data on this subject.
MCCAIN
John McCain was bombing women in a light bulb factory and animals in its surroundings when shot down,
has a 0% animal rights voting record. Water buffalo, birds
and countless other animals were burned bombed and maimed by the
napalm, by machine gun fire, etc. He wants to continue
his 41 year history of supporting the murder of people
and animals in illegal and violent wars. Bomber pilots
are the most removed from the beings they kill maim and
burn since they rarely come face to face with their victims.
McCain is endorsed by neocon Sulzberger family Boston Globe,
neocon Murdoch's Boston Herald as well as by indicted
war criminal Henry Kissinger and warmonger Joe Lieberman.
MILITARY
All Republican candidates but Paul want illegal violent
war continued against Iraqis and Afghans. Dogs are used
as minesniffers. Recently WGBH and the BBC interviewed
a Dutch woman traveling the world on a tractor. She is
promoting the scam of using rats a minesniffing victims.
Giuliani's wife Judy was employed
by US Surgical, a dog vivisecting
company which has a history of
jailing animal rights protesters.
RACCOONS SQUIRRELS CHIPMUNKS
The Bush regime's rollback of
environmental protection has
destroyed millions of acres of
animal habitat.
Squirrels, chipmunks and thousands
of other species have been burned
alive as the USDA's and DOI's controlled burn
policy has caused even more fires
with windchanges.
BIRDS
The Bush regime has polluted even
the Peace Corps. College students
are encouraged to take poultry
science and other animal agriculture
slavery courses.
Antonin Scalia who has serially killed
prisoners with his pen as weapon
went hunting with Dick Cheney
where besides killing birds they
illegally discussed cases before the
court.
Chuck Grassley (as well as Feingold
and Harkin) changed the way
baby chicks are shipped. Their
humane legislation protections
have been removed. They are shipped
often in flimsy cardboard containers
.. they can be smashed or die
of heat or thirst or cold sitting on
loading docks. These baby chick
females and males have been
classified as commercial mail.
George Voinovich introduced
legislation to allow the hunting
of federally protected migrating birds
John Cornyn, senator from Texas,
helped Dick Cheney kill over 400
birds in 1 day in Rolling Rock Pennsylvania where cage raised
birds were released in nets directly
in front of Cheney's hunting party.
"Shooting fish in a barrel" does not
describe this action.
PRIMATES
Anthrax bioterror weapon
research (and in some cases
development) is occurring at over
300 sites in the US funded by
your tax dollars.
Primates have been irradiated
at the CDC, Barnes Air Force Base,
have been killed in the thousands
for anthrax weapons testing at
Ft Detrick.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index....ext=va&aid=6131
http://www.primatefreedom.com
BEARS
Maryland's Diebold installed
governor Ehrlich tried to pass
bear hunting in the state and
was defeated.
The slaughter of bears is allowed
in several states. Please ask
Gov. Spitzer of NY to end the bear hunting
which Pataki promoted.
http://161.11.121.121/govemail
WOLVES
Republican senators Stevens and
Murkowski of Alaska facilitated
the shooting of wolves from
helicopters by hunters.
Update on US candidates' positions on animals
(When Republican candidates are noted, may it be remembered
that they represent a tiny segment of the population. 55%
are unregistered. 60% of the remaining 45% are 3rd party
or independent. Of the remaining 18% over 2/3 are Democrats. Registered
Republicans are a single digit
percentage of the US populatio
n.
CANDIDATE POSITIONS ON ANIMALS
Romney and Huckabee, but not
McCain and Paul are in favor
of 'exhanced interrogation techniques'
a code word for torture.
All but 1 of the 10 announced Republican candidates define
themselves as prolife, by which they mean only human fetal life, not
support of prisoners' right not
to be deprived of life through execution.
. In
the area of humans many Republicans exempt prisoners
from their prolife positions.
CLINTON
Her husband allowed
Dan Glickman and Espy to muzzle the truth
about Mad Cow, Mad Pig, Mad Chicken,
Mad Deer, Mad Fish, Mad Sheep
and other spongiform encephalopathy
diseases.
She has voted for vivisector money
and for campaigns in which people
and animals were bombed
Her position is that the US should
keep some troops in Iraq and
Afghanistan. She announced in
Iowa in late august 2007 that
she wanted to double NIH's animal
torture research, research designed
to give new pricegouging ineffective
products to multinational pharmaceuticals.
BARACK OBAMA
Barack Obama like Clinton supports
an escalation of the war in Afghanistan,
for which purpose Tom Hanks' neocon
film was released. Like most Illinois politicians he has a cozy relationship with unionbuster
McDonald's which he has praised. His wife is a spokesperson for vivisection as a VP
of Univ of Chicago Hospitals.
He has said the bombing of
Aghanistan was not off the table.
Like Clinton he favors state murder
(capital punishment) which is
banned in 2/3 of the world's
countries.
MCCAIN
bombed animals in Vietnam, has a 0% environment voting
record, is in favor of continued bombing of animals in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
HUCKABEE
Huckabee is a hunter and murdered in the name of the state
several Arkansans.
WIVES:
Mrs Obama, Mrs Giuliani, and
Mrs Romney have all been employed
by vivisectors or fundraise for
vivisectors. Mrs Obama has worked
for Univ of Chicago Hospitals
as a spokesperson. Mrs Giuliani
worked for US Surgical, and
Mrs Romney campaigns for animal
killing multiple sclerosis researchers.
Mrs Obama has purchased ant traps.
What you have done to these
the least of My brethren you have
done unto Me.
*
Senators' animal rights, peace and other positions
GIULIANI HAS WITHDRAWN
Judy Giuliani worked for US Surgical which carves up
dogs, a company which cooperated in the framing of animal
rights activists. Her husband ridiculed animal rights activists
on a New York talk show. Type in 'ferrett and Giuliani'
in search. Giuliani is a 911 profiteer who wants to continue
the bombing of Afghan and Iraqi animals
Senators' animal rights, peace and other positions
please multipost any part of this.. and please suggest additions
or corrections
http://votesmart.org/issue_rating_d...?sig_id=002847M
DEFEAT ALL 21 REPUBLICANS RUNNING
FOR THE SENATE.. EVERY ONE OF THEM HAS
VOTED MONEY FOR THE BOMBING OF PEOPLE AND
ANIMALS AND BIRDS REPTILES TREES AND PLANTS
THE WORST:
ALASKA: Is there any senator
who has killed more animals in his
own state than Ted Stevens who
has promoted the aerial shooting
of wolves etc. etc. etc. Ted
Stevens was in the Senate when it
voted 94 to 0 to club the Pribilof
Island seals.
