Social media performer more engaged in self-promotion than in message-focused statement SAN DIEGO, California––Claiming more than 300,000 people had viewed her 60-odd (and sometimes very odd) YouTube videos on vegan and animal rights themes, Nasim Aghdam on April 3, 2018, two days before what would have been her 38th birthday, abruptly multiplied her audience and […]
Leaving The Wild: The Unnatural History of Dogs, Cats, Cows & Horses
by Gavin Ehringer Pegasus Books, distributed by W.W. Norton & Co. 364 pages. $27.95 hardcover. In stores December 5, 2017. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Remember the most gripping and informative few books you ever read about dogs, cats, cows, and/or horses, by authors as thorough as the multi-time best sellers Desmond Morris, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, […]
Did the bastards kill any bustards? Oil sheik hunters evicted from Pakistan
Officially, the oil sheiks didn’t use their falcons THARPARKAR, Pakistan––Birding enthusiasts, conservationists, and inquiring minds throughout Pakistan are wondering how endangered houbara bustards really fared this past winter, after––according to the Urdu newspaper Daily Dunya––an alleged falconing camp set up in Tharparkar, Sindh district, by Qatari prince Fahad Abdul Rahman Al Thani was removed […]
How plastic reindeer can feed the world
(at least as well as livestock gift charities) The 2015 holiday giving season is here. Predictably as plastic replicas of Santa Claus’ reindeer appearing on Sunbelt rooftops where no snow ever falls, livestock gift charities including World Vision, Oxfam, and the original, Heifer International, are saturating mass media with appeals to donors to subsidize distributing […]
Super floods in Pakistan: question mark on animal agriculture
Ill-considered food policies aggravate effects of global warming The super floods in Pakistan may be the result of a global ecological shift, but the country is also suffering from misguided domestic food production policies, possibly based on bad advice from donor nations and international charities. Has the world reached its limits on the production capacity […]
Vultures at play keep ghouls away
Loss of vultures haunts the Indian subcontinent CHANDIGARH, NAIROBI, LITTLE ROCK––Vultures darkening the sky, trees, and rooftops in growing numbers near slaughterhouses throughout the U.S. South and Midwest in recent years signify as Halloween 2015 approaches that the U.S. has little to fear from ghouls. Ghouls, in original definition, are grave robbers and scavengers […]
“Xi & Obama: please talk tigers!”
Fourteen leading tiger experts appeal to Chinese and U.S. presidents Discussion of China’s tiger farms and its growing domestic trade in luxury tiger products was unfortunately not on the table for President Xi’s September 24, 2015 visit with U.S. President Barack Obama. Between 5,000 and 6,000 tigers are being farmed today in China for a luxury […]
Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World
Edited by Don Hunter Univ. Press of Colorado (5589 Arapahoe Ave., Suite 206-C, Boulder, CO 80303), 2012. 216 pages. Hardcover $26.95, e-book $21.95. Reviewed by Merritt Clifton Don Hunter, who assembled Snow Leopard: Stories from the Roof of the World, acknowledges inspiration and help in arranging publication from wildlife ethologist Marc Bekoff, co-editor of the 2008 […]
Did botched pre-Ramadan sheep shipment start an epidemic?
TBILISI, Georgia––How many sheep were casualties of a botched pre-Ramadan live transport from the nation of Georgia to Saudi Arabia and Jordan in late May 2015? The authentic toll might never be known. Exported for ritual sacrifice, the sheep instead fell ill in transit, were refused at several ports, and reportedly died in large numbers upon […]
Pain in my heart: Why the lack of attention to animal welfare in international development?
by Janice Cox The many ways in which the development of industrial animal agriculture harms humans, animals and the environment in developing nations have been subjects of concern to far-sighted thinkers for more than a century. The lineage of intellectual concern about such issues includes Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977), Barbara Ward (1914-1981), Lester Brown (1934-), Frances Moore Lappe […]