Global Alliance for Rabies Control still says there are at least 120 times more rabies deaths than found by 18 years of annual body counts NEW DELHI, India––Mad dogs and rabies are finally following Englishmen out of India, approximately 165 years after an 1857 New York Times report indicated that the disease had apparently […]
Bullfighting politics take sharp twists in India
Bullfighting foes receive national honors even as Tamil Nadu state government drops charges against 26,450 bullfighting defenders & heads of both major national parties support bullfights CHENNAI, Tamil Nadu, India––Jallikattu, the Tamil Nadu form of bullfighting in which mobs abuse the bulls as they run through the streets during harvest festivals, on February 20, […]
Maneka makes waves as animal welfare minister (November 1998)
Moved rapidly on marine mammal exhibition, cattle transport, & wild-caught bird trade NEW DELHI––Contrary to Press Trust of India and New Zealand Press Association reports of October 7, Indian minister for social justice and empowerment Maneka Gandhi did not ban animal experiments in India effective on October 8, 1998 but she did announce draft regulations […]
Did Nagaland ban dog meat, or did a politician just repeat an empty promise?
Advocacy groups in 2020 again claim the same “victory” they claimed in 2016––which never happened KOHIMA, Nagaland, India––Two weeks after Nagaland chief secretary Temjen Toy on July 3, 2020 announced an impending ban on dog meat, in the last part of India where dogs had been legally eaten, how, when, and if the ban […]
Sperm-sorting comes to India through cow-loving Modi government
Slippery business may stop the bull calf surplus NEW DELHI, India––Cracking down hard against illegal cattle slaughter and exports to slaughter, while boosting milk production, the Hindi nationalist Nahendra Modi regime ruling India since 2014 caused the perennial Indian bull calf surplus to explode. Now, however, the Modi government has reportedly […]
#DontGetMilked makes a splash in the heart of hypocritical cow worship
Animal advocates wean themselves from the “gaushala” dairy tradition NEW DELHI, India––The billboard message “#DontGetMilked. Ditch Dairy! Go Vegan!” posted recently in Nehru Place, New Delhi by the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO), is a crowd-stopper. It might not rate a blink, let alone a shocked doubletake from visiting American and European […]
Heads & Tails, by Maneka Gandhi
People For Animals (A4 Maharani Bagh, New Delhi 110 065, India).184 pages, paperback; 1993. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12498154-heads-and-tails Reviewed by Merritt Clifton “I have always detested milk,” Maneka Gandhi opined in the first line of her first syndicated column, entitled “Milk, Meat and Animal Violence.” “My son too refused to drink cow’s milk when he was weaned,” she continued, […]
Thin ice & few buyers for pelts, but Canadian sealers kill 60,000 seal pups anyway
2018 seal hunt close to the end ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland––Perhaps the surest sign that the annual Atlantic Canada seal hunt is fading into history is the lack of prominence it has had this spring in the St. Johns Telegram, the leading media voice serving Newfoundland since 1879, which through April 2018 had barely mentioned it […]
What Gau Rakshas, the ALF, & “pit bullies” have in common
“The difference between vigilantes and animal rights activists” NEW DELHI, India; WASHINGTON D.C.––Responding to “animal rights violence” that has cost at least 10 human lives in two years, the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations on May 7, 2017 spelled out “The Difference between Vigilantes and Animal Rights Activists.” Strongly worded as it was, […]
What if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled rodeo unconstitutional?
It happened in India! NEW DELHI, India––Imagine the U.S. Supreme Court resoundingly rebuking the Donald Trump presidential administration by holding rodeo to be unconstitutional, regardless of how culturally entrenched it is among “red state voters,” his support base. Difficult though it may be to imagine newly appointed U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions moving under […]