TEXAS John Cornyn.. this warmonger senator
helped Dick Cheney kill over 400 birds
in 1 day.. cage raised birds released
directly in front of the 2 shooting
fish in a barrel avicidal maniacs.
KENTUCKY
Soldiers at Ft Campbell have had FOUR tours of duty.
Mitch McConnell is on the way out.
Ft Campbell was the site in which the Army sprayed tens of
thousands of blackbirds with detergent so that they would
freeze to death in winter... the heat from their bodies
rose into the air.. as their souls arose above their dying
forms. Ann Free publicized the slaughter. McConnell has promoted
Kentucky cow slaughter.
VIRGINIA
Hopefully, John Warner will not run
again. When he was Secretary of
the Navy hideous things were done
to animals at Bethesda Naval and
elsewhere. Primates were stuck
in restraining chairs for months. Their legs cramped or atrophied.
They had to sleep sitting up. They could not defecate except
in Navy provided bags.
Dolphins were used as minecarriers,
etc. etc. Warner became a senator
when his primary opponent died
in a plane crash.
NEBRASKA
Chuck Hagel like virtually every senator in Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Texas etc. has promoted
the slaughter of mammals and the cattle concentration camps of
Nebraska. He was CEO of ESS, a Republican owned vote manipulation
company, before he became
senator from Nebraska. His company
helped in the fraudulent installation
of the unelected Bush and in other
races.
KANSAS: Pat Roberts, operative
for Kansas cattle concentration camps.
TENNESSEE Lamar Alexander has facilitated
Battelle of Tennessee which received 1 billion from the CIA
to develop weaponized anthrax and primates from Ft
Detrick which had already sacrificed over 4000 primates in just
1 anthrax experiment. Alexander has been helped by vivisector
Bill Frist, the senator who shielded vivisectors from liability lawsuits
and carved up cats at Harvard.
Lamar Alexander's voting record
http://www.vote-smart.org/voting_ca...can_id=BZZ57901
OKLAHOMA Jim Inhofe, pawn of
cattle concentration camp operators,
introduced a bill with Coburn to
criminalize economic boycotts of
animal butchers. The Senate and House
passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism
Act.
ALABAMA
Jeff Sessions of the FBI harrassed
and criminalized the activity of
nonviolent animal rights activists
NORTH CAROLINA:
Elizabeth Dole has been silent
about the hideous Smithfield
and other pig and chicken
concentration camps in her state,
as well as silent about the war
in Iraq. Though one of her first lawsuits was on behalf of a lion
at the Washington Zoo, she has let down the animals since.
OTHERS:
OREGON
Mormon Gordon Smith will do
better for the world going back
to his vegetable frozen food business
than continuing to vote war
appropriations.
WYOMING: Michael Enzi has
advanced the murder of cows
in Wyoming. That's the job he was
elected to do.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
Katrina Swett has been forced to
withdraw her support for Joe Lieberman
but New Hampshire Democrats want
someone else to run against Diebold
installed Sununu.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/votefraud.html
ALABAMA FBI chief Jeff Sessions
while another Alabama senator Richard
Shelby
ran as a Democrat and then immeidately after the election
switched to the Republican Party
and was immediately awarded with
powerful Senate committees.
ARIZONA: Pete Domenici
sought to obscure rampant Bush
violations in the 2006 and 2004
elections by asking US attorneys
to come up with hard to find
Democratic vote fraud.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org
COLORADO: Allard was installed
by Diebold fraud though Strickland
was elected.
GEORGIA has 2 Diebold installed
senators. One is Saxbe Chambliss.
MINNESOTA
Diebold installed Coleman in Minnesota
though the highly popular Vice President
Walter Mondale was ahead 9 points
2 days before the election.
OTHERS:
Retiring? Thad Cochran (R) of Mississippi
Retiring? Larry Craig (R) of Idaho
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
UP TO YOUR OWN CONSCIENCE AS ARE ALL OF THESE
MAINE
http://www.jeanhaybright.us/
Susan Collins is a henhawk Republican
who faces defeat. Poster does
not know if Jean Hay Bright will
run against her. Collins has a good record in terms of humane
legislation, but has not used her influence to end bear hunting
nor lobsters being boiled alive
in Maine nor the burial of bears in
Afghani caves created by US regime
bombs.
http://votesmart.org/issue_rating_c....php?can_id=379
Father Mother God we pray for
all those listed above... that they
receive your grace as You simultaneously
cause the Republican Party to
disappear in 2008 or before,
to be replaced by strong Green,
Socialist, Libertarian and other parties.
God destroy the Rove votefraud quiver of 1000 varieties of
crime.
*
Defeat 21 Republicans senators, elected
and unelected, whose terms expire
in 2008. At least 4 of them (Coleman, Sununu, Allard
and Chambliss) were installed
by Diebold despite the fact that
VP Walter Mondale, Governor Shaheen,
Strickland etc. got more votes). Impeach them earlier
if possible.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/votefraud.html
They see the numbers.. and know
the Bush war is hurting their chances.
CNN poll July 9, 07: 89% want US out of Iraq now.
************
Senator Larry Craig of Idaho voted to bomb
the animals of Iraq and Afghanistan,
has tried to gut the endangered species act, and has promoted
cow and sheep genocide in Idaho.
So has Senator Crapo.
HOW HAVE CATS BEEN TREATED
BY REPUBLICAN LEADERS?
President McKinley's wife drowned
2 angora cats (MSNBC Keith Olbermann
show)
Eisenhower ordered cats on the
White House grounds shot
Former Republican Senate majority (because of Diebold) leader Bill Frist
obtained cats by lying to Boston
animal shelters and then
carved them up at Harvard med school
before becoming a billionaire by
stealing from Medicare and Medicaid.
Frist is a Thompson supporter. He
also exempted vivisecting drug companies from lawsuits generated
by their causation of death or injury.
Republican appointees such
as Julie Gerberding at CDC, who supervises primate torture at the CDC before going to her Emory job.
At Emory, cats are tortured.
http://www.emorylies.com
HORSES
The two biggest horse slaughterhouses in the US are in Republican
run Texas
Republicans have engineered the rounding up of wild mustangs
(not an endorsement of the Democratic Senate and House)
COWS
Romney, Tancredo, Brownback
are linked to animal agribusiness
and cattle concentration camps
financially and politically. They support
the cowboys, not the cows.
Henry Paulson is now Secretary
of the Treasury. The former CEO
of Goldman Sachs and president
of Nature Conservancy used his
power to turn NC's wilderness
shrines into cattle ranches. This
has helped Texas Pacific and other
Goldman Sachs investments to
have a supply of murdered animals'
cadavers for their fast food outlets.
