The witness Dr Franz Josef Plank is the only witness called by the prosecution from the side of animal welfare. Dr Plank was previously head of VGT but was voted out of the organisation following his misuse of donations. Dr Plank appeared before the court in a highly emotional state and let forth a stream of accusations against Dr Martin Balluch, the present head of the organisation. These allegations came as a surprise to the court as Plank had been interviewed by police three times and had written a statement without mentioning them. Dr Balluch has evidence to dispute these accusations and it remains to be seen whether the judge is aware of the plainly obvious: That Dr Plank is driven by a desire for revenge. In any case, she was particularly short with him especially in contrast to her treatment of other prosecution witnesses. This witness is due to testify again on July 19th.
Filed under Body by on Jul 22nd, 2010. Comment. 
Actress Pamela Anderson recently posed for a provocative PETA advertisement reminding people that legs, breasts, and ribs are body parts—not entrées. Her body was painted in marks suggestive of a butcher’s diagram to hammer home the point that “All Animals Have the Same Parts.”
Anderson flew to Montréal to unveil the ad at Jacques Cartier Square, but the Montreal Film and TV Commission refused to issue a permit, citing flimsy reasons about male-female equality. City official Josee Rochefort sent PETA a last-minute e-mail claiming that the ad is “not so much controversial as it goes against all principles public organizations are fighting for in the everlasting battle of equality between men and women.”
Filed under Body by on Jul 21st, 2010. Comment.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW-www.ifaw.org) announced today that a controversial proposal to legalize whaling has failed at the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in Agadir, Morocco.
“Under a cloud of corruption allegations the IWC is taking a safe course, opting for a cooling off period that protects the moratorium and other IWC conservation measures,” said Patrick Ramage, Director of IFAW’s Global Whale Campaign. “Had it been done here, this deal would have lived in infamy.”
Filed under Body by on Jun 24th, 2010. 1 Comment.
In one week, the International Whaling Commission will hold its final vote on a proposal to legalize commercial whale hunting for the first time in a generation.
The outcome rests on whose voices are heard most clearly in the final hours: the pro-whaling lobby — or the world’s people?
More than 650,000 of us have signed the petition to protect whales — it’s time to reach 1 million! At the whale summit in Morocco, an Avaaz team is setting up billboards, front-page newspaper ads, and a giant, constantly-updating petition counter — all to ensure that delegates, from the moment they step off the plane until they cast their votes, will see from our explosive numbers that the world will not accept legal whale slaughter.
Filed under Body, Mind, Soul by on Jun 17th, 2010. Comment.
Staff and volunteers from the American animal rights organisation FARM held a protest outside the Austrian Embassy in Washington DC this week. For an hour activists gathered and marched in front of the Austrian Embassy chanting messages and carrying large signs reading “Stop Austrian Repression”, “Activism is NOT a crime”, “Protect Free Speech” and “Drop all Charges – Shame on Austria!”. During the demonstration activists approached the embassy to deliver a letter to the embassy’s public information officer, Wolfgang Renezeder. Friendly and understanding, Mr Renezeder was aware of the worldwide protests and agreed to make sure that the letter was delivered to the Ministry of Justice in Vienna.
Filed under Body, Mind, Soul by on Jun 15th, 2010. Comment.
Environmental groups and scientists have been warning us for years to first test a product or technology before putting it out into the environment or into someone’s body. Unfortunately, the world did not always listen. Yes, laws have been passed and changed and fudged to allow thousands of chemicals to make their way into our waterways and bloodstreams; and while there are some who take action for change there are still too many with their head stuck in the sand of denial. Today in the spirit of bashing BP and all those individuals who have made greed motivated decisions concerning our health and the welfare of our planet, I present you with the Big 10 Global Warnings We Ignored.
Filed under Body, Mind by on Jun 11th, 2010. Comment.
This week saw three detectives from the special commission testifying in court. What they told the judge revealed many shocking inconsistencies which the defence attempted to address in their questioning. However, the judge prevented this by not allowing many of the defences’ questions.
It transpired that in October 2007 police were already planning home raids and remand prison for a number of activists. The police reports show that Dr Balluch and VGT were the main suspects. However, this was based on nothing more than the assumption that VGT possibly provided a cover for people committing offences, there was no proof or any evidence. And Dr Balluch was considered the main suspect only because he was president of VGT.
Asked about investigative results, such as DNA tests and Mobile phone and vehicle tracking, which would clear the defendants of any involvement in offences, the detectives claimed that the results were in their reports but not in the final police reports, since evidence was only considered relevant, if it provided evidence for guilt.
Filed under Body, Mind, Soul by on Jun 8th, 2010. Comment.
The 29-member panel will seek WHO records and correspondence from before and after the H1N1 strain was declared a pandemic in June, said committee chairman Harvey Fineberg, who is also president of the Institute of Medicine in Washington.
“We will want to have access to certain confidential documents that may be in place here at WHO or elsewhere,” Fineberg told reporters in Geneva.
The documents include “contractual or letters of understanding” between the pharmaceutical industry and WHO, he said. “Some of the agreements with industry that we would like to examine have been considered confidential,” but so far all of the panel’s requests have been met, he said.
Filed under Body, Mind by on May 24th, 2010. Comment.
Only hours after the British oil major claimed partial success in stemming the flow of some of the oil from its damaged Gulf of Mexico oil rig, a group of US Senators asked Eric Holder, US Attorney General, to investigate the company in connection to the spill.
The eight cite a BP document from February last year in which the company told the Minerals Management Service (MMS) that “in the event of an unanticipated blowout resulting in an oil spill, it is unlikely to have an impact based on the industry-wide standards for using proven equipment and technology for such responses”.
Filed under Body, Mind by on May 24th, 2010. 1 Comment.
After almost all of last week and most of this week’s trial dates being taken up by questioning witnesses about legal anti fur demonstrations the defence made an objection to the judge on the grounds that the demonstrations under discussion were legally registered, not forbidden by the police and had no relevance to any crimes. The judge overruled the objection stating that those demonstrations were incriminated as part of a double strategy of legal protests and illegal activity. The two days in court this week were taken up with shop assistants and store managers being asked to describe the anti fur demonstrations in front of their stores and the behaviour of the protesters taking part.
Filed under Body, Mind, Soul by on May 20th, 2010. 2 Comments.
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