Healthy Young Giraffe Wantonly Killed in Danish Zoo

Innocent Marius, killed by the Copenhagen Zoo, despite offers to rehome him.

EDITOR’S NOTE—
A COUPLE DAYS AGO I got a mail from Care2.com alerting me about a dreadful incident involving a young giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo (see below).

ho makes a zoo’s scientific director God? How coldhearted can some humans be? When is the killing of a healthy captive animal a scientifically indispensable act instead of the latest demonstration of the ethical bankruptcy of speciesism?

The case of Marius, a healthy, 2-year old male giraffe living until a few days ago at his birthplace, the Copenhagen Zoo, forces me to focus on this topic once again.

I’ve even written about it. In my view, speciesism is, by and large, a primitive form of fascism. As a species, we’re a global tyranny of horrific, mind-boggling dimensions to every other creature on earth, the devil itself, if there is such a thing, a regime supported by our undisputed supremacy in brainpower, and, as those who believe in religion might argue, “proximity to God.”

Zoo Giraffe Killed, Dissected, Fed to Lions
COPENHAGEN, Denmark February 9, 2014 (AP)

By RICHARD STEED and MALIN RISING Associated Press

PHOTO: Marius, a male giraffe, lies dead before being dissected, after he was put down at Copenhagen Zoo on Sunday, Feb. 9, 2014.

Saying it needed to prevent inbreeding, the Copenhagen Zoo killed a 2-year-old giraffe and fed its remains to lions as visitors watched, ignoring a petition signed by thousands and offers from other zoos and a private individual to save the animal.

Marius, a healthy male, was put down Sunday using a bolt pistol, said zoo spokesman Tobias Stenbaek Bro. Visitors, including children, were invited to watch while the giraffe was then skinned and fed to the lions.

Marius’ plight triggered a wave of online protests and renewed debate about the conditions of zoo animals. Before the giraffe was killed, an online petition to save it had received more than 20,000 signatures.

But the public feeding of Marius’ remains to the lions was popular at Copenhagen Zoo. Stenbaek Bro said it allowed parents to decide whether their children should watch what the zoo regards as an important display of scientific knowledge about animals.

“I’m actually proud because I think we have given children a huge understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe that they wouldn’t have had from watching a giraffe in a photo,” Stenbaek Bro said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

He said the zoo, which now has seven giraffes left, followed the recommendation of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria to put down Marius by because there already were a lot of giraffes with similar genes in the organization’s breeding program.

The Amsterdam-based EAZA has 347 members, including many large zoos in European capitals, and works to conserve global biodiversity and achieve the highest standards of care and breeding for animals.

Stenbaek Bro said EAZA membership isn’t mandatory, but most responsible zoos are members of the organization.

Bengt Holst: Undisturbed by his decision. "I'd do it again."

Perfect fit: Bengt Holst, a defiant speciesist deciding the fate of nonhuman creatures.

He said his zoo had turned down offers from other ones to take Marius and an offer from a private individual who wanted to buy the giraffe for 500,000 euros ($680,000).

Stenbaek Bro said a significant part of EAZA membership is that the zoos don’t own the animals themselves, but govern them, and therefore can’t sell them to anyone outside the organization that doesn’t follow the same set of rules.

He also said it is important for the breeding programs to work.

Bengt Holst, Copenhagen Zoo’s scientific director, said it turned down an offer from Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Britain, which is a member of EAZA, because Marius’ older brother lives there and the park’s space could be better used by a “genetically more valuable giraffe.”

Yorkshire Wildlife Park said it called the zoo on Saturday with a last-minute offer to house Marius in a new giraffe house with room for an extra male. It said it was saddened by the killing of Marius, but “without knowing the full details it would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Copenhagen Zoo also turned down an offer from a zoo in northern Sweden, because it was not an EAZA member and didn’t want to comply with the same high standards, Holst said.