Goldman Sachs meat investments
are subtly managed still by Josh
Bolten, GS former employee and
present Bush chief of staff. John Bolton,
former meat lobbyist, has been moved
out by universal opposition.
Richard Nixon was given 1 million
by Ray Kroc of McDonald's and
in return exempted McDonald's
from minimum wage. The Congress
overturned his legislation.
http://www.mcspotlight.org
Inhofe and Coburn, Oklahoma
senators, began a campaign to
criminalize economic boycotts of
butchers and vivisectors and to
add further penalties to public
protests. This legislation was passed
by a majority of the Senate pawns
of abbatoir owners.
Giuliani promoted milk in milk moustache
ads.. and contracted prostate cancer.
Many physicians see a link between
the 2 because of the carcinogenic
hormones allowed in the US, banned
by the EU.
http://www.satyamag.com/novdec00/newkirk.html
MICE
All Republican candidates support
lab torture (vivisection) of animals
paid for with stolen tax dollars.
.
MUELLER
The FBI has made it a priority
to attack animal rights activists.
DEER
Republican governors Pataki, Taft,
Bush of Florida, Bush of Texas, Perry, Keating and others
increased canned hunting in their
states, hunting in which
animals huddle behind 9 ft. chain
link fences and are shot by trophy
seeking game hunters.
The Safari Club, rich trophy
seeking hunters who have shot
endangered species around the world,
is a group which gave awards
to both George H W Bush
and George W Bush.
Romney participated in a canned
hunt in Georgia in 2006 in which
all Republican governors were
invited to blast away at trapped quail.
Mike Huckabee, Baptist minister,
and Sam Brownback, Catholic
both are proud of their prolife
endorsements. Neither sees a dichotomy between that and their
frequent mentions that they are hunters
and fishermen. Both support the
bombing of Baghdad babies and
Afghan people and animals.
Norman Schwarzkopf, in charge
of the bombing of Desert Storm
which carpet bombed 250,000
Iraqi refugees fleeing in donkey carts
as well as whiteflagged surrendering
Iraqi soldiers, and then bulldozed
them into graves, is a member of
the Safari Club which signifies he
has killed 300 KINDS of animals.
Matthew Scully, former Bush
speechwriter, left over animal
treatment by the White House.
http://www.matthewscully.com
PIGS
Former Governor Gilmore helped
Smithfield become the worst factory
farm in the nation, a pig concentration
camp, an Abu Ghraib for animals, which has filled the Atlantic
with pig waste
Sam Alito, nominated for an unelected
position on the Supreme Court (one
of last unelected high courts in the
world) bought much stock in
slaughterhouse invested Vanguard
and twice broke his promise to
recuse himself in Vanguard cases
before the court.
FERRETS
A tape of a Giuliani talk show in which
he is abusing a ferret pet companion
was played several times on network
tv. It is available many places on the
internet. Giuliani stings and stings
and stings again.
http://www.rudygiulianivideos.com/v...iuliani&index=8
http://www.peta.net/feat/military (one paragraph in the PETA report
is disputed).
RACCOONS SQUIRRELS CHIPMUNKS
The Bush regime's rollback of
environmental protection has
destroyed millions of acres of
animal habitat.
Squirrels, chipmunks and thousands
of other species have been burned
alive as the USDA's and DOI's controlled burn
policy has caused even more fires
with windchanges.
there are at least 150 million Americans who live with cats and dogs
.. we have political power! please spread the word! how many millions have
horses? birds? fishes?
ANIMAL AGONY DECADENCE AND DISEASE
College Republicans:
http://murepublicans.com/node/9
http://www.thenation.com/doc/200611..._gop_flames_out
wbzt.com and AP
excerpts
Romney's 'Dog On Roof' Story Sparks Outcry
(AP) BOSTON An example of Mitt Romney's crisis management skills has turned into something of a political problem for the Republican presidential contender.
Romney placed his family dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, into a kennel lashed to the top of his station wagon for a 12-hour family trip from Boston to Ontario in 1983. Despite being shielded by a wind screen the former Massachusetts governor erected, Seamus expressed his discomfort with a diarrhea attack.
Now the story, recounted this week in a Boston Globe profile of Romney, has touched off ..outrage from bloggers and animal rights activists.
When Romney's eldest son, Tagg, and his four brothers complained about the brown runoff down the back windshield, their father quietly pulled the car over, borrowed a gas station hose and sprayed down both the dog and the kennel before returning to the road.
"Massachusetts animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal `in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon,"' wrote Steve Benen in a post on the blog "Crooks and Liars."
Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, told Time magazine's "Swampland" blog: "If you wouldn't strap your child to the roof of your car, you have no business doing that to the family dog!"
http://www.freedomisforeverybody.or...tatebystate.php
Dump Senator Graham, enemy
of animals
Animal Rights and Wildlife Issues
(hard these days to navigate
the following link
http://www.vote-smart.org/issue_rat...hp?can_id=21992)
2005-2006 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 40 percent in 2005-2006.
2005 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 20 percent in 2005.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Fund for Animals 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Humane Association 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 0 percent in 2004.
2004 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Animal Protection Institute 0 percent in 2004.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Fund for Animals 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Humane Association 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Animal Protection Institute 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 0 percent in 2003.
2003 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation 0 percent in 2003.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Fund for Animals 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Humane Association 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Animal Protection Institute 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the Society for Animal Protective Legislation 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2001-2002 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2001-2002.
2000 Senator Graham supported the interests of the The Humane Society of the United States 0 percent in 2000.
2000 On the votes that the Society for Animal Protective Legislation considered to be the most important in 2000, Senator Graham voted their preferred position 0 percent of the time.
frugivore writes: "Animal rights was excluded entirely from virtually every debate
hosted by Time Warner's Wolf Blitzer, GE's Tim Russert
and Chris Matthews, Kevin Klose's NPR employees. Yet
as genocide it dwarfs every human catastrophe.
http://www.worldanimalnet.org"
Romney's connection to the Chinese Army through his
Bain Capital and Huawei, a Chinese computer company,
is illegal. It has been brought up but not answered by Romney
in televized debates and on the Loud Dobbs Show.
http://www.gohunter08.com/showpress.asp?artid=178
For more information:
http://www.worldanimalnet.org
Add Your Comments
Comments
(Hide Comments)
10 Ways to Make a Difference
by Peter Singer
Monday Feb 4th, 2008 6:32 AM
Ten Ways to Make a Difference
Peter Singer
Excerpted from Ethics into Action, Oxford, 1998, pp. 184-192
The whole forward thrust of the movement Henry has created rests on his shoulders. If Henry disappears tomorrow, there's an interesting question as to how much of it will survive, how much will be nipped in the bud, how much will be lost by there not being some mechanism in place for someone else to pick up that mantle. In the time that I have talked to Henry, he has never come to grips with the issue of who is going to carry on in his footsteps and continue fighting the fight the way he fought it. [1]
This comment was made by Barnaby Feder, who profiled Henry for the New York Times Magazine. But Henry doesn't see the continuation of his work in terms of grooming individuals to take over from him. In many interviews, and in articles he has written himself. Henry has described the methods he has used to bring about change. His methods are what count, not who uses them. The following key points are, therefore, set out here so that others can continue to fight as he has done, whether for animals or for the oppressed and exploited more generally. [2]
1. Try to understand the public's current thinking and where it could he encouraged to go tomorrow. Above all, keep in touch with reality.
Too many activists mix only with other activists and imagine that everyone else thinks as they do. They start to believe in their own propaganda and lose their feel for what the average person in the street might think. They no longer know what is achievable and what is a fantasy that has grown out of their own intense conviction of the need for change. Henry saw this in the Socialist Workers Party, where members were so used to the Marxist- Trotskyist framework that they all accepted that they lost contact with the real world in which they were trying to make a revolution. As Henry put it: "You need to have a crap detector rotating all the time."
Henry grabs every opportunity to talk to people outside the animal movement. He'll start up a conversation with the person sitting next to him on a bus or train, mention an issue he is concerned about, and listen to their responses. How do they react? Can they feel themselves in the place of the victim? Are they outraged? What in particular do they focus on?
2. Select a target on the basis of vulnerabilities to public opinion, the intensity of suffering, and the opportunities for change.
Target selection is crucial. Henry knows that he can run an effective campaign when he feels sure that, as he said about the New York state law allowing laboratories to take dogs and cats from shelters, "it just defies common sense that the average guy in the street would say, 'Hey, that's a real neat thing to do.'"
You know that you have a good target if, by merely stating the issue, you put your adversary on the defensive. During the museum campaign, for example. Henry could ask the public: "Do you want your tax monies spent to mutilate cats in order to observe the sexual performance of crippled felines?" The museum was immediately in a very awkward position. Cosmetic testing made another good target, because you only had to ask, "Is another shampoo worth blinding rabbits?" to put Revlon officials on the defensive.
Keeping in touch with reality is a prerequisite for selecting the right target: If you don't know what the public currently thinks, you won't know what they will find acceptable and what will revolt them.
The other elements of point 2 suggest a balance between the good that the campaign can do and its likelihood of success. When Henry selected the cat experiments at the American Museum of Natural History as his first target, he knew that he would directly affect, at best, about sixty cats a year—a tiny number compared to many other possible targets. But the opportunity for change was great because of the nature of the experiments themselves and the location and vulnerability of the institution carrying out the experiments. In 1976, it was vital for the animal movement to have a victory, no matter how small, to encourage its own supporters to believe in the possibility of change and to gain some credibility with the wider world. With that victory gained, Henry began to give more weight, in choosing his targets, to the amount of suffering involved. Even so, that was never the dominant consideration. If you multiply x by y, but y = 0, then no matter how large x may be, the product will also be 0. So, too, no target should be chosen without considering both the amount of suffering and the opportunities for change.
3. Set goals that are achievable. Bring about meaningful change one step at a time. Raising awareness is not enough.
When Henry first took an interest in opposing animal experimentation, the antivivisection movement had no goal other than the abolition of vivisection and no strategy for achieving this goal other than "raising awareness"—that is, mailing out literature filled with pictures and descriptions of the horrors of vivisection. This was the strategy of a movement that talked mainly to itself. It had no idea how to get a hold on the levers of change, or even where those levers might be located. It seemed unaware of its own image as a bunch of ineffective cranks and did not know how to make vivisection an issue that would be picked up by the media. Henry's background in the civil rights movement told him that this was not the way to succeed:
One of the first things that I learned in earlier movements was that nothing is ever an all-or-nothing issue. It's not a one-day process, it's a long process. You need to see the world—including individuals and institutions—as not being static but in constant change, with change occurring one step at a time. It's incremental. It's almost like organic development. You might say, for instance, that a couple of blacks demanding to be seated at a lunch counter really doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference because most of them don't even have the money to buy anything at a lunch counter. But it did make a difference, it was a first step. Once you take that first step and you have that same first step in a number of places, you integrate a number of lunch counters, you set a whole pattern, and it's one of the steps that would generate the least amount of resistance. It's something that's winnable, but it encourages the black struggle and it clearly leads to the next step and the next step. I think that no movement has ever won on the basis of all or none. [3]
Some activists think that accepting less than, say, the total abolition of vivisection is a form of compromise that reduces their chances of a more complete victory. Henry's view is: "I want to abolish the use of animals as much as anybody else, but I say, let's do what we can do today and then do more tomorrow." [4] That is why he was willing to support moves to replace the LD50 with tests like the approximate lethal dose test, which still uses animals, but far fewer of them.
Look for targets that are not only winnable in themselves, but where winning will have expanding ripple effects. Ask yourself if success in one campaign will be a stepping stone toward still-bigger targets and more significant victories. The campaign against Revlon is an example: Because it made research into alternatives respectable, its most important effects have been felt beyond Revlon and even beyond the cosmetics industry as a whole.
While raising awareness is essential if we are to bring about change, Henry does not usually work directly at raising awareness. (His advertisements against meat are an exception.) Awareness follows a successful campaign, and a successful campaign will have achievable goals.
4. Establish credible sources of information and documentation. Never assume anything. Never deceive the media or the public. Maintain credibility, don't exaggerate or hype the issue.
Before starting a new campaign. Henry spends several months gathering information. Freedom of information legislation has helped enormously, but a lot of information is already out there, in the public domain. Experimenters report their experiments in scientific journals that are available in major libraries, and valuable data about corporations may also be a matter of public record. Henry is never content simply to quote from the leaflets of animal rights groups, or other opponents of the institution or corporation that he is targeting. He always goes to the source, which is preferably a publication of the target itself, or else a government document. Newspapers like the New York Times have been prepared to run Henry's advertisements making very specific allegations of wrongdoing against people like Frank Perdue because every allegation has been meticulously checked.
Some organizations describing experiments will conveniently omit details that make the experiments less shocking than they would otherwise appear. They may, for example, neglect to tell their readers that the animals were anesthetized at the time. But those who do this eventually lose credibility. Henry's credibility is extraordinarily high, both within the animal movement and with its opponents, because he regards it as his most important asset. It is therefore never to be sacrificed for a short-term gain, no matter how tempting that may be at the time.