“I know the giraffe is a nice looking animal, but I don’t think there would have been such an outrage if it had been an antelope, and I don’t think anyone would have lifted an eyebrow if it was a pig,” said Holst. {Editor’s Note: Denmark is one of Europe’s largest producers of “pork”, having many factory farms dedicated to raising pigs.}

mariusGiraffeButchering Copenhagen Zoo doesn’t give giraffes contraceptives or castrate them because that could have unwanted side effects on their internal organs, and the zoo regards parental care as important, said Holst.

EAZA said it supported the zoo’s decision to “humanely put the animal down and believes strongly in the need for genetic and demographic management within animals in human care.”

However, the organization Animal Rights Sweden said the case highlights what it believes zoos do to animals regularly.

“It is no secret that animals are killed when there is no longer space, or if the animals don’t have genes that are interesting enough,” it said in a statement. “The only way to stop this is to not visit zoos.”

“When the cute animal babies that attract visitors grow up, they are not as interesting anymore,” said the organization.

Elisa Allen, spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in the U.K., said Marius’ case should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who “still harbors the illusion that zoos serve any purpose beyond incarcerating intelligent animals for profit.”

She said in a statement, “Giraffes rarely die of old age in captivity, and had Marius not been euthanized today, he would have lived out his short life as a living exhibit, stranded in a cold climate, thousands of miles away from his true home.”

—

Malin Rising reported from Stockholm, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.

___________

ALERT: Please circulate

This past Sunday, the Copenhagen Zoo killed an 18-month-old giraffe, Marius, with a shot to the head. This was a completely irresponsible decision on the part of zoo officials, and we must make sure it never happens again.

Fire Bengt Holst For Having Marius the Giraffe Killed

please share

it helps!

Dear Patrice,

Marius was born at the Copenhagen Zoo and was in perfect health. But because his genes were deemed too common, he was considered useless for the zoo’s breeding program. Several zoos offered Marius a new home and almost 30,000 people signed a Care2 petition to save Marius’ life but Holst did not respond.

Zoo breeding programs play a valuable role in helping many species, including endangered animals, to survive. But the Copenhagen Zoo acted irresponsibly and unethically by executing Marius in cold blood. Right after Marius was dead, the zoo staged a public dissection of his body — children were among those witnessing this — and fed his remains to the lions.

Holst has undermined the claims of the Copenhagen Zoo to be an ethical institution which cares for the welfare of animals. As Stine Jensen of Denmark’s Organization against the Suffering of Animals said, the zoo treated Marius as a “waste product.”

That’s no message for a zoo to make. Tell the Copenhagen Zoo to fire Bernt Holst from his position as scientific director for killing Marius, a young giraffe who had his whole life ahead of him.

Thank you for taking action,Kristina C.
Care2 and ThePetitionSite Team

Keith Olbermann reports on the Sochi dog strays nightmare

Patrice Greanville
Editorial

SochiDogs-Olbermann
Keith Olbermann rightfully denouncing the cruel treatment accorded abandoned animals in the Sochi area.
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The handling of strays in Sochi leaves much to be desired. In fact, it’s a disgrace. It’s a stain on an event that is designed to elevate and unite humanity and cast the host nation in an admiring light.

We do not think this is a case of extraordinary Russian villainy, since, besides the fact things of this nature happened in China (Peking Games) and elsewhere in preparation for these types of monster events, the Olympic Committee is also responsible for the planning and should have seen to it that appropriate and humane measures were taken from the first day to avoid the painful spectacle of helpless animals being rounded up and killed in horrible ways. Yet, ultimately, we know speciesism is the cause, the assumption that human supremacy carries no moral obligations toward “lesser beings” and that (for those who still believe in the self-serving claptrap of dominionistic religions) this horrid state of affairs was indeed sanctioned by God.

Incidentally, the IOC is an international body with many heavy hitters. “The members of this unelected, multi-billion dollar, transnational organization include royalty, corporate executives, politicians, and retired military personal. If these savory characters aren’t enough for you, they even have the war criminal Henry Kissinger as a member of honor. The organization’s members had until recently served life terms, and no women were included in the organization until 1981.” (See our companion piece on this topic, A Critical History of the Olympics).
•
Below, Olbermann’s coverage of the Sochi stray dogs tragedy. Thanks, Keith.