5. Don't divide the world into saints and sinners.
When Henry wants to get someone—a scientist, a corporate executive, a legislator, or a government official—to do something differently, he puts himself in the position of that person:
[The question to ask yourself is:] If I were that person, what would make me want to change my behavior? If you accuse them of being a bunch of sadistic bastards, these people are not going to figure, "Hey, what is it I could do that's going to be different and make those people happy?" That's not the way the real world works.
Being personally hostile to an opponent may be a good way of letting off steam, but it doesn't win people over. When Henry wanted to persuade scientists working for corporations like Procter & Gamble to develop nonanimal alternatives, he saw their situation as similar to that of people who eat animals:
How do you change these people's behavior best? By saying you've never made a conscious decision to harm those animals. Basically you've been programmed from being a kid: "Be nice to cat and doggy, and eat meat." And I think some of these researchers, that's how they were taught, that's how they were programmed. And you want to reprogram them, and you're not going to reprogram them by saying we're saints and you're sinners, and we're going to clobber you with a two-by-four in order to educate you.
As Susan Fowler, editor of the trade magazine Lab Animal at the time of the Revlon campaign, put it:
There is no sense in Henry's campaign of: "Well, this is Revlon, and no one in Revlon is going to be interested in what we are doing, they're all the enemy." Rather ... he looks for—and kind of waits for, I think— someone to step out of the group and say: "Well, I understand what you're saying." [5]
Without this attitude, when Roger Shelley came along ready to listen to what Henry wanted Revlon to do, the opportunity to change the company's approach could easily have been missed.
Not dividing the world into saints and sinners isn't just sound tactics, it is also the way Henry thinks. "People can change, " he says. "I used to eat animals and I never considered myself a cannibal." [6]
6. Seek dialogue and attempt to work together to solve problems. Position issues as problems with solutions. This is best done by presenting realistic alternatives.
Because he doesn't think of his opponents as evil. Henry has no preconceptions about whether they will or will not work with him to reduce animal suffering. So he opens every campaign with a polite letter to the target organization—whether the American Museum of Natural History, Amnesty International, Revlon, Frank Perdue, or a meatpacker—inviting them to discuss the concerns he has. Sometimes Henry's invitations have been ignored, sometimes they have received an equally polite response from a person skilled in public relations who has no intention of doing anything, and sometimes they have led directly to the change he wanted without any public campaigning at all. But the fact that he suggests sitting down to talk about the problem before he does any public campaigning shows that he isn't just stirring up trouble for the fun of it, or as a way of raising funds for his organization.
Henry puts considerable thought into how the person or organization he is approaching could achieve its goals while eliminating or substantially reducing the suffering now being caused. The classic example of an imaginative solution was Henry's proposal to Revlon and other cosmetics manufacturers that they should fund research into alternatives to the Draize eye test. For more than a year before his campaign went public, Henry had been seeking a collaborative, rather than a confrontational, approach with Revlon. In the end, after the campaign finally did go public, Revlon accepted his proposal and, together with other companies, found that for a very small expenditure, relative to their income, they could develop an alternative that enabled them to have a more precise, cheaper form of product safety testing that did not involve animals at all.
Having a realistic solution to offer means that it is possible to accentuate the positive, instead of running a purely negative campaign. In interviews and leaflets about the Draize test, for example. Henry always emphasized that in vitro testing methods offered the prospect of quicker, cheaper, more reliable, and more elegant ways of testing the safety of new products.
It is always possible to find a positive side if you look hard enough, though it may not be one that will appeal to everyone involved on the other side. There was nothing Henry could propose that would appeal to the cat researcher Lester Aronson, who had spent decades mutilating animals and was too near the end of his career to try something different. But Aronson could not continue to experiment without the support of the American Museum of Natural History and the National Institutes of Health. The interests of the museum and of the NIH were not the same as Aronson's. Henry sought to split his adversaries by arguing that the pointless cruelty of the cat research was actually turning sensitive young people away from the life sciences. Closing Aronson's lab would be an opportunity to put the museum's research funds into something creative and respectful of life, which could inspire people to choose a career in biology. The problem was to convince the museum and the NIH that this really was a better outcome. To do so, Henry had to generate problems for them. For the museum, those turned out to be the prospect of continuing bad publicity and threats to its public funding. For the NIH, it was pressure from Congress that could have had an impact on its overall budget. With such negatives in the offing, the previously spurned positive solution of closing the lab and funding different kinds of research started to look more attractive.
In terms of offering a positive outcome, the difference between the campaigns against the cat experiments and those against the Draize test was one of degree, not kind. If your tube of toothpaste is blocked, whether you will be able to get any toothpaste out of it will depend on how badly blocked the tube is and on how much pressure is exerted on it. So, too, whether an institution or corporation will adopt an alternative will depend on how negatively it views the alternative and how much pressure it is under. The more realistic the alternative is, the less pressure will be needed to see it adopted.
7. Be ready for confrontation if your target remains unresponsive. If accepted channels don't work, prepare an escalating public awareness campaign to place your adversary on the defensive.
If point 6 is about making it easy for the toothpaste to come out of the tube, point 7 is about increasing the pressure if it still won't come. A public awareness campaign may take various forms. At the American Museum of Natural History, it started with an article in a local newspaper, then it was kept up by pickets and demonstrations, and finally it spread through the national media and specialist journals like Science. The Revlon campaign went public with a dramatic full-page advertisement in the New York Times, which itself generated more publicity. The campaign continued with demonstrations outside Revlon's offices. The Perdue and face-branding campaigns relied much more heavily on advertising and the use of the media. Advertising takes money, on which, see point 8.
8. Avoid bureaucracy.
Anyone who has been frustrated by lengthy committee meetings that absorb time and energy will sympathize with Henry's desire to get things done rather than spend time on organizational tangles. Worse still, bureaucratic structures all too often divert energy into making the organization grow, rather than getting results for the cause. Then when the organization grows, it needs staff and an office. So you get a situation in which people who want to make a difference for animals (or for street kids, or for rain forests, or for whatever cause) spend 80 percent of their time raising money just to keep the organization going. Most of the time is spent ensuring that everyone in the organization gets along with one another, feels appreciated, and is not upset because he or she expected to be promoted to a more responsible position or given an office with more windows.
Henry has been able to avoid such obstacles by working, essentially, on his own. That isn't a style that will suit everyone, but it has worked well for Henry. Animal Rights International has no members. It has a long list of advisers and its board consists of trusted close friends whom Henry can rely upon for support without hassles. Henry doesn't need a lot of money, but he does need some. He has been fortunate in finding two donors who support him regularly because they like to see their money making a difference.
When Henry needs more clout, he puts a coalition together—as he did on the repeal of the Metcalf-Hatch Act, in fighting against the Draize and LD50 tests, and now, to persuade McDonald's to take a leading role in improving the welfare of farm animals. Since his early success at the American Museum of Natural History, other organizations have been eager to join his coalitions. At their height, these coalitions have included hundreds of organizations, with memberships in the millions. Here, too, though, Henry keeps hassles to a minimum. Organizations are welcome to participate at whatever level they wish. Some get their supporters out to demonstrate or march, while others don't. Some pay for full-page advertisements, and others ask them to write letters to newspapers, where they may reach millions without spending a cent. What no organization can do is dictate policy. Henry consults widely, but in the end, he makes his own decisions, thus avoiding the time-consuming and sometimes divisive process of elections and committee meetings. Clearly, in the case of major disagreements, organizations have the option of leaving; but if the coalition is making progress, organizations will generally swallow the disagreements in order to be part of a successful team.
9. Don't assume that only legislation or legal action can solve the problem.
Henry has used elected representatives in his campaigns to put pressure on government agencies and to gain publicity. But the only campaign in which he achieved his aim through legislation was the repeal of the Metcalf-Hatch Act. Here, since bad legislation was the target of the campaign, he had no choice. Otherwise, as far as he can. Henry stays out of conventional political processes and keeps away from the courts: "No congressional bill, no legal gimmickry, by itself, will save the animals." No doubt there are other situations, and other issues, on which legislation will make a difference. But on the whole, Henry sees laws as maintaining the status quo. They will be changed only in order to keep disturbance at a minimum. The danger of getting deeply involved in the political process is that it often deflects struggles into what Henry calls "political gabbery." There is a lot of talk, but nothing happens. Political lobbying or legal maneuvering becomes a substitute for action.
10. Ask yourself: "Will it work?"
All of the preceding points are directed toward this last one. Before you launch a campaign, or continue with a campaign already begun, ask yourself if it will work. If you can't give a realistic account of the ways in which your plans will achieve your objectives, you need to change your plans. Keeping in touch with what the public is thinking, selecting a target, setting an achievable goal, getting accurate information, maintaining credibility, suggesting alternative solutions, being ready to talk to adversaries or to confront them if they will not talk—all of these are directed toward creating a campaign that is a practical means of making a difference. The overriding question is always: Will it work?
Notes
1. Barnaby Feder, videotaped interview with John Swindells, Chicago, November 1996.
2. The ten points that follow draw on Henry Spira, "Fighting for Animal Rights: Issues and Strategies," in Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams, eds., Ethics and Animals (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983), pp. 373-377, and Henry Spira, Strategies for Activists: From the Campaign Files of Henry Spira (New York: Animal Rights International, privately circulated in 1996), esp. p. 3.
3. "Singer Speaks with Spira," Animal Liberation, January-March 1989, p. 5.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. Susan Fowler, videotaped interview with author. New York, December 1996.
6. "Singer Speaks with Spira," p. 5.
Send questions or comments about this web site to Ann Berlin, annxtberlin [at] gmail.com
Online sporadically since 1985 & continuously since 1991. Fair Use Notice & Disclaimer
http://www.animalliberationfront.com
by Peter Singer
Monday Feb 4th, 2008 6:32 AM
Ten Ways to Make a Difference
Peter Singer
Excerpted from Ethics into Action, Oxford, 1998, pp. 184-192
The whole forward thrust of the movement Henry has created rests on his shoulders. If Henry disappears tomorrow, there's an interesting question as to how much of it will survive, how much will be nipped in the bud, how much will be lost by there not being some mechanism in place for someone else to pick up that mantle. In the time that I have talked to Henry, he has never come to grips with the issue of who is going to carry on in his footsteps and continue fighting the fight the way he fought it. [1]
This comment was made by Barnaby Feder, who profiled Henry for the New York Times Magazine. But Henry doesn't see the continuation of his work in terms of grooming individuals to take over from him. In many interviews, and in articles he has written himself. Henry has described the methods he has used to bring about change. His methods are what count, not who uses them. The following key points are, therefore, set out here so that others can continue to fight as he has done, whether for animals or for the oppressed and exploited more generally. [2]
1. Try to understand the public's current thinking and where it could he encouraged to go tomorrow. Above all, keep in touch with reality.
Too many activists mix only with other activists and imagine that everyone else thinks as they do. They start to believe in their own propaganda and lose their feel for what the average person in the street might think. They no longer know what is achievable and what is a fantasy that has grown out of their own intense conviction of the need for change. Henry saw this in the Socialist Workers Party, where members were so used to the Marxist- Trotskyist framework that they all accepted that they lost contact with the real world in which they were trying to make a revolution. As Henry put it: "You need to have a crap detector rotating all the time."
Henry grabs every opportunity to talk to people outside the animal movement. He'll start up a conversation with the person sitting next to him on a bus or train, mention an issue he is concerned about, and listen to their responses. How do they react? Can they feel themselves in the place of the victim? Are they outraged? What in particular do they focus on?
2. Select a target on the basis of vulnerabilities to public opinion, the intensity of suffering, and the opportunities for change.
Target selection is crucial. Henry knows that he can run an effective campaign when he feels sure that, as he said about the New York state law allowing laboratories to take dogs and cats from shelters, "it just defies common sense that the average guy in the street would say, 'Hey, that's a real neat thing to do.'"
You know that you have a good target if, by merely stating the issue, you put your adversary on the defensive. During the museum campaign, for example. Henry could ask the public: "Do you want your tax monies spent to mutilate cats in order to observe the sexual performance of crippled felines?" The museum was immediately in a very awkward position. Cosmetic testing made another good target, because you only had to ask, "Is another shampoo worth blinding rabbits?" to put Revlon officials on the defensive.
Keeping in touch with reality is a prerequisite for selecting the right target: If you don't know what the public currently thinks, you won't know what they will find acceptable and what will revolt them.
The other elements of point 2 suggest a balance between the good that the campaign can do and its likelihood of success. When Henry selected the cat experiments at the American Museum of Natural History as his first target, he knew that he would directly affect, at best, about sixty cats a year—a tiny number compared to many other possible targets. But the opportunity for change was great because of the nature of the experiments themselves and the location and vulnerability of the institution carrying out the experiments. In 1976, it was vital for the animal movement to have a victory, no matter how small, to encourage its own supporters to believe in the possibility of change and to gain some credibility with the wider world. With that victory gained, Henry began to give more weight, in choosing his targets, to the amount of suffering involved. Even so, that was never the dominant consideration. If you multiply x by y, but y = 0, then no matter how large x may be, the product will also be 0. So, too, no target should be chosen without considering both the amount of suffering and the opportunities for change.