The Killing of Stray Dogs in Sochi
By Keith Olbermann / ESPN

The Sochi Stray Dog Nightmare Continues

Letters: The hunting mania and other degeneracies

Giraffe murdered, with proud at large murderer at the site. This image sums up the abject degeneracy of our civilization and utter uselessness and corruption of our so-called governments.

Giraffe murdered, with undisturbed murderer at the site of his crime. This image sums up the abject degeneracy of our civilization and the utter uselessness and corruption of the leaders who run our societies, to say nothing of the bankrupt media that does nothing to counteract these outrages. It is an indictment of a whole global system, and the pervasive, mostly unchallenged selfishness of our species.

To the editor:

I believe it was in one of your Greanville Posts that included a photo of a giraffe that some British asshole had just shot. He, his wife and their (young) children, were posing near and on it, all big smiles. I still haven’t gotten over that one. What kind of a degenerate would shoot a giraffe for crying out loud. What’s next on his list, the actual horse featured in Spielberg’s “War Horse?”

I’m glad you are publishing opinions on sport hunting aimed at discrediting it and the bottom-feeders who enjoy it.

A Swiftian solution to the wildlife plague

Here is a satirical little piece I wrote some time ago, since I’m most familiar with deer hunting in Texas. Please feel free to use it if you want. If you do, you might want to write a preface so that readers understand how wildlife management is handled in Texas and other states. Also, hunting magazines always use the euphemism ‘harvest’ rather than ‘kill.’ “Cull-small” is a wildlife management term for bucks with very small antlers. They should be readily shot (culled) to get them out of the gene pool, which would result in many more trophy bucks according to wildlife managers.

Here it is:

“Since wildlife management supposedly works so well with wildlife, its principles should be applied to the hunting cult itself in view of their declining numbers and cull-small ‘antlers’ [thinning hair, bad comb-overs (most deer hunters think of their hair as antlers)]. While many non-hunters and certainly all anti-hunting folks believe hunting accidents are causes for dancing in the street, there are simply not enough hunters accidently harvested every season to conserve and enhance hunter populations; i.e., increase their numbers and improve their trophy attributes like fuller heads of hair. In view of that disappointing deficiency, the commissioners that run the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department should develop and implement “hunter management” programs in which hunters harvest each other on hunt-the-hunter ranches that are surrounded by high-voltage fencing. Like the animals on killing ranches, we wouldn’t want these deviants to have a means of escape.

Hunters would use the same grossly unsportsmanlike hunting gadgets used for killing deer, but modified for human consumption. Electronically-timed and activated bait feeders would be filled with buttered popcorn or McDonald’s fries instead of corn. Hunters would lure other hunters out of hiding by pouring cheap perfume all over themselves and their surroundings. Drooling, sex-crazed hunters would come crashing out of the brush to “hunter calls” that imitate the moans of a porn star faking an orgasm. Life-size deer decoys would be replaced with life-size inflatable dolls with blond wigs. Rifle hunters would harvest rifle hunters, and bow hunters would shoot those little sticks into other bow hunters. An arrow stuck in his fat ass would certainly convince a shrieking hunter just how blatantly sadistic bow hunting is.

Just as wildlife management aims to produce lots of trophy bucks, hunter management could produce robust populations of trophy hunters with antlers like fight promoter Don King’s. Sadly, it would likely be abolished before any real progress could be made. Soccer moms and ladies who lunch would soon demand a stop to hunter management programs. The sight of jacked-up pickups speeding to and fro with dead trophy hunters piled up in their beds would prove almost as much of a distraction to those women as a bent-over construction worker’s butt cleavage. In addition to causing traffic mishaps, there would be a lot of bug-eyed precious little darlings late to school or karate lessons. Plus, no matter how rugged his face or how thick his perfectly-coiffed hair, the mounted head of an angry hunter would be as nauseating as mounted animal heads are to evolved men, women and children.”

Bill Buchanan_________

Is Freeing a Duck Terrorism?

By Ryan Shapiro, Truthout | Op-EDS

duck-Terrorism
(Photo: blmiers2)
•
A lawsuit filed today seeks to strike down the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Politicians, industry and law enforcement too long employed the rhetoric and apparatus of national security to counter effective animal advocacy, labeling those who exercise constitutionally protected rights “terrorists.”

It is only by chance that I write this from behind a desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, rather than from behind bars in a federal prison. In 2003, I helped coordinate an undercover investigation of notoriously cruel foie gras factory farms. We found ducks crammed inside cages so small they couldn’t stand up, spread their wings, or turn around. As an act of civil disobedience, a group of us openly rescued a number of ducks from this abuse. We also made a short documentary film to educate the public about what was being hidden behind the closed doors of these factory farms. The images we captured played a crucial role in sparking national and international campaigns against foie gras and in the successful 2004 ballot initiative to ban the production of foie gras in California.

From the Boston Tea Party to the suffragettes to the civil rights movement, civil disobedience has a long and proud history in American politics. In this tradition, we did everything openly and took full responsibility for our actions. My fellow investigator Sarahjane Blum and I were eventually convicted of misdemeanor trespass and sentenced to community service. This was a reasonable and acceptable price to pay for bringing to light the realities of factory farming. However, even as we performed our community service, a series of legislative and law enforcement shifts began to make future activism far more dangerous.

In 2004, the FBI designated the animal rights and environmental movements the leading domestic terror threats in the United States. This is despite the fact that neither movement has ever physically injured a single person in their decades of existence in the US, while violence from the far right has proliferated. (Reports document approximately 190 injuries a year and 30 deaths between 2007 and 2012 due to right-wing violence, most of it carried out against ethnic and religious minorities and LGBTQ people.) Then, in 2006, under heavy lobbying from the pharmaceutical, animal agriculture and fur industries, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA). The AETA is designer legislation that targets political dissent directed at any business that uses or sells animals or animal products – or any company “connected to” such “animal enterprises.” Simply hurting the profits of these businesses – by, for example, producing and screening a film that inspires people to boycott foie gras or other animal products – qualifies as a terrorist offense. Indeed, a distressingly high number of my closest friends have been convicted as terrorists for engaging in free speech and civil disobedience advocacy on behalf of animals.

As I watched my friends, classmates and roommates hauled off to federal prison, another industry-led attack on animal activists was gaining momentum. In recent years, Big Ag has pushed hard to enact state-level “ag-gag” bills to criminalize undercover investigations of factory farmsand slaughter plants. These laws would put an end to the exposés of stomach-churning violence to animals “raised” for food. The fierce ag-gag debate resumed this month, including right next door in New Hampshire where a proposed bill would severely curtail whistleblowers’ ability to document animal abuse.

Ag-gag bills are based on legislation drafted by the corporate-dominated American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. As with the federal AETA, ALEC’s model “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” seeks to turn speech critical of animal industries into “terrorism.”

As intended, ag-gag laws and the federal AETA have cast a chill over the animal rights community. Many advocates, myself included, have begun tocensor themselves and refrain from speech that is protected by the First Amendment, or from peaceful civil disobedience in the tradition of some of America’s greatest voices. These fears are well-grounded. Through the Freedom of Information Act, I’ve uncovered documents that reveal explicit FBI consideration of federal AETA charges against those who expose factory farming cruelty.

As a Ph.D. candidate at M.I.T.,my research explores the policing of dissent and the political functioning of national security. I have found that politicians, industry and law enforcement have long employed the rhetoric and apparatus of national security to counter effective animal advocacy. The AETA and ag-gag initiatives stand on the shoulders of a century of similar efforts to marginalize animal protectionists as threats to American security.