3. Set goals that are achievable. Bring about meaningful change one step at a time. Raising awareness is not enough.
When Henry first took an interest in opposing animal experimentation, the antivivisection movement had no goal other than the abolition of vivisection and no strategy for achieving this goal other than "raising awareness"—that is, mailing out literature filled with pictures and descriptions of the horrors of vivisection. This was the strategy of a movement that talked mainly to itself. It had no idea how to get a hold on the levers of change, or even where those levers might be located. It seemed unaware of its own image as a bunch of ineffective cranks and did not know how to make vivisection an issue that would be picked up by the media. Henry's background in the civil rights movement told him that this was not the way to succeed:
One of the first things that I learned in earlier movements was that nothing is ever an all-or-nothing issue. It's not a one-day process, it's a long process. You need to see the world—including individuals and institutions—as not being static but in constant change, with change occurring one step at a time. It's incremental. It's almost like organic development. You might say, for instance, that a couple of blacks demanding to be seated at a lunch counter really doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference because most of them don't even have the money to buy anything at a lunch counter. But it did make a difference, it was a first step. Once you take that first step and you have that same first step in a number of places, you integrate a number of lunch counters, you set a whole pattern, and it's one of the steps that would generate the least amount of resistance. It's something that's winnable, but it encourages the black struggle and it clearly leads to the next step and the next step. I think that no movement has ever won on the basis of all or none. [3]
Some activists think that accepting less than, say, the total abolition of vivisection is a form of compromise that reduces their chances of a more complete victory. Henry's view is: "I want to abolish the use of animals as much as anybody else, but I say, let's do what we can do today and then do more tomorrow." [4] That is why he was willing to support moves to replace the LD50 with tests like the approximate lethal dose test, which still uses animals, but far fewer of them.
Look for targets that are not only winnable in themselves, but where winning will have expanding ripple effects. Ask yourself if success in one campaign will be a stepping stone toward still-bigger targets and more significant victories. The campaign against Revlon is an example: Because it made research into alternatives respectable, its most important effects have been felt beyond Revlon and even beyond the cosmetics industry as a whole.
While raising awareness is essential if we are to bring about change, Henry does not usually work directly at raising awareness. (His advertisements against meat are an exception.) Awareness follows a successful campaign, and a successful campaign will have achievable goals.
4. Establish credible sources of information and documentation. Never assume anything. Never deceive the media or the public. Maintain credibility, don't exaggerate or hype the issue.
Before starting a new campaign. Henry spends several months gathering information. Freedom of information legislation has helped enormously, but a lot of information is already out there, in the public domain. Experimenters report their experiments in scientific journals that are available in major libraries, and valuable data about corporations may also be a matter of public record. Henry is never content simply to quote from the leaflets of animal rights groups, or other opponents of the institution or corporation that he is targeting. He always goes to the source, which is preferably a publication of the target itself, or else a government document. Newspapers like the New York Times have been prepared to run Henry's advertisements making very specific allegations of wrongdoing against people like Frank Perdue because every allegation has been meticulously checked.
Some organizations describing experiments will conveniently omit details that make the experiments less shocking than they would otherwise appear. They may, for example, neglect to tell their readers that the animals were anesthetized at the time. But those who do this eventually lose credibility. Henry's credibility is extraordinarily high, both within the animal movement and with its opponents, because he regards it as his most important asset. It is therefore never to be sacrificed for a short-term gain, no matter how tempting that may be at the time.
5. Don't divide the world into saints and sinners.
When Henry wants to get someone—a scientist, a corporate executive, a legislator, or a government official—to do something differently, he puts himself in the position of that person:
[The question to ask yourself is:] If I were that person, what would make me want to change my behavior? If you accuse them of being a bunch of sadistic bastards, these people are not going to figure, "Hey, what is it I could do that's going to be different and make those people happy?" That's not the way the real world works.
Being personally hostile to an opponent may be a good way of letting off steam, but it doesn't win people over. When Henry wanted to persuade scientists working for corporations like Procter & Gamble to develop nonanimal alternatives, he saw their situation as similar to that of people who eat animals:
How do you change these people's behavior best? By saying you've never made a conscious decision to harm those animals. Basically you've been programmed from being a kid: "Be nice to cat and doggy, and eat meat." And I think some of these researchers, that's how they were taught, that's how they were programmed. And you want to reprogram them, and you're not going to reprogram them by saying we're saints and you're sinners, and we're going to clobber you with a two-by-four in order to educate you.
As Susan Fowler, editor of the trade magazine Lab Animal at the time of the Revlon campaign, put it:
There is no sense in Henry's campaign of: "Well, this is Revlon, and no one in Revlon is going to be interested in what we are doing, they're all the enemy." Rather ... he looks for—and kind of waits for, I think— someone to step out of the group and say: "Well, I understand what you're saying." [5]
Without this attitude, when Roger Shelley came along ready to listen to what Henry wanted Revlon to do, the opportunity to change the company's approach could easily have been missed.
Not dividing the world into saints and sinners isn't just sound tactics, it is also the way Henry thinks. "People can change, " he says. "I used to eat animals and I never considered myself a cannibal." [6]
6. Seek dialogue and attempt to work together to solve problems. Position issues as problems with solutions. This is best done by presenting realistic alternatives.
Because he doesn't think of his opponents as evil. Henry has no preconceptions about whether they will or will not work with him to reduce animal suffering. So he opens every campaign with a polite letter to the target organization—whether the American Museum of Natural History, Amnesty International, Revlon, Frank Perdue, or a meatpacker—inviting them to discuss the concerns he has. Sometimes Henry's invitations have been ignored, sometimes they have received an equally polite response from a person skilled in public relations who has no intention of doing anything, and sometimes they have led directly to the change he wanted without any public campaigning at all. But the fact that he suggests sitting down to talk about the problem before he does any public campaigning shows that he isn't just stirring up trouble for the fun of it, or as a way of raising funds for his organization.
Henry puts considerable thought into how the person or organization he is approaching could achieve its goals while eliminating or substantially reducing the suffering now being caused. The classic example of an imaginative solution was Henry's proposal to Revlon and other cosmetics manufacturers that they should fund research into alternatives to the Draize eye test. For more than a year before his campaign went public, Henry had been seeking a collaborative, rather than a confrontational, approach with Revlon. In the end, after the campaign finally did go public, Revlon accepted his proposal and, together with other companies, found that for a very small expenditure, relative to their income, they could develop an alternative that enabled them to have a more precise, cheaper form of product safety testing that did not involve animals at all.