It is time to break with this shameful history. That’s why I am in court today as a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights. We seek to have the federal AETA struck down as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech. Though I am now a scholar behind a desk, I just as easily could have found myself a “terrorist” behind bars. Corporate power should not dictate the limits of political dissent. It’s time to do away with the undemocratic and unconstitutional AETA.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ryan Shapiro is a Ph.D. candidate in the program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) at M.I.T.

The Pestilence of Great White (mostly Christian) Hunters

By Ruth Eisenbud, Animal Issues Correspondent
Annotated by Patrice Greanville

Yet another human degenerate striking a pose over animal needlessly murdered. It is his breed that should go into prompt extinction.

This is a follow up to LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND HEARTLESS [https://www.greanvillepost.com/2014/02/02/lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-heartless/]

Thomas Babington Macaulay, a coldblooded imperialist.

Why is it that almost all the photo ops of hunters gloating over their prey are white Christian males, and more recently, women of the same demographic? The canned hunt of a rare black rhino in namibia was auctioned off by a hunting association in Texas, heavily infused by a christian perspective, to an inheritor of dominion for $350,000. The glory of dominion comes with a hefty price tag, but then man’s dominion over the animals carries with it the imperative of triumph over nature and animalkind.

“The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.’” —Genesis

Hunters —and in general sociopaths—scoff at images like this. They see neither the message nor its sheer beauty.

The magnates of Indian corporations and government officials go out of their way to proclaim they are vegetarian from birth, as this comes with a certain amount of status… There are no photo ops of the rich and famous among these ranks posed triumphantly over animal corpses.

Although Indian princes had long practiced “recreational hunting of tigers and other animals, the floodgates were open with the arrival of European conquerors, chiefly the British. It was precisely British imperialist Lord Macaulay who brought the notion of the”Great White Hunter to India (as they did to Africa):

Lord Macaulay

An Indian movie star, Salman Khan (see below), from the semitic religion of Islam, was arrested for deer hunting in Rajistan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/23/salman-khan-deer-killing_n_2939720.html

Another imbecile displaying his "prowess".

Another moral imbecile displaying his “prowess”.

Though he offered bribes to poor villagers, they refused to cooperate and reported him to Wildlife Services. In Christian nations wildlife services takes bribes in the form of fees, as it functions to aid and abet in every step of the hunting process from licensing to implementation.No one in dominion nations is arrested for hunting. In fact there are canned hunts of exotic animals, pigeon shoots, python slaughterfests, wolf derbies, squirrel slams and culls of every animal. The latest declared culls, being the effort to kill all the mute swans of New York City along with the destruction of 3000 deer in eastern Long Island.

Though Lord Macaulay brought the Great White Hunter to India, with the scheme to invalidate Indian values, with liberation from its dominion masters all the excesses of hunting have now been banned by The Wildermess Protection Act of India. India has had the good sense to return to its traditionally more compassionate view of animals, based on the wisdom of ahimsa: reverence for ALL life:

"For there is nothing inaccessible for death.
All beings are fond of life, hate pain, like pleasure,
shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life
is dear." Jain Acharanga Sutra.

•••
Salman Khan Deer Killing: Bollywood Actor And Others Charged WIth Killing Rare Species

Ironic that for uber-egotistical celebrity Salman Khan being human does not include compassion.

Ironic that for uber-egotistical celebrity Salman Khan being human does not include having any compassion.

Bollywood film actor Salman Khan smiles during the launch of his ‘Being Human’ flagship clothing store in Mumbai on January 17, 2013.

An Indian court will try five Bollywood actors, including action hero Salman Khan, for allegedly killing two rare deer in a western India wildlife preserve 14 years ago.

Attorney K.L. Vyas says that while Salman Khan was charged with shooting the bucks, Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre and others allegedly abetted the crime by encouraging him while hunting in Rajasthan state.

The Indian court system is notoriously slow, and it often takes years and even decades for a case to go to trial.

••••

If convicted, the actors could face three to six years in prison. They deny the charges.
Four of the accused appeared before a magistrate Saturday.

On Thursday, Sanjay Dutt had a conviction for illegal possession of weapons upheld, and the Bollywood leading man now faces prison time.