Having a realistic solution to offer means that it is possible to accentuate the positive, instead of running a purely negative campaign. In interviews and leaflets about the Draize test, for example. Henry always emphasized that in vitro testing methods offered the prospect of quicker, cheaper, more reliable, and more elegant ways of testing the safety of new products.
It is always possible to find a positive side if you look hard enough, though it may not be one that will appeal to everyone involved on the other side. There was nothing Henry could propose that would appeal to the cat researcher Lester Aronson, who had spent decades mutilating animals and was too near the end of his career to try something different. But Aronson could not continue to experiment without the support of the American Museum of Natural History and the National Institutes of Health. The interests of the museum and of the NIH were not the same as Aronson's. Henry sought to split his adversaries by arguing that the pointless cruelty of the cat research was actually turning sensitive young people away from the life sciences. Closing Aronson's lab would be an opportunity to put the museum's research funds into something creative and respectful of life, which could inspire people to choose a career in biology. The problem was to convince the museum and the NIH that this really was a better outcome. To do so, Henry had to generate problems for them. For the museum, those turned out to be the prospect of continuing bad publicity and threats to its public funding. For the NIH, it was pressure from Congress that could have had an impact on its overall budget. With such negatives in the offing, the previously spurned positive solution of closing the lab and funding different kinds of research started to look more attractive.
In terms of offering a positive outcome, the difference between the campaigns against the cat experiments and those against the Draize test was one of degree, not kind. If your tube of toothpaste is blocked, whether you will be able to get any toothpaste out of it will depend on how badly blocked the tube is and on how much pressure is exerted on it. So, too, whether an institution or corporation will adopt an alternative will depend on how negatively it views the alternative and how much pressure it is under. The more realistic the alternative is, the less pressure will be needed to see it adopted.
7. Be ready for confrontation if your target remains unresponsive. If accepted channels don't work, prepare an escalating public awareness campaign to place your adversary on the defensive.
If point 6 is about making it easy for the toothpaste to come out of the tube, point 7 is about increasing the pressure if it still won't come. A public awareness campaign may take various forms. At the American Museum of Natural History, it started with an article in a local newspaper, then it was kept up by pickets and demonstrations, and finally it spread through the national media and specialist journals like Science. The Revlon campaign went public with a dramatic full-page advertisement in the New York Times, which itself generated more publicity. The campaign continued with demonstrations outside Revlon's offices. The Perdue and face-branding campaigns relied much more heavily on advertising and the use of the media. Advertising takes money, on which, see point 8.
8. Avoid bureaucracy.
Anyone who has been frustrated by lengthy committee meetings that absorb time and energy will sympathize with Henry's desire to get things done rather than spend time on organizational tangles. Worse still, bureaucratic structures all too often divert energy into making the organization grow, rather than getting results for the cause. Then when the organization grows, it needs staff and an office. So you get a situation in which people who want to make a difference for animals (or for street kids, or for rain forests, or for whatever cause) spend 80 percent of their time raising money just to keep the organization going. Most of the time is spent ensuring that everyone in the organization gets along with one another, feels appreciated, and is not upset because he or she expected to be promoted to a more responsible position or given an office with more windows.
Henry has been able to avoid such obstacles by working, essentially, on his own. That isn't a style that will suit everyone, but it has worked well for Henry. Animal Rights International has no members. It has a long list of advisers and its board consists of trusted close friends whom Henry can rely upon for support without hassles. Henry doesn't need a lot of money, but he does need some. He has been fortunate in finding two donors who support him regularly because they like to see their money making a difference.
When Henry needs more clout, he puts a coalition together—as he did on the repeal of the Metcalf-Hatch Act, in fighting against the Draize and LD50 tests, and now, to persuade McDonald's to take a leading role in improving the welfare of farm animals. Since his early success at the American Museum of Natural History, other organizations have been eager to join his coalitions. At their height, these coalitions have included hundreds of organizations, with memberships in the millions. Here, too, though, Henry keeps hassles to a minimum. Organizations are welcome to participate at whatever level they wish. Some get their supporters out to demonstrate or march, while others don't. Some pay for full-page advertisements, and others ask them to write letters to newspapers, where they may reach millions without spending a cent. What no organization can do is dictate policy. Henry consults widely, but in the end, he makes his own decisions, thus avoiding the time-consuming and sometimes divisive process of elections and committee meetings. Clearly, in the case of major disagreements, organizations have the option of leaving; but if the coalition is making progress, organizations will generally swallow the disagreements in order to be part of a successful team.
9. Don't assume that only legislation or legal action can solve the problem.
Henry has used elected representatives in his campaigns to put pressure on government agencies and to gain publicity. But the only campaign in which he achieved his aim through legislation was the repeal of the Metcalf-Hatch Act. Here, since bad legislation was the target of the campaign, he had no choice. Otherwise, as far as he can. Henry stays out of conventional political processes and keeps away from the courts: "No congressional bill, no legal gimmickry, by itself, will save the animals." No doubt there are other situations, and other issues, on which legislation will make a difference. But on the whole, Henry sees laws as maintaining the status quo. They will be changed only in order to keep disturbance at a minimum. The danger of getting deeply involved in the political process is that it often deflects struggles into what Henry calls "political gabbery." There is a lot of talk, but nothing happens. Political lobbying or legal maneuvering becomes a substitute for action.
10. Ask yourself: "Will it work?"
All of the preceding points are directed toward this last one. Before you launch a campaign, or continue with a campaign already begun, ask yourself if it will work. If you can't give a realistic account of the ways in which your plans will achieve your objectives, you need to change your plans. Keeping in touch with what the public is thinking, selecting a target, setting an achievable goal, getting accurate information, maintaining credibility, suggesting alternative solutions, being ready to talk to adversaries or to confront them if they will not talk—all of these are directed toward creating a campaign that is a practical means of making a difference. The overriding question is always: Will it work?
Notes
1. Barnaby Feder, videotaped interview with John Swindells, Chicago, November 1996.
2. The ten points that follow draw on Henry Spira, "Fighting for Animal Rights: Issues and Strategies," in Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams, eds., Ethics and Animals (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983), pp. 373-377, and Henry Spira, Strategies for Activists: From the Campaign Files of Henry Spira (New York: Animal Rights International, privately circulated in 1996), esp. p. 3.
3. "Singer Speaks with Spira," Animal Liberation, January-March 1989, p. 5.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. Susan Fowler, videotaped interview with author. New York, December 1996.
6. "Singer Speaks with Spira," p. 5.
Send questions or comments about this web site to Ann Berlin, annxtberlin [at] gmail.com
Online sporadically since 1985 & continuously since 1991. Fair Use Notice & Disclaimer
http://www.animalliberationfront.com
For more information:
http://www.animalliberationfront.com
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$190.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network